fembarracuda networks,ss:here" is cloud-connected security and storage solutions that simplify it. scott mcgrew: good morning everyone, i'm scott mcgrew. a very happy new year to you. we've given our crew the day off to celebrate the holidays with their families. so instead, we hope you'll enjoy at least a few of our "best of" clips this sunday morning, interviews i've picked out as some of my favorites. we're going to start with a fellow who's in charge of a private company that helps social media companies keep offensive content off their sites. it's a job that's super boring until it's not. scott: let me ask you, 3,000, just speaking generally about this, with facebook adding 3,000 people to watch these, is that enough? henry chang: absolutely not, i mean, just some figures out there, facebook has videos, photos, and just photos alone,

over 3 million a day. and on a just per-feed basis, over 4.5 billion pieces of information, so absolutely not. it's a good start, though. scott: yeah, how fast can somebody look at a video? 'cause i suppose if you see a birthday party, it's reasonable to think nothing terrible is going to happen. henry: right, right. fairly quickly. i mean, our clients have pretty elaborate platforms that allow photos, videos to scroll by fairly easily. and the folks that are doing it do it all the time, so they catch things. jon swartz: so, are you filtering the content as it's live or as it's uploaded? because in the case of the facebook murder in cleveland, that was a combination. i think his confession was live. the other two, they were--videos were actually were uploaded. can you do both? henry: it really depends on the client. what we've done in the past has been not live, it's things that's been uploaded, and there's some sort of time gap between it gets posted. tom simonite: henry, you've done this work, right?

you've done a shift screening the content. can you describe what that's like? henry: as you can imagine, it's pretty monotonous. you're looking through pictures, videos. most of the time, it's pretty uninteresting, if that's a word. but every once in a while, you do get these extremes that what we're hired to do is just to get rid of them. tom: it's uninteresting with the occasional horror thrown in? i mean, that can take a toll on people. henry: i mean, it does. i mean, there's two extremes. you can have the super humorous and crazy outtakes, but you can also have the awful things that you do see. it just really depends on the client's terms of service as far as what's being allowed and what's not. scott: that was henry chang from the company open access bpo. if you're just joining us, we're showing you clips of some of my favorite interviews over the year. we talk a lot about robotics and what it means for jobs. one of the top minds in robotics is melonee wise, who runs fetch robotics in silicon valley, creating robots for warehouse work. martin giles: i guess you're using robots in the workplace,

i mean, are we going to see more jobs replaced by automation, and how far? rich jaroslovsky: that was exactly my question. i've seen totally dystopian projections about job loss, and i've seen totally utopian projections about how many jobs the robotics revolution will create. i have no way of knowing which is true. melonee wise: yeah, so i think that there's a lot of data on both sides, supporting both cases. it depends on how you read the data. i personally believe that there's so much we don't know about the creation of jobs. for example, in the 1970s and 80s, we created this thing called robotic tellers. now, they're known as atms. but at the time, everyone said, "we'll never have any more tellers." unfortunately, it created a huge creation of jobs in the teller market because the atm enabled us to have smaller regional bank branches throughout the united states. and so, because we could have smaller bank branches,

we could have more tellers, only a couple, but at banks. and so, you saw huge growth in that job market. and, but on the other side, there's plenty of counter-examples to that. but the thing is, is that robots typically don't take jobs, they take tasks. for example, the robots that we deploy, they just do a small part of the job, they do the material delivery, but there's a person on either end. and i think that eventually, you'll start moving towards this, but you know, when people--when the iphone was invented, a lot of people didn't think that there would be this huge explosion in app development and, you know, app millionaires from something as simple as a portable computing device. and so, i think that there's a lot of opportunity. i mean, you never know, these robots might get into your home and we're going to have a whole new robot app development market. scott: that was melonee wise from fetch robotics in conversation with reporters martin giles

and rich jaroslovsky. each week on the show, we have different guests talking to different reporters. here's roboticist henry hu talking with mark niu and troy wolverton about a coffee-making robot. troy wolverton: so, walk us through some of the economics of this. like, what are the startup costs that you face with your kiosk versus, like, a typical starbucks? how many people are you employing versus a typical starbucks? how many people can you serve versus a typical starbucks? henry hu: sure, so onsite, we employ less people than a typical starbucks. however, in order to build the equipment, we have a lot of engineers, and it's a product, so it's something that's manufactured. and so, onsite, there's going to be less people, but there's still a lot of people behind the company that's needed to create this product. and then in terms of setting up a location or a store, a cafe is not like a manufactured product, so you don't really have economies of scale. whereas with the robotic cafe, this is something that we're going to mass-produce over the next few years.

