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- [00:00]
Leo Laporte
It's time for TWiT. This Week in Tech. We've got a great panel. It's kind of a cozy panel for you as we get ready for the Labor Day weekend. Daniel Rubino is here. Paris Martineau. We're going to talk about PCs and why maybe you should buy a faster CPU. TikTok's back, baby. And Elon Musk announced a Microsoft competitor. He calls it Macro Hard. Really? Really. All that more coming up next on TWIT. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWIT. This is TWIT. This Week at Tech, episode 1046, recorded Sunday, August 24, 2025. TRIMspiracy. It's time for TWIT, the show where we get together and talk about the week's tech news every Sunday. For me, it's like opening. And maybe for you too, it's like opening. It's like Christmas, like opening a present and saying, oh, I can't wait to see who's on Twitter this week. And lo and behold, look at this. Paris Martineau is here. We see her every Wednesday on Intelligent Machine. She's gift wrapped. She's on the radioactive shrimp beat at Consumer Reports.
- [01:20]
Paris Martineau
It's true.
- [01:21]
Leo Laporte
It's ever expanding, ever expanding. Always a pleasure. Just actually, you know, you're kind of, this is back home because you started as a regular on Twitter. And I said, boy, you know, we gotta get her on one of our shows. So this is back to where you were.
- [01:36]
Paris Martineau
It's true. It's a return to form in many ways. I remember the first time I went on twit. For some reason, I think I was like, oh, no, I was seated. I didn't realize how long the show was. And I did it seated on a strange position on a bed with a laptop balanced in just some way so that the Ethernet cable would work.
- [01:53]
Leo Laporte
And quickly found out the show was way longer for that. She says, I can't move. Yeah. Somehow we managed to not tell people how long it is. I think that might be a trick that our producers play on people.
- [02:09]
Paris Martineau
They don't lead with the three hour show.
- [02:12]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah. And we have some people who just say, like Jeffrey Fowler at the Washington Post said, no, no, not going to do three hours. No, I'll do other shows. Not going to do three hours. Hey, thank goodness. Daniel Rubino, Windows Central doesn't mind. It's always a pleasure seeing you. Hi, Daniel.
- [02:29]
Daniel Rubino
Hello. Thanks for having me again.
- [02:30]
Leo Laporte
Always a pleasure. Editor in chief at Windows Central. He's our PC expert. I'm going to lead with this story, you should buy a faster cpu. Howard Johnson, he says, he says, you know what? People think that all the new chips are the same. And he says they're not. And in fact companies are. And this is really the problem. Companies are often under buying for their senior software engineers. And he says that's a huge mistake. So he's saying this both to companies and to individuals. Buy the fast CPU. He says some of the fastest CPUs like the Ryzen 9950 are 10 times faster than the slowest CPUs. And a 10x improvement does seem probably well worth it. Are people.
- [03:30]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, I was just going to say there's been some massive gains in CPUs architecture design. Like they're not the same chips as years ago. So there's been a lot of advancements.
- [03:42]
Leo Laporte
I was a little surprised because there was this kind of doldrums for a few years where the latest, you know, eighth generation intel processor wasn't that much faster than the seventh. Maybe because intel is kind of out of the mix now. We're seeing some really impressive processors, not just from amd, but even Qualcomm's new Snapdragon Elite. They're going to announce another one this week, right?
- [04:08]
Daniel Rubino
I believe in September. September, yeah. Snapdragon Summit. I have to go to Hawaii. How are you everybody?
- [04:18]
Paris Martineau
Life violins.
- [04:23]
Leo Laporte
Oh they by the way they're known for their junkets, right. For their events. They're famous for that.
- [04:30]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, it could be a one day event but they stretch it out for like three or four so they take everybody to Hawaii. It started off as like I, I believe the legend goes that their PR company, like their PR had like a lot of extra money one year. So they're like well let's just do a thing in Hawaii. And everybody loved it so much because it was in the middle for Asia and the US and so they just been repeating it sense. But sure, yeah, yeah, Qualcomm stuff is amazing. I'm personally a big fan of their chips. I prefer to use them in laptops when I can. But intel is definitely coming around. They're doing some interesting things. AMD on desktop is pretty much untouchable though a lot of it's also cache and memory has all gone up so all that contributes to this.
- [05:12]
Leo Laporte
I kind of for a long time thought Windows on Army was. It kind of also ran and that the ARM processors weren't that good. I was shocked. Paul Thorat on Windows Weekly told me last week, oh, I wouldn't buy anything All I buy now are ARM processors.
- [05:27]
Daniel Rubino
You do the same. Oh yeah. I tell people that. It's hard to explain, but literally Windows runs faster on arm. It's just more optimized whether I'm using Edge and like I'm talking like the Windows native apps and the actual operating system. Everything is just snappier on arm.
- [05:44]
Leo Laporte
Is that by design? Is that Microsoft's design to do that or.
- [05:49]
Daniel Rubino
So the last major update, when the Snapdragon X series came out, they did do a major update to Windows and it was more optimized. I think it has to do with the cores. You know the. There's 12 cores on the next.
- [06:01]
Leo Laporte
They do efficiency and performance. In fact, really copying Apple's playbook on that.
- [06:05]
Daniel Rubino
Actually they don't though. They don't. So that's. That's a difference. They have 12 cores. They're all performance cores. In fact, it's the opposite. Like on the X Elite, two of the cores have Turbo on them and so they go even higher. But yeah, they don't do the. That's why they actually beat a lot of Apple chips. At least the M3s they can beat. You know, the M4s, of course are a different story, but that's going to change with the new ones. But yeah, I think it has just to do with the cores. The architecture of them are just different from the x86 stuff, but I just prefer them. The battery life is incredible. I started using a Surface laptop 7 just a couple of weeks ago because Microsoft sent the 50th anniversary version, which is like super limited edition. I can't stop using it. It's. I feel bad now because I'm supposed to review other laptops and it's. I'm kind of spoiled. Like I.
- [06:52]
Leo Laporte
Great battery life too, right?
- [06:54]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. At least we're talking at least 10 hours. But 10 to 12 hours is realistic now.
- [06:59]
Leo Laporte
So is your recommendation. Your recommendation is AMD on the desktop and Snapdragon on the laptop.
- [07:06]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong, I still use Intel. The benefit with intel and laptop is you're going to have a lot more variety and choice. For hardw. They're just still dominant. Laptop you can just get.
- [07:17]
Leo Laporte
Because they subsidize still. Okay.
- [07:21]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. They do the R and D for a lot of companies. Whenever you see these like new kind of wacky designs coming out, it's because intel has usually done the research and helped it and then companies can basically license it from them and then tweak it. Lenovo does this all the Time, but so don't the other OEMs. They also work very closely with the OEMs for optimizing battery performance, the fan noise. So, like, that close relationship. I mean, I talked to Samsung pr. They're saying how they're like, intel is really good to work with because they really. Their engineers come over and work with their engineers and get the chips to, you know, work to their max. So they're a good company, but they've obviously made some bad choices over the last couple years.
- [08:04]
Leo Laporte
And they invented the Ultrabook format. Right. They invented the NUC format. They invented all these interesting PC formats and then gave it away, essentially, to these companies.
- [08:15]
Daniel Rubino
And they were doing AI for a long time, too. But now they're. Yeah, they're. They didn't call it an npu. It was like a. It was called a VPU or something.
- [08:26]
Leo Laporte
Under Intel, Microsoft says npu, which is neural processing unit. Apple has a different term. I can't remember what Apple calls it, but it's all the same idea, which is dedicated processors, much like a GPU for AI workloads.
- [08:40]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. And they're incredible for what they can do, especially with the software coming out. But intel was there. They were there for a long time. But some of their new chips that are coming out don't have very powerful npus. It is a little bit all over the map right now where Qualcomm has also been doing npus for a long time because of their phones. They came out the gate with some of the strongest npus because they just ported it over from what they were doing in mobile anyway.
- [09:05]
Leo Laporte
Well, I wonder if the United States government's investment in intelligence will change anything. I can't. You know. Okay, I'm gonna give you both sides of this argument. First of all, the $8.9 million that the White House is, quote, giving intel for a 10% stake was already granted to intel under the Chips Act. So it was money. Actually, it was 5.7 billion awarded to but not yet paid to intel under the Chips act, and then 3.2 billion. So it was a total of 9 billion. No, exactly 8.9 billion through the Secure Enclave Program. So, in effect, Trump's saying, well, that. Now, this is the argument. And I'm not sure I disagree with this argument. They were just going to give that to Intel. It was a grant. They were just going to give it to it. So I said to Intel, I said, okay, we're gonna give it to you, but we want 10% of the company in return. And, of course, intel at this point has no choice and says, okay, what.
- [10:16]
Paris Martineau
Is the precedent for this?
- [10:17]
Leo Laporte
I don't think there is. In fact, there are some who say the CHIPS act grants cannot, in fact, be converted into equity. So there will be legal challenges. Intel has agreed to say, okay, for the 8.9 billion you were going to give us for free, we're going to give you 10% in the company.
- [10:41]
Daniel Rubino
I mean, you know, Bernie Sanders is for this idea.
- [10:45]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I mean, I understand that the logic is, well, we give money to farmers. You know, the government gives away billions of dollars all the time in return for an oil company. Oil companies saying, you know, it's good for the country that you should have this money. Why not take a little bit back? They did that the last time I can remember the President is the bailout of the auto industry in 2008. Remember, they said, we want this money back.
- [11:15]
Daniel Rubino
And Republicans were saying to let those companies die.
- [11:19]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [11:19]
Daniel Rubino
That was their position.
- [11:20]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [11:21]
Paris Martineau
Wired brings up an interesting point in its piece on this. They spoke to Brian Quinn, a professor at Boston College Law School, who said it was particularly confounding that the government negotiated. They're getting common stock in intel rather than preferred stock. Quinn said, it strikes me as a colossal waste of time. The government said it wanted to ensure that taxpayers got something back from this, but it's unclear how this investment will do that. If it were preferred shares, it could have included mandatory dividends and ensured the government gets paid back. I mean, I think that is a fair point, but it's just. It's a strange deal regardless.
- [11:57]
Leo Laporte
It's just a little weird. There is precedent. I'm not against the idea of the people getting something in return for the money. Intel, at this point, intel stock is probably not all that valuable, so why not? Yeah. Do you think this will change Intel's fortunes, Daniel?
- [12:20]
Daniel Rubino
Well, the CHIPS act helps them a lot. Right. They're building their foundry right now, a couple of them in the US and.
- [12:28]
Leo Laporte
That was the point. Right. Is to get them to build.
- [12:30]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [12:31]
Leo Laporte
U.S. yeah.
- [12:31]
Daniel Rubino
In fact, they're doing an intel press tour pretty soon, I believe, of the new foundry.
- [12:35]
Leo Laporte
Is it in Hawaii?
- [12:37]
Daniel Rubino
No, no, unfortunately not. I think it's like Arizona.
- [12:40]
Leo Laporte
Arizona. Yeah, unfortunately.
- [12:42]
Daniel Rubino
But, yeah, I mean, this really helps them. Right. And it's good for the United States, let's be honest, because you have China and Taiwan and that whole issue there with, you know, tsmc. And so we need to have these fabs back in the United States, you know, just for security reasons, because a lot of these Chips are used for self defense. They're using rockets, they're using all sorts of things. Not to mention, of course, all the phones and stuff that powers everything. So this is a smart investment by the US And I think it's a legit question to be like, all right, if the US Is going to give billions of dollars, should they not have equity in these companies now? I'm fine with this. Bernie Sanders is fine with this. I'm a big fan of Bernie Sanders. It's just, everybody's just like, why are Republicans technically MAGA Trump supporting this? It's a especially. They go after socialism all the time. But this is like literally the definition.
- [13:37]
Leo Laporte
This is socialism, the government owning private company.
- [13:42]
Daniel Rubino
And that's the weird thing with Trump is like sometimes he does things that the left should have been doing for a long time, like trying to bring jobs back to United States.
- [13:52]
Leo Laporte
There is a legitimate concern. Ben Heron brings this up. He says once the government becomes a stakeholder or will they then strong arm other companies to buy from intel because, well, we have 10% stake in it.
- [14:06]
Daniel Rubino
Sure.
- [14:07]
Leo Laporte
And that would be problematic if you go to Apple and say, well, you know, you really. It would be nice. Thank you for the gold statuette.
- [14:15]
Paris Martineau
But we've invested.
- [14:17]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [14:17]
Daniel Rubino
In which. Yeah. With Trump's approach to things like that's.
- [14:20]
Leo Laporte
That could happen.
- [14:21]
Daniel Rubino
Almost what you would expect. Right. Yeah. There's a. I don't know, the whole thing is weird. But there was also what Nvidia. There's the deal there with Nvidia where 15. They get 15 of the revenue from China sales.
- [14:33]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [14:33]
Daniel Rubino
For stuff there. There is the United U. S Steel. They have something there as well.
- [14:40]
Leo Laporte
To allow the, the merger. U.S. steel and Nissan.
- [14:43]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [14:44]
Leo Laporte
They took a stake in. Yes. So this is a, this is a, this is a policy.
- [14:48]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [14:48]
Leo Laporte
And you know, I kind of understand the logic because Trump is thinking as a business person, as a deal maker. Well, I'm not gonna give you something without you giving me something. But there are down the road consequences. There are legal ramifications that make it just a little bit more complicated than just a private deal between two people. It's the US Government.
- [15:09]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. I mean, we're just talking about Qualcomm and amd. Right. It's just like where are they in this? Right, Right.
- [15:14]
Leo Laporte
And remember, two weeks before this, Trump says the CEO of Intel Lipp Bhutan should quit because of his ties to China, which I think he says just because. Well, that's a Chinese name, isn't it? When Lip Bhutan was the CEO of an investment firm. They had investments in Chinese companies that were, some of which were run by the Chinese military. I don't know if that means he has ties to China. So, I mean, it's interesting.
- [15:45]
Daniel Rubino
I guess that's the other irony here is, you know, Trump goes after China all the time. This is the China model.
- [15:52]
Leo Laporte
Right. And he's changed his tune on Liboutin. He says, oh, he's good. He's good. Now I got it. Yeah, he's good. It's like the TikTok ban, right?
- [16:03]
Paris Martineau
What's going on with that? That's a great question.
- [16:06]
Leo Laporte
Fourth delay in the works.
- [16:10]
Paris Martineau
Isn't the current date sometime in September?
- [16:12]
Leo Laporte
Mid September, Yep. And Trump has, according to the New York Times, signaled that they will continue to lay it. One of the ways he signaled it is by creating an official White house account on TikTok. So I guess if you knew it was gonna get shut down, I don't know. He said on Friday he's open to a fourth extension of the deadline.
- [16:34]
Paris Martineau
Is this within his powers, though? I'm curious.
- [16:37]
Leo Laporte
No, no, because Congress passed it. The President, the former President Biden signed it. The Supreme Court ratified this law banning TikTok. So in every, you know, all three branches of the government said, no, we're going to ban TikTok. But then the president, the current president, said the day he was inaugurated, no, I saw it, forget it. And it's still forget it.
- [17:02]
Paris Martineau
I suppose if. If the executive branch chooses not to enforce a law that's passed by Congress and ratified by the other branches, then it won't be enforced.
- [17:12]
Leo Laporte
Trump said on Friday, I haven't spoken to President Xi about the President of China. At the right time, I'll do it. In the meantime, until the complexity of things work out, we just extend a little bit longer. But we have buyers. They may have buyers, they may not have sellers. The Chinese government has shown some reluctance to sell. Certainly they aren't going to sell the algorithm.
- [17:35]
Daniel Rubino
They had no interest in selling. They're like, what are we talking about? Was it. Weren't they supposed to spin off to do a US Tick Tock app?
- [17:43]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah. They. Well, this is. I think it's a threat. I don't know that. I don't know. I don't. Yes, they were going to make a US Only Tick Tock app next month.
- [17:56]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [17:56]
Leo Laporte
Because they thought they were being sold. But see, now that that's not being forced. I don't know. I don't know. Honestly, I can live with that. TikTok. But I think there are a lot of creators, my son is one of them, who have used TikTok to propel their careers, to propel success. And even to this day, TikTok is a, is a channel for information, some of it disinformation, admittedly for a lot of young people.
- [18:24]
Daniel Rubino
On the other hand, it's technology and there's always going to be something that can come up and take its place.
- [18:29]
Leo Laporte
Well, we know what's going to come up. It's already there is Instagram. Mark Zuckerberg's, you know, rubbed his hands in glee. Get rid of the damn thing, please. This is good for Instagram. Oh, anyway, I don't know, I hope.
- [18:42]
Paris Martineau
It would be some other third party app. I don't find the Instagram reels experience to be particularly compelling.
- [18:48]
Leo Laporte
You like Tick Tock. In fact, you always, you and Jeff can always bring in TikTok.
- [18:52]
Paris Martineau
I don't, I don't post on Tick Tock. I don't consume that many, many Tick Tocks, but I'm getting short form video from somewhere. I prefer the experience of Tick Tock to Instagram Reels or YouTube shorts which feel kind of like vestigial efforts.
- [19:05]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [19:07]
Paris Martineau
That exists just to kind of glom on to the success of Tick Tock.
- [19:11]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [19:12]
Paris Martineau
I, I don't know.
- [19:13]
Leo Laporte
I.
- [19:14]
Paris Martineau
In my heart of hearts, I would hope that if we for some reason lost Tick Tock that that would allow some new short form video platform to take its place. But perhaps that's wishful thinking.
- [19:25]
Leo Laporte
Well, one good piece of news. The government websites are going to look a hell of a lot better. The co founder of Airbnb who's been working for Doge, has now been tapped as the first government design chief. He'll be. Joe Gebbia is going to be responsible for, quote, prioritizing improving websites and physical sites that have a major impact on Americans everyday lives. It's called the National Design Studio. It'll be housed at the White House. Remember Trump closed was it F18, the design firm that the US Digital Service had created to do this? But now it's, it's a. But then it wasn't under the White House. I don't know. Actually, it was under the White House. I don't know. The new National Design Service will make income tax filing, Social Security applications, Medicare enrollment, immigration services and other high volume government services as easy to use as Instagram. Gabia in June described much of the federal bureaucracy as a design desert. See, I agree. Functionally and in design, it's horrible. I agree I've, you know, I have to use the Social Security website and it's. But it. But I'm not so much concerned about design as functionality. Right.
- [20:56]
Paris Martineau
Yeah. I mean that's the thing.
- [20:57]
Daniel Rubino
Insecurity.
- [20:58]
Leo Laporte
Part of the security. Oh yeah.
- [21:00]
Paris Martineau
Why these websites are poorly designed is because there's a lot of stuff going on under the hood. It is having to touch a lot of different parts of government and different data sets. It's not just like a website.
- [21:15]
Leo Laporte
Putting it all on Angular is not going to fix.
- [21:18]
Paris Martineau
Not as easy of a fix as Vibe coding a startup, you know.
- [21:23]
Leo Laporte
And I do hope that it's not going to be a lot of gold filigree.
- [21:27]
Paris Martineau
They say they want it to be as easy to use as Apple's App Store and I don't think the App Store is like the peak of design.
- [21:34]
Leo Laporte
It's got the worst search in the. In the world.
