Windows Weekly 927: Up to Stuff

Summary

Windows Weekly 927: Up to Stuff – Detailed Summary

Release Date: April 9, 2025
Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurot, Richard Campbell

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Introduction and Personal Updates (00:00 - 03:03)

The episode kicks off with Leo Laporte introducing Windows Weekly alongside co-hosts Paul Thurot and Richard Campbell. Paul shares personal news about returning home to Madeira Park with his new puppy and grandchild, highlighting the joys and challenges of a full household. Richard briefly mentions sticking around after a previous impression on the show.

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Microsoft Account Changes and Community Reactions (03:03 - 07:10)

The discussion shifts to recent changes Microsoft has implemented regarding user accounts in Windows 11. Richard Campbell expresses concerns over Microsoft's gradual shift away from local accounts toward mandatory Microsoft accounts.

Notable Quote:

Richard Campbell [03:47]: "But I don't see that. They're never really going to get rid of it."

Paul Thurot adds that these changes are motivated by the desire to reduce tech support burdens, as users become more reliant on standardized tools and services.

Notable Quote:

Paul Thurot [05:06]: "This is not going to be them."

Richard defends Microsoft's approach, stating that the benefits of Microsoft accounts, such as enhanced security and easier recovery options, outweigh the drawbacks for most users.

Notable Quote:

Richard Campbell [05:51]: "The benefits of the Microsoft account outweigh the, the bad stuff by far."

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Community Interactions and User Feedback (07:10 - 19:00)

The conversation touches on community interactions, including Richard's engagement with a Twitter thread criticizing Google's Pixel phones for bloatware. They discuss the challenges of modifying devices to remove unwanted software and the implications for user experience.

Paul introduces the concept of the Windows 11 Feature Tracker, a tool Richard developed to monitor and catalog upcoming and tested Windows 11 features. Richard elaborates on the difficulties of keeping up with Microsoft's rapid feature releases and the inadequacy of Microsoft's official roadmap.

Notable Quote:

Richard Campbell [12:23]: "Keeping up with what Microsoft is doing is very difficult."

They explore potential platforms for the Feature Tracker, debating between Notion, GitHub, and MediaWiki for better community collaboration and interactivity.

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Patch Tuesday Updates and New Features (19:00 - 34:00)

Richard delves into the latest Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 11, highlighting the introduction of over two dozen major features still in testing. He critiques the Controlled Feature Release (CFR) approach, where features roll out randomly instead of being available to all users simultaneously.

Notable Quote:

Richard Campbell [20:12]: "Every single one of them is a CFR, a controlled feature release, meaning they will roll out randomly."

The hosts discuss specific new features, such as the revamped Start Menu with enhanced customization options and the return of taskbar scaling to accommodate more icons without clutter.

Notable Quote:

Richard Campbell [28:57]: "They're bringing back this notion of taskbar scaling."

They also touch upon the ongoing integration of AI across Windows, including updates to the Copilot app, which adds functionalities like file searching and content analysis.

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Microsoft's AI Integration and Copilot Developments (34:00 - 60:00)

The focus shifts to Microsoft's Copilot initiatives, discussing the integration of AI across various platforms, including Windows, web services, and developer tools. Richard explains how Copilot is evolving to become an orchestrator, assisting users by interacting with both Windows features and web services seamlessly.

Notable Quote:

Richard Campbell [41:53]: "Copilot can do it for you. That literally might be the reason this is the destination."

They debate the reliance on AI models, with Richard emphasizing the need for system-agnostic AI that selects the best model for each task without user intervention.

Paul raises concerns about Microsoft's dependency on models like ChatGPT, suggesting that developing proprietary models might offer more stability and control.

Notable Quote:

Richard Campbell [71:42]: "Copilot Search in Bing. Interesting."

The hosts also discuss Security Copilot, a tool designed to aid system administrators in prioritizing and addressing security vulnerabilities within their organizations. Richard highlights its potential to streamline security operations, especially for SMBs lacking dedicated security personnel.

Notable Quote:

Richard Campbell [131:21]: "Security Copilot was one of the very first copilots announced and it was the one where I looked at him when you guys are out of your minds."

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AI's Impact on Technology and Society (60:00 - 87:10)

A substantial portion of the conversation revolves around the broader implications of AI in technology and society. Richard and Leo discuss the historical skepticism surrounding new technologies making humans "stupider," drawing parallels with past innovations like the printing press and automated farming.

Notable Quote:

Richard Campbell [75:58]: "You could point to any technology through history and you will find the people saying this exact thing."

They reflect on AI's role in enhancing productivity versus the fear of job displacement, considering whether AI will ultimately lead to better tools or exacerbate existing problems.

Paul introduces anecdotes about AI-generated content, such as game levels and writing, debating whether these tools complement human creativity or undermine it.

Notable Quote:

Richard Campbell [84:33]: "This is the Exchange server job thing I always talk about... What are you talking about? We don't have email."

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Community Engagement and Show Announcements (87:10 - 113:00)

The hosts shift gears to engage with their audience, announcing the restoration of the Club Twit yearly membership plan. Leo highlights upcoming events and special segments, including Crafting Corner, Coffee Time with the Coffee Geek, and an AI User Group.

Richard promotes his book, "Windows Everywhere: The Field Guide to Windows 11," and encourages listeners to check out historical interviews available on his website, programmersatwork.wordpress.com.

Notable Quote:

Leo Laporte [116:28]: "This is a great book and it is unfortunately out of print, but you can go to the website and get it."

They share personal stories about their journeys in the tech industry, emphasizing the importance of continuous learning and adaptation in a rapidly evolving field.

