This Week in Tech 1020: Smell My Mouse

Summary

This Week in Tech 1020: Smell My Mouse – Detailed Summary

Release Date: February 24, 2025
Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy (The Verge), Abrar Al Heedi (CNET), Larry Magid (Connect Safely)

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1. Introduction of the Panel

Leo Laporte kicks off the episode by welcoming the panel members:

• Jennifer Pattison Tuohy from The Verge
• Abrar Al Heedi from CNET
• Larry Magid, President and CEO of Connect Safely

The panel engages in light-hearted banter about their roles and appearances, setting a relaxed and engaging tone for the discussion.

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2. Major Tech News

A. Bybit Cryptocurrency Exchange Hack

The episode opens with a significant discussion on the largest cryptocurrency theft to date.

• Leo Laporte introduces the topic:

  "[03:11] Leo Laporte: If Molly White were here, she would be talking about the largest ever crypto purchase theft."

• Details of the Hack:

  • Bybit, a major cryptocurrency exchange, experienced a massive breach where attackers stole $1.4 billion in ETH-based tokens by compromising a hot wallet.
  • The CEO, Ben Joe, confirmed the attack on Twitter and assured users that all client assets are 1:1 backed, aiming to cover the loss even if the funds aren't fully recovered.

• Panel Insights:
  Larry Magid expresses concern:

  "[04:53] Larry Magid: Where did the money, whose pockets did it come from though? Who lost the money?"

  Leo Laporte clarifies the term "musked":

  "[04:58] Leo Laporte: What I gather by the way, musked according to Kroc, in the context of the Bybit hack refers to a transaction payload being obfuscated or spoofed."

  The panel reflects on the scale of the theft, comparing it to historical breaches like Mt. Gox, and emphasizes the inherent risks of using custodial wallets.

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B. Apple's Advanced Data Protection and UK Regulations

A significant update on Apple's stance against government-mandated backdoors for data access.

• Apple's Concession:
  Apple has removed Advanced Data Protection (ADP) for UK users following pressure from the UK government under the Investigatory Powers Act. This act demands unencrypted access to all iCloud data, effectively mandating a backdoor.

• Leo Laporte highlights Apple's response:

  "[18:58] Leo Laporte: Apple has decided to remove advanced data protection for UK users. We will never build a backdoor to user data, says Apple."

• Panel Discussion:
  Jennifer Pattison Tuohy elaborates on the impact, noting that while iMessage remains end-to-end encrypted, other data types like iCloud backups, photos, notes, and voice memos will no longer enjoy the same level of protection.

  Larry Magid raises concerns about global compliance and Apple's ability to maintain its privacy standards across different jurisdictions.

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C. Smart Home Updates: Robot Vacuums and iOS 18.4

Apple's latest software update enhances smart home integration, particularly with robot vacuums.

• New Features in iOS 18.4:

  • Robot Vacuum Support: Apple now allows direct control of robot vacuums like the SwitchBot S10 through the Apple Home app, eliminating the need for separate vendor-specific apps.
  • Local Control: Emphasis on local network control, reducing dependency on internet connectivity and enhancing privacy.

• Jennifer Pattison Tuohy shares her excitement:

  "[27:26] Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:…this is big news if you use Apple home…"

• Security Implications:
  The panel discusses potential security concerns, such as unauthorized access to smart home devices. Leo Laporte mentions his own experience with a Roomba and the importance of balancing convenience with security.

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D. Amazon's Revamped Echo and AI Challenges

Amazon faces delays in rolling out its next-generation Echo devices equipped with enhanced AI capabilities.

• Amazon's Struggle with AI Integration:
  Reports indicate that Amazon has postponed the launch of its smarter Echo devices due to challenges in merging existing functionalities with new Generative AI models.

• Leo Laporte explains the delay:

  "[51:29] Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:…Amazon is struggling to integrate AI into their Echo devices seamlessly…"

• Expected Features:

  • Multiple Command Execution: Ability to handle several commands simultaneously, e.g., "Turn off the lights, start the vacuum, and lock the doors."
  • Contextual Understanding: Enhanced AI to better understand and act upon user context and preferences.

• Panel Opinions:
  Abral Al Heedi expresses cautious optimism, noting that while AI integration promises greater functionality, it must be executed flawlessly to meet user expectations.

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E. AI Integration in Smart Homes: Siri and AI Assistants

The conversation shifts to the broader topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in smart home ecosystems, focusing on Siri's advancements and challenges.

• Siri's Development:
  Apple aims to make Siri more intelligent by leveraging AI to understand context and perform complex tasks, such as managing schedules and automating home routines.

• Challenges:

  • Device Synchronization: Ensuring all Apple devices are updated to support advanced AI features.
  • Privacy Concerns: Balancing AI's need for data with Apple's commitment to user privacy.

• Larry Magid shares his skepticism:

  "[36:13] Larry Magid: But that's the point of the arm. Less. Less needed for if it can only…"

• Future Outlook:
  The panel anticipates that while AI can significantly enhance smart home operations, it also introduces risks related to privacy and security, urging cautious implementation.

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F. ChatGPT Reaches 400 Million Weekly Users

A milestone achievement for OpenAI's ChatGPT, now serving 400 million users weekly, marking its widespread adoption and integration into various sectors.

• ChatGPT's Growth:

  • From 3 million weekly users in December to 400 million, showcasing explosive growth and mainstream acceptance.

• Panel Reactions:
  Jennifer Pattison Tuohy remarks on its integration into daily tasks:

  "[74:37] Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:…Chat GPT really has become, you know, it's mainstream…"

  Leo Laporte discusses the financial sustainability of such growth:

  "[72:03] Leo Laporte: Because if you think ChatGPT is a money loser right now…"

• Use Cases and Implications:

  • Productivity Boost: Assisting in tasks like writing, data analysis, and content creation.
  • Privacy and Data Security: Concerns about data handling and user privacy given the scale of usage.

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G. Data Privacy and California Fines on Data Broker

The California Privacy Protection Agency imposes a relatively minor fine on a massive data breach involving National Public Data (NPD), despite exposing 270 million Social Security numbers.

• The Breach:

  • NPD, a data broker, legally collected and subsequently leaked sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers of 270 million individuals.

• Fine Details:

  • The California regulator seeks a $46,000 fine, which the panel perceives as insufficient given the breach's magnitude.

• Panel Insights:
  Larry Magid criticizes the penalty:

  "[108:46] Larry Magid: $46,000. That's like a $2 parking ticket."

  Leo Laporte echoes the sentiment:

  "[108:55] Leo Laporte: This is the California Privacy Protection Act. CPPA says brokers have to register by January 31, 2024…"

• Broader Implications:
  The panel discusses the effectiveness of current regulations in deterring data breaches and the need for more substantial penalties to protect consumer data.

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H. Generative AI and Its Impact on Various Industries

The panel delves into the transformative effects of Generative AI across different sectors, highlighting both its potential and inherent challenges.

• Applications Discussed:

  • Content Creation: Automating tasks like writing, editing, and summarizing.
  • Smart Home Automation: Enhancing device interconnectivity and functionality.
  • Enterprise Solutions: Tools like Melissa's AI-enabled data quality solutions assisting businesses in data management.

• Challenges Identified:

  • Trust and Reliability: Concerns about AI's accuracy and potential for "hallucinations."
  • Privacy Risks: Balancing AI's data needs with user privacy protections.

• Panel Perspectives:
  Jennifer Pattison Tuohy emphasizes the necessity of human oversight:

  "[66:24] Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:…you have to get over the creepy factor…"

  Larry Magid highlights the practical benefits and ethical considerations:

  "[75:16] Larry Magid:…how much money I spent on Amazon…"

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I. Apple's New iPhone 16E

Apple introduces its latest iPhone 16E, marking a strategic shift in its product lineup and pricing strategy.

• Pricing and Features:

  • Price Increase: The iPhone SE, previously priced at $429, now starts at $599.
  • Features: Includes advanced technologies like Apple Intelligence, Dynamic Island, Ultra-Wideband (UWB) for enhanced location services, and improved camera capabilities.

• Panel Reactions:
  Larry Magid observes:

  "[140:37] Abrar Al Heedi: My colleague had a article … 'The E in iPhone 16E might as well stand for expensive.'"

  Jennifer Pattison Tuohy analyzes the implications for global markets:

  "[141:03] Abrar Al Heedi:…Apple must have researched this. Do you think they've maybe decided that their the value proposition of an iPhone is sufficient to overcome its extra cost?"

• Strategic Insights:
  The panel discusses Apple's focus on integrating AI-driven features over maintaining a low-cost entry point, potentially alienating price-sensitive markets like India and China.

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J. Asus Releases a Fragrant Mouse and Other Novel Devices

Asus ventures into unique hardware innovations with its new Fragrant Mouse, blending peripheral functionality with sensory experiences.

• Product Details:

  • Fragrant Mouse: Equipped with a scent module housing essential oils, available in colors like White and Rose Clay.

• Panel Discussion:
  Leo Laporte humorously remarks on the practicality:

  "[130:01] Leo Laporte:…It’s a fragrance producing mouse which is, it's got nice, you know, it's like the G502 or the G Pro X…"

  Abral Al Heedi contemplates the user experience:

  "[131:31] Abrar Al Heedi:…how you associate smells with moments."

• Broader Implications:
  The panel explores how integrating scents into devices could enhance user interaction but also raises questions about practicality and user preferences.

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3. AI and Voice Assistant Enhancements

The conversation pivots to the evolution of AI-driven voice assistants across major tech platforms.

• Siri's Advancement:
  Apple aims to enhance Siri with Apple Intelligence, enabling more contextual understanding and seamless integration with smart home devices.

• Amazon Echo's AI Struggles:
  Amazon grapples with integrating Generative AI into Echo devices, leading to repeated delays and functionality issues, as reported by major news outlets.

• Privacy and Security Concerns:
  The panel underscores the delicate balance between AI advancements and maintaining user privacy, especially in smart home environments where AI can control critical systems.

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4. Data Privacy and Regulatory Challenges

The episode delves deeper into the intersection of data privacy, regulation, and the responsibilities of tech companies.

• Section 230 Scrutiny:
  The discussion highlights ongoing FTC inquiries into tech censorship and potential modifications to Section 230 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which currently protects tech platforms from liability over user-generated content.

• Panel Perspectives:
  Leo Laporte emphasizes the importance of Section 230 for podcasting and small platforms:

  "[116:45] Leo Laporte:…the principle works for social media platforms as it does for others."

  Jennifer Pattison Tuohy debates the feasibility of comprehensive content moderation without incurring prohibitive costs.

• Future Implications:
  The panel debates the potential consequences of weakening or eliminating Section 230, noting that it could stifle smaller tech companies' ability to operate and moderate content effectively.

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5. Generative AI in Content Creation and Beyond

The panel explores the pervasive influence of Generative AI in various realms, including journalism, content creation, and personal productivity.

• Journalistic Integrity:
  Leo Laporte and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy discuss The New York Times adopting AI tools for editing and headline generation, raising concerns about authenticity and quality.

• Personal Productivity Tools:
  Larry Magid shares his experience using ChatGPT to decipher complex data, emphasizing its utility while cautioning against over-reliance.

• Ethical Considerations:
  The panel debates the ethical implications of AI in automating creative and analytical tasks, highlighting the need for human oversight to prevent misinformation and maintain quality.

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6. Sponsorships and Advertisements

Throughout the episode, various sponsors are promoted, seamlessly integrated into the discussion:

• ExpressVPN:
  Emphasizes the necessity of secure internet connections and protecting personal data from hackers, especially on unencrypted networks.

• ZipRecruiter:
  Promoted as an efficient solution for employers seeking quality candidates rapidly, leveraging smart technology to streamline the hiring process.

• US Cloud:
  Highlights their role in providing affordable and superior Microsoft support for enterprises, alongside Azure cost optimization services.

• ThreatLocker:
  Introduces their zero trust endpoint protection platform, focusing on comprehensive cybersecurity measures to protect against modern threats.

• Melissa:
  Showcases their AI-enabled data quality solutions tailored for various industries, ensuring accurate and reliable data management.

The sponsors were presented with enthusiasm, aligning their services with the show's technical and security-focused themes.

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7. Closing Remarks and Upcoming Content

As the episode concludes, the panel reflects on the broad spectrum of topics covered:

• Future Episodes:
  Announcement of upcoming shows, including an interview with Stephen Wolfram, the creator of Wolfram Alpha, focusing on Intelligent Machines.

• Celebrating Milestones:
  Mention of TWiT's 20th anniversary in April, highlighting the show's longevity and continued relevance in the tech podcasting landscape.

• Community Engagement:
  Encouragement for listeners to join the TWiT TV Club for exclusive content, ad-free experiences, and participation in special events like Stacy's Book Clubs.

The panel ends on a contemplative note about the rapid advancements in AI, the responsibilities of tech companies, and the ongoing challenges in balancing innovation with ethical considerations.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Leo Laporte on Bybit Hack:

  "[04:53] Larry Magid: Where did the money, whose pockets did it come from though? Who lost the money?"

• Larry Magid on California Fine:

  "[108:46] Larry Magid: $46,000. That's like a $2 parking ticket."

• Jennifer Pattison Tuohy on Apple's Data Protection:

  "[22:07] Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:…if you add in generative AI, you need the model, so you need the cloud."

• Leo Laporte on AI and Privacy:

  "[48:39] Abrar Al Heedi: Yeah. I think... once you get over the creepy factor, you think, okay, I actually have become quite reliant."

• Larry Magid on Generative AI's Utility:

  "[75:10] Larry Magid: One of the biggest challenges I have as a person who gets paid to write is I will sometimes use ChatGPT or Gemini for ideas…"

• Leo Laporte on Generative AI's Role in Education:

  "[75:07] Leo Laporte: But you can't trust it. You can't."

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Conclusion

This episode of This Week in Tech offers a comprehensive exploration of pivotal tech developments, particularly focusing on AI advancements, data security, and the evolving landscape of smart home technologies. Through insightful discussions and expert perspectives, the panel underscores the delicate balance between innovation and ethical responsibility, providing listeners with a nuanced understanding of the current tech ecosystem.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for TWiT. This Week in Tech. We got a great panel. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy is here from the Verge. Abral Al Heedi from cnet, from Connect Safely. My old friend Larry Magid. We will talk about, well, many things. The new iPhone, for one. Amazon's revamped Echo may not have its intelligence built in. And a massive lawsuit to fine the national public data broker that leaked all our Social Security numbers. California Watts, $46,000. All that more coming up on Twit podcasts you love from people you Trust. This is TWIT. This is TWIT. This Week in Tech, episode 1020, recorded Sunday, February 23rd, 2025. Smell my mouse. It's time for TWITT. This Week in Tech, the show. We get together with the smartest, most interesting and best looking people in technology to talk about the week's news. Larry Maggot, president and CEO of Connect Safely. Larry, you and I are the grandpas on this show.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah. I must be either the smartest or the most interesting because I know I'm not the best looking.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, nobody's all three.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah. Okay, good. Good to know. Yeah, I know it's been a while. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

President of connect safely.org which is all about protecting families on the Internet. And God knows they need it.

[Larry Magid]

Thanks for joining us.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you. Wait a minute, are you wearing your meta glasses?

[Larry Magid]

I am wearing my meta glasses, so be careful. I can take your picture.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, my goodness.

[Larry Magid]

Gotcha.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, it's funny, they don't really look like, you know, smart glasses. They look like normal spectacles.

[Larry Magid]

That's what. Actually, my wife thinks I look better in them than I do in my regular.

[Leo Laporte]

You think you look smarter?

[Larry Magid]

The problem is the battery only lasts three hours, so I have to constantly be putting them back in the charger.

[Leo Laporte]

Or buy four pairs.

[Larry Magid]

That's a possibility, yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Also with us, Abrar Al Heiti from cnet. Always wonderful to have a bra on. What's a weekend?

[Abrar Al Heedi]

What is a weekend?

[Leo Laporte]

What is a weekend? Hello. Behind her. She's a technology reporter at Scene. It's so nice to see you, Abrar.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Good to see you too. Good to be on with that epic intro.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Smartest.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Well, you got to guess which one. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Smartest, cleverest, best looking. I think you get all. I think you got all three.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Very kind. Thank you.

[Leo Laporte]

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy is also here. Again, qualifies in all categories from the Verge. Hi, jpt.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Hello. Hello. Such a pleasure to be here too. Very excited for this and we're already half an hour in, so we're all warmed up.

[Leo Laporte]

The pre show which will be released to the club, will be dynamite by the way, I apologize, I didn't realize you were also going to be on Tech News Weekly this week. So we're kind of using a lot of your time. I thank you for being here.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Oh, I'm big fan, always happy to be here. It's a real privilege and a pleasure.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you. If Molly White were here, she would be talking about the largest ever crypto purchase theft. I guess theft is the word. Bybit $1.4 billion in ETH based tokens stolen. Stolen Attackers took control of what's called a hot wallet belonging to the Bybit cryptocurrency exchange. And once they took control, they moved $1.4 billion of tokens out. It's gone. Bybit CEO Ben Joe confirmed the attack on Twitter. They actually, I have to say they, you know, did the best one could with a bad situation. They've purchased now back I think 200, some almost 300 million tokens. No individual user as far as I know of. Bybit got bit, so to speak. Bybit Eth multisig cold wallet just made a transfer to our warm wallet about an hour ago. This specific transaction was musked. That's interesting. I don't know what that verb means. All the signers saw the musked UI which showed the correct address and the URL was from @safe. However the signing message. This is the kind of communication you want from a company when it's breached or hacked. Very specific information, he says. Rest assured all other cold wallets are secure, all withdrawals are normal. I will keep you guys posted.

[Larry Magid]

Where did the money, whose pockets did it come from though? Who lost the money?

[Leo Laporte]

What I gather by the way, musked according to Kroc, in the context of the Bybit hack refers to a transaction payload being obfuscated or spoofed. So it was spoofed. I don't know why they chose the name Musk, but maybe you can imagine it sounds like it was from them. It was Bybit's own holdings.

[Larry Magid]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

So that's a pretty big loss. It doesn't. And Joe also posts on X. Bybit is solvent. Even if this hack loss is not recovered, all of clients assets are one to one backed. We can cover the loss.

[Larry Magid]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

Now let's, let's hope that's true. This exceeds even the Mt. Gox theft many years ago. This is a big one and it kind of is a good Reminder that custodial wallets are not necessarily safe. You have to, you know, really trust the security of the place you're storing your wallet with.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah. They didn't really say what happened.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Right.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

That we don't know how musked.

[Larry Magid]

I wonder how that compares. I mean, how could you. I don't imagine you could have ever stolen a billion dollars from a bank.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

From a bank. That's what I was gonna say a billion dollars to.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, not even Goldfinger from Fort Knox was gonna get a billion dollars.

[Larry Magid]

I know.

[Leo Laporte]

So, yeah, that might be the. Not just the largest crypto heist ever. It's got to be the largest heist ever.

[Larry Magid]

I mean, I don't know how much. I don't know how much gold is in Fort Knox, but I wouldn't surprise me if it's not a billion.

