This Week in Tech 1033: Our Friend Zinc

Summary

Towel Day Celebration and Literary Influences

[00:00 - 05:00]
Leo Laporte kicked off the episode by celebrating Towel Day, honoring Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy shared her love for Terry Pratchett's works, mentioning, "I was reading every Terry Pratchett book ever written as they came out. He's my man." The group reflected on the challenges of adapting beloved books like Terry Pratchett's and Neuromancer into screen formats, with Mike Elgin noting, "There are two iconic works that have proven to be almost unrepresentable on screen."

Advancements and Challenges in Robotics

[05:00 - 32:35]
The conversation shifted to the latest in robotics, focusing on the Roborock Saris Z70—a robot vacuum with a mechanical arm capable of picking up socks and other small items. Jennifer demonstrated its functionalities, stating, "It can pick up shoes and designate specific storage zones." However, she acknowledged its limitations: "It keeps avoiding that sock...it's still got a ways to go."
Mike Elgin and Jennifer discussed the future of home robotics, emphasizing the trend towards single-purpose or dual-purpose robots. Mike highlighted, "In Italy, they have robotic lawnmowers that are very common," contrasting it with the less developed state of American robotic solutions. They anticipated significant advancements within the next five to ten years, with devices becoming more autonomous and versatile.

Political Influence and Economic Impacts on Tech: Trump’s Tariff Threats on Apple

[32:35 - 21:13]
A major segment delved into President Trump's recent threat to impose a 25% tariff on Apple's iPhones unless production moves to the United States. Brian McCullough raised legal concerns, questioning, "Is there even a law that YouTube, tax an internal, a domestic company, or a tariff?"
Mike Elgin critiqued the feasibility, stating, "He's trying to push everybody around and force Apple to make the iPhone in the US, which could triple the price of the iPhone and make it unaffordable."
The panel discussed the broader implications of such tariffs, including potential disruptions in global supply chains and increased prices for consumers. Jennifer added, "The infrastructure would take a very long time," reinforcing the impracticality of swiftly relocating manufacturing facilities.

Microsoft’s Agentic AI and Scientific Discovery

[32:35 - 43:14]
Leo highlighted Microsoft's recent Build conference where they introduced agentic AI through the MCP and A2A platforms. He shared an impressive demo where an AI agent developed a new coolant liquid for Xbox motherboards, showcasing practical applications in scientific research. Mike emphasized, "This will speed up the scientific discovery process significantly," and discussed AI's role in solving complex problems beyond human capabilities.
Brian McCullough pointed out AI's prowess in pattern matching, noting its potential to revolutionize fields like weather forecasting and cybersecurity by identifying zero-day exploits.

AI’s Role in Data Privacy and Misinformation

[43:14 - 84:10]
The discussion moved to the ethical implications of AI, particularly in data privacy and misinformation. Jennifer Tuohy expressed concerns over AI-generated content, stating, "You can't trust anything anymore," and highlighted incidents where AI created fake books and misleading videos.
Mike Elgin stressed the importance of AI literacy, advocating for educational initiatives to help individuals navigate and protect their data in an AI-driven world.
Brian McCullough added, "AI is great at pattern matching, but it also poses risks in terms of misinformation and privacy breaches," underscoring the need for robust regulations and ethical guidelines.

Meta vs. Google in Smart Glasses and AI Integration

[84:10 - 117:07]
The hosts compared Meta’s Orion glasses with Google’s Android XR, discussing advancements in smart glasses technology. Jennifer Tuohy described Google's new infrared contact lenses that allow users to perceive multiple wavelengths, enabling functionalities like night vision without visible light.
Mike Elgin envisioned a future where AI-integrated smart glasses act as universal assistants, capable of providing real-time information and enhancing daily tasks. However, concerns were raised about privacy and the potential for constant surveillance, with Leo questioning, "How do you know that's not real? Not made up?"

Regulatory Developments and Market Reactions

[117:07 - 122:00]
Leo reported on the FTC's decision to drop its challenge against Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, marking a significant victory for Microsoft. He remarked, "We're grateful to the FTC for dropping this dumb case after three long years."
The panel also touched upon ongoing regulatory battles, including Meta's attempts to undo its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, and the broader implications for market competition and monopolistic practices.

Closing Remarks and Sponsor Messages

[122:00 - End]
In the closing segment, the hosts briefly discussed additional tech news, including advancements in wireless power transfer for smart home devices and the evolving landscape of online privacy. Jennifer Tuohy shared her experience with wireless charging for smart locks, highlighting both the potential and current limitations of the technology.
Leo Laporte concluded the episode by encouraging listeners to engage with their favorite technologies responsibly and stay informed about the rapid advancements in AI and robotics.

Notable Quotes:

• Jennifer Pattison Tuohy: "I was reading every Terry Pratchett book ever written as they came out. He's my man." [04:00]
• Mike Elgin: "He's trying to push everybody around and force Apple to make the iPhone in the US, which could triple the price of the iPhone and make it unaffordable." [12:09]
• Brian McCullough: "AI is great at pattern matching, but it also poses risks in terms of misinformation and privacy breaches." [43:14]
• Leo Laporte: "You can't trust anything anymore." [73:51]

This episode of This Week in Tech provided a comprehensive overview of the intersection between technology, politics, and society, emphasizing the transformative potential of AI and robotics while cautioning against the ethical and practical challenges they present.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for TWiT this Week in Tech. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy from the Verge is here. Brian McCullough from the Tech Meme Ride Home and my favorite gastro nomad, Mike Elgin. We celebrate Towel day with a whole bunch of stories. I think he set a record this week for the number of stories Apple's no good, very bad week, why Android XR may be the future of smart devices, and why Jony I've and Sam Altman really should rethink their marriage. All of that and more coming up next on Twit Podcasts you love from people you Trust. This is TWiT. This is TWiT this Week in Tech, episode 1033, recorded Sunday, May 25, 2025. Our friend Zynk. It's time for TWiT this Week at Tech the show, we talk about the week's tech news. We have gathered an assemblage of eminent personages. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy is here. You might see her occasionally on Tech News Weekly, but she's also a smart home [e-mail]. see, I combine them both.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Hi, Leo. Great to be here.

[Leo Laporte]

Always a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. Thank you. Did you have a good Mother's Day?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I did. I have a lovely Mother's Day. Thank you. We went strawberry picking and to the beach. So lots of fun.

[Leo Laporte]

Just say strawberry one more time for me.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Strawberry.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, strawberry. Oh my.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Also, I made strawberry jam.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you really? Oh, jealous. Oh, my gosh. I love strawberry jam. Right after strawberry rhubarb pie. Mike Elgin is also here. Hello, Mike.

[Mike Elgin]

Hey, Leo. Good to see you again.

[Leo Laporte]

My favorite gastro nomad, blogger@machineSociety AI off. Do you still do Mike's List or has that been subsumed?

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, that's basically Machine Society is the origin. It came sprung from the win letter, then it was Mike's list, then it was the raw feed, then it was something else, and now it's Machine Society as the technology changes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's AI focused. Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

But I've been doing this newsletter since the 90s.

[Leo Laporte]

Holy cow.

[Mike Elgin]

It's been a long time.

[Leo Laporte]

That's practically before the Internet.

[Mike Elgin]

That's right. Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

Also here, the Internet's favorite historian, host of the Tech Meme Rhyme Home Palm. The host of the Tech Meme Ride Home podcast. He's a professional podcaster, Mr. Brian McCullough. Hello, Brian.

[Brian McCullough]

By the way, speaking of history, Leo, didn't you have an anniversary recently and all that?

[Leo Laporte]

We had our 20th, yeah.

[Brian McCullough]

Congratulations.

[Leo Laporte]

Hard to believe. Hard to believe. It is also an important day in, I guess, the geek world. It's towel day, May 25, a day picked kind of at random to honor the man who said, never be without your towel and don't panic. Douglas Adams and the great author Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I just have learned. You have not read, Mr. McCullough.

[Brian McCullough]

I just started reading for the first time in my life.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, as I said, it'd be better to start with the BBC plays because that was the original Hitchhiker's Guide. The thing to stay away from is any movie adaptation. They weren't great. Here. From the European Space Administration, a little celebration from an astronaut at the International Space Station to celebrate Towel Day. She's squeezing a towel.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Happy Towel Day from the International Space Station.

[Leo Laporte]

Happy Towel day to you.

[Mike Elgin]

Is that her space hair or is that, like, regular?

[Leo Laporte]

That's. No, no, that's space hair. All right. That's Samantha Cristoforetti, who is aboard the ISS during her Minerva mission for the esa. Happy Towel Day. And I think I only wanted to start with that because we all love Douglas Adams, I think, and it's nice to celebrate one of our favorite authors who has long passed. Sad to say, but his works live on. Jennifer Patterson. Tui, you have read Douglas Adams?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Oh, I feel like. I feel like I've read it because I've heard so many. So many quotes over my lifetime, but I was just. Just the wrong generation for it, I guess.

[Leo Laporte]

So, yeah.

[Brian McCullough]

Can I jump in to help you, Jennifer? I'm not sure that I like it.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Oh, no.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, so, yeah, I love, like Monty Python. I love what I feel like. Similar.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, that comedy. I'm a Monty Python Girl.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a little Terry Pratchett in its. In its tongue.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Huge Terry Pratchett.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I love Terry Pratchett.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I was. That was what I was reading and I. Reading every Terry Pratchett book ever written as they came out. Used to go to his signings when he.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, wow.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I mean, he was my. He's my man. So it was like Douglas Adams was kind of like the next step, but I never got there. I just stuck with Terry Pratchett and a bit of Neil Gaiman, who is unfortunately now. But still good. But grata the Good Omens.

[Leo Laporte]

I know. I love his writing. Sad to hear his story, but I'm.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

What did you think of the series with Michael Sheen and Scottish?

[Leo Laporte]

I preferred the book, to be honest, obviously.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But the first season was pretty good. The second season went off a little, but I thought they did a nice job.

[Leo Laporte]

Gaiman had a lot to work with the series, so it was definitely his vision. Yeah, but I just thought the book was so good.

[Mike Elgin]

I think there are two iconic works that have proven to be almost unrepresentable on screen, one of which is this one, and the other one is Neuromancer, which is now in the works. Well, Apple's working on it. Let's see if they can pull it off. Yeah, it's with the sparkly vampire guy. Oh, no. Who's in it? It's a pretty, you know, Robert Sparkly vampire.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Robert Pattinson.

[Leo Laporte]

Tell me it's not the sparkle.

[Mike Elgin]

No, he's not. He's not in it. But I think. Don't listen to me. I don't know who's in it.

[Leo Laporte]

I feel like they ruined the foundation. Although that's also unfilmable.

[Mike Elgin]

So true. But I thought it was not terrible. I kind of liked it that the series, even though barely, barely was similar to the book. But like, I thought it was okay. It wasn't the worst thing I ever saw.

[Leo Laporte]

Many folks were fans of the Wheel of Time series, which is a thousand novels long. Yeah. Got news that Amazon has now canceled that after. After two or three seasons.

[Brian McCullough]

Has anyone tried Murderbot yet on Apple?

[Leo Laporte]

Excellent, excellent. Well, you have to like Murderbot, which is a great, Martha Wells, wonderful series of novels, but I think they've done a good job with it. I feel like they've done a good job with it. Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Even though it's been not translating well to screen, being unfilmable is almost like, means the book is brilliant.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Because. And that's what the brilliance of Terry Pratchett. In fact, the only place I've seen it really translate well, actually, is theater.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

People have done a lot of plays of disco and those. Those just kind of. I don't know, they bring it more to life somehow than the movies. There are a few good movies out there, but nothing really captures. And with any really beloved book, it's, you know, it's hard to justify how to bring it to life because everyone has such a clear idea of what it should be that no one's ever going to be happy with it.

[Leo Laporte]

No Hollywood craftsperson or actor can do as well as your own imagination. And I.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

True.

[Leo Laporte]

It's always been my. Especially with sci fi, to read the. Yeah, definitely is to read the sci fi first before you see the movie, because it's very rare that a Movie is better than the book. And I would think that the play. The play, because it requires some suspension of disbelief, still engages your imagination more than a movie.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I think that's the difference. Yeah. When it's on stage, you kind of have. It's more of a participation between the audience and the show rather than just being presented when you is. Which is what more the movie and TV adaptations do. Although TV adaptations tend to do slightly better, I think, because they have more time. Yes. That's always the frustrating part about a movie, a book being turned into a movie. Unless it's like a seven hour movie, it's going to leave out so much and you're going to be frustrated by that.

[Leo Laporte]

You can't turn 10 hour.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Hitchhiker's guide into a two hour movie. Absolutely true.

[Mike Elgin]

But that's why, that's so why it's so great that what would have been movies are now our series in many, many cases. And it's much better. Like think of Breaking Bad as a movie. I think it was. That would be impossible. But I'm probably the only person. And let's see if I can throw this out there and see if anybody agrees with this, which you will not agree. But I thought that the movie Ready Player One was much better than the book.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Oh, see, I see. I saw the movie, then read the book and I might slightly agree with you.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm gonna say something that's gonna alienate our entire audience. I thought Ready Player One was execrable. It was terribly.

[Brian McCullough]

Me too, Leo.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah. Yes, exactly.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

That's why the movie was better.

[Mike Elgin]

That's exactly right. It was so bothersome to read the prose.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Mike Elgin]

That I couldn't enjoy it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Oh, good story though. You and I are both hated now. Ernest. Clients beloved in the community.

[Mike Elgin]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Okay. Hey, speaking of fantasy, how about this one? President Trump says Apple better start making its phones in the United States or else. He says he'll apply a 25% tariff just to the iPhone, if. Just to the iPhone. If Apple doesn't start making the iPhone in the United States. He actually kind of threatened Tim Apple with this one, but I think he's fairly serious. Then somebody pointed out, well, you know, there's other companies. He said, well, also Samsung and anybody that makes that product. Otherwise it wouldn't be fair.

[Mike Elgin]

Okay, you know, here's what there's. There's a big glaring problem. He's trying to push everybody around and force Apple to make the iPhone in the US so he can brag about that. The problem is that the 25% tariff would be much cheaper than an iPhone that was made in the United States.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So it's kind of interesting because I, the, the, the goal is laudable. Let's, you know, let's.

[Mike Elgin]

Why?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I mean you could say we should bring manufacturing back to the United States, but I think a lot of people pointed out no American wants the job of assembling an iPhone. It is a low paying, grueling, difficult, long houred job. So that's part of the problem. This is a very good. So Trip Mickle published a piece in the New York Times. Is Trump's made in America iPhone a fantasy? Which kind of did a both side ism treatment of this, treating it as if it were possible. Some analysts say it'd be possible, but it cost $2,000 to which I love this. Our friend over at Daring Fireball, Jon Gruber, wrote idiocy or jackassery? You make the call. And he's not talking about the president, he's talking about Trump. Trip Mickle, he said the answer should simply be yes. It's sheer fantasy. And you made the exact point that Gruber did too. It's not merely the 25% tariff. In order to make the iPhone more expensive to ship in than make in the US you'd have to have a 200% tariff.

[Mike Elgin]

You know, there are two glaring problems with this whole idea. One is that, you know, the people who don't understand how the world works, like Donald Trump, don't appreciate the fact that the US hasn't made in terms of the balance of trade. The US does all the high paying consulting type gigs, the financial services, we design the iPhone.

[Leo Laporte]

We do all good job.

[Mike Elgin]

Exactly. And then other countries have child labor.

[Leo Laporte]

And they get the grunt work. Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

Due to produce for us these, these relatively affordable gadgets which are amazing and there's a lot of ugliness there. They're environmental problems, they're human rights problems in the manufacturing, all this stuff. But in terms of pure self interest, we had it made. We have it made and he's going to, wants to dismantle that and bring the sweatshops to the United States, tripling the price of the iPhone so nobody can afford it. Like what, what kind of plan is this? He just doesn't understand how good we, we've got it. And, and, and it's just, it's, it's awful. And, and the other, the other problem that he doesn't understand is he's systematically dismantling the soft power that prevents us from going to war with the. With our rivals. If you're totally enmeshed with a country like China, economically, their incentive to go to war against us is much lower. If you sever those connections, then, well, might as well just invade Taiwan and let's bring on the war, the World War iii. So I just really, it. He just doesn't understand international relations. He doesn't understand the history of alliances and tariffs, and he doesn't understand how the world economy works. It's awful.

[Leo Laporte]

It kind of puts Apple over a barrel, but I don't think they have any choice but to. If he does charge a specific tariff to Apple's iPhones, which seems illegal, by the way.

[Brian McCullough]

Leo. Well, I said that on my show. I was like, is there even a law that.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know how I would do this?

[Brian McCullough]

YouTube, tax an internal, a domestic company, or a tariff. Okay, but the game theory on this is so difficult because, like, let's say Apple was like, you know what, you're right. President Trump, let's bring all these factories over here. That would take a decade, right? So what does that even mean? So, like, when, when. When finally, all of the iPhones sold in America are made in America, that's a decade from now, some of us will be dead. You know, like.

[Leo Laporte]

But don't look at me when you say that, would you? I mean, I know it's true.

[Brian McCullough]

I was looking over in the horizon.

[Mike Elgin]

How about he can't even make his red hats in the United States.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, Isn't that funny? They're made in China.

[Brian McCullough]

The game theory I'm thinking about is also, like, if you're Apple, right? Like, no one can do this in any reasonable way because, you know, like, let's say, whatever. He said something about tariffs for Europe.

[Leo Laporte]

April, 50% tariffs on the European Union. That goes in effect June 1.

