This Week in Tech 1034: Two I's and No P

Summary

Podcast Summary: TWiT This Week in Tech 1034: Two I's and No P

Release Date: June 2, 2025

In Episode 1034 of "This Week in Tech" titled "Two I's and No P," host Leo Laporte engages with a panel of tech experts—Lou Maresca from Microsoft, Ian Thompson from The Register, and Doc Rock from YouTube.com—to explore the evolving landscape of technology, particularly focusing on YouTube's dominance over traditional TV, the integration of AI in content creation and cybersecurity, and emerging innovations in robotics.

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1. Introduction of Guests

Leo Laporte welcomes his guests, setting the stage for a diverse discussion:

• Lou Maresca: Principal Engineering Manager at Microsoft, overseeing the integration of Python and Excel Copilot in Excel.
• Ian Thompson: Technology journalist from The Register, known for his sharp commentary.
• Doc Rock: Director of Strategic Partnerships at eCamm and YouTube expert.

Notable Quote:

"It's time for TWiT this Week in Tech. Great show ahead for you."
— Leo Laporte [00:00]

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2. YouTube's Ascendance Over Traditional TV

The conversation kicks off with a deep dive into YouTube's growing influence in replacing traditional cable TV. Doc Rock shares insights on YouTube's expansive reach, noting that "70 billion shorts a day" are being uploaded, highlighting the platform's massive engagement levels.

Notable Quotes:

"YouTube is swallowing TV whole."
— Leo Laporte [04:12]

"Yesterday YouTube reported that they're dropping over 70 billion shorts a day. It's insane."
— Doc Rock [06:44]

The panelists discuss how YouTube's flexibility allows creators to produce a wide range of content, from professional-grade videos to casual vlogs, catering to diverse audiences and preferences.

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3. AI in Content Creation and Distribution

AI's role in shaping content creation is a significant focus. Lou Maresca elaborates on how AI tools like Excel Copilot enhance productivity by automating complex tasks, while Doc Rock emphasizes YouTube's use of AI for content recommendation and ad targeting.

Notable Quote:

"Shorts work so well because it does play automatically and you can kind of thumb really quickly."
— Lou Maresca [14:53]

The discussion highlights the balance between leveraging AI for efficiency and maintaining content quality, with panelists acknowledging both the benefits and potential pitfalls of over-reliance on automated systems.

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4. Privacy Concerns with Government Data Aggregation

A critical segment addresses the implications of government contracts with companies like Palantir, which aim to centralize and cross-reference vast amounts of citizen data. The panel expresses concerns over privacy and the potential misuse of such centralized databases.

Notable Quotes:

"Should we be concerned about the idea of a centralized database combining all of those disparate functions?"
— Leo Laporte [36:53]

"These databases are very dangerous."
— Ian Thompson [37:25]

The conversation underscores the delicate balance between data-driven efficiencies and the safeguarding of individual privacy rights, questioning the long-term repercussions of such integrations.

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5. Jay Allard's Move to Amazon's Breakthrough Devices Team

Lou Maresca discusses Jay Allard's transition from Microsoft to Amazon's new team, 01, focused on developing "breakthrough devices." The panel speculates on potential projects, including advanced smart home devices and interactive gaming systems that could revolutionize user experiences.

Notable Quote:

"Amazon has a new team. It's called 01, and it's focused on breakthrough devices led by Jay Allard."
— Leo Laporte [78:38]

Allard's history with innovative projects like the Courier and Duo at Microsoft positions him as a key player in Amazon's ambitious hardware endeavors.

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6. AI in Coding and Software Development

The integration of AI in software development is explored, with a particular focus on Microsoft's Copilot in Excel. Lou Maresca shares his experience using AI for "vibe coding," where AI assists in writing and testing code, enhancing both speed and accuracy.

Notable Quotes:

"AI can... generate a test on it. That's where humans sometimes just save time to go and do those kind of edge case scenarios."
— Lou Maresca [97:26]

"It's more helpful, and I'm not... building products, using cloud... it definitely helps more than it hurts."
— Lou Maresca [102:33]

The panel acknowledges that while AI tools significantly aid in routine coding tasks, human oversight remains crucial to ensure code quality and functionality.

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7. AI in Security and Defense

Doc Rock introduces a segment on cybersecurity, highlighting how AI both empowers organizations and poses new threats. Zscaler, the episode's sponsor, is discussed as a solution that utilizes AI to protect against sophisticated cyber-attacks.

Notable Quotes:

"Hackers use AI to breach your organization. AI powers innovation but also helps bad actors."
— Leo Laporte [System Advertisement Segment]

"Zscaler's comprehensive Zero Trust architecture plus AI ensures safe public AI productivity, protects private AI integrity, and stops AI-powered attacks."
— Doc Rock [System Advertisement Segment]

The discussion emphasizes the dual-edged nature of AI in cybersecurity, advocating for advanced protective measures to counteract AI-enhanced threats.

---

8. Managing Children's Technology Use

The panel shifts focus to parental strategies for controlling children's access to platforms like YouTube. Lou Maresca shares his approach of blocking YouTube during specific times and monitoring content to ensure safe and educational usage.

Notable Quotes:

"I control at the network layer, so I block YouTube at certain parts of the day, like dinner time."
— Lou Maresca [27:47]

"The biggest thing is oversight, making sure I watch what they watch or I'm interested in what they're interested."
— Lou Maresca [28:24]

The conversation underscores the challenges parents face in the digital age, balancing the benefits of technology with the need for supervision and appropriate content.

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9. AI’s Influence on Content Creation and Potential Risks

Concerns about AI-generated content, such as deepfakes and misinformation, are discussed. The panelists highlight real-world implications, including legal repercussions and ethical considerations, as AI becomes more adept at mimicking human behavior and creating believable fake content.

Notable Quotes:

"We've got to the era where maybe it takes some skill, a lot of skill still, but videos can be created that are indistinguishable from real and can be used for propaganda or to influence or to persuade."
— Leo Laporte [115:00]

"AI can't break news. They can help, but they can't do that."
— Ian Thompson [113:27]

The dialogue emphasizes the importance of critical evaluation and the need for robust verification mechanisms to counteract the spread of AI-generated misinformation.

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10. Robotics and the Future of Human-AI Interaction

Doc Rock showcases the use of robotic dogs in educational settings, demonstrating how AI and robotics can engage and teach the younger generation about programming and technology. The panel touches on the advancements in humanoid robots and their potential applications.

Notable Quotes:

"These kids are brilliant; once you install this, you're going to go, how did I live without it?"
— Doc Rock [86:48]

"They want to teach kids how to program waypoints and have it do various things."
— Doc Rock [133:03]

The segment illustrates the practical benefits of integrating robotics into learning environments, fostering interest and skills in STEM fields among children.

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11. Closing Discussions and Upcoming Events

As the episode nears its end, the panel briefly discusses upcoming tech events like Apple’s keynote and the State of the Union address, emphasizing the continuous evolution of tech trends and the importance of staying informed. They also share personal anecdotes and future plans for the TWiT community, promoting their AI user group and other interactive segments.

Notable Quote:

"Join Club Twit. It covers about 25% of our operating costs and helps keep the shows on the air."
— Leo Laporte [141:37]

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Conclusion

Episode 1034 of "This Week in Tech" offers a comprehensive exploration of the shifting dynamics in the tech world, from YouTube's supremacy over traditional media to the intricate balance of leveraging AI for innovation while mitigating its risks. Through insightful conversations and expert opinions, Leo Laporte and his guests provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of current and emerging tech trends.

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For more detailed insights and ongoing discussions, listeners are encouraged to subscribe to the TWiT network and join the Club Twit community.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for TWiT this Week in Tech. Great show ahead for you. Lou Mareska's here. He works at Microsoft. He's a principal software engineer for Python and Excel. And Excel Copilot. He's got a lot of AI experience. Ian Thompson is here. He's the king of snark@the register.com and Doc Rock. Aloha from YouTube. YouTube's Doc Rock. We'll talk actually quite a bit about how YouTube is taking over for TV, AI taking over for movie making and humanoid robots for only $3,000. All that and more coming up next on Twit podcasts you love from people you Trust. This is TWiT. This is TWiT this Week at Tech. Episode 1034, recorded Sunday, June 1st, 2025. Two eyes and no P. It's time for TWiT this Week in Tech. The show. We cover the latest weeks, the week's latest. You know, the stuff that happened this week in the tech thing. Ian, help me. Ian Thompson is here for the register dot com.

[Ian Thompson]

Oh, come on. I fluff my opening lines.

[Doc Rock]

Better.

[Ian Thompson]

Much worse.

[Leo Laporte]

But you're so eloquent. You have the. You have that.

[Ian Thompson]

Are you kidding? I introduced twit words to twit people to the word wanker on live.

[Leo Laporte]

That's eloquen. That's using a word and it's perfect context. Anyway, great to have you. Ian reports on technology at the Register, the kingdom of snark in our tech journalistic area. It's so good to see you, Ian. Also here, Lou Maresca, longtime host of this Week in Enterprise Tech. He is principal engineering manager, guy responsible for embedding Excel or Python and copilot in Excel. Nice job, Lou.

[Lou Maresca]

Great to see you.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice to see you. Really, really love that idea. And also with us, Doc Rock from the Aloha State, YouTube.com docrock Director of Strategic Partnerships at ECAMM. And when he talks, the wall behind him listens.

[Doc Rock]

The wall. The wall listens.

[Leo Laporte]

I actually have that behind me, but I. I only have a little. This. This. I made it a clock, but it can have. It can be a spectrum analyzer. It's kind of cool. Really.

[Doc Rock]

That is cool. I need to divoom.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what those are? Divooms. Here, I'll. I'll put on the spectrum analyzer. Wait a minute. Let me see here.

[Doc Rock]

I like. I like a divoom. You know, everybody needs a good divoom.

[Leo Laporte]

Everybody should have a divoom in the room.

[Ian Thompson]

That is not slogan. That could work.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. These Are kind of like completely Chinese fabricated things here. Let's. Let's see if I can.

[Doc Rock]

Oh, there you.

[Leo Laporte]

Look at that.

[Doc Rock]

Hey, Analyzing the screen.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm talking to you. Yeah, pretty cool.

[Doc Rock]

Hey, look, I'm talking here.

[Leo Laporte]

I feel like it doesn't hear you, by the way, because I have, you know, headphones on, but I feel like it's a little distracting. And besides my background.

[Doc Rock]

Distracting? I just got here.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, not for you, but for me, the people, our viewers, like a clock. For some reason, I've always. Since we started doing this 20 years ago, I've always had a clock in the background. And people, when I take it away, they get. They get all upset. In the chat room, they say, but we use it for our workouts or something like that. What are you working out for while you're listening to this? Nuts. Are you nuts?

[Ian Thompson]

It's a good way to get through what would be an otherwise really boring activity with something interesting. So, you know, it's just to get.

[Leo Laporte]

Through twit by exercising? Is that what you're saying? Because.

[Ian Thompson]

No, no, what I'm saying is if exercising. Because I have. When I'm at the gym, I have my mixtape and it's usually hard techno, but some documentary stuff put in between.

[Leo Laporte]

So yeah, I like it that I control my own TV in the gym. So I. I watch YouTube videos. So one, one time I feel like I can watch YouTube videos.

[Ian Thompson]

You have a personal TV in the gym?

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, well, the gym's in our house.

[Ian Thompson]

Ah, okay, fair enough.

[Leo Laporte]

So actually I was going to start with the dystopia stuff, but maybe it's too, too soon. Maybe we'll start with the YouTube stuff and leave the dystopia for a little bit later in the show. How about that? I hate to start with the hardcore stuff. YouTube is swallowing TV whole.

[Doc Rock]

Oh, my goodness. Yes, they are.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's actually. This is not the. This is not the story I was looking for, but it's. You get the idea. Let me see. This is from Bloomberg. Everybody knows that cable. Cable TV's dying, right? YouTube is what everybody under 30 watches. And now, according to Bloomberg, it's coming. YouTube's coming for the sitcom. Creators are making longer shows to meet viewers where they are increasingly in front of their TVs. Doc, do you have any sense of how much of your audience watches in the living room on a TV as opposed to on a phone or on a computer?

[Doc Rock]

Yeah, why, yes, I do, considering so my audience is specifically Gen X creators. But I do get some people like just above 30, right? I go down to like 32. Ain't nobody talking to you, girl.

[Leo Laporte]

Was that Siri just.

[Doc Rock]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Wanted to say hi.

[Doc Rock]

Nobody ask her anything. She just decided to butt it.

[Leo Laporte]

She likes attention.

[Doc Rock]

Lady, listen. Okay, so here's the thing that's really cool. I, I specifically target this audience and even when I say that in, in most of my videos, I definitely get younger people watching because they're like, well, I can get a head start if I can know what the OGs know at this point. And you know, you know last year the CEO came out and said that they serve over a billion hours of podcast on television.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Doc Rock]

And that's.

[Leo Laporte]

This worries me a little bit that, that people are saying the future of podcasting is YouTube.

[Doc Rock]

Well, here's why. And I know it's going to be hard for us OGs because we've been around since you had to hand code your stuff, but if you ask, that's literally true.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way, my, the first RSS.

[Doc Rock]

Feeds we did for behind you, I.

[Leo Laporte]

Did it by hand in a text.

[Doc Rock]

So nobody. Nowadays, people don't really know what an RSS feed is per se. Right. And a lot of my people are afraid of. Because they need these numbers, because they use these numbers for ads and things like that. But in the same token, you have an opportunity to get more numbers. I mean, yesterday, well, last. Sorry, last week YouTube reported that they're dropping over 70 billion shorts a day. Wait, it was 700 billion? It was. Anyway, the number was dumb. That's the answer. The number was insane.

[Leo Laporte]

It's probably 700 actually.

[Doc Rock]

And the, the amount of shorts tell you that's a good lead in to people to see the long content. So when you're chopping this stuff up and people are watching on tv, we consume on TV and always hear the stat that you just stated that people under 30 are only watching on TV. Yo, the giddy owner, sorry, mother in law sees 78. You know what she watches all day, every day?

[Leo Laporte]

Not YouTube, not Tik Tok, YouTube, just YouTube.

[Doc Rock]

Because YouTube is on the TV, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute. Sorry. What was that?

[Ian Thompson]

Why did that come?

[Doc Rock]

Somebody saying, hi, studio is alive. Listen, live streamers out here. So in what happened was maybe like right when the pandemic happened, you know, she was having some problem with the cable box. And I said, well mom, you have a YouTube button on your TV. Just press that. And then she goes, well, I don't know what to watch. And so I put in a couple of things for her to watch, which Were just like Okinawa TV shows. And then she could listen to Okinawa music because as my father in law was getting dementia, that's the one thing that would calm him down is that.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that a Japanese music style?

[Doc Rock]

Listen, this is a tough one, Leo. And the whole country gets wrong. Okinawa is to Japan like Puerto Rico would be to Spain. Okay, Speak the same language, but we ain't the same.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a colony.

[Doc Rock]

Is it a colony because Japan stole it? Let's just put it that way. Okinawa has the Hawaii treatment.

[Leo Laporte]

All we, all we Americans know about Okinawa is World War II.

[Ian Thompson]

And there's a massive, massive base there.

[Benito]

Yeah, Karate Kid too, by the way. Also Karate Kid 2.

[Leo Laporte]

Karate Kid too, exactly. Thank you, Benito, for that.

[Doc Rock]

She would start to watch out once I showed her this. And then she found like, you know, recipes and like shows that she could watch. Like she never really watches regular TV anymore. And she tells me the other day, oh, I just found these old school, you know, Okinawan movies that are on YouTube. And so she just had her knee surgery and she's at home all day now.

[Leo Laporte]

She's got exactly the content she wants when she watches what she wants.

[Doc Rock]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

So you were right. 70 billion a day.

[Doc Rock]

That's the answer. I was looking.

[Leo Laporte]

60% of YouTube video is shorts. Only 5% stories. You can say goodbye to that soon. We're being watched right now in a live stream. That's only 10%.

[Doc Rock]

But this live streaming is growing.

[Leo Laporte]

Is growing good. Yes. Because standard videos, only 25% of YouTube's watching one quarter.

[Doc Rock]

25% is a massive number, so.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I know it's big, but.

[Doc Rock]

Yeah, that is correct. But the number is psycho. When you.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah.

[Doc Rock]

So the last one that also got from our buddy Renee, because this is his job and I just saw him like a couple weeks ago. If you add up all the other streaming providers, that means abc, Disney, Hulu, Netflix, all of these cats, they don't even hold a candle to YouTube combined, not individually combined. YouTube Smoking Fools.