[Leo Laporte]

Let me ask, how much gold is in Fort Knox?

[Larry Magid]

In dollars?

[Leo Laporte]

In dollars? I don't know. Yeah, she might say tons or pounds. Yeah, I don't know.

[Larry Magid]

Hey, Meta, how much gold and dollars is in Fort Knox?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I'm going to get my voice assistants going here.

[Larry Magid]

He doesn't want to answer. Probably more than.

[Leo Laporte]

This is a large number.

[Larry Magid]

More than my boss, Mark Zuckerberg has, actually.

[Leo Laporte]

It's funny because there is this meme.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Going around the exact amount of gold held in Fort Knox. The US Bullion depository is not publicly disclosed. However, it is reported that Fort Knox holds about 147 million ounces of gold, which is roughly 4,080 metric tons. This gold represents a significant portion of the United States gold reserves. If you have more specific questions about gold reserves or Fort Knox, feel free to ask.

[Larry Magid]

That's.

[Leo Laporte]

How much is that in US dollars? Now? The. The government only values it at $42.40 an ounce or something like that, but obviously gold is more than $600 an ounce last time I checked.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So I think your next episode will just be voice assistants talking to each other.

[Leo Laporte]

You could be, for all I know, a voice assistant anyway.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Chattering away in the background. What did matter say? Nothing.

[Larry Magid]

Nothing. Didn't like the question, unfortunately.

[Leo Laporte]

So the system I'm using is from B Dot Computer. We interviewed him on Wednesday. And Intelligent machines.

[Larry Magid]

How are you getting the sound into the mic? Are you just. Are we hearing it through the speaker or that?

[Leo Laporte]

No, I have the. I have my iPhone. You know how you put the iPhone on your computer screen? So it's that. And apparently it's also taking the sound. But she's also apparently very busy, so, you know, you'll Hear the answer? Yeah, she'll get back to me anyway. Yeah, that's a good point. It's. I don't think, you know, no armored car heist, no bank heist, nothing approaches $1.4 billion.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, because no one could physically move that. So once we get to technology, this is bits alight. Right?

[Larry Magid]

Right.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Speed of light.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah. A heck of getaway car to get away with a billion dollars of anything.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

The next Ocean's Eleven movies can be very boring, people sitting on computers.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm in. That's the classic line.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm in. Anyway, I think there's nothing more to say about it, except now I should say that it's probably more convenient to have a custodial wallet. A wallet that's held by Bybit or Coinbase or whoever you. You do business with. But there's always that risk. And certainly a lot of people who had their coins at Mount Gox lost quite a bit. I have a wallet that I keep locally. There's problems with that, too, as people, longtime listeners will know I forgot my password and I have 7.85 bitcoin just cool in their heels because I can't figure out how to get to them.

[Larry Magid]

But how is that different than a bank account or an investment account? Isn't that essentially a custodial wallet? I mean, if you're.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it is. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, we trust our banks, our stock brokerages, wherever we store our money. I mean, they don't have a pile of dollars in the vaults.

[Larry Magid]

I print out my statements because I want to have at least something that I can share.

[Leo Laporte]

So old school, Larry?

[Larry Magid]

Well, no, but it's all bits. How do I know that tomorrow the bits aren't going to all turn to.

[Leo Laporte]

Zero just because you put it in ink on a piece of paper, does it make it less bitwise?

[Larry Magid]

At least I can show it. I can see. Let me.

[Leo Laporte]

They have it here.

[Larry Magid]

I also printed out my Social Security statement, given what's going on.

[Leo Laporte]

Your money's not here, Mr. Maggot.

[Larry Magid]

It's.

[Leo Laporte]

It's over there in the houses that were built.

[Larry Magid]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

There's never been any money in the bank. It's just I. There is a requirement there. Actually, that is a difference. I don't know if crypto banks have the same requirement, but regular banks have a requirement to hold some small percentage of their deposits in the bank.

[Larry Magid]

None of them have actual cash.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I think so.

[Larry Magid]

Really?

[Leo Laporte]

Am I wrong? Maybe not.

[Larry Magid]

I don't know.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Sounds right.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it's changed quite a bit over the years. But yeah, there was at one point a requirement. But there's also insurance, there's fdic. And so you remember the run on Silicon Valley bank and many of the holders, account holders, had more than the quarter million dollar insurance, but the government ended up making them whole, which they didn't have to. They didn't have to, but they did probably, you know, too big to fail reasons. I doubt anybody's going to make BYBIT whole. I don't think they have FDI insurance.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

No, no FDI insurance there.

[Larry Magid]

That could come. Maybe that's something Elon could make happen.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know. I think it's all in flux. I mean, the President has talked about a strategic bitcoin reserve, kind of like Fort Knox, but lighter. It can all fit on a thumb drive.

[Larry Magid]

He can carry it in his pocket or with the nuclear codes of the football, you know, See, I think that.

[Leo Laporte]

Reasonably should make people nervous. The reason there's gold in Fort Knox is because we used to be on a gold standard. We haven't been in years. And at the time the idea was the government will back up. You know, you could in the old days, really old days, bring a dollar bill to the bank and they would exchange it for gold. Then it was silver, then it was. We got off the metal. And then of course, for years there have been conservatives who said, let's get back on the gold standard or the silver standard, I guess. I mean, what are you going to do with the gold? You had it, so keep it. I guess by keeping it, they keep gold prices artificially raised, don't they? If they were to release those 14 million troy ounces or whatever it was, the price of gold would drop.

[Larry Magid]

Although gold does have an intrinsic value. I mean, it does.

[Leo Laporte]

It is nothing like the. Nothing like it's worth face value.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah, right. And diamonds, of course, are just totally.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Larry Magid]

Lifted up.

[Leo Laporte]

Gold has an industrial value that is probably just a few dollars an ounce, not. Let me see what the current price on gold is because copper has a.

[Larry Magid]

Very high value these days.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, copper's very.

[Larry Magid]

If you own a Prius, you're in trouble because everybody. Catal converter.

[Leo Laporte]

It's. It's actually one of the. Yeah, so. Oh, gosh, I was off by a lot. Gold's almost $3,000 an ounce. I was off by an awful lot. That's why we got rid of. Or Trump's getting rid of the penny.

[Larry Magid]

I actually agree with him on that one.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, but wait. Yeah, here's A problem. First of all, pennies haven't been copper in a long time. They're zinc slugs made by one company, which has been lobbying for the preservation of the penny for years. @Pennies.org this. Americans for Common Sense get it. They make the zinc. They make the zinc blanks. This is why they're lobbying for this. Right? They make the zinc blanks. It's very popular. They have a monopoly that the pennies are made of, then a thin cladding of copper on top of it. Here's the problem with not making the penny. You eliminate the penny. That means there's demand on the next coin up. The nickel pennies cost about 13 cents a cent to make. Nickels cost a lot more. So you're not saving the treasury any money by abandoning the penny. I mean, yeah, you're. But you're going to end up probably costing more because people are going to go to nickels.

[Larry Magid]

You know, the funny thing, I was in Europe a few months ago and I didn't bother converting any of my currency into. Into euros. And I was there for two weeks and never missed having any cash at all. I mean, yeah, I didn't even use my phone. I use my phone for literally everything.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah, same.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So, yeah, much more. I mean, we've got better here, but Apple Pay and Google Pay and everything, I mean, everywhere accepts it in Europe, whereas here you still. There are still times. But also they got rid of a lot of coins in the uk, I remember, and no one really cared. It all worked out fine. It's kind of sad. I think it's sentimental, really. People feel attached to physical money. Just like, you know, with the issue of digital money being stolen, I mean, or printing out, your bank accounts have actually been able to hold physical money. And as it starts to go away, it's sort of almost like the. The beginning of the end. Dollar bills will be next. Right.

[Larry Magid]

When I go to London, I'll bother going to the ATM machine. The atm. It's not an ATM point.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

In London.

[Leo Laporte]

So the only argument against going all digital, and I think Trump could actually do this, but the only argument against it is the only truly anonymous way to make a transaction is cash.

[Larry Magid]

That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

We now know cryptocurrency. Bitcoin's not fully anonymous. It's more anonymous. It's not fully anonymous. It can be traced back to an address, a wallet. But that aside, why aren't we all digital? What are we making? Pieces of paper or zinc slugs that we use? I mean, we rarely use doesn't everybody have a jar full of coins that just are getting growing and growing and growing?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

And then you take it to one of those machines and you put the coins in, and then the machine, like, takes, like, half of it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it takes a.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

This is your fee for sure.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And then spits out the things like Canadian pennies.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, and you don't even need pennies and cash for. For yard sales anymore because everyone takes Venmo.

[Leo Laporte]

It's all.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, that was the last time you really needed it was for, like, and, like, farmers markets. Now the farmers markets will take Venmo.

[Larry Magid]

And now marijuana is legal, so you don't even need it for drugs. I mean.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, not that we still need it for other drugs.

[Larry Magid]

Well, actually, they don't take credit cards because it's federally still illegal.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah. You don't want MasterCard to come down on you, Right? Say, hey, what are you doing? So there are about. There are 240 billion pennies in circulation. That's about 700 pennies per person, most of them in jars. Yeah, I've got my OR thrown out.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

That's not very lucky.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you know, it's an old, I think an old Jewish superstition, I think, to throw pennies in the corner of a new office or new home. When we left the studio, there were pennies in the corners.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Oh, interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Larry Magid]

I actually dropped a penny the other day, and I really thought it's not.

[Leo Laporte]

Worth picking it up.

[Larry Magid]

Well, I figured the exercise. Well, it's good for me, you know, I need to.

[Leo Laporte]

I need for the stre.

[Larry Magid]

Other than that, there was no other advantage. I probably earned more money on the interest on my savings account in the time it took me to pick up the penny.

[Leo Laporte]

I have a policy never to pick up anything under a quarter.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Okay, you got Stan.

[Larry Magid]

Well, you're richer than I am, Lou.

[Leo Laporte]

And I don't want to bend over.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Save it for the next guy. That's what it is. You're just paying forward.

[Leo Laporte]

In other news, Apple has caved to the uk. We've talked in past shows about the United Kingdom Snoopers Charter, the Investigative Investigatory Powers act, which the United Kingdom had decided. Apparently, it's not public, but rumor had it, and a number of news organizations confirmed it had sent a letter to Apple saying, you must provide us with unencrypted access to anything stored on icloud, including advanced data protection, which is end to end encrypted. Apple does not have the keys to that intentionally. They don't want to be able to respond to subpoenas from law enforcement and say, you know, here's what's In Larry's iCloud UK said not only does Apple is are they going to require Apple and presumably it leaked out about Apple, but presumably that's everybody else too. You know, they could easily have sent the same letter to Google and Signal and a bunch of other people, but they said you must provide unencrypted access, a backdoor in effect to this icloud information not just for UK citizens but for everybody worldwide. Which of course raised the hackles of the U.S. congress. And letters were exchanged, angry words were exchanged. Apple has decided to remove advanced data protection for UK users. We will never build a backdoor to user data, says Apple. It announced this on Friday. I don't know if it, it actually responds to what the UK is asking because it still wants access to your information and mine even though we're not in the uk.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah, that's what I was wondering about. I think a lot of these, you know, changes, although they might start in the UK or in the eu, tend to spread over here too. So I don't know where this is headed or what it's going to affect.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that's right, yeah. Apple says we're gravely disappointed that the protections provided by adp, the advanced data protection will not be available to our customers in the uk, given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy. That's what ADP is in response to. ADP protects icloud data with end to end encryption, which means data can only be decrypted by the user who owns it and only on their trusted devices. Bloomberg got the scoop, but a number of other journalistic entities also got the information. Two weeks ago, the UK government had ordered Apple to build a backdoor into customer data globally.

[Larry Magid]

What does that mean to people who travel like Americans that go to the uk?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, they were saying even if the icloud data is stored in the us, we want access to it, which is incredibly offensive.

[Larry Magid]

So if I'm talking to somebody in the uk, then my data, I'm trying to figure out how this affects.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, ADP is for your data specifically, not your phone calls. If you are using imessage, right, it's, it's on, it's on everybody's phone. If somebody in the UK's got it, then the UK authorities can get it.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But the truth is I think imessage is still, Imessage is not included in this because that is it still end to end. Encrypted like passwords, health data, payment information and imessage logs are staying and encrypted. It's icloud file backups, photos, notes and voice memos are among and I'm reading from the Verge.com, among the data types that will no longer be encrypted. So it's not so because I mean in England they have, you know, WhatsApp. There are several platforms that have end to end encryption. So an icloud imessaging will stay hat still has by default that is in your iCloud is end to end encrypted by default. But it's this extra layer of your icloud file backups photos, notes and voice memos and other data types.

[Larry Magid]

Storage. Yeah, Filing kit.

[Leo Laporte]

I should point this out. Have any of you turned on advanced data protection?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

No. Yeah. So who's using it? And I think that's probably the government's argument is like if the people that are using this are the ones that we want to get to the data. Well, obviously that's not, you know, it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Not just criminals, it's also members of, I mean it was intended originally for members of Congress. Yeah, it was intended for, you know, people who are need a higher level of security than Apple provides at its base. The problem for a lot of people is every single one of your Apple devices has to be upgraded to the latest version of the operating system to do this. That's what's stopping me. I have one device that is not upgraded, but also it takes away some capabilities. It's like Google did the same thing. They had a higher level of protection which I never used because you had to have two hardware keys. It was all this rigmarole, but that's what it is. To be secure you have to go through.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

There's always payoffs for the security. You lose conveniences and some benefits. I mean this is the. You see that throughout like security cameras, if they're end to end encrypted, you lose access to things like person recognition or smart alerts because you know, the more secure you are, the harder it is for to add these extra features. But yeah, for the people that need it and want it. This is, this is pretty bad news. And it's interesting that Apple did cave.

[Leo Laporte]

What's interesting is the law, the Investigatory Powers act forbids Apple from telling anybody that they got this notice. The law makes it illegal for companies to reveal when the government has made such an order, much less like our National Security Letters in the United States from The Patriot Act. So Apple is in a way admitting that this is true. What Bloomberg said is true. Yeah, we did get this notice, but I still think it doesn't go the full distance that the UK government is asking. In order to do that, I think Apple would have to withdraw from the UK and say, no, we're not going to do it at all and you're not going to be able to buy any Apple products, which seems like an unlikely thing from Apple.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Drastic. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

They haven't withdrawn from China, which makes similar requirements. They did withdraw. Didn't they withdraw from Russia? I feel like they are not doing business in Russia, although they have acceded to Russian government requests to take some apps off of the App Store.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, I mean, I feel like their stance has always been, you know, we follow the laws of the countries that we.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So I mean, that's kind of a universal stance that they've always had. I mean, they can tell when they're unhappy about it. But, you know, if you're doing business in that country, you follow the law of that country.

[Leo Laporte]

Which is why Google withdrew from China.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Apple has signed. This is the latest is Apple has significantly reduced its operations in Russia. They closed their headquarters and stopped selling new products directly in the country. But. And this is why they can accede to Russia requests, they still provide access to Apple Music tv. Plus the App Store is active. And as a result, when Russia says you have to take those VPNs out of the App Store, they do or take down those. You know, lately it was YouTube taking down videos that the government of Russia requested. Yeah, it's a difficult position if you're a multinational. I don't envy Apple in this. In fact, Apple, especially since the ascension of the Trump administration, has got to deal with every country, including the United States.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Delicately. Very delicately. Tim Cook's very good. He's very diplomatic. He's managed, for instance, to keep tariffs from biting into iPhone profits. But that may not stay. I may not continue. So it's. I don't. I. All I can say is I, I don't. Not that anybody's ever offered me a job like that, but I can't imagine being the CEO of a multinational these days and, and all the different governmental requirements and requests. I think that Apple caving in this request is the smallest caving it could do. Okay, fine. No ADP if you're in the UK. I don't think it fully complies with the UK's request. So, you know, balls in the UK's court maybe they'll all save face by just saying, oh good, thank you and leave it at that.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

It is amazing how political everything has become, including running a tech company.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's hard to do business these days, although business has always complained about regulation. And I think we're in an environment where regulation will not be as. What's the word?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Omnipresent?

[Leo Laporte]

Stringent. That's a good word. What does stringent have to do with astringent.

[Larry Magid]

After your watch? I don't know. Smarter than I am.

[Leo Laporte]

Maggie. I named it Maggie because it sounds a little like Maggie Smith. Although you're right, it's more like Ellen Mirror. Yeah, I should call her Helen. Apple has added priority notification support. You had this story JPT for RobotVax.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

In 184 yes, we have. Well, there's lots of new exciting things in iOS 18.4 better, which just dropped on Friday. Apple's a bit behind the ball. That's kind of unusual I think for Friday, but I'm sure most people in the chat and everyone listening is far more interested in priority notifications. But I'm really interested in Robot vacuums. Being a smart home reporter, this is something we've been waiting for. Apple promised.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute, it didn't support robot vacuums before.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Apple Home has not supported robot Vacuums directly. There is Siri Shortcuts is one way you can control some robot vacuums using Siri on your phone but not on your on your Apple Home pods and such. And this is one of the big things that people had been excited about Apple joining Matter or Apple creating or helping create matter because Matter was supposed to bring new device types to the Apple Home app because Apple has been relatively slow in adding new device types. Support for new smart home device types in Apple Home since Apple Home launched and Robot Vacuums was sort of a glaring missing one because that's one of the more popular smart home devices alongside cameras, which is still not part of matter. But obviously Apple supports Cameras through its HomeKit Secure Video and some and some other ways you can use cameras in Apple Home. But Robot vacuums everyone was looking forward to. They announced at WWDC that it would be coming this year as in 2024. But like a lot of the things in iOS 18, it got delayed and we were expecting in 18.33. There was some hints in the code that it was coming but not hadn't arrived yet. And then 18.4 we got Friday and one one intrepid smart home reviewer managed to I haven't downloaded the better Yet I'm not a, I'm not a dev better. I'm a more of a public better gal because I don't want my house to fall apart.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I agree with you.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But he managed to download it and get it going on the SwitchBot S10, which is a very fun robot vacuum that I've, that I have in my house. And Switchbot is a great company. They, they've been sort of on the matter bandwagon. They, they added support for robot vacuums a while back. But you so matter helps add robot vacuums to all the smart home platforms. But most smart home platforms had supported robot vacuums before. This is, this is big news if you use Apple home. So it basically now allows you to not have to worry, not have to use your robot vacuum app for most things if you just want to start, stop, change type from vacuum to mop or strength or dock your robot. But in theory, the whole point of the smart home isn't necessarily pulling out your app to control things. Now you can add your robot into routines. So for example, when you go to bed, your good night routine could include starting your robot vacuum downstairs or when you leave the house, it could include starting your vacuum when you leave the house and then ending your robot vacuum when you arrive home so that it's not running when you get there. So it's got, you know, and you can do these things already in some of the robot vacuum apps themselves. But this way, you know, it's all inside the Apple ecosystem and it also brings local control, which one thing I think a lot of people are interested in who are sort of more into the local side of the smart home is to see whether you'd be able to use your robot vacuum without having to rely on a connection with the Internet. I don't know if that's going to be possible, but be interesting to see if what kind of function and capability you'd have because a lot of these robot vacuums haven't had. There's been quite a few sort of security issues or scares around robot vacuums in.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, because they map your house.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

They map your house. They have cameras. Most of them are made in China and most of them are Chinese manufacturers.