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Closing Remarks and Future Outlook (113:00 - End)

As the episode wraps up, the hosts discuss upcoming Xbox showcases and anticipated game releases, including The Elder Worlds 2 by Obsidian Entertainment and the revival of classic titles like Fable. They express optimism about Microsoft's commitment to enhancing gaming experiences through both hardware advancements and strategic game releases.

Paul introduces special whiskey editions from the MVP Summit, showcasing handcrafted spirits from East London Liquor Company. The discussion highlights the blend of traditional craftsmanship with modern technology, drawing parallels between artisanal products and tech innovations.

Notable Quote:

Paul Thurot [137:25]: "It's a 500 ml bottle. It's a smaller bottle, quite little actually."

In their final remarks, Leo and Richard emphasize the importance of community support, encouraging listeners to join Club Twit and engage with their content across multiple platforms. They celebrate their 20th anniversary, reflecting on two decades of providing insightful discussions on Windows and technology.

Notable Quote:

Leo Laporte [142:12]: "We're going to celebrate our audience because that's really what makes all of our shows exist."

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Conclusion

Windows Weekly 927: Up to Stuff offers an in-depth exploration of Microsoft's ongoing developments in Windows 11, particularly focusing on AI integrations and user account changes. The hosts provide thoughtful analysis on the implications of these updates, engage with community feedback, and share personal anecdotes that enrich the discussion. Their conversations extend beyond technical topics, touching on the societal impact of AI and the enduring importance of community and continuous learning in the tech landscape.

For those interested in the latest Windows updates, AI advancements, and the intersection of technology and society, this episode delivers valuable insights and engaging commentary.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Windows Weekly. Richard Campbell is here. Paul Thurot 2. Paul's been busy. He created a Windows 11 feature tracker at first for his own use, but now you can use it too. Build is coming. We'll talk about the session catalog and all the AI. Every AI sprinkled everywhere. Plus the number one game in the world is now the number one movie. All that and more coming up next on Windows Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit. This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurad and Richard Campbell. Episode 927, recorded Wednesday, April 9, 2025. Up to Stuff. It's time for Windows Weekly, the show we get together with two people who shall remain nameless.

[Paul Thurot]

Not for very long, but yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

To talk about Windows at Microsoft. Paul Thurat is in Roma Norte, Mexico City. From thurat.com.

[Richard Campbell]

Hello, Paul. Hello, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

And also with us, Richard Gamble, who very kindly stuck around and did the Leatherbutt impression last week.

[Paul Thurot]

I was inspired.

[Leo Laporte]

Good news, you don't have to. This week we've got Corey Doctorow. We can all go home early.

[Richard Campbell]

It'll be.

[Paul Thurot]

Geez, I wish I would be on that show.

[Leo Laporte]

I love that. You could be on it if you want. You could stick around.

[Paul Thurot]

It's all right, brother.

[Leo Laporte]

Wednesday's Richard Campbell Day.

[Paul Thurot]

Richard, let's just work the whole day, right? Yeah, but say, definitely say hi for me. I'm an admirer. He's amazing. Oh, I know. He's writing.

[Leo Laporte]

Always fascinating.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Rich is back home in beautiful Madeira Park. Nice to see you. I bet you're happy to be there.

[Paul Thurot]

Happy to be home and arrived home to a puppy. Because, you know, having a granddaughter wasn't enough. Now we have a puppy.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I thought you were calling your new baby a puppy.

[Paul Thurot]

Oh, nope.

[Leo Laporte]

You have a puppy and a grandbaby.

[Paul Thurot]

Yes. So, yeah, now, full, full plate. All the loves. That's what we got. More biting now, but, you know, all the loves.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, no, it's wonderful. What kind of puppy?

[Paul Thurot]

She's a cross. There's a little poodle in there. So she's got springs in her legs and some Bernese and some Aussie shepherd and some cotton.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it sounds perfect.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah, it's going to be as long.

[Leo Laporte]

As you get the best of each breed.

[Paul Thurot]

We'll see. We'll see what we got. You know, you find out later and you can't return them back in again. Right. And warranty expires before you know anything.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, no, that sounds like just a bundle of love I think you're going to love it. That's great. Is it your dog or your kid's dog?

[Paul Thurot]

It's my wife's dog and the last one was supposed to be her dog too and it didn't work out that way. So that's why I'm going. This is why I'm going out of town.

[Leo Laporte]

That's your cat? Not my cat. That's your cat.

[Paul Thurot]

But you know, next week after the show I head for Australia. So she's going to get three weeks of, you know, managing it herself. But she's very confident and it, she wants the dog more than I do. But she's, this is a little love, you know, she's. There's something about a dog.

[Leo Laporte]

They just love you. They love you.

[Paul Thurot]

She's a sweetie.

[Leo Laporte]

So, Paul Thorat. Yes, I nipped Steve Gibson in the bud yesterday.

[Richard Campbell]

Nipse him in the bud.

[Leo Laporte]

I nipped him in the bud.

[Richard Campbell]

That doesn't sound like it's suitable for.

[Leo Laporte]

Work, but please, on the nose of the newspaper. No, I just. We started going on about the bypass nro, CMD and I repeated your, your caution that they didn't take. They just took away the batch file, not the commands it executed. And you can still. And Steve was mollified. He said, oh, that's good. I said, it's exactly what we want. You want the kind of unsophisticated user to have what they expect, but you want the sophisticated user be able to do what they want.

[Richard Campbell]

I also, I mean, we'll see what happens. That's the thing. I. You don't think this is a long.