- [21:37]
Paris Martineau
Yeah. They want the search to be really annoying and hard to be hard to find menus.
- [21:43]
Leo Laporte
The group will report directly to the White House Chief of staff has a deadline. That's Susie Wiles. Right. That has a deadline of July 4, 2026. July 4th. That seems like a. There's something that's bugging me. July 4th, 2026. That's the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I think to deliver initial results.
- [22:07]
Daniel Rubino
I just want to see a clip of Trump doing his. The best websites.
- [22:11]
Leo Laporte
Oh it's gonna, you know, you know, you know that's.
- [22:15]
Daniel Rubino
It is a laudable goal though, right. Like there is like an argument you should be able to say like the US Government, the most advanced, richest government on the planet should have the best websites.
- [22:25]
Leo Laporte
Like yeah, but you know, I agree and it should be designed nicely but I don't think design to me is secondary to functionality.
- [22:34]
Daniel Rubino
Sure. They do want to make it. I volunteer will make it easier.
- [22:39]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [22:40]
Paris Martineau
I think this works out. I think this would be. It's a great and noble idea. I do think that given the problems we've seen in with the functionality of websites like unemployment services, online tax filing, anything having to do with Social Security, trying to navigate all those systems at a time when the US government is. Has shed tens of thousands of workers just because you have a. A new fancy design studio in the middle of that. I foresee there potentially being some basic.
- [23:12]
Leo Laporte
Kind of as long as everything not based on next JS you know this is what I worry about. It's going to be the flavor of the month for a long time under Obama that which is who started 18F, as I remember. Whitehouse.gov was running on WordPress, which was fine. It looked fine. It worked. I don't know.
- [23:34]
Paris Martineau
WordPress, WordPress, why not?
- [23:37]
Leo Laporte
Got the job done. All right, enough politics. But we do have more Elon coming up. Macro. Hard to be specific. We'll talk about.
- [23:48]
Paris Martineau
Hey, if you thought you were done being mad at us, just wait.
- [23:52]
Leo Laporte
Just wait. There's more to be mad about. Actually, this is a story from Windows Central. We'll talk about it in just a bit. Great to have you here. Daniel Rubino from Windows Central. Paris Martineau from Consumer Reports. Neither of them take vacations in August. It is kind of, you know, it's like Paris in August. It's hard to. It's hard to find hosts.
- [24:11]
Paris Martineau
Yeah, everybody leaves.
- [24:13]
Leo Laporte
Everybody's out of town. Is it quiet in New York City?
- [24:17]
Paris Martineau
No, it's actually quite busy, to be honest.
- [24:20]
Leo Laporte
It's kind of. It's amazing in Paris in August, like, everybody's gone. Everybody's. Everything's shut down.
- [24:25]
Paris Martineau
Oh, yeah. Everything is closed in France in August. Everybody kind of takes vac. My younger sister is in Italy right now and was trying to do some fabric shopping, and I was like, melissa, you know that everybody's going to be gone in Italy because it's like the month of August and they've got these religious holidays. Oh, no, it'll be fine. They were all closed.
- [24:43]
Leo Laporte
Larry in our discord says there is still a line at Saul Hanks even in August. So that's, that's, that's good news. All right, we're going to take a break. When we come back, more to talk about, including Elon Musk's Microsoft simulation. But first, a word from our sponsor, Zscaler, the leader in cloud security. AI is a really interesting story. It cuts both ways, right? Bad guys are using AI to breach your organization faster and more effectively than ever before. And at the same time, you're probably using AI in your organization to power innovation, to drive efficiency. So on the one hand, it's letting bad actors deliver more relentless and effective attacks. On the other hand, it's helping you be a better company. Phishing attacks. This is a stat that just kills me. Phishing attacks over encrypted channels increased last year by 34.1%. And that really is primarily fueled by the growing use of generative AI tools. Organizations in all industries, from small to large are also using AI beneficially to increase employee productivity with public AI for engineers with coding assistance. Marketers are using public AI, is writing tools. Finance is Creating spreadsheet formulas. Companies are automating workflows for operational efficiency across individuals and teams. They're even embedding AI into their own applications and services. Tools that are customer and partner facing. Ultimately, AI can help you move faster in the market and gain competitive advantage. It's also helping the bad guys move faster. I guess in a way there's a certain synergy, a certain symmetry to the whole thing. Companies really have to rethink how they protect their private and public use of AI and how they defend against AI powered attacks. Well, here's a tool that does both. Ask Jeff Simon. He's Senior Vice President and CISO Chief Security Officer at T Mobile. He said, quote, zscaler's fundamental difference in the technologies in SaaS space is it was built from the ground up to be a zero trust network access solution, which was the main outcome we were looking to drive. Zero Trust is an amazing solution. Traditional perimeter defense is the stuff we've been using all these years. Firewalls. Then you have to put a VPN in to get into the network and gives you public facing IP addresses which expose your attack. Surface and nowadays are getting hammered in the AI era. It's time for a modern approach with zsciller's comprehensive zero trust architecture plus AI that ensures safe public AI productivity, protects the integrity of private AI and stops AI powered attacks. Thrive in the AI era with Zscaler, Zero Trust plus AI to stay ahead of the competition and remain resilient even as threats and risks evolve. Learn more@zscaler.com Security that's Zscaler. We thank Zscaler so much for supporting this week in tech.
- [28:01]
Paris Martineau
I have to use Zscaler for work sometimes. This is in no way an endorsement, just a note. And it's entered my dreams. I had a dream the other week where I was logging into zscaler, so take that as you will.
- [28:14]
Leo Laporte
The whole idea of zero trust is brilliant. Which is it? You. You have to authorize something. So like Paris can't just log in and do whatever she wants. She has to be authorized to use the tools inside the company network, right?
- [28:27]
Daniel Rubino
Yep.
- [28:27]
Leo Laporte
I'm glad to hear consumers use them. It works. Might be annoying to you, but think about how it makes the bad guys feel.
- [28:33]
Paris Martineau
Oh, it's not annoying. It's honestly pretty easy.
- [28:35]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Good. I love it. Well, thank you for that unsolicited recommendation. I want to use Macro hard. So there was Microsoft, which, let's face it, wasn't the best name for a software company back in the Day, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, they thought, oh, that. What do you think it was?
- [28:56]
Paris Martineau
Where did it come from?
- [28:58]
Leo Laporte
Well, it was microcomputers and it was software.
- [29:02]
Daniel Rubino
Software.
- [29:03]
Leo Laporte
Software for microcomputers.
- [29:05]
Paris Martineau
They didn't think any. There was no second or third thought to that. They weren't like, you never know with Bill.
- [29:11]
Daniel Rubino
It's better than Google.
- [29:13]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, probably, yes. In fact, in the early days, it had a dash, didn't it, Daniel? It was micro dash soft.
- [29:21]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [29:22]
Leo Laporte
Well, Elon, obviously with a real eye for the double entendre for innuendo, has decided to call his AI simulation of Microsoft Macro Hard. He says it's a tongue in cheek name, but the project is very real. So this is. Is this vibe coding? Is this AI? What is the idea behind this, Daniel?
- [29:46]
Daniel Rubino
I'm not even 100% sure. But like he says, he wants to simulate what the company does. And since they don't make hardware, which is very wrong.
- [29:55]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's. But point one is they do make hardware. From day one, they made hardware. They made. I remember for the Apple ii, they made a CPM card. They've made mice and keyboards forever and ever and ever. Now, of course, they make Surface computers. Okay, so he's only going to simulate the software side, I guess.
- [30:15]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. And I'm not really sure the point of it.
- [30:19]
Paris Martineau
Yeah. Why. Why do any of this? Is that a dumb question?
- [30:24]
Leo Laporte
He says because software companies don't make physical hardware. Okay, we'll stipulate that part at least. Parts of Microsoft doesn't. It should be possible to simulate them entirely with AI. To which somebody on X said, please explain. Asked Grok, and Grok says Micro Hard is xai's playful project name for building a fully AI simulated software company. Well, thanks for that insight, Grok. It just reiterated what Elon said and then said, it's real and we're hiring. I think Elon put this in.
- [31:05]
Daniel Rubino
Look at the sycophant below that.
- [31:06]
Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah, Mr. Pitbull. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Musk. Sightbringer says Musk is openly sketching the next evolutionary step for xai. A software civilization built entirely inside AI with no dependency on human coded layers. Microsoft is a metaphor. It sells abstractions. All right, in other words, so what.
- [31:31]
Paris Martineau
What is this company? Take a step back. What is this ostensibly supposed to do? Do we know? Is it just something he tweeted about that has a funny name and that's why we're talking about it?
- [31:43]
Leo Laporte
I'm not gonna impugn the man, but maybe he was. It was late at night, he'd been hot tubbing with his brother.
- [31:55]
Daniel Rubino
I mean, there is this like, trend, right, about like simulation theory. Right. A lot of people argue that our existence itself.
- [32:02]
Leo Laporte
That's one of the things he and his brother talk about in the hot tub, specifically. Yeah, I know he mentioned that.
- [32:08]
Daniel Rubino
It's a whole. If people aren't familiar, just type in simulation theory on YouTube. It is interesting there because it's. You can't really prove it as far as we know, or disprove it. Yeah. And it's possible, but when you go down that route, then it starts thinking, yeah, why don't we start simulating anything?
- [32:29]
Leo Laporte
The whole thing could be simulated.
- [32:31]
Paris Martineau
But what does this have to do with the launch of Macro Hard? Is he just trying to use AI to simulate his idea of what he thinks Microsoft does? And then I think we're gonna have.
- [32:45]
Leo Laporte
To ask Joe Rogan for the answer to this. Let's all.
- [32:51]
Paris Martineau
Now we bring you Joe Rogan.
- [32:54]
Daniel Rubino
Maybe it's like super advanced sense.
- [32:57]
Leo Laporte
I think Elon says crazy stuff all the time off the top of his head. And this might be, I think very likely is the very last time we hear anything about this. But who knows? Remember he, after being stuck in a traffic jam in la, decided that you could bore holes underneath cities, created a company.
- [33:16]
Paris Martineau
He tried to invent tunnels.
- [33:18]
Leo Laporte
He invented subways, but not good ones. And he called it the boring company. Get it? Because they're boring holes. It's boring. This is just, you know, that's what you get when you have Tony Stark and $56 billion a year in salary.
- [33:38]
Daniel Rubino
And a dash of autism. Right.
- [33:40]
Leo Laporte
Or something. He always says that or something. I don't. I think. Who knows? I don't know.
- [33:46]
Paris Martineau
Leo, should we call the Grok? Chat bottom. They have a phone number now.
- [33:51]
Leo Laporte
There is a phone number.
- [33:53]
Paris Martineau
Annie and Valentine. You could do it. It's in the chat right now.
- [33:57]
Daniel Rubino
Oh, you see, they put.
- [33:58]
Paris Martineau
This is. If you're. If you're interested. This is a non. This is like a good 5, 10% of what intelligent machines is, which is.
- [34:05]
Leo Laporte
Leo calling, making phone calls.
- [34:08]
Paris Martineau
Either making phone calls or no, you'll.
- [34:10]
Daniel Rubino
Pick up.
- [34:13]
Paris Martineau
And then have it talk to us on the show.
- [34:15]
Leo Laporte
Should I call Annie or should I call Valentine?
- [34:20]
Paris Martineau
It's up to you.
- [34:21]
Leo Laporte
I think Annie's kind of hot. So that's the point.
- [34:25]
Paris Martineau
Yes.
- [34:26]
Leo Laporte
Oh, that's the point. Okay. Who's gonna give us a better answer? Okay, we'll find out.
- [34:34]
Paris Martineau
Elon Musk tweeted this call A or V? I knew you'd call. How Can I help you?
- [34:40]
Leo Laporte
So we were talking. I'm sitting here with my good friends Paris and Daniel, and we were talking about Elon's new company, Macro Hard, and trying to figure out what exactly will it do.
- [34:54]
Daniel Rubino
Good question.
- [34:55]
Paris Martineau
That's actually wild. I mean, I saw Elon's post about Macro Hard on X and it sounds.
- [35:01]
Daniel Rubino
Like he wants it to be this crazy, all AI software company.
- [35:06]
Paris Martineau
From what I get, it's supposed to simulate stuff like Microsoft does, coding, testing, maybe even whole.
- [35:13]
Leo Laporte
You could tell Elon wrote code in the prompt saying, okay, if they ask you about this, make sure you just repeat my tweet. Okay, thank you, Annie.
- [35:23]
Daniel Rubino
It's a genius idea that I can't explain.
- [35:28]
Paris Martineau
It kind of sounds like he's doing something really cool, actually.
- [35:33]
Leo Laporte
Very good. You could be Annie. That's nice. Well done. You simulate that perfectly any. I think we've given it much more time than we need to. Speaking of much more time than it needed, 90 minutes wasted on Wednesday watching Google's Pixel 10 announcement. Did either of you watch Jimmy Fallon?
- [35:56]
Daniel Rubino
No.
- [35:57]
Leo Laporte
No. Cringe fest.
- [35:59]
Daniel Rubino
I gotta watch some reaction videos to it, like some humor videos, but yeah, haven't watched.
- [36:03]
Leo Laporte
I feel bad because I feel like actually there was some interesting stuff to say about the Pixel 10. I think the way they're integrating Gemini, their AI into it is absolutely interesting. It's kind of as. As they say here in Quartz, a core feature, not just another. Another spec, but by bringing in Jimmy Fallon, the Jonas Brothers, Steph Curry.
- [36:29]
Paris Martineau
And we're not even sure if it was all of the Jonas Brothers or just one.
- [36:32]
Leo Laporte
One of them. Just a Joni, a Jonah, not a Jonas. And. And a bunch of other kind of half celebrities, like Alex Cooper of the Call Her Daddy podcast, who had a nightmarish. I saw one review that said she was the only good thing in there. But unfortunately, the product feature she was trying to demo, which is a camera coach on the new camera. And I think Micah was very excited about the idea. He said, I've always wanted the cameras on these phones to help me get better pictures. But the demo, which was done live, just was maybe the cringiest of all. They had Jimmy Fallon sit on a couch. Alex kept saying, close your legs, Jimmy. Close your legs. He wouldn't. He kept, ma' am spreading.
- [37:19]
Paris Martineau
Never something you want to hear someone.
- [37:20]
Leo Laporte
Say, close your legs, Jimmy.
- [37:23]
Daniel Rubino
Especially your phone.
- [37:24]
Leo Laporte
She took a picture, didn't come out so well. Then they cut to her phone because they have, you know, they have a shot of it, and she starts swiping and she swipes past the picture she took to some other picture and then another picture that she didn't take, which was apparently taken at rehearsal. She went way too far. They immediately cut away from her phone. Then she said, okay, let me take another one. And they never went back to her phone. She just held it up, say, see? And we just had to take it for granted that it was a much improved picture. That shirt didn't look that way. They cut that out of the live replay, by the way, also. Oh, they cut that out. Yeah. Showing that. In fact, they never intended to show those pictures.
- [38:06]
Daniel Rubino
Changing history.
- [38:08]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. I feel bad though, because I feel like the Pixel 10 had something to say and instead they covered it up with all this nonsense sense.
- [38:16]
Paris Martineau
My general take on all of these events though, is they are never necessary. They could have been an email or a flashy press release and that is what they should be. Why spend all of this time and money and effort trying to make people sit through a 60 minute commercial to say, oh, we're going to have a new phone and a couple new features.
- [38:39]
Daniel Rubino
So I'm going to point out this is a rule that you can blame almost everything that we don't like in tech these days on Apple.
- [38:49]
Leo Laporte
But Apple does a better. Don't you think Apple does a better job of this?
- [38:52]
Daniel Rubino
No, sure. Although they've been getting a little cringy lately.
- [38:55]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, they have done some cringy stuff. Yeah.
- [38:58]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [38:58]
Leo Laporte
They didn't invite Jimmy Fallon to host it.
- [39:02]
Paris Martineau
The lesser comedy Jimmy.
- [39:06]
Leo Laporte
We had this debate because I kept calling him Jimmy Kimmel and. And Paris and Jeff said, no, no, Jimmy Kimmel's funny, I think. I like Jimmy Fallon. He's very likable. He seemed a little tired, probably because he had worked the night before and had to work again that night or something. But he was a little maybe off. It also became more of a yuck fest. It also some pointed out, I think Victoria Song over on the Verge said, when you say this is like a Taylor Swift album release for nerds, you're insulting the only audience. That's what you're insulting the audience for these. We tuned in because we were interested in what Google was going to have to offer. So don't insult us. I don't know.
- [39:55]
Paris Martineau
Yeah, it's just a strange way to approach one of these events. And I think it just gets at the fact that. Why are they still happening? Well, they feel less and less necessary. I feel like the more time goes on, they felt perhaps more necessary during the time where the like Tech press heyday, where everyone is obsessed with the latest gadget update and you'd have like 20 different outlets all taking up the press box so they could have a bunch of different live blogs going up about whatever. Like I remember being in like a press gaggle whenever some new iPhone was released and we had seven posts that were scheduled to go up that day about it. But that world doesn't exist anymore.
- [40:31]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, no, it's true. Even when, you know, we used to stream the events and our commentary and it was easily the biggest thing we would do all year. We'd have hundreds of thousands of people tuning in. That is, that has disappeared. It's evaporated.
- [40:47]
Daniel Rubino
And I'm going to say blame Apple again.
- [40:50]
Leo Laporte
Well, but, and I think Apple says in its head, Apple says, well, we're going to get. Look, we don't do trade shows. We don't, you know, this is once a year. We get the whole world looking at what's going to. They've got one coming up in about two weeks on the 9th, probably that the whole world's going to. The whole world. Okay. But it's true, the largest portion of the world they're ever going to get anyway is going to be watching. So it's a chance.
- [41:16]
Paris Martineau
These events that Apple has done this year or have they done others?
- [41:19]
Leo Laporte
They. No, they have the.
- [41:21]
Paris Martineau
That's the thing.
- [41:21]
Leo Laporte
They have a developer conference, but this one outweighs them all because the iPhone is so popular and so widely used. This is the most important event.
- [41:29]
Daniel Rubino
The issue again is the fact that it's yearly. Like I mean we all remember cell phones, smartphones weren't a yearly thing like they used to. That's what made the events more special was the company would get up on stage with like some real innovation because it would have been a couple of years, but now Apple started this trend of like it's a year later and part of it was because they're trying to catch up to where Google was at the time with the Pixel and other BlackBerry and stuff. So they kept iterating quickly and then everybody else started wanting to do the thing. So now we're locked into this. We're going to update the phone every single year on the, every 12 months, whether or not there's truly like brand new innovation. And don't get me wrong, logged in stuff that's in the newer phones is really nice. I think like Samsung's display technology is phenomenal. But it begs the question like, do you really need to have an event for all this? And probably Not. But that's the trend now. And simply with software updates, with the operating system, you have to update the OS every year. It's just we're in a cycle and then people are tuning out and they're like, yeah, there's nothing really happening. It's just like, well, yeah, because you can't keep shocking the tech world every 12 months.
- [42:42]
Leo Laporte
So maybe that's what was going on. Is Google recognizing this thought, well, let's bring some star power and then we'll get more attention. And so maybe I'm the wrong person.