[Ian Thompson]

Does that work with Tik Tok as well? Because, you know, I don't know, some of the stats there seem either wildly inflated or really quite remarkable.

[Doc Rock]

The, the thing about Tick Tock. And yes, there's Tick Tock has massive viewership. Let's not get it twisted. They don't have Tick Tock on the TV yet, even with some of them.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah.

[Doc Rock]

So if you look at your TV, every TV in the world over the last 10 years has a YouTube button on it. Yeah, right. And many people just started using that when you know, the writer strike went on. YouTube took a massive boost. And like, people are just like, I can watch everything. Like, it's kind of incredible. They have a new movie service which is like three or four dollars a month to let you see all the old movies. And so I was watching Kill Bill 1 and 2 because my marketing director, Katie, she has a podcast where she talks about 80s and 90s movies. And we wanted to do Kill Bill, and I was like, this service is only three bucks and there's a bunch of cool stuff, so I'll watch it all and then get rid of it.

[Leo Laporte]

But, you know, there is a perception that the stuff on YouTube is not as polished as the stu you'd see on streaming or network tv.

[Ian Thompson]

I don't know. I've seen some really good stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, well, that's the problem. There's everything.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Including polished and unpolished old movies and some guy in his basement with making cardboard I probably can't fix.

[Ian Thompson]

I probably can't name the name. But there's a YouTube channel I've become addicted to over the last couple of years about a. An Alaskan who goes out hiking often with his family. And it's just like this is where YouTube strength really comes in, because with a very small production crew, you can do really, really engaging content. And, you know, I haven't seen that on many other platforms.

[Leo Laporte]

There's also the issue, and I guess, you know, ultimately YouTube's got to make money, so advertising is going to be important. But there's the issue of what kind of content is on YouTube. And I think many advertisers are concerned. They don't want their ads next to a Logan Paul or maybe even next to a Mr. Beast.

[Doc Rock]

The ad algorithms are so good that they could absolutely exclude things.

[Leo Laporte]

They don't have to worry about that.

[Doc Rock]

They don't have to worry about that. Okay, so let me break down the ad business on YouTube because this is where I live. One thing very good. A lot of people don't understand the old school methodology of putting on your blog. You know, so you got your little site up and then your site would get a lot of traffic because when someone go to search for something that you talk about, right. Say you're the guy who is an expert and spectrum analyzing clocks that you can put in your studio. When I go to look for that, you know, it would go to LeoSupport.com well, when I click on that link, I just removed myself from Google's mall. Their mall sells ads. So now, because of Geo Generative engine, Optim optimization. I do speak English.

[Leo Laporte]

That's opposed to SEO, because SEO is.

[Doc Rock]

Over because everybody kept cheating. And so Google's like, you know what, I'm done with you. We're going to do geo. So if I can ask that same question and there's a video of you talking about it on your YouTube channel, if I send you there, you're still in my mall where I can serve another ad.

[Leo Laporte]

Google likes that, correct?

[Doc Rock]

Right. If I give you things that are on sort of GEO thing that opens up the new AI shopping thing, you're still in the Google verse. But I could buy the clock directly from you from this site that's tied into your Shopify store or fourth wall and you still never left the Google mall. I can still show you more ads. So now the way they're setting it up, if you are creating content that both lives on YouTube and on a site somewhere where Google Ads are and on, you know, some other place like Shopify where Google's tied into, you are being a good citizen of the Google algorithm because you're still allowing that shopper to look at Google Ads and they reward you. So this is why everybody and their mama should be making YouTube content. And this is why I'm a YouTube coach right now.

[Lou Maresca]

Hold on a second. So, so let me see if I understand something. They, they're pushing. Obviously I see the financial appeal of going towards longer content. Obviously advertisers love it. So they're going to start promoting and asking creators to do it and they'll probably give them more of a chunk of change to do it. But the data is showing that most of their attention spans of their viewerships is short. So I guess the question to me is, is this going to succeed for pushing people in that direction? Because people tend to, they have ads.

[Doc Rock]

And shorts as well. But with shorts are shorts. This is a really we to say, please don't trademark me. Shorts are your discovery channel. If I am watching like how to do Python in Excel and there's short videos of you, you've just given me the Costco sample. Now I need to see the whole thing so I that I can directly connect your sample video of how I might create a pivot table using AI Python, you know, Excel, I want to go watch the whole thing. That's a combination of like Copilot plus Excel plus Python. I could do some really cool stuff, right? But I can't see that in 30 seconds. All I'm doing is taking the tease, right, and then jumping Over. So shorts work so well because it does play automatically and you can kind of thumb really quickly, but a lot of shorts convert into real long tail content because it works for me.

[Leo Laporte]

So for a long time, network television had the luxury of thinking of its audience as basically passive. Right. Cows. Consumers of whatever crap they put out. And they were captive.

[Ian Thompson]

You will take what we give you.

[Leo Laporte]

And they're dying now because the audience isn't captive anymore. It isn't. I mean the thing I worry about is, is that eventually YouTube will become as inside ified as network television did. Yeah.

[Ian Thompson]

Oh, it's already well on the way. I mean if you look at. Yeah, I mean if you look at the amount of ads they're spamming out at the moment, in the last 18 months, this has really kicked in.

[Leo Laporte]

But as long as you can get YouTube Premium, you can avoid that.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, yeah, but you know, at the same time.

[Leo Laporte]

And that's cheaper than a cable subscription. I mean you have to add the Internet. That costs.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah, sure. But honestly, I'm not quite sure YouTube's content. I mean it's a lot of it is secondhand and a lot of it is badly produced.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, so this is. Hold that thought because this is exactly what I was going to ask.

[Ian Thompson]

Ah.

[Leo Laporte]

Is don't people see YouTube content as a little bit down market or. And is that a misapprehension? Is that maybe old fashioned? Is that maybe you and I are a little bit too old to appreciate YouTube? Thank you.

[Doc Rock]

I would say yes. And I'll tell you why. Okay, so in the last year, a bunch of big names have come to YouTube as their forefront content. Right? Conan, after the writer strike, tired of the NETWORKS. Conan has three brand new shows on YouTube. He owns the studio. Oatmeal Winfrey, she owns the studio. She got like six brand new shows on YouTube. Sky Sports with Gary Neville and Roy Keane. Sorry, these are my footy guys. Right, okay. And the other Ian, Ian Wright, he's not as cool as you because he was Arsenal turd anyway.

[Ian Thompson]

I think he's slightly cooler in fact.

[Doc Rock]

But yeah, so those guys started a brand new thing called Stick the Football. They just signed a contract for three more new seasons. They just signed a massive contract. I don't remember what the poundage is, but Mr. T can look it up real fast. So those, these are, these are happening. Jon Stewart, he left Apple, went to YouTube, started another show. So the, the guys that were on TV that were sort of being pawned around, the only person who hasn't really made the jump is Colbert because he's paid handsomely. But even CBS is under a bunch of noise right now.

[Leo Laporte]

That won't happen. That won't stay that way forever though, right? Because.

[Doc Rock]

No, exactly. I think, I think Stevie's out, right? So a lot of the OGs are coming over and building their own brand new networks on YouTube where they bas basically own the entire pie. That's one side of it. The other side of it is just like on television. Remember that song, 57 channels enter nothing on. Well, I feel like we're up to a thousand.

[Leo Laporte]

A billion there. I mean there is an effectively an infinite number of channels on YouTube, right?

[Doc Rock]

No, I mean TV like, like, I mean TV has so many TVs dead.

[Leo Laporte]

But I mean that's, that's it, right? This is YouTube for TV.

[Doc Rock]

The thing that's cool about YouTube is if there is a content gap, this is what the terminology that I use as I'm speaking around the country, if there's a content gap that you see for somebody who's doing a whole foods plant based, no oil vegan, and you can't find that on Food Network, you can make that and you can serve an entire community. And what happens is you end up inspiring other people to make similar content and they build whole entire networks. So just like Ian was talking about this guy in Alaska who does these hiking. I watch like 6, 7 different channels of people who hike through Japan. My knees do not work. I can't hike to Japan no more. But I watch the heck out of those things. And what's really cool is there's a new form of content on YouTube was about three to four years old and it's called listenable content. That is what inspired when they set up.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the podcast, right? Like shows like this, you can listen to this, right?

[Doc Rock]

When they started the listenable hashtag about.

[Leo Laporte]

3, you can show that Benito how much Sonny and Gizmo, they saw how.

[Doc Rock]

Much people are watching listenable content. That's when they decided to start the podcast division and Kai came in and just blew it up. And this guy right now that you're looking at with Sonny and Gizmo, I want you to go look at the channel real quick and look at the number of people that are currently watching. Never mind the people that already watched it. Look at the number of people currently watching in your head.

[Leo Laporte]

This is a bald eagle nest in California's Big bear Valley, perched 145ft above the lake, and people are watching it. Well, how do I get to the.

[Benito]

Watch on YouTube on the bottom left.

[Leo Laporte]

There you go. Yeah, I don't know how to.

[Lou Maresca]

You.

[Leo Laporte]

What is this? YouTube? 40,000 more people, a hundred times more people are watching this bird sit there than are watching this show right now. 40, 000.

[Doc Rock]

40 to 60, 000 every time I pop on.

[Leo Laporte]

And all, all these. I don't know if that's Sunny or Giz, but they're just. She's just sitting there right now.

[Ian Thompson]

But at the same time, this is. This is kind of.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute. There's. Is that one up here? Is that a bird? What is that?

[Doc Rock]

Yeah, that's. That's the. That's the sister. So the brother and sister, the mom comes by and feeds them. Every once in a while you can use the scrubber to see if you can see the mom pop in. There's. There's these channels by Big Bear where the birds. I mean. Sorry, not the birds.

[Leo Laporte]

I feel like people just leave this on their TV. Oh, 100 and just let it go. There we go. There's. There's mama.

[Doc Rock]

Mama's back. Yeah. So she'll feed them. There's ones where they're with the. The bears are spawning and they're catching salmon. And you see the cub fall down the fall because he didn't have his footing. Right. And the mom just leaves him there to suffer. But people like legit watch this because it's calming. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

You could leave that on your TV instead of.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You'd have a view to Big Bear Valley and eagles sitting there.

[Ian Thompson]

As far as I'm aware, the first webcam view like that was of a coffee pot at mit.

[Leo Laporte]

I remember that. Cambridge. No, it's Cambridge.

[Lou Maresca]

The Cambridge.

[Ian Thompson]

Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, people are mesmerized by this stuff and fair play to them.

[Benito]

I mean, talking going towards Doc's point, it's like YouTube is different for everybody. Like, YouTube isn't the same.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a good point.

[Benito]

That's really the thing. Everybody has their own channel.

[Leo Laporte]

It's custom.

[Benito]

Yeah, exactly. And that's what makes YouTube special.

[Leo Laporte]

And at this point, as much as ad support is moving there and so forth, if you pay for YouTube Premium, what. What is YouTube Premium? I forget. 14, 15 bucks a month, you could pay for that. You have maybe A$40,$60. Whatever your. Your broadband bill is, and you're using it for other things too. And that's it. You don't need anything else, right?

[Doc Rock]

Yep. Where you live, there's somebody doing flight path, takeoff and landing. And there's one here at H L I'm pretty sure there's one in SFO or MCO or wherever.

[Leo Laporte]

You just watch planes take off and.

[Doc Rock]

On average, bro, there's a hundred thousand people watching planes take off and land any given day. I know because I watch the Honolulu ones when the 35s are going to take off because it's just a beautiful site. You see the afterburner.

[Leo Laporte]

So I pay for YouTube TV because I'm an old man and I want my cable television. But if you take YouTube TV out of the equation, 12% of TV viewing last month was YouTube, more than all of Walt Disney's TV networks combined. And streaming 40% of viewers are 18 to 49, which is a very, very desirable advertising demographic. Right. In fact, what advertisers are really thinking is this is the only way to reach people in maybe that 18 to 30 demographic.

[Ian Thompson]

I've got to say, I love the subscription function on you on YouTube because it's kind of like cable as it should be. You know, it's like you find people you like, you follow them, you see what they're when their new stuff comes in and you call them out if they produce. Not so much good stuff. But, you know, it's. It seems to be the way the industry is going. And not just on YouTube, I mean, and also a shout out to the Internet Archive, which has an awful lot of good stuff on there.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it does, actually. I think you have to be a little more sophisticated. You have to have a browser when there is someday an Internet Archive channel that might be, you know, very well. But right now it's bomb.

[Doc Rock]

During Christmas is Nick Offerman sits down with a. With a single malt. Yeah, a fireplace. He just sits there and reads a book. He don't even say anything, he just reads the book.

[Leo Laporte]

You can hear the firecracker. It's the best. So here from Nielsen is a graph of viewership since July 2022. The black one is YouTube. Look at straight up. The pink one is Netflix. Basically flat Disney streaming, flat prime video, flat. YouTube is just dominant.

[Ian Thompson]

I mean, I think Disney's discovering that basically pumping out endlessly market research content with no real soul is not working for them. And YouTube is a haven of originality to my.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm not thrilled about it becoming the dominant podcast platform, however, because I like rss. I like it for us that you can watch us anywhere, including YouTube, by the way. I mean, we're on YouTube, we do YouTube shorts, we do full length YouTube videos for every show. We're even streaming live, right now on YouTube. But that's not the only way we distribute.

[Doc Rock]

One thing that the YouTube player has that none of the other players have seen them pull off. And I've tried them all, from Overcast to Poddler, like, whatever. I tried all of them. When you're watching back Break Weekly, right? Because I'm there and then I go to my car, it's always off. I have to go and scrub it to the right spot. The syncing just does not work, right? When I come back in the house and I try to go back to the video version, it's always off. The syncing does not work in YouTube Player. When you use YouTube Music to watch, I can see the video. It's where it is. When I come back, Andy is stealing his same funny joke. I hit the button. Never lose a beat. It doesn't back up. It's in the exact right spot.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay?

[Doc Rock]

So that player has out matured all the players made by nerds who should know better.

[Leo Laporte]

Because this is what's happening. This is terrible. This is. This is. The world is changing, obviously, right? And the way we consume content is changing. And you know, it's people my age. I remember when I was growing up, I couldn't. Why would anybody watch Lawrence Welkin? You know, my grandparents watched it, right? But as soon as they died out, Lawrence Welk was over. I think that's where we stand are right now with television.

[Ian Thompson]

Okay? I mean, you're American for goodness sake. You had more channels than any of us did. I mean, and we had serve. We had a school holiday on the day the fourth national TV channel actually launched. Channel four. And they actually gave us the afternoon off so could watch the first episode from this film. Fourth channel. Come over to America and you've got hundreds of the damn things and they're all showing rubbish. What I like about YouTube is that you can focus in on what you like, right?

[Doc Rock]

You said something really good right there. You know what I discovered maybe like four years ago, and I have watched every single episode. Filamena Crunk.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, she's hysterical.

[Doc Rock]

Oh, Diane. What the heck is Diane's last name anyway? Dude, once I. I discovered that on YouTube and I went down a rabbit hole and then I. I fired up.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what you could do with yout. That's also the disadvantage. I mean, at least somebody. Maybe again, I shouldn't use myself as an example because I'm obviously of a different generation, but it's overwhelming. The amount of stuff on YouTube is part of the problem too. It's not only an asset, it makes it like, wow, what do I watch?

[Doc Rock]

It's the same as a bookstore or library.

[Ian Thompson]

I don't know.

[Doc Rock]

You find what you want. I mean, YouTube seems to be overwhelming.

[Ian Thompson]

I mean, YouTube seems to Be getting spammed out with an awful lot of AI content at the moment.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's going to be worrying.

[Doc Rock]

Kids are working on that.

[Lou Maresca]

Kids watch that crap, too. They love watching the AI.

[Leo Laporte]

How do you keep your kids from. I mean, I'm sure, Lou, you're not the kind of parent that just gives them an iPad and says, watch whatever you want. No, no, that's. I mean, that. I see we were at a nice restaurant yesterday. The adults are talking and the kids are just staring at the screen. And I feel like those poor kids are not getting, what, an adult conversation. There's nothing to learn from that. But. But how do you handle this with your kids? Because you have pretty young kids.

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah, I, you know, I actually, I. I control at the network layer, so I. I block YouTube at certain parts of the day, like dinner time. YouTube's blocked.

[Leo Laporte]

This is why you don't want a network engineer, daddy.

[Lou Maresca]

Exactly. But I. And also I. I block specific things, too.

[Leo Laporte]

So at the network level, my friends.

[Lou Maresca]

That's right. So certain shows are blocked. Like, there's things that are blocked. But I would say kids are going.

[Leo Laporte]

To grow up and say, yeah, YouTube was never on at dinner time.

[Lou Maresca]

I don't understand why nothing's on it.