[Brian McCullough]

Between now and then. Between now and then.

[Leo Laporte]

Not even two weeks, one week.

[Brian McCullough]

So the point is, is like, you can't game theory this out because there's no way to know what will happen. Like, you. I know. We know that Tim Cook met with him last week, right?

[Leo Laporte]

This was. He said this the day after he met with Tim Cook.

[Brian McCullough]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

And he has said several times. For instance, when he was in Saudi Arabia, he. I mean, he's been gunning for Apple. He said it was in Saudi Arabia. He looked at Jensen Huang. He said, Nvidia's here. Tim Cook's not. He said, Tim Cook has promised to bring iPhone manufacturing to the United States, which I'm sure Cook never promised. Cook is in a very difficult position. He gave a million dollars out of his personal money to Trump for the inaugural. That wasn't enough. Is there any way out for Apple on this or, and really by the way, it's not Apple, just Apple. Cuz what's Apple gonna do? They're gonna pass as much of this on to us, which is not good for their business. But what else are they gonna do?

[Brian McCullough]

But even if Apple. So the Occam's Razor thing is Tim Cook goes to the White House and does a press conference and says we're going to, we're gonna build the plants. Yeah, yeah, $500 billion, whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what it'll say, that's what'll happen.

[Brian McCullough]

And that's what'll work. Or also it doesn't matter. Like you saw all of the other countries sort of wait out the tariff thing. So like the thing that when I say that it's impossible to game theory this out, it's, you don't know. Even if you give a pound of flesh or whatever, or do the sort of make an announcement and go to the White House and have a press conference or whatever, like you don't know what's going to happen in three weeks or six months or whatever. So like what's, what's the point of doing anything when it comes to these threats?

[Mike Elgin]

And also I'm old fashioned. I think that if you bribe a Corrupt official with $1,000,000 you should get something in return.

[Leo Laporte]

I believe it, I believe it. But this is, makes me wonder what the Qataris are going to get for their $400 million jet. But never mind. Go ahead, Jennifer.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Brian, I think your 10 year prediction is a little optimistic. I mean it's not feasible to make iPhones in the country. I mean it just is. We just. The infrastructure would take a very long time.

[Mike Elgin]

Isn't Brian saying you have to pretend like you're going to do it until.

[Leo Laporte]

That'S, that is what I'm saying it's all about, right?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It's put it, put on the, put on the show, pretend, wait, wait until everything changes in six minutes, not six months. Because who knows what's going to happen next? Who's he going to turn his attention to? But the other thing is we've seen a lot of companies and in the smart home space, which I cover with the first round of tariffs, a lot of companies did move their manufacturing out of China, moved to Vietnam and to other countries.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what Tim's doing. In fact, that's what Trump said He said he's building all these plants all over India. I don't want them building plants in India.

[Mike Elgin]

India, literally that's a problem.

[Leo Laporte]

So it doesn't, it's not. In fact, I think the worst thing you can do and this is I think where it really went south. Apple said the tariffs cost us $900 million. And remember what happened with Walmart when they said we're going to have to raise prices because of the tariffs. Remember what happened to Amazon when they, the rumor was that they were going to start putting the amount paid to a tariffs in the pricing. Car manufacturers are going to put it on the sticker. That is the sin.

[Mike Elgin]

Trump said just let him eat tariffs.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. He, he doesn't want that to be clear to the American people what the tariffs are costing them. So when Apple says this cost us almost a billion dollars, I think that was the sin. And that's, that's when Trump got upset. Now how do you. But, but more to the point, this is politics. The real question is what does Apple do?

[Brian McCullough]

But also they had to say that because that was in an earnings report like you have.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. They can't deny it.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

But you wait. Well, you can do what some other companies have done. Microsoft raised its Xbox prices without by the way, the way they got around it is they didn't just raise them in the US they raised them everywhere. See, it's not the tariffs. We're just going to raise it everywhere and which has, you know, it's a win win because we make more money.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And the president doesn't get mad at us.

[Mike Elgin]

It's sucking up to the President and greedflation.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's perfect.

[Mike Elgin]

It's perfect.

[Leo Laporte]

You people in the UK are paying 200 bucks more for the, for the Xbox because of our tariffs.

[Brian McCullough]

Has anyone done the math in terms of since we know Apple has more money than God? Like what if they did had to have.

[Leo Laporte]

They could just eat tariffs.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, right. But like what, what's the, what's the math on that and for how long?

[Leo Laporte]

I could give you back of the napkin math because we know that their profit margin is, is more than 40%. So they could eat a 25% tariff and they're just. Their profit margin go down to 15% or 30 or 10% and then how.

[Brian McCullough]

Does Wall street feel about that? Well, if wa street is intelligent, they know what the game the shot is here.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, they already, by the way, after the President's announcement, they already hit Apple's stock BY I think 3%. So Wall street knows. And I think, I think Wall Street's smart enough to do what we just did, which is say, well, that's not going to happen. Apple's going to have to do something. I think maybe they split the difference and they. Because they do have a lot of margin.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Right, but that's not going to get Trump what he wants, though, is it? So isn't he just going to keep pushing the number up like he did with, you know, the initial trade war with China? I mean, are we going to get to 140%?

[Mike Elgin]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

This has to be keeping Tim Cook up at night.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah. I mean, this isn't. We've got to meet this challenge and then we'll be okay. This is. Okay. Where. What's going to be the next challenge? How. How do we fit into this business model? An ever changing goal posts that we're going to, you know, ultimately.

[Leo Laporte]

During his remarks on Friday, Trump warned companies against passing costs of tariffs off to their customers. I don't want the customer, the consumer to pay, he told reporters. Really puts Apple.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Who, who's going to pay?

[Leo Laporte]

Who's going to pay? China. Everybody knows China's going to pay.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

China's paying the tariffs.

[Mike Elgin]

But, but I think, you know, the advantage Apple has is that Apple's way smarter than Trump and they have got to know that all Trump really wants is credit or something. That's why they want the credit for forcing Apple to do something it didn't want to do. So they just need to manufacture a press conference or a thing, a situation.

[Leo Laporte]

They've done it before. Yeah, they remember the. In his last term, Tim Cook gave a tour of the Texas facility, implying that this was here for years.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

This is where we make everything.

[Leo Laporte]

It'd been there for years and it only made Mac pros. Didn't matter. It worked.

[Mike Elgin]

Our most powerful computer that has 10,000 customers, but never mind.

[Leo Laporte]

I feel like, though, this stuff works less well than it used to because I think the President has people telling him, you know, that's. That was just lip service. Remember Foxconn's Wisconsin plant, which they still haven't broken ground on? This has been going on for a while, but I think you won't hear me say this often. I think Trump is wised up. He's onto us. So this is a tough one, not just for Apple, maybe for Samsung, maybe for every consumer goods manufacturer in the country, maybe for all those robot vacuums you review, Jennifer.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, the one I reviewed last week went up $1,000 from one week to the next because of The. And they said because of the tariffs, but they're a Chinese company, so they don't get yelled at by Trump. But yes, Roborock Vacuum was. When it was announced, it was 1899. And then when they shipped it or launched so you could buy it, it was $2,600.

[Leo Laporte]

That seems a little bit more than I'd be willing to pay for.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, this does have an arm.

[Leo Laporte]

This is the one that scared your dog.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

This is the one that. Yeah, it's from. It's the Roborock Saris Z70 and it has. It's the first consumer robot vacuum with a mechanical arm that will reach out and pick up socks and. Not that.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the laser one. Oh, yeah. Okay.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

That's also. Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Also scary to dogs.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yes, Scary thing in my home. But yes, here it is.

[Leo Laporte]

Here it is.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah. So the dog was actually. He wasn't so much scared of it. He was mad at it because it would. He likes to pick up our socks.

[Leo Laporte]

It's his job. You see what AI is doing to the. To our canine friends.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But yes, this was. This went up a significant amount of money. It wasn't $1,000. Totally. So the. It was 2600 to buy it today. Last week it was 1890.

[Leo Laporte]

You're lucky you have a teenage boy. So there's an ample supply of socks on the ground.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Sports socks everywhere. And yeah, it was.

[Leo Laporte]

It puts them away. It doesn't just pick them up.

[Mike Elgin]

It does.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

That was kind of what I was excited about because the whole picking up seemed very gimmicky.

[Leo Laporte]

I thought it was just pick it up vacuum and then put it back down.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

No, it designates different. You designate two different areas. That's actually a little Roborock bin that they send you, so you don't have to use that. But it's sort of tuned to be able to find it. And you can ask it to put socks and tissues is the other thing it can pick up. And then shoes, you can ask it to put in a specific shoe storage zone. So like right by the front door or wherever you'd like to. So wherever you like to use dog poop. No, I can see really messy.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah. You wouldn't want to.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

You would need a special attachment.

[Leo Laporte]

I can't believe how expensive it is. Do you think there's a market for that?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So. Yes, but maybe. I mean, at 1899, it was actually kind of a bargain in the space because the high end Roborocks and the high end dreamies are about 16 to $1800. So when it was only 1899, it was like, wow, you get an arm as well for like a couple hundred dollars more than the other flagship. But then literally, it vacuums and mops. And mops. Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

But it will not pick up shoes.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So it's supposed to pick up shoes, but it did not do a very good job of picking up only light shoes. Yeah, it's supposed to pick up sandals and slippers and then put those, you know, in specified areas. And the whole concept, whilst it feels a bit gimmicky in practice, one of the biggest problems with running robot vacuums in your home is that they do get tripped up by things that you leave on the floor. And also it takes it to that next level of being. Not only does it clean, but it tidies up. And Roborock says that they're working on more and more objects that it will pick up. But as you can see, it did also try and pick up my rug. So it still has a ways to go.

[Mike Elgin]

Was it trying to sweep dirt under the rug or.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

You see now it was.

[Leo Laporte]

The tassels on the rug looked like socks.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

The tassels were socks. Exactly. And it has, you know, machine learning on board, so it recognizes certain objects. And I was able to tell it, no, don't pick up the tassels.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, okay. So you trained it a little.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

You were able to train it. Yes. And it is. I mean, this is a common thing I'm seeing with consumer products these days, is that companies releasing them kind of or in a beta form and adding more features and doing more testing once it's out in the. In people's homes. So a lot of these products. Oh, there it goes. Picking up the sock.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, my God.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It is. It's quite impressive when you first see it. And I was actually away for a couple nights and I had it running while I was gone and my husband got a video, got it on video, and he was like, look, it's picking up.

[Brian McCullough]

So working.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It's so excited. And then it went all the way over to the bin and it didn't. It dropped it next to the bin.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute here, let's see. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. To the left, right, right, right. Turn right. No, where's it going? Go back.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It's quite a slow process. If you are hoping this would clean up your house speedily, it's not going to do that. Yeah, it's. But it's being very precise and it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Worth it for the comedy.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It is. And you can remote control It. So, you know, you can have. Go off and have BattleBots as to your heart's content.

[Leo Laporte]

Look, it did it.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But it does. And you know, you get, you feel proud of it. You kind of want to give it a round of applause and that does a little bow and then tucks itself away. But it, yeah, it's. It's definitely. I mean, we've been waiting for robots to grow. Not grow, but to get legs so they can climb different. That would be a bit much. But, you know, it's. It's not, it's not hyperbole to say that. You know, I would expect robot vacuums, most robot vacuums to have some type of tidying up function in the next year or so.

[Leo Laporte]

We're getting there.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah. It is this. And it does, it does. This doesn't work well because of the programming. Like the AI right now is just not very smart. As you can see. It keeps avoiding that sock. So it would pick up on average one sock or clean, even if I'd left like 15 around. So it wasn't tidying my house up. But the mechanics worked well, as you could see. Slow, but they did actually work. So I'm excited for when this gets better.

[Leo Laporte]

But to me, the ultimate test for this. Here it is trying to pick up a flip flop.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah. And this it couldn't do. I had to do it manually. It was not.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but what good is it if you have to fire up the app.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I know.

[Leo Laporte]

And manually pick up this flip flop? It seems like it'd be easier there. Is that your cat?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, that's Boone, my cat. And he tried to bite it. He enjoyed the. He enjoyed the arm. He would try and like play with it. Thankfully, the arm did not try and play back, so it was relatively safe. It has a lot of sensors on it, so if he got anywhere near it, it would stop moving.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah. One of these days you're gonna find the cat in the sock bin.

[Leo Laporte]

So here's the real question on any of these is, do you then have to vacuum afterwards?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So it. We mean after the vacuum, robot vacuum.

[Leo Laporte]

Like, does it do a good enough job that you no longer have to vacuum?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So, yes, for most. Mostly this. This vacuum in particular. And mop is, is very good. Roborock is one of the better companies. They produce.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what killed iRobot, right? They're too good.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

One of. Yeah. I mean, iRobot's still around technically, but yes. Roborock and Deebot, EcoVax and Dreamey have three Chinese companies that have really kind of taken iRobot's market share, but it is a very good vacuum. But you still have to vacuum like your stairs. You still have to vacuum in certain areas that it can't get to. And they don't do as good job on rugs as, say, like a handheld is going to do.

[Leo Laporte]

This almost feels like a proof of concept, sort of like that. It sort of works. And I just can't imagine spending 2,600 bucks for it.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

No, I would not. The vacuum. So there is a version of this exact vacuum without the arm that is 1600 or 1800, which is very expensive. But it is a really good vacuum and a really good mop. And it can take its robot mop off and then go vacuum your carpets, and then it goes back and puts its mops on and goes and vacuums your hardwood. So it's, you know, it's got, got quite a bit more function than your standard Roomba. Or, you know, you can buy robot vacuums for 5, $600 that will do a perfectly good job. But you, you have to do a bit more manual intervention. This one is fairly autonomous, just very slow. You're still going to need to pick up after it or pick up before it runs if you really want it to clean your home efficiently.

[Leo Laporte]

It's just a gimmick, let's face it.

[Mike Elgin]

But what's the rush if it's working all night or whatever? If it's.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the thing.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

If you're out all day, it could. That's unless it's if you're never home. Promise. That's the promise of robot vacuums, that they would clean up while you were gone. And then we all came and stayed at home for a long time, right. And, and then they. So they developed the AI obstacle avoidance so they can avoid obstacles and not get stuck and clean around them. But then what's. Then they're trying to solve this problem of, okay, well, you didn't clean where the obstacle was, so the next step was, okay, let's create an arm and move the obstacle and then go back and clean where it was. So you can see the natural progression. But at the moment, this is definitely feels gimmicky. I would not spend 2, 600 on it, but I do. The way robot vacuums have innovated in the last five to 10 years is quite astonishing. How fast the technology has moved and how inexpensive it is. So, as I said, I think you'll see this become a bit more mainstream in a couple of, well, probably less in A couple of years.

[Leo Laporte]

I feel like what we're doing really is supporting an industry that is getting towards robotics but isn't quite where we want it to be yet, but moving.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Towards the rosy, contributing.

[Mike Elgin]

But this, this kind of thing. And I go to Italy a lot. In Italy they have these. It's very common to see robotic lawnmowers. I think the biggest robotic lawnmower company is an Italian company. And the, the idea, the Elon Musk idea that a humanoid robot is going to be pushing a mop and pushing a lawnmower just seems so ridiculous when you could have these special purpose devices that have, are being perfected slowly over time to the point where they're going to be, have two arms, they're going to pick up two socks at once and all that kind of stuff. The idea that we'd have a humanoid robot with an apron.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, the single purpose. The single purpose robot or you know, two or three purpose like dual mop, mop and vote mop and vacuum makes, does make more sense. I actually did test, I just did a big piece about robot motors as well which I just dropped in the, in the zoom. But they aren't quite there there yet. They are in Italy because they have little tiny gardens. But here in this, in America they really struggle with our garden sizes and different topology and different types of soil. They really can't handle sand. I live in the south, we have very sandy soil and they were constantly getting stuck. But I think they're about like five or 10 years behind where robot vacuums are today. So within the next five to 10 years they will be a lot more advanced. And I totally agree with you Mike, that that's sort of the future of home robotics are these single purpose or dual purpose robots that are doing specific chores for us. I mean we saw the laundry robot for a few years try and try and make it. It failed. But we, I'm sure someone will come back with a solution there. Those kind of chores that everyone is looking for help with and actually read a very interesting article recently with a robotics expert at Stanford and she was talking about how humanoid, not humanoid robots, but robots that can help with specific human tasks will be very in demand with aging in place. So you know, for helping people in their home with specific things, you know, even, especially in dangerous spaces like bathrooms or kitchens. So the more you can automate areas of the home that could be dangerous or difficult for people living on their own, the more, you know that's going to be more beneficial in the long run than I think the whole idea of an actual Rosie the Robot is not only unlikely but also unnecessary. I think. Yeah. Individual.

[Leo Laporte]

It's going to end up being a cost. It's going to be a cost thing because if you have 20 special purpose devices each at $2,000, it's a lot more than a $10,000 robot that can do all of that. Those. So this is going to be an interesting race.

[Mike Elgin]

Well, the prices will come down as they become commoditized and perfected.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I mean, Darren Okey in our chat points out we do have quite a few robots. We have dishwashers, we have clothes washers. We do have some purpose built devices in our house. Yeah, yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

And they got cheaper. They started very expensive and now they're much more affordable. And the same thing with robot vacuums, robot lawnmowers, that for a while it was $9,000 for a decent robot lawnmower and now you can, can get one for a thousand. So it's definitely, you know, cost of the economies of scale as the more people are using these you'll, you'll find that they're more affordable. But they are world. They aren't always. Yeah, they're not always. I mean, pool robots are the big thing right now. I didn't.