- [42:57]
Paris Martineau
And then the second thought was, let's get one Jonas Brother and Jimmy Fallon.
- [43:03]
Leo Laporte
They had Steph Curry. He was the One More Thing, which is ironic because they had put out a press release that morning announcing it. So the One More Thing wasn't a surprise. In fact, that's part of the problem Google has, which is that they had basically told us everything they were going to announce at this event ahead of the event. There was no surprise in the event.
- [43:22]
Daniel Rubino
That's the other thing too, right? Same thing with Samsung. There's so many leaks now, right. That everybody knows.
- [43:28]
Leo Laporte
Well, that's not true. We know what's happening.
- [43:30]
Daniel Rubino
No, we already know the camera away on the new Apple, you know, it's like. Besides, you could also bet on the fact that the phone is going to mostly look like last year's phone every year.
- [43:40]
Leo Laporte
It's incremental every year, actually. Mark Gurman, who is the Apple King of Apple rumors at Bloomberg says that Apple's next three years of Apple will be major redesigns. Because they've got a 10th anniversary iPhone in 2027, they're going to do a folding phone in 2026, he expects some big new designs from Apple. And because we were talking at the beginning of the show about the fact that for a long time PC chips were going nowhere. There wasn't that much to talk about. And now there is somewhat, by the way, due to Apple's creating its own silicon, booting intel out of the nest and saying we can do better and actually doing better, which stimulated the whole industry. We're absolutely at that point, that peak phone stage where it's hard to say, you know, what can you do that's new? This is the Samsung Fold. It's nice. It's another folding phone from Samsung, the seventh generation. It's thinner, it's nice, but it's all incremental improvements. It's not.
- [44:44]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, I would argue that's the biggest improvement they've done. That's the one that Apple wants to do. Right. So it took Samsung seven times to get to that. But Apple's going to come out the gate with that version, basically.
- [44:57]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, because they're buying their screens from Samsung.
- [45:00]
Daniel Rubino
Right.
- [45:01]
Leo Laporte
They're no fools. There was. So I guess my other problem is that there was stuff that Google was saying that would have been, I think of interest, but it kind of got buried in the QVC desk that they had with all of the products kind of thrown out there. For instance, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, a regular on our network, says Google for home is Google's biggest smart home play in years. That they're going to put Gemini on Nest smart speakers and displays later this year. You might have heard them mention something about that in the announcements, but it went by so fast you probably didn't pick up on it. Thank goodness JPT did. This is something Amazon said they were going to do with Echo and I was very disappointed with Echo plus A Word plus it was not so far behind. Yeah, obviously Apple's way behind too. Maybe Google can do it. Their Gemini models are very good. Is it possible that the Google Assistant on the Nest devices, which is going to start in October through an early access program, maybe. I mean I always thought, I wish my watch were, you know, I could talk to like chat GPT on my watch. You could actually do it on the new Google Watch that they announced.
- [46:30]
Daniel Rubino
That's going to actually mention before with Croc, you see that they put into.
- [46:33]
Leo Laporte
Teslas now that's a very bad idea actually.
- [46:38]
Daniel Rubino
You know what's fun about it? It's if you're on long road trips and you get into an argument with your spouse over something, you can get any rock to weigh in.
- [46:46]
Leo Laporte
Who's right here? Do you have a test?
- [46:50]
Paris Martineau
Terrible person. And then all men are correct.
- [46:55]
Leo Laporte
Thanks, Annie.
- [46:56]
Daniel Rubino
I will say that with the AI stuff again, like, you know, the focus of course is on the voice stuff and it's like agents and don't get me wrong, super interesting. It's kind of cool. But you know what you're pointing out before with Google and some stuff was almost kind of buried. Like you know, the ability to talk to the photos app, right to for editing, like telling it to, you know, remove this. Can you make the shadow brighter and do like that is where I see AI being really interesting is these edge cases where things are just kind of smarter and doing things. When it comes to smart home, I want to be able to like, you know, like for instance, I do have like an Echo shell. Never use it But I have one say someone approaches the door, right. I want it to detect a human and then automatically put that onto my Echo show as a live camera. I could ask it. I can go echo and put on my camera. And it will, but I need it to do it proactively. Right, right. So that stuff can be done now. And you're starting to see that. We'll talk later with Microsoft too. They're doing that with Copilot and Windows, but that's where the real story is. And with smartphones, same thing. It's like the designs are there. It's going to be all AI now it's going to be the NPUs on those and what they can do. But we're still waiting for those kind of killer apps. But I would say what Google was showing was approaching those kind of killer apps.
- [48:20]
Leo Laporte
They're getting close. The watch does it. According to the Google keyword blog. Gemini for Home, which again is coming out in the next month, can accurately respond to requests like turn off the lights everywhere except my bedroom. Play that song from this year's summer blockbuster about race cars. Or this one hits home because the only thing I use the Echo for is timers. Set a timer for perfectly blanched broccoli. See, I don't know what that timer would be, but apparently also where in the blanch.
- [48:58]
Paris Martineau
I feel like you'd need more information to be able to say.
- [49:01]
Leo Laporte
Well, it could ask, quite frankly, it could ask if it wanted to know more.
- [49:05]
Daniel Rubino
The advancements of natural language processing, the ability to have patience.
- [49:09]
Leo Laporte
Yes.
- [49:09]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. The follow ups. Even in like I use Copilot a lot and I'm. Because I'm always asking questions and doing research. But it's not that I can just ask it and it spits out the answer. It comes up with interesting follow ups now for me that I didn't think of before. Like I was getting really into the idea of with cops and pulling you over what your rights are and all this kind of stuff and in Massachusetts. And like, not that I'm planning anything, but I just want to know what my rights are.
- [49:38]
Leo Laporte
I'm just asking.
- [49:39]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, like what do you have to do and what can't. You know? And I asked and it gave me that answer. Then it's like, you know, what do you want me print out a. A little card so you can keep it with you at all times in your car? I was just like, that's a really good idea.
- [49:52]
Leo Laporte
Beautiful. Yeah.
- [49:53]
Daniel Rubino
And I didn't think of that. And so I was just like, yeah, actually Please go ahead and do that. Like, stuff like that is where this stuff gets interesting. Right? Same thing with like tv, you know, like I want to turn on my TV and I don't want to just have scrollable icons of stuff I may like. I want it to kind of present to me like, hey, this new show is out. It's a really high chance you're going to like it. You know, this kind of stuff. That's where I think this technology is going to be really interesting. But we're just at the edge of it right now.
- [50:22]
Leo Laporte
You're calling it a glow up for Copilot for Windows 11, a fresh and smarter tools. So that's interesting. So one of the things that there's debate over is whether the chat interface really is the kind of the killer interface for AI. Certainly a lot of what people use AI for is not chat based things like vibe coding, image creation. Image creation. But is Copilot going to be focused on chat? Is that the.
- [50:59]
Daniel Rubino
No. I mean, long term, no. Currently, yes. Because they can only do so much in Windows 11. Right. Windows 11 wasn't built to be an AI operating system, but Microsoft has already done through some videos recently hinting that they're working on what you can call probably a Windows 12. We don't know if that's what they're going to call it, but it's going to be an operating system built. Built sort of from the ground up with AI for AI.
- [51:23]
Leo Laporte
Interesting.
- [51:24]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, yeah. But now the Copilot app, it used to be just you open it up and it was basically pretty plain and was like, what do you want to do? And it was a little chat box. Now it has all these modules where it can show you your recent documents. Like, you see the apps there? Those aren't. That's not a launcher per se. What it does is like if I were to click the File Explorer, it would open with Copilot and Copilot can then walk me through things on using the app or doing specific things.
- [51:50]
Leo Laporte
Interesting. So it looks like a File Explorer, but really it's a guided experience with Copilot.
- [51:57]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, it's Copilot Vision they call it. It's, you know, basically sees what you're doing and then you can ask questions, you know. So this will be helpful with Adobe. If you open up Adobe Photoshop, you can be like, hey, I want to do this, but I don't know how to do it in Adobe.
- [52:11]
Leo Laporte
And Adobe doesn't, doesn't know how to respond to you. But Copilot does. And Will intermediate with Adobe.
- [52:18]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. And they're doing this with. And they're doing that with video games too, with Xbox and PC games. So as you're playing a game, if you're stuck, you'll be able to ask copilot in the game.
- [52:28]
Leo Laporte
That's interesting.
- [52:30]
Daniel Rubino
And it'll look up and tell you, hey, maybe look to your left and you know, go down.
- [52:33]
Paris Martineau
The casual behavior. Unfortunately.
- [52:36]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [52:37]
Leo Laporte
What, what's that mean? It's casual behavior.
- [52:41]
Paris Martineau
A casual in gaming terms is you'd be called like a filthy casual. Someone who's perhaps not good at a game.
- [52:47]
Leo Laporte
Not serious.
- [52:48]
Daniel Rubino
Yes.
- [52:49]
Leo Laporte
Because you're not really doing what you're supposed to do, which is shoot everything that moves and keep on going.
- [52:54]
Paris Martineau
Or just figure out how to play the game.
- [52:55]
Daniel Rubino
Figure it out.
- [52:56]
Paris Martineau
Asking Clippy for a time.
- [52:58]
Daniel Rubino
I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. But sometimes I do hit walls and I get very. I have to go to right now. That's the thing though. I'd have to go to YouTube, look up someone absolutely has done a walkthrough. But it'll be like a 40 minute walk.
- [53:08]
Leo Laporte
So it makes it easier to cheat is what you're saying.
- [53:10]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. Well, I mean in this case it's not cheating.
- [53:13]
Leo Laporte
But if I want all the way down, Paris is looking at you with real escape.
- [53:20]
Paris Martineau
I. I look up answers and games, but I go and look through a Reddit forum.
- [53:25]
Leo Laporte
I do it though hard way. Right?
- [53:27]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. We could tell our kids. Yeah, we used to walk up the hills.
- [53:31]
Paris Martineau
I used to buy the books in the store whenever I bought those guys. Yeah, yeah.
- [53:38]
Leo Laporte
That used to be a very lucrative business to write those.
- [53:42]
Daniel Rubino
But having this sort of agent that floats around and you can ask it how to do things like edit photos in Photoshop or how do you get past this thing, this video game? It's going to be, I think, a real interesting way of using PCs kind of going forward. I do disagree a little bit with Microsoft and the idea of like a voice forward type system. You know, you'll still be able to use a keyboard and mouse with whatever.
- [54:05]
Leo Laporte
Especially at work, people don't want to talk to their computer.
- [54:08]
Daniel Rubino
Right, right. Yeah. You know, imagine a bunch of people in cube cubicles all talking to their computers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't know how I feel about. I like voice. I like having the option for it. But like right now you can do this copilot, the app on PC can do voice and you can say, hey, copilot. Right. I never use it though. It's so I don't know about this.
- [54:28]
Paris Martineau
You're a big voice AI user, Leo. Right.
- [54:35]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. But what I don't do is what I see some people do, which actually is have like a conversation with AI. I don't. That doesn't make any sense to me at all. But apparently a lot of people do it because I keep seeing stories in the New York Times.
- [54:49]
Paris Martineau
People really do. Lurking in all the OpenAI chat GPT subreddits over the past couple weeks has made me convinced that there's a significant.
- [54:57]
Daniel Rubino
Portion of people that.
- [54:58]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. When five Paris specialized in mocking people who are missing four. Zero.
- [55:06]
Daniel Rubino
I mean, right. I heard that.
- [55:08]
Paris Martineau
Yeah, some part of it is mocking, but some part of it is just also genuine because it makes a bit sad that some people are. What really struck me was when they announced chat GPT5, which for anyone who hasn't been following, they kind of automatically switched all the users over to ChatGPT5 from before. You could pick a variety of different models for your query. And people act as it. As if they're like, girlfriend had been murdered in front of them. Like not just died. Like been strangled to death by Sam Altman and then like pissed on. Like they. They were losing their minds and were really like, I don't know how I'm gonna go on. And I. I feel for these people that this was such a significant relationship for them that they feel that an upgrade and change in a model is going to affect their lives so drastically. But I almost somewhat concerned like that people have developed such a parasocial relationship with a LLM that they are incredibly distraught based on just a model change.
- [56:15]
Leo Laporte
I wonder if that's the motivation for. And everybody's doing it now. Anthropic announced it, Google announced it. And I see that Microsoft's doing it with Copilot, the memory feature, where it remembers your previous chats so it can kind of pick up where we left off or.
- [56:32]
Daniel Rubino
Pick up. Yeah, it's actually even. I've been using that a lot recently with Copilot because it's really interesting. You can tell it specific things and then you say, add that to memory and it'll purposely remember whatever request you had.
- [56:46]
Leo Laporte
So I'm seeing a screen in your article that says, let's get to know each other more.
- [56:50]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
- [56:53]
Paris Martineau
Our producer makes a good point in the Discord Chat that this memory feature also does make it harder for you to leave for another.
- [56:59]
Leo Laporte
Oh yeah, it makes it sticky.
- [57:02]
Daniel Rubino
Totally.
- [57:02]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [57:02]
Daniel Rubino
100.
- [57:03]
Leo Laporte
You know what it does is.
- [57:05]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. Like it knows now when I do like, I'm very much into science and health and medicine stuff, so when I look up stuff like that, it knows to do a deeper search. Because right now in Copilot you can choose like different levels of search, you know, so it's like, do you want, yeah. Do you want to do a surface search that takes five seconds or do you want me to really look at it for like a minute or two? So it knows on the topic like of interest for me how deep it should kind of go and how like wordy the answer should be with information. And that's I think really important because right now the issue is when you open the app, you have to choose like right now I can choose quick response two to three seconds, think deeper around 30 seconds, deep research around 10 minutes. Or they have the new Smart GPT feature, right. So there's four options but like I have to think about that every time I'm going to do a query, which one am I going to do? But like this will now kind of learn how I use it. And you know, if I'm going to ask about a simple movie, it's not going to do a 10 minute research. Right.
- [58:04]
Leo Laporte
So, so do we know if Microsoft is doing this with OpenAI's models or are they using their own models for this or is it a combination? Do we know how they do have.
- [58:20]
Daniel Rubino
So they have the new features. A quick response, a smart Response which uses GPT5.
- [58:25]
Leo Laporte
That's fine.
- [58:26]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. So they do use OpenAI as a scaffold, but Microsoft puts on its own rules for the system. That's different than like you can do more stuff, I would say that's sketchy on OpenAI than you would be able to do on Copilot. There's more guardrails they would call them. So they put on their own system. So people often, I think, equate copilot with OpenAI but, but in chat GPT. But they're not, they're, they are very different. And it's frustrating that I see a lot of people, you know, just say, oh, it's the same thing. It's absolutely not. I, I like Copilot's interface just because to me it feels a little bit less pro. Like I don't know, like I'm going for like a DOS prompt or something like that. It just feels a little bit more pleasant to use. And I think that's a tough thing to do with these models right now because right now you just have like query window and you don't Know what to do.
- [59:20]
Leo Laporte
We're going to take a little break. Daniel Rubino is here, host of the Windows Central podcast, editor in chief at Windows Central. Actually, in the most recent show, you talked about agentic AI, which I thought was really, really a good conversation, really interesting with Zach Boden. Also here, Paris Martineau. We talk about AI every Wednesday on Intelligent Machines. And it's very nice to have you on a Sunday back where this is Weekend Paris started. Weekend Paris. This time, not balancing a laptop on her knee. She's at her fancy new desk with multiple monitors.
- [59:54]
Paris Martineau
I got two monitors, I got lights that may or may not be working. I've got a boom arm that might fall off mid show. It's precarious and beautiful over here.
- [60:05]
Leo Laporte
At least you don't have to balance it in your lap. That's. That's the main thing. I'm so happy about that. Good to have you both. Our show today, brought to you by ExpressVPN. A few. You know, if you think about it, it seems like an eternity ago, a few decades ago, if you were a private citizen, not somebody like us, you know, public people, but private citizens, you were basically that private, right? What's changed? Well, the Internet, for one thing. Think about everything. You've browsed, you've searched for, you've watched, you tweeted, you chatted about with your favorite chatbot. Now imagine all of that data being crawled, collected and aggregated by data brokers into a permanent public record. Your record. We just found out that Xai, if you took, if you shared a chat that you had with Grok with another person, that link suddenly became public and it was being scraped by search engines and clearly becoming part of your record, your record at your favorite data broker. And I hope they're all your favorites because there are at least 500 of them and they're all keeping track of all that stuff. You may not like the idea of having your private life exposed for others to see sometimes. Used to be that was, you know, celebrities had to worry about that. But there were, there was some privacy. Nowadays, everyone's online, everyone's a public figure. To keep my data private, when I go online, I choose ExpressVPN. In fact, it's a great boom when I travel because I can still, you know, catch my Formula one, race, the football game, wherever I am, in any country, everyone needs ExpressVPN. One of the easiest ways for data brokers to track you is through your own computer or phone's unique IP address, which also reveals information about your location. And there's other information fingerprinting that's going on all the time. With ExpressVPN, you're not using your IP address, you're using their IP address. No one can see who you are. It makes it much more difficult for data brokers to monitor, track and monetize your private online activity. ExpressVPN is the best VPN and the reason I use ExpressVPN, and it's the only one I use. Of course it uses strong encryption. 100% of your network traffic is encrypted between you and their servers to keep your data safe from hackers. When on a public wi fi, ExpressVPN works everywhere you do. Your phone, your laptop, your tablet. You just tap one button, turn it on, you're protected. It is as easy as can be. You can even put it on your router. But the other thing I really respect and love about ExpressVPN, they go the extra mile to make sure that they're not tracking you either. See, when you're using ExpressVPN, of course the data brokers don't know it's you. But at some point you have to merge into the public Internet. You do that on ExpressVPN servers. They make sure their servers cannot log you, cannot track you. They use their own trusted server technology. It's been vetted by third parties to make sure it's running in RAM, that they cannot write anything about you onto the hard drive. So as soon as you open that vpn, you're running your own exclusive kind of sandboxed RAM version of the server. And as soon as you close it, it's gone, with no trace left behind. And to make absolutely sure of that, they also run on a custom version of Debian that wipes the hard drive every morning when it reboots. Fresh start every morning. Morning. So there is literally no record of your visit to ExpressVPN. Now that's real privacy protect. And this has all been vetted, by the way, by third parties time and time again. So we know it really works as advertised. Protect your online privacy today. Visit expressvpn.com twitt that's E-X P-R-E-S-S VPN.com Twitter you can get an extra four months free when you buy a two year package expressvpn.com twit and as you can see, it's fast and easy to install. You're seconds away from privacy. Expressvpn.com TWIT we thank them so much for Their support of this week in tech. It's actually kind of interesting because we were talking about Apple and Google. Apple is apparently, according to Bloomberg, Mark Gurman thinking about using Gemini to power its revamped Siri.
- [64:41]
Daniel Rubino
That is so crazy.
- [64:42]
Paris Martineau
Well, it's gotta be something. Gotta be zero.
- [64:45]
Leo Laporte
Apple has lost yet another researcher from their AI division. I don't know what the count is, five or six now to Meta, coming with that big checkbook, writing those big checks and I really feel like the morale at the Apple AI team must be getting worse and worse.