[Leo Laporte]

Term plan on Microsoft's part to slow.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, I do actually. Unfortunately, that's what he was worried about. Yeah, it's part of it. Well, look, off the top of my head, I can't go through all of the steps that they took, but at one, you know, they switched to Microsoft. You know, you can sign it with a Microsoft account. Well, first you could attach a, what used to be called a Net Passport or Windows Live Passport or whatever it was called to your Windows whatever 7 account. And then they introduced the ability to sign in with a Microsoft account in Windows 8. And then at some point you. It was the default and at some point they got rid of it in home and at some point actually they got rid of it in Pro. You know, the ability of that is to sign in with local account. Right. And set up. So, you know, it's been an escalating series of things. But like I said last time and with The Mac today as well. They really, they'd have to fundamentally change Windows to really get rid of it. And I just don't. It's. They're never really going to get rid of it. And there are other workarounds, you know.

[Paul Thurot]

So the motivation here is releasing tech support. Yeah, that's the, that's the clearest, most logical expense in their lives is when folks use these tools, not really understanding where they are and get their machine estate, they know what to do. Who are they going to call, who are they going to blame? This is not going to be them.

[Richard Campbell]

Look, like everything else in life, I talked about this McDonald's effect. You know, they didn't start McDonald's to make everyone fat, but they were trying to solve a problem. There's good and bad to everything. Right. And Microsoft purposefully is doing things that drive you toward their services. Right. And that's understandable. It's a business, it's fine. But the benefits of the Microsoft account outweigh the, the bad stuff by far. There are very good technical reasons for it. And you know what Richard said? Absolutely 100% correct. It gets you. And I talked about this notion of start a Microsoft account or a Google account, but use a different email address, automatic recovery built in. You're better off. Right there. You're better off. You know, the automatic disk encryption stuff right there. Better off.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And most people expect that, right. They, so they don't want to be told, oh, well, there's a.

[Richard Campbell]

We're going to talk about these features coming in Windows 11. Right. So there's a feature there either. I can't remember, I can't keep this track. I can't keep this stuff straight. That's the point. There's a feature either coming or in Windows 11 now all of a sudden that if you sign in with a Microsoft account and it knows that you have not set up recovery methods through another email address, phone number, whatever it will prompt you to do. So that's also better for you. Now, I know a lot of these prompting things are the types of things I do complain about, but those are the things that don't have a benefit for me or Microsoft driving me to do something that's better for them exclusively. Right. Like a lot of the edge behaviors or whatever. So good and bad, but mostly good. And for most people, it's the right decision.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah. Nothing to argue with. And you know, they're not taking away functionality, they're just making you need a little more expertise to be successful with it.

[Richard Campbell]

Hey, listen, the People who are Windows experts or tech experts. This is. You should love this. That's what you want. You want to be able to do something other people can't figure out. That's how it should be. This is all you ever wanted. It's perfect. Yeah. What's the problem? Well, the problem is you're afraid they're going to take it away. But. But I don't know. I just don't see that. But we'll see. We'll see how it evolves.

[Leo Laporte]

I think this is such a perfect compromise for Microsoft and I feel like. Why would they insist on a Microsoft account? I mean, that's what, you know, that's what it. The conspiracy theory is.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, they just want to get you in.

[Leo Laporte]

But you'd already bought. You're already using Windows. I don't know.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah, far too late for that. Anyway.

[Leo Laporte]

You're already.

[Richard Campbell]

I got stupidly involved in a thread on wherever Twitter thread threads, whatever it was. Where. I don't even know. It was just in response to some auto post about something I or Laurent had writing written on thrott.com something about Google and whatever. And some guy. Apropov. Nothing. Just chimes in with like, I bought a Google Pixel phone, but I got all the Google crap off of it. I installed some other operating system and it's like. I'm sorry, what? You wanted the weaker processor with no battery life, but not the Google stuff. That's why you buy that phone. What are you talking about?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you can't. I mean, in fact, there is a company that sells this phone de Googled and you could put. There are some nice.

[Richard Campbell]

If you want to do anything. Anything. How about take a Samsung Flagship and D Samsung. That would be useful. Or put Pixel. Because this has Android on there.

[Leo Laporte]

This has some hardware feature. Oh, you think this is a worse processor than the Samsung?

[Richard Campbell]

It's objectively a worse processor. Yeah. Performance and battery life. Yeah. Even. Even the AI processing is. Is worse.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I didn't read that.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it's kind of bizarre.

[Leo Laporte]

But this is. You own a Pixel, right?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I love it.

[Leo Laporte]

So 9 mm.

[Richard Campbell]

I do.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. But I also would say buy a Samsung.

[Richard Campbell]

I see.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't want the Samsung.

[Richard Campbell]

No. Because when I buy a Samsung, I see it and I hate it and I hate everything on it and everything. That's what I mean. If I could get the Samsung hardware. Right. The Google Pixel software. Ah, the whole thing. That would be the. That's the. That's the.

[Leo Laporte]

That's probably doable. I'll have to I'll look over an XDA developers and see what.

[Richard Campbell]

I can't. It takes two seconds before you have to sign the three Samsung agreements that you give away your third child and whatever else is in there. It's crazy.

[Leo Laporte]

I regret I'm mostly Samsung TVs and I deeply regret it. We have that frame TV. Hate it. So disappointing.

[Richard Campbell]

And it's that Samsung smart TVs where you like. I just sign in to receive your virus over the air. Yeah, it's unbelievable.

[Leo Laporte]

Sign in to get your free.

[Richard Campbell]

Don't sign in. And we'll just prompt you to sign in all the time. We'll be great.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, they pop up stuff all the time.

[Richard Campbell]

Say. Well, you know, just so you know that the terms have changed. I know.

[Leo Laporte]

It's like I'm watching a show here. Do you mind?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, exactly. I'm in the middle of severance over here. Do you think you could hold it a second?