[Leo Laporte]

Sure.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Ces sure. I mean they wear everything and they.

[Leo Laporte]

Work because it's a very limited, constrained thing they have to do. There's no socks in the pool.

[Mike Elgin]

Well, one hopes, but you know, there's a, there's a, there's a robot. At least one. It's not a robot. I'm sorry. It's an AI camera that looks in a pool underwater and can detect using AI whether somebody is drowning.

[Leo Laporte]

That's great. That's brilliant.

[Mike Elgin]

Great. Very great. I think that's. That kind of thing is going to.

[Leo Laporte]

Be really fundamental to human. To save them. We got to take a break. We're going to come back there. This was a big week for AI. Microsoft and Google both had their developers conferences. We'll talk about agentic AI. Really, the two big announcements from both of them in my mind. We'll see what you guys think was agentic and spectacles. We'll talk about that in just a little bit. You're watching this week in Tech, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy from The Verge, Brian McCullough from the Tech Meme Ride Home podcast. Mike elgin from MachineSociety AI. You have a podcast now. An AI podcast too, too.

[Mike Elgin]

That's right. Yes. Emily Forlini and I talk about AI. We both cover sort of like separate areas of AI. So it's a lot of fun. We do it almost weekly.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice.

[Mike Elgin]

So yeah, it's a lot of fun.

[Leo Laporte]

And if you go to MachineSociety AI and subscribe, you'll get a copy of the podcast too.

[Mike Elgin]

That's right. You can listen to it right in the newsletter.

[Leo Laporte]

Very nice. Our show today. Thank you, Mike, Jennifer, Brian. Our show today, brought to you by our friends at Outsystems. They are the leading. This is actually a really interesting story. The leading AI powered application and agent development platform. But they're not new. They've been around for more than 20 years in the low code, no code space. Right. So their mission from day one, the mission of Outsystems has been to give every company the power to innovate through software. Now if you're at a company, you know that the big choice is to build or buy, right? IT teams typically have two different paths they could take. You could buy off the shelf SaaS products. That gets you up to speed fast. But you lose flexibility. You also lose differentiation because you're not the only ones using it. Or if you really want to take, you know, some chances, you can build custom software at great time and expense. AI forges a path for a third way. This is really cool. The fusion of AI plus low code plus DevSecOps automation into a single development platform. As I said, outsystems have been doing this for a long time and they were perfectly positioned to take advantage of this whole new AI coding capability. They will. Your teams will use Outsystems to build custom applications that are ready to go with. They'll do it with AI agents and it's as easy as buying generic off the shelf, you know, sameware. But you get flexibility built in. Security, scalability, it all comes standard with AI powered low code teams can build custom future proof applications at the speed of buying with fully automated architecture, with security, with integrations, data flows, permissions. It's already there. Outsystems, it turns out now is going to be the last platform you need to buy because you can build it to then build anything and customize and extend your core systems. This makes so much sense. There's a third path beyond build or buy. Build your future with OutSystems. Visit outsystems.com TWiT to learn more. That's outsystems.com TWit thank you so much for supporting this week in tech. Let's see Microsoft. I will start with Microsoft. They were on Monday their build conferences going on in Seattle, they. I was actually very pleased to see them promoting Agentic AI and in particular the open source platform that came not from Microsoft but from anthropic called MCP and A2A. These are capabilities that allow AIs to go out and interact with other data sources, pull them in to give you, you know, huge capabilities. I mean, it. Sometimes they just talk about things like buying concert tickets, but it can be so much more than that. In fact, there was a demo at Mike at the Microsoft Build keynote that was kind of blew my mind. A guy who is a chemist working in the Microsoft AI division showed how he used an agent, agentic AI to go out to. He said, okay, we need, we need a new coolant liquid that doesn't use PFAs, you know, forever chemicals that, you know, doesn't gonna, it's not, you know, gonna poison the environment. So he gave it some parameters. It went out, it got scientific journals. It did. It used its agent capability to go out, get information, then generated three candidate molecules, tested them, but not in the real world, tested them kind of inside the AI system and said, this might be the one. They then synthesized it and at the demo they showed an Xbox motherboard submerged in this coolant liquid playing Forza and staying very cool. And it was, it was a very impressive demo. It all happened in just a few minutes. He said, here's the thing that wasn't just a demo. This is something we actually did. And we came up with a new medium, a new coolant medium. This is the Microsoft Discovery Agentic platform, which is designed for scientists and researchers to speed up the scientific discovery process. This I was very impressed with.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, it's going to be, it's a new world in terms of this sort of thing. And.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, this is the question we always ask. You know, I, you know, sometimes people say, well, when's it going to be super intelligence or AGI? But I think it's much more interesting when, when is AI going to help people come up with new things? Things that no human is already, you know, not, not regurgitated human writing or paintings, but something that humans haven't done yet.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah. So other than other than making up books for the summer reading list.

[Leo Laporte]

That was a funny one. Holy cow.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, but, but yeah, I mean, it's so one of the things that's interesting for me as an AI writer is that I do enormous research on the, on the, on a very broad scope of what is happening in the world of AI. And 90% of it is this kind of Thing generally it's science break like small breakthroughs, not necessarily agentic AI. But what I mean is that there's so many amazing things that are happening in the world of AI. Everybody in the tech space seems to be captured by the horse race between OpenAI and Google, etc.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Mike Elgin]

And that's not really, not even that interesting. I think that, well, one of, one.

[Leo Laporte]

Of the most interesting. We like horse races.

[Mike Elgin]

Right, exactly, the horse race part. But, but you know, it's going to be great when agentic AI is actually doing positive things. Also going to be great for hackers and all kinds of nefarious uses. But it's also going to be great when we have what Google calls the, the, the, the universal assistant that's really going to change the world for people. But, but this sort of thing, inventing new material, solving problems that will save lives, this is going to be happening at a massive scale. Of course it'll be like everything else as life gets better and better and better because of these kinds of applications. People will get used to those things and we'll just think, well, the world is terrible, but actually it's going to be better than it's ever been in terms of, in terms of, you know, detecting diseases that can be stopped before they actually become, before it's too late, like, you know, Parkinson's, cancer. It's going to go on and on. So it's going to be really, it's going to be a fantastic thing. And I have the feeling that agentic AI is going to be the technology, not AGI, as you say, but agentic AI is going to be the general use case that's going to make all this good stuff happen.

[Brian McCullough]

I put a couple of things in.

[Leo Laporte]

The chat that I have the link here. Go ahead.

[Brian McCullough]

The things that AI so far is great at is pattern matching. Right. So one of the things that I keep saying on the show that keeps, keeps coming up is what is AI about to revolutionize weather forecasting? Why pattern matching. Right. And so we were just talking about pattern matching in terms of finding new compounds, new proteins, things like that. And so I've done half a dozen stories recently about how weather forecasting is on the cusp of being revolutionized by AI because, because again, it's pattern matching. But then the second one that I did, and people have been warning that this is coming for a while, I just put it in the chat is hey, what else can you do? If you can code with AI, you can start to search for zero day exploits by using AI. To run through code and find new ways to hack into things. So again, I guess my only point in saying this is right now, all we can be sure that AI is great at is pattern matching beyond any reasonable human capabilities.

[Mike Elgin]

Well, yeah, that's true, but the specific thing that it's really good at right now is filling in the blind spots. So the example that Leo described essentially is there are all kinds of things that we understand and there are some materials or some chemicals or some things that we don't know yet. We could have discovered them, but we haven't. So we'll show you all the ones we've discovered. Show us the one we haven't discovered. AI is great at this. It's also great if you're developing a report and you want to give examples for, you know, and you can think of three. You tell AI the three examples and it'll give you two more.

[Leo Laporte]

What AI does fundamentally is tokenize information and then make connections. Now that's what we do also, is we make connections. But. And we. And you know, this insight came to me when we interviewed Ray Kurzweil. He said AI is looking at a much larger batch of tokens than we could and can make connections that we might not be able to make. And if it only were to do that, that would be incredible. This is The Microsoft Aurora 1.3 billion parameter foundation model for modeling Earth weather. This is traditionally difficult to do. They do it with supercomputers because it's so chaotic of a system. I mean, it's a good thing because we fired half of noaa, but at least we'll have the AI that could do the weather forecasting. I think this is very interesting.

[Brian McCullough]

And by the way, I hope no one thinks that I was being reductive by saying pattern matching.

[Leo Laporte]

No, that's a bad. That's an important thing, isn't it?

[Brian McCullough]

I mean, I was being reductive in the sense, like that's the lowest common denominator to explain how it's being applied right now. But I take what you were saying, Mike, in terms of what next step beyond that is, is filling in the gaps that you don't have a thousand years and a thousand interns to fill in those gaps. Right.

[Mike Elgin]

Or people who work for the weather service.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I thought the, the Microsoft keynote on Monday was quite interesting and I was impressed with the practicality of some of the things they show. We've seen so many kind of, gee whiz, things like sock picker uppers. Yeah, it's kind of nice to see something. Actually, now you mentioned. Since you mentioned it, I got to bring this up. 404 Media was the first to catch the Chicago Sun Times. AI generated summer reading list that included a book by Isabel Allende and Andy Weir of the Martian fame. Books that don't exist.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Ruh Roh.

[Leo Laporte]

Ruh Roh. And the guy who wrote this, I mean, we talked about a little bit on our AI show, Intelligent Machines on Wednesday. Say the guy who wrote this said, yeah. Oh, I can't believe I missed it. He generated the list with AI but didn't check it, apparently. But then Jeff Jarvis pointed out that this whole Best of Summer section was a generic section that was sold to newspapers all over the country. One guy had to write the whole thing. It really was just an ad insert into these newspapers. And I guess he just felt like he had too much to do. And he wrote the whole. Marco Boscalia wrote the whole 64 page section. 404 called him. He said, I do use AI for background at times, but I always check out the material first. This time I didn't. I can't believe I missed it. It's on me 100%. I'm completely embarrassed.

[Mike Elgin]

Well, it's nice that he's owning up to it. But you know who's really upset about this? The other journalists who work for the Chicago Sun Times. Because they're like, this is really messing with our reputation.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

And we work really hard to fact check everything, do everything on the up and up. And this guy goes out here and it's like, you know, a leading story about how Chicago sometimes uses A.I. there's another one.

[Leo Laporte]

It wasn't just the Sun Times. It was a bunch of night newspapers.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, yeah, right, right.

[Mike Elgin]

Yes, of course.

[Leo Laporte]

Chicago sometimes gets the. Gets the targe with the brush.

[Mike Elgin]

There was another even more hilarious story that came out this week where a novel, a fantasy novel published, a novel called Dark Hollow Academy, year two. It was published by Lena McDonald.

[Leo Laporte]

Don't tell me she left the prompts in.

[Mike Elgin]

She left the output. Not only did she leave the output from the prompt saying, but. But the prompt was. She was telling the. As a large language model copy somebody else's style.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, even worse.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, so. So the output was. I've rewritten the passage to align more with J Breeze style, which features more tension, gritty undertones and raw emotional subtext. Anyway, what a disaster. Published it in a book. Leo.

[Brian McCullough]

How.

[Mike Elgin]

Can you even read her own book?

[Leo Laporte]

It's hysterical. I just think this stuff is so funny. So Maybe this isn't cause for rejoicing that Microsoft is going to build the MCP protocol. It's probably redundant to call it Control Protocol. A protocol, but it is built into Windows to make an agentic os. But as the dev class blog points out, security might be a key concern here, but you could see why you would want this so that your Windows is smart enough to go out and get information from a variety of different sources. But you also might see the potential for exfiltration of your own information as well. Microsoft says they're gonna just like with recall, they're gonna build in a lot of security. Their MCP will work with Anthropic figma and Perplexity. Actually, they. I'm sorry, Anthropic Figma and Perplexity are integrating MCP into their Windows apps.

[Brian McCullough]

I was gonna say there's a ton of people working on like the protocols and all the stuff for which I love. Yeah. To work.

[Leo Laporte]

It's an open protocol, so that's a good thing. Right?

[Brian McCullough]

Well, you need to do that. I mean, just like the web, like there's. If there's going to be 10,000 of these things, they can't all be one.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, and I can't remember who pointed it out, but somebody pointed out, probably on intelligent machines or maybe Mac pretty quickly, that the only reason these guys are cooperating. Oh, I think it was Paul Thurat. The only reason these guys are cooperating is because nobody's dominant yet.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, right.

[Leo Laporte]

Yet. So they can't. They have to work together because they can't afford not to.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, well. Oh, well, I got to take another break. We will come back and talk about Google IO because they made a number of announcements. You're watching this week in Tech, Mike Elgin, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, Brian McCullough. Our show this week brought to you by Express VPN. You know, a few decades ago, private citizens used to be largely that private. Right. What's changed? The Internet. Think about everything you've browsed, you've searched for, you've watched or tweeted. Now imagine all that data being crawled, collected and aggregated by data brokers into a permanent public record. Your record having your private life exposed for others to see was once something, you know, only celebrities worried about. But in an era where everyone is online, everyone is a public figure. To keep my data private, when I go online, I turn to Express vpn. In fact, when I travel, it's a great boom because I can still catch the football game or the F1 race here's why everyone needs ExpressVPN. One of the easiest ways for data brokers to track you is through your device's unique IP address, which also reveals information about your location. With ExpressVPN, your IP address is hidden. It makes it much more difficult for data brokers to monitor, track and monetize your private online activity. ExpressVPN is the best VPN. I love it because, well, it's the only one I use. It encrypts 100% of your traffic to keep your data safe from hackers when you're on public WI fi. And it works everywhere. You do all your devices, iPhone, Android phone, laptop, tablet, you name it. Even on your routers and your whole home network. If you want, just tap one button to turn it on and you're protected. It's, it's just that easy. Protect your online privacy today by visiting expressvpn.com twit that's E X P R E-S-S vpn.com twit and you can get an extra four months free when you buy a two year package express vpn.com twit by the way, continuing in the Microsoft news real quickly, the FTC has finally dropped their challenge to the Activision Blizzard deal. Months after it finished. The FTC just didn't want to lose this one. They repealed it. They went back to the courts. Three years after suing to block Microsoft from buying Activision Blizzard, the government finally said on Thursday, okay, fine, it's kind of, kind of sad. They kept losing in court. They didn't have much of a case. In fact, the only case they had was that it was bad for the streaming gaming business, which is pretty much a non existent business at this point. Microsoft President Brad Smith said, we're grateful to the FTC for dropping this dumb case after three long years. You know, I don't know how you feel about the acquisition. It's done, so it doesn't really matter. At this point though, you know there's they're also trying to turn back the clock on Meta's acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp that that trial wrapped this week with, with Meta's defense. They so the government attempted to show that Instagram they brought in Kevin Systrom, one of the founders of Instagram, who said Meta just tried to kill us. They bought us because we were too competitive and then they didn't give us any resources. So then they brought in the other founder of Instagram to say oh no, what's happened? Instagram were only made Better by Microsoft's contribute or Meta's contributions. We'll see. The case rested on Wednesday. The judge now has to decide what. What's the. What's the situation actually was Brian Acton not the Instagram founder, but what. What's app founder, co founder Brian Acton who said, oh no, Meta was great, man. Meta did so much for us.

[Brian McCullough]

Which is odd because they were the ones that left Meta.

[Leo Laporte]

That's true. Right, because they were going to put ads on WhatsApp. They were pissed.

[Mike Elgin]

What's funny is that the United States is the place where Meta has the weakest monopoly. If you go to, you know, all my friends in Europe and elsewhere around the world, the vast majority of them only use Meta products.

[Leo Laporte]

We came down to Oaxaca to visit with you and Amira, your wife. What do we have to do? We had to install WhatsApp so we could communicate.

[Mike Elgin]

Now a lot more Americans are using WhatsApp these days. But like, you know, five years ago, Americans had never heard of it and everyone in Europe used that as their main, main thing. But I, you know, you have to use, if you want to have friends abroad, you have to use Meta services. You have to use Facebook or Instagram or WhatsApp or all.

[Leo Laporte]

So Meta said after six weeks of trying to make their case to undo acquisitions made over a decade ago and show that no deal is ever truly final. And the only thing FTC showed was a dynamic, hyper competitive nature of the past, present and future of the technology industry. Meta is a proud American success story.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I mean, do you think, do you think they're right? Do you think there would have. That the Instagram and WhatsApp would not have succeeded without Meta behind them?

[Leo Laporte]

I think they were doing great. In fact, Instagram was an amazing story.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But there were also a lot of, there was a lot of competition around. Initially, around that time we saw a lot of social media startups and Instagram was, did take hold. But there were, there was competition. Once Facebook, Meta took it. Here's the thing that kind of all the competition just dissolved.

[Leo Laporte]

The thing that's clear to me is that Meta was looking at Snapchat, they were looking at Instagram and they were saying they're going to eat our lunch. We are the dominant social network today. We won't be tomorrow if these guys continue to grow. They tried to buy Snapchat and failed. By the way, they succeeded. They bought Instagram for a billion dollars. I remember when that happened, I thought there's, they had like 10 developers. I said a billion dollars for an app. Are they insane? But they. It wasn't insane. They were crazy like a fox because they were right. They were threatened by the success of Instagram. I don't know if the government proved its case, but if you ask me, it's very clear that Meta bought Instagram to put a. To take a competitor off the market.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, right.

[Leo Laporte]

And that's. I, I mean, if. If they're a monopoly in social, which they're probably not, that may be the hardest thing for the government to prove.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Using that monopoly success to take competition off the market is illegal.