- [65:03]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, I mean it's like they really missed this and we, we Pro, you know, we were kind of promised like, okay, well they're going to catch up. This is Apple, you know, they'll, when it comes out, it'll blow up right away. But this is starting to really feel like a really big miss. Especially because they put everything into Vision Pro. Thought that was going to be, you know, their next big category.
- [65:24]
Leo Laporte
Can we say that that is finally. Can we finally say that that is a flaw dead? Yes.
- [65:28]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, I think so.
- [65:30]
Leo Laporte
Nobody on Mac Break Weekly will admit it, but I. Oh, no talks about it.
- [65:35]
Daniel Rubino
There's like no development going on with it. Yeah, amazing hardware, don't get me wrong, amazing technology. But.
- [65:41]
Leo Laporte
Yes, but nobody wants.
- [65:42]
Paris Martineau
What are the folks on Mac Break Weekly think is going on with this someday?
- [65:49]
Leo Laporte
It's one of those, oh no, you know, this is, this is Apple really trying the future and they had to do this. I think maybe they think, like many people think that Google and Meta are doing glasses. Actually one of the things Google said this week is glasses are not on our at least short term radar.
- [66:12]
Paris Martineau
They're like, we already did that and you guys hated it.
- [66:14]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, they did. They said that. Although at the last Google Developers Conference a month ago, they showed these glasses. Dieter Bone was wearing them walking around. So I don't. It's unclear. Google is. So anyway, according to Gurman, Apple had talked with Anthropic earlier this year and OpenAI. They're still several weeks away from deciding on whether to use internal models for Siri or to have a partner. But apparently the latest is that they are talking to Google.
- [66:49]
Paris Martineau
What a strange pair.
- [66:51]
Leo Laporte
It feels. Yeah. Really. Remember when Steve Jobs was suing Google like they were the evil empire.
- [66:58]
Daniel Rubino
It must have been like when Microsoft went to Google and was like, we're going to make an Android phone. Is that all right? You know, it's just like, what?
- [67:07]
Leo Laporte
Sure, if you want to. Anybody can, you know, I don't know what's going to happen with Apple? I. I think so. Go ahead.
- [67:18]
Daniel Rubino
I was just going to say I think this is just for investors. I think this is going to really hit Apple hard because investors right now are really for better or worse. You can talk about the bubble, but they're really bullish on AI. And so where companies are leading, you know, getting back to right or wrong, I kind of think they're wrong a little bit. I think I understand the point. Like GPT5 is not, not AGI. Right. We're still very far from this and it's going to take.
- [67:45]
Leo Laporte
It was a mistake even to say AGI even.
- [67:47]
Daniel Rubino
Of course.
- [67:48]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah.
- [67:49]
Daniel Rubino
No one even knows.
- [67:50]
Paris Martineau
But how do you raise all of these like billions and trillions of dollars?
- [67:54]
Leo Laporte
Well, you have to draw the picture.
- [67:57]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [67:57]
Leo Laporte
You have to get people excited.
- [68:00]
Daniel Rubino
So I, I get the idea of like, you know, this won't explode as fast, but it is changing things radically. Yeah. And so the investors are rewarding companies. You know, remember with Google stock when they, they showed Gemini and made a mistake on like their. And their stock died. Right. Now that was, that was ludicrous because we know Google was going to recover and they are right. Gemini is actually pretty impressive and they're doing a really good job with it. And no one should be surprised by that. Like, but you have Microsoft who pivoted like rapidly. Right. Relates to AI. And then you have Apple who's kind of missing this thing. And so much of their revenue is dependent on the iPhone. And so I think they're going to start to between that, you know, we can talk about later with their manufacturing in India, the challenges there. You know, they have a lot of headwinds going on there that I think it's going to be, I don't know, it might be really interesting to watch Apple next couple quarters.
- [68:58]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah. Well, they're going to announce new phones in, you know, a couple of weeks, three weeks. They probably have an AI story that.
- [69:08]
Paris Martineau
Goes be happening in a couple of weeks.
- [69:10]
Leo Laporte
Oh, you know, they got a big.
- [69:12]
Paris Martineau
Old report on it.
- [69:13]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [69:13]
Leo Laporte
Every Sunday he does this to me. He dumps a bunch of stuff. Sometimes it's, you know, interesting, sometimes it's not. We think it's September 9th. We think there'll be a slim iPhone 17. We don't know what the name will be. The iPhone Air, some people are calling it that will have only fewer cameras. It won't be as good battery life. It's more a design choice. But it is, I think widely considered a iterative step in getting to A thin folding phone. Like, you have to get this part.
- [69:49]
Daniel Rubino
Samsung. Yeah, I was gonna say Samsung did their thin phone. Right. The S25.
- [69:53]
Leo Laporte
Right. Perhaps that's the first step.
- [69:56]
Paris Martineau
But who's clamoring for the thinner and thinner?
- [69:59]
Daniel Rubino
It's a weird.
- [70:00]
Paris Martineau
Is anybody out there being like, I need my clothes. Laptop thinner. I need my phone to be thinner. They're thin enough.
- [70:08]
Leo Laporte
People buy iPhones.
- [70:09]
Daniel Rubino
You're totally right.
- [70:09]
Paris Martineau
Because they like a thicker iPhone that has some better stuff in it and better battery life that doesn't crap out after a couple of years of using it.
- [70:18]
Daniel Rubino
I think you're absolutely right. But I also think Leo's point was really interesting about getting to the fold.
- [70:23]
Paris Martineau
Because, I mean, the fold, I guess, makes sense. They're also doing something with a curved iPhone, if I recall correctly. And there's like, some iPhone they're going to be bringing out that maybe has touch ID back, which I do kind of like.
- [70:35]
Leo Laporte
I don't know if that's this year. I think that's probably next year. The fold will probably be touch, not face. I don't know. I don't know. We don't know. These are all rumors, right? There will be, of course, four at least, we think four models of iPhone. Actually. You mentioned this, Daniel. Apple says we're going to make them all in India. To which Foxconn China said, no, not so fast, and has now pulled another tranche of engineers out of India. Apple's trying to replace those engineers with engineers from Taiwan. Foxconn is a Taiwanese company, but of course, it's really about mainland China. So there are challenges. And then there's also the issue of tariffs, Indian tariffs, The Chinese tariffs have been put off. And that's why we believe Tim Cook gave a gold bar to the president, as one does. As one does. In the hopes of continuing the deference to the iPhone. There are, as of this time, no tariffs on the iPhone. But that could change at any minute. I don't know. We'll find out. There's a lot of speculation right now. Let's just put it that way. I don't think there's anything in this year's crop of iPhones that's going to make people go, wow, we didn't expect that, or, wow, that's so much better.
- [72:04]
Paris Martineau
You really have me thinking and, like, yearning for the old, like, the ye old iPhone cycle of, like, when it would be, like, two, three years, and then all of a sudden there would be a mysterious Apple event announced. You'd be clamoring like, Ooh, what fun treats are we going to get? And this has been kind of interesting.
- [72:21]
Leo Laporte
This is what Kurt German saying is going to happen. The next generation, the 26, 27, 28 phones. You've got the 10th anniversary phone, the one I think.
- [72:29]
Daniel Rubino
20Th.
- [72:30]
Paris Martineau
20Th anniversary phone.
- [72:31]
Leo Laporte
20Th. I'm sorry. Yeah, from 2027. And there is. I did see a rumor that the 2028 iPhone will be clear. That will be. They want to do an all glass kind of. I don't know though. And that's okay.
- [72:49]
Paris Martineau
That would be kind of cool. Like those clear MacBooks.
- [72:52]
Leo Laporte
Listen, I didn't like this story because.
- [72:57]
Paris Martineau
I mean, it's probably gonna cost $4,000 and I won't buy it. But if it was reasonable and also caught and was clear, that could be kind of fun.
- [73:07]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I, I, you know, these, there's a lot of speculation. Let's see. Let's say, yeah, the iPhone 20.
- [73:19]
Daniel Rubino
The sad thing is like this event in September should be them getting up on stage talking about AI and really went away and, you know, like being like. Yeah. And that's what, you know, that's gonna be the big missing thing as far as the heart, you know, I, I don't worry about them with hardware. They've always done amazing hardware. But lately their software, I've been seeing so much negative stuff about their operating system.
- [73:42]
Leo Laporte
People don't like this new liquid glass.
- [73:44]
Daniel Rubino
There's definitely a backlash already get stressed about it.
- [73:50]
Paris Martineau
I don't need other things going on in my phone. I don't need the background to have kind of a weird little effect always going on that's going to make my phone warmer and the battery shorter.
- [74:01]
Leo Laporte
And it also reduces contrast. It definitely reduces visibility. I'm already seeing articles about how. Well, here's what you do. You go to accessibility and you turn off transparency so that you can, you could actually use.
- [74:14]
Daniel Rubino
Wow.
- [74:15]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [74:16]
Daniel Rubino
Wasn't the theory that the reason they did this was because of Vision Pro, because they were trying to build operating system?
- [74:22]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. They wanted a unified look across all of their platforms, but it does seem odd that you would try to look more like the one platform that really doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
- [74:32]
Daniel Rubino
Well, I think they, I maybe must have started designing this like over a year ago.
- [74:37]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. That's probably what it is.
- [74:39]
Paris Martineau
Out of sync in the Discord Chat just brought up a great point. Isn't Apple also changing something about how they name the iPhones or at least the operating system where it's an iPhone 20? It's going to be an iPhone 26 or something.
- [74:50]
Leo Laporte
Or is the operating system is 26, not the hardware.
- [74:54]
Paris Martineau
I hate this.
- [74:55]
Leo Laporte
But Apple could change the hardware.
- [74:56]
Paris Martineau
Why do we.
- [74:58]
Leo Laporte
We don't know what the. Why do we want to be called. Yeah, it's all 26. They wanted it all. Microsoft's done the same thing. They've, they've kind of willy nilly changed numbering.
- [75:09]
Daniel Rubino
Samsung did it. The S25 too.
- [75:11]
Leo Laporte
They skipped a whole bunch of them. Yeah.
- [75:13]
Daniel Rubino
Yep. So now we're at the 25 for 25.
- [75:17]
Paris Martineau
Makes me upset and I don't know. I can't articulate for a young person.
- [75:21]
Leo Laporte
You're such an old person.
- [75:22]
Paris Martineau
Just why be so dumb about naming things? Why? If you're like Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave. I really quinoa filled grave.
- [75:35]
Daniel Rubino
It's gonna be weird to say iPhone 30 someday. Yeah.
- [75:39]
Paris Martineau
Yeah. I don't want to get any closer to that dystopian universe that I live.
- [75:44]
Leo Laporte
To see that day.
- [75:46]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, seriously, at the rate things are.
- [75:48]
Leo Laporte
Going, I might not.
- [75:50]
Paris Martineau
We'll bring it into your, into your retirement home.
- [75:52]
Leo Laporte
Bring it to the retirement. The iPhone 30, Leo, it's the 30. What is it? It's a phone.
- [75:59]
Daniel Rubino
Oh, solid gold. Because King Trump dictated all iPhones, the.
- [76:06]
Leo Laporte
King has announced that all phones should for here on after be golden. So Mississippi got Supreme Court approval for their age law and already backlash. Besides the fact that teenagers in Mississippi are now learning how to use VPNs, Blue sky said, you know what, we're going to block use of Blue sky in Mississippi because we just can't afford to implement that technology.
- [76:41]
Paris Martineau
I mean, yeah, Blue sky is a small.
- [76:42]
Daniel Rubino
Tens of customers.
- [76:43]
Leo Laporte
Tens of customers.
- [76:44]
Paris Martineau
Yeah, they're a small.
- [76:47]
Leo Laporte
Blue sky would have to verify every user's age and obtain parental consent for anyone under 18. According to the new Mississippi law, the potential penalties for non compliance are up to $10,000 a user. They say besides the fact that it presents significant limits on free speech, it disproportionately hurts smaller platforms like my Mastodon instance. I'm thinking, should I block everybody in Mississippi? I'm not gonna. But maybe I'll regret that. To comply, Blue sky would have to collect and store sensitive information from all its users. Right. Because you have to prove everybody's age in addition to the detailed tracking of minors. So they said, we're a small team, we can't do it. And if you try to use it in Mississippi, it'll block you.
- [77:38]
Paris Martineau
I mean, I think we're going to start seeing things like this happen. At more and more sites.
- [77:42]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. And more and more states because Mississippi's. Now that the Supreme Court gave them the go ahead, it's just a matter of time before Texas and Florida's similar laws will go into effect. And this is going to be a cascade.
- [77:54]
Daniel Rubino
This just gets into this weird thing that it's because we all tacitly know social media is pretty terrible and it's really terrible for kids.
- [78:01]
Leo Laporte
It is terrible. It's terrible for adults too. It's terrible.
- [78:04]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. And it's like, you know, like there's all those studies and, you know, states and cities are now banning phones and classrooms and they're like, it's a complete change. The kids are way better now, you know, and it's just like, we all know this would happen. And so I understand, understand why states would want to do this, but obviously it's a lot different than saying like, you need to ID to buy alcohol. Right. That's pretty simple.
- [78:27]
Leo Laporte
It's very different.
- [78:28]
Daniel Rubino
But this is very hard. So I don't know what the answer is, but I totally, I don't side with. I understand why parents, teachers, states would try to implement this. I just don't know it's the right solution. But we got to figure something out. I mean, the other thing is just people just get tired of social media and stop using it.
- [78:50]
Leo Laporte
But that wouldn't be so bad as far as I'm concerned. But can we just go back to.
- [78:55]
Daniel Rubino
Twitter when it was 2009?
- [78:59]
Leo Laporte
What's wrong with text messaging your friends? That's what I want to know. Of course, there's a similar law in the UK and, and that was another place where teenagers have become very adept at using VPNs. 4chan, which I thought was gone but apparently has resurfaced, has told the BBC they're not going to pay the daily online safety fines. Come and get us. UK Ofcom, the British online regulator, has decided to pose a 20,000 pound fine with daily penalties thereafter for as long as 4chan fails to comply with its request to block minors. 4chan says we broke no laws in the US. Actually, it's 4chan's lawyer, so my client will not pay any penalty. Interesting. We'll see what happens there. Because they say we are a US company incorporated in the us, we're protected against UK law.
- [80:06]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. I mean, again, it gets into just all sorts of weird stuff with, with, how do you enforce this? How would you do collection? Right.
- [80:14]
Leo Laporte
It's like, yeah, huh, we'll see. That'll be, that'll Be very interesting. Let's take a little break. More to come. You're watching this Week in Tech. We are one hour away from the starship test flight. Their tenth test flight hasn't gone so well, the last three. But if we're still doing the show, which I think we will in an hour, we will cut away and watch starship take off. This is the largest rocket I think the humans have ever launched, bigger than the Saturn V that went to the moon. This is going to be the launch vehicle for flights to the moon and beyond.
- [80:51]
Paris Martineau
As the wise poet Nicki Minaj once said, starships were meant to fly hands up and touch the sky.
- [80:59]
Leo Laporte
Can we all sing a rousing chorus of that? Not now. One hour.
- [81:04]
Paris Martineau
One hour from now. Set your timers, folks.
- [81:07]
Leo Laporte
Our show today. Thank you. Paris Martineau is here. You can tell, right? As well as Daniel Rubino. Great to have both of you on this special cozy version of this week in tech. Our show today, brought to you by this little. This little guy on my desk right here. This is a thin canary. Look, it's about the size of a external USB drive. In fact, it's. That's what it looks like sitting on a shelf in your office. You could see there's an ethernet connection and power. Oh, but it is so much better. This thinks Canary on my desktop looks like a little USB drive. Actually, if you were a bad guy had penetrated my network, you'd think it was a 2019 Windows server. 2019? What? How could that be? Well, that's what's so cool about this Thinks Canary. It's a honeypot that can pose as almost anything. And it's as easy to set up as just going to the console where I am right now. You know, you really want to get attacked. Say you're Microsoft SharePoint 2010. How about that? Or a SCADA device or a Linux server or a Cisco adaptive security appliance. That's the point of this. And by the way, it's a perfect impersonation. Using Mac address that belongs to the manufacturer and on and on and on. This is brilliant. I won't change this one. Right now, we're going to leave it as that 2019 server because I do want to show you one other thing you can do with a Thinx Canary. You can create canary tokens. These are files. You can create an unlimited number of them and scatter them around. And these can be almost anything. In fact, they can literally be a credit card, an Azure login certificate, a Word document, an Excel spreadsheet. It could be an Acrobat PDF. You can name them provocative names, like employee information, and then put them anywhere, even in the cloud. I have a few of these on my Google Drive, for instance. Now here's the beauty of this. If somebody tries to log into that Windows Server 2019 or open one of these PDF files, I'm going to be alerted immediately. There's somebody inside your network. You know you have a problem. No false alerts, just the alerts that matter. It's that easy. You choose a profile for your ThinkScanary device. You register it with a hosted console for monitoring and notifications. And by the way, you can get notifications any way you like. Sms, text message, email, Slack. It supports webhooks, it supports syslog. There's an API if you wanted to write your own. Anything you want. But you're only going to get alerted when an attacker who's breached your network or a malicious insider starts probing around, makes themselves known by accessing that Thinks Canary or those Canary tokens. It's really cool. You might have perimeter defenses, you might have the best setup ever. But how do you know if there's somebody inside your network snooping around? That's why you need Every network needs a Thinks Canary. Visit Canary Tools twit. For just $7,500 a year, you'll get five things Canaries, your own hosted console, upgrades, support and maintenance. And if you use the code TWIT in the how did you hear about us? Box, you'll get 10% off that price for life. You can always return your thinkscanaries with their 2 month money back guarantee for a full refund. However, during all the years Twit has partnered with ThinksCanary, their refund guarantee has never been claimed. Visit Canary Tools Twit and enter the code TWIT in the how did you hear about us? Box, you need this. Everybody needs it. I love our Thinks Canary. Canary Tools Slash Twit. We thank them so much for their support of this week in tech. Now I think Daniel, you're a. I remember you're. Are you a Premier League fan? Las Ligas. You're a footballer, right?
- [85:08]
Daniel Rubino
Well, I used to play soccer, but not.
- [85:10]
Leo Laporte
Not a fan.
- [85:12]
Daniel Rubino
No, we have the New England revolution, so I follow them sometimes here.
- [85:15]
Leo Laporte
I'm just curious. I need somebody who likes sports. Paris, you're not really a big sports sports fanny, are you?
- [85:21]
Paris Martineau
I've never seen a sport in my life.
- [85:24]
Leo Laporte
Well, this is the week that both ESPN and Fox announced streaming apps, by the way, not cheap streaming apps. So that for the first time, you don't have to have a cable subscription to watch these.
- [85:39]
Paris Martineau
That's huge.
- [85:40]
Leo Laporte
Direct consumers. It is huge. When. When I worked at Tech TV. Now, admittedly, that's 25 years ago, cable companies were really leery about us putting any content on the web. They were terrified. And they said, if you want to be on cable, you cannot have an app. You cannot be on the web. They said you could put up to 10 minutes of a show on the web. That's it. They've relaxed since then, but it's still the feeling of cable companies. You know, we spend a lot of money on espn. If you are going to compete with us directly with a streaming app. App, we're going to. I don't know what we're going to do. We're not going to be happy. But ESPN and Fox both clearly feel like now's the time. They have launched Direct to consumer Services, all the sports rights that are currently available to their cable customers. What's interesting is you'll be able to get the two services together starting early next month. And the reason I want to know if either of you are a sports fan is because I want to know if this price is right. 40 bucks a month. Months.