[Paul Thurot]

Why?

[Richard Campbell]

You know, like I know. No, I don't understand. I don't get. I don't get Samsung. I have a problem with this.

[Paul Thurot]

Let's get Cory Doctorow on.

[Leo Laporte]

He is. He's coming up in two hours one day.

[Richard Campbell]

He comes up a couple of times. Not him, you know, but the inside ification stuff comes up a couple of times today later in the show, including right at the end of my bit where, you know, looking for those things that are the opposite of that. Right. Which because yes, some things in our world, there aren't many. It's a short conversation.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a Reddit subreddit I really like called Buy it for Life.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, nice.

[Leo Laporte]

And the premise is you buy it once and you never have to buy it again. And of course, none of that is technological. It's not. It's all. It's all things like KitchenAid mixers.

[Richard Campbell]

But I think that copy of Paperclip I have for the Commodore 64 is still kicking around. It's fine. That's all I need to write, baby.

[Leo Laporte]

Introducing. I'm sorry I hijacked the show. I will not. I just wanted you to know that I defended.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I can't believe this. Windows, Microsoft to Steve Gibson and he.

[Richard Campbell]

This is the cancerous effect I have on people. I'm sorry.

[Paul Thurot]

I mean, really, you're just picking the least effort alternative.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurot]

It's outcomes. Razor. What is the least they need to do to create outrage? Just take the script away.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. I keep saying we have plenty to be outraged about. You don't need to make stuff up. There's all kinds of stuff going on in our world. Don't worry, we'll get there. How did I get out of this? Clicking on things in Notion and I go somewhere else.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, I am on the Notion spreadsheet that you use. What do you call this database File page notes that you use. And it says the next feature of this show will be introducing the Windows 11 feature tracker.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes, it does. I was like, what does it say? I'm like, I don't see.

[Leo Laporte]

What does it mean?

[Richard Campbell]

No, no, you're right. It does say.

[Leo Laporte]

So I'll show you. What does that mean?

[Paul Thurot]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep. What does that mean? Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

What does that mean?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft did that little shift very quietly. They took the dev channel out of 24H2, new build stream, and then they're calling it 24H2. So I was like, okay, they're onto something here. That's going to be 25H2. Probably. It could be Windows 12, we don't know yet. But this is a new version of Windows. So this thing has been gnawing me in the back of my brain. I've got this book, it's got. It's grown to 1200 pages. It's stupid. I need. Keeping up with what Microsoft is doing is very difficult. I don't feel like there are many people in the world that care as much as I do and yet are as confused by it as much as I am.

[Paul Thurot]

You know, if you don't care, it's easy to not be confused.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes, caring too much is the path to confusion, also to outrage and anger. But I ended up writing this gigantic article where I walked into listing what.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute. I'm sorry, I have to stop. I have a free gift from thorat.com let me just enter my email. Sorry, here it is. So this is.

[Richard Campbell]

Before we get to that. Hold on.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, sorry. Don't pay no attention to that. Go ahead.

[Richard Campbell]

No, a couple weeks ago, I just. I kind of went through, just for my own edification, did this thing I should have been doing for years and years now, but have never really done, which was go back. And I just stuck with the dev channel. I didn't look at other channels or individual apps. What did they announce? What features did they add and when and did they ever make their way to stable? I came up with a list of 15 major features, some of which everyone knows like recall, click to do, etc. That had never shipped in stable yet. I mean, they will, right? But I'm like, we need to keep track of this So I was like, all right, I'm going to. I sort of said vaguely, I'm going to work on this. I knew it would take a lot of time. Two days later, Microsoft put up something called the Windows Roadmap, which was a list of features we've been testing for Windows 11 but haven't shipped yet, or here's when they're going to ship. I'm like, oh, good, now I don't have to do this work. So then I looked at it. It was garbage and really incomplete. Even though the thing I did was by definition incomplete, it was way, way better than what Microsoft had come up with.

[Leo Laporte]

I like your hero shot at the beginning of your article in which you have written something and then you go to rewrite and casual formal refine.

[Richard Campbell]

So the reason that screenshot exists is because I wanted to list what the features were for rewriting text actions. But also. So I took one of this, and I took one of an image with the image options.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And then when I was looking for a shot for the article, I was like, oh, actually, I got one. There's a Windows 11 feature that's never shipped. I'll use that.

[Leo Laporte]

Click.

[Richard Campbell]

I didn't actually use it to rewrite anything. I mean, I'm not an idiot. But anyway, you realize this is going.

[Paul Thurot]

To become the website of misfit Windows toys eventually.

[Leo Laporte]

I love it.

[Richard Campbell]

Which is actually a much better title for my book as well. Subtitle. Yeah, it's good. I like that. So I. Coming into this week, I don't remember it randomly. I guess it was two. It was just randomly Tuesday. And I was like, I'm gonna do this thing. I'm gonna. I'm actually gonna make this. And as I wrote an article about why and what I was going to do and then. And that's the thing you see highlighted in that image. And it was going to include the tracker at the bottom of it. And then I was like, wait a minute, this is too long. I'll just say that I'm going to do it. I'll just do. I'll do the next one on Patch Tuesday, which is probably next week. I look at the calendar. I'm like, oh, it's today. Great. So Patch Tuesday was yesterday. So I was like, I got to get going on this. So I'm right in the way. I'm doing it. I'm. You know, it's growing and growing and growing. And Laurent texts me, and he says, hey, the Patch Tuesday updates are out. And I'm like, kill me. Okay. I had written what I had written based on the Preview update from two weeks ago, it turns out 100% accurate to what was released Tuesday. So that worked out pretty, pretty good. But I just did it as a web page. Right. So the thing, Leo, you can show it now. I'm sorry. The thing you were showing is the thing I came up with. But even as I did it, I sort of realized I'm going to be republishing this whenever. I don't know exactly, like maybe every two weeks, week D, week B, maybe just on Patch Tuesday. I don't know, I'm not sure yet. This is going to kind of evolve as I do it. But I was like, I need this to be kind of better than this. Right. I need it to be maybe interactive. I've. Brad was talking to me this morning. He says, hey, I saw this thing you did. You should do this in Notion and write Notion. He's like, yeah, Notion has like databases, they have tables, they have whatever. I don't know if you can make it interactive where other people could. You could contribute. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

You can also make it a public web page, which is nice.