and so, the economics will be significantly better. scott: there's a cheaper coffee as well. i mean it's--did you intentionally make it cheaper, or are you offering it cheaper because you're not paying the robot medical bills or medical benefits? henry: so, that's one of the reasons why we can offer it for a lower cost and still be a good business. scott: 'cause i mean, starbucks is $4, you're about 2-something, right? henry: yeah, typically we're about a dollar less. and then we also have, like, single origin coffees that are a dollar more than the standard ones. so, you can select in the app from different coffee beans. scott: henry, tell me about people's reaction. i mean, it's a little like the claw game, i mean, to be honest with you, i mean, kids love it. when i saw it, my first suggestion was you need to start serving hot chocolate because kids--are you serving hot chocolate yet? henry: we're working on that. scott: okay, 'cause that's my--yeah. because you are going to get a huge kid--people just are mesmerized by the thing moving back and forth, and picking up the cups, et cetera. henry: yeah; well, i think with a good food or drink experience, well, it's supposed to be a good experience.

so, having a robot there, you know, in addition to the efficiency gains, it's also quite exciting and fun to watch. we did add a new item called really good milk on the menu, so for kids that-- scott: okay, good, a kid thing, yes. troy: so, how do you respond to some of the reactions that you're getting, so the less positive reactions about, you know, "this is displacing jobs." or, you know, "i actually enjoy going to my cafe and talking with my barista, or having that human interaction with my barista." or, you know, "i enjoy being in a cafe with other people, rather than getting served by a glorified vending machine"? henry: yeah; well, our goal is definitely not to replace cafes. cafex really i think will be created as the best possible experience for people that are trying to get good quality coffee to go. so, if you're looking for somewhere to sit down or have a meeting, you know, a cafe is still a great place for that. but for kind of the typical use case, where the--you know, the more common use case where you just need coffee and you want it really--a really good coffee, yeah, train station, airports, high-traffic areas, office buildings, i think cafex is the best possible experience.

scott: that was henry hu talking about his coffee-making robot. a reminder, you can watch the entire interview, and many interviews, on our website pressheretv.com. we'll be back with some of our favorite interviews of the year after this. ♪

as a podcast on itunes.

scott: welcome back to "press:here." we've let our hardworking crew have new year's off, so we're recycling a little bit, showing you some of my favorite interviews from 2017. obviously, the big story in 2017, sexual harassment and diversity. we took a look at diversity with the head of hewlett-packard's diversity effort, lesley slaton brown. sarah lacy: when you think about diversity in silicon valley, there's a lot of people who feel like, you know, maybe gender gets more attention, or you know, when you talk about, you know, white men and asian men, like is there, you know, a difference between, like, hiring asian versus hiring african-american? and you know, what about hiring older people and age discrimination? i mean, how should we think about diversity where--because a lot of these are individual problems, but really, it's also the whole same problem. how do you guys approach it? lesley slaton brown: in the way we approach it, sarah, and i appreciate your question, is that--and it goes back to all, right? we do business in 170 countries across the world.

and although we're headquartered in the silicon valley, we have hub sites within the us, across the us. and it's very important for us to really be able to balance that workforce. so, ethnic minorities, race representation, gender, generational, ability, veteran status, all of that is very important to us because we create technology for everyone everywhere. and so, we have to be very respectful to that, and knowing that we have to bring that into our workforce and honor that. scott: i notice you didn't include religion in that. lesley: religion as well. scott: religion as well? you would consider a religious person of some religious faith to count towards a diversity number? lesley: well, i mean, it's a perspective, right? it brings a different perspective to the table. scott: would you--i guess i should refine my question. when you're putting together your diversity report, is religion one of your numbers? lesley: no, it is not. no, it is not. connie guglielmo: can we talk about the end goal of diversity?