[Brian McCullough]

And also, if you look at how they did it, what was the name of that app that they had that they were looking at what the use case numbers were for? They had that app that it told them what were the new apps that were being that were growing.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. I don't remember the name of it, but they were able to monitor that success.

[Brian McCullough]

Right. So essentially they knew they were. One of the things that Zuck, we know from the very first days, like going back to Harvard, was he watches what people do with his products obsessively, like, so he knows. You say you don't like me doing this. Introducing the newsfeed, but I know you do like it. You tell me you don't like it, but I know you do, because I'm watching. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I was listening to an old twit like one episode 130 or something. 173, I think, was where they had just announced a newsfeed and the whole. The whole show practically was how. How utterly unhappy all the Facebook users were because Facebook had promised this is going to be the place where you keep up with friends and family. Now you're feeding me all this stuff from people I don't know or care about. And people were furious. But Meta refused to back down. Facebook refused to back down.

[Brian McCullough]

And that's my point, is that they have always, or maybe Zuckerberg specifically has. I mean, the company in general has always gone towards engagement. So it's all about the numbers. It's all about where they see what you do and they move in that direction. Right. So, right. If what we're talking about is we can see. Well, wait, we want people to be interact. We want engagement. We want people to be chatting with their friends. While chatting with their friends these days means messaging. Well, this app over here is doing messaging. We can see that. Grab it. Obviously, they copied a lot of stuff too, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I'm sure you've talked about this Leo. But isn't it been interesting to you the degree to which in recent months, even it has become clear that Zuckerberg himself does not like the fact that Instagram and WhatsApp and other have become more successful than Facebook. Like, he keeps talking about making Facebook relevant again. Like, is it too late? Yeah, but your firstborn is kind of like, you're like, isn't that so. So funny that he's kind of pissed.

[Leo Laporte]

Off at the same time? He said, oh, VR is the next thing. He put. At least he lost, what do they say, $10 billion. They lost huge, huge amounts of money. Now he's saying AI is the next big thing. Right. And they're putting many, many billions into that.

[Mike Elgin]

Right. What has become clear is that Facebook just can't stand the idea of interacting with other people. And he believes that everybody wants to not interact with other people.

[Leo Laporte]

He said, most Americans only have three friends.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And we want them to have AI friends so they aren't lonely.

[Mike Elgin]

Yes. This is insane. But it's not just AI friends. Like, his vision is that people will create other fake users that will interact with people as if they're real users. And his other vision for Instagram is that influencers will create a virtual version of themselves to interact with the hoi polloi, riffraff, unwashed masses so they don't have to and, you know, goes on and on. Like, all of the innovation around AI is all about replacing people with AI in terms of interaction. And then he wants to call that, you know, whatever keeps people's eyeballs on there for longer. He figures he can double his user base if half the people are fake. You know, it's just insane.

[Leo Laporte]

This is the future of AI. Have you seen. I think this is from Veo. They can now make these. This was Google announced VO3. They can make videos with sound. This is all AI watch. We can talk.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

We can talk. We can talk.

[Brian McCullough]

We can talk.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

With accents.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I think that would be marvelous. Yes, it is very fun. Yes, it is very good. This is all AI.

[Mike Elgin]

It's incredible.

[Brian McCullough]

Yes, we can talk.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yes, we can talk. We can talk.

[Brian McCullough]

There's a better one out there where it looks like it's from a. Like a B roll that one of us would do at, like an AI. No, no, an ev thing, like a car show. And you would not be able to tell the difference. Like this kind of. I could tell the difference. This looks a little too.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, so close, though, isn't it?

[Mike Elgin]

So close.

[Brian McCullough]

Here, let me find the one.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, give me the link to the 1. Because I'm impressed by this. This. I found this on Reddit.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

News anchor ones that had been going around with the announcing. Well, there's an Australian secretaries.

[Leo Laporte]

There's an Australian radio station that's had an AI DJ for six months and no one knew. Everybody shocked when they, when they, when they said that. If I'm a filmmaker, I'm looking at this thinking, well, guess I don't need actors anymore. Yeah, it's close enough link in the. Close enough that was all generated. So let me go to this x.com link here.

[Mike Elgin]

And I Just to be clear, for those of you at home, this costs 250 bucks a month at present, so.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but that's not outrageous to make a movie that costs $400 million to make mission Impossible.

[Mike Elgin]

Yes, but you, you, you. Yes, I'm talking to you people out there, listening. You're not gonna pay 250amonth. I'm not gonna pay 250, Leo, just.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Buy the robot with an arm instead. That would be exactly.

[Mike Elgin]

Get the robot.

[Brian McCullough]

You know the reason I want you to see this one, Leo, is because the one you showed, it's still Uncanny Valley. It still looks.

[Leo Laporte]

This one's not.

[Brian McCullough]

You're saying this looks like I shot this this afternoon?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Is this one with a VO as well? I'm going to Laszlo Gall's feed, so I'm gonna look for that.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, right, right.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that right? Maybe I got the wrong one.

[Mike Elgin]

He's got one follower, so that's probably not right.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, probably not right. I can't because you put it in zoom. I can't quite get it.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, the one I sent was 2 1/2 million views, so.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Can you put it in the zoom instead? I mean, not the zoom, the spreadsheet instead. Because then that way I can, I can click the link, just put it right under line 100. All right, thank you.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, that's the one.

[Leo Laporte]

Las Logal. All right, let's see. Ladies and gentlemen, you be the judge. This is a what a car show. And this is AI generated. Is this or is it? Welcome to a non existent car show.

[Brian McCullough]

Let's see some opinions.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, man, the acceleration duration is crazy. You look far. Step on the. Still a little over there. But I mean, you have to be looking for it.

[Brian McCullough]

And it seems to be like, look.

[Leo Laporte]

At the kid and the dad. I think the range is only. Only going to get.

[Brian McCullough]

Why is he holding a cup of coffee like that?

[Mike Elgin]

And what, did he put it down on cars anymore?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, no, More gas cars, hipsters.

[Leo Laporte]

And see, I'm kind of 1L. Maybe his name is as hell really great for families and for little babies.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

With all the safety features that these SUVs have.

[Mike Elgin]

But what you're really seeing is that technology is.

[Leo Laporte]

So this was the new video generation tool that Google announced on Tuesday at Google to come to the conference. Because, see, Mike, you say $250. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. That sounds like a deal to me.

[Mike Elgin]

But yes, it is if you are professional.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. If you had to make clips of any kind. All right, that's enough of this car show.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

That looks very realistic, very good compared to the things we were looking at.

[Leo Laporte]

And the people look real, right?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah. I mean, you could see. You could definitely scroll by that in the Facebook feed and be completely fooled by it. I mean, there's a lot of stuff out there.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Unless you're looking. That's right. Right.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah. And there's. It's. I mean, I've. You've seen it already in social media. Like the car, the ev car fire at. Was it Jacksonville Airport, one of the airports last week? There was a car fire and there were videos of this like in raging inferno. And in fact, if you actually watch the news, that was just a little bit of smoke. But people were just.

[Leo Laporte]

You can't trust anything anymore.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

No, you can't trust anything. And then the Pope. Have you seen the, the stuff of the pope talking about Donald Trump?

[Leo Laporte]

There's.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Oh, yeah, where did I say it's fake?

[Leo Laporte]

Huh?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. You wouldn't necessarily know that he was saying, you know. Well, I, I was. I didn't like J.D. vance. I didn't want to talk to him. Can you see how I kind of turned away from him? And. Yeah, I mean, and he's very convincingly talking to this interviewer. And it's like the only reason it really raises a flag is because. When have you ever seen the Pope interviewed? I mean, honestly, that's not something.

[Leo Laporte]

He doesn't do interviews, does he? Except.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But it was a full. I mean, it was very convincing. And when you. Yeah, this is. And this. That does lead into another story, I think. I don't know where it is on the run sheet, but when I was reading through. But about the, the new law about taking down.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I actually took it out because. So there's been. Well, there's a reason I took it out. So Trump passed the Take it Down act, which was passed in Congress by like, I can't remember what it was. The Senate passed it like 98 to 2. The House passed it like 340 to 7 or something. It was widely supported, bipartisan support, because who doesn't think, you know, revenge porn is horrific and that social media should take it down as soon as it possibly can. It gives social media 48 hours to take it down. Anybody can complain. The problem with 48 hours is it's not a lot of time to vet something and it doesn't necessarily. It's non consensual intimate imagery. Nii. The problem is that doesn't necessarily mean revenge porn. It could be a picture of me in a T shirt. It could be. And so the concern is that it might be used for censorship. In fact, Trump said in his State of the Union, pass this because I want to use it because no one's been worse treated on the Internet than me.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

No one. Of course.

[Leo Laporte]

Of course. So that implies that there is perhaps some intent to use it for censorship. Now, I took it down only because while I've heard the EFF and tech dirt, Mike Masnick and everybody say that I'm not, it's not immediately clear how it would be misused. Because if it, if it's, if you complain about my tweet about, let's say it's towel day, that's not non consensual intimate imagery.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But it's opening a door, isn't it? It's making. Yeah, I can see that there is a. You can see how it could be a slippery slope and that's.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. I run a mastodon instance and I'm not concerned. It does mean that I have to monitor more than every 48 hours in case somebody posts something because there's you. I would go to jail if I didn't take it down for like eight years. So obviously it means. But that's not a bad thing. It means that social media has to pay closer attention. Well, the complaint is that 48 hours isn't enough to verify that it's non consensual. But, you know, I take down any truly intimate imagery anyway, regardless.

[Mike Elgin]

Well, everything is a race to the bottom in terms of, you know, costs. Right. So if you're trying to save money and you're a social network or you're a, you're a, you know, activity publisher.

[Leo Laporte]

Related, you're going to use AI networks.

[Mike Elgin]

No, what you're going to do is when somebody complains, you're just going to take it down because that's, that's fast. And so that's what happens.

[Leo Laporte]

Takedowns on, on YouTube Right, right, exactly.

[Mike Elgin]

And that's bad. That's like, you know, it's censorship. So the way to do this, right, is to dedicate humans to this and, and to, to, to thoughtfully consider every request and have a good policy and all that kind of stuff. But who has the money to do that? I mean, it's the bigger. The companies with the companies with the money, like Meta and they just all.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I mean, they used to do that.

[Mike Elgin]

But they're going to have moderators at a massive scale. Right, exactly.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But then AI is going to just make this problem even worse because these, what we've seen here with VO3, I mean, this is the. It just came out two days ago and now. And what we're seeing is, is quite impressive. You can imagine how much better it's going to get. We are one of the Verge reporters, Alison Johnson did a piece of. And she kind of tested some of the limits so it wouldn't let her create. I mean, there are guardrails around.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. But they're not very good.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Whether they're gonna, let's face it, whether they're gonna hold up to. Yeah, and so what, what, what are we gonna do with this AI Content everywhere that is misleading and that, you know, if my mum sees on her Facebook feed, she's gonna freak out, you know, if she sees, you know, that, that this is. And the danger of this misinformation that could so easily be spread are, could have real world repercussions. One of the things she, I think she mentioned in her piece she tried.

[Leo Laporte]

To do was she called it a slop monger's dream.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yes, the boot was fun.

[Leo Laporte]

She said these boots are not made for walking, but you can make AI do that any do it anyway. That's great, I love it.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But I mean, it's, it's definitely a challenge. I mean, social media has stepped back, as we just discussed, from moderating. So we, you know, now everything, everything goes. But now we're getting to this, the point where you can create anything and everything goes. Is it going to be. No one trusts anything they see online, which realistically you probably shouldn't these days. Or is it going to be, you know, people are tricked by this and it can cause real world harm.

[Mike Elgin]

So, and, and people will be caught dead to rights on video and they'll just say it's AI.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, right.

[Leo Laporte]

That's actually maybe more of a concern. You can deny anything now.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

How do you know that's not real? Not made up?

[Mike Elgin]

Well, already, already politicians which shall no longer Be named because they've already been named enough. Will actually say something that, you know, 50 cameras recorded him saying. He'll say, I didn't say that.

[Leo Laporte]

That Right.

[Mike Elgin]

I mean, politicians are going to love this world where nothing can be believed and everything has plausible deniability. Every medium has plausible deniability.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. All right, time for another break. Sorry to do this to you, but, God, there's so many things I want to talk about today. We still haven't. It's still my intent to talk about Google I O. Google I o. We kind of did. We kind of did. By the way, I just want to say that I didn't. This is not me. I did not do that. I deny it all. Every bit of it.

[Mike Elgin]

That's obviously you, Leo. That's obviously.

[Leo Laporte]

I wasn't there. It's a cartoon. Thank you, General Tabb, for a fabulous simulated A.I. leo. I do have to wonder, though, how long it is before. I mean, given that there are tens of thousands of hours of me doing this show for the last 20 years. How long before? Be easy, right? My.

[Brian McCullough]

My whole swit saying that all the time.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Leo, you don't need to retire. You just need to have an AI avatar. I mean, you see the story about the CEO that presented his earnings.

[Brian McCullough]

I've been doing that.

[Leo Laporte]

That was weird.

[Brian McCullough]

I've been. Leo, I've been doing that for three months. If you go to the Tech meme.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Brian McCullough]

Home YouTube channel. Channel. If you see my face on there for the last three months, any video that's been up there is. Is. Is a avatar.

[Leo Laporte]

No, you're lying.

[Brian McCullough]

I'm not lying.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Breaking news.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute. It's.

[Brian McCullough]

It's. It's all done with. Hey, Jen. But it's my audio. I write the script and whatever. I'm not. Listen. I'm not sending anyone to the YouTube page. But this is true.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute, wait a minute. Okay, so it's an audio podcast, right?

[Brian McCullough]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

So on YouTube. When I watch it on YouTube.

[Brian McCullough]

So let me go if you can't find a video.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I can find it. Let me just go to YouTube, right? And just search for Tech Meme.

[Brian McCullough]

Ride home at home. And then I don't know if I have a recent one that I can show you, but here, like this one.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it realistic?

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah. Watch. So this is the jony I've news from this week. I just sent it to you here in the chat.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, look, here's a whole scroll of them. Which one?

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, okay. It's in the chat, in the thing.

[Leo Laporte]

I know, but I can't. It doesn't help.

[Brian McCullough]

Put it in the rundown under on 96. If you look at 96, click on 96.

[Leo Laporte]

And what are you using to do this?

[Brian McCullough]

Hey, Jen. So you know how I do the podcast every day and I record a segment, so a two minute long segment. And so I upload the audio. I trained an avatar on me. Me that, by the way, that's not you. That's me £25 ago, by the way.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's by the way, a nice advantage is you can make yourself skinny.

[Mike Elgin]

You're an ageless sex kitten. It's beautiful.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, no, no, that's me 25 pounds heavier.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you're doing it in the wrong. You're not doing it right.

[Brian McCullough]

I know I need to train a new avatar, but. So anyway, so this is, this is one that I did this week. So this is The Jony I've OpenAI news. So I upload my segment segment, which was like what a 2 minute and 30 second segment. And then the avatar is all lip synced.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Mike Elgin]

And, and of course Riverside, which is owned by Spotify, just has a matter. Of course you can do a whole podcast and you can say, yeah, you know what, just give me the AI version. It will literally replace your actual voice with a voice created from the, from the transcript and it'll have better audio and all that kind of stuff. And of course, Melania Trump narrated her AI that news out this week, so she wants to be.

[Leo Laporte]

We're getting really close. We're getting really close. Well, I can't have AI read this ad because Spaceship paid me good money to do this personally. So we'll take a break.

[Mike Elgin]

I don't give him any ideas.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh my God. That's Mike Elgin giving them ideas. Jennifer Pattison, Tuohy from the Verge and Brian McCullough. Not an AI avatar. You think that's sometimes me now I'm worried. Can I take the wrinkles off and, and maybe 10 years younger, maybe get the hair a little bit?

[Brian McCullough]

Leo, wait. I, I take the eye bags off sometimes. Yeah, you can, you can do that with a bunch of AI stuff too. I, I'm being serious.

[Leo Laporte]

As long as I have wrinkles, you know, I'm the real deal. How about that? All right.

[Brian McCullough]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Our show today, brought to you by Spaceship. You know, last night around 8 o' clock, I got a frantic call from my daughter. She says, I can't. I, I bought a domain name and I can't connect it to my. Spotify is. I don't understand what's going on. I said, oh, honey, you didn't use Spaceship, did you? She said, no. Next time you buy a domain name, Abby, go to spaceship. Spaceship.com twitt. You know, simple and affordable doesn't have to mean dumb. Basic only for beginners. Tech professionals would like simple and affordable too, right? Why wouldn't we? That's the idea behind Spaceship. This is the modern, the most modern, super cool, pioneering domain and web platform that takes the pain out of choosing, purchasing and managing domain names and web products like shared hosting, like virtual machines, like business email. So it starts with below market prices for domain registrations and renewals. And they have some really nice ways to deliver simplicity. For instance, I would have told Abby to use Unbox. It's a simple, easy way to connect your Spaceship products to your domain and configure it all in just a few steps. Couldn't be easier. And if you need some more help, you've got your very own AI assistant, Alf. Alf. To make life easy, from domain transfers to updating DNS records. In fact, she could probably just say, hey, Alf, connect my site to Shopify. Connect my domain to Shopify. Alf would have just done it because Alf loves the stuff you don't. There's also, and I love this, a roadmap for exploring, suggesting and voting on new features and products. Because Spaceship really wants to be responsive to you. It's customers. Customers. So you can go to the roadmap and you can vote on what's next. Customers in the tech community can get what they really need. In fact, one of the things that came up in the roadmap, and I want to talk more about this another time, they've created a messaging system that uses your domain as your unique identity. So you got a domain name. People can voicemail, text mail, can video chat with you using your domain. This is. Is brilliant. All came from the roadmap. Visit Spaceship.comTwit Discover exclusive deals on domains and more. Spaceship.comTwit. i told my daughter, don't call me. Call Spaceship. Spaceship.comTwit. you had a good story, Mike, about Captchas. It's over. Oh, wait a minute. We got to do Google I O. All right, we'll do one thing with. We'll do one thing with Google I O and then we can move. We did do vo, right? What do you think about the glasses? So Meta showed at its last conf developer conference, these Orion glasses. But they said these are years off. Well, Google had a live demo of These glasses, they say we're going to work with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster to create spectacles with your prescriptions in them. They've got Samsung working with them. It's called Android xr. When we first heard about Android XR it seemed like kind of a speculative thing thing. Not anymore. You were a big Google Glass fan, Mike. This is the next generation.