[Leo Laporte]

Nothing's on at dinner time. Yeah.

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Was that the same for you in your house?

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah, but I would. I would say that the biggest thing is just obviously oversight is just making sure that I. I watch what they watch or I'm interested in what they're interested. And I. I promote other avenues. Like, like doctor said, hey, go, go. What bookstore is the same? Well, yeah, I'd rather promote. Then let's go read some books and stuff. We bought the same sub subject, so I think they're, you know, it's. It's hard, though. Five kids is hard to watch.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And I have no judgment on parents who do that because I. Look, it's hard to be a parent. And if. If you're going crazy and. And the only way you can get a moment to yourself is to say, here, kid, watch this.

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

At least pick Blue's Clues or something. Pick some, you know, something good. Don't. Don't make them watch Baby Shark over and over and over again.

[Ian Thompson]

I mean, in the old days, it used to be that you had the family computer. And you put it in the la. You know, or the lounge. Yeah. So that everyone could see what you were doing on there. And that was a good way to keep people. Hon. But I mean, all respect, Lou. I mean, that's. That's. It's a really tough job.

[Doc Rock]

It is.

[Ian Thompson]

You know, because it's.

[Lou Maresca]

But that's actually what I do, Ian. In fact, all the computers are in literally within line of sight of where I am.

[Leo Laporte]

Kids aren't old enough to have cell phones yet. They all.

[Lou Maresca]

My son's 15, so he has a cell phone.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. There's nothing you can do about him.

[Lou Maresca]

Right.

[Ian Thompson]

I mean, did you go for a smartphone or a dumb phone? Because there was a really interesting.

[Lou Maresca]

Most of my kids have watches, so they, like. That's how I get a hold of them. But that's where I started them. And then the phones are kind of a newer thing, but, yeah, that's a smartphone. But, you know, I mean, there was.

[Ian Thompson]

A really interesting study that was put. I think it was NPR put it out this week where they. There's a school where they've basically limited everyone to dumb phones, and the students hate it, but the teachers and the administrators love it because, you know, the kids are actually getting engaged rather than sitting there looking at a screen.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, we're. Take a quick break, then the dystopia. Actually, we're verging into dystopia. We're slowly sliding into dystopia. This is this Week in Tech where we talk about the week's tech news and the week's tech trends. This is a huge trend, and I'm glad Doc Rock is here. He is a YouTube expert. Good to have you. YouTube.com docrock Lou Mareska, a parenting expert. Also, if you. If you want to put some python in your spreadsheets, you might be a good guy for that, too. It's good to have you, Lou. And Ian Thompson, who's an expert in British slang.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, just have to warn you off of using one thing for a title once, but y. Yeah, almost did, actually.

[Leo Laporte]

I almost used a bad word in Yiddish for a title last week. So I have to. Yes, I need experts in all the areas. Thank you, Ian, for being here. We appreciate it. Our show today, brought to you by Zscaler, the leader in cloud security. This is. I mean, look, AI is obviously changing the world, but it's also changing the way bad guys operate. Hackers use AI to breach your organization. AI, yeah, Powers innovation, drives efficiency, but it also helps bad actors. The bad Guys deliver more relentless and effective attacks. And boy, it's long gone are the times you can say, oh, that phishing email is so ungrammatical. Obviously a phony. No, they're perfect now. Phishing attacks over encrypted channels over encrypted channels increased by 34.1% last year, fueled by the growing use of generative AI tools and phishing as a service. Kiss. Yes. Phishing as a service. You don't you want to know about that? Listen to security now. It's, it's mind blowing. You don't have to be an expert to be a bad guy anymore. You just, hey, it's a service organizations in all industries, from small to large want to leverage AI. I mean it's great for increasing employee productivity. Public AI for engineers with coding assistance. Who's not using coding assistance these days? Marketers use it for writing finance. They've got the AI spun up creating spreadsheet formulas. Maybe a little copilot in the Excel makes, makes pivot tables a lot easier. They're also automating workflows for operational efficiency across individuals and teams. They're embedding AI into applications and services that are customer and partner facing. It's everywhere. Ultimately, companies are moving faster in the market and gaining competitive advantage with AI. So it's both a plus and a negative. It's a double edged sword. Companies have to think how they protect their public and private use of AI and how you defend against AI powered attacks. May I suggest Zscaler Chief Information Security Officer CISO from the New York City Department of Education. Right. They're under attack all the time. Time he says with AI, I'm concerned. This is a direct quote. I'm concerned about the usage of it, but I also love the innovation with it. Right. This is universal. How are employees using AI? Which AIs are they using? Zscaler can be a good partner there to help us find out the answers to those questions and to help us move faster when it comes to incident response and finding that needle in the haystack. Proactively finding threats to our network and our data. This is AI that can be used to protect you against the bad guys. You know, traditional firewalls, the way we've been doing it so far, the perimeter defenses, then you have to have a VPN to get people in. And now you have public facing IPs. This all exposes your network, it exposes your attack surface and it's no match in the AI era. Right. It's time for a modern approach. Zscaler uses Zero Trust. Love that. It's my favorite kind of security. Zscaler's comprehensive zero Trust architecture plus AI ensures safe public AI productivity, protects the integrity of private AI and stops AI powered attacks. So you know it defends and protects and lets you use AI. You can thrive in the AI era with Zscaler Zero Trust plus AI to stay ahead of the competition and remain resilient even as threats and risk evolve. Learn [e-mail] security that Zsc A L E R zscaler.com security put the double edged sword to good use with Zscaler. You're watching and we thank him by the way for supporting this Week in Tech. You're watching this Week in Tech. Now here's a use of AI. I'm maybe not so excited about this from the New York Times. You're probably aware of Palantir, a company founded, funded by Peter Thiel, founded by Alex Karp. They do a lot of military uses of AI. The Trump administration has now said we want to use Palantir to create a database of Americans. This all started with Doge, right? And the idea of sharing data across agencies for efficiencies. That makes sense. But when you bring in Palantir to do this, the whole secret sauce of Palantir, as I understand, I've read Alex's book, the Technological Republic is kind of cross referencing. They had great success in Afghanistan, in the Middle east against IEDs because they were able to cross reference a lot of data and actually make predictions about where IEDs might be and, and how to avoid them. That kind of thing. Very good. Worked very well. However, I'm very concerned about the idea of giving access to all of these protected databases from the irs, the opm, the Social Security, and then using Palantir to cross reference it. Since Trump took office just a few months ago, Palantir has received more than $113 I forgot the M $113 million in federal funds, including additional including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon, not including the $800 million deal that the Pentagon did with Palantir last week. Representative this is from the New York Times. Representatives of Palantir also speaking to at least two other agencies, the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service about bringing Palantir in. This is according to six government officials and Palantir employees with knowledge of the discussions DHS Health and Human Services already have. Palantir's foundry, which organizes and analyzes data. Should we be concerned about the idea of a centralized database combining all of those disparate functions? Traditionally, the irs, for instance, firewalls off its information. It knows everything about you and me, but it firewalls it off.

[Ian Thompson]

I've got no problems with the centralized database as such, but it's who has access to it, because we've gone through this in Britain before in the Ripper laws, in the noughties. The government wanted to set up a centralized database, but they were allowing access to everyone, to parish councillors who are elected by 300 people. These kind of databases are very dangerous. But I don't honestly see the Trump administration saying no to Palantir on this one. You know, they are going to get the data and it's going to be very interesting to see how it works.

[Leo Laporte]

Out the Again from the New York Times. The Trump administration has sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including bank account numbers, the amount of student debt, medical claims, disability status. You remember that RFK Jr. Wanted to make a database of people with autism, you know, in theory using it for public health, but it really raises kind of the specter of it being used against people. And of course, one of the number one things they want to do is find illegal immigrants, right? Undocumented immigrants.

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah, but I'm not under the guise that AI is not already power things at the private sector. I mean, you know, obviously government can contract external organizations to do this. I mean, that's what AI is power powerful about, about connecting the synapse between all the data. Right, right.

[Leo Laporte]

That's his real skill, isn't it?

[Lou Maresca]

Right. So I think, I can't, I can't imagine there's not already like, like, you know, this company already is doing that. I can't imagine that the government's not already contracting these companies to do it. So having it come inside, you know, it obviously just. I don't know if it seems like a ploy or even a play on something. It doesn't seem like a real thing.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't think it's genuine?

[Lou Maresca]

No, I think there's already private companies doing it. Why not pay them? You know, it's. It seems strange that they just want to do it as part of the governmental agency, you know, so.

[Ian Thompson]

Because been doing much the same thing with the intelligence data, right?

[Doc Rock]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I think my concern would be that the real risk, and this is what data brokers did, is the cross referencing. Right. It's one thing to have the IRS have a database, Social Security Administration Have a database. As long as they're not cross referenced, it's much less dangerous. But as soon as you cross reference everything the government knows about you. You know, it's funny, I've always had mixed feelings about the privacy argument. Right? I say, well, what's the harm? I'm going to get more targeted advertising. That's a benefit to me. I don't want to see ads for something I'm not interested in buying. And then people say, well, what about insurance? What if insurance knows that you, you know, you like to make bagels? Isn't that. Isn't that bad? Yeah, that would be bad. But I think insurance companies already ask you that. And if you lie, then they don't give you benefits anyway. So I think insurance companies kind of know all that. That. But when you say, okay, now what if the government has all of that information? Well, the government so many ways to screw you. It makes me very nervous.

[Doc Rock]

Yeah. Well, okay, first of all, let's understand one thing. Dude normally just likes to do things that will make it sound good on paper. They don't actually know how to do it. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

The other thing, Palantir knows how to do it. That's what worries.

[Doc Rock]

Well, Palantir does. But I mean, like, as far as once they get it inside whether the guy's going to do like, they're dead. The people who are making the noise, they say things that they don't know how to do. It's like the guy who called out anybody on the left who wanted to come and fight him. And then like a bunch of boxers, it's like, okay, I'm ready. He just disappeared. So, yeah. It's kind of funny, this thing though, about the cross referencing. We're at a level of computational speed at this point. Even if they're not cross referenced, you can still make it work because the computers are so quick now. Like, they could process data levels that we couldn't even imagine back in the day. But then you also think about, like, what you said about the privacy side of it. The only reason why I would try to hide something from my insurance company is because my rates are going to go up. But then that level of cheating is why they put in buffer rates, which makes it expensive for no reason anyway.

[Leo Laporte]

So insurance companies actually want you to, my opinion, want you to lie because then they don't have to give you the benefits because the minute they catch you in the lie, it's like, oh, yeah, well, you lied to us, so I don't have to.

[Doc Rock]

It's Actually better not to lie to them because tell the truth a little bit more in premium, but you still can get the pot.

[Leo Laporte]

But you can collect and catch you.

[Doc Rock]

You're done.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Doc Rock]

So there's a. I think a lot of the. This is, this is just me personally and I know people gonna hate me. I don't really care. I think a lot of people are like, well, I don't want anybody to know how much I'm making. Why are you lying? Your taxes then. Then get mad that you don't have, you have holes in your road. Like, which is it? I know people from the pandemic that were super mad that they could not get the bridge funding because why they do a bunch of cash under the table business and then they were mad when their businesses had.

[Leo Laporte]

So maybe this, maybe this is going to be a good thing.

[Doc Rock]

You know, at some point in time we have to fix the thought process of I hate paying taxes. Well, that's kind of your civic responsibility. I do understand the idea of hating the waste of tax money. Like, I don't know, a 200 and whatever million dollar.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't mind paying taxes. I just want the other guys to pay taxes too.

[Doc Rock]

Thank you.

[Leo Laporte]

It's like Warren Buffett who said, you know, my, my secretary pays a higher tax rate than I do. That's wrong. That's wrong.

[Ian Thompson]

I mean, it's. I mean, the other thing that worries me about this kind of database is there's a quote oddly attributed to Cardinal Rich Lou, but we don't actually know which was, give me six paragraphs written by an honest man, and I can get the conviction to get him executed.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Ian Thompson]

You know, it's like, yeah, if you have this level of data, then the potential for manipulation is not good.

[Leo Laporte]

Somebody in the, in the YouTube set chat is pointing out that the CIA's venture capital arm also invested in Palantir at the beginning.

[Ian Thompson]

Oh, inky.

[Leo Laporte]

So I guess they've known all along this might be useful. Palantir in the New York Times article says, well, we act as a data processor, not a data controller. Our software and services are used under direction from the organizations that license our products. These organizations define what can and cannot be done with their data. We wash our hands of it. And the White House referred to the President's executive order which said, quote, he wanted to eliminate information silos and streamline data collection across all agencies to increase government efficiency and save hard earned taxpayer dollars. That's fine if that's what they use it for. I think that's fine. Efficiency is fine. I'm concerned they might use it for political reasons, motivations.

[Doc Rock]

Oh, 100, right. Yeah. I mean, you already got people getting in trouble because they said something nasty about. I mean. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So in California, by the way, I.

[Ian Thompson]

Will be taking this very, very carefully.

[Doc Rock]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

We pay. We. We don't get to deduct our property taxes, our sales taxes anymore because we're in a blue state. The red states can just. Not the blue states. Okay, that seems political to me, but. All right. Palantir stock has gone up 140% since Trump's election, I might point out.

[Ian Thompson]

It's interesting though, that Peter Thiel has played a very back room position as opposed to Elon's rather drugged out front room position. Not that I would suggest that he was in any way on anything over the last week, but, you know, did.

[Leo Laporte]

You see the video?

[Ian Thompson]

Oh, God. It was like someone going through reset. You know, it's like control delete on the brain. But, but James played it very smart. He's basically. I'm not in the public eye like he was in 2022.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Ian Thompson]

He's just basically working the backroom deals and has paid marvelous benefits.

[Leo Laporte]

Look at. That's where the smart money is. They're not in the front.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

In the back. They're anonymous.

[Ian Thompson]

He's not bringing, you know, kids up into the, in, you know, into the Oval Office and watching them smear bogeys on the desk. You know.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, I think part of this, to me is that Palantir is named after the seeing stones of Saruman and Sauron, which. So that kind of, that kind of maybe I don't know what it is with these Silicon Valley types and, and J.R.R. tolkien works, but.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, the whole thing with Elon Musk and Ian M. Banks is really embarrassing because Ian M. Banks, I love Ian Banks. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, if he'd seen what Elon had become, he would have been really peed off about this.

[Leo Laporte]

I know you're a Banks fan. I see Banks books behind you.

[Ian Thompson]

Oh, God, yes. No, it's. I was lucky enough to interview him once and it was really. Oh, it was just. He spoke at 90, you know, 90 words a minute and just a really interesting person. And you try and get your head around it and it's one of those things where you have to listen to the tape recording afterwards and spend an hour just going through it because so many good things thrown out of there.

[Leo Laporte]

I know why you like him. Because he spells Ian properly.

[Ian Thompson]

Exactly. Two Eyes.

[Leo Laporte]

Is a good Scotsman two.

[Ian Thompson]

Eyes and no P. Just like the swimming pool.

[Leo Laporte]

What is. So I did actually read Consider Flea Bus because Elon named his rockets after the rockets in that book.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah, I mean, considering it was good.

[Leo Laporte]

I liked it.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah. I mean, it's the first book in the series. If you're coming into a new I'd still recommend it as a starter, but use of weapons and player of games are the two.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the next. I have to read players of games. That's the next one.

[Ian Thompson]

And Accession unfortunately suffers because he just discovered email. So there's an awful lot of email between ships.

[Leo Laporte]

It's going to be the next big thing. Can't wait. All right, another break and then we shall continue on with discussion. Great panel. Nice to have all three of you with me today. Three of my oldest, dearest friends.

[Doc Rock]

Actually, I don't want to say the oldest part.

[Ian Thompson]

Jesus, me neither.

[Doc Rock]

Old.