'cause that's what gets a lot of drama and attention. whenever i or my staff write about it, the first response is always from people saying, "well, these are already very successful companies that are making a lot of money, so obviously it's not an issue of diversity." can you counter that? lesley: well, the reason i think hp has had the success that it has is because we have a legacy of caring about our workforce. and so, when bill hewlett and dave packard formed hp in a little garage on addison avenue, they considered, "how do we build a workforce that--well, first of all, products that meet the needs of a community." and then, in addition to that, they consciously thought about what the workforce should look like in order to innovate. and so, that's what we're focused on. our endgame is greater innovation and winning. scott: 2017 marked the 30th anniversary of the gif, the little animated pictures you see online and in text messages.

and it's pronounced "jiff," not "giff," at least in my opinion. scott: so, let's start with how does one, how--well, how do you--the burning question, is it "jiff" or "giff"? richard rabbat: so, the creator, steve wilhite, calls it "jiff." and we care a lot about creators, we call it "jiff." scott: i will allow you to continue to stay on this show, "jiff" is the correct answer. president obama is entirely wrong. okay, so let me start with this. gifs, as i remember, started back when we could barely transmit video over the internet. and so, you had these low-frame rate, low-quality, teensy-weensy little videos. and yet, we're still using them. why is that? richard: amazing, so it used to be that, like, you know, when the age of computers came, we took typewriters and put them on a pc, and that was fine. and then with mobile, like we took--we took the qwerty keyboard, and we put it on a phone, and we're like, you know, spending all our time trying to

figure out, like, how to press on the right character. and instead, like this input device is so bad for, you know, what we're trying to achieve. so, gifs are an easy way for you to transmit your emotions, thoughts, and ideas to the person you're conversing with. and that's why it's so--it's grown so fast. jon: it's kind of like our own language. like for instance, i have two daughters, and one of them likes gifs with dogs, and the other one likes any gif with drake. michal lev-ram: i love drake gifs. jon: yeah, she loves those, and so, is it in a way a form of communication between people? richard: it is, like, you can imagine, like, when you take a piece of content and you just look at the visual element and the--and the time element, and you remove the sound element, then people can interpret that content in many, many different ways. so, your emotional attachment to that piece of content becomes the reason why you want to share, that you want to talk about it. and that just creates a new way of people

to communicate with each other. michal: it is really interesting that it has become this new mode of communication. i mean, to go back to our president's recent gif, which he tweeted out himself, i mean, this is an expression. this is saying what he--i mean, which he said in many other ways as well. but i mean is, is that totally new territory? richard: so, i think--so, our current president is an amazing piece of content for all-- michal: i was wondering what you were going to say. richard: for all of what we're trying to do. like you know, like since the campaign has started, it's been amazing content after amazing content that people want to share and discuss across different places. our content is being shared on, like, a lot of publications, new york times, wall street journal. all these guys are, you know, embedding our content and talking about it because of the--all these facial expressions that, you know, politicians give us day after day.

jon: so, trump is so good at using twitter, it would makes sense he would use more gifs, actually, because he doesn't have to say--he doesn't have to type anything. i mean, he could just show-- scott: that cnn one was, as best i can remember, his first one, i'm not sure. but yeah, you're right, he may have discovered gifs now. michal: yeah, maybe we're entering a whole new-- jon: a new realm, maybe it's just the next wave if he doesn't make a fool of himself with--i'll stop. scott: so, let me ask you, richard. i mean, you have, "oh, you know, the new york times use our content," the--everyone-- where do you make a buck? i mean, how do you--where's the money in this? richard: so, i mean, the way we created gfycat, we wanted to be the youtube for gifs. people come create content, and then they share it, and the ones that become viral are the ones that basically people like and share, et cetera. now, because people are sharing widely on all the different social networks and, you know, in articles and magazines and publishers, that creates a lot of traffic back to us. we're today the #60 site in the us. we do about 400 million page views all through

the power of these gifs. and monetization through advertising is an easy-- scott: so, i come to your site with a little clip, a video, and you turn it into a gif for me. it's hosted on your site, i send it out, somebody likes it and wonders, "hey, how'd he make that?" et cetera. then returns, and you're selling banner ads i assume is the process. richard: over time, that's what we will do, although we've been very focused on growth. scott: ah, so you don't make any money. richard: we're not making any money. but the model is very much, you know, people are attracted to these pages, there would be banner ads that people can also look at and get value out of. scott: we've been taking a look at some of our favorite interviews of 2017. of course, you can find every single interview we do at pressheretv.com. but stick around, after the break, we'll show you some more. ♪