[Richard Campbell]

Which I have done. And so that's actually, I. No, I'm sorry, I've not completed it.

[Leo Laporte]

But you're working on it.

[Richard Campbell]

He told me this this morning. Today's Wednesday, I'm in Mexico. So this is two hours earlier for me than it would be if I was in the United States.

[Leo Laporte]

It's also. This is non trivial to move this all over. You've got to.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, but I'll do it. It's okay because I only have to do it once and then the.

[Leo Laporte]

But do you want people to edit it? I mean, I wouldn't make it.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, I do like the idea of a GitHub type thing where they make a, like I guess you call a push request or whatever. And I can maybe that maybe. But that's not super important to me. I mean the big thing for me is I need to keep track of this for myself. I think it's useful for other people.

[Leo Laporte]

This is incredible.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, but this is just.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, this is just the web based version. So there's a Notion version where I just put the first three into a very basic table that just to kind of see what it might look like. It looks so good. There's almost no way I'm not using this. It's really neat looking. And there's a link, there is a link to it, I think in the notes at the bottom of that first paragraph. I don't know if it will come up on for me. It's coming up. Copy the link and then paste it into a browser. I don't know why it's coming up inside of notion for me, but if you look at it on the web, you can see. You know, by the way, this is just rough. I just roughed in three things, but I'm like. I saw this and I was like, yeah, because you can filter this in different ways. You can sort it in different ways. You know, it has all those interactions.

[Paul Thurot]

You kind of want to have the data set in GitHub and then maybe generate to this. So then you get all that people can contribute and write issues.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. And then I could say, okay, and it gets into. Yes, the other way.

[Paul Thurot]

Decide when to propagate it into.

[Leo Laporte]

Let me. Let me further complicate it. Yep. The other way you could do it is a wiki, use media Wiki. And you could have the same editing features that a Wikipedia has. So you could have contributors, you could have conversations.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I mean, there's different ways.

[Leo Laporte]

If you have a vps, setting up media wiki is pretty trivial. I've done it.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

And then.

[Richard Campbell]

And I'm not trying to turn the creation of this thing into a career.

[Leo Laporte]

I know, I know.

[Richard Campbell]

But I do. Now that I've sort of done one thing like this, I'm like, yes. Like, I.

[Leo Laporte]

Notion is a. Is a very straightforward way to.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I feel very stupid not to have done this before. This was. This is almost too much.

[Paul Thurot]

And again, just for your own consumption, to organize your thoughts around these things.

[Richard Campbell]

So. Yeah, we'll see.

[Leo Laporte]

We're trying to find the notion link, though. I don't.

[Richard Campbell]

So the last link in that first paragraph, if you right click it and do copy link.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm looking at the premium version and I don't.

[Richard Campbell]

No, no, on the. On the notes, in the notion notes, the last link.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, our notes. Oh, you mean like the.

[Richard Campbell]

It says like a notion website. But don't click it in Notion. You have to right click and choose Copy link or something.

[Paul Thurot]

Open a new window.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, nice.

[Paul Thurot]

Yes. Oh, this is sweet.

[Richard Campbell]

Sweet. This was 10 minutes of work, you know, just to like, just.

[Leo Laporte]

No, this is what Notion's made for. It's basically a database, right?

[Richard Campbell]

It's literally a database.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So one thing that. Well, yeah, so like I said yesterday was Patch Tuesday. So Patch Tuesday has a long list of new features. So if you're following along with the preview update stuff from two weeks prior, you knew that it was Surprised for.

[Paul Thurot]

A while, but it seems they're in full swing again.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh yeah. So what I found doing this feature tracker were a couple of things. One is that there are now roughly two dozen, I think over two dozen major features for Windows 11 that are in testing, have never shipped and are.

[Paul Thurot]

Still rolling in 24H2 like win 25.

[Richard Campbell]

I know, it's crazy. Also, if you look at the list of new features from this patch Tuesday, every single one of them, and I mean every single one of them is a cfr, a controlled feature release, meaning they will roll out randomly. There are no features that you will get automatically on every PC on day one. It's just like this is the stupidest kind of crazy thing tied to this. The same day that I did the tracker, Microsoft later that day posted a major update to the Copilot app in the inside of preview program to all channels, which suggests that it will come out imminently. It's tied to some stuff we'll talk to later in the show from the consumer AI day. It has a couple of new features related to searching for files from within Copilot and analyzing the content obviously and for vision. But that's, you know, we'll talk about that later.

[Paul Thurot]

Sure.

[Richard Campbell]

And people discovered that the latest builds in the Insider program have a new Start menu that's completely, well, very different, quite different from the one that we have now. I would say that the Start menu in Windows 11 was one of the more controversial bits when they first shipped it. Especially not particularly configurable.