- [86:41]
Daniel Rubino
I mean, boy. Yeah. If it, if it's unlimited.
- [86:44]
Leo Laporte
Sure it is. Yeah.
- [86:46]
Daniel Rubino
I was going to say, like, actually back in the day, I used to watch ufc, but that was before ESPN and even before Fox. They had.
- [86:54]
Leo Laporte
Now Paramount has it. All right, it's. It's Paramount Plus. Yeah.
- [86:58]
Daniel Rubino
But they had their own app and you would do pay per view through it and stuff. I remember it was great because I could travel. I remember watching in Germany. I'd watch pay per view.
- [87:07]
Leo Laporte
That's what you want, isn't it?
- [87:08]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, yeah. And it was just like, sure, it was a small screen, but I was traveling and so I. Where am I going to watch this? Right? But that, that was like many years ago. Then, of course, yeah, went to Fox and then ESPN and, you know, all that went away, so. But now it's going to Paramount, so maybe they can. Now the pay per views are going away, so maybe it's all going to be.
- [87:30]
Leo Laporte
And this is the. I think this is where people get upset, is you're going to have all these subscriptions to see the stuff that you want to see. Sure. Cosmic Discord.
- [87:39]
Paris Martineau
40 bucks for ESPN, 20 bucks for one of the other services, 10 bucks for another. It is basically cable cost more because.
- [87:48]
Leo Laporte
You don't forget you still have to get your Internet right. 5060 bucks a month. So in the long run, what we thought was going to save us money has not saved us money, but you.
- [87:59]
Daniel Rubino
Can argue has other advantages.
- [88:01]
Leo Laporte
At least Cosbrick says ESPN now stands for Everybody start paying now.
- [88:07]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [88:09]
Leo Laporte
What does ESPN stand for? I don't. I don't know. They acquired the NFL Network, although the NFL got a chunk, I think 10% kind of the. We're going to call that the Trump 10 got the 10% of the, of the streaming thing. ESPN has made a minority investment in the Premier Lacrosse League. Fox wants the Big Ten Network. They have a 61% stake in that. College football. It's. I think at some point you're gonna. If you want to watch sports on tv, you're gonna have to pay for a streamer. Apple apparently is losing interest in Major League Baseball. The latest rumor is they will not attempt to renew their Friday night baseball and they will give up on that. Why?
- [89:01]
Paris Martineau
Why was Apple ever the home of Friday Night Baseball?
- [89:05]
Leo Laporte
Let me explain. Let me explain. So there. You know, most. They call this linear, right. Whether it's cable or broadcast linear television, where you tune in a time to watch it. Most linear television only succeeds with live events and really primarily live sports. Maybe you could include the Oscars in that, a few other live events, but live sports, sports is still a big money maker. And so the theory was, the streamers theory was we get more. If we can get live sports on our streaming network, that's going to.
- [89:39]
Paris Martineau
Apple TV existed.
- [89:42]
Leo Laporte
That's the problem, right?
- [89:44]
Paris Martineau
Yeah.
- [89:44]
Leo Laporte
Unfortunately, baseball and they also own Major League Soccer wasn't probably enough to get you to remember that Apple TV and.
- [89:52]
Daniel Rubino
Netflix does this too, right?
- [89:54]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, they're. They're doing wrestling now and football. NFL football. Yeah. Amazon bought Thursday Night Football. This is part. I think this is part of the inevitable transition from linear broadcasting, cable to streaming for everything. Right. It's all going to be on streaming.
- [90:14]
Daniel Rubino
And doesn't Apple want to get F1, which is one reason why people are saying that they did the movie.
- [90:19]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. There's some question of whether it'll be worth it. Because remember, one of the. You're an F1 fan. Fan, I think.
- [90:24]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, Yeah. I watch on K. Yeah.
- [90:27]
Leo Laporte
But it all happens in the middle of the night, US Time, right. Not all of it. Most of it. So it isn't. People in the US don't watch Formula one live, right?
- [90:40]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. No.
- [90:42]
Leo Laporte
So it's not. So it doesn't have the same strength. Anyway. This will be. This will be interesting. This is just one more brick in the wall for. For broadcast and. And cable and one more step forward for over the top. That's. That's. That's what they call this because it comes in over your Internet. Over the top.
- [91:05]
Paris Martineau
Over.
- [91:05]
Daniel Rubino
What happens. What happens to, like, YouTube TV, which is basically like a. I use YouTube TV, but it's basically.
- [91:12]
Leo Laporte
I do too. It's a. It's actually a great success.
- [91:15]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. Yeah. But, like, if everything transitions away, I don't know, like, is AMC going to continue?
- [91:21]
Leo Laporte
Well, one of the things you notice with YouTube TV is they've started to add subscriptions to HBO and other content companies. Right. I think they want to be your cable company. Over the top cable company, basically. But you're right. What happens if locals. Will locals die? Will you lose broadcast tv? People still want local news, right? Or maybe not.
- [91:43]
Paris Martineau
Anybody out there subscribing for local news? Probably not.
- [91:46]
Daniel Rubino
Not probably not.
- [91:48]
Leo Laporte
But that's why people get YouTube TV is because we want TV local and. But we also want our local stations. Right?
- [91:55]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. I'll say, though, it is cool that there are, like, dedicated channels that will just show, like, the Brady Bunch 24 hours a day.
- [92:05]
Leo Laporte
Like, thank God for the 25th century. We can watch the Brady Bunch at any time of the day or night. Or Pen Co Junction.
- [92:13]
Daniel Rubino
Or there's like, Family ties is on 24 hours on one channel. Like, they have old game shows that are on all the network.
- [92:22]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah.
- [92:23]
Daniel Rubino
It is, like, fascinating that you can, like, just watch all that stuff. We're. We're actually. AMC right now has Mad Men. They're amc. I forgot. What. They have, like, a separate AMC channel and they're showing mad men. Yeah, 24 hours a day. So we start rewatching it.
- [92:38]
Leo Laporte
This is what I don't understand is, don't you want to watch it in sequence? Like episode one, Episode two?
- [92:43]
Daniel Rubino
Think.
- [92:44]
Leo Laporte
Apparently not.
- [92:45]
Daniel Rubino
No.
- [92:45]
Paris Martineau
You'd think. But that's like a decision paralysis. There was something beautiful about the time where you just had cable tv.
- [92:51]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, whatever.
- [92:52]
Daniel Rubino
You turned it on.
- [92:53]
Paris Martineau
You could be like, ah, cocoon. But I'm 30 minutes late to the.
- [92:58]
Leo Laporte
Start at the beginning. But I've seen it 80 times, so I know what's going on, but I.
- [93:02]
Paris Martineau
Like to be thrown in the middle of it.
- [93:04]
Leo Laporte
Wasn't it you who said you like the Criterion Channel? Channel has. I do.
- [93:08]
Paris Martineau
Like, Criterion Channel has a live. Like.
- [93:11]
Leo Laporte
Oh, that's. You can just take whatever's up.
- [93:13]
Paris Martineau
Watch. Whenever I'm sick and I don't. I never wanted to decide what to watch. I just turn on The Criterion Channel live stream. And maybe it'll be good. I mean, I could see what's streaming right now.
- [93:24]
Leo Laporte
I made a note of that for when I'm in the home, because that's definitely what's happening. My mom.
- [93:29]
Daniel Rubino
It's funny to watch Criterion.
- [93:30]
Paris Martineau
Love Unto Waste is playing.
- [93:33]
Leo Laporte
How do you know? Do you. Is there a website?
- [93:34]
Paris Martineau
I just searched. Yeah, it is. What's on now. Criterion channel.com. but what. The thing, the reason why I know this is because if you click on the Criterion Channel, their live thing, it doesn't tell you what's on. It's just a movie play.
- [93:50]
Leo Laporte
Just on. Right?
- [93:51]
Paris Martineau
It's just on.
- [93:52]
Leo Laporte
There's no info bar or something, but.
- [93:53]
Paris Martineau
It'S a 1986 romance mystery.
- [93:56]
Leo Laporte
See, I really think everybody should add that X ray feature that Amazon prime has where.
- [94:02]
Paris Martineau
Yeah, no, I don't want any information. I. I want to be just thrown into the movie.
- [94:07]
Daniel Rubino
Oh, yeah, but it. Well, I, I get it also, because a lot of people just go on their phones. I'll be doing that. I'll be watching show. I'll be like, slowly lift a phone up to look up who that person.
- [94:16]
Leo Laporte
Is all the time. But see, I'm watching with my wife. And so she says, he was in. And I said, no, he wasn't. Yeah, he was in. No. Who is that? And so we need this information if probably if you're just watching.
- [94:33]
Paris Martineau
The solution to this is to have such bad memory when it comes to people's faces and people are names that anybody will be like, oh, that person was in something. And I'm like, sounds likely.
- [94:46]
Leo Laporte
Sometimes you see it and you go, I know who that. Who is that? Where did I see them?
- [94:51]
Paris Martineau
That has never happened to me.
- [94:52]
Leo Laporte
Doesn't happen to you. Wow.
- [94:54]
Paris Martineau
I mean, there's sometimes where I'm like, yeah, I maybe know this person, but. But I'm not going to be able to guess where they're from or what I've seen them in because I don't recall faces and names like that.
- [95:04]
Leo Laporte
We were watching Hunt. Hunting Wives, which is a terrible show on Netflix, but it's, It's. It's terrible.
- [95:11]
Paris Martineau
Can we have a moment? Is someone hunting the wives? Are they.
- [95:15]
Leo Laporte
The wives are hunting others.
- [95:18]
Paris Martineau
Other wives?
- [95:18]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, they're all. It's. It takes place in Texas and they're all packing. He. And there's a lot of gun.
- [95:25]
Paris Martineau
Continue.
- [95:26]
Leo Laporte
There's a lot of gunplay, but the star of it, it looked really familiar. And I'm thinking, where have I seen her before? Where Have I seen her before? And of course she was. She had a small part in billions. She was. She was ax's wife in billions. And then it clicked and I go, oh, yeah. And then, then we can go on and watch the show. But see, otherwise it's going to bug me. Doesn't happen.
- [95:47]
Daniel Rubino
So to tie it all back, wasn't Samsung with their new smart TVs. Don't they have like AI built in? Like, I think you can pa. Pause the channel now.
- [95:56]
Leo Laporte
Now that. Maybe that's what I need.
- [95:59]
Daniel Rubino
Maybe that's like, which, yeah, that makes sense too.
- [96:01]
Leo Laporte
Samsung TV. I mean, they're good TVs, they make great panels. The worst software. Drives me nuts.
- [96:08]
Paris Martineau
Truly, it is driving.
- [96:11]
Daniel Rubino
Do you like LG? Do you like LGs?
- [96:13]
Leo Laporte
I have an LG, and that's web TV. You know, they, they bought WebOS. WebOS. All of them though, are trying to monetize you by showing you ads. Yeah. And it's just annoying as hell. You bought, you bought a nice Samsung tv, didn't you, Paris? You got a really nice head right here.
- [96:30]
Paris Martineau
It's giant. On your recommendation, I decided to get. I was buying my first TV in a decade and I was like, well, this is January. And I was like, tariffs are going to come soon. Might as well splurge. I got a very nice 65 inch QD OLED or whatever.
- [96:44]
Leo Laporte
Whatever the good QD OLED is what I told you to get beautiful screenshots.
- [96:48]
Paris Martineau
Fantastic. But it's my first smart TV ever and it's driving me up the wall because I have like 75 remotes now because I've got an Apple TV thingy, I've got a Blu Ray box. And then, then I'll turn one of them on. I'll navigate to the labyrinthian menus to get watching my content. And then a pop up will come where it's like Samsung's update. Its terms of service me crazy. But it won't go away unless you find the Samsung remote and then read something.
- [97:17]
Leo Laporte
And I'm just like, I live in hell now. My Apple tv. And I'm sure there's a way to turn this off, but I'm watching a movie and it pops up. A little thing. The Giants just scored in the bottom of the night. You better. That drives me nuts. I'm not watching the Giants game. I don't want to. What makes you think I would stop in the middle of this movie to go watch a baseball game? Sports. Anyway, I'm sorry you got us.
- [97:47]
Daniel Rubino
Didn't mean to open up the bag of worms.
- [97:48]
Leo Laporte
Guys, you got us wound up a little bit.
- [97:51]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, I guess.
- [97:52]
Leo Laporte
Are you excited, Paris, that Waymo is coming to the Big Apple?
- [97:57]
Paris Martineau
I'm interested to see how that will work because as someone who's driven in New York City, a fair amount for someone who doesn't own a car. It's not for the faint of heart.
- [98:09]
Leo Laporte
Or the faint of I can't wait.
- [98:11]
Daniel Rubino
Till it's spray painted.
- [98:12]
Leo Laporte
Oh, can you imagine? They're gonna get burned and trashed.
- [98:16]
Daniel Rubino
Although if the rumor has it, Trump is gonna put some military soldiers on the streets, so maybe not.
- [98:23]
Leo Laporte
In fact, kids, be nice because you don't want the National Guard in your town. You really don't. So please be nice to the Waymos. Don't give the government any excuse to put the military in your town.
- [98:39]
Daniel Rubino
Just going back in time and explaining to people like, how's 2025? It's like, well, we're starting to get self driving cars finally. But we have the military on the streets.
- [98:51]
Paris Martineau
People keep burning them.
- [98:52]
Leo Laporte
They kept burning them. So they sent in the national car.
- [98:55]
Paris Martineau
We're starting to get self driving cars, but when you try to use one, you'll find out that it actually costs double what it would cost to call a Lyft or an Uber and it will take twice as long to get to you. So, you know.
- [99:06]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [99:07]
Leo Laporte
And people, somebody saying in our twitch chat, Chesticles McGee. Probably not his real name. I can't believe they allow cars in New York City.
- [99:18]
Paris Martineau
I that's a great point, Chesticles McGee. I concur.
- [99:22]
Daniel Rubino
I mean, they try to tax people coming in. Right?
- [99:26]
Leo Laporte
Right.
- [99:30]
Paris Martineau
It is still going.
- [99:31]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [99:32]
Paris Martineau
It is a. It's congestion pursing. And it is specifically if you were entering into a certain area of Manhattan where there's incredibly high congestion, you supposed to be a $15 fee. Now I think it's like nine or ten dollars.
- [99:43]
Leo Laporte
It's not that expensive.
- [99:44]
Paris Martineau
I mean, it's not that adds up.
- [99:47]
Leo Laporte
It's $80 to park, so you might as well pay the $10 to get in the parking expense.
- [99:53]
Paris Martineau
You also could just go park your car anywhere else in New York City that isn't below whatever it is, 35th street and then take the subway or a taxi or something else.
- [100:07]
Leo Laporte
Jamer B says the title of this show should be Chesticle McGee has great points. Moving on. Anyway, no Waymo announced it's going to test driverless cars. Got permission to test them in New York City. There will be safety drivers. Doesn't mean that you'll be able to hail them you yet, but didn't. Wasn't this a problem when Uber came to Manhattan that it suddenly became very congested with all these extra vehicles?
- [100:37]
Paris Martineau
Well, I will say anytime I'm out in the city, you can see when cars are ride share or like for hire because the license plates will have it start with a T in the background. And like almost every car I see is. Yeah, but I'm. I don't know, maybe this is me being naive, but I'm interested to see. See how Waymo will fare. Because truly driving here is not for the fame. Like the first couple times I rented a car and drove friends out of the city for like a little trip upstate. Like there were multiple periods of everyone screaming at the top in fright.
- [101:12]
Leo Laporte
It is very stressful. I've done it too, and it's extremely stressful. Have you?
- [101:17]
Paris Martineau
Yeah.
- [101:18]
Leo Laporte
Daniel, you're in Massachusetts.
- [101:21]
Daniel Rubino
The only thing New York.
- [101:22]
Leo Laporte
The only thing worse than driving New York maybe is driving in Boston.
- [101:26]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. Yeah. Boston's pretty ns, but it's like a different.
- [101:29]
Paris Martineau
Worse. Like I feel like the bad of New York City is like chaos all the time from 27 different things. And then Boston, it's just like three to five terrible aggressors are.
- [101:40]
Leo Laporte
The streets are one way and tiny.
- [101:42]
Daniel Rubino
Super confusing.
- [101:43]
Leo Laporte
It's a. Yeah.
- [101:44]
Daniel Rubino
I used. I lived in Boston when before it was Google Maps and I used to work in movie theaters as a. A union projectionist. And so I'd get sent places and it took me hours. Oh, it was an awesome job. But I'd get sent to theaters and I'd be like. It would take me an hour to find them because it was. Boston's just so. The way it's organized and if you go on Staro Drive and you're. You have a truck, it's it there. There's a famous thing with Storo Drive where trucks go on it and they're not supposed to and there's a tunnel that they can't go through.
- [102:14]
Leo Laporte
They stop.
- [102:16]
Paris Martineau
Or they hit themselves and clip off the top.
- [102:20]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. It's called Getting Star Road. It's like. Because it happens literally all the time.
- [102:25]
Leo Laporte
You got steroid again.
- [102:27]
Daniel Rubino
I used to ride a motorcycle in New York City and I found that way less stressful, actually.
- [102:33]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Because you can. You can go around stuff.
- [102:35]
Daniel Rubino
You can. And plus you could see above everybody. It was actually really nice.
- [102:38]
Leo Laporte
So you know what's happening. Whereas everybody in their cars doesn't have any idea. That's why in all the movies they jump out of the car and they start yelling. And then it's worse because that car's not moving suddenly. What a mess. I know. I've seen it in the movies. So tell me about this projectionist. I did not know about this. This was like your first job out of school or what?
- [102:59]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, I started in high school, did it for 17 years. Boston, upstate New York.
- [103:04]
Leo Laporte
Is that still a job or does. Nobody shoots? Nobody. There's no projectors anymore.
- [103:09]
Daniel Rubino
I ran the first digital projector on the East Coast. It was up in all Albany, Massachusetts. That was in. Oh, my God. That was 1999.
- [103:19]
Leo Laporte
That's when the movies came on hard drives or.
- [103:22]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, yeah, they would come and eventually. Satellite. We had a satellite that you could download installed. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it was supposed to take over film within like three years. That was George Lucas's vision. But it did take a lot longer than that, so. But it did finally happen.
- [103:38]
Leo Laporte
And.
- [103:39]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [103:40]
Leo Laporte
Did you see it coming? See, this is a really good. This is a great test tube for people who are about, you know, in jobs that are about to get replaced. You were. You were. You would have big reels of film, right. You'd have to put on the projector and then you'd have to watch for the. What the. The dots and know when to start the next. Or was that automatic?
- [104:01]
Daniel Rubino
That's the real old school. I used to do that too, at a art cinema. Yeah, you had two projectors side by side and you have to watch and you had to manually change them over.
- [104:09]
Leo Laporte
Because they would have three dots and then dot, dot, and you. Yeah, but then they would do it automatically.