door in california history. inside the controversial pot law getting a lot of buzz ) around the country. plus- kari will track new rain chances for your work week. ...when you join us )new years) morning from 4:30 to 7. morning from 4:30 to 7. a podcast on itunes. scott: welcome back to "press:here." this week, we're taking a look back at some of our favorite interviews. steve hofstetter is a comedian who made a name for himself by posting videos of his routines on youtube, in particular, routines interrupted by hecklers. it's done him well. his videos have millions of views for every video. he sat down to talk to us about using youtube

to spread your brand. scott: let me ask you, i mean, the astonishing numbers on youtube, what drives that kind of numbers? i mean, obviously people like you, but how did you generate the interest when it's just this gigantic amount of video on youtube? steve hofstetter: youtube was a bit of an accident for me, actually. what i started doing is i didn't want to give away my content for free. i wanted to give away outtakes, so i started putting up clips of when i would ad-lib with the audience. and it happens to be a particular skill that i have as part of my repertoire. so, someone would interrupt me, i would go off on them, and then i would put it up. and there's a lot of justice in that. i think a lot of people want to be able to do that at the workplace. sarah: i do. journalists get to do that too. steve: yeah, when you're--when you're frustrated with someone, that you could just say horrible things to them and everybody applauds, it's great. so, those clips took off. and you know, that just led to a huge new audience. and the other thing that i make sure of is i never worry about alienating my fanbase because you can't alienate your own

fanbase if you're true to yourself. because then the people you alienate were never going to be your fans to begin with. so, especially in today's climate, where some comedians are like, "oh, i'm not going to talk politics," i'm going to talk about them more than ever because that way my fans come to me, and the people who weren't going to bother buying a ticket anyway, they won't watch my video. scott: this is like talking to sarah lacy with red hair. steve: i don't get the reference, but-- sarah: i continually punch everyone in the face. steve: yeah, i was like, "you seem like a pleasant person," but yeah. mark: i've seen your videos where you let loose on the audience, talking about in indiana god, i believe gay marriage, and also abortion. and how do you deal with sort of the trolling online too? does that--do you use the same sort of technique to sort of get-- steve: well, the first thing you have to realize is that it doesn't matter, you know? i had a guy who said something awful about me on twitter, and i clicked on his twitter to see who he was,

and he had one follower. and it made me laugh so hard because i was like you didn't need to tweet that, you could have just told someone. like, you have one follower. tell two people, really expand your base, you know, get the word out. tell your parents, those are two people. scott: well, one of them was probably his mom, so yeah. steve: no, no, he probably lives with them. but anyway, the point being that, like, you realize that the people who are doing this online, what are they--what does that really matter? you know, in the long run, i've got 65 million views on my youtube now, and the vast majority of them are from supportive, wonderful people. and so, what does it matter if the loudest people are the idiots? sarah: now, how is that translated into business for you? because some comedians and musicians have done this incredibly well. and there's a long tale of a lot of other independent musicians and comedians who say, you know, "this works for radiohead and louis c.k., but not the rest of us." steve: well, it has worked for me on a huge level. i'm able to draw now. and as a comedian, that is a huge hump to get over. right now, i'm on a 65-city, 18-country tour.

it's called the "your tour" because the idea was i gave it to the fans. i said, "okay, here are the cities i might do. buy tickets, i don't have a venue yet, here's the city and the date that i want to do it. i don't have a venue or a show time. buy tickets. if i end up not doing that city, i'll refund your money. if i sell enough tickets in that city, that's where i'll go." and so, they basically start voting on where i perform with their ticket money. and what ends up happening is, you know, this week i did five venues on off-nights, none of them weekends, and sold out every single one of them. scott: because you knew ahead of time you were going to sell out because it's almost--it's kind of amazing that that's not how tickets are--a lot of performers work. steve: it gives the artist the power. i think there's going to be a shift toward that. i'm the first one that's doing it this way, but hopefully other people will as well. because what then happens is, like, i have a show in london in july. i'm still not sure where yet, but i've already sold 125 tickets.