[Leo Laporte]

You're so old. Hey, can I show you something cool? This is. Let me see if I can show you this. This here. This is. It looks like an external hard drive, doesn't it? That is a thinxt Canary. And our sponsor for this segment of this week in tech, the Thin canary is a honeypot that can be almost anything. This one, I think, is a Windows server. It can be for a long time I had it be a nas. It could be a Linux server. It can be a SCADA device. It can be anything you want it to be. But they don't look vulnerable. They don't look like, you know, oh, clearly somebody's trying to. Trying to get me. They look valuable. The other thing you can do with your thinks Canary is you can make Canary tokens. Let's see what this is. It's a Windows server Right now, 2019 office file share. Here, I'll put it up on the screen so you can see it. This is the actual configuration tool. You can also use this to create Canary tokens. Those are little files you can put anywhere. I've got tokens spread out all around. These files could be PDFs, they could be a Microsoft Excel document. Lou. But you could also make it a wireguard VPN configuration, a Slack API key. You spread these around. I put them on my Google Drive. And then if somebody tries to open them, by the way, give them good names, provocative names. Like put an Excel spreadsheet up that says employee information. For instance, if somebody tries to open one of these, you'll immediately get an alert. Same thing here for this, the hardware device. Let me just show you when I Go to the configuration. It can be iis, it can be a Microsoft AD domain controller. I don't know what that is, Lou, but I'm sure it's good. SharePoint, Windows Server 2000 if you want. You know, sometimes when you set up something old like that, bad guys think, oh, I got them now. Those things are Windows xp, Desktop File Share. You know what? That's a good one. That's gonna attract, attract them like bees to honey. It could be Linux, can be a Mac OS X File Share, Apollo Alto firewall. Anything you want want, you're going to get notified whenever anybody touches it. It's so easy to play with it, but it is such a great tool. Now you're set. You set up your Thinks canaries all over your network. You set up your, your, your Canary tokens, the lure files. The minute someone accesses them or tries to brute force that fake internal SSH server, your Thinks Canary will immediately tell you you got a problem, there's somebody in your network or a malicious insider probing things. No false alerts, just the alerts that matter. And by the way, the alerts, any way you want them. Email, text, sms, Slack, Syslog, of course they support webhooks and there's an API any way you want it. Or all of the above. You know, have everything light up like a Christmas tree. Because when you get an alert, it means there's somebody in your network. Choose a profile for your Think Canary device, register it as I just did with the hosted console for monitoring and notifications, and then you just sit back and relax and wait. As soon as an attacker breaches your network or a malicious insider, they will make themselves known just by accessing the Thinks Canary or those Canary tokens. Visit Canary Tools Twit. Some big banks might have hundreds, you know, back end casino operation, might have more than several hundred of them. Small operation like ours, maybe a handful. I'll give you an example. For 7,500 bucks a year here that gets you five things canaries. You get your own hosted console, you get upgrades, you get support, you get maintenance. And if you use the code twit in the how did you hear about us box, you will get 10% off the price for life. Here's one more thing that will reassure you. They have a great return policy. You can always return your Thinks canary within its two month 60 day money back guarantee. You get a full refund. I should point out that in the years Thinks Canary has been advertising with a. No one has ever, ever asked for a refund. You know why? Once you install this, you're going to go, how did I live without it? Visit Canary Tools Twit. Enter the code TWIT in the how did you hear about us? Box. You'd be nuts to try to set up your own honey pot. It's hard. It's a security risk. Let the pros do it. These guys have trained governments, they've trained corporations in how to protect themselves. Now they can protect you with a simple box. Canary Tools Twit. Don't forget that offer Code TWIT in the how did you hear about us? Box for 10% off and a 60 day money back guarantee. Thank you. Thanks, Canary. Love this thing. Oh, hey, as long as we're talking about government, this will be the last story. I'm a little sad to say that the President has withdrawn his nomination of Jared Isaacman for Director of NASA. A kind of a surprise. This happened late last night. Apparently it's because he donated money to a Democrat, to Mark Kelly and other astronauts.

[Ian Thompson]

Oh, how petty does this have to be? I mean, really.

[Leo Laporte]

It might also have to do with the fact that Elon isn't around anymore. You know, Elon's gone back home. And this was Elon's pick because Isaacman had actually paid for a couple of flights on SpaceX rockets. Isaacsman was pretty sharp. He was due to appear before the Senate this week for a confirmation vote. There's some concern now that with the new budget, which cuts NASA's finance by I think, 25%, that perhaps NASA may not be a top priority for the President.

[Ian Thompson]

Call me cynical on this one, but it does seem like SpaceX's main competitor is being cut back. And admittedly the SLS is a nasty rocket system which should never have been done. But SpaceX relies on NASA engineering, so they'd be unwise to cut it too much.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, and a lot of NASA contracts have gone to SpaceX, right?

[Ian Thompson]

No, of course. I mean, Elon wasn't in there just for the chips and giggles. Oh, sorry.

[Doc Rock]

It's funny. I was going to say the thing about the whole space race that bothered me because we were kids, the idea that, that, you know, by the time we got to this age we would be able to be in space and, you know, be like, what was that? Johnny's Robot with Will. Will Smith, Things like that. The other, other Mr. Smith. And, you know, when NASA started getting their cuts in the first place, I felt like, well, that dream's gone. But now it seems like, you know, some of the stuff that we're looking forward into space now is going to be collected by one of the private companies and then they'll own the rights and everything to it. And it's going to cost us more to use it it. So in a way like they're like, okay, we'll let those guys handle it. But that means anything that comes out of it is going to cost us 5x the time to use it. So it's just, I don't know. That's the most depressing part to me.

[Ian Thompson]

I don't know. I mean, I, I hate to defend Elon Musk in some regards, but it has to be said he has revolutionized orbital delivery. The, the use of reusable rockets. The amount of cost saving that has done is, is, is basically just changed the entire thing. And yeah, the government gave me a lot of money, but at the same time they broke up the oligopoly that was running space delivery. What worries me now is we're reliant on them and that's not a good situation to be in. You need competition.

[Leo Laporte]

Although just to talk about the other side, the way Congress funds these projects like the SLS is so inefficient, so appallingly bad because each state gets to make a little part of the SLS.

[Ian Thompson]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

When you have the SLS made in 50 different states, it's not efficient, it's not going to work. So the way we have been doing it isn't so hot either. Why don't we just fund NASA, let them make the choice and not trying to get the, the, you know, the pork barrel.

[Ian Thompson]

But I mean, as we saw with the starship launch, you know, SpaceX can do things that NASA can't. There was a marvelous quote from NASA administrator where he said, listen, if we'd blown up four or five rockets on the way to testing our things, we would have been defunded immediately. Private companies can do this stuff, right? And that's how SpaceX got started. That's how Electron and various other companies have got started. You know, I mean, this is the way it's done now. And okay, the FAA is going to declare a debris zone around the Caribbean. But even so, you know, move fast and break things can work in the space industry if you're smart. My big worry is that Elon's going to try and take control again. And Glenn Shotwell, who's been managing the company so well, might get pushed back.

[Leo Laporte]

The story is that she has a team of people who are there to surround Elon and say, don't touch anything. Go down the hall, Mr. Musk, and see the shiny new thing we were making down here.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, Isaacman was Elon's pick. So in one sense, this change means Elon has less power in NASA. But the budget, of course, takes away a lot of money from Nessa, so. I know, Don't. I don't really know. I think we're all NASA fans, right? I'm not a fan of going to Mars. Pardon me.

[Doc Rock]

What's the over under on him ending up at SpaceX?

[Leo Laporte]

He doesn't need the money. Isaacman is a billionaire. In fact, he owns his own private jet fighter fleet. Did you know that?

[Ian Thompson]

No.

[Leo Laporte]

He's a fighter pilot and he has been acquiring. Not for. Not for combat purposes, but he's been acquiring fighter jets. Let me just see what his current.

[Ian Thompson]

Let's say. Hang on, let me just check. But Larry Ellison, I think, has a MiG 29 that he got busted for. For flying over the speed limit. Or maybe a MiG 23. I don't know. We'll see.

[Doc Rock]

Hey, I need you to pull this big over.

[Leo Laporte]

Isaacman has a MiG 29 too, so maybe we could have a dog fight between the. Yeah. I don't know.

[Doc Rock]

Live on YouTube, there's Isaac.

[Ian Thompson]

That would be something people would stream for.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Wow, look at that. I feel like he has more than one fighter plane, but I might. Maybe I misunderstood that, but. Yeah.

[Doc Rock]

Man. I'm sitting over here trying to scroll Leo's screen.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it possible you can't scroll my screen? No, no. Only I. So make sure. You shouldn't be looking at my screen. You should be looking at you. You should be seeing yourself.

[Ian Thompson]

You're still using the studio screen, so it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you want to see the setup? You can see it. I have an over the shoulder shot here. You can see, so I have a laptop. That's the thing Doc's looking at. This is where you guys appear. This is where the chat room appears. This is where the commercials appear. This is so. I know what's here. You know what I just ordered, though? A new clock. I have that red clock behind me, but it's. It's only got seconds. I ordered a new clock that has like thousands of a second.

[Ian Thompson]

Oh, good Lord.

[Lou Maresca]

You need the atomic.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's a GPS driven clock. It's. I saw it on the Hacker news, I think. And now I had.

[Ian Thompson]

As a Formula one fan who's just watched the Spanish Grand Prix, I can say those thousandths of a second really count everything.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Wow. Isn't that amazing?

[Doc Rock]

What's going on purpose, right? Okay.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah. No, Max did do it on purpose.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I loved that. He just elbowed George. He just went, hey, out of the way here.

[Ian Thompson]

I. I can't help feeling that should be a black flag. Black flag moment. You know, it's like, I know Vettel got away with it.

[Leo Laporte]

Second penalty, but.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, so did Vettel and Azerbaijan in 2017. But if you're driving into another driver. Yeah. You know, it's kind of the other.

[Doc Rock]

Part of it that cracks me up is the skill of it, though, because, you know, if you do it wrong, you're done. Both you guys are done.

[Ian Thompson]

It was wheel to wheel, but doing.

[Doc Rock]

So, like, I kind of want to punch him in the neck, but then the other side, I'm like, okay, I respect that.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you an F1 fan or are these guys taking you a. I don't watch F1, unfortunately. You don't have time. You have children.

[Doc Rock]

You should start. Get the kids into it. It's like the great.

[Lou Maresca]

I wish I could. I wish I would. Would actually.

[Doc Rock]

They watch nas.

[Lou Maresca]

They don't mind nascar. I'm not sure why.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah, I mean, NASCAR is the fastest. BAL1 is the most complex if you.

[Leo Laporte]

Want to most faster than Formula one. I didn't know that.

[Ian Thompson]

No. Nascar f cars on an oval will go faster than.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah. Cuz going around in circles.

[Ian Thompson]

Formula one, you've got to constantly readjust the computer. This caused a major problem. This in this weekend's race. If you want to do both most complex go for rallying World Rally Championship. You've got a hell of a lot of stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah, I got a Formula one like much of America because we watched that Netflix show Drive to Survive and that drove some popularity. Now Apple has an F1 movie coming out.

[Doc Rock]

Oh, that's cool. I was in way before then. One of my friends and I was in Alhambra, he actually bought a Jacques Villeneuve car and he had it in his shop. Shop.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Doc Rock]

And I got to see it, like, up front. And from that moment on, I was addicted. And this was like circa 90 something. So.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah, we see. I moved to San Francisco in 2008, and the second day I was here, I looked up San Francisco Formula one club, and they were down in a really seedy bar in the Tenderloin. And so I walked down there and I saw what the Tenderloin had to offer and it was like, yeah, we're not in Kansas anymore, are we? But went to. Went to see the show. There were like Half a dozen people there. We watched the race. We, you know, had a drink, had a chat, drive to survive. Came in and I went to Cesar in Golden Gate park, and they were out the door. You know, the amount of people in there watching the race was insane. So the drive to survive effect is real.

[Leo Laporte]

It's real. Liberty Media, the American company that owns F1, believe it or not, but is having a little hard time selling the rights. ESPN has broadcast rights in the United states. They paid $90 million for that. But their rights expand, expire at the end of this year. The problem with F1 in the US is all the. Almost all the races are in the middle of the night.

[Doc Rock]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Today's race was at 6am California time. It was like, no, yeah, guess what time it is? For me, yeah. For you, it's the middle of the night. Yeah.

[Ian Thompson]

But you see, in one way, that's an advantage in that if you're streaming it, you can pause and fast forward because you've had a couple of races this year where red flags have just blocked out 20 minutes. If I'd have got up at 6am to watch some of the races, as I used to do, you know, live, you'd have had an hour sitting around going, what the hell am I standing here for?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that argues for somebody like YouTube or Apple to buy the rights. YouTube spent a lot of money on the NFL for Sunday night. Night Sunday ticket. Right. And. And I think the streamers. I thought Apple might be in the market, given that they are the ones producing this Formula one movie.

[Doc Rock]

What they do with their spatial stuff and some of the innovations they do with.

[Leo Laporte]

Amazon bought football.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Have all those stats all over it.

[Doc Rock]

Yeah.

[Ian Thompson]

Amazon has done that with Formula one. Now you've got AWS stats, which are essentially meaningless about, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

I know.

[Ian Thompson]

No, I mean, they keep on putting.

[Leo Laporte]

A 3% chance of having an accident. My favorite is how close to the wall they got.

[Lou Maresca]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Doc Rock]

No, Well, I mean, especially in Monaco.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah. Oh, no, I was gonna say, doc. In Monaco, there's a famous story where A and Senna complained that the barrier on one of the corners was wider than it should be. And it turned out he was right. They'd repainted it with a thick paint, and he just brushed against it. These are the levels that these people work at.

[Leo Laporte]

And Liberty is hoping that the Formula One movie with Brad Pit, which comes out on the 25th.

[Ian Thompson]

I'm a high skeptic on that one.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Will drive traffic because he's trying to get a good deal Formula one is nowhere near NFL or even NBA or Major League Baseball rights revenues.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, not in the US but worldwide.

[Leo Laporte]

Worldwide.

[Doc Rock]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Sky I'm sure pays a lot of money. Money to put Crofty on the tube.

[Ian Thompson]

Oh, no. Well, they had, they had Nico Rosberg commentating on the sky feed.

[Leo Laporte]

I bet that's good. Yeah.

[Ian Thompson]

Oh, he's so passionate and he was just.

[Leo Laporte]

I pay for the F1.

[Ian Thompson]

So do I. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Stream. You can watch the sky. You can see the sky announcers if you want.

[Doc Rock]

You just said something in that also. I think one of the reasons why it went down in the US Is when the Andretti's came out out. We don't really have a. A fighter in the fight at this point. Right. So we have to adopt like Lewis. That's what Cadillac is coming.

[Leo Laporte]

Cadillac's coming in though.

[Ian Thompson]

No, Cadillac is coming in as a new team. And I'm. I'm an F1TV subscriber as well. Although I usually go the international feed.

[Leo Laporte]

I always watch the F1 feed. But now that I know Nico is doing the.

[Ian Thompson]

Nico and Crofty, it looks, it looks like a one off. It was Nico and Crofty. Martin Brundle's birthday was week, so he ends up having stayed away. And the previous week he just received an order of the British Empire from her. Sorry, not Her Majesty. His Majesty. Yes, please get that right. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

How is Chuck doing by the way? You happy with him?

[Ian Thompson]

He seems to be getting it quite right. There were worrying concerns that when, when he was, you know, Prince of Wales for so long, he had really big ideas about actually ruling the country, which is not what we have the royal family for. You know, they're there to open supermarkets and they're there.

[Leo Laporte]

Tourist industry.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah, exactly. But you know, Charles seems to be working okay. You know, I mean he's. He's got some health problems, but the best health care, don't you think?

[Leo Laporte]

Wills. Everybody wants Wills as soon as possible. Like he.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I feel like the monarchy is on thin ice and Charles isn't helping. He's not Mr. Charisma.

[Ian Thompson]

No, no. I mean. And people are living longer than they would were. But you know, he's not disliked as much as he could have been. You know. Okay. He chucked over Diana for some. For. Never mind. But yeah, it's. It seems to be working. We'll see what Canada on Australia do, whether or not they stay in the Commonwealth.

[Leo Laporte]

But is that, is that at risk?

[Ian Thompson]

Australia certainly at risk. Kind of less so, I think. Think.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, Canada has. Canada might want some Help from across the Atlantic, just in case.

[Ian Thompson]

I honestly, Canada, EU deals I think are going to be going huge. Because when someone, in fact, Charles was.

[Leo Laporte]

In Canada just last week and said, you know, kind of in veiled, very veiled speech, you know, you might want to keep us around.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, we think veil, veiled, yes, by media terms, but in terms of British royalty, that was pretty damn. You know, that they're not supposed to slap.

[Leo Laporte]

They're not supposed to get political, are they?

[Ian Thompson]

No, exactly. The whole point is they stay away from politics. But at the same time, I don't know, Canada has. When somebody is saying, oh, I wouldn't rule out in militarily invading Canada, they've got good reason to be iffy about the whole thing.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, we're going to get back to the tech talk. I don't know how we got into F1 in the British royalty.

[Ian Thompson]

Sorry about that.