[Paul Thurot]

No, it took away features primarily.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. But it's also really badly done. Like just from. As a programming project, it's badly done. So by default you have a pin section at the top and a recommended section at the bottom. You can some basic layout changes where you have more space for pinned or more space for recommended. But if you get like if you. If you deleted every item in pinned, you would just have some empty space at the top of the star menu screen space. It doesn't have a. Yeah, auto flow sense or anything. It's. It's really dumb. So the new update, the Start menu gets bigger, wider and taller. It's still not resizable, which is stupid. You used to be able to do that in Windows 10, you may recall, but they have different sections and then different views that you can customize. So you can have a category view, a name list or name grid. And all your apps are on the front page now by default at the bottom of the Start menu. So it's more customizable as well. And of course they're all separately rolling out this update for phone link users where you get that phone link cancerous side thing that sits there like doing what it does. Yeah, it's very strange telling me to.

[Paul Thurot]

Connect while still being connected. Really, really, really wants to turn all the notifications on the map matter what you want.

[Richard Campbell]

The entire day yesterday telling me it was disconnected and it was connected just fine and updating and I don't know, you know, it's not very good but you know, nothing they do is very good, I guess. So this is where we're at. But anyway, this kind of highlighted that between the Copilot app getting updated yet again and this thing that they have not yet announced, but will soon, I'm sure. You know, Windows there, these changes are coming. Like there's a lot of stuff happening and it just kind of highlighted the.

[Paul Thurot]

Need of, I mean, a lot of ways I feel like that's a good thing too. Right? Like there's clearly a group of people working on stuff.

[Richard Campbell]

And the problem is those people are driving around in a clown car and they have brightly colored noses and clothes and big shoot. No, I, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, you're right. I, you're right.

[Paul Thurot]

You were, you were sadder when you thought they weren't paying any attention at all.

[Richard Campbell]

That's the thing. I, I, if we've learned anything, it's that I'm never going to be happy. So what's the difference?

[Paul Thurot]

You know, we might as well make stuff uses us and upsets you.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Corey Doctorow]

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[Paul Thurot]

I'm really excited about the fact that there's two segments on Windows. Yeah, this is fancy in some ways.

[Richard Campbell]

There are three, but we'll get to that.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh no, this. Oh no.

[Richard Campbell]

I heard. You know, I don't know why you call it Windows Weekly anymore. No, no, not really. So looking back at the insider program, there were two major sets of builds over the past week and I, I don't remember anymore if these are even in the tracker thing. If they're not, they will be. But in the beta channel for 23H2 testing changes to Explorer. So there's some like what will happen if you have a File Explorer open and then a window open and then you open a new File Explorer window. Does it have the same tabs? Does it do different tabs? So they're kind of playing around with that. And then this context bending thing we've been talking about forever. Back in 24h2 backend, like where we are now, I mean back when they first shipped it a million years ago, like almost a year ago. Right. For copilot plus PCs, they had fixed those context menu icons that look like hieroglyphics by adding labels to them. And Genius, right? This is the one feature that I know of that has not shipped in 23H2. Microsoft has been testing it in 23H2 and has pulled it twice. And now they're saying they might not be doing it.

[Paul Thurot]

It might be a render.

[Richard Campbell]

Maybe there's some. Yeah, some. I don't know. Something's wrong in there for some reason in 23h2 where they can't get it to work right.

[Paul Thurot]

You can't crash your machine with captions. That's just unacceptable.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it's kind of. It's weird. So, okay, we'll see what happens there and then dev and beta in the 24H2 time frame or a build frame or whatever. However, we're saying that a bunch of things and actually one of these is really exciting. So they're bringing back this notion of taskbar scaling. So as you add icons to the taskbar, the taskbar will get smaller and the icons get smaller and fit more on screen instead of doing that silly overflow area. But tied to this is an option we used to have in the taskbar, I don't even know how long ago for a long time where you could just keep it small. So it's basically the small icons view, which is what I want. I mean not that it's taking up.

[Paul Thurot]

Great windows 10, man. Perfect.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. So we're going back in time there and then this I don't quite understand. I feel like Microsoft is kind of screwing around with UI a little bit too much here. But in a coming build of Windows or a coming version of Windows or whatever, we're going to get this change to the right click Share menu. So you, you right click on a file. I'm just going to do it now so I can tell you what it says. And Today in Windows 11, one of the options is share. So coming soon, that's one of those items in the tracker. Share is actually going to be trigger a submenu and there'll be a list of apps that are compatible with that thing which you would normally have to go to the share pane for. Or somewhere at the bottom there's an option that just says more or share or whatever it says and that will bring up the normal share pane. And those apps will be there too, but there'll be the other ways you can share. So now they're introducing a variant of that where you pick up a file and drag it. Oh actually this is in this bill. So I have the I'm on the dev channel. So I drag it to the top and you get a little pop down thing like we get for Snap and it says drag here to share and there is a list of apps that are compatible with sharing this thing and then a more and if I go to more it opens the share pane. So it's two ways to do the same thing. Which is the most Microsoft thing I've ever heard of in my life at Least two.

[Paul Thurot]

I mean, it's going to be more. They're really desperate for you to use Share, so they're just going to put it in more places.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, there are actually. There are more. So there's also the toolbar based way to do it in File Explorer.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So just.

[Paul Thurot]

And I mean, except for that part where the thing you want to share it to doesn't support that. It works great.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes. When I did do the tracker the other day, it feels like it was a million years ago. It was yesterday. That's how long ago it was.