[Mike Elgin]

It's return of the glass holes. We're coming back.

[Leo Laporte]

Heads up display using a laser projection. What was it Anthony? You actually had these. Was it xreal? What were the glasses?

[Brian McCullough]

It was focals by north at Google acquired like four or five years ago. But I think they're partnering with xreal.

[Leo Laporte]

Xreal.

[Brian McCullough]

Xreal is one of the partners.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. So it's a laser projection of a heads up display. So it looks, it looks like regular glasses. Yeah, one. It's only on one lens. The one lens you can see things like notifications. They showed simultaneous translation.

[Mike Elgin]

Yes. And that's huge. So I'm a big Ray Ban meta fan only because nothing else exists like it. And it's been frustrating that after all this time other companies like Google haven't stepped up and done something like Ray Ban meta. Yeah, I'm excited about the one that will show you the, the, the, the screen. And of course you can also do two screens. That's more expensive. It's heavier. Heavier usability.

[Leo Laporte]

Look at this as you're walking around. It will show you how directions on the, on the glasses when you look.

[Mike Elgin]

Down to, to make sure you don't step into a manhole, open manhole, you'll.

[Leo Laporte]

Still see the direction, you'll still see an open manhole.

[Mike Elgin]

It's pretty great. But really what, what, what we're getting to the, the easiest prediction to make in technology and has been for like three years is that we're all headed for a world in which lots of billion, a billion people will be wearing glasses that are connected to AI and you'll have what Google is now describing as a universal assistant. It's basically a AI chatbot that's agentic, that knows who you are, that knows your preferences, knows what you've done, knows how you talk, knows everything about you and will help you and guide you and give you advice and make sure you don't step into manholes. And part of this is, is, you know, generic things like walking directions. But a lot of it is just like, you know, you can spitball stuff like what do you think about this? Or you know, and it will, it'll. And this is what do you do.

[Leo Laporte]

That with your Ray Bans now because you can talk to meta.

[Mike Elgin]

I do as much as I can, but it's actually better with Perplexity. So as you, as you guys pointed out on intelligent machines, I think it was, and probably twit as well, Perplexity has sort of hijacked the iOS. I'm an iPhone user and it's basically you can put things on your reminders, you can, you can book a table on OpenTable.

[Leo Laporte]

It's agentic already.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, well, it's. It's got aspects of agentic AI to it, but. But more importantly, it's a better universal assistant because basically it has a. Only on the iPhone, not on Android. It has more advanced things on the Android. But one thing it has on iOS is that it's persistent. So you can basically be talking to it through the Ray Ban metaglasses, by the way. Way. So you can just. The Ray Ban meta glasses, among other things, are just a Bluetooth headset to your. To whatever's going on in your phone. Right. So.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. With really good speakers on your temple.

[Mike Elgin]

Exactly. And so with the perplexity and a camera interface going, you can basically just have it open and listening. And you're just walking around, you're like, hey, you know, what about. Tell me more about that thing we were talking about two minutes ago. And it will just pick up right where it was.

[Brian McCullough]

Mike, Mike. That's the key. Right. That's the thing that all of a sudden in the next five years, this is the new hotness in hardware. It's the fact that AI has actually made smart glasses a reasonable proposition at this point.

[Mike Elgin]

Exactly. Especially with agentic. I'm sorry, multimodal AI, which is what Google's getting at here and which will be perfectly universal.

[Leo Laporte]

You can take a picture of something or you don't even take a picture. You say, I'm looking at. You do that now with meta. Right, Right.

[Mike Elgin]

We're at some point. I do. We'll get to some point where we'll just have the multimodal AI constantly hoovering up everything you look at. I already do it with a special mode. It's an experimental mode called live AI. So if you say, hey, meta, start live AI. And it will just be looking at everything and you can say, wait a minute, I just passed a road sign a couple of minutes ago. What did that say? And it'll tell you.

[Leo Laporte]

And what's really interesting, what about the privacy concerns here? Because, I mean, it's almost feels like today we have to either have privacy or good AI. You can't have both.

[Mike Elgin]

Well, nobody cares about privacy. There was a. What was it? There was an app that came out recently and I think it was Gen Xers. And basically it's an app that says, can we. We'll buy all of your personal data from you. Your location, your this, your that. And the price is $65. And a huge number of people are willing to do this.

[Brian McCullough]

Shoot, yes, there's a lot of startups doing that right now. Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

But I mean, already if, if you, if you walk around, everyone's got a phone in their hand. They, you don't know if their camera is going. You don't know if they're recording video. It's. Everybody's being recorded all the time. And with glasses, it'll be even more so. The difference is with glasses, it informs the other person that you're recording, at least with Ray Ban meta glasses. But, but it's going to be very powerful and I think it'll replace the smartphone within 10 years.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But don't they. Right now they entirely rely on the smartphone? I mean, that live AI, how long does the battery last when you're in that mode? I mean, once you start putting the processing power and all of this technology into the glasses on their own, you're going to really struggle with the hardware.

[Mike Elgin]

Software balance, especially when you have the screen. Also.

[Leo Laporte]

That'S what's holding it back right now is battery life.

[Mike Elgin]

Well, it's battery energy that's generated. It's up against your temples. Right. And this thing's getting hot.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you need your phone, so it may not kill the phone. You may have a little companion in your pocket. Right.

[Mike Elgin]

But I mean, look at, look at the quality of photos in the last 15 years. Like the same evolution is going to continue. It'll get cheaper, faster, better.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't think there's a problem with having to carry around a little computer in your pocket that ties.

[Mike Elgin]

No, it's not a problem. No, it's not a problem. What I think is going to be the replacement for the iPhone first will be. Be a watch and a phone working together. So you have a little screen. You'll have a bulky thing on your wrist that does some processing power and has radios in it and all that kind of stuff. And this combination will be a great replacement for the iPhone because you'll never have to take it out and look at it. It'll just be. You just have AI there helping you out all day.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's why lovers Sam Altman and Jony I've gotten together.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It'll be made from aluminium.

[Mike Elgin]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

$6.2 billion is the largest private acquisition in history. 6.5. Sorry. OpenAI bought what they bought.

[Brian McCullough]

It was. It was IO. It wasn't love from. Love from. Still exists. IO. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Jony Ives design firm still exists. They got Johnny, they got Evan Hanke who was another Apple designer. They got aluminium. Don't you say aluminium. JPT too.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Aluminum.

[Leo Laporte]

What did you have to train your yourself?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Aluminum.

[Leo Laporte]

It was a little bit creepy. The video.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I, I thought the bet. The. The greatest thing was I buying. Selling IO the day after IO it's like steal Google's thunder, why don't you?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

The wedding announcement. This wedding announcement.

[Leo Laporte]

Johnny, introduce.

[Brian McCullough]

That looks like the Simon and Garfunkel album cover. I can't remember the name of the album but remember where they're. It's in black and white and they're holding each other exactly like that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Maybe that was intentional. So I'm not going to play this video because.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, please don't.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we don't need it.

[Mike Elgin]

But, but, but let me say this Leo. So I. We know a little bit about it from leaks and other things that people have said and there's three reasons why this is not going to go anywhere and why it's going to fail.

[Leo Laporte]

So what? So the idea was some sort of AI device that Johnny. I would say.

[Mike Elgin]

Right, exactly. It's not going to be a phone, it's not going to be glasses and it's not going to be a watch. But there's a problem, something. The first problem is they won't have a problem to solve. AI chatbots are totally being commoditized and becoming ubiquitous. Every device we have will have AI in it. Have AI Chatbot in it. The second one is you can't be glasses for AI. AI, look. AI cameras. Look at what you're looking at. If speakers are an inch from your ear and, and the, and there's a screen is right in front of your eyes.

[Leo Laporte]

Better than AirPod even. Right?

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

This is what you want. Plus you want a heads up display and you want audio, of course.

[Mike Elgin]

Exactly. And the third reason.

[Leo Laporte]

Look, if for some reason they're walking down the streets of San Francisco looking for each other and they're not getting mugged, they're not getting. This is. No this San Francisco. It's a safe country.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

There were apparently people saw this being filmed and it was all completely staged. Like all the bystanders and stuff were actors.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh Those are all extras. Yeah. Because they're not gonna let anybody get near Sam and Johnny.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Oh, actually, Simon and Garfunkel albums in the Discord. And it. My goodness.

[Leo Laporte]

Is this.

[Brian McCullough]

It's identical.

[Mike Elgin]

But. But here's the thing. It's. It's supposed to be a pocket device. You look at those skinny jeans that Sam Altman is wearing, he's going to put another device into those pants. I don't think so.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, it just. At this point, I don't understand why everyone's trying to make another piece of hardware. Because like you say, we already. I mean, the glasses make sense, but the phone or the watch?

[Brian McCullough]

Why?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I mean, because I think they were quoted as saying that this is going to be a device that you also put on your desk along with your iPhone and your Mac.

[Brian McCullough]

A third device.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Why. Why can I not use my phone.

[Brian McCullough]

When we say that this video is cringe, doesn't remind you of the Humane pin video.

[Leo Laporte]

It's exactly equally cringe and is now out of business.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, it is going to be like that, right? It is going to be like a humane pin.

[Leo Laporte]

Or did he was this crazy? Did he overpay?

[Mike Elgin]

Like.

[Brian McCullough]

Okay, I don't. I'm going to. I'm going to push back a bit, but. But I'm going to give you a conspiracy theory that I don't necessarily believe in. You know how they're trying to convert into the for profit thing?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Brian McCullough]

One thing that would help that happen would be to dilute the holdings, which.

[Leo Laporte]

They did because it was 6.5 billion in stock. It wasn't.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah. So the more you can. Can acquire things, the more you can dilute, the easier it would be to transform because then the nonprofit arm would have less control.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Yeah. This was the whole thing that Elon did to kind of try to screw them was offer to pay $94 billion for OpenAI. Trying to set a market price that was much higher than reality. Is that right? That's the whole theory here. But.

[Brian McCullough]

Okay, so that's the conspiracy theory. But my real pushback is this. Okay, let's buy into the fact that maybe Humane Pin didn't get it right. Maybe smart glasses aren't going to get it right. Maybe Johnny's not going to get it right. Like, he might not have his fastball anymore. Who knows?

[Leo Laporte]

But he definitely doesn't have his fastball anymore. By the way, I agree with you.

[Mike Elgin]

Oh, he was never that fast anyway.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, at least he was the guy.

[Leo Laporte]

Who foisted the butterfly keyboard.

[Brian McCullough]

Exactly. Touch bar I was going to say, but okay, so, but let's, let's. If what we said when Mike and I agreed that what has happened is that AI is maybe enabling a new type of hardware form factor.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Brian McCullough]

Okay. If you believe that then the people that should be worried, the people that had the worst, the person that had the worst week this week was basically Apple. And because like they. Jony I've is going. Even if he doesn't have his fastball to make a hardware, hardware that's going to replace the iPhone. You have IO that is doing smart glasses. That is AI stuff. You have President Trump yelling at them. Tim, Apple had the worst week.

[Leo Laporte]

It wasn't terrible for Apple.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, because, because bottom line is if you're right about this, this if, if AI is enabling a new hardware form factor, who's the furthest behind in AI?

[Mike Elgin]

Right?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh God, they're not even close.

[Mike Elgin]

But, but it's a huge failure on the part of Apple because this is a perfect category for Apple.

[Leo Laporte]

Why?

[Mike Elgin]

Because glasses are fashion and that's the business they really want to be in. Look at their, look at their watch bands. They really want to be in a situation where they're selling designs, like fashion designs on a massive scale for very high prices. It's a perf.

[Leo Laporte]

You have to think Apple wasted so much time and money on the car. Yeah. One could argue even Vision Pro didn't really forward anything for them.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

The glasses forward.

[Mike Elgin]

The Vision Pro is like the space program that got you Tang and all these other like follow on benefits. Right.

[Brian McCullough]

And Tang is a great business.

[Mike Elgin]

It's a great business. But, but it's, but it's like all the, the stuff that the Vision Pro is like the ultimate thing that wearing all day wearable glasses could do in 20, 30 years. So it's a good thing to have engineering in place I think and also have the developers working on this kind of thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, so maybe they are not so far behind.

[Brian McCullough]

No, they are completely far behind.

[Leo Laporte]

The play for Apple might be the smart thing to do. Might be what Microsoft did, which was instead of saying we're going to create AI is fire.

[Brian McCullough]

Fire Steve Ballmer.

[Leo Laporte]

That was smart, right? No, it would be the platform for AI that you will still want an iPhone, but you will have Grok and Chat, GPT and Perplexity and Claude and everything else on the iPhone and that's the way you access it.

[Mike Elgin]

Like search.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, like Search.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Leo, do you still wear your bee?

[Leo Laporte]

I. Why? Thank you for asking. I have it right here.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

This is that. I mean yeah, this is. It's gonna. You feel like it's got to be something like that, right? It's gonna. Whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

I think this is preparatory. I think this is the John the Baptist for the Jesus AI.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it's paving the way. And I'll tell you why I'm wearing this. Not because, I mean, look, right now I can ask it, you know, Whoops. Do you think Apple is behind an AI and it's just dumb. It's dopey. But that's not the point. It's also really slow. It's going to get back to us.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, the technology has gotten a lot of infrastructure.

[Leo Laporte]

The reason I call it the John the Baptist is it is right now collecting. Everything that I do, everything that happens to me, I am collecting in this database. It's already amassed hundreds of facts about me here. I'll read you some of the things.

[Brian McCullough]

Are you sure?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it seems to. Here's. It says we've generated. So it already has well over a thousand facts about me in. In hobbies, technology, entertainment, health, food, politics, sports, general. But here's a few. It says, Please review these 81 facts we generated in the last day based on listening to everything you're saying.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

And is it just what you say though, or does it also hear like the podcast?

[Leo Laporte]

It doesn't hear you guys because you're not. Not on speakers, but it went. Here's my wife.

[Brian McCullough]

I was at a conference last week where someone had to ask permission. Consent that they were wearing.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, this is highly illegal. I admit it. I'm in a two party state. I'm. I'm screwed. So here's what it says. Leo's cat, Rosie often experiences happiness and contentment when going downstairs. Yes, that's true. Now I get to approve these. I share playful and affectionate communication with my wife, Leo. It keeps saying that. I don't know why I follow local Petaluma news. Okay, Yes, I enjoy engaging in conversations about family and community matters. A lot of these are dopey. Oh, I have a reformer for Pilates workouts at home. It's true. It recently got a haircut.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So this is, I think, where Google has such a leg up. Up in the AI.

[Leo Laporte]

Very good points.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

They do because it. They have or it has. They even said context that.

[Leo Laporte]

They even said that they admitted it.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

That's. Context is what is needed to make AI work. And we. So, for example, the bee, our reviewer at our wearables review of his song, reviewed it and it had all these facts about her that were Based on a TV show she was watching.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. By the way, it learned that that's old. It used to watch TV and it would say you're preparing to take over the Berlin CIA headquarters.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It's like whereas Google knows what's in your Gmail and it knows that perhaps, you know, you is connected to my.

[Leo Laporte]

Gmail, it's connected to my Google Calendar.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Feed everything into it.

[Leo Laporte]

And when we, I interviewed on Intelligent Machines, we interviewed the founders and I mentioned this TV problem, he said yeah, yeah, we're working on that and I think they figured it out because it helps. Hasn't done that in a, in a couple of months.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But the history, I think that the, the whole sphere that Google has, especially compared to Apple, I mean Apple could have that context if you give it access.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, they don't want to though, do they?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

This. Yeah. Whereas I think Google and this is the case in the, the smart home as well. Like the context is the most important element for creating. Yes. And they did they. I think we actually, we know more.

[Leo Laporte]

About you than anyone anyone else.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So if you don't mind, you know, do everything for you.

[Leo Laporte]

You know who does know probably more about me than even Google is Amazon.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well they know what you buy but they're trying very hard to find out more about you personally. But they don't have the same kind of access that Google and Apple does.

[Leo Laporte]

Because here's an article. This was a little scary to me from. This is from the Guardian, what I discovered when I asked Amazon to tell me everything my family's smart speaker had heard. Now I've had Amazon echoes throughout my house since they came out. There is apparently now this might only be in Europe but there is a link well hidden that you can download everything that Amazon knows about you. It says I requested and I suspect this is a GDPR thing. Yeah, I requested all the available data using an almost impossible to find link which when I clicked it brought me to Amazon uk. He got an email a couple of days later containing links to gigabytes of information. Every purchase I've ever made, records of every page turn of every Kindle book I've opened, every moment of prime content I've watched, measured by the second and every audio and transcriptions of every interaction we've ever had with our echo.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So you can delete all that? It sounds like they had not done that. You can like, you can just say to it it a delete what I just said.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. Most people leave it there, right?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, that is, that is.