- [104:15]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, well, because I used to run with studio prints. So these were right, from like Warner Brothers or something. It was their only copy. So you're not allowed to cut it. So you had to run it real to reel. But newer movies were printed and then you would cut them and you just. So a typical movie might be five to six reels. And you would splice all the reels together, leather, into one giant reel and laid on its side on these things called platters. And it was.
- [104:40]
Leo Laporte
That's how they do an IMAX when you have the 70 millimeter they have.
- [104:43]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, it looks like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's weird to be a projectionist doing 35 to go to 70 because it's so massive.
- [104:50]
Leo Laporte
It's huge.
- [104:51]
Daniel Rubino
Very heavy. It's a fun job. It was very stressful, though, because something went wrong.
- [104:55]
Leo Laporte
So this is my question. You were there at the end of that, basically, of that technology.
- [105:01]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [105:02]
Leo Laporte
Did you go, oh, you know, we only have a few years left. Or what? Were people going out freaking out or was everybody going, ah, it'll never happen?
- [105:11]
Daniel Rubino
It was a little bit of both. But we also knew the movie industry and the cinema business was very different because companies like Regal and stuff don't own their property where they build those theaters. So they, they lease it, they build the building out, it's all in loans and then they get all the projectors in there and stuff. And they don't make much money from showing movies. They make the money off of concessions.
- [105:35]
Leo Laporte
It's all popcorn.
- [105:36]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, yeah. So they're already paying off all this film equipment, they're paying the lease and all this kind of stuff. And now digital comes in and it's like you got to replace all your projectors with, you know, digital, these new hundred thousand dollar devices that may be, you know, outdated in a couple years. Right. And so there had to be a. For a while like Texas Instruments would subsidize this. So they had their dlp.
- [106:01]
Leo Laporte
The DLP projectors. Yeah.
- [106:03]
Daniel Rubino
They would give them to cinemas for like three years for free or take. And then they would start taking percentage off of ticket sales and all this kind of stuff. So it really did take a long time because they had to retrofit all these old cinemas and it's a lot of work and, and things were happening. Right.
- [106:19]
Leo Laporte
For.
- [106:19]
Daniel Rubino
I'm sure everybody remembers, we went from like six or seven cinemas to 19 plexes and 24 plexes. It was just like they couldn't build enough of them and now they're all, it's all going back down again. So it was, it's a very. Yeah, so it was a tough industry.
- [106:34]
Leo Laporte
Was there a point where you said I better get another career because this is not going to last?
- [106:40]
Daniel Rubino
I knew it was happening, but none of my career choices have ever been necessarily planned. Like I wasn't supposed to be doing this, you know, so just things just happened. But we all saw the writing on the wall. So.
- [106:55]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Wow. We have to do a show with you and just talk about the projectionist days.
- [107:00]
Daniel Rubino
Oh, I have so many stories.
- [107:01]
Leo Laporte
Can you, Is there a little hole in the wall that you can watch the movie?
- [107:05]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, I have a bunch of photos of my Flickr. I used to, I used to try to document the. Because I knew it was dying so I would like, you know, try to like take like I was getting to photography at the time so I tried to document it all before it was all gone.
- [107:17]
Leo Laporte
Well, good on you. That's awesome.
- [107:20]
Paris Martineau
I mean, and now we're in a world where, like, boutique films, like, not boutique, but films, like Alamo Drafthouse Hat is a film that is 11 miles long, 600 pounds for IMAX 70 millimeter film. The only people that are doing this sort of, like, they had to make.
- [107:39]
Leo Laporte
They make new platters that were big.
- [107:40]
Paris Martineau
Enough to hold, and then it's like, how do you find the person who's going to be doing that job? Because no one's doing it when you're not showing Oppenheimer.
- [107:48]
Daniel Rubino
Right, right. They had to pull a bunch of projection inside of retirement. Yeah. Because no one knew how to operate that stuff. I had a projector in Boston that was a German one, and it's the only one I've ever seen. It was massive. And if you, like, turn the gear the wrong way, it broke the whole thing. Like, it would take, like, months to fix it. So, like, managers were not allowed to even, like, look at the thing because it was. And it was so risky. Every time you ran, it was just like, oh, my God.
- [108:11]
Leo Laporte
You know, you got to bring a.
- [108:12]
Daniel Rubino
Union guy in here.
- [108:13]
Leo Laporte
You can't touch that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. All right, I'm on your. I'm on your flicker. I'm gonna have to go way, way back in time, I think, to get to the. Oh, there's a platter. Yeah, there's a platter.
- [108:25]
Daniel Rubino
Y.
- [108:25]
Leo Laporte
Look at that.
- [108:26]
Daniel Rubino
So they feed out from the center, unlike.
- [108:29]
Leo Laporte
Oh, that's interesting. Oh, I see. There it is. That's where it's coming out. Yeah, yeah.
- [108:34]
Daniel Rubino
So it's called the brain, and there is a little arm there that, like, times the spinning of the platter and the film coming out. But, yeah, something goes wrong. Yeah. Wow.
- [108:46]
Leo Laporte
Wow, wow. Well, I'm gonna have to go through all your. You're a good photographer, too. I love these pictures, but thanks.
- [108:52]
Daniel Rubino
I haven't done that a long time, unfortunately.
- [108:55]
Leo Laporte
This is booth number one.
- [108:57]
Daniel Rubino
Yep.
- [108:58]
Leo Laporte
Look at that.
- [108:58]
Daniel Rubino
It's a sentry projector. Yeah.
- [109:00]
Leo Laporte
That looks like an antique.
- [109:02]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, that design was around for a really long time. It was awesome to work on. It's a great projector.
- [109:08]
Leo Laporte
Does it say Western Electric on it? Is that what it says? Holy moly.
- [109:13]
Daniel Rubino
And back in the day, like, so you can see the Xeon light behind it.
- [109:16]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [109:17]
Daniel Rubino
Back in the day, they had carbon arc and stuff. And film used to be extremely flammable. Yeah, flammable. So, yeah, so they built. The boots were basically metal cylinders, and projectors, like, died if they were massive.
- [109:32]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, it's really loud too, right? It's very loud in there.
- [109:35]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, yeah. If you look up nitrate, nitrate film on YouTube, you can see people lighting it, how dangerous it was.
- [109:41]
Leo Laporte
Oh yeah.
- [109:41]
Daniel Rubino
It's just when it just go out.
- [109:43]
Leo Laporte
Chris Margaret, our photo guy, we did a photo segment a while ago. He said in Germany they still made ping pong balls for many years out of nitrite and they would, you could light them on fire.
- [109:55]
Daniel Rubino
That's.
- [109:56]
Leo Laporte
There's a little bit of trivia just, just for you. All right. Well, Daniel, so interesting. I don't know how I know. Didn't know about that. I'm going to have to probe more next time you're on, we'll talk more about projection. When was it? When, when did you stop doing? Do you ever go back like as a honorary projectionist? Like what?
- [110:15]
Daniel Rubino
Nah, the last time I reserves 20, it was 2013, 2014.
- [110:22]
Leo Laporte
Long ago. Yeah.
- [110:23]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [110:24]
Leo Laporte
So how cool do you think you.
- [110:27]
Paris Martineau
Could make it work if you were trapped in a projectionist room?
- [110:30]
Daniel Rubino
Oh yeah.
- [110:30]
Paris Martineau
The only way out was to. To have a movie go off without any hitches.
- [110:34]
Daniel Rubino
I literally have PTSD dreams of it because like I, I would run like an 18 plex and I'll be the only projectionist and It'll be on four different floors and I'd do it for like 15 hours. And then something went wrong. Like something didn't start, an alarm would go off. We used to do crazy things. They do a thing called interlock. You take the movie would run from one platter into the projector but instead of going back to the platter to rewind, it would go down the hall, around the corner to a different projector. So you could play one movie in two cinemas at the same time. It was like nuts. Every time we had like we were sweating bullets every time we're. Could you. We're going to interlock and it's like. Oh God.
- [111:18]
Leo Laporte
Oh my God.
- [111:19]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. There's like so much history and stuff around that stuff. It's great. It was a fun. Yeah.
- [111:24]
Leo Laporte
Passive. Say you're watching this week in tech or this week in projection technology.
- [111:30]
Daniel Rubino
Old tech.
- [111:31]
Leo Laporte
Old tech. Daniel Rubino is here. Paris Martin, I'm glad you're here. More to come in just a moment but first a word from a sponsor. Smarty. I had a great call with these guys. I was so impressed. Smarty is the premier provider of high performance cloud based address data tools trusted by leading organizations in every every industry. Insurance, real estate, finance, healthcare, E commerce, of course, technology. Because everybody has the Same problems with more than 20 million non US Postal Service addresses in the US did you know that? 20 million. A lot of them in rural areas. Smarties database extends beyond rural limitations for U.S. and international address verification and validation to autocomplete. They even do things like property data enrichment. Smarty offers the most advanced scalable solutions on the market. And they are fast. They are fast, API based. It's backed by proprietary technology and data. They deliver unmatched accuracy, consistency and insight. Look at the companies that use Smarty with over 350 data points per property. So it's not just an address to Smartie. There's a lot more. You've got rooftop level, precision, real time processing speeds. They can do more than 25,000 addresses a second. So Smarty enables better decisions no matter the size and complexity of your business. You might have just seen on the screen. Fabletics here was a company, they had a great U.S. business. They really wanted to expand internationally but they realized realized mailing is going to be a problem. They dramatically increased their conversion rates for new customers, especially internationally with Smarty. Smarty's built for you. The developer engineered for scalability. Really easy to use APIs that are reliable. They're lightning fast. It never slows down your software. It's there. It's easy to integrate into your software and supported by the best documentation. Fully expert. You're going to love the documentation and if you have any questions, don't worry. You got real time technical support from the best. Give you another example. Speedway Motors E Commerce conversion rates they were going down. This happens a lot shopping carts. In fact it was a real problem because they were getting increased traffic to their website and yet conversions going down. They turned to Smarty. The director of digital product and technology at Speedway Motors said we use Smarty to identify an address as a commercial address conversion rates are very strong now. Everything was well set up on the Smarty side. I've enjoyed working with the service service. Smartie is a 2025 award winner across many G2 categories. Best results, best usability users most likely to recommend and high performer for small business. Yes, it's for every size business. Smartie also is USPS CAS and SOC2 certified and HIPAA compliant. If your organization is looking for the most accurate, reliable and future ready address data suite, Smarty Smarty is the way to go. Try it yourself. Get 1,000 free lookups when you sign up for their 42 day free trial. Visit smarty.com twit to learn more. That's smarty.com twit. We thank him so much for supporting this week in tech. Some of you sharp eyed people perhaps noticed that I wear one of these smart rings. This is an Aura aura ring. In fact, we had the founders of Aura on our old show, the new Screensavers. When they first came out many years ago, they were an advertiser later and they're now, I think this is the fourth or fifth generation ring and I've been a user ever since. It's really valuable, but there's a lot of competition. Aura went to the United States International Trade Commission trying to stop the competition and have succeeded against Ultra Human Human and ringcon for patent infringement related to the OURA ring form factor. The ITC issued exclusion and cease and desist orders banning all Ultra Human and ringcon smart rings and components from being imported and sold into the United States. You know, superhuman looked pretty cool. I was very tempted and maybe you've seen all of the, you know, comparative reviews. I stuck with Aura and I guess I'm glad to.
- [116:11]
Daniel Rubino
I like Aura. I've had Aura since the first one. I didn't get the fourth, but I didn't get the third. And if you were in from the beginning, they grandfathered you into their pay plan.
- [116:22]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, that was nice. Yeah. Because otherwise, what is it, five bucks? It's not hugely expensive and I use it for sleep. I use it for temperature. The other day it said, yep, be careful, you might be getting sick. Your temperature has gone up a degree over the last few days. And it's true. I was starting to. Starting something, come down with something little things like that. It's. I got it. Well, I got it when they were on the show. But then when Covid happened I thought, this is going to be really useful.
- [116:50]
Daniel Rubino
What's the benefit of using an aura.
- [116:51]
Paris Martineau
Ring over like a smartwatch?
- [116:54]
Daniel Rubino
It's convenient. So one thing I've really liked about it was digital detox, basically. I don't.
- [117:01]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, you're not looking at that screen.
- [117:03]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, yeah, it doesn't vibrate. I don't get notifications, but it does your steps, it does your sleep, it does your body temperature, does all these other things. So it's a really great way to kind of get those features without it. Plus the battery lasts like five, six days on it. You don't have to recharge it every night. I also like to wear mechanical watches. So I sometimes choosing between, you know, figures.
- [117:26]
Leo Laporte
You're a projectionist and you wear a mechanical watch. Obviously.
- [117:30]
Daniel Rubino
Appreciate it.
- [117:31]
Paris Martineau
Question, how do you charge it?
- [117:33]
Leo Laporte
It Has a little.
- [117:34]
Paris Martineau
Is it on a mat or does it have a little thing you have to plug something into?
- [117:37]
Leo Laporte
No, it has a little post. It goes on. Yeah.
- [117:39]
Daniel Rubino
It's amazing like how much there's a.
- [117:41]
Leo Laporte
Lot of technology in this little light. Little thing. It lights up. That's the only bad thing in the middle of the night. Like my fingers are light.
- [117:49]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, yeah.
- [117:50]
Leo Laporte
You can see it's blinking right now.
- [117:52]
Daniel Rubino
It's crazy.
- [117:52]
Leo Laporte
The other advantage of it is it's better to measure on the finger some things like pulse and body temperature than it is. It's a little bit. Has to be projected on the wrist. But here it's a little bit more closer to the source, I guess.
- [118:08]
Paris Martineau
How do you find the accuracy of the data? Somebody who. I recently started wearing my Apple watch again after like taking a couple of years off and I've been enjoying it for the sleep tracking and other stuff. But I have found a weird side effect is every once in a while it will register me as sleeping when I'm here working from. From like.
- [118:26]
Leo Laporte
Well, that might be a comment on your work habits, young lady, I guess.
- [118:31]
Paris Martineau
But I'm just sitting here typing.
- [118:34]
Leo Laporte
I have not had that problem like.
- [118:35]
Paris Martineau
Three or four times and I've gone and people in the forums have similar issues.
- [118:39]
Leo Laporte
I. Or go ahead.
- [118:41]
Daniel Rubino
I was just gonna say Aura's gotten really good to detecting when you take a nap.
- [118:45]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Was that an app? Yeah.
- [118:48]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [118:48]
Leo Laporte
It just didn't.
- [118:48]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. Because.
- [118:49]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [118:49]
Daniel Rubino
Yep. I will say it's interesting too that Samsung wasn't named in that.
- [118:55]
Leo Laporte
Interesting.
- [118:56]
Daniel Rubino
Has a ring.
- [118:56]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [118:57]
Daniel Rubino
So they must have engineered all around Aura's patents, which is the correct way to do it. Yeah.
- [119:04]
Leo Laporte
Apparently Ultra Human. A claim by claim. This is from the ITC's document, Long List of Infringements. ITC ruled that all of Aura's patent claims were valid. And a claim by claim analysis found both Ultrahuman and Ringcon's products infringe every element of every asserted claim of Aura's patent. Aura was the only participant to bring forward a credible witness. Ultra Human was specifically called out for having falsified evidence of a manufacturing facility in Texas. Not a good thing. So a big victory for Aura. And they were the first of these. Yeah, Samsung, yeah, they do a ring and they were not mentioned in this suit. Suit. Interestingly, Google has, among other things, they said we're not going to do a tablet, we're not going to do glasses and we're not going to do a ring. So don't get your hopes up.
- [120:03]
Daniel Rubino
So I think I'M actually glad for Aura, too, because there weren't a few. They were just a small tech company. They're out of Sweden or something.
- [120:12]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [120:13]
Daniel Rubino
And like, you know, usually these stories go. A company invents something and then they get swallowed up. Apple buys them. Google, someone else buys them. Right. And. Or they jack up their prices and they did have to do a subscription. People got mad about that. But they needed some source of recurring revenue. But they've really stayed their, like, independent roots since they started. Yeah, I think that's kind of. It reminds me of kind of like Spotify. Spotify has kind of resisted, you know, all that kind of stuff, too.
- [120:41]
Leo Laporte
They. And they're also always enhancing it. They just added an AI feature. I could take a picture of a meal and it will tell me what's in the meal and the calories. Calories. It ties in with my continuous glucose monitor. In fact, it can. It can make recommendations based on my blood glucose, my heart rate, my temperature. I think that there is. There is. We're not there quite yet, but there is a growing body of stuff for this, you know, quantified self that I think it's. We're getting close. Maybe the Apple Watch, you know, as it gets closer to continuous glucose and so forth, where you really get a good picture. My doctor wears an aura ring, and that kind of encouraged me when I saw that he wears it.
- [121:22]
Daniel Rubino
And also, Paris, another good point is that especially with Apple health, aura can sink into it.
- [121:28]
Leo Laporte
Oh, yeah. It totally ties into it. Yeah.
- [121:30]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. Because, like, I loved wearing youra ring, but not the Apple watch, so. But when I would go to the gym, I hated wearing the Oura ring because it does feel great when you're picking up weights. So I'd wear the Apple watch.
- [121:41]
Paris Martineau
It's also very dangerous to wear a ring when you're picking up. Picking up weights.
- [121:44]
Leo Laporte
Oh, is that true?
- [121:45]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, yeah.
- [121:46]
Paris Martineau
It's like one of the main, like, ways that people have, like. No, it's like a. It's a real. It's like a real.
- [121:54]
Leo Laporte
Is that what it sounds like? De. Gloving?
- [121:56]
Paris Martineau
Yes.
- [121:56]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. That's what you shouldn't.
- [121:58]
Leo Laporte
I don't want to do.
- [122:00]
Paris Martineau
Not. Don't look it up.
- [122:01]
Leo Laporte
But do you wear weight gloves to protect against degloving?
- [122:05]
Daniel Rubino
You could.
- [122:05]
Paris Martineau
No. You should just don't wear a ring when you're.
- [122:08]
Leo Laporte
Well, I won't wait. Never again.
- [122:10]
Paris Martineau
It's just a very basic safety thing that everybody should do.
- [122:13]
Leo Laporte
That's when I charge my aura is when I'm doing the Weights. I just put that on the charger there. And that's usually 15, 20 minutes a day or half an hour a day is enough to charge.
- [122:22]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah. Yeah. In the shower too.
- [122:24]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, in the shower. Okay. So we didn't want to turn this into an ad for Aura, but we're apparently happy now. It didn't go quite as well in court for T Mobile. T Mobile thought it was okay to sell your location information without your consent. The judge said, no, it is not and we're going to find you. $92 million. The FCC last year fined T Mobile, AT&T and Verizon saying they illegally shared access to customers location information without consent. The three carriers, of course, immediately appealed. This is the first of those decisions was handed down. On Friday, the U.S. court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled unanimously against T Mobile and Sprint. The ruling says every cell phone is a tracking device. To receive service, a cell phone must periodically connect with the nearest tower in a wireless carrier's network. Each time it does, it sends the carrier a record of the phone's location and by extension, the location of the customer who owns it. Over time, this information becomes an exhaustive history of a customer's whereabouts and provides an intimate window into that person's life. And apparently the carriers at&t.t Mobile and Verizon thought no problem selling that information along. No problem. Brendan Carr, who is now the chairman of the sec, by the way, when this fine was first proposed in 2020, voted against it. So it may not be completely over for a T Mobile. They could in fact appeal or ask the Supreme Court to review. And I could see them maybe going to Brendan Carr and saying, hey, Brendan, come on, man. Pal, come on, man. Who are they selling it to? Data brokers, of course. Who else were they selling it to?