[Paul Thurot]

Yesterday was hours ago.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. 24 hours ago. Or in my brain, 48 years ago when I did the tracker. That's what it feels like. I talked about it a little bit. Leo said, oh, I love this screenshot. I said, yeah, the reason it exists is because I was taking a screenshot so I could list the actions for both text and graphics and I noticed that one of them was called Ask Copilot. I was like, that's kind of interesting. I actually don't remember that being an option. That's because it's in. It's one of the newest features. They just added it to the dev channel and the beta channel in 24H2. And what it does is it brings up the co pilot app so that you can go and learn more about the thing you've selected, whether it's text or a graphic. Right. So that's fun. Or not. I don't know. And then just because I know this is an ongoing issue for every single human being that's ever used Windows and is technical in any way. Microsoft is dripping out little features in the settings that used to only be available in Control Panel. And in this build they're adding some accessibility mouse and pointer and touch features into settings that used to trigger one of those, you know, Control Panel Windows. Not the Control Panel itself, but the little windows.

[Paul Thurot]

Like, I don't know why they've not really had an initiative to simply retire Control Panel to really just go through and make sure everything is somewhere else.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep. I can't explain it. I. I feel like there's some legacy extensibility thing that I'm just not privy to that maybe it's some business stuff.

[Paul Thurot]

In Control Panel that nobody's prepared to replace. Right. And there's lots of third party stuff in Control Panel.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurot]

Your real tech audio stuff like. And who wants to fix that?

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, I only know a little bit about this because I've been sort of half working on this kind of Windows TWEAK utility thing. But one of the things that's really interesting to me about the Settings app is that you can construct a link and thus a button or whatever is in an app, or it could be a shortcut on your desktop that will trigger a particular page or even option in Settings. So, for example, one of the ones I actually made a shortcut out of is I just call it Colors, and when I double click it, Settings opens and navigates to personalization colors. And it lets me switch back and forth between dark and light mode quickly, which I have to do when I'm testing apps or like when I'm on a podcast like this. I have to be in dark mode because otherwise, you know, it'd be like this lightning bolt in my face. Every single thing in Settings can be linked to that way. So you can go right to those things. And I don't know this for a fact, but I believe that every single setting as well can be programmatically set using a similar syntax or whatever it is. So that's. To me, that alone makes Settings the better option for everything. I do wish they would move to that.

[Paul Thurot]

But I mean, in theory, we're going to copilot all the things since I just. I mean, what do I need to ask this machine? Most of the time it's like, would you turn up all the microphone settings? I don't care where they are, just turn them up.

[Richard Campbell]

You do this a lot. I think you said something that cut right to the heart of the matter, which is that might be why what I just described is true. So that Copilot can do it for you. That literally might be the reason this is the destination. Yeah. That's very interesting. That's interesting that you said that. I think that might be it. I'm going to just talk myself into that now.

[Paul Thurot]

Okay. Just believe it. It'll be easier.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. There is an app called Intel Unison that is like Phone Link. And for a long time it had features that were not available in Phone Link, including iPhone support, which is now available in Phone Link. Finally, not as good as Android, obviously. Last year at ifa, Lenovo announced, expanded their partnership with intel and they're creating these things called Aura Ed Laptops. Right. So they're ThinkPads, IdeaPads. I might be missing something.

[Paul Thurot]

Yoga.

[Richard Campbell]

Yoga, yeah. Right. That have Aura Editions and Aura Editions have these software experiences that intel and Lenovo co created, most of which are not super interesting, but the best one is tied to this Unison app. And the idea with this is that you bring your phone to your computer and you don't actually have to tap it, they show you tapping it, you just have to bring it close. But if you bring it close to any side of these computers which have proximity sensors on them, it will launch a Unison experience that comes out of that side of the screen, wherever the phone is, so that you can move photos back and forth or do whatever the options are.

[Paul Thurot]

Interesting.

[Richard Campbell]

Really neat. That's going away because Apple intel is killing the Unison app. And for most people that's going to end at the end of June. But for people with our Edition laptops, it's going to.

[Paul Thurot]

You bought a laptop for this feature and now the features.

[Richard Campbell]

The problem with this is. I'm sorry, but unless I'm missing something and you know this is always a challenge for me, it could be if you want the latest ThinkPad X1 carbon, that's an OR Edition laptop. I don't think there is a non OR edition laptop. I kind of hope I'm wrong, but I don't think it costs any extra because of that or anything. But no, you know, you get the logo when the thing boots up, it's on the screen. You know, it's.

[Paul Thurot]

But if you selected the machine because you really wanted that feature, you're very annoying.

[Richard Campbell]

That's going to be. Yeah, it's not a good thing. Now, it's possible that something could change between now and then in the sense of there'll be an alternative or maybe Lenovo takes this on themselves and they can do this functionality just for that. Their machines, I don't know.

[Paul Thurot]

But incorporated the phone link. Goodness knows.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, that would be one option too. So we'll see. But this warning is everywhere. Intel has never announced it formally, but if you go to the app listing in the Microsoft Store for Windows, the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store, it's there.

[Paul Thurot]

This is being deprecated.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh yeah.

[Paul Thurot]

Don't fall in love with this.

[Richard Campbell]

This is happening pretty quietly. So. But it's interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

So what does it do?

[Richard Campbell]

It's a phone connectivity app. So it's sort of like phone. Like you have a smartphone.

[Leo Laporte]

So if you have phone, like do you need it?

[Richard Campbell]

The OR Edition feature that I described, where you tap the side of the device is unique. But do you need it? No. I mean, honestly, Phone link has gotten to the point where it's actually very good.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I think Phone works great. I didn't even know about Unison.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, they don't say this. It's weird in the Intel. My understanding was that Dell owned the company that made this and it was unique to Dell for a while. And I don't know if I spun it off or I sold it or something. It became its own company and then intel bought that company and it was like, oh, good, now we'll be everywhere. And it's like, no, we're going to strike deals with PC makers. So it was hp, Lenovo and I think Acer. Not every single computer, but some range of them would come with this app. And, you know, for a while it was actually very valuable because again, Phone Link didn't do certain things, including most notably work with iPhones. But, you know, now it does.