[Leo Laporte]

At some point there were pictures surfaced of a guy on the toilet that the robot vacuumed.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I was gonna say that was actually Roomba.

[Leo Laporte]

That was Roomba, yeah.

[Larry Magid]

It's the only device in my house. The only came that have access to my bedroom and bathroom is the robot. It's a vacuum cleaner. We don't have Any other camera than in bedrooms and bathrooms.

[Leo Laporte]

So there's privacy, there's Internet. But I think also for most just users, the idea that you don't have a different app for every single.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Device and in many cases a different hub for every single device. If you could have a single hub and a single app, you could maybe even use Apple shortcuts to script it. And that's how it would know that you're not home. The robot Vac doesn't know you're not home, but your phone does or your cameras might. You know, there are other devices that might not. Might know if that kind of integration I think is necessary before the home really is smart. Instead of just a bunch of individual devices doing their own thing.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Right. The way they work together with the things in your home so that ultimately you know your, your home can respond to you as opposed to you dictating to it what needs, what needs to be done. And, and robot vacuums really are useful devices. Yes, you can get out a vacuum and do it yourself. But who loves to vacuum? There aren't people.

[Leo Laporte]

And I found that I. Even after having a Roomba for some time, I still had to vacuum like.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

The Roomba, but not as often.

[Larry Magid]

This is an interesting segue. I don't know if you guys. I just reviewed the newest, the newest Roomba, the 10 Max, which is this like fourteen hundred dollar vacuum cleaner.

[Leo Laporte]

Jeez Louise.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

And they are very expensive now. You can get cheap ones though.

[Larry Magid]

Oh yeah. Get cheap wood. But the fact is that it's fun and it's useful. But I have a $300 Dyson which does a better job picking up dirt. $1400 Roomba.

[Leo Laporte]

So what is this?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, they don't have.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way, I see you can get it at iRobot now for 8.99.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah. Oh, wow. It's done. 8.99. That's amazing.

[Leo Laporte]

They probably realized nobody was going to spend twice that they dropped it for. This thing washes as well as vacuuming.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah, it does wash kind of well.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

This one, yeah. Has a little bit of a mop. There are some very moppy ones out there though. The rumors they just added mops quite recently. But like the ones from roborock and ecovax and Switchbot have big like oscillating mops that look like the mops you might actually use yourself. As opposed to the Roomba which has this teeny little rollers underneath it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's not.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But some of the robo vacuums now have very good Mopping capabilities, much better. But again, not going to be as good as doing it yourself.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't trust a robot to mop my floor. I feel like that's something that requires a little bit more attention than just some machine.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Oh, well, they. What about the job?

[Leo Laporte]

What about. Do you have pets?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I do. I have cats and a dog.

[Larry Magid]

What about your machines?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So you worried about pet messes? So most of them now have artificial. You know, they have AI obstacle avoidance. So they've been trained on specific obstacles they're going to find in your house.

[Leo Laporte]

So hot dog or not.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Right. And they know. So they'll. It's very funny because you. So for exactly the. Roomba is actually one of the better ones at this. So it can identify the difference between a pile of popcorn and a pile of poop. So which one would you want?

[Leo Laporte]

Is there anything it can't do?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Exactly. So if you. Would you want it to suck up. Up the popcorn? Yes, probably. Would you want it to avoid. And it's very careful. It'll go. It gives the poop a wide berth. Whereas if it finds something like a cable or a shoe, it will get up closer because those are things it can recognize. It will get up closer. There's actually a new robot that just came out at CES that has an arm that will pick up socks.

[Leo Laporte]

So dopey. Does it work?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, I saw it.

[Leo Laporte]

What do you do with the socks? Throw it behind it.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

It.

[Leo Laporte]

So no putting them. Does it walk over to the beach.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Where to put it? So in theory, it can take them all, the socks and put them in a basket. And then there was another one that was on show that can actually lift up shoes and it will go and put like. You can tell it to put the shoes by the front door, or you could even get to the point where it can identify shoes and you can tell it which like, okay, these are my son's shoes, so go put it in my son's room.

[Leo Laporte]

So Christian, who's watching on YouTube, points out that while I am a big fan of AI and I feel like, you know, AGI is just around the corner, I won't trust a robot vacuum. I think there are things, mainly my attitude. Benito, you'll confirm this. Our producer and I were talking is that I like AI in conjunction with humans. I don't really trust especially AI that has agency like a robot vacuum. I don't really trust it to always do the right thing. And it only needs to try to clean up poop once. Yes.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, actually, Roomba has its, has its poop promise. It's pet owners promise that if it, if it does accidentally clean up pet poop it will give you, they will give you a new one but it.

[Leo Laporte]

Will ensue if it picks up the poop and puts it where your shoes go.

[Larry Magid]

I hope you would have ended in.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It is and they, I mean this is sort of the beginning of and we've seen some reports of Apple and Google in the last few months, you know working on robots. Robots humanoid style robots for the home. I mean really a robotic vacuum is the beginning, is the foundation of what we're going to see.

[Leo Laporte]

It's the low hanging fruit in I.

[Larry Magid]

Want one to get a dishwasher for me.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah, well I mean pretty tall. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

We are so freaking lazy.

[Larry Magid]

You know it is true since I.

[Leo Laporte]

Got thousands of dollars so we don't have to empty, empty the dishwasher.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

It's such a hassle. I don't know why. Honestly I actually enjoy vacuuming so I'd be okay bypassing.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah I don't mind a little tidying.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I think it's satisfying. You're like oh wow. Yeah. You like hear it as it's like, you know that's the weird things. It's the weird ASMR angle of it. But, but, but doing the dishes is not like I guess I have a dishwasher but yeah loading and unloading it a pain in the butt. Why? I don't know but it is.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well a dishwasher is a robot so there you go.

[Leo Laporte]

I guess we have an arm now.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

And then fully function.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah but it's the next washing machine.

[Leo Laporte]

A robot.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, I mean it's a, it's a device that is a mechanical device that is cleaning our clothes for us. Like the dishwasher is a mechanical, you know device that's cleaning our dishes for us. But yeah the next that it doesn't have the intelligence. Although some dishwashers and washing machines now are smart and yeah they, they know adapt how to clean.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Washing machine with AI and honestly I.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Think those purposes like single purpose robotic devices make much more sense to me than like a Rosie the Robot. Although the you know the dream, the ideal, what a lot of companies are working towards is this humanoid robotic figure that will kind of do everything for you in your home. But that's mildly terrifying. Seems like very, very far away incredibly expensive when, when and if it ever arrives. Whereas having devices that can help make chores easier or help save you time just, you know I love the Flintstones. Flintstones and The Jetsons. You see, this is what the people that are developing these are all grew up on.

[Leo Laporte]

So that's the problem right there. That's exactly the problem.

[Larry Magid]

Would you call a Tesla with full self driving a robot?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is. Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, what is a robot? So I think sometimes we think of a robot as humanoid.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It doesn't.

[Leo Laporte]

But it doesn't need to be.

[Larry Magid]

No. In fact, that was a breakthrough from Roomba. When they first started Roomba, that was one of their breakthroughs, is we don't need our robot to look like a human. We just need it to design to do what it's.

[Leo Laporte]

In fact, it's a mistake to make a robot bipedal. Unless that robot needs to open a door or climb stairs.

[Larry Magid]

I mean, the Roomba does not. There is one. There's something called Mygo. I'm not mistaken. You might know, Jennifer. There is a robot that was shown that will climb back and it will climb stairs.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So. Well, there's the dreamy one. We'll climb one step. But there is one that. Yeah, it's not great.

[Leo Laporte]

It gets one step up and then just stops.

[Larry Magid]

I had to carry my robot all the way up my staircase.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It's for like, you know, houses that have like a transition or something. It's to help.

[Leo Laporte]

But you know, what if. If you can do one step, the.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Ascender stair climbing robot, stop and then.

[Leo Laporte]

Do the next step. It's just. It's all one step all the way out.

[Larry Magid]

The funny thing is, I actually did carry my roof upstairs to do by upstairs today, and I can't remember whether it's upstairs or downstairs. Like where it is right now. The only thing I know is it won't fall down the stairs.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

If you had maddo, I'm quite good at that.

[Leo Laporte]

You could press a button, it would play the da da da da da da sound and you'd know where it was.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Say where it is. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Last time I picked up a Roomba and positioned it, I positioned it underneath my wife's tire in the garage, hoping she would back over it.

[Larry Magid]

Oh, so can you see this?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Not a fan. Then.

[Leo Laporte]

It'S saying, clear a path. Check for items what can't pick up the socks. What?

[Larry Magid]

I don't know. And this is. That's what bothers me.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a locate button. Press the locate button.

[Larry Magid]

Is there a locate button? No. There we go. Boom. See what happened? What bothers me is I do have to intervene. I have to intervene pretty often.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, me too.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

You know that's the point of the arm. Less. Less needed for if it can only.

[Leo Laporte]

Bring myself up and move it upstairs.

[Larry Magid]

I never have to intervene with my Dyson. I just carry it around with me and.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But you're doing it. That's the difference. That's why you don't have to intervene.

[Leo Laporte]

Larry, do you have to intervene with your Tesla? Full self driving.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I was going to say that analogy.

[Larry Magid]

Once in a while.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Like it's different levels. Levels of robotics, I guess, if that's how we're going to talk about it. Because the Tesla isn't a robo vehicle. Technically it can't be done yet. Right. But it's like some level of automation. So I guess we just have different tiers of.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, we were talking about the Waymo earlier. You've ridden the Waymo. Is that a robot then?

[Abrar Al Heedi]

It is, because you don't. It's not like level 5 autonomy, but it's still. You're able to get in the vehicle. You don't have to intervene in any way it drives itself. All you do is get in, get out and start a ride. So that's like the next level of autonomy.

[Leo Laporte]

But what we don't know, no one.

[Larry Magid]

Has to be in. It'll come pick you up.

[Leo Laporte]

But what we don't know and has never been really fully revealed is how often it phones home and gets a human driver at the office to handle it. And we know that that happens and may even happen more than anybody's admitting. Yeah, there are human drivers back at the home office that are manipulating it.

[Larry Magid]

Through a joystick or whatever, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of like drone pilots.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Long road ahead.

[Leo Laporte]

I asked my. My B computer to tell me it was when it was time for a break and it neglected to, so I better do it myself. It's time for a break. Leo. We have a great panel. I thought we would. Jennifer Pattison Hutui is here from the Verge. Larry Magid from Connect Safely, and from cnet, the wonderful Abrar Alheidi. All three of you, so good to have you. Thank you for joining us. Our show today brought to you by Express VPN. My favorite VPN. Going online without ExpressVPN is like, I don't know, leaving your laptop unattended at the coffee shop where you go to the bathroom. If you're in Tokyo, that's fine. But what if one day you come out of the bathroom and your laptop's gone? Right. Why does everyone need ExpressVPN? Well, every time you connect to an unencrypted network, Cafes the airport, hotels. Your online data isn't secure. Any hacker on the same network can not only see what you're doing, but can access your device and steal your personal data. It doesn't take a lot of knowledge to hack someone. Just some cheap hardware like the WI fi, Pineapple. And you know your data is valuable. There's a lot of incentive for hackers to steal it. They can make up to $1,000 per person selling your personal info on the dark web. ExpressVPN stops hackers from stealing your data by creating a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the outside world. ExpressVPN is the one I use. It's the best VPN out there. It's the only one I recommend. They're committed to keeping your privacy private. I use it when I travel. Just did when I went down to Tucson. It was really Nice. Why is ExpressVPN the best? Super Secure? It take a hacker with a supercomputer over a billion years to get past ExpressVPN's encryption. It's easy to use. You just fire up the app and then you're protected. Big button on it. I love that. And it's on every device. IPhones, Android phones, laptops, tablets and more. So you can stay private on the go. And it's rated number one by top tech reviewers at, well, CNET and the Verge. It's the only one I use. Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com twitt that's E X P R E S S vpn.com twit Right now get an extra four months free when you buy a two year package. Expressvpn.com twit let's see what else is happening. Oh, I didn't mention. I meant to mention the 18 4. You mentioned that the beta is out. The developer beta adds nice support for robot vacuums. But Siri is still a moron.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yes, Siri is still sad. Yeah, sad Siri. So all of the. A lot of things that were announced in WWDC about how we'd be able to. Siri would be able to use context and Apple Intelligence would be able to kind of use the interaction between different apps on our phone. So like you could say something like, oh, what time am I supposed to pick up mom from the airport? And it would be able to go through your text messages and figure out who mum was and which airport it was from and what time she said she was going to be there and then pull up the map and send it. You Know, send you a. Your route and what time you need to leave. All this kind of smart stuff that they promised us with Apple intelligence, which right now has not arrived. It was supposed to arrive at the end of last year, I think was the original sort of idea and hope. And now, although they never were really specific, they were like, there'll be lots of great new features coming to Siri in the future. And there was just a line at the end of the press release that came out this week about iOS 18.4, which was mainly focused on the Vision Pro, because that's finally got Apple Intelligence, that said, and we'll be bringing more to Siri soon.

[Leo Laporte]

Soon.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

That was it. So, yeah, and that's something I'm really looking forward to, is a smarter Siri because it has in the smart home in particular fallen. Well, fallen pine has always been behind. And this is an area that there's so much opportunity, especially with the context that Apple has, where other voice assistants in the smart home don't have that. I'm, you know, I understand it's complicated and difficult what they're trying to do. So I'm guessing the, the reason we're seeing delays is that things right now, as you add artificial intelligence, generative AI into the, to the home environment, you start to really hit some, some major roadblocks. And we've seen Amazon and Google also having delays in bringing this type of intelligence to our home. So be interesting to see. I mean, what do you guys want a smarter Siri for? What do you feel like we need?

[Larry Magid]

It's interesting. It also brings up some privacy issues. So, for example, one of the things I love about ChatGPT is one of the things I hate about ChatGPT. I can go in. I recently. What was it? I was, I had some kind of medical question and I asked it and it actually gave me the answer based on what it knows about my medical situation. Well, because you take this drug, it knows about this. Because at one point a long time ago, I asked it about a certain drug. And so it has a complete dossier on me, which is incredibly useful but incredibly creepy. And the same thing is true. I mean, okay, so yeah, it knows.

[Leo Laporte]

So you got to get over that is my position. Because if you want an AI to be useful, it does. You need to know everything, right?

[Larry Magid]

But isn't that a challenge for Apple? Because that means somewhere on the server, unless they could do it on the device. But you wanted across devices. You've got on your Mac, your iPhone, your iPad. So somewhere on a Server, it has to know about when time your mom's flying in, where is she flying from, you know, what time she went to the bathroom in the airplane.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, do you remember for a while Google had this interface with cards and it would know things like that because it would know about your calendar and would it pop up your airplane tickets.

[Larry Magid]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

And it would pro. You're going to work. It would pop up traffic conditions and they stopped doing that. And I think it was because people were. Now, this was quite a few years ago. This maybe it's eight years ago. People got creeped out by it.

[Larry Magid]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

I understand Apple's reluctance because they're the privacy company, but it's my, it's always been my contention that's going to hold Apple back from a useful AI.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah. I think especially with where Android has been headed with things like Gemini. I mean, if you get, you know, any Android device these days, you're going to have a Gemini that's very deeply integrated into all of your tasks and routines. And you'll see the Samsung devices have that now brief where you're going to know what your traffic conditions are going to be when you're leaving the house, because it's looking at your calendar and it's looking at all the stuff that you do on your phone and you're going to try to suggest things that are helpful. And I was, I tend to be kind of cautious around AI because it's creepy. But as I've been kind of diving into testing more devices and that includes things like Gemini because it's just so baked into, you know, any Android phone these days, you start to realize how helpful it is. And so I think once you get over the creepy factor, you think, okay, I actually have become quite reliant. And like my, my Google home speaker has not been upgraded to Gemini. It's still the Google Assistant. And I feel like it's the dumbest thing like I've ever interacted with because it just doesn't know anything. Like it doesn't know context. It gives me really terrible answers. I tried, like it still has a really hard time connecting to my, you know, smart tv, even though it shouldn't. Like I have to restart it all the time anyway. I just think, you know, I personally have been on this journey of getting over the creepy factor of AI and just embracing it for what it is, where if you do want it to be helpful, you just kind of got to let go of privacy. We haven't had privacy in a while anyway, so might as well oh God.

[Leo Laporte]

There are people though are cringing as you say.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Apple has the advantage though, if they can make this work in this and sorry, I'm bringing back to the smart home but because Apple already has and Apple has a foothold in the smart home already that is focused on local and private and the difference being if you add in generative AI, you need the model, so you need the cloud. But if they can keep, if they can manage to connect a smarter Siri with the smart home and your context, but keep all of that, the context it has about you on the phone, but keep it all within your devices in your home, like using your Apple tv, which is a hub for the Apple home or a HomePod. You know, they, they have the ability to do some of this and still keep it on a local level. And this is again what matters helping with because that is all local connections between devices and I think that's sort of a holy grail for them. I think they're going to potentially and we've already seen them do this with Apple intelligence. Offer two levels like you've got your, your local Apple intelligence and then you can go out to chat GPT or you can go out to. The rumor is now Gemini is coming next as the option on your, on your iPhone when you talk to.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's Apple punting, isn't it? When Apple says, oh, I don't know, you want to use ChatGPT, they're going to know anything about you. And I'm sure they'll have the same warning with Gemini. That's Apple saying, you know, it's funny because Siri was apparently smarter back in the day when it would say, well, I don't know. But here's what I found on the web web about this, right? That was series stock response. Now it makes up stuff Jon Gruber and another blogger whose name escapes me, I apologize. Asked the mod, the new Siri who won all of the Super Bowls, they even went through Super Bowl 60, which is in the future and it only got about five or six right. And the rest it was just wrong. In the past it would have said, I don't know, but here's what's on the web, which would have been a better, frankly a more accurate response. So I think Apple, if you ask me, that's why you're not getting the promised Smarter Siri in 18 4. Incidentally, it's not just Apple. Amazon has an event on Wednesday. They're going to announce new echoes but there won't be any new hardware. They Were going to make that event be all about the intelligent. You know, I can't say the A word. A word probably. I don't want to trigger people's echoes. And they've put. They had a meeting on Valentine's Day last week and apparently decided, yeah, it's not ready yet. It was answering things wrong. It was. Here's the Washington Post story. Amazon's new Echo delayed again over incorrect answers.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I think they will announce it. It's just the delay is we probably won't get it.