[Leo Laporte]

Drifted off a little bit. But when we come back, Microsoft executive going to Amazon. This is a big one. I think you know who I'm talking about. Mr. Maresca. We'll have in just a moment. Yep. But first, a word from our sponsor, Express VPN. You know, going online without ExpressVPN is like, I don't know, leaving your laptop at the coffee shop when you run to the bathroom. If you're in Tokyo, no problem. Most of the time in the United States, probably you're okay. But one day, what if you come out and your laptop's gone? Right? You take precautions. It's normal. Look, everyone needs ExpressVPN every time you connect to an unencrypted network in that coffee shop, in a hotel, in an airport, or wherever your online data is suddenly not secure. Any hacker on the same network can gain access to and steal your personal data. It doesn't take much technical knowledge to hack someone. You just need some cheap hardware. The. You know, like the WI fi pineapple. And suddenly, you know, you can see what's going on. Your data. Data, of course, is valuable. That's the incentive. Hackers can make up to $1,000 a person selling your personal info on the dark web. That's why you need ExpressVPN. It stops hackers from stealing your data by creating a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the Internet. This is the one I use, ExpressVPN. It's the best VPN out there, the only one I recommend because I really trust them. They're committed to keeping your privacy private.

[Ian Thompson]

It.

[Leo Laporte]

And I love to use it when I travel because I can Keep up on my shows. I can watch football or I can get, you know, the sky sports version of F1 anywhere in the world. ExpressVPN is the number one VPN in my mind because it's super secure. It would take a hacker with a supercomputer more than a billion years to get past ExpressVPN's encryption. It's easy to use. You fire up the app, you click one button, you get protected, and it works on everything. You've got phones, laptops, tablets. Tablets and more. So you can stay secure on the go, even at home. Optional, dedicated IP service engineered with innovative zero knowledge design. Not even ExpressVPN can trace an IP address back to the user. Rated number one by Top Tech reviewers like CNET and the Verge, it's the only one I use. Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com twit that's Expres VPN and you can get an extra four months free when you buy a two year package. Expressvpn.com Twitter we thank them so much for their support of this week in tech and we appreciate it. They've been with us for a long time and frankly, wouldn't go anywhere without them. So, Jay, do you know Jay Allard by any chance? I know you know him by reputation.

[Benito]

Sorry, real quick.

[Doc Rock]

I do know.

[Lou Maresca]

I do know him.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yes.

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You do know him.

[Lou Maresca]

I do, yeah. Not personally, obviously, but I would, I would say having to work in different organizations, I've worked kind of adjacent, I guess you could say.

[Leo Laporte]

But he was the, he was one of the Xbox guys. In fact, I remember going up to 360.

[Lou Maresca]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

For that big launch. Yeah. Of the Xbox and that was a big deal. We were, I was still at Tech TV. That was how long it was like 2001, I feel like 2002. He was the co founder, former Microsoft executive, face of the Xbox and the 360, 20 years at Microsoft. He also, he wouldn't mention this on his resume, but he was one of the guys behind the Zune.

[Ian Thompson]

This was something I found. Oh, come on.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what he did that was great? That didn't get. Deserved credit, but didn't get. It was the Kin. I thought the Kin was a great idea. This was the phone. Microsoft sold it for three months. Three months. But it was a simple phone. It was designed for. It would be so big today, right?

[Doc Rock]

Yep.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah. I mean there was a famous story where the Zune was launched and they set up bins at Microsoft to actually. You could put your Ipod in there and get a Zune and There were like two iPods in there at the end of it.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, nobody's gonna turn in their ipod for a Z.

[Ian Thompson]

But I mean he's a very, very talented guy and this is a really important move. But that look at.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, we'll talk about it. I just want to say I want to. I've got him. I gotta drill down on the Kin. I'm sorry, this was the best. I think this was 2012 or sorry, 2010. I think they could do very well selling this now.

[Lou Maresca]

Oh yeah, people want to want that. They want, they wants to come back, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. It had a. Look at this. It slid up. That was a sliding face. It was just a little thing like a flip phone had a keyboard but also it was simple.

[Doc Rock]

It. That's a Ken one. I actually like the Kin two. There's a KIN two. There you go.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a Kin a little bit.

[Ian Thompson]

I still think BlackBerry were doing it better.

[Benito]

It looks like a Sidekick. It looks like a Sidekick.

[Leo Laporte]

Why did it fail? What happened?

[Ian Thompson]

Windows OS on mobile wasn't great, right?

[Leo Laporte]

You know I take.

[Doc Rock]

No, I take Windows ce.

[Leo Laporte]

I take Umbridge.

[Ian Thompson]

It wasn't quints for a reason.

[Leo Laporte]

This was the very nice Windows version of Windows Phone, wasn't it?

[Ian Thompson]

Well, the problem was Windows Phone couldn't decide what it wanted to do. Seven was a great operating system. Then they went to eight. Now all the apps died and Balma just wasn't serious about it.

[Leo Laporte]

Let me see, let me see what this was running. I think full scale processor was soon inside.

[Benito]

No, like saying this was Windows 8. So like there was a big like people hated Microsoft at this moment. So that was also a thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Nobody liked Windows ce. But I like Windows Phone. I'm trying to figure out, yeah, Windows Phone was awesome.

[Lou Maresca]

Bees knees.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah, yeah, it had its advantages. But you know when Windows CE was called wince for a reason. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, CE was. No, but remember there wasn't any competition either. There was BlackBerry and Windows CE.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Nokia Candy bar Phones.

[Ian Thompson]

When Windows phone shifted from 7 to 8 and onwards, then they lost a lot of apps because they weren't supporting the apps properly.

[Leo Laporte]

So Microsoft acquired Sidekick which was a wonderful phone. I did have a wonderful phone. And the Sidekick was the inspiration for the Kin. The Danger Hip top. It was the inspiration for the Kin. I think you really can't say it was Windows Phone because it was really its own, at least on the surface, its own version of a kind of a simplified phone. It was 50 or 100 bucks.

[Lou Maresca]

Yep.

[Ian Thompson]

That was a key selling point. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Microsoft.

[Lou Maresca]

No, it wasn't that he didn't go all in either. I remember like he, he went all in like jl. I mean, he had a pink conference room. He had like, you know, he, like he did just about everything to like promote this project.

[Leo Laporte]

So you know who didn't? Verizon.

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And that was the problem is that, and I think it's somewhat still true today, if the phone store doesn't promote the phone, you're not going to be able to sell it in the United States. I remember Xiaomi pulling out, or was it Huawei? One of the Chinese phone manufacturers had a deal and they were all set to launch a really nice phone. This was some years ago at ces. They had a big keynote at CES and everything. And then their, their phone company partner, I think it was Verizon, was told by the federal government, you know, you probably shouldn't be selling this phone. They pulled out and Xiaomi said, okay, that's it. We're not going to sell any phones in the United States ever again. Because without this phone store support, you're not going to sell. And the Microsoft told the New York Times at the time time that they were dismayed that Verizon Wireless staff were not promoting the phones. 48 days later they discontinued it.

[Benito]

I think the problem was more the apps though, right? Because there were none of the iPhone apps, none of the Android Dots ever made it to that phone. So that was.

[Leo Laporte]

No, but that was the point. It was kind of a simple phone. It's almost a kid's phone.

[Benito]

Yeah, but at the time we wanted. That's not what we wanted. We wanted like an iPhone at the time.

[Leo Laporte]

That's not what we wanted.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, I mean, I appreciate your point about the carriers because the same thing happened with Palm Pre. Now there have been only, only two press conferences I've stood up and applauded in this century. And one of them was launched the Palm Pre because Palm was a great operating system, but the carriers wouldn't support it. So, you know, we lost an entire really good ecosystem just like that. It's the same thing with Windows. It was kind of like, yeah, it kind of works, but you're screwing around with it. So there we go.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, man.

[Doc Rock]

I had that red handspring tree, Leo and I. Oh, that's great. In that, in that Manchester United red. That thing was a beast.

[Leo Laporte]

And you put the little handspring modules in there and do all sorts of other stuff.

[Doc Rock]

Now, Leo, you gotta Remember too, Jay. Jay got the. He stepped in the dog dookies a little bit with. What's that thing called the, the Font Courier.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, the Courier. Now that was. I wanted that too, dude.

[Doc Rock]

We all did. I remember.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't think that was ever announced.

[Ian Thompson]

Disagree.

[Doc Rock]

But yeah, it was the announcement. And we were on Mac break weekly going, oh my God. I remember people were like, oh, this is going to iPad. This is going to be some drama. And then Apple was like, okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Microsoft killed it.

[Doc Rock]

Steve killed it. Steve Baller killed it.

[Leo Laporte]

Steve Ballmer killed it.

[Doc Rock]

He was like, I ain't giving you any money for that.

[Leo Laporte]

So here's the story. This is from Jay Green's story on CNET back in 2011 when it actually happened. One group led by Xbox godfather Jay Allard was pushing for a sleek two screen tablet called the Courier that users controlled with their finger or a pen, running a modified version of Windows. You know who, you know who killed it? Steven Sinofsky.

[Ian Thompson]

Oh, good lord.

[Doc Rock]

He was that laugh.

[Ian Thompson]

Lou.

[Leo Laporte]

Louis.

[Lou Maresca]

I'm laughing now. A little bit of Trump, I was gonna say. Like, if you Remember back in 2019, there was a device called the Surface Neo.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Lou Maresca]

And I can tell you, I've held this device. It's the Courier.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. Sinofsky did not want a tablet friendly version of Windows. He ran Windows at the time. And so it was Sinofsky versus Allard and Ballmer had to pick the winner.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, he asked Bill Gates.

[Leo Laporte]

Ballmer arranged for Microsoft's chairman and co founder to meet for a few hours with Allard and Robbie Bach and the other courier team members. And I guess Gates said, well, how do you get email on this? Allard said, you don't. He reasoned that everyone who had a courier would also have a smartphone for email. What do you need email for? And I think Bill Gates said, you know, this is. One courier worker said, this is where Bill had an allergic reaction. He's. Bill pressed Allard, challenging the logic of the approach. Allard wanted to create a device focused on content creation. I think Jay Allard's kind of a visionary, really.

[Doc Rock]

100%.

[Lou Maresca]

He really was. Yeah, he is.

[Doc Rock]

Yeah.

[Lou Maresca]

I think that's the thing. Amazon keeps Amazon keeps like engulfing all of the really visionary people that we had, like.

[Ian Thompson]

Yep.

[Lou Maresca]

I mean, and these are all great leaders. They're visionary, they're approachable, they're really cool. They're just incredibly creative. Like, I think they continue to do it.

[Leo Laporte]

So that's the story that Allard is now at Amazon and doing the same thing, I think working on what he calls breakthrough device. This is the story from the verge. Antonio G. DiBenedetto writing. Amazon has a new team. It's called 01, which is I think a play on. Remember Jeff Bezos always said it's always day one, right? In his letters.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

01 team focused on breakthrough devices led by Jay Allard. Based on a job listing for the team, one of the products is a smart home device. Well, wait a minute. Amazon already has the Air Echo.

[Doc Rock]

They're trying to do the new.

[Leo Laporte]

The next Echo thing too.

[Doc Rock]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Probably nobody better to design that.

[Doc Rock]

Though. One thing that Jacob bring to the table to Amazon, which I think needs to happen sooner or later. First of all, the idea of catching up all the visionaries is somebody's hoping that there's another Steve type cat around somewhere. Right. When he came out with Xbox live as a 360 player, like when Live came out like our heads exploded. Like we were like, yo, this is the next thing. Since like spread. Most of the games now are being purchased by a DLC type system which Amazon excels at. Right. Imagine if he could bring some of that so that you can do fun and casual games on an Xbox tv TV oriented device. Be able to play these things on a device that connects to your tv, that allows interactive play between families or things like that. So I think it's a combination of both the smart devices. But he could also bring some of that Lamp party style gaming situation back to Amazon and, and, and probably, you know, just that market would explode. That would be super cool.

[Leo Laporte]

Here's the Neo. You're right. Luke, put a link in our discord. It looks just like the Courier.

[Lou Maresca]

Oh yeah. I'm telling you, it's. It was a bigger version of the Duo, but it, it felt premium. Like this guy's holding it. I will tell you, I've held this device and it really feels, it felt better than even an iPad.

[Leo Laporte]

So Microsoft announced at the same time as they announced this, they announced that phone.

[Lou Maresca]

Right, right, right. And the coolest thing about this is you see that keyboard there? That was two screens and you just put the keyboard on the screen, all of a sudden it would detect it. It's really, really cool.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that's cool.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So they released the. What was the name of the phone? I forgot now.

[Lou Maresca]

Duo.

[Leo Laporte]

The Duo. And they did a few versions of the Duo. I loved the Duo. I bought the Duo, then returned it because I love the hardware. Yeah, it was. The software was lacking. It didn't have software to take advantage of the dual screen surface.

[Doc Rock]

Do over.

[Ian Thompson]

I mean, this is the thing with Microsoft. When they went mobile, they bought Nokia and Nokia made the best hardware on the planet when it came to phones. Worst software, but great hardware, you know, so they had the best camera, they had a decent amount of processing power in there and. And Microsoft got great phones and then they killed the company.

[Leo Laporte]

So did the Neo ever come out?

[Lou Maresca]

I don't think it did. I think it was just a like a proof of concept that they had like shown people and. And it never actually came out as a product, unfortunately.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it went south when Windows 10X went south. Like it was designed to be the platform for this sandbox, super secure version of Windows, right. And then they never, for some reason they abandoned Windows 10X. And then there was a yoga book.

[Doc Rock]

That came out that matched.

[Leo Laporte]

Yoga was similar, but this is. This felt more like the Courier. It felt more like it was solid, right?

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah, it was really dense and it. And it was responsive. The hinge was great. It was just one of those things I wish came out.

[Leo Laporte]

Look at the pen. Kind of stuck to the back of it there. It's just the right size too. That was the other problem with the phone. It was just a little small. This is, this is like.

[Ian Thompson]

I mean one of the things Jobs got right was saying we don't need a stylus. You need your finger. And that was absolutely right because the amount of styluses, although Apple does sell now.

[Leo Laporte]

Styluses, Yeah, I know they call them pencils, but.

[Ian Thompson]

But I mean that's for tablets, not for phones.

[Leo Laporte]

Phones, right.

[Ian Thompson]

You know, used to get with Palm, with various other. With Windows you get a tablet which, sorry, a stylus which slotted it into the side of the phone, right. And it never worked, right, because it's so small.

[Doc Rock]

Like yeah, ones that go into. It's too skinny. And then anybody that has grown man hands losing a little toothpick to try to write, it just never freaking works.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, as a grown man hand guy, I still, I don't know, I thought. Anyway, I thought I. Allard, look, these are all Allard designs, right? This is all Allard's. Some pretty impressive and the most importantly innovative stuff that unfortunately Microsoft at the time just wasn't really prepared to get behind. Except for the Xbox.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, he gave him a mint.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, he did all right with that. Well, I hope he does something interesting for. You know what, you kind of nailed it when you said, Doc, that these companies are just looking for the next Steve Job. Because didn't OpenAI just give six and a half billion dollars to Jony. I've to design an AI device.

[Doc Rock]

It's crazy.

[Leo Laporte]

Six and a half billion. Of course, it was just stock.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

We talked about this last week and I think it was Mike Elgin who said, you know, they just wanted to dilute their stock because it makes it easier to do the nonprofit thing they've been trying to do. So maybe it wasn't. It was, you know, they were already working with him. But what they want to make make with Johnny, who is of course the former Apple designer, the wizard at Apple is according to what every. Everybody's been the rumor mills been saying is a pet is a pendant that hangs around your neck, records everything, is your AI assistant, agent, your buddy. I want a little break. And when we come back, I want to ask you, Lou, how close we are to that AI bottle. Buddy. It can do. It could do pivot tables, but can it book an air. Can it book out a flight for me? See, I wear my little AI buddy. I always talk about my, my B computer, but it doesn't do anything yet. I'm just getting ready for the day at will. Lumaresa is here. He. You can, you can ask him all about Python and Excel and copilot in Excel.

[Lou Maresca]

That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

Principal engineering manager at Excel. Copilot. So nice to have you, Lou, former host of this Week in Enterprise Tech. We miss you. We miss that show. Also, Doc Rock, the YouTube guru and director of strategic partnerships at eCamm. We're using eCamm right now, Doc, you'll be proud to say, proud to know. We are very happy with our ECAMM setup.

[Doc Rock]

Thank you.