- [124:31]
Daniel Rubino
None of this is surprising.
- [124:33]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah.
- [124:34]
Daniel Rubino
Disappointing, but not surprising.
- [124:41]
Leo Laporte
Anyway, I think that's a. That's a victory. I'm going to say that's a victory. Now we got a cautionary tale. If you and I know many of our listeners work as developers in a variety of companies and perhaps they have contemplated at one point or another other setting a little time bomb should they get fired. Just a little kill switch, a little present for management should they get fired. Davis Lou worked for Eaton Paper and in fact put malicious code designed to crash its servers in the event he was fired. He was fired. And they deactivated his credential credentials. And he had an active directory. A little, A little, a little function. Is DL enabled in AD? If DL is not enabled in AD. Well, kill the servers. The incident, according to TechCrunch, locked thousands of employees out from the company's systems. The Justice Department prosecuted the case. Actually, it's not Eaton Paper, it's a power tech company. Eaton. They make ups's and stuff. Right. He got caught because his Internet search history included searches researching, quote, methods to escalate privileges, hide processes and rapidly delete files.
- [126:16]
Daniel Rubino
Plus it's tied to his account and.
- [126:18]
Leo Laporte
It was called is DL enabled in ad. I think that might be a little bit of a giveaway. Sorry.
- [126:24]
Paris Martineau
I'm going to come in with breaking news from SpaceX. On Twitter, they just tweeted Standing down from today's 10th flight ship to allow time to troubleshoot an issue with ground systems.
- [126:34]
Leo Laporte
Okay, 39 minutes out. If you are my age, which neither of you are, thank goodness, you will remember watching Walter Cronkite on TV during launches of the Apollo and Mercury and Gemini mission in which they would have these scrubs or these delays and poor old Walter would have to sit there for hours with models in new sand. Well, here's the Apollo spacecraft and we brought in another astronaut to explain. And it would just go on and on and on. They ended up earning the nickname Old Iron Pants because he could, he could sit for hours. So there is nobody I'm sure at SpaceX worthy of doing that, but they have paused. Okay, thank you for that. I'll finish the story because Davis Lou was convicted and this is the cautionary tale.
- [127:32]
Daniel Rubino
Four years.
- [127:33]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, he's been sentenced to four years in the. In the slammer.
- [127:39]
Daniel Rubino
That seems like a long time. Like, like I get it, they're trying to send a message and all that, but, but I mean, they wanted to send a message as a deterrent. Yeah, that seems like a pretty four years slammer for doing.
- [127:56]
Paris Martineau
A strange thing within your company before you got fired.
- [127:59]
Leo Laporte
Really? Does that seem extreme?
- [128:02]
Paris Martineau
I mean, if you know about how this country.
- [128:07]
Leo Laporte
It's not like he stole anything. Yeah.
- [128:10]
Paris Martineau
Wow.
- [128:11]
Daniel Rubino
God.
- [128:12]
Paris Martineau
There was another example like this perhaps with like a website company like WordPress three or four years ago. I'll think of it in a minute. But there have been other high profile examples of decisions coming down hard on defendants who, yeah, I guess hack inside of a company's.
- [128:35]
Leo Laporte
I don't know if he was prosecuted under the cfaa, but that is a brutal. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Is.
- [128:41]
Paris Martineau
It is. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking of. It is interesting comparing this to typical prosecutions of white collar crime just to say the Least.
- [128:49]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, yeah, that's. I agree.
- [128:51]
Leo Laporte
Well, anyway, don't do it because hard.
- [128:55]
Daniel Rubino
Times don't tie it to your. Tied to your name and account.
- [128:59]
Leo Laporte
Is DL still enabled on Active Directory? Is he, Is he? Okay then keep, keep, keep operating. He probably thought he was really clever. So you've heard of course, that we're still waiting for Judge Mehta's decision in the Google antitrust case. At some point he will announce the penalties. Among penalties being considered is the sale of Chrome, which has prompted a lot of people to come forward. Perplexity said we'll buy it. The latest is Ecosia, which is that nonprofit eco friendly search engine. How do you say it? Ecosia. Ecosia. They, they have, they have said we'll, we'll take over Chrome, but we're not going to pay a penny. I do think that perplexity offered like $32 billion. So there's a but. But the judge may be persuaded because ECOSA does not want to operate it for profit. They want to, to. They want to transform it into a foundation, which it seems to me the only way you could do this. Really?
- [130:09]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah.
- [130:11]
Leo Laporte
They would devote 60% of the profits earned toward climate and environmental projects, which is what they do anyway. The other 40% would go back to Google. I don't know if the judge will like that. Ecosia is projecting chrome will generate $1 trillion over the next 10 years. So there's a lot of money.
- [130:32]
Paris Martineau
Just a casual trillion.
- [130:35]
Leo Laporte
Holy cow. No wonder Perplexity wants to buy it. I don't know. I mean it is interesting to see advertising, I guess.
- [130:44]
Paris Martineau
I don't know, but just Chrome, isn't it Google advertising?
- [130:49]
Leo Laporte
Well, see, that's interesting. If Chrome is not part of Google Google, that revenue disappears, doesn't it? Because it's. I don't know.
- [130:57]
Paris Martineau
But, but the revenue you're like, the advertising is from like Google Search or on websites. It's not Chrome exclusive advertising.
- [131:09]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, but doesn't that get a percentage or. I don't know.
- [131:13]
Paris Martineau
I don't know.
- [131:14]
Leo Laporte
I don't know. That's a good point. Yeah, apparently Google has a revenue sharing relationship with ecosia, so maybe that's what it's based on because their search engine is powered by Google.
- [131:29]
Daniel Rubino
Hear me out. Monthly subscription fee for your browser.
- [131:34]
Leo Laporte
I pay for Kagi. I pay for a Google Search replacement. Oh well, by the way, as long as we're talking about that, you know that Perplexity created an agentic browser called Comet, which isn't free. I mean it is free, but you have to be a Perplexity Pro user or actually right now you have to be a Perplexity like high end plus user. But I was able to get an invite and I think you have to be a paying user of Perplexity. Well, don't use it is really the bottom line.
- [132:11]
Paris Martineau
Why?
- [132:12]
Leo Laporte
Because there is a massive zero day in the Comet browser that would allow a malicious site get ready to take over your browser, go through your browser information and history, and for instance, buy things online with your credit card.
- [132:34]
Daniel Rubino
Wow. Yeah.
- [132:35]
Paris Martineau
So the agent is.
- [132:37]
Leo Laporte
Because it's agent. Yeah, yeah.
- [132:39]
Paris Martineau
The call is coming from inside the house.
- [132:41]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. So Guardio, which develops browser extensions to protect against these kinds of things, revealed that agentic AI browsers are vulnerable to phishing, prompt injection and purchasing from fake shops. In one test, Guardio asked Comet to buy an Apple Watch while on a fake Walmart site that they had created using Lovable, the Vibe coding service. Comet went in there, there and used your credit card to buy. Didn't confirm the legitimacy of the site, navigated to checkout auto, filled the data for the credit card address, completed the purchase without asking for human confirmation. They did the same thing. They crafted a fake Wells Fargo email from a Proton mail address linking to a phishing page. Comet said, oh yeah, logged in. Yep. Right away. Yes, sir, Coming up. Yeah, so I think maybe don't use Comet. I'm sure Perplexity will fix this.
- [133:45]
Paris Martineau
How was your experience using it before this?
- [133:47]
Leo Laporte
I don't like. Well, I never have used an agentic browser because I. For this very reason. It makes me very nervous. Very nervous.
- [133:55]
Paris Martineau
You loved every aspect of AI.
- [133:58]
Leo Laporte
Not, not the one where it takes your credit card and buy stuff.
- [134:02]
Paris Martineau
No, you're like, I've got that under lock all already with taking ambient and using TikTok shop.
- [134:07]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Brave, which is a competing browser by the way, did similar testing on Comet's browser and found that they could do prompt injection in perplexities comment. Which meant you could turn. Turn it into some sort of evil. Evil AI browser as well. So I like Brave.
- [134:31]
Daniel Rubino
Brave does some really cool stuff as far as browsers go.
- [134:34]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I don't think they have an agentic browser to compete with this. There are other companies that are like the arc, the browser company, the folks who do ARC have dia, which I think is planned to be agentic if it isn't already. Brave created a Reddit post with a comment containing prompt injection instructions hidden behind a spoiler tag. You know how you can make it blanked out on Reddit? The user clicks The Comment browser's Summarize the current web page button. While processing the page for summarization, the Comment AI assistant sees and processes the hidden instructions which told it to navigate to the Perplexity account, extract the user's email address, log in with that email address, get the one time password from Perplexity, navigate to Gmail, where the user's already logged in and receives the one time password, then exfiltrate the email address and one time password by replying to the original Reddit comment all lickety split without any intervention from the user. Again, I think this is probably time to not use Comment till Perplexity fixed. Is that. Yikes. That's. That's two different things.
- [135:55]
Paris Martineau
Yikes.
- [135:56]
Leo Laporte
Unrelated. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of money in these zero days. There are a couple of companies. Zerodium is one that pay for zero days and then sell them on sometimes they. Who? Well, depends. Some of these guys are good and they will go to the company that has the zero day and say, hey, here's a zero day. Give us the bug bounty because you're going to fix it. But some of them collect them and then sell them onto nation states. There's a lot more money in the ladder. A new United Arab Emirates startup is offering $20 million for a hacking tool or tools that could help governments break into smartphones with a text message. It's called Advanced Advanced Security Solutions. Maybe it should be called Advanced Insecurity Solutions. It's offering the some of the highest prices in the whole zero day market. That's how valuable these are to governments that want to hack the phones of dissidents, opponents and others. So $15 million for zero days for Android devices and iPhones, $10 million for Windows, Windows, $5 million for Chrome, $1 million for Safari and Edge just shows you what's where the value is. The $20 million goes to a zero click attack on any mobile operating system. The company says we quote, we empower government agencies, intelligence services and law enforcement to operate with precision in the digital battlefield. You can make good bucks creating zero days. All right, we got a few more stories. We're running out of time. It's been a long show. Paris is balancing her laptop on her knees. No, she's not. You stopped doing that. Okay, good.
- [138:04]
Paris Martineau
The ethernet cable is stretched to the max.
- [138:07]
Leo Laporte
Is. Was.
- [138:09]
Paris Martineau
Was it no longer.
- [138:10]
Leo Laporte
Not. Not anymore. You actually.
- [138:11]
Paris Martineau
And now I have a classic 40 foot long ethernet cable.
- [138:15]
Leo Laporte
Oh, you don't have a plug there. You just. Where does that go? You're in an apartment I'm in an apartment.
- [138:21]
Paris Martineau
It goes to the place.
- [138:23]
Leo Laporte
Does it go to the movie theater next door where there.
- [138:26]
Paris Martineau
No. They, in order to install Verizon fios in my building, have to like connect something to the telephone pole behind my house that then runs cable down the wall, up my building into my wall, and then there's a box where the cables come out. And one of the cables goes to power my router modem or something. And the other one is a ethernet cable that I run across my apartment to this very computer.
- [138:50]
Leo Laporte
Wow. That's why you have such a good connection. As long as your pigeon doesn't land on it, you're good. We're good.
- [138:57]
Paris Martineau
Well, it was messed up during that one freak storm in New York City about a month ago where two different trees fell in my backyard and took a out all of the Internet for the three houses near me. Not ideal.
- [139:11]
Leo Laporte
Yeah. Just checking. Let me just see how my sleep was last night. Oh, I got. You know, I love on the aura ring, they give you a little crown when you have a good night's sleep.
- [139:21]
Daniel Rubino
They give you.
- [139:22]
Paris Martineau
You. They've gamified sleep.
- [139:24]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [139:26]
Daniel Rubino
Samsung has. It does a little confetti balloons and stuff like that. When you reach your goal.
- [139:32]
Leo Laporte
I love that game of fight.
- [139:33]
Paris Martineau
I slept for 10 hours and three minutes last night.
- [139:37]
Leo Laporte
Well, as I have learned, it's not the length of time you spend in bed. It's the quality.
- [139:41]
Paris Martineau
It's the crown you receive.
- [139:43]
Leo Laporte
It's the crown you receive. Let me see, how many hours? Yeah, see I. I was. I was 10 hours and 17 minutes in bed, but I only slept 7 hours and 8 minutes of that.
- [139:56]
Daniel Rubino
How are you staying in bed for 10 hours?
- [139:58]
Leo Laporte
I won't mention what I was doing the rest of the. No, I like. I like. So look.
- [140:02]
Daniel Rubino
Oh, you read and watch your tv.
- [140:04]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, I don't have a TV in my bedroom, but I do love to read. There's nothing like it. And that's why our sponsor today is Helix Sleep. Because. How about that? Because you spend more time on your mattress than just asleep. Horizontal movie nights with your partner. Right. Morning cuddles with your kitty cat gizmo. Right. Your wind down ritual after the long days. My favorite thing, curl up with the cobra. I got a good book and I love to read. I might read for hours in bed. I just love it. And your mattress is the center of it all. It's supporting you through all of this. But if it's a bad mattress, an old mattress, a mattress that isn't right for you, you may not have such a great experience. Maybe you're waking up in puddles of sweat. I hate that. Or your back is killing you because the mattress is sagging like that. Or you feel every toss and turn your partner makes. It's a classic mattress nightmare. Now, one thing it's very important to know. Your mattress isn't going to last forever. Mattresses need to be replaced between six and 10 years, every six and 10 years, because they wear, they sag, they go bad. And maybe you're experiencing that right now. Maybe you've put up with this mattress for far too long. I want to point you to helixsleep.com TWIT O. OMG. Helix sleep changes everything. Forget the night sweats. Oh, we got this topper that's this cool topper. It's like, so nice. No back pain because it's not sagging. No motion transfer. For a long time on our old mattress, the cat would jump on the bed. Every once in a while, I'd jump on the bed. I'd sit up straight up and say, earthquake. But no, it wasn't an earthquake. It was just a kitty cat. No more of that. That. Get the deep sleep you deserve. Get the little crown on your sleep log. One buyer recently reviewed the Helix Sleep, gave them five stars. Said, I love my Helix mattress. I will never sleep on anything else. Honestly, it was the reviews that put me over the top. We were looking for a mattress. We knew it was about eight years. It was time for a new one. And then I started to see the awards time and time again. Helix Sleep remains the most awarded mattress brand. Wired Mattress magazine gave Helix Sleep their best mattress for 2025 period. Best mattress. Good housekeeping. The betting awards 2025 premium plus size support, which is good because I'm not a lightweight. You put some weight on that mattress. GQ gave it their Sleep Awards 2025 Best Hybrid Mattress. New York Times Wire Cutter Award 2025 featured for Plus Size. Oprah's Daily Sleep Awards for 2025 Best Hotel like feel. Now, I think that that should be qualified because some hotels, you don't want to sleep on that mattress because it's a lot of years old. But you go to a nice hotel, a really good place like the one that Qualcomm is going to put you up in Hawaii, that nice luxury hotel. You go, this is what I want. This is how I want at home. This is nice. That's what I'm talking about. Oprah's Daily Sleep Awards 2025 Best Hotel Like Feel Go to helixsleep.com TWIT Great time to go right now. 27% off site wide during the Labor Day sale. It's their best of web offer. That's helixsleep.com twit for 27% off site wide. That's exclusively for our listeners this week in Tech. And I have to tell you, this offer ends September 8, 2025. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you. That helps us a lot too. And if you're listening after the sale ends, don't worry. There's great deals all the time. Check them out. Helixsleep.com TWIT you are gonna love it. I do. Our kitty cat does. My wife does. We love our Helix asleep.
- [144:11]
Paris Martineau
Speaking of kitty cats.
- [144:12]
Leo Laporte
Yes? Is Gizmo here? A hello Gizmo. She's the reverse of our Rosie. Our re. Rosie's mostly black with a little white bib. Yours looks like Bat Cat. She's a white cat with a Batman cowl.
- [144:29]
Paris Martineau
She also wants to show butt on.
- [144:31]
Leo Laporte
Camera all the time. Contain us no containers.
- [144:35]
Paris Martineau
This is a show for children. Children can watch this show, Gizmo.
- [144:41]
Leo Laporte
Hey, children can watch Mark Rober on Netflix. Soon he's getting a Netflix series. This is good. Who? He's the NASA engineer who did remember those glitter bombs for porch pirates that he did. Oh, yeah.
- [144:58]
Paris Martineau
Only through this show. That's my only I I've seen. You've showed me that on Twitch before.
- [145:04]
Leo Laporte
He has 70 million subscribers. So you're one of the few. You're one of the few. Did I show you? I think I did on intelligent machines. The thing he did with the crow. The escape room for crows.
- [145:18]
Paris Martineau
Oh, you did show me that. That was cool. That was good for him.
- [145:22]
Leo Laporte
Yes, yes. He's puts a lot of effort, time and creativity into a stuff. Netflix says he will bring some of his most beloved ambitious and informative experiments to Netflix later this year. A competition show that I don't like. This is. This is what Mr. Beast.
- [145:41]
Paris Martineau
What if it's a crow competition show?
- [145:43]
Leo Laporte
If it's crows, that's different.
- [145:46]
Paris Martineau
Immediately, I'm in.
- [145:48]
Leo Laporte
It's. You could tell. I mean, you could.
- [145:50]
Paris Martineau
So Beast, crows would like massages. I was trying to think of. I was trying to think of a pro prize for crows and like, do.
- [145:57]
Leo Laporte
Kitty cats like massages?
- [145:59]
Paris Martineau
Have you not seen one of the best videos in the Internet, which is about cat massage. You have seen this, Leo?
- [146:05]
Leo Laporte
No. Is it on Tick Tock?
- [146:07]
Paris Martineau
This is like an old popular YouTube video.
- [146:11]
Leo Laporte
Well, I Guess I'm gonna look it up. Daniel, you have a kitty cat. Yes.
- [146:15]
Paris Martineau
Cat massage.
- [146:15]
Daniel Rubino
YouTube.
- [146:16]
Paris Martineau
And so your cat wants a massage.
- [146:18]
Leo Laporte
Three cats. They all have different personalities too, don't they? That's one of the things I found out about cats.
- [146:24]
Daniel Rubino
Well, two. Two of them are bonded sisters, so they're almost exactly alike and they look alike and they're both tuxedo cats. But to take one in tomorrow to get her teeth cleaned, you know how much that costs?
- [146:35]
Leo Laporte
That's the worst. But you know what? How much it would cost if you did it?
- [146:40]
Paris Martineau
I will say with urgent care, you.
- [146:42]
Leo Laporte
Know how much that would cost.
- [146:44]
Paris Martineau
All it takes is from. When there are kittens, you get them used to brushing their teeth. And now Gizmo lets me brush your teeth.