[Leo Laporte]

They'll announce it and they'll say coming.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Soon, which is what they did over a year ago because they actually announced, announced the revamped smarter Amazon a lady in 2023 in the fall. And they kept saying it was coming, it was coming, it kept getting delayed. And we've had lots of reports from Bloomberg and Reuters and the Washington Post talking to people inside Amazon who say it. It. This is. This is this meshing of the existing voice assistants that we have in our homes and on our devices. And the generative AI powered LLM models are. They can't. Apparently the new Amazon voice assistant can't do things that the old one can like turn on lights reliably because they're not able. They're struggling. The reports are to mesh the existing capabilities with these enhanced capabilities. So it's gonna be interesting. I think we're gonna get something on Wednesday, which I'm gonna be there. I'm excited.

[Leo Laporte]

You'll get to see his debut as an Amazon Amazon employee. He was of course the guy who famously was always pumped about the new Surface from Microsoft. He left Microsoft probably I'm imagining because he was a little dissatisfied with what he was getting to do there and is now in charge of hardware at Amazon. So this is his debut, isn't it? Right.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

This will. So he. They had new Kindles. They did a little event last year at the end of last year for Kindles, but this is his first big one. Yeah, this is the press. The. It's a press event and I don't.

[Leo Laporte]

Think live streaming otherwise we would like to.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, so it's it. But yeah, this is his first big show and I mean he's most likely the reason that this has been delayed because he's coming in. This is his first big thing even though it started long before him. I think we will get a new Echo device so we will get new hardware. I'm fairly certain we haven't seen the original an update to the original Echo Smart speaker since 2020. So it's long overdue and it would make sense that they would debut the new or launch because they've already debuted the new Alexa or the remarkable Alexa as she's report it is reportedly known as. With some kind of hardware because they'll. Although it is going to work, they've said on all previous Echo devices. So I think we'll get some hardware. I'm thinking. My guess. Well, we're going to get, get maybe glasses and earbuds too, because I don't think they want this to just be in the house.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it's doing very well with it. Exactly.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Smart glasses are very popular right now and they have. Amazon has the Echo frames, so they have a. That's right, they already. And they have earbuds, but the earbuds haven't been updated in a long time.

[Larry Magid]

They're not that smart. They're. They're.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, no, but I think, you know, I think this will be a big push to take Alexa out of the home, which they've tried to do for a long time, but not successfully. And so I think we may, we could see glasses, we could see new buds, we'll almost certainly see a new speaker. But whether this is the real new Alexa or whether we'll get sort of what we're getting with Siri, like incremental upgrades and we're seeing this with Google too, on the Google Nest devices in the home, it's got a little better, but still not at the level that they're just. None of these companies are quite ready to unleash this into our homes yet.

[Larry Magid]

Well, one of our sponsors at Connect Safely is Amazon Kids. And speaking of the home, I mean, one thing many homes have are kids. And I think that they are way ahead of Google and Apple when it comes to products aimed at children, including a robot. We talked about robots Astro, which is a robot aimed at children or well, not aimed at children, but children.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

My kids loved it.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah, okay, they're older, but, but you know, so I think that, that Amazon is going to have a very interesting opportunity when it comes to home automation in general. The other thing it knows is what you buy. I mean, I, I actually recently this week reviewed some personal finance management programs and one of the things I did is figured out where I'm spending my money. And I was shocked how much money I spent on Amazon. I knew it was a lot, but I had no idea how much it was. And the point is that it knows about many of the things I have in my home because that's where I got them whether they're from Amazon or a third party. And I think that they could figure out ways to integrate all this stuff without having to ask you questions.

[Leo Laporte]

It won't be the first time poor Panos Panay has been blindsided by the company he works for. I think this is one of the reasons he left Microsoft. At the Microsoft build conference in 2020, 2023, he was scheduled to do a keynote about AI. And Satya Nadella decided to do it first.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Oh, no.

[Leo Laporte]

And poor. I don't know if you remember this, but poor Panos Panay, all his talking points had been excavated away. Oh, my God. And he just basically kind of bsed for half an hour. You know, everybody who watched it. I certainly felt like a humiliating situation. And then shortly thereafter, he left for Amazon. He's got to be a little bit thinking, oh, my God, here we go again. I'm going to get on stage and I'm not going to be able to say anything about a smarter Amazon Echo. The rumor is it's going to cost five bucks more a month. Yeah, I think the old Echo will still be available. Right. So if people want to set kitchen timers. And what do you use it for? Mostly kitchen timers, Playing music, asking for podcasts, maybe finding out how old TV.

[Larry Magid]

Stars are because I want to see if I'm older than them.

[Leo Laporte]

Isn't that weird? Maybe it's an age thing.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I'm still alive.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm always asking that, like, how old is that person?

[Larry Magid]

Right.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Turning on lights. I use that often.

[Leo Laporte]

Turning on lights.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

See, that's because you're a home automation expert.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

There are, I mean, and Amazon's got.

[Leo Laporte]

Can I tie my Echo to the Cassettas? I have Cassettas.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Can I. The Lutron. I could make it turn off light on and off lights.

[Larry Magid]

Oh, sure. That's the only way I turn it. We don't even have a light switch in our bedroom.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's a mistake. I could tell you there is one.

[Larry Magid]

Somewhere, but I, I haven't used it. I don't know where it is. It's somewhere in the corner.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, I think Amazon's Amazon's big problem, though, is that it'll have. It has the context of the home, but it doesn't have your personal context, which is what Google and Apple has. So it'll be interesting. I. I'm expecting to see some kind of element if they do launch this AI where you can feed it more information about you. A bit like your bee on your wrist.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

And I was just this last week I just put a review up on the verge for a calendar, digital calendar I was testing that has its own Sidekick AI that you send data to so that it knows. So I can send my son's tennis schedule and it will put all the dates and times on my calendar for me, which is just. What's the name of that life changing. It's called Skylight Calendar.

[Leo Laporte]

Skylight, yeah, yeah, I've seen, I saw your review. Yeah, yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

And so the Sidekick is the new feature. Newish. It just came out a couple months ago and it, and there's a fee. It's $40. Well, it was $40 a year when I was testing and like an hour after I posted my review, they doubled the price.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Oh my God.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

To $80. But it's a, but it's a. My question immediately for my editor was like, well, would you still pay for it? Was it still valuable? And it was very valuable. I would be tempted. And I think that's what Amazon needs to do with Alexa if it's going to add this charge, which it needs to do because as we've seen reports of it's lost a lot of money on its Echo devices and its smart voice assistant, that it's got to add that extra value. And I could see this type of thing like what Sidekick does for Skylight Calendar, which is help organize your family. I mean that, that's Amazon's wheelhouse, as we were talking about earlier. They're very much in people's homes and used by families quite extensively, more so probably than the other two. So it will be because they're so inexpensive as well. They need that level. They need to bring the context to Amazon Smart Home, which Google and Apple already has. And again though, will we trust, trust. Who will trust it with their privacy? Well, as a parent, having someone fill out my calendar for me is worth.

[Leo Laporte]

It if there's, if there's value to it.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Significant value. Just like we use Gmail, we're willing to be honest.

[Leo Laporte]

I read your review and it made me want to have kids.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

And you've got kids.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but they're 30 and 32. I don't need that. I don't have their schedule. I wish that I had had piano lessons and tennis lessons and soccer games to go to. This looks so cool hanging on the wall. I love this.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, it's, it's neat. And as we talked about it on Tech News Weekly, and as I said, I'm sure a lot of your audience would be able to roll their Own with DAC board and like some E ink screen and do something amazing. But if you just want a plug and play solution that just, that works, this really does. And the AI assistant portion has been incredibly useful. And this is what I want to see come to. I could see this coming to our, to Amazon's assistant. I mean Siri and Google could do this too. And the charge, you know this is they're charging 80 a year. Chat GPT can do some of this, so can Gemini, but you have to pay for the higher tiers. So people, you know, if they can show value and like you say, if it's something that is going to help you, just like you know, if the robot vacuum can clean your floor for you, you're going to pay for it. If the assistant can keep your life in order for you, you may consider paying for it. So I think that's. But can they bring enough value? And that's what I'm interested to see on Wednesday when they hopefully announce this new Amazon Alexa revamped, re architected, who will hopefully be a lot smarter and be able to do a lot more in your home. So, and a couple of the other things they've said that it's going to be able to do is like multiple, multiple commands at once, which is something that none of the other voice assistants managed to do. And that could be really useful, you know, so you can say, you know, turn out the lights, turn on the tv, turn down thermostat and lock the back door and it would just do it all for you.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the goal. That's the, that's the holy grail of home automation.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Or even better, Earl Gray Hot.

[Leo Laporte]

T. Earl Gray Hot. Exactly.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I mean, no, I could.

[Larry Magid]

Why couldn't you for example, connect ChatGPP or some other AI agent to your Google Calendar and have it organize it for you and then project.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So I did that, I did that. And you had. So what Chat GPT did? Well, I couldn't connect it to the calendar. What it did was it spat out an ICS file and let me import that. But that was, that's too many steps. That's sitting at a computer. That's not helpful. Whereas with the Sidekick on Skylight, I just set, sent the file by email and it did everything. It added it all to the calendar for me. Automatically got the times right, the place, the person whose calendar it was. So yeah, that's, it's that extra step. ChatGPT is too general, I suppose. It's just not. That's not what it's specifically designed for and I think that sort of specific artificial intelligence. When you have something that does, going back to the robot, like when it does one thing and does it well, that's valuable. Whereas when it tries to do too many things and messes most of them up, which is like what most of them do today.

[Larry Magid]

I have as, as I'm sure Leo does as well, a gazillion things that track my sleep and my health and all that. And half the time I don't, I can't understand them. Right. I still don't know what hrv. I mean, I know what it stands for, but. So I actually started feeding in the screens from some of these, like the, the screen for my Fitbit and the screen for my, my smart ring into Chat GPT and said, would you explain this to me in, in, in common English so I can do something with it? And it's actually remarkably useful to, you know, and the same thing. I had it, I had it analyze a lab test and a radiology report.

[Leo Laporte]

RIT guy Russell feeds terms of service and end user agreements into ChatGPT and says, Are there any issues I should worry about in here or is there anything I need to know from this? Because nobody reads the terms of service.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

That's genius. I love it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, there are some. If you give it something and it analyzes it, there's some very good things. It will be ironic, won't it? You're sending your instructions via email, Jennifer. It would be ironic if we had these great smart machines, but you had to use a command line.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, you can also upload a photo and it will, it can, it can pass that.

[Leo Laporte]

So do you worry about hallucinations though? Like being set off on a wild goose chase.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So it did what was, I thought was neat about this is what it will send. It will do everything that I've asked. So I'll send it its picture, a picture of, of my son's schedule or I'll forward an email from my son's coach, which somewhere in the email mentions a date and it will pass that data. But then it sends me an email after it's added everything to my calendar and shows everything it's added. And right next to each entry is a delete button. So anything it's added that it shouldn't have I can easily delete. But that does require me going to check it. So yeah, I mean being able to. I would worry about hallucinations in my smart home for sure. And this is what I like about this. This so Far my sort of dabbling with artificial intelligence in my home is. Or generative AI is that I'm able to check its work and that, you know, you kind of.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a shame because ultimately the best, most useful thing would be get the human out of the loop.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, ultimately.

[Leo Laporte]

But you can't trust it. You can't.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

No. And this is. This is the problem with generative AI and the smart home is if it went wild, there's a lot that could go wrong in your home. As opposed to if you're just sitting in talking in a window with a chatbot and it wants. It starts saying it's falling in love with you. You know the worst thing that can happen. Whereas if it can start adjusting your thermostat in the middle of the night or knocking your doors without your. Yeah, this is where I'm.

[Leo Laporte]

I noticed Jennifer forgot to close the garage door, lock her doors and turn off the lights downstairs. But I know she would want me to. So I'm going to do it.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It. Yeah.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Long overdue. That we have a seat.

[Larry Magid]

My security system will lock my door, but it won't unlock it for me. And I think that was a deliberate.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a better. That's a good. That's probably a good thing. There are some things that are more dangerous.

[Larry Magid]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

It's. Is it analogous to the waymo. You know, at first, I mean, if you think of it, a self driving vehicle could cause horrendous problems.

[Larry Magid]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

And so we first get in gingerly and kind of watch holding tight onto the. The oh shoot handle. But eventually we kind of relax into it and say I. Okay, I think I can trust it.

[Larry Magid]

And that's the danger. That's when you get in trouble.

[Leo Laporte]

That's when your trouble.

[Larry Magid]

No, it's true. When I first got. When I first had autopilot on my Tesla, I completely didn't trust it. I mean I knew it was a piece of crap and so I used it, but I watched it every minute. Full self driving is like 98% good.

[Leo Laporte]

It's those 2%.

[Larry Magid]

It's that 2% that could literally kill you.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, right.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's take a break. We got to take a break. We've got a great panel. Having a lot of fun. Going to have some more fun. It's not over yet. Jennifer Patterson Tuohy Abrar al heati Larry Maggot I like to mix up the order just to see if Benito is paying attention. He got it. Bang on. Thank you, Benito. Our show today brought to you by Zip Recruiter, according to research, a major challenge, and I will back this up, it's my own experience that many employers face is the pressure to hire quickly. It's a, I mean, you know, somebody gives you notice, you've got two weeks, you're going to have to do their job until, you know, you hire somebody. So you've got a lot of stuff on your plate already and now you got to look for a new person. It's a tough hurdle to overcome because it is time consuming to search for great candidates, to sort through applications, answer, you know, voicemails. If you can relate. I know I can. I've got a question for you. Have you ever tried ZipRecruiter? What a boon it has been for us. ZipRecruiter has figured out how to solve this exact problem. In fact, four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get quality candidates within the first day. We would get often within the hour or two. How does that magic happen? Well, I could just try it and you could find out. You try it for [e-mail] TWIT ZipRecruiter is the hiring site employers prefer the most. That's what G2 says. How fast does ZipRecruiter smart technology start showing your job to qualified candidates? Immediately you click send and it's posted to a hundred plus job sites and social. So you're casting the widest net. All of those applicants though, all of those resumes, those voicemails, those emails go right into the ZipRecruiter interface, not to your email box. In fact, they reformat the resume so you can scan them quickly. They've got screening questions, true or false, multiple choice, even essay questions. So you can eliminate candidates who don't meet your needs. And then something magical happens. ZipRecruiter goes out, looks at the resumes it has on file, more than a million current resumes because lots of people go to ZipRecruiter looking for work. It then says this person matches your requirements and sends you a list of people who fit your needs. You can go through them, screen them just like you would, and then do something magical. Send an invite the people you want. And this puts you at the head of the line. You know you're competing for the best employees with a lot of other companies by inviting the best employees to apply. They're flattered, they love it. They, this has been my experience. They apply, they love it. Try it. Relax. Let Zip recruiters speed up your hiring. See for yourself. Ziprecruiter.com TWIT Right now try it for free. Free. It's the same price as a genuine smile from a stranger, A picture perfect sunset, or a cute dog running up to you and licking your hand. And that's ZipRecruiter.com TWIT ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire. Thank you ZipRecruiter, for all the good work you've done for us to make it a lot easier to get through those times when, when somebody moves on. We've been talking a lot about AI. I think there's no question there's an AI. Boom. According to OpenAI, this shocked me. ChatGPT now serves 400 million users every week. 400 million weekly active users. That's kind of mind blowing. I mean, there's only 350 million people in the US that's worldwide, obviously. In December, OpenAI said they had 3 million weekly active users. It's now up, what is that, 33%? They don't say how many of them have paid.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

That's the question. Right?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I think even if all of them paid the 20 bucks a month, it still wouldn't cover the bill.

[Larry Magid]

No, we can cover the electric bill.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but I mean, this is why the stock market's going crazy and investment firms VCs are going crazy over AI. Because the upside is very high, is very up. Even if it's, if it's a money loser right now. Right. Developer traffic for OpenAI has doubled in the last six months. Enterprise wise. OpenAI has 2 million paying enterprise users. I don't know if that's the 200. I think that might be the 200 buck a month plan. Anyway, OpenAI, obviously a little stung by the Chinese deep seek, is quick to tell you that they're, they're doing fine.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

We're doing fine, thank you very much, Very much. Broken through into the mainstream. And that's, you know, where we've seen for a lot of tech products, this is, you know, just going back to the robot vacuums. Like there's the one area where all my normal friends talk about, like they all want robot vacuums and video doorbells. And then they all started talking about Chat GPT when it came out. And even my husband was like, oh, someone at work said I could use this new thing called Chat GPT. And I was like, oh my God.

[Leo Laporte]

Tech Luddite.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Is he a complete Tech Luddite Stays away as much as possible possible, mainly because he's forced to live in a smart home. But that'll do it. That'll do it.

[Leo Laporte]

Honey, is there a way just to turn the light on, please?

[Larry Magid]

Yes, yes.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

That's my life.

[Leo Laporte]

Stacy Higginbotham always talked about her husband like, honey, why are the blinds going up and down? He was so happy when she got out of the business.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Stacy and I have, you know, we need to get a spousal support, support group going.

[Leo Laporte]

So discuss this.

[Larry Magid]

My wife would, my wife would definitely join. I drive her crazy.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But it is, I think it's, I think chat GPT really has become, you know, it's mainstream and every, everyone is familiar with it but, and I think it coming to the iPhone, even though that's still quite limited because you have to have a certain type of, certain model of phone to use it at the moment. But yes, it's, it's, this is a clear indicator that that generative AI is, you know, is going mainstream and we're going to, everyone is using it now for. Mainly for work, I would say is where we're at at the moment. Like it's useful for things like spreadsheets and, and the things like Larry was talking about earlier about, you know, deciphering complicated details.

[Larry Magid]

I just got this three page letter from my investment firm which I think is important and I, I got the idea from Leo. I'm going to scan it and, and figure what the hell it's all about because I don't want to read it.

[Leo Laporte]

You've seen the New Yorker cartoon? Maybe it was a New Yorker cartoon. It was XKCD where the guy says, I'm going to take this bullet point and have AI generate a nice long email to my boss, you know, telling him what I've done. And then the boss saying, I'm going to take this email and distill it down using AI to one bullet point.

[Larry Magid]

Wow. Federal workers could use it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Larry Magid]

Things they did last week.

[Leo Laporte]

Five things I would be hard pressed to tell you, five things I did last week.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I think 300, half of those, 400 million are probably students using it to write essays as well.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a little scary for teachers, I would imagine. Teachers take two texts. Jeff Jarvis tells me this. He's a professor, deals with college kids a lot. They take two texts. One is they ban it. They say you may not and they try to use tools to find AI generated text and so forth. The others embrace it and I think this is the proper way to handle it and say, look, look, it's going to be in your life from now on, so let's use it, but let's use it appropriately. And I think that teaching people how to use it. Yeah.

[Larry Magid]

One of the biggest challenges I have as a person who gets paid to write is I will sometimes use ChatGPT or Gemini for ideas, for outlines, for verifying. Not verifying information, finding out some things. And sometimes it phrases it so well that it's just tempting to steal it. But I figure I'm not allowed to do that because people are paying me for my original writing.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, is it. First of all, New York Times.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I agree with you. New York Times is now using. Is using AI.

[Leo Laporte]

I saw that. I was a little shocked.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

That was very surprised. Yeah. So not writing. Not writing stories, but for sort of around the work.

[Leo Laporte]

Sure.