so, i can call any venue in london and say, "hey, give me the best terms you can possibly give someone because i can guarantee you these people are coming." there's no rolling the dice anymore. and that's why it works. sarah: now, facebook is trying to eat into youtube's turf. they were paying creators for a while and trying to really jumpstart people being more on their platform. for comedy, is youtube still where it's at? have you played with facebook live at all? steve: it'd be so wonderful if facebook ever paid content creators for anything that they do. and eventually, there was an announcement soon, it'd be like, "well, we're going to try doing that." and it's like, "oh, what a wonderful thing to let us know. how about you just start doing that?" and so, the reason why so many of us post videos on youtube is because that's where we can make a living. and so, as soon as facebook starts sharing their ad revenue with the people who are generating it, then they're going to get more people posting that content. scott: what percentage of youtube--i mean, what percentage of your living comes from youtube as compared to performing? and is there any other place you're making money? well, i guess you're selling your albums as well.

steve: sure, there's merchandise, i do produce-- scott: what percentage is it? what percentage of your daily take-home check is youtube? steve: i'd say probably about a quarter. scott: oh, that's significant. steve: it's definitely significant. and it didn't used to be that. you know, my youtube has grown an incredible amount in the past year. it's doubled in the past year. and that's because i've had a couple of different clips that went viral. and you know, just, i guess, mean to the right people. and so, you know, and that resonated, they went viral. and then once you hit that tipping point, it's just a snowball, and keeps getting bigger and bigger. but what's great about that is i invest everything i make in my career. so, i use the stuff that i'm making on youtube to go buy better cameras so that the content in the future will be better, you know? and i just keep doing stuff like that to upgrade my website, to expand the production capabilities i have. because i don't want to make a little bit of money now to be okay. i want to never worry about money again and just get to be creative.

and that's really the goal of any artist. well, most artists. sarah: is tv as important to comedy as it was in the past? steve: no, not at all. i had my own television show that i hosted, and-- scott: i don't remember it exactly. steve: that's my point, i've had maybe two people come up to me on the street and say, "hey, i loved your show." and probably three or four times a week, someone stops me and says, "hey, i love your youtube." it's completely changed the landscape. scott: i'll let you know i've had four people come up and love my show. steve: that's more than me. sarah: you still have the power of tv. scott: now, you did--you experimented with this idea of selling albums à la radiohead, right? where you could just pay what you want. what was the average pay? i mean, what did people feel you were worth in that album? steve: the average ended up being about $4, which is almost three times as much as i would have gotten from a label. because the label pays you-- scott: 'cause you keep all the money. steve: exactly, and so, basically what happened was--and so, this was before louis c.k. i was the first one to do it with comedy.

radiohead gave me the idea, i certainly don't take credit for the idea, but i wanted to see if it worked with comedy, and it did. because what ended up happening, and this is before i had a big youtube, before i had anything, these were just a couple of fans. and i made more in the first week on that album than i made on the previous album, and that album was done with sony bmg. because i was able to actually get all of it. so, the fans were able to pay less, which i think is a wonderful thing, i'm an advocate for that. the--you know, i was able to make more. and the only people who were cut out of it were the record execs. and boo-hoo, you don't get your third yacht, i'm so sorry. but sometimes, the fans and the artists need to negotiate between themselves, and that's what is an amazing thing right now is that we can have content direct to the artists. scott: back in a moment. ♪

a podcast on itunes. scott: that's our show for this week, a look back on our favorite interviews of 2017.

each week, reporters from the world's top newspapers and news outlets join me as we interview silicon valley newsmakers on the latest issues. and i hope you'll join us next week. i'm scott mcgrew, happy new year. ♪ ♪ announcer: "press:here" is sponsored in part by barracuda networks, cloud-connected security and storage solutions that simplify it.

damian trujillo: hello, and welcome to "comunidad del valle". i'm damian trujillo, and today we celebrate the fortieth anniversary of los mestizos de san jose. one half hour of danza on your "comunidad del valle." ♪ damian: they are los mestizos de san jose, and they are celebrating 40 years of danza all across the bay area. we're going to begin, actually, with my little girls. it's the pee-wee version of los mestizos. estella and malina are in this first segment. they are dancing from the region of michoacan. ♪