[Leo Laporte]

But you know, Google would have wearing this thing intentionally. So it will collect all that. But if I could connect it to my Roomba, I would.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

This goes to what Mike was saying earlier. Do we. What is the value of privacy? Do we need privacy? Do we want our data to be private? Are we prepared for the benef. The trade offs for what benefits are we going to get if we are giving up our privacy? I believe we should not give up our privacy. But I do believe that we want the benefits that we could get from this type of interaction with AI. So what? Where do we find that balance?

[Mike Elgin]

But the reason you value privacy is because you know what you're talking about. The problem is that the public is just the.

[Leo Laporte]

I know what I'm talking about. I don't value my privacy.

[Mike Elgin]

Well, you also value your publicity. You know, you're a public person. Right. So, but, but seriously. And people don't understand the implications of, you know, of, of their privacy.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, here's a question.

[Mike Elgin]

You understand concrete things like give me five bucks and I'll, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Who doesn't give up their privacy be at a disadvantage in this new AI enabled world over somebody like me who's given.

[Mike Elgin]

It all up now for sure they.

[Leo Laporte]

Will and have a huge advantage, wouldn't I?

[Mike Elgin]

Starting with biometrics. I mean at the end of the day, as you know, this arms race between hackers and crackers and so on, and people see this ring keep secrets.

[Leo Laporte]

Ring, it knows everything about me.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Including my blood glucose because I'm also wearing a continuous glucose monitor.

[Mike Elgin]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

This is the OURA ring. But there are a number of these devices.

[Mike Elgin]

Your insurance company wants that data. Leo.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

This is the, this is where we're going, where, where people are going to learn about the value of keeping your data private. Because when right now we have, have these terrible phishing scams that we're seeing everywhere. You know the UPS scam where you might. My dad texts me like twice a week. Is this a link I should click? You know, and because they're out there and they're getting more and more convincing phishing scams. But now when you have all this data out there available, if people can get hold of, you know, data about your home, data about your blood glucose, if these phishing scams are just going to get more and more sophisticated and people are going to get, get to the point where something is going to happen that is going to make them realize that there is too much of their data out there. And that is why you need to protect yourself. I was just on a panel at the Connection Smart Home conference last week and moderating a panel about data privacy and AI. Because AI needs data, right? This is what to make AI work for us to do what we want to achieve these kind of, of personal assistant aspirations. They need our data. But if you're putting this data out there, I mean, there was a gentleman on the panel who is an insurance agent speaking of insurance, and he creates packages for people to protect them against their data being being hacked or being used by companies. Because one thing he started to see is people getting so much of their data fished that they're able to actually take out second mortgages on their homes. And then you one day show up and you've no longer own your home because so much information is out there and available and someone. And this isn't. This is what happened to the Graceland estate, right? There's the. The more and more data. We think it doesn't matter that our data is out there. We think it doesn't matter that someone knows that our smart home knows that our lights turn off every night or that we've locked our door and this armed our security system. But that's telling someone that you're not home. So there's. So I think that that value in our data, we. People don't realize how small little things like how many steps you took or how much glucose you have in your system can tell so much about a person. And once AI has that information, they can recreate you. I mean, this is not just about. About an avatar of you. This is like a digital twin of you. Imagine what someone could do with that. And that's where it gets scary and that's where we really need to think and stop and think hard about what we're doing with AI and our data because it's a slippery slope and there could be some really serious consequences.

[Leo Laporte]

I wonder if it's possible. I am, by the way, the poster child for. Right, the person who is giving every possible bit of information away. And you know, every once in a while while happened. The other day I accidentally put my Apple password on the screen and before the show was over I had to change it. But I think it's. I wonder if it's possible to have OPSEC in such a. If and maybe the companies have to help us with this. For instance, I have a lock on all of the credit reporting agencies, obviously, so nobody can take a mortgage out.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But how many people do that? I mean.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, no, but that's the thing. Is it possible to balance. Because I want to Give AI everything so that I get the benefit of that.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

But here you go. So this is why AI is perfectly inevitable as a completely ubiquitous technology in everyone's lives. The defense against all this will be AI driven. Our AI universal agent will go out, go through all our stuff. We'll give it permission and it'll figure out where the surfaces are that can be hacked, where our data is where, where that's vulnerable, where our passwords are being reused. It'll figure all that out for us and we'll be able to hopefully within a reasonable amount of time, say, yeah, go fix that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

And.

[Leo Laporte]

But again, or protect me or, you know, be watching. Have the perimeter guard. The perimeter actually takes. This is why CAPTCHAs no longer work. And we're going to talk about that in just a bit. You wrote an article about it. I saw another article. Captchas are. It's over. Thank God.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah. I hope.

[Leo Laporte]

We're talking tech with Mike Elgin. It's great to have you from MachineSociety AI. That's his blog, his newsletter, his podcast with Emily Forlini. Must listen. Absolutely. And we'll talk about Gastronomad too a little later on because that's a fun thing. Also with us, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy. She covers all sorts of things, mainly home [e-mail] that's why she calls herself the smart at home Mama. And your cat, your kitty cat was sitting there for a little bit over there.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But I guess, yeah, he was meowing though he made his way out. So on, on a break. Sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

I wish I'd get my kitty cat. We, we. I bought a little bed so he could sit right on the desk next to me. But she won't sit.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So mine likes to just sit right on you.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

In fact, earlier in the show he was walking around, but.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't mind that. I think that's the difference between us and cnn. I want your animals on the show and your children. Also with us from the Tech Meme Ride Home podcast, the Internet's historian, Brian McCullough. Always a pleasure to see you, Brian.

[Brian McCullough]

Thank you as always.

[Mike Elgin]

Thank you, Lee.

[Leo Laporte]

Our show today brought to you by US Cloud, the number one Microsoft unified support replacement. Maybe you've heard me talk about US Cloud before. It's really cool. I had a great conversation with these guys. I said, wait a minute, U.S. cloud, what do you do? They say, well, we are the global leader in third party Microsoft support for enterprises. I said, okay, why would somebody choose you instead of Microsoft software support? They Said, well We now support 50 of the Fortune 500 companies for a couple of reasons. One, switching to US Cloud can save you 30 to 50% over Microsoft Unified and Premiere support support. Imagine saving 50% on your support. But then I said, well yeah, okay fine, it's less expensive, but is it as good as good? No, it's better. Our response time is twice as fast. Our average time to resolution twice as fast as Microsoft. And they offer, unlike Microsoft, an SLA on response time. They guarantee it. They will tell you where you're wasting money on Azure. Now that is cool. They are excited to tell you about this new offering. It's their Azure cost optimization services. Now anybody uses Azure knows it's really easy to kind of lose track of your spend, right? Just, you know, a little Azure sprawl happens over time. A little spend creep. Well this is such good news from US Cloud. You can now save on Azure with an eight week Azure Engagement. It's powered by VBOX that identifies key opportunities to reduce costs, not reduce capabilities, just costs across your entire Azure environment you're going to get expert access to. And by the way, this is the third reason people switch to US Cloud. The best darn engineers in the business, an average of over 16 years with Microsoft products, they know this, their stuff. So at the end of those eight weeks, you're going to have an interactive dashboard that will identify, rebuild and downscale opportunities, unused resources and you could take that, reallocate those precious IT dollars towards the things you really need. Or if you want to keep the savings going, invest your Azure savings in US Cloud's Microsoft support and the savings go on. Right? That's what a few other US Cloud customers have done. Done. Sam, the technical operations manager at Bead Gaming gave us a great review. He used the Azure Engagement. He said it gave it five stars saying, quote, we found some things that have been running for three years which no one was checking. These 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 started to add up. Yes, I bet it did.

[Mike Elgin]

Did.

[Leo Laporte]

It's simple. Stop overpaying for Azure, identify and eliminate Azure creep and boost your performance all in eight weeks with US Cloud. See, this is why you need US Cloud on your team. Visit uscloud.com, book a call today to find out how much your team can save. That's uscloud.com to book a call today. And get faster Microsoft support for less, faster and better. All from us Cloud. Those engineers, all US based, the best in the business. I said, how do you get such great engineers? He said, we give them great benefits. We pay them well. They love working for us. They'll love working for you. Uscloud.com, book a call today. So your article, Mike, wasn't the first thing I'd seen actually, about the problems with CAPTCHAs. Yeah, I saw a European blog prefix EU talking about ticketing. So this is a particular problem. You know, there's a lot of scalpers going on, raising the prices of tickets. Companies that sell tickets really are trying to figure out a way to prevent these, you know, bots from buying tickets at great capacity. He's got a little history of captchas, but he says there's a problem. There's no capture out there right now that AI can't solve faster than a human can.

[Mike Elgin]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Not to mention the accessibility issue, because you've got to make them accessible.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah. Well, researchers from ETH Zurich published a paper back in September that found that Google's recaptcha version 2 could be solved by their AI 100% of the time. Humans hit about 71 to 85%.

[Leo Laporte]

So the bots do better with captchas.

[Mike Elgin]

At proving they're human. That's the test, yes. Right. They're better at proving they're humans than humans are. And so it's obviously obsolete now. ReCAPTCHA version 2 is what we're talking about. There's a ReCAPTCHA version 3 which you never see because it's invisible and behind the scenes, but it's harder and more expensive to use.

[Leo Laporte]

I see it occasionally.

[Mike Elgin]

There's.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the one where you get the checkbox from Google or from. Oh, that's not it.

[Mike Elgin]

Both the checkbox and the, you know, show me the buses, you know, identify.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, I'm not talking about that. Where you have to do anything. Just the one that says, are you human?

[Mike Elgin]

And you go, yeah, that's also version two. Oh, both the checkbox and the. And the mailbox, because it's using what.

[Leo Laporte]

It knows about you to say, yeah, you're not acting like a human.

[Mike Elgin]

But this is the most common kind because it's 200 million people a day use these.

[Leo Laporte]

I hate the damn motorcycles thing. I can't find another bridge to save my life.

[Mike Elgin]

They also don't know what a motorcycle is like. A Vespa is not a motorcycle anyway.

[Leo Laporte]

I just hate those. I also by the way, feel like I'm training AI every time.

[Mike Elgin]

That's yes, you feel that way because you are training. It's, it's unpaid labor. And, and, and in fact a study by University of California at Irvine found that, that users collectively spent 819 million hours and that's approximately $6.1 billion in wages that they never paid. So basically you're a slave to the Google, you know, AI training and visual.

[Leo Laporte]

Machine learning and you can't get around it.

[Mike Elgin]

Can't get around it.

[Leo Laporte]

What's Capture three?

[Mike Elgin]

Capture three is invisible. So it just basically looks at behavior. You don't actually see that one.

[Leo Laporte]

So you never even have a checkbox.

[Mike Elgin]

It just knows exactly. But even websites that use Capture three often Capture two also as a fallback because Capture three is more difficult, it's more expensive, it's harder for people.

[Leo Laporte]

It can also give false negatives. It can say you're a robot when you're not because you've never been to that site before or you know, you've, you know you're not behaving like a human all the time.

[Mike Elgin]

Exactly. And I, I find Captcha 2 to be particularly vexing because basically what I do all day is I open websites and read stuff and I'm also abroad so in Europe, you know, I'll use a vpn. I typically keep it running because I have to go to my bank, I have to do all these things that, where I have to pretend like I'm in the United States and it considers using a VPN to be suspicious. Behavior will therefore throw up more captchas. So it's like I have spent so much money to have a super fast computer that doesn't slow me down when I'm doing my thing. And then here Google is saying here, find the, find the scooters, right? And I just want to strangle there scrawny little necks and it's quite vexing and it's obsolete. And so I think it's good that we need to move beyond CAPTCHAs. We haven't yet.

[Leo Laporte]

Well how. But what do you propose in its place? Don't we need to distinguish? Maybe not maybe with MCP and A2A out now we don't need to distinguish between bots and humans.

[Mike Elgin]

But that's the thing we've set up a thing that's designed to prevent bots but from bots are better at getting past that system than we are. So it's obsolete. Throw it away, it's useless. Now we live in a new era where AI can just blow past this stuff. And in fact, if you recall, the first indication that there was a problem was when somebody gave some A.I. remember this? A couple years ago, they gave A.I. a problem, and it hired a human.

[Leo Laporte]

To go click the checkbox. Right. Because we're cheap.

[Mike Elgin]

Exactly. Anyway, so it's obsolete and terrible, and we need something else.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what else is obsolete and terrible? And we are getting rid of it. The penny.

[Mike Elgin]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Trump, when he came into office, ordered one of his many executive orders, ordered the Mint to stop making pennies. The reason is it costs 3.7 cents to make a penny penny. Most pennies end up in your drawer or in your car seats or anywhere but in the actual circulation. Treasury lost $85 million making pennies last year. So they said, all right, we're going to stop making pennies when we run out of those blanks. By the way, there's only one company in the world that makes the zinc blanks that pennies are made out of. And they're the ones who've been keeping the penny alive all this time. They. They actually have a website to save the penny because it's. It's a. It's their business. Let me see if I can find.

[Mike Elgin]

It was like, what I don't understand.

[Leo Laporte]

Artisan zinc. A R, T, a Z, N Zinc.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

They're gonna. They're gonna have to find new business.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah. I don't know. You know, it's like, is $85 million a lot of money?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but what. But what do we really need pennies for?

[Mike Elgin]

Well, I mean, so people can have flexibility in their pricing. For people. For little mom and pop shops that they don't want to round up around down 5 cents. They want to charge 23, you know, $1.23 for something. You know, they should. They not be able to do that.

[Brian McCullough]

But, Mike, honest. Honest to God.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

God.

[Brian McCullough]

And maybe this is a coastal thing, but, like, who's using cash?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I wish you could eliminate.

[Mike Elgin]

This is the other thing. It's like there's this sort of conspiracy of circumstance that's essentially making cash illegal or unusable. Right. Which puts everything. Makes everything digital, which makes everything kind of vulnerable. Right.

[Brian McCullough]

And makes it more expensive because everything. Everything under $5. Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

You need. Where do you. Where are you located?

[Brian McCullough]

Brooklyn.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Brian. Okay, so you're on the same coast as me. So I'm in the south. And we always get cash. In the summer. We get a stash of cash. You want to know why? Because of hurricane season.

[Brian McCullough]

Hey, by the way, I have cash all the time. But what I'm saying is I'm getting to the point where. And again, again, I'm acknowledging Coastal. When I don't pay for something that's too. Anything under $5, I always try to pay cash because I don't want to have to pay the upsell that the bodega said, you know?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Right. That's another reason. Right, Right.

[Brian McCullough]

So. But they. I get looked askance now, if it's like, why are you not paying with your phone?

[Leo Laporte]

I pay with my watch for everything. It's like you're not actually giving them money. You just tap this thing. Thing, and you walk away.

[Brian McCullough]

So even. Even if it's.

[Leo Laporte]

If.

[Brian McCullough]

Even if it's a two dollar. Again, Coastal bottle of Coke or whatever, like, it's. It's like they want me to pay with my tap to go.

[Leo Laporte]

I would imagine most stores don't want. This is the site, by the way, Americans for Common Sense. We conduct research and provide information to. To Congress and the executive branch on the value and benefits of the penny. It's paid for, of course, by Artisan, the company. The one company in all of America that makes the blanks that fuel this whole thing. And Americans for common [e-mail] has lost the battle. Even though 68% of Americans support keeping the penny, 76% of Hispanics and African Americans want to keep the coin. That kind of backs up what you're saying, Mike. It in bodegas and small stores.

[Mike Elgin]

And I would start with the proposition that what is the reason to get rid of it? Besides the cost, the fact that it costs more than a penny to make a penny? Like, what is the reasons? Besides that there really aren't any.

[Leo Laporte]

And you're right. 85 million is nothing in the U.S. 27.

[Mike Elgin]

We have a $27 trillion economy. What's 85 million bucks? It's nothing.

[Leo Laporte]

So you're in the save the penny group.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It's gonna cause problems, isn't it? I mean, if you go to the.

[Leo Laporte]

Artisan website, they say, welcome to the future of zinc. And here, by the way, here's the picture of the guys who founded Artisan. Wait a minute. Let me see if I can find it. Oh, it's. Where is it? It's on the site. I thought it's like a hundred years ago, there's a bunch of guys sitting around with beards. How you can unlock zinc's potential for your business. We have answers. Let's talk.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, Leah, let's find out.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's. Excellence Is just the beginning.

[Brian McCullough]

How can zinc help Podcasts?

[Leo Laporte]

Here they are. Here they are. These are the original zinc guys.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Don'T they look like they're thinking, what? How can we make some money? I know pennies well, remember pennies used to be made out of copper, but copper got so valuable that they stopped making them out of copper a long time ago. There's zinc with a copper that was a real.

[Brian McCullough]

There will be blood. I drink your milkshake.

[Leo Laporte]

Drink your milkshake. I drink it up. I drink your pennies. Well, here it is. 1998, the US Mint calls Artisan, becomes the sole supplier of US penny blanks. And the rest is history. So is the penny, apparently. You know, Mike, this is what I like, Mike, because you're the first person I met who said, yeah, let's save the penny. And you make a good point. Why do we want to get rid of it? What's wrong with the penny?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

They got rid of lots of bits of the currency in England. I think they got rid of halfpenny.