[Larry Magid]

I use it all.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yes. But they're very. Well, we're very specific at the Verge where we do not use.

[Larry Magid]

Really?

[Leo Laporte]

I think this. Yeah. The Verge broke this story. Actually, it was Jesse Weatherbed. The New York Times adopts AI tools in the newsroom, encouraging staff to use AI to suggest edits, headlines, and questions to ask during interviews. I was pretty shocked when I read this story, to be honest.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I think the reporters at the New York Times were a bit. Bit unhappy as well. From what I heard.

[Leo Laporte]

The staff were reportedly just writes sent new editorial guidelines detailing permitted use for. And this surprised me. Echo and other AI tools. No. Okay. New York Times, do not use Echo for your AI. That's. Yeah. Oh, wait a minute. No, no, it's not Amazon Echo. Okay. Sorry. No, it's a new internal AI tool.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yes. Because Amazon's is Alexa and Echo is the speaker, so. Yes, but that is a bad choice of word.

[Leo Laporte]

It seems to me they were encouraged to use it, encourage newsroom employees to suggest edits and revisions for their work. So in effect. I don't know of that New York Times, but I know a lot of places copy editors have been, you know, banished to some degree. Right.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I feel like copy editors are even more important now if we're gonna.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what I get into.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

AI. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you still have copy editors at cena?

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I do, and I hope. Hope that remains true for the foreseeable.

[Leo Laporte]

I can always tell when a blog or a website doesn't because they're typos, they're grammatical errors. They're just little mistakes.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Absolutely. Also, I saw a posting that I pulled up here. It was from Gannett. It was a AI assisted reporter. You'll be assisted by technology to create a high volume of stories from trusted press releases and similar sources.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

That was a job description.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

It's crazy. It's unreal. This is.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Who is that for?

[Abrar Al Heedi]

This is for USA Today. This is not a beat reporting position.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute. I just want to make note in that case that that reassured Jennifer that it was for USA Today. Oh, well, in that case.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Well, that makes sense. But yeah, a lot of people read usa.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

The USA Today part. It was g. It's, you know, they've been.

[Leo Laporte]

They're not known for their journalistic.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

But yeah, that's excellence. So to hear it says to see something like this from the New York Times as startling because I didn't think people don't expect that from.

[Larry Magid]

Well, it depends on how they're used. I mean, I have no problem using it as an idea generator. You know, did I miss something? And. But I don't.

[Leo Laporte]

I think I've used it. You know, when you interview authors, you're always given from the publicity department a one sheet that. That's basically, if you would like, you could describe our author this way and ask him these four questions. And I think there are a lot of lazy people on Good Morning Muncie or whatever that use this. I know because I used to be on the west coast, so I'd be the end of the book tour back when I was working at CANBR in San Francisco. And I always had all the authors on and they would have answered that same four questions a hundred times by the time they got to me. So I knew first of all, I couldn't use those. I wouldn't. And they were always so relieved when I asked them a question that wasn't in that set of, you know, proposed questions Here. This scares me a little bit. Jess writes that they want to use this echo AI to suggest edits and revisions. Okay. Copy editor, generate summaries. Okay, good. Use promotional copy for social media. Okay. This is the one that bothered me. And SEO headlines.

[Larry Magid]

That's scary.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So there was a. Yeah, the. So the Verge cast podcast that the Verge has our executive editor, Jake Krasnakis, and, and David Pierce, who hosts it, was talking about this and this was. Jake was saying while we don't do this on the Verge, there are, I mean, and you know, you guys humans for the link.

[Leo Laporte]

Bay. Right.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, no, no, just that when you write. So the writing is the fun part. Right. We were just saying that we love writing, but there's so many menial tasks. Once you've filed your story, you have to fill out like three different headlines. This is what they're talking about. So you have to have far you've Got your main headline. Then you've got your headline for your social media dissemination. Then you have your SEO headline which will be different from your main headline.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's not the main headline. That's a special SEO version. Is that the subhead or is it only in the.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

No, it's. So when. It's the search. When you search. So you may notice if you. If you look at the headline on this verge.com article and then you go back and Google it, it will have a different headline.

[Leo Laporte]

The headline in the Verge article is very. Is exactly straightforward. The New York Times adopts AI tools in the newsroom.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yes. And this may. And some not all headlines get rewritten, but most will have four different versions of headlines. And let me go back. Is this what they do at CNET too? I don't know.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

But we.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

You used to.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

We don't. But you've changed early anymore. Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Because it takes a lot of extra time.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah. And our main headline ends up being what we optimize for SEO or try to optimize for SEO. But we used to write kind of separate.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, yeah. Because there'll be. The main SEO headline is normally very dry.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

The Verge quite often will have.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Oh, yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Very punchy quirky headlines, you might notice on our front page. And those. Those wouldn't be as good for SEO.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Right.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So it's like I name shows. Like I'm going to name this show Muskie and that's terrible for SEO.

[Larry Magid]

I don't know a lot of people searching on Musky and then.

[Leo Laporte]

And then. But then our editors will come in and they will put a subhead in that is like the three different.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

That's what it is. Yes. So you've. So this.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way, I hate that I don't want SEO. I always get.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I've always loved your guys headlines. They're so fun. The headlines should be.

[Leo Laporte]

My position is we're gonna cover 30 news stories. There's no way you can, in a subhead, summarize what we did. So just use the stupid funny headline. And then the whole point, just between us kids, is we try to pick a headline that's at the end of the show so that people are forced to listen to the entire show to.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Find out what they want to get to it. Yes.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Perfect. It's like you need to take the.

[Larry Magid]

Transition transcript of this show and feed it into generative AI and have it.

[Leo Laporte]

Boil an hour and a half shorter.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah. I feel like your strategy for naming is like when grocery stores put milk at the back of the store so that you have to walk through everything else.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

It's genius. I mean, it's just like you want.

[Leo Laporte]

Is never at the front of the store.

[Larry Magid]

Candy is right at the front of the store.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

No, but you know what is interesting about this exit?

[Leo Laporte]

Exit through the gift shop.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Exactly. What's interesting about this ethnic SEO thing is the main thing we hear about in media is the death of SEO with AI. Right. So to have AI optimized for SEO and then kill SEO is hilarious.

[Leo Laporte]

It is. It's. In fact, to some degree, I think a lot of AI is talking to other AI just like that cartoon.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You know.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

If I name the show Musk, people will think that we talked about musk in the show, though.

[Larry Magid]

Genius.

[Leo Laporte]

And we haven't and we won't. I'm trying to avoid it. You don't want to be honest.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Come on.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

If you want to. I mean, there's plenty of places you can. You can hear about Musk.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

It doesn't have to be here everywhere. Yeah. Every. Well, that's. You know, we used to talk a lot about it, and I realized that people are coming to us as a. As a refuge.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Light relief. The first week of. Have everything going kind of crazy. A few weeks we had a story about an ice cream maker. That was our most popular story. I just want to read about ice cream.

[Leo Laporte]

More pudding.

[Larry Magid]

I'm watching a lot more just mind dumbing television these days on Netflix and a lot less CNN and MSNBC and Fox than I used to watch.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, God. Yeah. Because it'll. It'll agitate the system.

[Larry Magid]

Triggers me.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, it's triggering and.

[Larry Magid]

And I understand any better that I.

[Leo Laporte]

People feel like, well, we got to pay attention. But not. Not 24 7. Yeah. I noticed. I'm watching more documentaries about the 60s. Like, about. About how we protested things and stuff like that. And I'm kind of. It's a little reassuring because I had forgotten, but things looked pretty bad in 1968.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

History.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Itself. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

They really. I mean, we thought this was the. The end of the world and. And we made it. So. I don't know.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I like that. It's a note of optimism. That's good.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Looking for it wherever.

[Larry Magid]

I long for the days of Richard Nixon.

[Leo Laporte]

I know he was. You know, he seems so mild in. In comparison.

[Larry Magid]

He could be shamed.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Amazon is shutting down its app store for Android. I thought that was a weird thing.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I thought it was weird that it still.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

People existed.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, they need it for the tablets, for the, you know, the Amazon Fire tablets.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I know you'll stick around for that.

[Leo Laporte]

That's going to stick around, but. Well, and this is funny because Microsoft initially, when they put in their Android subsystem so that you could run Android apps under Windows, didn't use the Google Play Store. They used the Amazon App Store. But Microsoft shut that down pretty quickly and shut down on the use of the App Store. So Starting in August, August 20th, you'll no longer have access to the Amazon App Store on your Android.

[Larry Magid]

I didn't even know you had an Amazon App Store on my Android. So.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, there you go. You'll like this. Did you know about the Amazon Coins program?

[Larry Magid]

No.

[Leo Laporte]

You used to be able to buy coins with real American money. Coin was worth a penny and then use it for in app purchases. I dimly remember this. I could never figure out. I think Amazon's hope was you'd buy some and forget about it and then.

[Larry Magid]

They would keep it like your Bitcoin.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah. Well, Amazon's on a tad, getting rid of all sorts of things. They shut down Chime Rip, the worst video calling service.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, they did.

[Larry Magid]

I used it just the other day.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, they have announced it shut down. It's going to last for another year, but it is no longer. You can no longer sign up for it. I know it was.

[Leo Laporte]

Why do you use that? What is it?

[Larry Magid]

We're partnered. The problem with Connect Safe, because we're partners with all these companies. So talk to them. We have to use their.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

You talk to. Yeah. Anyone at Amazon, Blink Ring, Any Connect, Aero, any connection.

[Larry Magid]

And employees hate it as much as I do.

[Leo Laporte]

So it was their version of Zoom or Microsoft Teams.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah, it was.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It was a video work. Video calling service which, you know, they launched around the time of the pandemic and, and when everyone was launching new video services and I think they were, they were having many, like partners encouraged to use it or if you have AWS service, you know, it was like a package, but never very good and not a. Yeah, not a great experience. It seems like Amazon used it.

[Larry Magid]

The other problem is that, I mean, even if it were good, how many interfaces can you remember? Like, where is the chat button? Where is the record button? How do I mute my microphone? You know, if there are so many of these out there that.

[Leo Laporte]

And they're all different interfaces.

[Larry Magid]

I know Zoom well, but the others I have to think about, why did.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, why did Zoom take off during the pandemic and. And Skype didn't. Teams didn't chime didn't. What did Zoom do right that they all did wrong?

[Larry Magid]

And none of us had ever heard of or very few people even heard of Zoom prior to the pandemic.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that's right. I mean, it was used in business.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah. I was going to say for work. It was what we were already using. But I would have expected something like Skype to really take off, because Skype's going to forever and it's not as abhorrent.

[Leo Laporte]

It feels like Microsoft fumbled that.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Microsoft fumbles a lot of things. I feel like Outlook and Teams are probably the worst things they've ever created. But.

[Leo Laporte]

Speak your mind. Speak your mind.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Sorry, guys. I love working with you all, but you need to fix that.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I agree with you 100%. You're amongst friends.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah, but no, but no. I'm surprised that Zoom took over from Skype mainly because Skype had. People were aware of what it was before the pandemic. And I think a lot of people learned what Zoom was for the first time. But I don't know. I don't know if it was. Was the interface that wasn't particularly more intuitive than Skype.

[Leo Laporte]

So I don't know what E. Rosner in our YouTube chat says. It's very simply, in two words, Skype blows.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Okay, there you go. Don't overthink it. Just that's that.

[Larry Magid]

We used to use that routinely for the show.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

You had skyposaurus. I remember skyposaurus.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow, you really did listen in the. Back in the day. Yeah. The twit wouldn't exist, frankly, without Skyposis. Without Skype, none of our hosts were in. In the same. We're in Petaluma, California. So I had to zoom everybody in. And. Well, it was Skype for the longest time because Skype was the best.

[Larry Magid]

When I was at cbs, we were required to disclose that we use Skype. We had to put their logo on there.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, they always wanted us to, but I never did. I noticed the news networks when. When there's a Skype call, we'll have a little.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah, we had to.

[Leo Laporte]

That was a. Zoom doesn't do. I don't believe Zoom asks us to do that. So I will give them a plug now, though, as soon as. When did we switch to Zoom? Benito, do you remember? You're right. We had Skype a source. Colleen, our first chief engineer, built us. It was four Mac Minis, I think. And they would. And each would call, make one of the calls because there was no way to do individual mixing in Skype. So we had four different calls that we would then mix together and feed the call back to everybody. So it was a pretty complicated, hairy thing. We used that, I think, well after we moved into the last studio, the Eastside studio. But at some point, Zoom got better than Skype. Plus, everybody knew how to use Zoom.

[Larry Magid]

Right. And Google Meet never took off as much as I expected. It's still doing pretty well.

[Leo Laporte]

But, you know, the irony is, as a company, we use Meat for almost all of our. Which is so weird. I don't know why.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I have no idea why Zoom must have. Zoom didn't require an account. Right. So I think, yeah, you could use.

[Leo Laporte]

It on the Web. It was more flexible.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Skype, you know, downloading anything that's. Microsoft is always such, you know, a painful experience. And Microsoft is not directing grandma to download Skype. Just. I mean, I use Skype a lot because it was a great way to call friends.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. In the uk.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

In the uk. From the US Many years ago, and.

[Leo Laporte]

My daughter was going to school in France that I bought her a $90 a year Skype phone number and we were able to talk freely.

[Larry Magid]

Seems so expensive today.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it more expensive? Probably.

[Larry Magid]

No, it's free.

[Leo Laporte]

It's free now.

[Larry Magid]

Okay, well, I don't want Skype, but.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, Jammer B, who is the mind of the. Of the company, he was our studio manager for many years. He's written out, retired, but he still watches. Nice to see you, John. He says Alex Lindsay, who was one of our hosts in MacBreak weekly, insisted we move to Zoom. He said, why are you still using Skype? And he was right. I mean, if you watch this show, the quality's very good.

[Larry Magid]

I think we use Zencastr for our video podcast because it does a little bit better job on the video than Skype. And plus, it's all in separate tracks.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we do. We are using something called Zoom ISO, which does that as well.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah. So the separate tracks are useful when you're.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, God. That's why we had Skypasaurus, because I needed separate tracks, because Patrick Norton would always be, like, under a car on the show, fixing his car, and I'd have to mute him. So we needed separate audio tracks. That's why we had Skyposaurus. Yeah. Zoom now with Zoom ISO is a pretty painless process. I'm on Zoom. You are all on Zoom. Benito is actually. It gets a little more complicated from there on. He is. The Zoom call then goes to a Macintosh in the cloud at Mac Stadium, which is running eCamm. No so you're running Zoom locally and then. But you're running ECAMM locally also. Ah, so we don't use the Max Stadium server anymore. Or you're not using it anyway. Well, that's better, isn't it? Is it better for you? That's why I gave you my old Mac. Yeah. Yeah, I got Mini.

[Larry Magid]

And you're no longer working out of a big studio anymore, right?

[Leo Laporte]

No, this is my attic.

[Larry Magid]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

You want to see it?

[Larry Magid]

It sure.

[Leo Laporte]

For real. This is. This is the fake. This is the fakes. This is what it really looks like.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I love that.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

The wheel, the cog. I love the cog.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah, we saved that from the studio.

[Larry Magid]

Can I show you a secret? Let me. Let me grab my little webcam.

[Leo Laporte]

You're gonna. We're gonna see yourself.

[Larry Magid]

Wardrobe. I keep a wardrobe in my office.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you never know because back when.

[Larry Magid]

I was working for BBC a couple years ago, they would put me on the air and I had to wear a suit and tie.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's unlike broadcast news. Right. William Hurt was going to go on and he had a starched pressed shirt in his drawer that he would took.

[Larry Magid]

Out and put on. I run over there and put on.

[Leo Laporte]

A shirt and my wardrobe is in another room. Larry, I've decided to separate my wardrobe from mine.

[Larry Magid]

I'm lazier than you are. Also, I had tighter deadlines. Sometimes I wouldn't have more than a couple of minutes before I had to go in the air.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Leo, your lighting is fantastic. Fantastic, though. That's what I'm.

[Leo Laporte]

We brought in a gaffer. Really good lighting guy. So good, in fact, if you go back to that over the head shot, I can show you. This is a Kino flow. It's very bright. Elgato duo lights.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Oh, God.

[Leo Laporte]

And then you don't see, but behind me there's another duplicate Kino flow, the diva light behind me. And then there's some up spots. There's all sorts of stuff going on.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

So how hot is it in that room right now?

[Leo Laporte]

It's very pleasant because they're all LED lights.

[Larry Magid]

Oh, that's pretty.

[Leo Laporte]

Back in the old days, it would have been unbearable.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah.

[Larry Magid]

I have a studio light just for show. It actually doesn't work, but it's kind of cool.

[Leo Laporte]

It looks good and that's what counts.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Exactly. Looks like it'll send a bat signal or something.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. It turns out that good lighting is very important.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah, good lighting and good microphones.

[Leo Laporte]

It covers a multitude of defects. And then Anthony and Burke cobbled together this neon TWIT logo. So that's.

[Larry Magid]

Is that a real Macintosh behind you or a fake?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, no, it's Jammer B gave me when he left. When he first. The first time I met Jammer B, he gave me that old phone. The last time I saw Jammer B, he left me his Mac. That's the original 128K Mac. Not only that, it's actually running. It's running flying toasters.

[Larry Magid]

Is that worth anything? Is that like a. Oh, no, too many. Too many.

[Leo Laporte]

No one would want it.

[Larry Magid]

No, it's a great prop.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Prop.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a good prop. But you know what, it's funny, it introduces a huge complexity because it's a CRT screen. It's the only CRT screen you see. And of course it has a. You remember in the old days the scan lines going across it. And finally Burke figured out how to tune this camera shutter rate so there'd be no scan lines. So it actually works pretty well.

[Larry Magid]

It's probably using more energy than everything else in your office.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I guarantee you. Yeah, that single thing is using more wattage than anything else. I guarantee you. Let's see, Spotify making it easier to release audiobooks narrated by AI I don't.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Like this or I'm going to turn into like a curmudgeon.

[Leo Laporte]

But are you a Luddite on that regard? So I love human readers. I listen to audiobooks on Audible and they're actors.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So it's being brought to life.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Exactly. I'm reading a book that. Or I'm listening to a book that. I'm not going to say what it is because I don't want to bash the person who's narrating it. But they sound like a robot and they're not. So for it to actually be a robot, I don't particularly enjoy. But that's the thing is like, I think, you know, it's, it's two sided, It's. I want people who do voiceover work to have jobs. People who are good at that should continue to do that and I'm sure they will. Obviously it's not going to eradicate those jobs yet.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, there's a cause for concern.

[Larry Magid]

Would the AI know what to emphasize? I mean, a good, a good narrator.

[Leo Laporte]

Knows it does a pretty good job.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I mean, that's the other part of it, right? It's like these are, like you mentioned, these are professionals who know, they know how to act with their voices and it sounds more human. It's more enjoyable to listen to. I think it's not just about hearing something. It's about how a story is told, and there's an art to that. And I think AI is smart and I think it will do its best to replicate it. And maybe in time it will, but it's just. It's not the same.