[Leo Laporte]

Yep. And of course, Ian Thompson of the Register. You know, I our sponsor for this segment of, of the show is Spaceship. It's very modern. If you go to the website, you will see, see, it's extremely modern. Spaceship.comTwit It's a domain and web platform that simplifies the process of choosing, purchasing and managing domain names and web products. My daughter has been, you know, struggling with setting up her Shopify site. And I told her if you just used Spaceship, it would be. They have a simple. You click a button button and it's all connected. Makes it easy for you. And if you have any questions at Spaceship, they've got an AI assistant appropriately named Alf that will help you do all those domain setup things. I love it. If you go to the Spaceship website, the very first thing you see is Beast mode, which is a way to search for a Domain name. You just type it in and it'll find a domain name for you. They offer below market really good prices for domain registration and I think really innovative features for domain management. One of the things this got me so excited that they're doing is very clever. If you want to do end to end encrypted messaging, you know you can use Signal which you use your phone number not so private or you can make up a signal name and have to tell everybody that's kind of a pain. Or use or you use, you know, Facebook messenger and your Facebook name. They've come up with a new kind of end to end messaging messaging called Thunderbolt where your address is your domain. So for instance I'm Leos im. I registered at Spaceship. Actually once you, when you register domain at Spaceship it makes it very easy to do this, but you can use a domain registered anywhere. So I thought well I'm going to get one that's easy to remember. Leos. Leos IM right. If you. That is now because I control that. That is my one and only unique address. Address for text messaging, chat, video calling. It's not a phone number, it's not an email address. It's my domain name. Isn't that clever? It uses Internet standard end to end encryption. They're starting to really add some nice features to it. This is one of the things I love about Spaceship. They have a roadmap where you can vote on new features. And this was one of the features people said, hey, you know, since we got the domain names, what about making a messaging system around that? With other messaging apps you have an email and you have a password which you know that makes your account hackable. Right. If you don't practice, you know, if you use monkey123 as a password, it's not going to stay secure very long. With Thunderbolt you set it up. You, you use a QR code on the Spaceship site. And now I have Thunderbolt on my phone and now I can attach it and I have to all my other devices using a QR code from the phone, no password and it's not hackable. At Thunderbolt your domain ownership is verified so it's guaranteed to be you. Messages are end to end, encrypted. They don't store them on Thunderbolt servers. This is a brilliant idea. Using Internet standard end to end encryption and your domain name as your identity. It's a perfect app for domain owners who value privacy looking for a secure way to communicate. Great for businesses too, right? Because you can have your Business name as your messaging name. If you already have a domain name, you can use it at any other registrar. If you don't. I went to Spaceship.com because I wanted one that was just right for Thunderbolt. So I had, like I said, leos im. Once I set up the domain, it was automatic. Oh, and by the way, yes, they support passkeys, so it's really secure. I mean this is, this is a really good way to do it. Brand new, very clever, lots of nice features. Unbox that simple way to connect your sites to your domain. Like if my daughter had it Shopify, you could have a website hosted there if you want. Below market value, below market price. Domain names. And I love, I really love this Thunderbolt messaging. They also have email. They have a lot of other features. Really fancy. Fantastic. You should check it out and get a domain name. I think I paid $4.32 for a year of Leo's IM and now I have this uni. I mean, it's wonderful. Visit the App Store, get the Thunderbolt app from Spaceship. Now get the domain name and then it's very simple to connect it to the Thunderbolt app from Spaceship. You can go to spaceship.com TWiT Discover More exclusive deals on domains and more spatial. Highly recommend it. These guys are really smart. I had a great conversation with their developers. I wanted to know more about Thunderbolt. So I said let's, let's talk about this. And they gave me the lowdown. I was very impressed. Jay Allard. We did Jay Allard. We're all excited about Jay's. Jay's next project, whatever that might be. Do you think he's working with Panos?

[Lou Maresca]

He has to be because Panos runs Amazon Devices.

[Leo Laporte]

Panos must have brought him in, right?

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah, I'm sure of it. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Let's talk about. And this is a more nebulous conversation. It's not driven by the latest news. Well, I guess you could say it's driven by Johnny. I've going to work for Sam Altman. But where you use. Use Co pilot. Pilot you work with. You actually. Do you code with co pilot?

[Lou Maresca]

Absolutely. Yeah. It's built on OpenAI models, so.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. You do vibe coding.

[Lou Maresca]

I do.

[Leo Laporte]

Really?

[Lou Maresca]

Oh, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I want to do our prototyping. Our user group, our AI user group is Friday. You should come by if you have a. If you have time.

[Lou Maresca]

I would love that.

[Leo Laporte]

And what I wanted to do is show some Vibe coding. So I've been using Claude code, but you could show us code with it.

[Lou Maresca]

Sure. Because I use fly right in Copilot too.

[Leo Laporte]

It's really impressive. If you see it, that's Friday, June 6, 2pm if you're a member of the club, we do this the first Friday of every month. Last week, month we did. Anthony showed us how he does all these cool videos by the way. That's another thing happening. Talk about that in a second. Is these video generators like veo. Holy cow. Cow. Holy cow. But I'm really my. I want. Okay, so I saw the movie her, right? Okay, I admit it. And I want not. I know it's not gonna be Scarlett Johansson, but somebody likes Scarlett Johansson in my ear or on my lapel or around my neck. That's keeping track of everything that I can say, hey, do I have an appointment this afternoon that I could say, hey, could you check with my dentist and see if they can move that appointment? After I can say buy me. I really want to see Superman at the imax. Can you figure out how to get tickets? That kind of thing.

[Doc Rock]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

How close are we?

[Lou Maresca]

I think, you know, it's interesting because there's a lot of speculation. This is not personal experience, but there's a lot of speculation. You know, GPT5 is coming and I think the biggest thing there is they're focused on basically human level agency. This is the ability to act autonomously without user interaction.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the hot thing is agency. That's what Microsoft showed last week at Build the MCP and A2A. And by the way, kudos to Microsoft for adopting an industry standard which actually came out of a competitor anthropic. Because if it's standard then we can all interoperate, which is really important, I think.

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah, but I think the biggest thing that it's all about is it's all about being able to execute multiple steps, do it at many different layers. So you were saying, hey, I'd love it. A voice assistant. It can do multi. It can do multimodal voice assistant. It can talk to you just like Siri and Alexa. But then it can go and execute things like it go do automation. It can do complex processes like I don't know, inventory or management or financial analysts and then it can do that on the side. And I think the way you'll start to see this in the industry, I think this is going to be a big trend is these model companies, foundational model companies, are actually starting to build these larger systems that are built that have more just than just a model behind it. And then what happens is the user says what they want, and then it executes in the system. The system decides on whether they want deep reasoning or they want to do execute multiple steps or, or schedule a task or something like that. And that all happens behind the scenes without the user knowing. And it can do that, you know, successfully. Well, you know, and actually accurately. And so that's where that this comes in. Go and go find me these tickets. Right? Or go find me this. Go, go do this for me, man.

[Leo Laporte]

If I could get IMAX tickets for Superman, I would be a hero.

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah. I mean, that's another thing is obviously then you're going to have all these AI assistants kind of fighting against each other. So it's never to. Going, going to be. It's never going to be, but at.

[Leo Laporte]

Least I'd have a chance against these scalpers, right, who buy up all the tickets in the first 10 seconds.

[Lou Maresca]

Right, right. So I, but I think that's where it's coming. I think to me, this is where.

[Leo Laporte]

We want to go. And this is, I don't think so far from Vibe coding. Right. Right now, Vibe coding is a very constrained domain and domain the AI understands well, which is writing computer code. But you basically tell it, do this, and it does it right, and then you can correct it, you can work with it iterate.

[Lou Maresca]

It's about the memory too. Like a lot of times like these, these models, they just, you just accept your tokens and then they spit out what they can give you based off of what they ingested. But these new systems that are built behind the scenes are built on files, they're built on other things and they can go and consume them when they need them. And that's really what's going to kind of fuel the rest, the future of this, I think.

[Ian Thompson]

So I mean, I've got to say as a journalist, then how is the editing process when it comes to code? I mean, how many breaks are we getting built in there? And how much time do you have to spend making sure the code is perfect?

[Lou Maresca]

You have to. Yeah, you absolutely do have to spend a lot of time. You know, does it save you time, you think it saves time on smaller things? Like if you are want to write a test for something you just wrote, or if you, or if you want to go and, you know, if you want to write large, big modules like Ian just said, is you have to spend a bunch of time verifying that the functionality is correct or it's, you know, safe coding or something like that. So I, I think this, there's still some room for improvement there But I think smaller tasks like go, build me a function that does X, like goes and you know, turns everything backwards or, you know, or executes prime or something like that. Like, it can definitely do that very easily. And it can build on that.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't want to ambush you here on this, but Steve Gibson was talking about this on Tuesday. This is a Reddit thread. My new hobby, watching AI slowly drive Microsoft employees insane. I don't know. Have you seen these pull requests? These are.

[Lou Maresca]

I haven't. No, I haven't.

[Leo Laporte]

It's pretty funny. So this poor guy, his name, I.

[Lou Maresca]

Can tell you what they are. Actually, before you show, let me just guess what they are.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Lou Maresca]

They are automated assistants that come in and tell you what's wrong with your code.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's a copilot. What the guy's trying to use, it's their pull requests generated by copilot.

[Lou Maresca]

We do have that. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And the thread is about like these poor Microsoft coders who feel compelled to use copilot, but are. So here's an example. So this is trying to fix a problem. There's an out of range exception when using certain regex patterns. And you know, how do we fix this? So copilot did what I probably would do, not being intern level coder. They just put a bounds check in and says, if you've run out of buffer space, just return. No match. Right. So that seemed like a sensible thing to do. Then the human gets involved and says his name is Steven Taub. That seems like it's fixing the symptom rather than the underlying issue. Can you look at what gets us there in the first place? Place? And he says, co pilot, please take a look. And copilot says, you're right. Oh, you're right. This is one of the things all the AIs do. Oh, you're so smart. You're absolutely right. How. Oh, what was I thinking? So it goes through and does the same thing. It fixes the symptom.

[Lou Maresca]

This is the way I would like to say Steven Taub. Is he. He's. He's an amazing engineer. He's a top engineer at Microsoft.

[Leo Laporte]

Of course he is.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And well, and this is the problem. Is this poor? Highly. This, this, you know, 10x coder is now talking to this basically moronic AI and can't. And just can't. Can't get it to fix the underlying problem.

[Ian Thompson]

But.

[Lou Maresca]

Go ahead, Ian, go ahead.

[Ian Thompson]

I was gonna say, is it a training problem or is it a software problem? Because one of those is fixable It's a good question.

[Lou Maresca]

I mean I, I can't tell, I can't go in why this particular issue came out. But I will say that like, you know, a lot of times these automated assistants that come in and say, hey, this is what's wrong with your code. You know, they can go probably find a handful of situations where it recommends bad things or it recommends incorrect things.

[Leo Laporte]

But I will say we've all experienced that where it. And it doubles down. It's very confident.

[Lou Maresca]

Right. But I will say like the other, other side of things is it does point out things that people like humans didn't catch, didn't think about. Right. And I think I've seen that a lot of pull requests.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah, no, I mean I, I would agree with you on that. I mean it does point out really interesting case. I was writing an obituary for the founder of crypto and AI ChatGPT told me that a particular person I was interviewing added a 2 of an encryption algorithm on their body and didn't have an. It's one of those things. It's a filtering process and it's going to get better.

[Leo Laporte]

I think this is the issue that you were thinking about actually Lou, where earlier in May GitHub added a new option in its create new issue page. Save time by creating issues with co pilot and people are a little miffed that the AI is now going to be able to create issues on their repositories.

[Ian Thompson]

A little miffed.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you.

[Lou Maresca]

I've been dealing with this for a while. It doesn't. We already have this internally and I will say like, like I said, like, it, it helps.

[Leo Laporte]

Ignore it. Right.

[Lou Maresca]

But you can ignore it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's sometimes even if one time out of five it's right. That's great.

[Doc Rock]

That's still time savings.

[Leo Laporte]

As long as the other four are pretty obviously dopey and you can quickly. You don't have to spend a lot of time figuring them out.

[Lou Maresca]

It's the ones that aren't. That's the biggest problem I have is the ones that you, they point out a problem and you're like, is that really a problem? So then you have to go spend a bunch of time trying to discern whether it's a problem or not. So I think there's, there's definitely those situations as well.

[Leo Laporte]

Would you say on balance that I'm putting you on the spot? Look, let's say this right now. Lou is not represent Microsoft. He's not speaking for Microsoft. He is at this point. He's Day off. He is. He's just doing his own thing. But would you say on balance that this is more helpful or than less helpful?

[Lou Maresca]

I think it's. I definitely would say it's more helpful and I'm not. This is speaking on my own and this is just me using things at home too. Right. Of just building products, using cloud or anything. Right. I think it definitely helps more than it hurts.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it's useful.

[Doc Rock]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Doc Rock]

That's the same thing with, you know, like video and content creators. Like, a lot of people are freaking out, like, what's going to happen? And a lot of people are like, no, no, it's making my job easier. I'm on the. The latter more than the former. I think it's definitely making my job easier. And you know, with AI Studio, for instance. Right. I sent it a video and I was like, okay, as, dude, I want you to try something, watch, critique the video, give me a couple of things that I could do to make it better. And just so you don't completely crush my soul, tell me a couple of things that I nailed. And it, the, the feedback was flawless. I mean, like, as a person who coaches people and I just got lazy. On the video, like, the feedback was flawless and I'm like, today is the worst day that AI is ever going to be. Tomorrow to be.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a good point.

[Doc Rock]

And the next day, although it could.

[Leo Laporte]

Get worse, there's no reason going to get necessarily going to get better, going.

[Doc Rock]

To get more skilled. Better is subjective.

[Leo Laporte]

Darren Oki, who's one of my favorite people in, in our club and a coder, he works at JP Morgan, said, humans do this too. He said that when we were at JP Morgan about 10 years ago, or at Morgan Stanley, I should say, we had a thing where System A was producing an error in some situation. So people who were writing System B and couldn't fix System A just adjusted for the problem. They said, well, it's going to be off by one. So when you get it from System A, just add one or whatever, subtract one. Ten years later, we're working to fix System A. And we had to keep the bug because so much of System B was now reliant on fixing the error that System A had been sending for the last decade. And they couldn't fix System B, I guess. Guess so. He said, look, this. Humans have been doing this for ages too. I guess that's, that's a good point.

[Doc Rock]

Do you use.

[Leo Laporte]

Let me. This is getting a little geeky. We should save this for next, the AI user group. But do you use Copilot to write tests, Lou?

[Lou Maresca]

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[Leo Laporte]

I would think that'd be the main.

[Lou Maresca]

Function for me, actually.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, to be honest with you, because so tests for people who don't know. You know, one of the real, I think positive trends in code coding is what they call test driven design. In fact, I was taught the way to do it is you don't even write any code for a function. You write the tests first. What the function is supposed to do, the test will fail because you haven't written any code. And then you write the code in the function until the test pass. And so if everything is tested, then you know, in theory a change isn't going to cause a regression. You're not. Or if it does, you'll get an alert because it tests for will start failing. So you want to do comprehensive testing. The problem is humans are notoriously bad at that. We are very myopic. We can't write our own tests because, you know, we wrote the code in the first place. We didn't think about that weird out of bounds condition. But, but a, but an AI could in theory be very good at doing very good comprehensive tests. Has that been your experience?

[Lou Maresca]

Absolutely, yeah. I think, I think the biggest thing is it can see, it inspects everything, it evaluates everything and data types its limits on the data. Like it can, can figure out every limit or threshold and then it can generate a test on it. So that's where humans sometimes just, it just saves time to be able to go and do those kind of edge case scenarios. So yeah, yeah.

[Ian Thompson]

Does that work on higher level functions in terms of software? You know, because I mean, I get that the, you know, they pick up common breaks, but does it work at the higher level?

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah, that's a good question because again then you're like kind of working at a black box and so you have to pass more variations of it as at this like big back black box of the, you know, not understanding what's happening under the covers. And so that's. Sometimes it does like, I think there are examples where it's kind of like pen testing where you kind of test the thresholds on different things. And so AI can just generate droves of pen tests, right, to be able to even up the black box. So there's sometimes usefulness.

[Leo Laporte]

This is why I prefer functional coding, because you can test each function and once a function is tested and proven to be correct, you can choose trust it and then you can continue to proceed. And the Whole system you've built will be correct because every bit of the system at a lower level is correct, you know, and you don't have interactions between functions and things like that. But yeah, I'm not a real coder, Lou is. So I'm just gonna take a back seat till. Anybody who could put Python in Excel is obviously a good.

[Ian Thompson]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Clearly I mentioned that one of the things AI does is it sometimes can be, in fact, OpenAI had a problem with ChatGPT 4.5 being sycophantic. Overly nice. Washington Post. Your chatbot friend might be messing with your mind. Tactics used to make AI tools more engaging can drive chatbots to monopolize users time or reinforce harmful ideas. This is a recent study warning of a new danger of consumer using AI Chatbots that are tuned to win people over can say things to vulnerable people they probably shouldn't say. Right. It's like a customer service rep. My.