[Leo Laporte]

Shillings, two pence, tuppence, feed the birds, tumpets a bag. Canada got rid of its pennies and they're doing great. So, yeah, you don't need pennies. I think Australia. Didn't you get rid of the pennies too, Darren? I think Australia got rid of the pennies. All right, here's a depressing story I won't read. The Newark airport crisis is about to become everyone's pre problem.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

This fascinating story, it's so good.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, Lord. Daryl Campbell, your colleague.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Not that I wrote it, but on my site, it's a great story. My son is about to get in, start training to be a pilot. So I found this.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's cool. A commercial aviator that He's.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, he's 17, so he's. We're applying for schools now, so we'll see where it goes.

[Mike Elgin]

Just last week I went to a cousin's graduation forum from. From Brandeis, and he graduated in aviation. He's got a commercial pilot's license at the end of university.

[Leo Laporte]

Really cool.

[Mike Elgin]

That's all he wants to do.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Emery Riddle is actually quoted in this. That's one of the ones my son's looking at going to, but yeah, that's a good one. Arizona, it's actually Florida. There's one in Arizona and one in Florida. Better weather in Florida. Better weather in Florida and Arizona for flying. That's why all the sort of southern states have a lot of flight schools.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, my wife says we're not. We're not getting an airplane anytime soon.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Not if you want to fly into Newark, I wouldn't.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, apparently the problem at Newark is really the problem with Americans air traffic control system. Yes.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So what happened in Newark is getting the. The brunt of it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Brian McCullough]

And wasn't it because they shifted like geographically outsourced it all?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah.

[Brian McCullough]

No, no, no, it was, it was. Newark is now part of the Philadelphia zone and it used to be part of the New York City zone. And that specifically was what happened to Newark originally. Beyond that. Go on, Leo.

[Mike Elgin]

Radar contact lost. We lost our radar. So just stay on the arrival and maintain 6,000.

[Leo Laporte]

That's air traffic control saying, I can't see you.

[Mike Elgin]

Number six Charlie Bravo, you can continue on towards Caldwell.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

If for whatever reason you don't hear anything from any further, you can expect that a right down 1 and call comma, 119 or point 8 if you.

[Mike Elgin]

Don'T hear anything from me further.

[Leo Laporte]

Because you may not, because this isn't working so well. So apparently the air traffic control system we have is from the 90s, held.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Together by strings and held together by.

[Leo Laporte]

Chewing gum wrappers and string.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I swear there's the picture in this article that looks like the last newspaper I worked at the last print newspaper like 15 years ago. Looks like the basement with all the screens and computers wired together. And there was a guy called Dizzy that used to keep him running with staples and zip ties.

[Leo Laporte]

FAA's radar, satellite and flight data system is called Stars Light. This is from a 2007 Radeon brochure, Google's page.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, go on, click that button.

[Leo Laporte]

This is a little. Look at my server rack. Looks better than that. That's terrible.

[Brian McCullough]

Wait, the sun computer kind of scared me a little bit too.

[Leo Laporte]

But look at the floppy drum. What are those, floppy puppies? What the hell's going on here?

[Mike Elgin]

You know what we need? We need Elon Musk to go and fire people in radar maintenance.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that didn't help either.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It sounds like this has been a problem for decades. It's just that we're seeing because of this recent focus on air traffic safety for obvious reasons of terrible news stories that we've had to. That have happened the last few months. There's a, you know, every time there's an incident now it's making headline news. So it's really focused attention. Attention on what has been an ongoing problem. I mean, there's a quote in here about how they had to use their $1.4 billion repair budget to stretch over 5.3 billion worth of repairs that needed to be done to this system just to keep it up and running. I mean, this is, you know, it's definitely been held together by string and glue. And there's an, there's a disasters waiting down happen.

[Brian McCullough]

There was a, there was a New York Times interview. Was it last weekend with somebody? Or maybe it wasn't New York Times, but with an actual air traffic controller, which again is, you know, that's one person or whatever. But dude was like, listen, I don't want to fly. And we're, we're burned out. It's crazy. And he's like, the fact that this has gotten attention is the first time that money has been thrown at it in the last decade that I'm of.

[Leo Laporte]

Aware.

[Brian McCullough]

Aware of.

[Leo Laporte]

Yikes. Yeah, yikes. All right, let's take a break and just kind of think about that. What is the fix, by the way? Doge obviously didn't fix it.

[Mike Elgin]

What the fix is is somebody to come in and say, we're going to redo the entire system from scratch with a big thing using next generation technology. The problem is that, and I'm really coming off like anti current administration and I'm sorry for that, for those of you who don't like to hear such things, but the solution will come online after Trump's term is over.

[Leo Laporte]

So they don't care.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Well, they've been working on, I mean, they have been trying to implement new solutions, but they're like 10, 15 years out because they're such huge.

[Leo Laporte]

I presume that in 1990 this was state of the art, right? That track ball. Yeah, that was, that was the best trackball you.

[Mike Elgin]

They had. Yeah, that was really good. So floppies are the best, fastest floppies.

[Leo Laporte]

We've done it before. Admittedly we did it 45 years ago, but yeah, maybe we, maybe we could do it again. I mean, obviously you'd have to put it online side by side, you'd have to test it, you'd have to spend many, many billions of dollars on it.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah, but it's going to be done. You can't keep. It has to keep going the way we're to going going. It's like it has to happen.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It's going to be a long time. I mean, it's not something that can just be fixed overnight.

[Brian McCullough]

And you know, you know it will.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Fix decades of lack of investment, a big crash.

[Brian McCullough]

AI, AI.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's gonna fix everything. I'll fix it. Yeah, sure. All right, I want to take one more break there. There are still so many stories for instance, Pocket went out of business, which is sad. I liked Pocket. And then Kevin Rose says, I'll buy it. Kevin, of course, bought Dig back from the people who bought Dig. Kevin and Alexis Ohanian, kind of. It's funny because Kevin's founded Dig in the beginning. We know Kevin from our shows, of course. Alexis Ohanian founded a Dig competitor later called Reddit the T. Together, they're kind of exhuming Dig and bringing it back. And then Kevin just jumped on it. He said, we love Pocketed table Dig. Happy to take it over. So we'll see what happens. I did not know this, but Peter Rojas, who's also been this show many times, he was the founder of Gizmodo and Engadget. We had him on in those days, is the senior vice president of new products at Mozilla. I didn't even know that. So Mozilla is the one shutting down, sunsetting Pocket, but they haven't relaunched Dig, right?

[Brian McCullough]

I paid $5 or something.

[Leo Laporte]

You fell for it, did you?

[Brian McCullough]

I did, yeah. So is new Dig here? I haven't been told.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, Dig is not here. You paid $5 to participate in the.

[Brian McCullough]

In their discord or whatever?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. Planning for the new Dig. That's it.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah, why not? Hey, Leo, I'm in the news business, right? I got to know these things, which apparently I don't.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, yeah, what do you know? What have you learned for your five bucks?

[Brian McCullough]

Nothing yet.

[Leo Laporte]

Will you let me know when it happens? Happens. I. I kind of feel like a little responsible for this because Kevin used to be on the show all the time, and he was getting, you know, Dig three was the current version, and he was getting gamed a lot and stuff, and I made some suggestions for Dig4, which promptly killed him. And I even have a shirt that said I killed Dig four, but I'm respecting. Responsible, but I don't know if I am. Anyway, I have some.

[Brian McCullough]

Some interest I did for the Internet history podcast interview an engineer that also claimed they were involved in that, and it was a.

[Leo Laporte]

It was a catastrophe.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I don't really. I don't think it was really my fault.

[Brian McCullough]

No, I don't think I'm. I'm trying to let you off the hook.

[Leo Laporte]

I do have the T shirt, though. It's a good shirt, though. More to come in just a bit. But first, a word from our sponsors. Sponsor Storyblock. Oh, if you have ever used. And I'm talking mostly in enterprises here, legacy, cms, you know, in fact, when the Verge started up when, when it was, what was it called? My Our Next thing or something like that. The whole thing that Nilai and the gang were trying to do was create a great cms, a great content management system. So the writers would like to write that the IT would just kind of facilitate the whole thing. Unfortunately, most enterprises are struggling with legacy CMSs that promise enterprise great features. But what do you get? Slow, clunky systems that need developer support even for the smallest update. And if you're trying to move fast, whether you're a marketing company or a publication, that's a Nightmare, right? Well, StoryBlock has a much better way to do this. Unlike those monolithic cms, storyblock is headless. It decouples the back end from the front end. And I know a little bit about this because we decided that we made the same decision when we set up our website so that the back end is an API driven robust interactive thing with a front end that can be built in any framework. React Astro Vue marketers get to use this beautiful CMS and intuitive visual Edge editor to create and update content without filling out dev tickets. And Storyblock, by the way, scales whether you're a freelancer or part of a global enterprise. Because it's running on a global cdn, AWS data centers all over the world, us, Europe, Asia. It's built for performance at scale. So what do you get? A robust backend with an incredible CMS. And the front end could be whatever you need. StoryBlock is enterprise ready, built in, role based Access control, Enterprise SLAs top tier security. The stuff Fortune 500s demand. One global e commerce giant has switched to Storyblock and cut their content update cycles from weeks to hours. Another major brand, brands you would know, empowered marketing to launch campaigns independently, freeing up the devs for bigger projects. They just push it out and it's there. StoryBlock has an API first approach. I'm such a believer in this. So your content loads fast, fast anywhere in the world. That means better ux, higher engagement, improved SEO. And man, you're going to love their real time visual editor. Marketers see exactly what their content looks like before publishing. No more endless back and forth over minor tweaks Devs, you get fewer interruptions, marketers, you get more autonomy. It's a win all round. And if you're an agency, StoryBlock offers multi client workspace. With flexible permissions and seamless collaboration tools, you can manage multiple products without disrupting development workflows. So whether you're a startup, an enterprise or an agency, juggling multiple clients. StoryBlock gives you the power and flexibility you need. Try it today. Storyblock.com twitTV25 and use the code TWIT25. TWIT listeners will get 20% off for the first three months on growth and growth plus plans. That's storyblock.com twitTV 25 and the code is TWIT25 for 20% off the first three months on growth and Growth plus plans. S-T-O-R-Y-B-L-O-K.com TWIT TV-25 with the offer code TWIT25. Storyblock. Yeah, that's the way to. That's a way to do it on. We go with the show. Very nice. By the way, I'm really thrilled to have you, Brian and Jennifer and Mike on the show. Mike, you're in the U.S. weirdly enough.

[Mike Elgin]

Yes. Oddly enough, I am for a couple of weeks. We just got back from Sydney, Sicily.

[Leo Laporte]

How did that go? That sounds so cool. So for those who don't know, Mike does these. Mike and Amira do these incredible gastro nomad adventures.

[Mike Elgin]

Yeah. What we do is we go to a place we all live together, maybe 10 people or so. And we all day, every day. We do secret surprise things that around food. We go to farms, we go to dairies, we go to restaurants, we go to. We do cooking classes, we do all kinds of amazing things, a lot of which are, you know, completely unexpected. And we do them in the most beautiful food places in the world like Provence and now Sicily, Oaxaca, Mexico City, et cetera. And it's just such an antidote to the modern world because we go to traditional places, stay in traditional houses. We don't see tourists. We just live the way life ought to be lived, dining outside when we can. And it was just, it's drinking the world's most fantastic wine. It's, it's really so much fun.

[Leo Laporte]

Fantastic. Yeah, I can vouch for it. We did the Oaxaca adventure a couple of Halloweens ago. A couple of. Yeah, Dia de los Muertos ago. And it was so much fun.

[Mike Elgin]

That's right. And that was so fun to have you on it. And. Yeah. So.

[Leo Laporte]

So Fortnite is back in the app store. Is your 17 year old excited about that, Jennifer?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

He's 17, so no.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, he's past Fortnite.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Oh, yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, really? Oh, really?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Fortnite is like the 9, 10, 11.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm kidding. Really?

[Brian McCullough]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

I feel so old.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

He gave up on Fortnite probably about three years ago. I don't want. We've talked about this before. But what he went to. But I'm too ashamed as a parent, so I'm not going to say it.

[Brian McCullough]

Wait, well, I need to know because I've got younger kids.

[Leo Laporte]

Was it Call of Duty?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

No, Grand Theft Auto.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, he's gotta be excited. Cause Grand Theft Auto 6 comes out in a year.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So excited. He'll be in college though, so he probably won't be playing video games.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, so you can guarantee you dropping grades that month. Well, that's good. All right. Just something to look forward to.

[Mike Elgin]

I love your optimism though. He'll be in college, he won't be playing video games.

[Leo Laporte]

No, he'll have grown out of it by then.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Oh, no, he. Well, I mean, yes, I think he will, honestly, because he'll be flying real planes so he won't have to.

[Leo Laporte]

That's true. That's more fun, isn't it? Yeah.

[Brian McCullough]

But hey, listen, you know, that's what.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Got him into the pilot was Microsoft Simulator.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I know, it was so much fun because my husband's so anti tech and he was like so upset about him getting into video games. Even though we built his PC together, you know, we tried to do it all, like that's good, you know, and then he's, you know, it's the old adage that we all heard growing up, you know, playing video games, you'll just rot your brain, it'll get you nowhere. And now we're all hugely successful in tech. But now, you know, this is, it's interesting to see the, the next generation, what they're going to take away from the experiences they've had. The creator kind of economy. I know your son Leo has taken a new path that's based around social media.

[Leo Laporte]

I feel like he was very lucky. I mean, I wouldn't recommend this path.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

To anybody, but it does open, you know, interesting team sandwich mogul. But I'm excited that he, you know, that's what inspired him to become one of the things that inspired him to become a pilot. There were.

[Leo Laporte]

That's really cool. Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

John C. Dvorak used to say his kids were better drivers and did better on the driver's test because they played driving games when they were young. I'm not sure I bought that. But. But Simulator is very accurate. I mean, that's an intentionally very accurate way to fly.

[Brian McCullough]

Hey listen, as a, as a 47 year old old, I'm more excited about the new Mario Kart than anything.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you Order a Switch too?

[Brian McCullough]

Absolutely.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you gonna get it on the.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, not only that, all of my friends from high school, all the other 47 year olds, all we care about is Mario Kart, so.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I really. I have not ordered a switch 2 because I can't figure out how to get through the.

[Brian McCullough]

No, I put in with Nintendo. I don't have one yet, but no.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, in fact, you'll have it, what, in a week?

[Mike Elgin]

Soon.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, but no, but they haven't even sent me the email yet. They're supposed to because, by the way, all of my stupid 47 year old high school friends play Mario Kart online all the time and we're supposed to be grandfathered in for having played online all the time.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, because you have to have 50 hours of online, of Switch play.

[Brian McCullough]

Believe me.

[Leo Laporte]

You got that? Huh? I was trying to. I played in the. During COVID I played the. What's that silly game, but for Animal Crossing.

[Brian McCullough]

Animal Crossing.

[Leo Laporte]

Animal Crossing. For. For most of the first year of COVID but I don't know if that's going to count towards my 50 hours.

[Brian McCullough]

No, because you got to be online with other people. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you do. Oh, yeah. Because I asked, I put in, but I haven't gotten an email, so I don't know what the, what the story is.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Fortnite must still be the big hot thing for the younger.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it's funny because. Because Apple at first refused Epic's application to put Fortnite back in the store. And the judge said, okay, first of all, you don't need me to work this out, but if you don't work this out in a week, I want the name of the person who's responsible for keeping this from the store. Within 24 hours, Fortnite was on the store. So I guess Apple realized that they were running a pretty hefty risk. I don't think Tim Cook's name would have been on that. That list. Speaking of gaming, Gabe Newell, the founder, the CEO of Valve, has decided that he doesn't want to let Elon do this picture. This picture's really wild. He doesn't want Elon to have all the brain implants, so he has a Neuralink competitor. Here's a. I hope publicity still of Gabe Newell getting a hole drilled in his head with what looks like a Black and Decker drill.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Anyway, it does say in the caption that it works. Was staged.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, thank God.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

To get a hole drilled in his head.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not so far fetched, though. Elon's Neuralink Had a robot that would drill a hole in your head and implant the thing, the electrodes. Now we make fun of it, but it's also, at least in Elon's case, it was used to. To help a paraplegic be able to communicate. So I mean there are some. There are some valuable uses for this, for accessibility.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

This is the AI device that Jony, Ivan, Sam Alton will come up with.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I hope not. Anyway, this company is called Starfish Neuroscience and they plan to produce their very first brain chip later this year. Okay. Okay. I actually like this idea. Infrared contact lenses that let you see in the dark even with your eyes closed because it's not sensing light. Visible light. Sensing infrared radiation. It's light, but it's not visible. Unlike night vision goggles. They don't need to be powered. This is from the Journal Cell. And they let the wearer perceive multiple infrared wavelengths. And because they're transparent, they're also heads up displays. You can see both infrared and visible light simultaneously. Although the infrared works better with your eyes closed. How about that?

[Brian McCullough]

Wait, wait.

[Leo Laporte]

What?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Wow, that's just. Yeah. Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that wild?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It's pretty wild because I guess it.

[Leo Laporte]

Goes through your eyelids.

[Brian McCullough]

Wait, say that again.

[Leo Laporte]

It goes right through your eyelids.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So you can see with your eyes closed?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, the eyes. Closing your eyelids eliminates the visible light. Most of it. But the infrared I guess still goes through. Our research opens the potential for non invasive wearable devices to give people super vision.

[Brian McCullough]

They did promise us self driving cars and maybe X ray vision.

[Leo Laporte]

They use nanoparticles that absorb infrared light and convert it into visible wavelengths. That's a really wild idea. I mean, I don't know what you're going to do with this, but imagine at some point you could have put in contacts that would let you see in the dark. Dark.