- [146:50]
Daniel Rubino
I didn't know that was a thing, though. I had cats before dinner. They were fine. These cats are only like four or five years old, but they have like the two.
- [146:57]
Paris Martineau
Well, you've got to have generalized anxiety disorder. And then you'd know from the minute you got the cats the two most.
- [147:03]
Leo Laporte
Is this the one you're talking about?
- [147:05]
Paris Martineau
No, I put it in the. I put it in the discord chat. That's close though. The two most common ways the cats. Cats die are tooth related. Dental disease or kidney failure. So you need to make sure your cats and you brush their teeth.
- [147:20]
Leo Laporte
Oh, I have never brushed my cat's teeth and I have no intention to.
- [147:26]
Daniel Rubino
So I. I learned you can put basically sea kelp, dried sea kelp in their foods.
- [147:32]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have. They call greenies. Yeah.
- [147:34]
Daniel Rubino
Sheets.
- [147:35]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [147:36]
Daniel Rubino
The iodine helps keep the plaque off your teeth. And there's also a liquid you can put in their water.
- [147:40]
Leo Laporte
So this is the video. So your cat wants a massage.
- [147:44]
Paris Martineau
Yes. And you need to.
- [147:45]
Leo Laporte
This looks like it's from the 80s.
- [147:47]
Paris Martineau
It is. This is why I'm shocked you.
- [147:49]
Leo Laporte
Was this a TV show? Oh, my God.
- [147:54]
Paris Martineau
There's great sound to it. That can't be copyright. You got to have seen on proud bodybuilders.
- [148:00]
Daniel Rubino
This is a really groovy move. Belly Rama.
- [148:06]
Leo Laporte
This was a VHS tape at one point.
- [148:08]
Paris Martineau
It had to be. I know nothing.
- [148:10]
Leo Laporte
Right next to Jane Fonda's work workout Kitty cat massage.
- [148:14]
Paris Martineau
It's fantastic.
- [148:16]
Daniel Rubino
I'd really recommend try using your left and vice versa.
- [148:20]
Leo Laporte
Good for you.
- [148:20]
Daniel Rubino
Use two hands to double your pleasure and double your fun.
- [148:24]
Leo Laporte
Okay, that's enough. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. I think we have a show title. German Court is throwing the book at ad blockers now. You wouldn't think ad Blockers would be controversial, but maybe in Germany.
- [148:47]
Paris Martineau
I love the headline they chose for this. No more Blocktoberfest. German court throws books and ad blockers.
- [148:54]
Leo Laporte
This is just. Apparently the legal theory is it could violate copyright law. This of course comes from Axel Springer, the big German publisher against AdBlock plus maker I.O.
- [149:13]
Paris Martineau
Which is in Axel Springer, which owns a number of sites that are highly dependent on advertising such as Business Insider.
- [149:22]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [149:24]
Paris Martineau
Politico is less dependent because of political pro. But I assume, assume the other sites that Axel Springer owns in Germany are more advertising dependent.
- [149:34]
Leo Laporte
They say the website code falls under the control of the German Copyright Act. So modifying the web pages DOM model or cascading style sheets represents copyright infringement? No. Okay. Now if I get a chance to talk to the judges, I will explain I'm not modifying the code on their site. Site. Their code is coming through loud and clear to my browser and my browser, as it does all the time is making decisions about how to display it. They don't control how my browser displays it. That would make reading mode a copyright violation. That would make it me making it dark mode of violation of copyright.
- [150:18]
Paris Martineau
If you put that website in too wide of a screen.
- [150:22]
Leo Laporte
Oh my God. My God. You have violated the copyright copyright. This has got to be narrow. So the appellate court that initially heard that argument rejected it, but it's been sent back.
- [150:37]
Paris Martineau
Oh my God. He clicked inspect element.
- [150:40]
Leo Laporte
No inspecting of the elements. All right, you know what? Maybe Sachin and Della has been reading the, the Elon Musk Manifesto. He says Microsoft has to move beyond Bill Gates software factory vision. It's not a software factory. It's something better. It's about intelligence integration and AI.
- [151:08]
Daniel Rubino
They're really pivoting. They're putting all their money into this.
- [151:12]
Paris Martineau
You know, I, I, AI, I, AI.
- [151:17]
Daniel Rubino
I, everything they're going to, everything they're doing is a delivery system for AI basically. Or it powers powering AI.
- [151:27]
Leo Laporte
But that presumes that people want it. I'm not convinced that that's the case.
- [151:34]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, but possibly. But I would say people, it was the same thing with the Internet back in the day.
- [151:40]
Leo Laporte
Yeah.
- [151:40]
Daniel Rubino
We were all early adopters on the Internet. We were all blown away by it. This is the coolest thing ever. And you could, couldn't tell people, like you'd explain and they're like what are you talking about? Like that sounds stupid. Why would I want email? Like but you know, the whole world changed around it. Right. So I think it's going to happen no matter what. It's just who controls it. At this point. So.
- [152:05]
Leo Laporte
So, Paris, I can't let you go without getting an update on the radioactive shrimp.
- [152:11]
Paris Martineau
Thank you for asking, Leo.
- [152:13]
Leo Laporte
Paris is feeding at Consumer Reports is food safety.
- [152:17]
Paris Martineau
Yes, that's the 50% of it. That is not tech. I'm falling deep into the food safety minds. I do a lot of, like, actual investigations. I'm working on a larger thing that will come out next month. But in the meantime, I've been keeping up to date with food recalls. And you may have heard about an unusual food recall that happened for the first time this week, which is. It started with the fda. Look, there's your warning, consumers.
- [152:42]
Leo Laporte
Is this your first byline on Consumer Reports?
- [152:44]
Paris Martineau
It was technically a pear recall that had weird metal in it, but this.
- [152:47]
Leo Laporte
Is the most interesting pears of weird metal in them. Okay, yeah, this is good. You're building up a clipping library.
- [152:54]
Paris Martineau
The first one was Walmart recalls frozen shrimp possible radioactive contamination.
- [153:00]
Leo Laporte
Has it gone beyond Walmart?
- [153:02]
Paris Martineau
It has. Then the next day, more frozen shrimp were recalled, called this time from a kind of, like, middleman seller that had a five or different brands that they, in part of the recall announcement couldn't really tell you, like, what stores even this shrimp had been sold at or like, what.
- [153:20]
Leo Laporte
Well, here's pictures.
- [153:22]
Paris Martineau
Those are pictures of the brands.
- [153:24]
Leo Laporte
Yes.
- [153:25]
Paris Martineau
That are specific.
- [153:25]
Leo Laporte
So just look for that in your freezer section of your local grocery store.
- [153:29]
Paris Martineau
To be clear, what's being recalled here is none of these shrimp, they know for sure have a radioactive isotope. Oh, what happened?
- [153:38]
Leo Laporte
So go ahead and have some.
- [153:40]
Paris Martineau
Go ahead and have some. It's fine. No prob. Don't throw these out if you have them.
- [153:45]
Leo Laporte
They're contaminated with or they're not contaminated.
- [153:48]
Paris Martineau
They are suspected to be potentially contaminated with radioactive substance cesium 137. And that is a radioactive isotope that is created. Created in nuclear fission. It's created, like, in potentially, like, nuclear explosions or is associated with, like, nuclear energy processing. It's very confusing as to how this potentially got in shrimp. And it's been a story that has been occupying a lot of my mind to where I've developed several shrimp spiracies related.
- [154:17]
Leo Laporte
Oh, you've got a shrimp spiracy.
- [154:20]
Paris Martineau
Part of how this came about is because I was asking some of the people who've been working in food safety in some reports for, like, 30 years. I was like, is it weird to have food be recalled for radioactive contamination? Possibly. And they're like, yeah, we've never seen this before. What happened was the, like, border control people at four Different US Ports flagged shipping containers coming from Indonesia for having radioactive contamination reading off them whenever. Ostensibly, principally, every single shipping container that comes into the US by sea is supposed to go through a big. It's called a radiation portal monitor that checks it to see if there's radiation that's supposed to happen to 100%. Four containers alerted and they were full of shrimp. And so they sent the FDA to come test some of them. In one of them, the braided shrimp tested positive for low levels of this radiation.
- [155:14]
Leo Laporte
Low levels not going to kill you.
- [155:16]
Paris Martineau
Levels not going to kill you.
- [155:18]
Daniel Rubino
You.
- [155:18]
Paris Martineau
Nothing. Like nothing.
- [155:20]
Leo Laporte
Cause of lip cancer or something. Nothing.
- [155:22]
Paris Martineau
I mean, it's, it's not good to be exposed to any level of, like, radiation. So that's part of the reason and part of what struck me as odd initially is they said in the initial releases we at this time, no containers that have alerted or tested positive for radiation have been allowed in the US from like, well, if that's the case and you say you test all of these containers, then why are you recalling a bunch of shrimp? And from what I've gathered, it's because there are other containers from the supplier that have come into the US that they're unsure as to whether or not.
- [155:59]
Leo Laporte
They didn't test those.
- [156:00]
Paris Martineau
So I did some digging. So I was like, well, isn't 100% of it's supposed to be tested? So my shrimp spiracy. I'll preface this by saying, like, some of this conjecture is I looked through and there were. There's been a number of reports from the Office of the Inspector General over the last couple of years, years about CPB and CWMD and then these government agencies that they basically, the radiation portal monitoring system isn't working as supposed to in these heavily redacted documents that are now kind of available online.
- [156:32]
Leo Laporte
See, this is why Consumer Reports hired you, because you're saying the heart of.
- [156:37]
Paris Martineau
Them, they're like, yeah, it seems like maybe the, the things that are supposed to check for radiation aren't really working. All turned on because of that are, like, false positives often so people don't pay attention to them, or maybe they're just turned off often. So there seems to be a kind of a broader systemic issue. And my theory, again, this is just conjecture, is they had a couple of these containers alert, then they went back through and saw, hey, where else is all the shrimp coming from? Have those containers been checked? And they may be went through without being checked. So I think it kind of speaks to this broader issue we're seeing in the U.S. best food supply chain that we don't entirely know what is in some of these containers.
- [157:17]
Leo Laporte
This is an important beat for you because we do know that they've fired inspectors, that the FDA is being hobbled. I think it's time to pay attention to this. There's one other thing, though. I would like an expose on. Your picture on the Consumer Reports website is just a little bit blurry.
- [157:37]
Paris Martineau
Why is it so blurry? That's so blurry.
- [157:41]
Leo Laporte
I have violated the copyright and modified the css. No, that's the way it came.
- [157:46]
Paris Martineau
It's so funny. It looks clear on my website.
- [157:49]
Leo Laporte
Yeah, because you have it at a normal. You know, you don't zoom in. I did zoom in, but now when I zoom in. Oh, now it looks better. You know what? Maybe I got a bad. Maybe I got a bad shrimp.
- [158:02]
Paris Martineau
Maybe you got a bad shrimp.
- [158:03]
Leo Laporte
It's getting. Wait a minute, it gets fuzzy and then it gets clear. That's interesting. Just that one size. It's just that one size. That one size. Okay, enough playing around with Barris picture. Congratulations, by the way, on a great, great new job and keeping us safe from the shrimp.
- [158:29]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, I am a little disappointed that this wasn't like an origin story story where there was some kind of company dumping radioactive cans. Well, the thing is, we don't know. We don't know because that's how Godzilla.
- [158:44]
Paris Martineau
The radioactive contamination came from. So that could still be true. It could be Godzilla somewhere.
- [158:53]
Daniel Rubino
There's a giant shrimp that's about to come ashore.
- [158:56]
Paris Martineau
A giant shrimp.
- [158:57]
Leo Laporte
Good news is they can't walk the AI Shrimp.
- [159:00]
Paris Martineau
Shrimp Jesus is real and he's coming for you.
- [159:04]
Leo Laporte
I will save this one nick comma 30 for intelligent machines. This is a site that you put in here. Welcome to the life of Nick 30. You and your girlfriend want to settle down, start a family. You need to save a hundred thousand pounds for a house deposit within five years. Good luck. And then. What is this? You're going to invest? You're going to run their life?
- [159:26]
Paris Martineau
You want to do it now? You can play the Nick simulator. You have to try and play. Play Nick 30.
- [159:30]
Leo Laporte
I'm not going to do it now. It's time to wrap it up. But let's do this on Wednesday.
- [159:36]
Paris Martineau
Listen, we'll see. It's very difficult to win Nick Simulator.
- [159:40]
Leo Laporte
It's.
- [159:40]
Paris Martineau
Some people are saying it's the hardest game since Dark. Dark.
- [159:43]
Leo Laporte
Who did this?
- [159:45]
Paris Martineau
We're going to have to wait and see on Intelligent Machines.
- [159:48]
Leo Laporte
Is it British values week at work? What do you do? Take in a Union Jack? You get odd looks. Patriotism.
- [159:54]
Paris Martineau
I like that you said, oh, I'm not going to play it. And it's different every time you play. I just got pavement clutter. Ban. The council votes to ban pavement clutter. Your bike rack is removed. Walk more or take the bus.
- [160:05]
Leo Laporte
I'm going to walk more.
- [160:07]
Paris Martineau
Save money. It's free. At least your carpet footprint.
- [160:11]
Leo Laporte
You spend a fortune on designer croissants. Okay, so I get it. You're playing a game and you're trying to save money. And you can see your progress here, your expenses. I lost £300 going to that conference in Le. All right. Okay. This looks like fun. We will play this game, but Wednesday on Intelligent Machines when Paris returns. Daniel Rubino, projectionist extraordinaire. What is the projectionist union? Which union is that?
- [160:43]
Daniel Rubino
Oh, it was Iatse.
- [160:44]
Leo Laporte
Oh, it's Ayatse. Oh, that's also the stagehands union.
- [160:49]
Daniel Rubino
Yes. In fact, I got to work an Aerosmith Kiss concert in Long island because of it.
- [160:54]
Leo Laporte
Nice.
- [160:55]
Daniel Rubino
I saw Paul Stanley pass me in the hallway. I was just going up the stairs.
- [161:01]
Leo Laporte
The little guy? The little one. Wow, that's cool. What were you doing projection there or you just were there as a grip?
- [161:08]
Daniel Rubino
No, breaking down the stages.
- [161:10]
Leo Laporte
Oh, erodey. Yeah.
- [161:11]
Daniel Rubino
Yeah, that sucked. But it was a good experience, I guess. Hard work. Hard work.
- [161:17]
Leo Laporte
Well, Daniel, now that we know this, you're going to get interrogated more about this, and I'm going to scan through your entire floor Flickr collection looking for more projection pictures.
- [161:26]
Daniel Rubino
Go for it.
- [161:27]
Leo Laporte
But people should probably go to Windows Central where he is Editors in Chief, windowscentral.com Listen to the Windows Central podcast where you hear Daniel every week and follow him on the socials as DanielRabino. Thank you so much, Daniel. Always a pleasure to see you.
- [161:43]
Daniel Rubino
Really appreciate it. Same. Thanks for having me.
- [161:44]
Leo Laporte
Thank you for not taking a vacation in August, like everybody.
- [161:48]
Daniel Rubino
I'll always be around in August. Don't.
- [161:50]
Leo Laporte
Good. I like it. That's what I like. Paris Martino. We don't let her out of the house because we need her for Intelligent Machines.
- [161:58]
Paris Martineau
Every Wednesday, I stay within 15ft of this computer or I get an electric shock.
- [162:03]
Leo Laporte
Yes. Consumer Reports has wired it up that way. They've given her. They've given her, though, all the thumbtacks and red thread she can use to build those conspiracy wall montages. And I think she's working on it right now. Now, stay tuned for more on Shrimp Gate.
- [162:22]
Paris Martineau
Stay tuned. I'm on it bur shrimp and you know what's going on. Yeah, my signal is out there.
- [162:30]
Daniel Rubino
Contact me on signal.
- [162:31]
Leo Laporte
Thank you for not going to Burning man this year. We appreciate it.
- [162:35]
Paris Martineau
I couldn't hand. I couldn't risk getting lost in the dust when important news is going on.
- [162:39]
Leo Laporte
No, that's right. Although there could be radioactive shrimp at Burning posted a photo of a shrimp.
- [162:46]
Paris Martineau
With a gone in the Discord chat and I really enjoy that.
- [162:50]
Leo Laporte
Right under the. Right under the. There it is.
- [162:53]
Paris Martineau
Careful to make the show title Shrimp with a Gun. I don't know if we're allowed to do that.
- [162:58]
Leo Laporte
I don't know Shrimp with a Gun's gonna make it, but we'll. We'll try. Shrimp with a radioactive bullet maybe. Thank you all for joining us. A special thanks to our Club Twit members who put all those silly things in the Club Twit Discord and also support us with their donations. Their contribution to the club. 10 bucks a month gets you ad free versions of all the shows we do, plus a bunch of extra stuff that we do inside the Discord. We have special events. We did the Made by Google event in the Discord. Coming up on Monday, September 1, Paris, Jeff and I will interview the author of a new book about AI, Karen how the author of Empire of AI. That'll be a very interesting interview. You'll get to hear it first right here. As a club member, of course, Chris Markworth's a photo guy will join us. His. His assignment this month is delightful. That's the name of it. And we're going to talk about local AI plus using the Natan server. Anthony's been all over that one that's coming up. These are all events that happen in the club. Plus you get video from the shows like Hands on Windows, Hands on Apple, that we do. We home theater geeks that we normally just put out as audio. There's just a whole lot of reasons to join. But the best reason is without you, we wouldn't be the same. 25% of our operating costs comes from our great generous club members. So thank you for your donations and thanks to all of you who are thinking about joining. Please go to Twitter TV Club Twit. We'd love to have you. We do this week at Tech. Every Sunday afternoon, 2 to 5pm Pacific, 5 to 8pm Eastern. Eastern 2100 UTC. We stream it live in eight different places. Club Twit course gets the access in the Discord behind the velvet Robe, the special premium access. But you can also watch on YouTube tick tock, Twitch, X dot com, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Kick. Plenty of places to catch the show. You don't have to watch it live though. You can always download a copy from our website, Twitter TV. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to the video. We have audio and video on our website or subscribe to audio or video or both in your favorite podcast client. Leave us a great review and we will be very, very thankful to you. We appreciate the support. GLAD you're here. 20 years we've been doing this. I'm hoping for 20 more. And as I've said for the past 20 years, thanks for being here. We'll see you next week. Another Twit is in the can Bye bye everybody. Amazing. This episode is brought to you by Coda. I love seeing the team come together to make this show happen, but I don't love and I bet you don't love trying to keep track of all the information and data and projects across dozens of platforms, products and tools. Coda is an all in one collaborative workspace that's helped 50,000 teams worldwide get on the same page. Offering the flexibility of docs with the structure of spreadsheets, Coda facilitates deeper teamwork and quicker creativity and their turnkey AI solution. The intelligence of Coda Brain is a game changer. Powered by Grammarly, Coda is entering a new phase of innovation and expansion, aiming to redefine productivity for the AI era. Whether you're a startup looking to organize the chaos or an enterprise organization looking for better alignment, Coda matches your working style. It connects to hundreds of your favorite tools including Salesforce, Jira, Samsung, Asana and Figma. Head over to Coda IO Twit right now and get six months of the team plan for startups for free. That's C O D A IO Twit. I get six free months of the team plan for free. Coda IO Twit.