[Larry Magid]

And rarely is the author the best person to narrate a book once in a while. But usually they're not that great at it.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Would you like to hear some of the 11 AI voices?

[Larry Magid]

Sure.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. This is from there. Hi, there. This is the voice of Adam from 11 Labs. Hi, there. This is the voice of Antoni from 11 Labs.

[Larry Magid]

No, hi, there. This is the voice of Arnold from 11 Labs. Hi, Arnold.

[Leo Laporte]

Hi, there.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

This is the voice of.

[Leo Laporte]

I think this might be old because I think they've gotten better than. This is the voice of Callum from a. How you doing?

[Larry Magid]

I've heard. I mean, hey, I could do a much better job than that. That's not.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, these might be old. I'll have to do a better Google.

[Larry Magid]

Search because, I mean, Notebook lm. When I. I mentioned that fake podcast it did about me or anybody, just feed it your bio. They sound like real people.

[Leo Laporte]

It's depressing because they sound like real podcasters.

[Larry Magid]

They sound like what? They sound like, like bad podcasters. For real.

[Leo Laporte]

Bad podcasters, including the ums and.

[Larry Magid]

But they're not that different than a lot of real. Real cat podcasters.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I know. That's kind of sad. I was playing with before the show my. My B computer, and it actually has some pretty good voices. I.

[Larry Magid]

That British woman is great. Not as good as the real British woman we have from Jennifer, but if.

[Leo Laporte]

Jennifer would just give me her voice.

[Larry Magid]

Well, that can happen.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm using a voice that we decided that sounds like Helen Mirin, right?

[Larry Magid]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Let me see if I can.

[Larry Magid]

But Jennifer won't put you out of work. You're still. You're still better.

[Leo Laporte]

It's my guess that these are actually 11 labs voices. I think they.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

As the room erupted in laughter, Peter's face turned crimson and he wished he could disappear from this embarrassing moment.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's how I feel all the time. Isn't that good?

[Larry Magid]

It's not bad.

[Leo Laporte]

You could hear that reading a book.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I could. And that's what I don't like.

[Leo Laporte]

That's scary.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Isn't that I'm like.

[Larry Magid]

Thing about AI when it's good, it's scary.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

My fa. One of my favorite readers is the now sadly discredited William Neil Gaiman. Who's this is, you know, this is hard. Like, do you listen to Michael Jackson music? Do you read Neil Gaiman stuff? He's a great writer and he was a horrible person.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

The. Yeah, the Sandman 2 isn't coming out now and neither is the next. So Good Omens is, like, my favorite book ever.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I love Good. Oh, I love his ra. Anyway, this. This voice sounds like Neil Gaiman. This is awesome. Amidst the chaos, Chloe's mind raced, right. His thoughts a whirlwind of worry and doubt, desperately seeking a way out. It's not exactly Neil Gaiman, but it's close enough.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

The voice of an audiobook narrator is so key. Like, when I. I know I want to listen to the book, but I will read the reviews to see if people could handle the voice, because if it's wrong, if it's not quite right, it's just. You just can't listen.

[Larry Magid]

Luckily, Audible gives you a free sample, which I always listen to before I bought.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, isn't that interesting? And that's something you. You voice actors should remember, is that we actually choose the book sometimes because of the voice actor.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah, sure. It's like watching a movie. It could be a great screenwriter, but if.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

And you can follow the voice actor and go and listen to more books by them if you like them.

[Leo Laporte]

I do.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I like following the author.

[Leo Laporte]

I do. Yeah. All right, timeout. Did I do a timeout? Did I. Benita, where am I do. I needed. You were supposed to tell me when it was time. All right, we'll take a little break and we'll come back lots more. I don't want to complain too much about Spotify. We are now on Spotify, both audio and video. So even though I think that in many ways they've been the bane of podcasting, and now maybe they're going to be the bane of audiobooks, I don't know. But at the same time, if you can't beat them, join them. More to come in just a bit with a wonderful panel. Thanks. We're streaming, by the way, and I see people chatting in all of our streams, which is wonderful. And of course, Discord is for our club members. If you're not a club twit member, seven bucks a month gets you ad free versions of all of our shows and lots of additional content. We've got some special events, Stacy's Book Clubs. Coming up on Thursday, Stacey Higginbotham and I will talk about Micaiah Johnson's those Beyond the Wall. It's a great book. It's very difficult. Not difficult, but real, you know, challenging in that regard. And a wonderful reader too. I'm listening to it on Audible. If you're not yet a member. It makes a big difference in terms of our bottom line. Yes, we have ads, but ads don't cover 100% of our cost. The club's members do. We've cut back as much as we can. Shutting down the studio was one of the ways we cut back. But in order to keep doing what we're doing and if we want to expand at all, we need your help. Twit TV Club Twit or scan the QR code in the upper left of the screen and join the fun. Seven bucks a month. Twit TV Club Twit. And it's thanks to the club members who've got the discord and a YouTube stream and a a Twitch stream and a Tick Tock stream and an X stream and a LinkedIn, Facebook and Kick. We're on eight different platforms that you can watch us live on. Thank you to our Club Twit members. Oh, and by the way, another good reason to be a member of the club. We've got a really great show coming up for you on Wednesday on Intelligent Machines. Stephen Wolfram, the creator of Wolfram Alpha will join us. We want to ask him about AI. He wrote a book about how LLMs work, but I think he's really up to date on the latest new reinforcement learning. Stephen Wolfram, our guest Wednesday on Intelligent Machines. And I thought you might want to know that our show today brought to you by US Cloud. I talked to them a couple of weeks ago and I thought actually said are you a cloud company? They said no, we're the number one Microsoft Unified support replacement now. They are actually the global leader in third party Microsoft support for enterprises. They support 50 of the Fortune 500. Reason number one, they're going to save you a lot of money. Switching to US Cloud can save your business 30 to 50% over Microsoft Unified and Premier support. But it wouldn't be any good if it were just less expensive. It's also better. These are engineered, they get the best engineers with an average of 16 years experience and break fix. They know how to do support. They're faster too, twice as fast. Average time to resolution, which is the amount of time that you really care about versus Microsoft. Let me say that again. They're twice as fast as Microsoft, so half the cost. Twice as fast. Better now. Now you I got your attention, right? They also do things for their customers that are really Remarkable. For instance, Microsoft's not going to tell you if you're overspending on Azure, right? They're going to encourage it. Well, US Cloud is excited to tell you about a new offering. It's their Azure cost optimization services. This is actually a brilliant idea. When was the last time you evaluated your Azure usage? If you've, you know, been using Azure for a while, undoubtedly you got some Azure sprawl, a little, you know, spend creep going on. Well, now, saving on Azure is easier than you think. With US Cloud, they offer an eight week Azure engagement. It's powered by VBox. Over those eight weeks, they'll identify key opportunities to reduce costs across your entire Azure environment. Now you're going to get expert guidance from US Cloud, those great senior engineers with an average of over 16 years with Microsoft products. They're there to backstop it. At the end of the eight weeks, you're going to get an interactive dashboard that will tell you very directly. Rebuild opportunities, downscale opportunities, and even unused resources. Microsoft's never going to tell you, allowing you to reallocate your precious IT dollars towards needed resources. Of course you're going to save money. It's my hope you'll use that Azure savings to hire US Cloud and their Microsoft support. That's what a lot of US Cloud customers ended up doing, completely eliminating your unified spend. I'll give you a testimonial review from Sam. He's a technical operations manager at at Bed Gaming B E D E. He gave us Cloud 5 stars. They did the Azure engagement. We found some things that have been running, he says, for three years, which no one was checking. He said those VMs were, I don't know, 10 grand a month. Not a massive chunk in the grand scheme of how much we spend on Azure. But once you get to 40 or $50,000 a month, it really starts to add up. It's simple. Stop overpaying for Azure, pay for what you need. Obviously, identify and eliminate Azure creep and boost your performance. And you can do it all in eight weeks with US Cloud. Just one more reason to call US Cloud right now. Visit uscloud.com, book a call, find out how much your team can save. Uscloud.com, book a call today and get faster, better Microsoft Support for less. USCloud.com, we thank him so much for supporting our show. California has a pretty good privacy policy and a pretty good privacy regulator, and I'm kind of proud of them. The California privacy regulator is now reaching out to fine the National. You remember this breach? The national public data breach. Hundreds of millions of Social Security numbers and other personal, personally identifiable information leaked in this breach from the. You know, all legally, by the way. All legally collected by npd. The California regulator is asking the court to find them. $46,000? Well, that's pathetic.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I also laughed at that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I didn't read the number until I looked deeper here. They failed to register as a data broker in the state. Man, this is pathetic. They released records, including Social Security numbers of as many as 270 million people. Some of it was inaccurate, although I searched the database, found my social. Steve Gibson searched the database, found his social. It was the. One of the largest data breaches of last year. They filed for bankruptcy, which only honestly I suspect means they'll change their name, reorganize, and get back in business. It's just too lucrative. And the worst thing is there's no law against it. So California is doing the only thing it can do, which is filing a claim against it for failing to register with the agency as a data broker.

[Larry Magid]

$46,000. That's like a $2 parking ticket.

[Leo Laporte]

It's nothing. It's a slap on the wrist. This is the best they can do.

[Larry Magid]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

This is the California Privacy Protection Act. CPPA says brokers have to register by January 31, 2024. The fines are $200 a day. It's almost embarrassing. At least they have to register. And I would think, you know, it's cheaper to register than not register. Salvatore Varini, the owner of Jericho Pictures, the. Believe it or not, the parent company of National Public Data, did not respond to TechCrunch for a request for comment. Salvatore, what are you doing here? Jericho Pictures. Okay, I guess that. That I was going to be a great big story. I thought they were looking for millions. 46 thou.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah, I also had to go back and check. That's.

[Leo Laporte]

That seems wrong somehow that we don't have anything better than that's that. By the way, that. That's the. As far as I know, that's the only penalty these guys are going to pay for this 270 million person data breach.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Shows you how much.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, I'm just getting like. I get mail every. Almost every week from companies saying, we're sorry, but we lost. We've exposed your Social Security number and your children's Social Security number and all this other stuff. And here has a year's free experience data protection.

[Leo Laporte]

Thanks.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It's like constant. It's constant. It's like constant. Which is. I mean, I, you know, I almost feel like I kind of ignore it now, but it's like, should I. I probably should be quite worried about this, but what am I supposed to do? It's like, yeah, we can't change our Social Security numbers.

[Leo Laporte]

We can change our passwords, but privacy's dead, my friends.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

That's the title of this episode. Just kidding.

[Leo Laporte]

I still want to go with Musk. I'm just. But I'm just, you know, I don't know. Speaking of, speaking of the current administration, there is a very good organization in the U. S. Government called cisa, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The president doesn't like it. Historically, he didn't like it since 2020 when CESA said no, the election was free and fair. Immediately fired the director of cesa, Chris Segoyan. But CESA has been continuing to do its work, trying to thwart security threats, deter the spread of misinformation. Now the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has frozen all of its election security work. This is from. Eric Geller, reporting for Wired. Is reviewing everything it has done to help state and local officials secure their elections for the last eight years. The move represents the first major example of the country's cyber Defense Agency accommodating President Trump's claims of election fraud and online censorship. In a memo sent Friday to all CISA employees and obtained by Wired, CESA's acting director, Bridget Bean, said she was ordering a review and assessment of every position at the agency related to election security and counting. Countering misinformation and disinformation. Wouldn't want to do that. As well as every election security and Ms. DIS&MAL information product, activity, service and program has been carried out since the federal government designated election systems as critical infrastructure in 2017.

[Larry Magid]

Chilling.

[Leo Laporte]

It's. Well, it's scary. I mean, there's a lot going on, but that's pretty scary. Has been very valuable.

[Larry Magid]

How is Russia's election integrity systems working? I mean, you know, because they've got free and fair elections, of course.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's not much more to say about it except that just, you know, an alert, something to pay attention to.

[Larry Magid]

It literally gives me chills when I hear you talking about that.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, it's.

[Leo Laporte]

It's the first thing you do if you want to undermine election right for the next.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

That's right. So when we get to. What do we. When, when does it come in 20?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, there's going to be midterm election 28 in 2020. 6.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

20. 26.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the first one. They're also.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, so we. I mean, are there any. What are the alternatives? I mean, there was a lot of work being done when. When he lost on election fraud and making sure everything's secure. So is that going to continue? Is that all just going to go away and we'll. There's no chance of election fraud anymore. Is this what we're hearing?

[Leo Laporte]

The FTC has launched an inquiry into tech censorship. I fear for the Future of Section 230. Both Democrats and Republicans have been hollering for the modification or elimination of Section 230 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Section 230 protects both big companies and little companies like mine. It indemnifies us, prevents people from suing us. For instance, we have a Mastodon. Instance, a Twitter social. We have a. We have forums at Twitter community. We also, of course, have, at last count, eight different chat rooms going during the shows. In any one of those, if somebody posted something somebody didn't like, section 230 prevents us from getting sued. The judge would immediately throw it out, saying, you can't sue the publisher for comments people put on their forums. But of course, there are a number of people on both the left and right who would like to hold the publishers liable. Now, maybe if that's Meta or Google or Twitter, okay, they can afford to defend themselves in court, but it would put us out of business.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah, it's interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

The FTC is launching, under the new chairman, Andrew Ferguson, an inquiry into, quote, tech censorship, which will help the FTC better understand how these firms may have violated the law by silencing and intimidating Americans for speaking their minds. One of the things section 230 allows is moderation. Without it, moderation would be dangerous. I could be sued if somebody goes on my. Right now. If somebody goes on my Mastodon and says, you know, something awful, I can kick him off or I can delete the comment. I have the right to moderate it.

[Larry Magid]

You really like the contradiction. They're basically telling you, you. You're responsible for what everybody posts, but you can't.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But you can't do anything.

[Larry Magid]

You can't do anything about it.

[Leo Laporte]

Right?

[Larry Magid]

They're taking it away on both sides. It's just ridiculous.

[Leo Laporte]

One of the reasons people think this is a good idea is they. They really think of Google and Meta in the big companies. They don't realize this affects everybody who has a forum, who has a blog, anywhere there is commenting. The Verge, cnet, and. And much smaller, every local news outlet.

[Larry Magid]

Just about the only area where I think it has any validity is algorithms. You could argue that if Meta is promoting or X or TikTok or anybody is promoting certain content and push, shoving it in your face, you could argue that they're playing some publishing role, but simply allowing for a forum, you know, so some bozo wants to say something defamatory through the bozo.

[Leo Laporte]

Honestly, I think algorithms are protected. I think that's a free speech.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, that was. Yeah, and that was the. Isn't there. There's the Supreme Court case about that with Google, about the algorithms in terms of like pushing a person to do something because of what videos.

[Leo Laporte]

You can't tell the New York Times what stories to run or not run.

[Larry Magid]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Rightly so.

[Larry Magid]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

But the government should not be in the bid. That's what the First Amendment protects. The government should not be in the business of. Of policing speech.

[Larry Magid]

Right, but the question is, if the New York Times were to post something.

[Leo Laporte]

That was defamatory, then that person could sue using libel or laws. Right, right. That's sufficient.

[Larry Magid]

Right. But. But the point is, and by the.

[Leo Laporte]

Way, that still holds, if somebody puts something defamatory on my mastodon about Larry Maggot, you could go sue them. You can't sue them.

[Larry Magid]

But not you. But not you. Right, exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Why should you be able to sue me? Sue the person who defamed you.

[Larry Magid]

Exactly, Exactly.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, and also, freedom of speech does not. Is not about the freedom is not about where you speak. So in terms of like, if you're publishing on a private platform, that's not freedom. Freedom of speech is the ability to say whatever you believe and whatever you want, but it's not specifically about where you can do it. So if you have a private platform, they people, a private company can moderate whatever they want. They can moderate. They have the right to put what they want on their platform. Platform. But then this is where the issue with the FTC here, with the act we were talking about, that will bring. Will make it illegal or not illegal, will make it difficult for you to publish anything you want on your website because you could get in trouble. So you'll kind of get. You've got this hamster wheel going around. It's like.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, there's a certain irony.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Because I think it comes down to this, comes down to the decision by Meta and Twitter at the time after January 6, to ban the President's account. They both have since reinstated his accounts. But it doesn't. But the funny thing is Elon is absolutely shadow banning People just shadow Banned Grimes for saying Grimes posted on X. Hey, Elon, you're ignoring me. And our kid has a medical issue. Please help. He just shadow banned her.

[Larry Magid]

And the irony is that's legal, I guess. Well, private entities. The only entity that doesn't write this, the government.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Right. So they can.

[Larry Magid]

The only. They're the only ones. That's what the First Amendment applies to.

[Leo Laporte]

We're defending his right, however reprehensible, to do that.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, and you. Any platform can. I mean, they're not. Like you said, they're not the government. They don't have the. They have the right to put what they allow what they want on their platform. But section 230, if, then we're going to end up saying, okay, well, anything that anyone says on your platform you're responsible for, well, then you're going to want to either shut down your platform or have much stronger moderation on your platform, because you can't. And that's going to cost. Like you say, the small companies won't be able to do that. But the big tech companies don't want to moderate. They're trying to push further, further away from moderation in the interests of supporting the idea that, well, we promote free speech on our platforms. Anyone can say anything they want, but it's, it's. Yeah, it's a mess. And it's not.

[Larry Magid]

If the, if the government is telling you that you must moderate or you must not moderate, that actually is a violation of the First Amendment because the First Amendment only applies to government. Meta can do whatever it wants. It could moderate. It could not moderate. I mean, it, that's what, you know, that's what, what private free speech is about. And, and these, I mean, so we're just mired with contradictions. The point about saying, you know, you must moderate, but you can't moderate. The mere, the mere fact that the government's even getting involved in that conversation is arguably a violation of the First Amendment.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

And I think even just taking a step back and looking at what social media has become and what it means to so many people, the reactions from both the left and the right about what should or shouldn't be on social media is a reflection of how powerful echo chambers have become and really just want to see content that reinforces what they already believe. And the fact that like, so many people on either side are unhappy. I think just like from a societal reflection standpoint is really interesting about what we actually want when we go online. I think people are less receptive to alternative viewpoints. There's a lot of misinformation out there. I'm not saying things that, like, there are things that need to be. I think getting rid of content moderators was an interesting choice. I'm not sure how helpful that is, but, you know, in general, when it comes to people presenting ideas, whether political or societal or otherwise, people don't want to see things that contradict how they see the world. And so it's trying to walk this line of how do you present enough ideas to people and create a space where people can maybe communicate with each other, but then also make sure that what they're accessing is real information and not misinformation and disinformation. So it's just. It's chaotic. I think social media has become so unenjoyable recently. I think because of that.

[Larry Magid]

If you want to come over to my house and have a conversation about politics or religion or. Or dress codes or whatever, fine. When you start calling each other names.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Larry Magid]

And then I'm going to kick you out of the house and ask them to stop talking.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah.