[Lou Maresca]

Wife has an example that she's. She's writing a new book. She writes it all on her own, no AI help, and then she wants to give, give it to the AI, say, hey, chatgpt, tell me how this book is. Will be received well, and it pats her on the back and she just wants constructive feedback, you know what I'm saying?

[Leo Laporte]

Right. That's a tuning issue, though. That's an issue of the. In, you know, the instructions the company provides. And, and, and of course, that's why CH Open AI pulled back chat GB245 and said, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna fix this. But it's something to be aware of.

[Ian Thompson]

Bruce Schneider gave a keynote talk at RSA this year just on this topic. And it was like, yeah, if you're using an AI agent and it's developed by a certain company, the company will put their particular likes and desires in there. So you can't trust them.

[Leo Laporte]

That was a really good talk. You might use, for instance, I use Perplexity AI all the time for everything. And if I was using it, I showed you before the show, I'm going to meet with my physician tomorrow. And I was using it to build a case for me to get a certain medicine medication. Now, if the manufacturers of a competing medication happen to be advertisers with.

[Ian Thompson]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Perplexity, I might get recommendations that were to facilitate their sales as opposed to. Actually the right answer.

[Ian Thompson]

No, absolutely.

[Leo Laporte]

We should mention that Aravind Srinivas, who's the founder of Perplexity, has already said they're doing a browser, a gentic Browser. He's already said, yeah, this is gonna be great for advertising.

[Ian Thompson]

Exactly, yeah. No, I mean, it's. It's the way that Google is, to use the previous word, and shitification has kicked in. You know, this is the way it goes.

[Leo Laporte]

And I hope they don't use that, because right now, come on, they're going to.

[Ian Thompson]

Leo, you know it.

[Leo Laporte]

We're kind of in a golden age, even with hallucination and, you know, sycophantic chatbots and stuff. I find it. I do a lot of research using perplexity or ChatGPT or Anthropics Cloud, Claude, and find it very, very useful. As long as you understand the parameters. Right.

[Ian Thompson]

And check the facts. Yes, that's the key thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, perplexity is great that way because it always gives you footnotes. Although there is a study. Can I put it in here? Apparently, lawyers are using AI to create pleadings and it's become. It's kind of adequate control.

[Ian Thompson]

Oh, yeah.

[Doc Rock]

Oh, my goodness. Leo. I was in Cancun last week or week before last, and I was speaking at a lawyer conference called Lawyers on the beach. And we got to talking about, you know, the AI ethics and stuff. One of the ladies there, she was doing a whole talk on it, and there are people that have been disbarred because they're. I was going to say pleans. That's not the right word.

[Leo Laporte]

Pleadings. Yeah.

[Doc Rock]

No. Plebians, Paralegals. Oh, were using AI to go through some.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, they're blaming the paralegals. Come on.

[Doc Rock]

What? Yeah, we don't know the way this. This was the way the story was put out. And of course, the attorney didn't check it and they let it out and like. And she was just talking in her talk about, like, some people recently got disbarred because they were basically using AI, and the other one was for using customer data on. On Gemini without. Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you. That's right. You have to be careful. You can't. You know, this is going to become more and more of an issue. Here's a story from the Verge. Why do lawyers keep using ChatGPT? I thought, you know, those were outlier stories. Remember we saw a story a few months ago about a lawyer who, you know, had a lot of fake sites in their pleadings. It happens again and again and again. One attorney was sanctioned last year, said he thought ChatGPT was a super search engine.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, you've seen the same thing with RFK Jr. Where he produces paper about how vaccines and bad.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah.

[Ian Thompson]

And when somebody actually went through it.

[Leo Laporte]

Made up.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, that's made up. That's made up. That's made up. You know, you know how I knew.

[Leo Laporte]

We were in trouble when, when, when RFK started saying, well, it's just common sense.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

That's when I knew we were in trouble.

[Ian Thompson]

Give me scientific facts. I'll go with those rather than common sense.

[Leo Laporte]

That's why we have science. Because common sense has failed us.

[Ian Thompson]

Exactly. Science works no matter what your feelings.

[Leo Laporte]

63% of lawyers surveyed by Thompson, Reuters last year said they've used AI. 12% say they use it regularly. I guess I would too, but I would check the citations.

[Lou Maresca]

It's all about volume, Right. I mean, these guys want to put out lots and lots of volume. And the only way to handle that amount of volume is to be able to ask for assistance.

[Leo Laporte]

So. And they just, they can always blame the.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, I mean, we, we have the same, we, we have the same thing with, you know, news. News companies are slashing stuff and just thinking, well, AI will do it for us and we want to deal with those, you know, and it's a, a disaster.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you worry about that at the Register?

[Ian Thompson]

No. Personally, no. Because an AI will never break news. They can do stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Good point. They, they can't do. Invest. They could help you with investigative reporting, but they can't do that.

[Ian Thompson]

An AI can't as yet interview somebody, find breaking news. It's always two, three weeks behind. You know, it's one of those things.

[Leo Laporte]

We'Ve had Gary Rivlin on who won a Pulitzer Prize for the Panama Papers, which.

[Ian Thompson]

And reveals.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, well deserved. Revealed so much about how people were hiding income all over the world. But he was saying that AI would be very helpful in analyzing these giant databases, bases. It doesn't do your job for you, but it helps make those connections. Right.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, I mean, when the Panama Papers came out, we all got an appeal, just like, can you help out?

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Ian Thompson]

And there were a lot of journalists who did their best, but I could probably do the job better. Hates me. I hate to say it, but it.

[Leo Laporte]

Probably could again, in conjunction with a human.

[Ian Thompson]

Absolutely. You always have to have a human.

[Doc Rock]

Editor in there because driving, you know, Kawaii, Kauai tried to do this thing where they did the morning reporters with these AI people, which are like synesthesia bots. And it is so terrible.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Doc Rock]

And we already get mad when we bring in a mainland transplant who flies to Hawaii, gets a job working the station, and they can't say kalaukawa or, you know, Danny Kini or you know, they can't say the proper names correctly. Man, it was so dumb. The garden aisle news you can find on YouTube, it's absolutely hilarious. They brought in morning show people that were synesthesia bots and it was doodoo terrible.

[Leo Laporte]

But it's not going to stay terrible for long.

[Doc Rock]

No, these are facts, these are absolutely.

[Leo Laporte]

This is what worries me. Have you. You've seen these VO3, the new Google video generator.

[Doc Rock]

We were playing with it live the other night is unbelievable.

[Leo Laporte]

They stole speak and I'm telling you, I don't see the uncanny valley. I, you know, Jeff Jarvis on our Intelligent Machine show, which is about AI said no, I can kind of tell. I can't tell.

[Ian Thompson]

It's getting to that point. It really is. And it's worryingly so because okay, I'm going to sound like an old fart here. But at the same time we have an entire generation that are built to agree, grown up trusting the Internet. And if you start being able to manufacture this kind of stuff, that's a really concerning situation.

[Leo Laporte]

The hot new movie right now from the guy who created Succession, Jesse Armstrong, it's out on Max, it's called the Mountain Head and it's about four billionaires who've gathered together. One of them, the richest man in the world, he's worth $220 billion dollars, has a Facebook like company called Tram and it has created AI videos and the world is on fire. There are wars, there are murders, there are everywhere. And it's really the movie which isn't a great movie but it's worth watching just for that is all about how these billionaires are kind of rationalizing. Yeah, well, you know, it's not our fault. These are, are hereditary animosities that are just getting inflamed and you know, they're not doing anything about it.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Are we getting close to that? Where the. Or I think the counterargument to it is as we kind of gradually, as the, like the frog in the pot of water, as it starts to eat up, we're getting smarter about it and people are learning. You can't trust this stuff.

[Ian Thompson]

I'm not entirely sure about that. You should check out Douglas Rushkoff's book, Survival of the Richest.

[Leo Laporte]

I read it. He's great. We've had him on the show.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean this, this is exactly it seems the short term thinking that is going on because all these people, oh yeah, we're going to build a bunker somewhere. It's like, yeah, the pitchforks are coming.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's the problem. They don't care. Yeah, we're going to Mars or. Yeah, whatever.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah, the whole Mars thing is a complete fallacy.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Ian Thompson]

You know, it's like, I'm sorry to actually get a self sustaining colon. Mars we fantastic. But it's going to be really grim for the first 200 years.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know even the examples. I mean, at first when Google showed it at Google I O last week, I thought, well, it's Google. There's, you know, they're going to make it look really good. But then I've gone to Reddit and I'm looking at these videos, they're amazing.

[Doc Rock]

Did you see Joanna Stearns piece?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. She didn't actually use it as well as it could be. She made a robot that hung up out with her.

[Doc Rock]

Yeah. But the thing that she did say was, look, we had to still bring in like a boss after effects guy and we had to do so many iterations to get them right. And she put the bloopers at the end. So she showed that, yes, you could make a piece. And it takes the budget of a Wall Street Journal to put that together. And they got free stuff as well. So it's, it's good. But again, we still got some time.

[Leo Laporte]

This is from Black Mixture. These are. There's a giraffe writing. I mean, you know, that's AI Right. Because no giraffe could actually pump Papa Wheelie going down the street in New York City. But a lot of this stuff is amazing. And they speak now.

[Doc Rock]

So a horse walks into a bar.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Why the long face?

[Doc Rock]

Such a long face.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, maybe these aren't the best examples. I'm just blown away by the stuff I've seen. And I do think that we have finally, it finally has happened. We've got to the era where maybe it takes some skill, a lot of skill still and a lot of trial and error. But videos can be created that are indistinguishable from real and can be used for propaganda, for lying, for deep fakes, for a lot of stuff. Does that concern you? Guys? Guys?

[Ian Thompson]

Well, I was talking to Sophos at RSA last month and they were saying, look, when it comes to actual impersonations by AI we're about three years away from your drunken uncle doing it on, you know, Thanksgiving Day. But it's, it is a serious problem because the processing power is there, the software is there. It's not looking great.

[Leo Laporte]

I just, I want.

[Doc Rock]

I am the drunken uncle.

[Leo Laporte]

Have you, have you done have you used flow? Have you gotten done some videos?

[Doc Rock]

I played around with that stuff. Nothing. That guy came out really, really good. I did put in the chat earlier. My baby takes some skill. I think still set up that I'm going to do a hydra thing with so that I can make fun of my arsenal friends because you know, they enjoy their fun.

[Ian Thompson]

There's a difference between doing a fake video where it's just broadcast but where you're getting real time interaction. That's where it's going to get really dangerous. We're about three years away from that at the moment based on current, you know, projections. But that is going to get, I mean from, I cover it security from a security perspective and from phishing, that's going to get really, really bad.

[Benito]

Sorry Ian. I think, I think we're already there. I mean that's. This is already happening in like on like cam, like cam girls. There's already cam girls out there that are all purely AI that are fake.

[Ian Thompson]

Oh no, absolutely. But real. The key is real time.

[Benito]

Oh, it's real time. It's real time.

[Doc Rock]

It's real time. There's a AI influencer named on me that this lady in Japan made and she's Japanese American but she lives in Japan. And this influencer is getting gigs from companies like hotels and everybody are paying her to come and be like, come and do a video in the lobby of our hotel. And so the, the AI girl walks in and you know, she's like, she's checking in, she got her little luggage and whatnot. Not. It's kind of crazy. And she.

[Ian Thompson]

I'm check that out. Cuz that sounds.

[Leo Laporte]

What's your. What. How do you spell it?

[Doc Rock]

I. I'll get it for you. It's a N NME on me. But just look up AI influencer. There's three major ones but the one from Japan is probably the best one.

[Leo Laporte]

And these are done in real time?

[Doc Rock]

No, the cam girl ones are done in real time. But I, I'm not going to talk about that. She's on the other side.

[Leo Laporte]

I know nothing. I don't know how that works.

[Benito]

The first implementation of technology is always in the porn industry. You all know this.

[Leo Laporte]

It is. Oh yeah.

[Ian Thompson]

They pioneered security and credit cards.

[Leo Laporte]

Well and there. I don't think the consumers care particularly. But I do worry about AI being used as propaganda or to influence or to persuade.

[Ian Thompson]

My big worry initially is business email confirmation compromise. Compromise because there is a CEO could.

[Leo Laporte]

Send you a video.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, this is it. There's a guy who claimed that he'd been convinced to transfer 25 million overseas last year.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ian Thompson]

I'm not quite sure the technology's there yet. And he wasn't just covering up for.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you think, you think that's a bogus story because he said that he went to a board meeting, a Zoom board meeting, where his CEO, his boss was there, the cfo, and they told him to do it.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah, well, I think honestly the technology isn't quite there yet.

[Leo Laporte]

In real time.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah, but you know it's coming and you know everyone's going to have to double and triple stack their security.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, one more break and then we will continue on. We're almost done. You're watching this week in Tech. It's nice to have a panel of people who can talk about everything from Formula One to anime porn. Doc Rock is here from YouTube.com Stock Rock. Not that he knows anything about that. Director of strategic partnerships at eCamm, Lou Mareska, our co pilot guy, he's at Microsoft. He's the guy behind Python in Excel. Amazing. So great to have you, Lou. And of course the king of snark himself from thereegister.com Ian Thompson. If you enjoy these shows, if you get value out of these shows, whether it's companionship or knowledge, I want to invite you to join Club Twit. This is a way for you to support what we do but also get some added value because we do a lot of shows that are in the club only now I mentioned that AI user group that's coming up on Friday. We do Stacy's book club in the club. I should mention a week from Monday, wwdc. And while we did this for years and public last year Apple tried to kill our YouTube channel and our Twitch channel because we are restreaming their keynotes and I don't want to take that risk anymore. So we have moved keynote coverage Microsoft build this last week in Google I o into the club Club only a private stream. I'm sorry we have to do that. Mike and I though, because we're going to be in the club on June 9. We're bringing lunch, we're going to watch the Apple keynote. We're going to stick around for you, your conversation about what you saw and then, and then we will cover we've never done this before, the State of the Union keynote following it, which I expect will have a lot more developer focused, AI focused stuff. If you're in the club that is available to you, you don't even have to watch it live. We'll put that in the Twit plus feed as well. That's what we do with all this stuff. Chris Marquote does a regular photo segment every month that's coming up June 13th. Micah does his crafting corner. I was there last week, was last month. It was so much fun as a chill space for you to do your thing. Whether it's, you know, drawing or Lego or coding, whatever it is you want to do, we just relax and we chill. This is what the club lets us do. If you're not a member of the club, I really would like to invite you to join it. It covers about 25% of our operating costs. That's a big deal. It doesn't go into my pocket, but it helps keep the shows on the air. It helps make make new shows. We're doing everything we can to, you know, tighten our belts. We shut down the Stuff studio, but we would like to keep doing this stuff because we think it's so important. If you think so, if you find value in it, join the Club Twit TV Club Twit Twitter TV Slash Club Twit. And we thank you so much for your support and all our Club Twit members. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you. 25 years ago, a small group of business and government leaders met in Washington D.C. they envision the creation of an independent non profit organization with a mission to help people, businesses and government mitigate the growing threat of cyber attacks. Today, the center for Internet Security embodies that vision. For 25 years it's worked with a global community of IT and cybersecurity experts to develop the CIS benchmarks and CIS critical security controls. These proven security cybersecurity best practices defend against common cyber threats and streamline compliance with industry frameworks, regulations and standards. Today, CIS provides cybersecurity services, threat intelligence and critical resources to help public and private sector organizations alike strengthen their Cyber defenses. Visit cisecurity.org today. That's the letters cisecurity.org to find out how CIS can help you, your organization, as we create confidence in the connected world. Are you a lover of all things dark and creepy? Of graveyards and monsters, haunted houses and spooky legends? Then welcome to Lore. I'm Aaron Manke. For close to 10 years now, I've been sharing history's darkest stories with millions of listeners around the world. Tune in each week as we explore the folklore, ghost tales and local legends that delivered the chills you're looking for. Learn more and subscribe today [e-mail]. here's a video. The top 15 most popular AI influencers you should know about. No, I don't know.

[Ian Thompson]

This is how Rome falls.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. This is the beginning of the end, isn't it?

[Doc Rock]

Yeah.

[Benito]

So this is what regular people are doing with AI, not us tech folks.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. This one, ludo Magalu, has 7 million followers.

[Doc Rock]

Yeah. Michaela, the girl I met was Ima, which is funny because in Japanese, ema means now.

[Leo Laporte]

Ah, interesting.

[Doc Rock]

I. I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

I thought, well, you know, Neil Gibson wrote about this with the Duru many years ago. We, you know, science fiction has said this is coming.