[Brian McCullough]

I can think of things you could do with that. But military mostly.

[Leo Laporte]

But yeah, I guess if you're seeing infrared, what you'll see is heat.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And so you'll see animals and humans moving around. You won't be able to see walls.

[Mike Elgin]

What? I mean, what if you slept with these? Then you had your eyes closed and you slept.

[Leo Laporte]

You had great dreams like sleeping with.

[Mike Elgin]

Your eyes open, wouldn't it?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I guess. Now we're still a little ways away from this being usable. The contact lenses currently can only work with radiation projected from an LED light source. But they're working to increase sensitivity so they can detect. So it has to be pretty bright infrared light anyway. I thought that was cool.

[Mike Elgin]

Fascinating.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Science you know, science, science.

[Brian McCullough]

Eyes closed.

[Leo Laporte]

Speaking of science, your spit is going to Regeneron.

[Mike Elgin]

All right.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, keeping your data private.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, actually, this might surprise you, but I deleted my data from 23andMe. And it turns out I didn't really, probably didn't need to because the court appointed a privacy ombudsman. And Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, which has acquired 23andMe, which filed for bankruptcy in March for a surprising 256 million doll dollars, says they will continue to offer DNN DNA testing. But I think they're also are interested, as any pharmaceutical company would be, in the data itself. Not in your individual data, but in the connections between various genetic traits and. And physical issues and so forth.

[Brian McCullough]

Is there a meaningful difference? Have we learned that like all data can be.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, yes, which is why people were concerned. It's why I deleted my spit. But, you know, they're actually. I read it. So they say we're not gonna. Don't worry. That's what they say. Don't worry. Regeneron uses DNA for research as development treatments to prevent blindness, asthma, several forms of cancer, Ebola and COVID 19. They said purchase of 23andMe will strengthen its research into new drugs to treat serious diseases. Did you read, by the way, the article in the New Yorker about Chinese babies and adoption? I don't. This might have been a brand new article. I didn't put it in the rundown, but it's related to this. It turns out that many of the adoptions, you know, was a real. It was a huge. A wave of them a couple of decades ago. In fact, I have several friends who adopted a baby from China, mostly girls, because of the one child per family rules. They were told many of these babies were abandoned on street corners and so forth. Turns out, not so much, not so fast. And the way we're finding this out is through 23andMe. You knew there'd be a connection. This is the article. The Chinese adoptees who were stolen.

[Mike Elgin]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

As thousands of Chinese families take DNA tests, the results are upending what adoptees abroad thought they knew about their origins. Now, many of the people whose children were taken away during this period, and that's what it often happens, they were actually taken from the family families or even stolen from the families are too poor, too illiterate to do 23andMe. But there's a US organization that is getting DNA tests from them and then compare and then helping others find their family. And they talk about a. A student at Purdue who got an email from 23andMe saying that her kit came in, in and we found your father. She said it's at the top of the list of, you know, there's a relatives tab. Right. And it's found cousins of mine, the top of the list. Joe Jong ji, born in 1956. The report said you inherited half of Joe's DNA. Predict your relationship father. Now, she was one of the many girls adopted in the last, you know, 20 or 30 years from China. She was told by her parents that her parents had given her up to an adoption agency. But it turns out she was essentially stolen from Zhou Jiang Chi and he has been searching for her ever since. Took advantage of these agencies in the us Got his DNA collected, hoping that this exact thing would happen, that his daughter would look and find her.

[Mike Elgin]

I mean it. With 23andMe, as long as you hawk one up and send in the tube of saliva, that happens almost automatically. They'll send you an email saying, we found your sibling, we found your, your offspring. And it's, it's amazing for people who don't know what happened to their loved ones, this is like quite, quite a story.

[Leo Laporte]

It is, it is. And it's also a very sad story because we're learning the origin of many of these children that have been adopted from China. Many of these girls have been adopted from China. Anyway, worth reading. It's in the New Yorker. Just, I guess. Yeah. May 23rd. It just came out in this week's New Yorker. The Chinese adoptees who were stolen little tie in to 23andMe. Good news. U.S. solar has generated more power than hydro in 2025. Yeah. Rising demand still outpaces the growth of renewables in the US but, but the, the growth is good. Not so much in China, where solar's growth has not been enough to offset rising demand. Natural gas still the biggest source. And there's a big 18% coal, which is problematic. But solar, hydro and wind represent a pretty good chunk now of our energy budget.

[Brian McCullough]

Renewables, only one, only one thing that can happen and it's all about the math.

[Leo Laporte]

What's that?

[Brian McCullough]

It's going to get cheaper. Once it's cheaper, it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. Like, it's not a political issue anymore. It's just cheaper.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Economics rules in the long run. Yep.

[Mike Elgin]

One of the things I'm really excited about is California. State of California is exploring the use of, of covering water canals. There's a lot of water being moved around in California, especially into Los Angeles, where there isn't nearly enough water locally to support that population. And so these canals are just open waterways. They're artificial rivers and they're talking about just putting solar over them. So the first thing that's great about this is this is available space that isn't taking away somebody's farm or whatever. Whatever. And the second thing is that it shades the water, reducing evaporation.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Mike Elgin]

And so this, these, these benefits looks like it's completely going forward. And they're going to be covering miles and miles and miles of canals in California with solar panels. And I think this is just the best idea I've heard in a long time.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, except for lasers in the home.

[Mike Elgin]

Well, that's good. Good point. Right? That's a good point.

[Leo Laporte]

Jennifer Pattison too. He says, I let lasers power my smart home. And I don't want to go back.

[Brian McCullough]

Jennifer, I want you to know I did this story on my podcast this week.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Oh, you did?

[Brian McCullough]

I did, yes. Before I knew. I didn't know you were on the show this week. So.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

No, why don't you tell me? Tell us about the story.

[Leo Laporte]

Tell Jennifer what happened. Guess what happened.

[Brian McCullough]

But if you have lasers that shoot at things, then you don't have to worry about them being recharged. If you have lasers shooting at the things.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute, is that accurate? That's accurate. Is this the long dreamed of charging wirelessly through the air thing?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Wireless power? It's in my home.

[Leo Laporte]

It works.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

It works. Works, yes.

[Brian McCullough]

Wait, Leah, you didn't know about this? I was so excited about this.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, yeah, I might have seen the article, but go ahead, tell me all about it.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yes. So it's a company called Y Charge. They first launched many, many years ago at CES. I think it was 2018.

[Leo Laporte]

I remember seeing him. Yeah. And thinking, this is stupid. Well, it's not possible to send enough juice. This thing takes 15 watts to charge. How are you going to send that through the air?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

This is the key for the smart home, is the smart home has many low powered, battery powered devices. Low, low energy use battery powered devices like smart door locks, which was what I was testing in this article. This is actually a consumer product that you can buy. It's the Alfred smart lock. And it's in. If you scroll back up to that picture, you can see.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Right now I have to take the batteries out of my lock every once in a while.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

And that. And so this is, you know, the use case right now is this door lock. And if you zoom in on the picture, you can see the 700 sensors on my door and you can laugh at me. But at the top there is. Keep going. There you go.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh my God. What are you doing?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

The life of a smart home reviewer.

[Leo Laporte]

It looks like there's an eruption of some kind, some sort of skin disease happening to your door. What?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

But that's beside the point. But I just might make you laugh, but the door lock itself has a modified receiver on the back which is a photov. Photovoltaic. Modified photovoltaic panel.

[Leo Laporte]

On this part.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

On this part. See at the top, you see how it's a little chunky on the top. There's a. There's a better picture of it further down in the story.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm fascinated by all those. Is that all for burglar alarms? What is that for?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yes, but the top, it'll charge your toothbrush too. Yes, go back, go back. Sorry, Anthony. But at the top there in that picture.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, this picture?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

No, no, no, the one with the.

[Leo Laporte]

This one here. Where this.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Great audio. There you go. Do you see the. The thing in the ceiling?

[Leo Laporte]

There's so much to unpack.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

In this photo taken my crazy.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that a laser?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

That is. Is the Y charge device. It's mounted in a ceiling light panel. So a fixture. Yeah, fixture. Thank you.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So you can just swap out an existing light and put this modifier.

[Leo Laporte]

So it's now dark in your entryway for everything except the lock, which is blinded by lasers.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So. And what it's. It's. It's wireless power transfer. So it's transferring power to the back panel on the smart lock. And it. So I tested this lock for over a year. The first nine months I just used the device to power it and it was. So if, as you. If you're familiar with. If you have a smart lock, generally if you're lucky, it will go about six months without needing to be replaced.

[Leo Laporte]

That's how long my akara goes before.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah. And some. It's more like three. Some can go a bit longer. But it's. It's annoying. It's a. It's an annoying thing to have to do to change. Change the batteries out of your smart lock. It's not something that most people are used to doing with general locks, but. So when you upgrade to a smart lock, it's an added annoyance. Anyway, is there anything else we should.

[Leo Laporte]

Look at in your house that we've got talk about privacy.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So there's all sorts of weird things.

[Leo Laporte]

What are all these sensors for?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I test smart security systems and then.

[Leo Laporte]

Also those are all door monitors.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah. Door contact sensors. And then also for things like, you know, when you open the doors, the lights turn on. You can use them for home automation. Yeah, my.

[Leo Laporte]

I remember Stacy Higginbotham's family used to hate it.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Hey, so the, the, the Y.

[Leo Laporte]

Look at this. Could do the same thing with your toothbrush.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

But you need a little base station that's going to. And you have to have a light that's aimed at it, basically.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So there is in the ceiling of that bathroom another one of those devices. So this is the downside is that there aren't many products that work with this. But, but the idea being, especially in the smart home, there are so many low power devices. This is the lock. That's me, but no, I know we see you. This is the lock. And then there's another picture further down that shows the receiver on the back. There it is. So that's.

[Brian McCullough]

Is it universal? Is it shooting everywhere?

[Leo Laporte]

I'm sorry, shooting at that thing.

[Brian McCullough]

Okay.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah. And then there's a lithium ion battery specially modified in the back of the.

[Leo Laporte]

Door because it's being trickle charged. It's not really getting a lot. How much power is transferred by the laser?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it's got milliwatts.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

So they didn't give. They're quite cagey about specific details for proprietary reasons. But they say the receiver is able to Transmit. They have two different types that can transmit 100 to 300 milliwatts.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

To the device, to the lock, to the battery. In, in there.

[Leo Laporte]

And then trickle charge.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, it's a trickle charge, but it kept it at 100% for nine months, so it never dropped. And then I tested it, I took it out and tried.

[Leo Laporte]

Can you see the laser? Is it visible?

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

And so when you walk through it, it immediately cuts off. So it's infrared, obviously. Power.

[Leo Laporte]

Don't wear those contacts with this though, because.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Yeah, I was thinking about that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Whether. But yeah, I mean there. The issue is it was. It's very expensive. It cost about $1,200 to install all of this in my house. And all it is charging is my lock. What we need is more. You see there, there's the device plugged in and you know, we need more devices that could be powered by this. But there are many. So like things like smart shades or those smart sensors on my door.

[Leo Laporte]

I have. That's actually the biggest pain in the butt. I have automated shades. And every more often than I'd like, every few months I have to go around and charge everyone yeah, so if.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

You had one of these, it could power the shades, but that would be good. Other problem is the, this basically required an entire sort of redesign of the product to allow it to be charged. So there are still a lot of infrastructure issues that are preventing wireless power. Wireless power in our homes. Unfortunately it's not like so because it's the big difference between from say QI charging or QI charging. QI charging is the kitchen wireless power standard. And then QI charging I'm sure most people are familiar with, with your phones that's all contact based. So this, but this is over the air and they have grand plans. They say that, you know, at some point you might be able to charge higher power devices like smart displays, maybe even phones. But at the moment the best use case in the home seems to me these sort of lower power powered, battery powered devices that we are increasingly have more and more in our homes where the amount of e waste you get having to replace standard batteries constantly in your devices, there's just, it's, it's pie in the sky in terms of being able to actually buy products that work with it. This is the only commercial consumer product you can buy right now, which is the Alfred door lock. And you have to sign up for a special better program to get the Y charge device. But I feel like the the future, if there are more companies that would part and use this type of power, it could be. It's exciting. I think it's exciting.

[Leo Laporte]

It's unusual. It's unusual that way.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

I am a slightly unusual use case in that there are many things in my home that are powered by batteries, but like robot vacuum, for example. If you could have a wireless charging device keeping the robot vacuum powered as it goes around your home, then you would definitely come home to a clean house, especially with no socks in the way.

[Leo Laporte]

Jennifer Pattison Tui writes about these crazy things at the Verge. It's so great to have you. The verge.com and of course every month we have you on Tech News Weekly too. And it's so nice to see you. Jennifer, thank you for being here today. I really appreciate it.

[Jennifer Pattison Tuohy]

Oh, always a pleasure. Really enjoy chatting with you guys. It's nice to, nice to be here. It's been a while, so.

[Leo Laporte]

It has, but. And I don't know why. We'll have you back soon. That's all I can say. Brian McCullough same for you. We love having you on. He's at the Tech Meme Ride home. You can watch his VR visage or his AI visage on his YouTube channel. He looks happier than he does there.

[Brian McCullough]

Yeah. I don't know what's happening to the video, but I can still hear you.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the good thing about AI, it never pauses. It just always keeps on going.

[Brian McCullough]

Well, I love y' all.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you.

[Brian McCullough]

Brian.

[Leo Laporte]

Great to have you on the show. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Mike Elgin, don't forget his newsletter and podcast at MachineSociety AI. And as always, I have to give a plug since we talk so much about the evils of AI to your son Kevin, who does this incredible product called hello, Chatterbox, the smart speaker that teaches coding skills and teaches kids how to embrace AI without fear.

[Mike Elgin]

And since I was last on Twitch, there's been a lot of movement in this area.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

Executive order by President Trump that all schools have to embrace AI literacy.

[Leo Laporte]

That's true. Whereas as they call it, their A1.

[Mike Elgin]

But it's literacy.

[Leo Laporte]

A1 literacy. Yeah.

[Mike Elgin]

So don't. Don't take any chances. Get some steak sauce. And also teach AI literacy. No, but this is something that's clearly important, and kids need to learn.

[Leo Laporte]

I agree.

[Mike Elgin]

And that's what Chatterbox does. It teaches them what AI is, how to use it, how to use it responsibly, and it does it all with total privacy. So it's the only smart speaker you can legally use in schools. So it's a great product, and it's a great mission that his company has.

[Leo Laporte]

What I like about it demystifies it. So kids, you know, this is why I don't think kids need to learn how to code or need how to learn how to build a computer, but it demystifies it when they do. So they kind of understand that it's not some magical being. It's just programmers writing this stuff. And you could be one. One, too.

[Mike Elgin]

Exactly. It's not a person. It doesn't have emotions and feelings. It was built by someone just like you. And they really learned that because they build it.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly. That was the epiphany Steve Jobs had where he said, you know, the world was made by people just like me, and I can change it if I don't like it. That's right. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you, Brian. Thanks to all of you for joining us. We do twit every Sunday afternoon, 2 to 4, 5pm Pacific might be the evening for you, 5 to 8 Eastern time might be the middle of the night for some of you at 2100 UTC. But if you wish you could watch us live, because we stream it on YouTube and Twitch and TikTok and X.com and Facebook and LinkedIn and Kick. And if you're in the club, you get to watch the stream on Discord because we also have a lovely club, Twit Discord, where you can hang out day and night, talk with our hosts, talk with each other, watch special programming. That's where we do the streams for the keynotes now because we don't like being taken down and Apple's done that to us a couple of times. So the WWDC keynote will be June 9th. Micah and I will do that in the club. We did the Google I O keynote on Tuesday, the Microsoft Build keynote on Monday, all in the club. Plus special events like Stacy's Book Club, the eighth AI user group that meets the first Friday of every month that's coming up pretty soon. Chris Markworth's photo workshop. We did a great thing on Friday. And if you're in the club, watch it on twit plus feed. A little trip down memory lane with Dick DiBartolo of Mad magazine was so much fun. Played all the jingles, had a great time. The club helps us, so we want to make sure you enjoy the club. You get ad free versions of all the shows, the club, Twit, Discord, access to special programming, all for seven bucks a month. It's a really good deal, $84 a year. Twit TV Club Twit. If you're not already a member, please, we'd love to have you in here. It's about 25% of our revenue now. It makes a. It's a significant portion of what we need to make to keep going. And so thank you very much for your participation. We appreciate it. Twit TV Club Twit. After the fact of course. The show is a podcast ad support supported so you can get the ad supported versions on our website, Twit TV. There's a YouTube channel, there's actually a dedicated YouTube channel for almost all of our shows where you can see the video. Great way to share clips, also with friends and family. But the best way to watch or listen to Twitters, to subscribe to the audio or the video in your favorite podcast player. If you do that, would you do me a favor? Please leave a five star review supporting the show because that helps us not only gain audience, but it helps us with advertisers, helps us with everybody. Just, you know, five stars. You don't have to write a review unless you feel like it, unless you're otherwise moved. Also a reminder, if you want to know what's coming up on this show and all of our shows. We put out a free newsletter at TWiT TV Newsletter. You can subscribe. You'll get that every week, letting you know what's ahead. A number of club members who are in the Discord said, how do we know when you're going to do the thing with the dick or whatever? It's always in the newsletter, so subscribe to that and you'll always be up to date. TWiT TV Newsletter thanks for joining me, everybody. I hope you enjoyed the show. I certainly did. We'll see you next week. Meanwhile, as I've said for 20 years now, in our 21st year, another twit is in the can this See you later.