[Larry Magid]

You know, and I don't know why private companies don't. They do have that. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I do do that on our Mastodon server, for sure. And I do that on our forums as well, for sure. I try to preserve. We have rules, we have written rules that say, among other things, we want to have polite discourse. It's okay to disagree with somebody, but there's a. There's a limit. And I certainly will ban people for going across the limit. And I think that's my right and duty to do so. Last year, the Supreme Court, when asked about the Texas state law which prohibited large social media companies from moderating posts based on a user's viewpoint, Supreme Court said that the court has many times held in many contexts that it is no job for government to decide what counts as the right balance of private expression to. It's not government's job to unbiased what it thinks biased rather than to leave such judgments to speakers and their audiences. Right. That principle works for social media platforms as it does for others. They were only clear about that was.

[Larry Magid]

For a while public Airways. But even that's been.

[Leo Laporte]

And that's only because you're using something that's owned by the public. You know, you can't say the seven dirty words words. But I can on a podcast because I'm not using the airwaves.

[Larry Magid]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

I still don't. But that's another matter.

[Larry Magid]

I don't. Because, I mean, I don't Want to get.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a private choice. Yeah, yeah, that's a, that's my choice. You can't force me to swear. You can't force me not to swear unless I'm using the public airwaves. Now, by the way, there are people at the FCC who would very much like to regulate podcasts, and that's what's next. But incidentally, you know, this is a, this is an aim to control speech, not. Not to make it. They say it's free speech. It's not. It's about controlling.

[Larry Magid]

Well, what happened to the ap? They got, they got banned from the White House press office because they choose to use the term Gulf of Mexico. And, you know, that's.

[Leo Laporte]

It'll always be the Gulf of Mexico to me.

[Larry Magid]

Good luck adding to a White House press conference.

[Leo Laporte]

And I will never be invited to a White House press conference. The FTC has a request for information. It's seeking public comment until May 21st. However, if you go there to say things like let free speech rule, you're in trouble because what are they asking for? They're looking for tech platform users who have been banned, shadow banned, demonetized, or otherwise censored. You're encouraged to share your comments. So it doesn't look like they're looking for anybody to defend free speech.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

What a time to be alive.

[Leo Laporte]

They're gonna, they're gonna do what they're gonna do, right? Brendan Carr, who's the new FCC chairman, has slammed Big Tech for censorship. He says that, quote, Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others have played central roles in the set. He says censorship cartel, along with fact checking groups and ad agencies that helped enforce first one sided narratives. By the way, the ad agencies bit comes from the fact that Elon Musk is suing advertisers because they decided not to put ads on ads.

[Larry Magid]

They're trying to free speech.

[Leo Laporte]

I wish to God I could sue advertisers for not advertising on our podcast.

[Larry Magid]

You'd be really wealthy.

[Leo Laporte]

Seems like a bad idea. Seems like a bad. It seems pretty, like almost whiny, like, oh, you didn't ever.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah, that'll make him come back.

[Leo Laporte]

What kind of thinking is that? All right, anyway, we're gonna take a break, come back with more. I pray that section 230 is not eliminated or modified. You know, certainly if it is, I will have to reconsider whether we have chats and forums and social media. You know, the irony, I can't afford to be sued.

[Larry Magid]

There's a certain guy who has happens to be in the White House right now that might have been kicked off some platforms if 230 hadn't been there. Because back when he was posting on the old Twitter, another, they could have sued the old Twitter for some of the horrible things that he said online.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, interesting.

[Larry Magid]

So he should be careful.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's true. Section230 is a knife that cuts both ways.

[Larry Magid]

Absolutely.

[Leo Laporte]

Just as, just as the first amendment does. Somebody quite wise said, you know, it doesn't make it, it doesn't mean anything to defend the First Amendment for people who are saying things you agree with. What really matters if you defend the right to speech for people you disagree with?

[Larry Magid]

Absolutely.

[Leo Laporte]

Probably somebody like Oliver Wender Holmes or somebody like that. I don't know. I'll ask my AI. You're watching this week in Tech. Great panel. We're getting, we're getting ready to wrap it up pretty soon. You, you, you've been very patient. Abrar Al Hedi. Wonderful to have you. You a regular and as many shows as we can get you on. Just think you're fantastic.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Thank you. That means a lot.

[Leo Laporte]

Technology reporter for cnet. Of course, same goes to you, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy. I think you're both, are you, are you not both regulars in Tech News Weekly? I think you are. Yes.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, we are co hosts. Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. We love having you. And of course Larry Magid and I are the old guys. I could say it, I'll say it now. I said it at the beginning of the show. I said I wouldn't say it in the show. The panel reminds me of the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary audience which was filled with old people, old guys with young good looking wives. It looks a little bit, a little bit like that. But really that's not the intention at all. No, we just, we're glad to have you for your brains. Right? That's right. This episode of this week in tech brought to you by Threat Locker. Love these guys. This is something I really believe in, which is zero trust. Harden your security with Threat Locker and never have to worry about zero day exploits supply chain attacks worldwide. Companies like JetBlue Trust threat locker to secure their data and keep their business operations flying high. The whole idea is with Threat Locker you take a proactive and this is the key deny by default approach to cybersecurity. That means just because somebody's in your network doesn't mean they're good guys. You block every action, every process, every user unless explicitly authorized by your team. Threat Locker is easy, it's affordable. It protects you, it makes it easy to do this. And for compliance, it's fantastic. It gives you a full audit of every action, not just compliance, risk management. Because you know who's using what, when and where. Complete log their 247 US based support team fully supports your onboarding. They make it easy to get started and of course beyond. Stop the exploitation of trusted applications within your organization. Keep your business secure and protected from even from ransomware. See, if you think about it, a ransomware gang. Once they get into your network, they then need access to all your apps, all your locations, all your files and many, I have to say, many security systems. Just assume once you've penetrated the perimeter, you're good to go. Organizations across any industry can benefit from Threat Lockers ring fencing. It isolates critical and trusted applications from unintended uses. From weaponization. It limits attackers lateral movement within the network. Oh, and by the way, Threat Locker works for Macs as well as PCs. Get unprecedented visibility and control of your cybersecurity quickly, easily and cost effectively with ThreatLocker zero trust endpoint protection platform. You'll be amazed. I was shocked at how affordable it is. Everybody needs this. ThreatLocker.com, visit them today, get a free 30 day trial. Learn more about how ThreatLocker can help mitigate unknown threats and ensure compliance. That's a nice side effect. Threatlocker.com we thank them so much for their support of this week in tech. And by the way, you support us. If they ask you tell them yeah, we saw it on Twitter. Please, please, I'm excited about this. Maybe you saw it at ces, I don't know. Asus has released an aromatic mouse.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

So intrigued by this.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, did I? Oh, I forgot, forgot to take it off there. There we go. This is the fragrant mouse. Asus, apparently not new to ACEs, even has a fragrant laptop. This mouse has a little scent fragrance module. Comes in white and rose clay. I, I guess they figure nobody wants a black mouse. Wants smells. Anyway, it's a fragrance producing mouse which is, it's got nice, you know, it's a nice. It's like the G502 or the G Pro X which means it supports 10 million clicks and low noise levels. It doesn't require Logitech Software. It has three DPI settings, 1200, 1600, 20, 400. But you don't care about that. That. What you care about is that under the mouse right behind the AA battery housing is a small semi translucent container designed to house oils that give the mouse a pleasing Aroma.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I actually really want to try this.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I think it's a neat idea.

[Leo Laporte]

It's good in here. What's going on?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It's hard to get your house smell nice.

[Leo Laporte]

Smell my mouse.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Them everywhere.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

It reminds me of this thing I tried out called movie scent, where, like, while you're watching a movie, it'll like, release the sense of, like, if there's a rain scene that's cool. You smell like you smell rain.

[Larry Magid]

The mouse could create smells related to what you were looking at. Be really wonderful.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't think I want that. Depending what you're looking at, there's no limit to what scents can be used because the container can be washed and refilled with different scents. Asus also makes an aroma dispensing laptop that has a fragrance that was.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, I remember our laptop review was walking around sniffing it.

[Leo Laporte]

There were. It came with three fragrances. Be a new her.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Oh, sure. Yeah, that one.

[Leo Laporte]

Be a new her.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

That's my favorite aroma.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, and here's a combination. You're dying for Basil and Mandarin.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

It kind of reminds me of, like, Jo Malone scents. Like, it sounds weird, but it'll be like orange bitters and something. And you're like, okay, sure. So. But like, I don't know, maybe it's some things that's supposed to.

[Leo Laporte]

I like the smell of basil. Or as you might say, basil. I don't know. Do you say basil in the UK for the herb?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Basil?

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, Basil. That's also a man's name, which is why I prefer basil. Because then, you know, that's the herb. And basil, like Basil Rathbone. That's the man's name anyway. Confusing. Well, how do you say Mandarin? You say Mandarin.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

No, Mandarin.

[Leo Laporte]

Mandarin.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Mandarin. And that's like the scene from Love actually. Bottle.

[Leo Laporte]

Great movie, by the way. I watch that every Christmas. What a great. That's the best Christmas movie ever. And then there's another one called I don't know what the. I guess it smells like roses. Rose of Man's Land.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah, that one I want to smell. That sounds lovely and weird.

[Larry Magid]

I'm gonna pass on that one, Leo. I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

If it were Rose of Man's pants or something, then I wouldn't. But what is Man's Land?

[Larry Magid]

I never understand why people buy. Buy cologne from athletes. Like, the athletes actually smell good.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you have.

[Larry Magid]

A guy's playing big bad basketball for four hours, you want to smell them.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Robot vacuums have little fragrance. Some robot vacuums are little fragrance things.

[Leo Laporte]

That makes sense. Whenever I Get my car washed. They say, do you want scent? I say, no. God, no. What are you doing? No.

[Larry Magid]

My Roomba sometimes smells after a job. I mean, not a good smell.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it's true.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

It can smell a little funky, dusty.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Smell like. It smells like money. You know, we should have money sense. Now, that I would go for. We're gonna have cash.

[Larry Magid]

Venmo. Smell like that. Yeah.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

This mouse kind of makes me think about, you know, how you associate smells with moments. So is this. Is it just going to remind you of work every day? Like, you use your mouse, you're like, that's the work. Smell like what?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, true. You have a stronger memory for scents than almost anything else.

[Larry Magid]

Right.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

So you might never want to smell it unless you're actually like.

[Larry Magid]

I remember Jeff Bezos years ago. I was listening to him give a talk about the smell of books and how people love the smell of books. And he said, it's not that books inherently smell good. It's just we associate them.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Larry Magid]

With positive, pleasant, you know, way of reading.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Here is. Here's a picture, for some reason, of a guy. Dang. A shadow of a guy dangling his keys over the mouse. I don't.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Oh, is that like a scent dropper?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it's a scent dropper, yes. So one more thing to have to do.

[Larry Magid]

You now have to feed your mouth essential oils. Now. Is that something Elon will cut out of the work schedule is, you know, inappropriate for federal employees to be taking time putting.

[Leo Laporte]

Tell me if your mouse smells.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Let'S see. Boy, I think we run out of stories. Let me do. Can't believe it. We've.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, we didn't talk about the big. The iPhone, iPhone, se.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, God.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

The biggest story.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, let me take a break. And. Biggest story of the day.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I didn't even.

[Leo Laporte]

What is wrong with me?

[Abrar Al Heedi]

That's for. I just know it's so. They.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah. Save it for. Everyone has to listen the whole way through.

[Leo Laporte]

They're gonna talk about the new iPhone. I'm dying to hear it. You're gonna be disappointed. That's all I can say. But, yeah, we will talk about. Apple announced a new iPhone this week.

[Larry Magid]

That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

And I think you can. You can order it this next. This coming week for delivery. I don't know. We'll get the details in a bit.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It. Yeah, I think it went up for order on Friday.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

It'll go on sale.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you. Well, I'll save this because I've got to do an ad, and then the moment You've all been waiting for the whole show. For the whole show. The one big story of the week. Our show today brought to you. Thank you for reminding me. Gosh, Holy moly. And I was going to get you to go home early. Our show this week brought to you by Melissa, the trusted data Expert. Expert since 1985. You know, if you've got a business, you've got important valuable information in your contact list, your suppliers, your customers, right? But it, it deteriorates over time. It, you know, people move, names change, phone numbers change and sometimes the worst, they're entered wrong to begin with. Melissa's AI enabled data quality solutions go far beyond just simple address verification. For four decades, they are leveraging four decades of accumulated data knowledge, advanced machine reasoning and by the way, they are very much in the 21st century. Melissa has been acquiring AI companies and really getting the smartest minds to work on this cutting edge AI that takes that raw data and transforms it into reliable, actionable insights for your business. Melissa's ability to enrich and cleanse data spans multiple industries. In fact, if you look at the website, you'll see they have specific tools for fintech, for healthcare, for government, for education, for real estate, and on and on and on. But those are all areas where having accurate address records is pretty darn important. Melissa's suite of verification and cleansing services will benefit any business that doesn't want to act as its own data scientist. In fact, I was, I had a great phone call with a data scientist who works at Melissa. These, in fact, we're going to get them on intelligent machines. These guys are really interesting, really smart, whatever business rules, very important, right? Being able to have an AI apply your business rules to a data set. Whatever rules your business operates within, Melissa is there to support you. Like it's like having a data expert that never sleeps. Melissa's intelligence system will verify identity, which is very important in preventing fraud in things like gaming operations. They ensure valid patient and medicine identification in healthcare systems. I mean, among other things, they actually will, can identify if there's an error in prescriptions. That's something you really want to get right. They can securely update and verify constituent data across government databases. These are all applications Melissa currently has in operation. And of course many of us are subject to the know your customer and know your business regulations. Know your business enables verification and monitoring for financial institutions. This is, this is a legal requirement. Melissa makes it easy. Melissa guides you through complex data management with ease, making advanced data quality accessible to everyone from small businesses to enterprises and even to governments with real time data validation, comprehensive enrichment, cross reference verification with gold standard reference data and intelligent anomaly detection. In fact, that's one of the things AI is really good at. It's no wonder Melissa is the trusted data quality expert worldwide. And don't worry about your data. Melissa holds it like the gold it is. They securely encrypt all file transfers. They have an information security ecosystem built on the ISO 27001 framework. They adhere to GDPR policies, they comply with SoC2. They treat your data like the precious entity it is. Contact Melissa's team to find out what they can do to elevate your business and evolve your data quality. Really smart people who can help you get the job done. Get started today. 1000 records clean for free melissa.com TWiT that's M E L I S S A.com Twitter TWiT really interesting business that has evolved over four decades to provide the tools that every business needs. Melissa.com TWiT we thank them so much for their support. Longtime support. Very happy to be partners with Melissa. All right, there's a new iPhone in town. It is not cheap. I think the first kind of the top line point that I noticed was they've gone from $429 for the least expensive iPhone SE which is now, you know, three or four years old, to $599.

[Larry Magid]

That's not cheap.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

My colleague had a article go up, my colleague David Lund, that says The e in iPhone 16e might as well stand for expensive. And I feel like Apple really walked into that one because why is it.

[Leo Laporte]

That price, I don't know what the E stands but that's an important point because they don't now have a low cost phone. And for many markets like India, China, you know, they're going to basically be aced out of those markets. They don't have an offering.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

And it's interesting that the priority was more. Let's pack in more of our advanced features like Apple intelligence, regardless of what that means for price rather than focusing on price, which I think is, was what was so, you know, alluring about the SE line in general. And so to then switch up the priorities to say, well, but look at all these features you get and you get an action button. It's like okay, but like why is it so much money?

[Leo Laporte]

It seems like it was pretty clear that they wanted to have Apple intelligence available across the whole line.

[Larry Magid]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

And that making a another $429 iPhone SE wouldn't, wouldn't Be possible.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah. And so there's that shift in priorities.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

AI matters more than anything else.

[Leo Laporte]

Interesting.

[Larry Magid]

And by the way, in addition to all those developing countries you mentioned, I would add American families to the kids list of people who can't afford it. That's a lot of money for. You got two kids, three kids, five people in the family. You're, that's two, you know, three grand just for basic phones to start with.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you think Apple, I mean this is really interesting to me. I mean Apple must have researched this. Do you think they've maybe decided that their the value proposition of an iPhone is sufficient to overcome its extra cost?

[Larry Magid]

Well, Steve Jobs would have felt that way.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

And you know what's interesting?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Like what people care about the most with phones for the most part are cameras and battery life. And so they've touted the battery life a lot. But you know, it's still one camera and it's a good camera. I mean 48 megapixel, it should be pretty decent. But it's, you know, to still to, you know, there is the Apple factor that comes in here where if it's something that's made by Apple, you think, okay, it's worth the money, it's worth the premium. But it's not a premium device compared to, you know, other devices that you pay $200 more and you get the baseline iPhone 16. It's this weird, awkward middle, you know, pricing tier. And I'm really curious how consumers will actually respond to it.

[Leo Laporte]

They did drop a lot of the older phones, so it's not like they have a whole bunch of less expensive older phones. A couple of people in the, in the YouTuber are pointing out maybe they padded it in anticipation of tariffs.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Tariffs. That's what I'd heard people say. Yeah, that maybe it was going to be cheaper. And they because losing that 429 in the lineup. But that only. Only came in a few years ago, so.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

For a long time they've only been three SEs.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

And my daughter had. That has the SE and IT, you know, that was we. It was the first time I actually had to buy a phone for her. Normally my kids would get my hand me downs and that's also probably what happens with a lot of families is the hand me downs. But the thing that I was surprised is if they were going to go with a more expensive phone and go with all the extra features, you know, Apple intelligence, the better camera, why no MagSafe, why no UWB radio, and why no thread. But that's because I'm a smart home person. But it's like if this is, if this is meant to be the bottom level to bring people in and you've got all these new technologies that Apple's championing. Championing. Sorry it's late and I haven't had my glass of wine yet.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh my goodness. Go get your glass of wine. By all means. You're the one who said we had to cover the iPhone. It's your fault.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But why? Why not? If it's, if it wasn't with a cheap phone, why did they leave out Some of these key technologies argue that.

[Leo Laporte]

UWB might be really much more useful than Apple intelligence. That's the thing that lets you point your phone to find your keys. Right.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

And your air tag and then the new smart unlocking that they're bringing to door locks.

[Leo Laporte]

That's right, there's all this new home hardware that will use uwb.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So I'll walk up to the door and it'll unlock cuz it sees me coming.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah. Although you can still use the NFC the tap to unlock so that they wouldn't be able to use it.

[Leo Laporte]

But yeah, I really, you know my car because I have a BMW that supports Apple's car key. I just walk up to the car, it unlocks, says hello, play some tunes, stuff like that. And I wanted that for the door instead of having to tap this.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Right. And it's not in the 60s.

[Larry Magid]

Poor guy. You have to tap your phone. Oh my God.

[Leo Laporte]

It wasn't Bluetooth. Le. It's not ble. It's. It's uwb.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Uwb, yes. That's the. So currently there is a. There are smart locks that use BLE and Wi Fi and GPS 3 location like three triangulation locations.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not perfect.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It's not, it's very bad.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Unless you're super lucky and you have really good service service and all of you know all the stars align and you have the app open running on your phone. That's the other thing. Whereas UWB is just going to be a simple radio to radio communication from your phone to your lock just like it is for your car and going to make auto unlock just hands free unlock simple and work which it hasn't really to date.