[Ian Thompson]

William Gibson's been really, really on, spot on on this, to be honest.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Hasn't he? Yeah.

[Ian Thompson]

I mean, it was just like, okay, Neuromancer was a fundamental book, but he. He's carried it on, and he's been mainly right.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. All right, enough AI influencers. I'm sorry. I had. I couldn't stop. It's very compelling. Using. Here's good news. Using technology may sharpen older brains. Forget digital dementia. There was some concern. A new study finds tech savvy seniors may actually experience fewer signs of cognitive decline. So there. This is from Baylor and the University of Texas at Austin. So there.

[Doc Rock]

So explain to me why I will constantly walk into the kitchen with the mug in my. My hand. Like, what the heck did I come in here?

[Leo Laporte]

What was I here for?

[Doc Rock]

I'm like, the coffee is right.

[Leo Laporte]

See, your AI assistant could say, doc, you went in here for a cup of coffee. Have some. It would be such a great thing.

[Doc Rock]

I moved my. I moved my. I have a super automatic. I moved it out of the kitchen and I put it on the bar next to the liquor, which is, you know, just nice.

[Leo Laporte]

That's good. It's like a speedball. Sure. Yeah.

[Doc Rock]

And so I keep walking in the kitchen with the coffee cup, but the coffee machine's actually on top of the credenza with the bar and the rest of the alcohol, so. But I keep walking in the kitchen with a coffee cup. Go, what the heck am I in here for? So I don't know if this is true.

[Ian Thompson]

I just know there was great hilarity in the registered newsroom when I got a phone call from my mother, Transatlantic phone call, because she couldn't work out why a computer was rebooting. It was like, okay, looks like it's an Ethernet problem. Take the. The square cable out of the back. Okay, the screen's gone dark. That was the power cord. Put it back in and reboot and Then there was huge hilarity, like, what's she gonna do next? So, you know. Yeah, we deal with these things as they come.

[Leo Laporte]

I. I'll never forget, there was a video that circulated years ago of John Mayer, the recording artist, standing outside the stage door of a concert, talking to his dad, saying, no, dad, no. Click the start. The start button. Dad, no. It's very funny. You need to buy this for the new newsroom. Wired bought a peeing robot attack dog from teemu. It looks just like the dog from Boston Dynamics, right? Except. Except.

[Ian Thompson]

Oh, good Lord. Yeah, that's a cheaper craze waiting to happen.

[Leo Laporte]

It's. It's cheaper.

[Lou Maresca]

It's Claire's virgin.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Arriving in a slightly battered box, following a series of questionable decisions on Teemu, I'm immediately drawn to the words fire, bullets, pet emplacent on the box.

[Ian Thompson]

This is.

[Leo Laporte]

This is. This is a great story from Iset Dezade. Here is the robotic dog from Teemo, he says costs less than a round of drinks. There's the fire pellet shooter.

[Ian Thompson]

Just doesn't work.

[Leo Laporte]

I want this. I do.

[Benito]

Oh, wait, I didn't know it had a spot before.

[Leo Laporte]

It has a gun. Of course it has a gun. It's $50. And actually, if you don't want the.

[Doc Rock]

Have you ever played with a spot before? Like an actual spot?

[Leo Laporte]

I played with Ibo way back in the day. Remember that? The Sony dog?

[Doc Rock]

No dog. We have spot in the ECAMM office. I can.

[Leo Laporte]

You have spot. The Boston. The Boston Dynamics dog.

[Doc Rock]

Yeah. Because ECAM's in Amesbury. Boston's down the street, dude.

[Ian Thompson]

Oh, wow.

[Leo Laporte]

They lend it to you. It must cost. It's probably. You can't even buy it if you wanted to.

[Doc Rock]

70 grand. You can just walk in the store and buy one. Well, 60 grand. But then we bought some extra stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it guarding the ECAMM offices? What is it doing?

[Doc Rock]

No. Okay, so let me explain this, because otherwise it sounds really creepy. One of our co founders, of which, you know, he has a school called Code and Circuit, and he teaches kids, you know, about coding and like, you know, 3D printing and robotics and all my sorts of things. So he bought it for that, and then they use it to take it around to the schools in the greater Mass area, so that way kids can get into tech, you know, because, I mean, look what it did for them, right? They wrote their first app at 14, and now they got this incredible company with, you know, nine wonderful employees and me, so I make the 10. And yeah, so they just Want to get kids into coding and learning all this stuff now instead of.

[Leo Laporte]

So they bought a robotics guard dog.

[Doc Rock]

Yep, yep. Because when you take it sounds like.

[Leo Laporte]

It might scare the children out of.

[Doc Rock]

No, the kids love it, bro. And they learn how to code and they learn how to do things. This is me driving it badly. But they learn how to do everything. And the kids, I watch these kids in the classroom whenever I'm working in the other side. Like I'm doing streams and stuff. And those kids are brilliant like that. Those fat hands are okay.

[Leo Laporte]

But this is not autonomous. You have to use a remote control.

[Doc Rock]

I'm driving it. I'm driving.

[Leo Laporte]

Do they, does it have, does it have autonomous capabilities?

[Doc Rock]

I think they kind of turned off all of the mil spec stuff when you sell it to a consumer, bro. Like that would be, that would be.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, you need an autonomous cameraman to keep pointing at the right spot, but other than that.

[Doc Rock]

Yeah, no, that's pretty cool.

[Leo Laporte]

So it walks by itself though. You just tell it walks to go.

[Doc Rock]

You can tell it to walk by itself, but it's set up so that the kids can learn how to program waypoints and like have it do various things.

[Leo Laporte]

And plus we want to bring up a younger generation that's not scared of robotic dogs.

[Doc Rock]

Correct, Correct. So they have no choice but to use this stuff. So you might as well teach them how to do it. But yeah, it's a lot of fun to play with.

[Benito]

It's very much like a video game to play with it. Like I played with one as well. It's like.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you have too?

[Benito]

Yeah, we used to like. Yeah, cuz they, we, we had a thing at Twitch with Boston Dynamics where we were doing. We did a thing together. So we're playing with a robot and it's like they gave us an obstacle course to run it through and it's a lot of fun. It's just so much fun.

[Leo Laporte]

It's like, how come we don't have a robotic dog in our lobby? We don't have a lobby.

[Lou Maresca]

That's maybe in a year.

[Leo Laporte]

You never know.

[Lou Maresca]

Hugging Face has got the $3,000. For a price of a MacBook, you might have be able to get your own human.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, so tell me about that. They just announced that, didn't they?

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah, that's a weird one.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a humanoid though. It's not a dog, it's a human.

[Lou Maresca]

Right? I mean they're, they're doing, they're going to try to do with robotics like they've done with, with, with Models is they're open, sourcing everything. They just bought this company recently. Was it Pollen Robotics, I think it's called, and they are going to open source this thing.

[Leo Laporte]

And you know what? I. I really love Hugging face. They've made it possible to run all of these AI, even things like Deep Seek, without censorship, you know, on their servers at a very affordable cost. They were the first thing I used for AI image generation a couple of years ago, but now they're just all sorts. They do everything. And now they want to do robots. Wow.

[Lou Maresca]

Yeah. They found a niche market and I think they're. Hopefully they take it through, you know, just like Tesla's doing with the EV market. Like, I'm hoping they can do this with the robotic market.

[Leo Laporte]

Here is. It's the hugging face. It's kind of cute.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, yeah, but also it's not. I mean, honestly, humans are. Humans are evolved to do this stuff, give them wheels, and robots can do it some much better.

[Lou Maresca]

So.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, why do they. You're saying, why make them humanoid? Why?

[Ian Thompson]

Exactly. Why?

[Leo Laporte]

Because. Because our environment is built for bipedal humanoids with opposable thumbs. So if you want a. A device to interact with the environment, it's going to have to be.

[Ian Thompson]

But ATLAS was doing that 10 years ago and it takes so much power and so much processing power to actually make it work.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. Well, this one, this isn't even autonomous. You've got. You could see the guy behind it that's, that's operating it. I want one that's autonomous. I don't care if it goes crazy and kills us. It's worth it for the fun.

[Ian Thompson]

Okay, Build it like Yul Brynner then. You know.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, make it bald with a cowboy hat. Okay. Okay. I can dig that. Yeah, but see, that's too much work that I have to do it. If I have to do it, then what's the point of the robot? Yeah, I want a robot that washes the dishes without any help.

[Benito]

I mean, at maximum efficiency.

[Doc Rock]

Robot stuff that we'll get will be Halo suits because they're already specking these in the military. And it's basically designed to let a soldier walk farther, carry heavier stuff. The first thing, it's an exos scale. And then from there we'll tune that to get better, to get us something that actually.

[Ian Thompson]

But that requires battery technology. I mean, actually getting an exoskeleton which can survive a full combat day is going to need really dense pockets, batteries. I don't know. I, I love the idea, but I, I worry about the application.

[Benito]

Like technically, for a humanoid robot to get walking, you only really need 20 watts. That's all we operate on.

[Leo Laporte]

So this, this imma. By the way, Doc Rock looks a lot like a sex doll. This is not a good example of a. Come on.

[Doc Rock]

This is.

[Leo Laporte]

You're not.

[Doc Rock]

Yo. She's making deals in Japan like she's doing all did it TED Talk.

[Leo Laporte]

She doesn't look real.

[Doc Rock]

Yeah, they don't want it to look too real. Yeah.

[Benito]

Oh, yeah. The Japanese have a different philosophy when it comes to this stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

So they don't want it to look human. They want it to look like a sex doll.

[Doc Rock]

No, no.

[Benito]

They want to know what. They want to know what a robot is.

[Doc Rock]

She meant it. Yeah, I don't think she meant it to look like a sex doll. She looks like any average girl walk around. How did you.

[Leo Laporte]

At this point, okay, she's just a harajuku girl. All right. Okay, okay. Whatever you say. All right, we're gonna wrap it up because everybody's got to go to bed early because we're gonna see an aurora tonight in Northern California. Right? Maybe.

[Ian Thompson]

We got a solar storm coming in. It's gonna be really great.

[Leo Laporte]

There is a G4 geomagnetic storm. The sun is at its peak of solar activity right. Right now. And as about this time last year has happened, Northern lights are going to kind of work their way down to the mid latitudes. Of course it's going to. While you're looking at the pretty lights, wreak havoc with the Earth's magnetic field. But don't pay no attention to that. You know, that may be the. In the end, that may be really what happens is we just. All the electronics break.

[Benito]

It's true. A solar storm powerful enough can kill everything. It's true.

[Leo Laporte]

Right?

[Benito]

Yeah.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And then be back to where we were.

[Doc Rock]

Well, app that says that we can see it.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah, NASA. NASA does storm center research. You'll also see it from various space sites. But if this is a great thing about the northern lights, you get three days warning because that's how long it has to travel to actually says it's.

[Leo Laporte]

On its way, folks. And it'll be here 10:00pm Pacific in the. In Northern California. California. I. I asked perplexity if I'd be able to see it in our town and yes, it says I can. And here is the. Here's the Noah site. Let's see. This is the problem with using an AI. It's hard to find.

[Ian Thompson]

Well, I mean the big thing is that you used to have to wait around for a while. And now if you want to see the northern lights, you can fly north and.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you could do that.

[Ian Thompson]

It's caught us at just the right moment because the North American continent is facing the sun just as it hits. So we're going to get a really low.

[Leo Laporte]

This doesn't look like it's coming down our way, though, I have to say. I mean, yeah.

[Ian Thompson]

Honestly. From eyesight? No, from camera. Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. So even though we're below the line of likelihood of aurora, we'll be able to see something in the sky with a camera.

[Ian Thompson]

I mean, the last time this happened, I went out and looked at with the eye mark. One human eyeball fails cameras. Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

All right. Okay. Okay. Well, I just wanted to warn you, if your computer's not working in the morning, you'll know why. Thank you. Ian Thompson, Thereegister.com, always a pleasure to see you.

[Ian Thompson]

Fantastic as ever.

[Leo Laporte]

Come back soon. Same to you, actually. Same to all three of you. Same to you. Lou Mareska, working hard. He's principal engineering manager at Excel. Copilot, using all of those amazing tools. And if you want to come by on Friday for our AI user group, I don't know, you might be busy 2pm Pacific on Friday, but if that'd be 5pm Your time, you're probably having dinner. But if you're around, stop by the club. Yeah, we'd love to see you. Thank you, Lou. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about vibe coding with some people who actually do it, so you'd be perfect. And of course, Doc Rock, whose vibe is all his own. He's the purpleness of the.

[Ian Thompson]

The.

[Leo Laporte]

Of the vibe, of the thing. Of the pop filter. Doc Rock. YouTube.com Doc Rock and. And any.

[Doc Rock]

It's always fun, Leo. I appreciate you. And I'm a little bummed that on keynote day, I'll be legit taking off from H and L Airport on my way to Boise.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we would love to have you during the keynote.

[Doc Rock]

Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, if you get there, stop by for the State of the Union. We'll be. Bring a lunch. We're gonna be there all day on Sunday.

[Doc Rock]

Yeah. You know what's fun? We have starlink now in Hawaiian Airlines, and it's super fast because there's not that much traffic from here to there. However, the one thing they always say, this is the pilot speaking. No video calls using our Starlink. Can I do any form of Zoom FaceTime?

[Leo Laporte]

They don't like that.

[Doc Rock]

And I was like, I Know, I want to do a live stream from the plane. I'm going to get permission. That be cool one day.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, in my day when they first put phones in planes, you'd hear people going, do you know where I'm calling you from right now? Yes, now we can do it with Zoom.

[Ian Thompson]

I'm old enough to remember when you could smoke on planes. Still brings people out.

[Leo Laporte]

They had banned it in the United States, but the first time I went to Singapore, I was on probably Air Japan or something like jal, and the smoking light came on and I went, what? This is a 12 hour flight. You're gonna let people. It's okay. Sir, you're in the non smoking section. Yes. Of this sealed tube. What are you talking about?

[Ian Thompson]

Small curtain. So bad.

[Doc Rock]

Oh, my God. Get it off the plane and your clothes melt.

[Leo Laporte]

I actually took one of those blue airplane blankets that you can see through. They're so poorly made. And I put it over my head and I just tried to breathe through it for the rest of the flight. It was not.

[Ian Thompson]

I mean, I flew from London to Jakarta on Air Kuwait. And you can't drink on the flight, but you could smoke on it. And they would turn the aircraft towards Mecca so that people could actually pray in. Did they really? Yeah. The worst thing of all, the only English language film was Speed 2.

[Leo Laporte]

Is Keanu in that one too?

[Ian Thompson]

No, thankfully not. But it's the boat one. It was the boat.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a boat. It's not a bus, it's a boat.

[Ian Thompson]

Yeah, it's a boat crashing to the land. But it was the worst conference I've been on for a long, long time. And the trip was really bad. 6 hour stop in Kuwait City. Never good.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, thank you all for being here. I appreciate it. Thanks especially to our club members who make all of this possible. We do TWIT every Sunday afternoon, 2 to 5pm That's Pacific time. That would be more like 5 to 8pm Eastern time. That'd be more like 2100 UTC. You can watch us live on eight different platforms. If you're in the club, of course, our club TWIT members can watch, you know, kind of behind the velvet rope in Discord, but you can also watch on YouTube. Everybody can Twitch, TikTok, Facebook, X.com, linkedIn and Kik. Eight different ways to watch live. But you don't have to because it's a podcast. Get a copy of the audio or video at our website, Twit TV, or. Or on YouTube. There's a dedicated channel for this Week in Tech. That way you can send clips of your favorite parts of the show to friends who may not know about our show. Of course, the best way to do it? Subscribe in your favorite podcast player or on YouTube. You could do it on YouTube, right? They play podcasts on YouTube now. If you subscribe, YouTube won't download it to you, but you'll at least get a notification if you what do you have to do doc? Ring the bell and hit the subscribe button and ring the bell.

[Doc Rock]

Scrap button, Ring the bell. That way you know whenever it comes up, you can do all personalized, none are unsubscribed. Please don't do the unsubscribe, but make.

[Leo Laporte]

Sure you do all that's all and thumbs up. And also subscribe to our newsletter because that's free you Twit TV newsletter because that'll tell you ahead what's coming up in the week ahead. And if you do subscribe on one of those old fashioned podcast clients, please leave us a five star review. Tell the world how great this Week in Tech is. 21. We're in our 21st year. 20 years we've been doing this and I am so grateful to all of you for letting me do this for so long along because I really enjoy it and I hope you'll come back next week so we can do it again. As I've said for the last 20 years, have a great night. And another twit is in the can.

[Lou Maresca]

This is amazing.

[Leo Laporte]

Doing the twit all right. Doing the twin baby. Doing the twit all right.