[Leo Laporte]

I will vouch for that because I had a Mustang Mach E that used those older technologies and it half the time it wouldn't open and I, I, I actually got locked out of my car once because I was waving the phone and tapping it and nothing worked.

[Larry Magid]

That Bluetooth works with a Tesla flawlessly. I mean, I never have to really.

[Leo Laporte]

Come to think of it, I never had a problem with the Tesla. Yeah, there's different reasons.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

And you know, for door lock, you've got. Is it. The UWB really helps with location too. So it makes sure it knows you're not inside the house to unlock. You know, it'll only. Only unlock if you're outside, which is. Which is importantly one that doesn't matter so much for your car because.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you walk by the front door. Let's unlock it.

[Larry Magid]

Well, the one thing in the car that I don't like is it unlocks all the doors. Which means if a thief wants to get into my car when I. When I get near it, there is that possibility.

[Leo Laporte]

I. You and I must have a disaster mentality because for some reason I always envision me running to the car to escape thugs and. And I want to get in quickly, but I don't want them to get in.

[Larry Magid]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

What is wrong with us, Larry? Has that ever happened to you?

[Larry Magid]

My old Prius, my 2012 Prius, when you unlock the door, it only unlocked the driver's door unless you hit the button twice.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that was.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah, that's made a lot of sense.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. That's the right way to do it.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

It also doesn't have. And I don't think anybody cares. The Dynamic Island.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I. I love Dynamic Island. Okay. I will be.

[Larry Magid]

Is that a new show on CBS or is that.

[Leo Laporte]

They used to be on Saturday Night Live, didn't they? Oh, no, that was. That was Lonely Island. So I do think. And I don't know if it's related to Dynamic Island. I like the live activities.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that related?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, I don't think you can get it without the Dynamic Island.

[Leo Laporte]

Ah, so that's. That is so that's nice. Like when I'm watching. When I'm. When I was watching the football, the Niners football would show the score in real time in a big box on the bottom of the phone. And it. I have carrot weather will tell me, you know, it's rain. It's going to start raining any minute now and things like that.

[Larry Magid]

I like the phone gets wet, you know, it's raining.

[Leo Laporte]

Just hold it out and if there's drops, it's raining. As you said, it doesn't have Magsafe, but it does have standard QI charging. So it does do wireless, just a little slower.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

But theory is if you're buying the cheaper iPhone you're not gonna have a.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Unit, but it's not that much cheaper. I mean, I mean, I saw Scooter X drop to the link in the chat about why you shouldn't buy the 15, but I'm seriously tempted by the 15 over the 16e for my daughter. My daughter needs, needs an upgrade. It's $100 more. But you get all of those things that are missing other than you don't get Apple Intelligence, which I don't really need Apple Intelligence.

[Leo Laporte]

This is Zach hall's piece in 9 to 5 why you really shouldn't buy this iPhone.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But you get Dynamic island, you get, you get the UWB, you get to.

[Leo Laporte]

Spend 100 bucks more and you get.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

A lot more and you get the Mag Safe, but you don't get Apple Intelligence. Right.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

This is like the classic Apple strategy of let's take the lowest price thing and only make it a little bit less expensive than the next level so that people just pay more for that next level thing. It's really Apple's formula and that's Right.

[Larry Magid]

The problem is then you have to buy the most expensive and they win. That's true in every level. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

They're slowly moving you up the ladder. Right. Well, I don't want to be in the bottom run.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe the next one up. Well, but if I'm going to spend that much, might as well spend another hundred dollars and get Apple Intelligence.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

One thing Apple is doing apparently is binning its A18 chip. So it has the same chip that's in the iPhone pros but it isn't exactly the same. It's missing one gpu. And what that tells us is that these are all the same chip. TSMC is making these A18s but every once in a while one comes every once in a while, probably more often than not one comes through with some broken component like a jeep like missing GPU core and they bin that, they throw that in a bin and that's what they're putting in the iPhone SE.

[Larry Magid]

Oh wow.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. That's a long standing process in the chip industry where you test the chips and you bin them. They're all come from the same wafer. But some chips don't run at the full clock speed or get too hot and so forth. And so you bin them, them and you. That gives you. And this is what Apple wants, a way to sell these lower binned, less capable chips. So that's, you know, maybe that's why.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Now this house, speaking of chips. So this has, this has the C1. Right. Which I know nothing about. I'm sure you guys do.

[Leo Laporte]

The most interesting thing. We'll talk about that a lot on Mac Break weekly. But Apple has been in the thrall of Qualcomm all this time for its modem chip. They actually went to intel and had intel build a modem chip that was so bad they put it in some of their phones and it was so bad they had to throttle the Qualcomm modem so that it wouldn't look like some phones are twice as fast as others, depending on which chip they got. They stopped buying chips from Intel. They still buy them from Qualcomm for all the other ones. This is the first time in Apple and they spent billions of dollars and hired many, many people to make this C1 chip. This is the first phone with a C1 chip. It'll be very interesting to see reviewers. Yeah, I'd really curious what the speeds are going to be.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah, it's data speed that will have satellite communications.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. That's an important, that's a good, that's universal now. Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But no millimeter wave.

[Leo Laporte]

Like anybody cares. This is the 5G that's always, you know, look how fast 5G is. But you have to live within three blocks of a millimeter meter wave antenna, which means you're either in downtown New York or downtown Philadelphia. It's not very widespread. Or in a football stadium. Apparently they put them in football stadiums, so I don't think it's a loss. Yeah, I don't think. Who cares, right? There you go. That's the story of the week.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

You made it.

[Leo Laporte]

Were you going to talk about your smart, smart race ring?

[Larry Magid]

Oh, yeah. You know, I, I, I just got this thing. It's, it's the, it's not the aura that everybody has. It's the ringcon, which is the only major difference is it doesn't, you don't have to. It's $8 a month or whatever it is to use it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I pay a subscription from I the Aura 4. I've had every Aura. We used to, we, we got to know the creators of the Aura back in the day they were on our show, the new screensavers. And so I got one then and I've worn it on ever since. They're of dubious value, I'll be honest.

[Larry Magid]

What's weird about it. So I have, have, I mean this is kind of tmi. I've got my smartwatch, I've got my, my Fitbit on the phone. I've got my Ring.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly.

[Larry Magid]

Got my smart bed. I've got my NEST radar system that somehow tracks my sleep. And they all disagree.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I agree.

[Larry Magid]

My SpO2 is all over the map. And, you know, by the way, what.

[Leo Laporte]

Good is it when you told you had a terrible night's sleep, which is pretty much what tells me every freaking night. How does that help me in any way? It just makes me feel bad, okay?

[Larry Magid]

In theory, you're supposed to think back about what your night was the night before. Did you drink too much? Did you watch TV too late?

[Leo Laporte]

I do the same thing every time.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah, I know.

[Leo Laporte]

I got a. I got a 69 sleep score last night.

[Larry Magid]

I think I beat you. We could compete on this one.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Oh, I can see what I got.

[Leo Laporte]

My wife used to. Lisa used to do that. She said. What'd you. Because we had the. The Serta sleeper or whatever. They had the pads.

[Larry Magid]

One of those.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, and Philippe Khan created that company, you know, Anyway. Yeah, there's a name from the past, remember?

[Larry Magid]

No, I have his current bed. I've got the tempur pedic.

[Leo Laporte]

Tempur pedic.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah, I've got fleece bed.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, it flee the fleet's the reason.

[Larry Magid]

Why I have sleep apnea. Or the reason I know I have sleep apnea.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, actually, that's one thing that's useful. The aura did tell me that. That I occasionally have some breathing problems, but not sleep apnea.

[Larry Magid]

That's good.

[Leo Laporte]

Some variation in your blood oxygen levels are detected. This can indicate that you experienced occasional breathing disturbances in your sleep, but not enough to say, I got to get a CPAP or something. So that's, I guess, useful. But honestly, the rest of it.

[Larry Magid]

I was 69 last night, too. I think we tied.

[Leo Laporte]

My wife used to do this with the sleep thing in the bed. Bed, she said. What was your sleep score? 70. She got 85. My wife always gets better compete with me.

[Larry Magid]

She always beats me on the food score.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, yeah, Lisa always beats me, too. She sleeps very well.

[Larry Magid]

Sometimes I get up early and she goes over to my side of the bed. So I'm thinking that maybe, you know, it's getting mixed up here.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, that's why I wear the ring.

[Larry Magid]

And I wonder when somebody's gonna, you know, you know, be on vacation or be on a business trip and know, notice that someone slept on their side of the bed and it wasn't them there.

[Leo Laporte]

There used to be a setting where you could say, you know, my dog slept there after I got up. So this is supposed to have 10. This only the. The aura is only maybe four or five days. You get three times eight, 10 days.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah, it seems to work about eight or 10 days. You get. It does tell you your apnea index, but again, it's not necessarily. It. It tends to go. If my apnea index, according to my CPAP machine is high, this is going to be high. If it's low, this is going to be low.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Larry Magid]

But they're never the same number. They tend to go together, you know. And it does tell you your SpO2 which is all over the map and doesn't necessarily agree. I actually have if I want to wear it a. Well you. Which is kind of a medical grade.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I bought one of those during COVID to see if I was dying.

[Larry Magid]

It intends to go in the same direction of that, but not the same.

[Leo Laporte]

It's interesting that they're directionally matched but not. Not quantitative exactly.

[Larry Magid]

If one is high, the other is going to be higher. But you know, I have to question whether or not how useful all this information really is. I don't think it's made me any healthier. In fact, it's probably made me even more neurotic than I would.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what it does. It makes you crazy.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you Jennifer, or have any of this good stuff?

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I got nothing. I'm living in.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

You're living unquantified sexual self.

[Leo Laporte]

God, it's the best self. You know what?

[Larry Magid]

How do you know if you feel good?

[Leo Laporte]

How do you know if you're happy or anything? I don't know.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

You just wear a mood, tell me. And it turns blue and you're sad and then you're.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I think the unquantified kind of.

[Larry Magid]

Like holding the iPhone up to know if it's raining. You know, you don't need to look at the screen. Just looking for some wet. You feel good. You feel good.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

If I wake up and I'm tired.

[Larry Magid]

But look, I. In all fairness, there are people who are alive today because Apple told them that they were having.

[Leo Laporte]

The watch is good. I wear an Apple watch and I'm very happy with that. I think that is very useful.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah. I wear the. Either way the watch and I have a sleep number bed. I haven't done the rings. I'm not. I'm just not interested in the rings.

[Larry Magid]

I like about the ring if you don't have to like I'm going on a business trip next week and I don't have to bring a charger with me.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that's.

[Larry Magid]

I like that idea.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah, but that's good.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't have to charge this useless thing that you don't really.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I was gonna say I don't have to charge my jewelry.

[Leo Laporte]

Amazing. Amazing. Wow.

[Larry Magid]

You mean your jewelry works without being plugged in?

[Leo Laporte]

Geez Louise. I like the unquantified self. That's my new goal. To live the unquantified.

[Larry Magid]

Why don't we need to show that.

[Leo Laporte]

I think I am forget Musk.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Abrar al Heidi. So such a pleasure. Thank you so much. Abrar, of course.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Thank you.

[Leo Laporte]

Works at cnet. You'll read her writings there. And of course appears on once a month on Tech News Weekly. We love having you on.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Thank you for having me.

[Leo Laporte]

Anything you want to plug?

[Abrar Al Heedi]

No, I mean, you can follow me on X, LTT3 or on Instagram.

[Leo Laporte]

You haven't left X, huh?

[Abrar Al Heedi]

No, I haven't. I don't post as much, but I think some people are really funny on there. So I'm still on there. But yeah, I don't really share that.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm increasingly feeling like being on X is kind of feeding the animal. Yeah.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

If you want to feel doomsday, it's a great place to go.

[Leo Laporte]

Highly recommend we stream on X. There's 387 people watching.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

There you go.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Hello, everyone. So you're still on there? Yeah, but yeah, also on Instagram, Abrar L eti.

[Larry Magid]

And yeah, that's Zuckerberg is so much better than Musk.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't skeet.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I don't. I'm sorry, can you repeat that?

[Leo Laporte]

You're not on Blue Sky.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Oh, is that what people are calling it? I am on Blue Sky. I've never posted. I should probably do that, but it's just another account and there's too many. I'm on TikTok. I think TikTok's my favorite. I don't do anything work related on there though, so. But you could find me on there.

[Leo Laporte]

And I have one more question. Are those little fishes on your scarf?

[Abrar Al Heedi]

They are flowers. I wish they were fishes. Now I need to get fishes. But these are just flowers.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, they're pretty little flowers.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Fishes. Yeah.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

That would be a good one.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I'm gonna work on that. I have Mexican hats.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

I love shirt. Your shirt. I love it.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you for being here, Abrar. Great to have you.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Always a pleasure.

[Leo Laporte]

Ditto jpt Jennifer Patterson. Tuohy. Love having you on Smart Home Mama. On the what? Blue Sky.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Twitter, that is. That is Threads, threads, threads. And then I'm also. Then I'm at JP2E everywhere else. The only reason I'm not not on threads because I.

[Leo Laporte]

That was my handle.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

That's why at JP2E is my personal account. Smart Home Mama was my work one but smart home mama on threads and, and at JP2E everywhere else and I'm. I'm still on X. Don't really post but still and then I'm on this. I skeet. I do skeet quite a bit actually. I like skiing. Ski's great and I'm a mastodon. I'm on. I'm on them all because as you kind of have to be in this. In this job but then next week on Wednesday I will be live tweeting. No, I won't be live tweeting. I will be live blogging that old fashioned thing. The Amazon event.

[Leo Laporte]

If you're so thrilled to hear that you're going to cover. Are you. Do you go to. Do you have to go to Seattle for that?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It's in New York. Oh which is very exciting. The last event was in D.C. at their new headquarters and the the Last one in 2023 that was a little easier for me But New York's not too far from you.

[Leo Laporte]

Take the Excela. How are you going to get up there?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Fly.

[Leo Laporte]

Fly in an aeroplane. You are a brave soul.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I'm quite brave right now.

[Leo Laporte]

Just don't fly out of national. Okay.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But yes that'll be. We'll be. I've got the three of us from the Verge will be there live live vlogging so verge.com if you want to find out about the new Alexa.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah that drives me crazy crazy that they don't stream it. I would love to cover it. Well good. We'll watch you on the vergin and keep up of and let us know how often Panos Penne says pumped. Okay.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Okay we'll keep it running count.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you Jennifer. Great to see you Larry Maggot connect safely dot org. You've always got stuff going on there. What's. What's the latest?

[Larry Magid]

Well we just had our Safer Internet Day event in Sacramento and that was on the 11th.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Larry Magid]

And that went well. What do we got? Let me, let me haven't been on the site today. I mean see what we see what we're featuring. We probably have an update. Ask Trish. Trisha Praboz what is Deep Seek? She writes a column for young people. She's our youth advisor for kids.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice.

[Larry Magid]

We have another. We have a youth advisory board. So our one of our other young people wrote Pixels Prompts and policy and.

[Leo Laporte]

AI through a youth lens.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah. What's the difference between a news outlet and a news influencers? One of our people wrote, see, this is great.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's young people talking to young people, helping them navigate this crazy world. And you and I, you know, we didn't grow up with this. It's a very different world for us than it is for them.

[Larry Magid]

I have a piece about Deep Seek, which is. I actually think it's pretty good, but I will not give it any personal information. It doesn't know my medical history.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you see that Grok, which is, you know, Elon spent a lot of money. Money for a hundred thousand Nvidia H, 100 GPUs going to 200,000 soon. It's just down the road from you, I think, actually, Jennifer. So it's the most expensive trained AI ever.

[Larry Magid]

I know where you're going with this. Okay, let's hear it.

[Leo Laporte]

But it isn't uncensored. And I thought that was very interesting.

[Larry Magid]

Well, I think it is now.

[Leo Laporte]

Did they change it because somebody posted, right.

[Larry Magid]

You know what the question somebody asked who should be murdered or something like this.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no. Simple question of who posts the most disinformation on X.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

And one of the things that Grok will do as. As all of these new deep research tools like Deep Seek do is show you its thought process. And one of the first things it says is, well, I'd like to say Elon Musk or Donald Trump, but I'm prohibited from saying that. So then it continues on and it comes up and says, you know, it really is Elon and Donald, but I can't say that. So I'm just going to say I can't answer that question.

[Larry Magid]

But it told you that.

[Leo Laporte]

But it, but unfortunately, because it's showing you the thought process, it's like a. I'm sure they fixed that since then.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

It's like when a kid isn't supposed to say something that was worth all.

[Larry Magid]

That money for in gpu.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, and Deep Seek, you can't, you know, if you're using the one that's sourced in China, won't talk about Tiananmen Square, but. But because Deep Seek is open source, there are other people running it in the US I use it on Perplexity, for instance. And you can ask it about Tiananmen in. I actually just said, is there a famous photo of a man standing in front of a tank? And I said, oh yeah, that's the Tiananmen Square, you know, tank man photo. And explained the whole story behind it. So it's not prohibited. It's just that the app in China blocks it.

[Larry Magid]

Even when I was using it at the very beginning, when it was blocking Tiananmen Square, it told me all about Hong Kong. I ran it by an expert, a friend of mine who's an expert about Hong Kong, and he said, yeah, it got it right. It was pretty. Pretty objective.

[Leo Laporte]

Interesting.

[Larry Magid]

So.

[Leo Laporte]

But again, it's hard to censor these. These things. They really want to tell you what they know, and I like that about them.

[Larry Magid]

Interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Thank you, Larry. Great to have you. Thanks to all three of you. Really a fun show. We do Twit, and you can, as I mentioned, watch us live every Sunday afternoon, 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern, the Middle of the night for Jennifer Pattison Tuohy. No, it just feels that way. JP just feels that way. That's 2200 UTC. Watch live on all of those eight platforms. But you don't have to because it's a podcast. You can always download a copy of the show after we edit it up on the TWiT website, TWiT TV, there's a YouTube channel dedicated to the video, and you could subscribe to audio or video of the show in your favorite podcast client. We've been doing this for 20 years. If your podcast client doesn't know what TWiT is, it's not a very good podcast client.

[Larry Magid]

And Leo, unlike Saturday Night Live, you and I were here for our intellect, not our good looks.

[Leo Laporte]

Very clearly.

[Larry Magid]

Yeah. Or.

[Leo Laporte]

Or our sense of humor.

[Abrar Al Heedi]

Yeah, I was gonna say your humor, obviously.

[Larry Magid]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we're here for the jokes. No, no.

[Larry Magid]

And everybody's here for their intellect.

[Leo Laporte]

We'll see you. We'll see you next week. I thank you all for being here. And as I've said for now, 20 years, our. Our 20th anniversary is in April's coming up. Another. I know. Isn't that amazing? And I don't look at different day older, which is. I don't know how I'm doing that one. Another twit is in the can. Bye. Bye, everybody. Doing the twit. All right. Doing the twit, all right.