[Leo Laporte]

It kind of looks like Apple's continuity. Right. Where you just everything, it moves around from all your devices.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

As long as they're all Intel.

[Richard Campbell]

I always, you know, this is like the Samsung Dex thing where it gives you a desktop and it's like, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, Dex was discontinued too, weirdly, because.

[Richard Campbell]

Intel, I mean, Google in that case is adding this to Android. Right. That's where it should come from. So you kind of want it to be in the platform, not from, you know, you don't want it just on certain computers. I mean, maybe the computer maker, the PC makers might. But, you know, as a user, you want to be able to buy the computer you want and get those feet, you know, that should be in the platform. So Phone Link has gotten to the point where, you know, it's there and it, it's actually very, it's, it's good. It's not as bad as it used to be. No, it's good. I didn't mean to qualify it.

[Leo Laporte]

It's damned by faint praise.

[Richard Campbell]

It's. No, it's, it used to be barely acceptable to acceptable, depending on the kind of phone you have. No, but it's actually very good.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, let's talk about build.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I'd love to, but I can't get. No, she won't scroll. I don't know what's going on.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, well, so the build session of technical sniffles.

[Richard Campbell]

I know, I don't know. This has been a crazy day. The thing I didn't tell you guys.

[Paul Thurot]

You'Re not supposed to jinx me. I'm the one with all the hardware problems.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you're doing all right now.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, so I, I, I was. My computer that I use for this is installing a build or. Yeah, a build. So normally you go through this screen, 17%, 70%, whatever it takes, a couple minutes comes back. Right. This time it rebooted and it went into that kind of Windows Update screen where it's like smaller text and it's going to be there for, like, a long time. And I was like, okay. So I said, well, it's one minute of two or one minute of 12, I guess here. I should probably get another computer now. I've not used this computer for the show, so I got to figure that. I asked Richard if you wouldn't mind sending me the link. Blah, blah, blah, whatever. I connected to the dock. I get the thing. My keyboard stopped working, and I'm like, what's happening? And I looked out, the batteries were dead. So I had to have. My wife threw me some batteries. I'm like, this is like. This is like the way this day is going. So this is probably 15 years ago or something. Well, almost 10 years ago. 10, 12 years ago. My son comes home from school one day and he goes, hey, I heard about this. I don't even remember what the feature was. He's like, something is coming to Xbox. Whatever was new at the time. I'm like, yep. And he goes, the reason I know about this is some goon named Paul Thorat said it on, like, Twitter or whatever. And I was like, okay. So I learned today that.

[Leo Laporte]

Did your son not know who his daddy was?

[Richard Campbell]

He was. He was joking. Oh. Oh. Good sense of, like, man humor. You know, he's just gonna ridicule me, right? So I was doing the show notes, and I go through and I refresh the front page and I'm like, oh, the build session catalog is live. I learned on my own website from someone else who wrote it. So I wrote Laurent. I'm like, I'm going to tell you what my son told me, which is, I know about this because some goon on my website wrote about it.

[Leo Laporte]

Laurent.

[Richard Campbell]

So no, it's cool. So, as expected, lots of AI, whatever, but also AI across the stack. If you go and look at the. Net dev stuff, you'll see AI and net as you would using AI in Maui, using AI just in Net in general, whatever is a lot of stuff. I looked at the Windows thing, which is one of the shorter ones. But as expected, Windows Copilot runtime, which they announced last year, build and have yet to ship, by the way, in stable. It's available in preview finally. But that's a recent development, Windows Actions, which are the things that Copilot in Windows can do with Windows features. So tied to that thing we were just talking about with settings, but not just Settings Actions, but also App Actions.

[Leo Laporte]

Right?

[Richard Campbell]

This is going to Turn into that kind of orchestrator type thing we always talk about. And some other stuff. There's even a native app, Experiences Talk, which is going to be WinUI 3 and the Windows app SDK. And that's fine. Some ARM 64 stuff. So that's exciting. I know both of us are going and. Richard, this is something I got to talk to you about because I signed up for it and Microsoft is only offering hotel rooms through Tuesday. Interesting.

[Paul Thurot]

Right now before the show really gets going.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Well, there's a thing on Sunday and then there's the Monday day one thing. So I could go home Tuesday and just do it normally or I could stay through Thursday, but I have to figure out the hotel. Gotta. I'm gonna. We'll talk about that offline. We didn't do our schedule thing on our dime, I guess, but we should.

[Paul Thurot]

I'll. I do have a video rigged booth, so we should be having some fun. I'll make sure I block out the Wednesday block for us.

[Richard Campbell]

I am really confused by this, but.

[Paul Thurot]

I don't know why. The hotel rooms are messed up. That's not right.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I don't. I don't. I'm thinking about contacting them and saying, could I stay through Wednesday night? Is that, you know, is that a thing?

[Paul Thurot]

It's worth a try.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurot]

I just wanted Thursday and then I'm flying to South Africa, so.

[Richard Campbell]

Jeez. Well, yeah, I'll be coming there from. I almost said Boston. From. Where do I live? Pennsylvania? I don't know. It's been a while.

[Leo Laporte]

Richard, you're such a mocker. You just. It's great. A mocker. You got the. You got the thing wired up, man.

[Paul Thurot]

Already going with the thing. With the stuff. For sure.

[Leo Laporte]

You got the stuff, the thing. You got the booth, you got the cameras.

[Richard Campbell]

I barely have the.

[Leo Laporte]

Paul doesn't even have a room.

[Richard Campbell]

I can't even. I can barely just roll out of bed and show up, you know.

[Paul Thurot]

Well, we'll see. This is a new rig we're experimenting with, so we'll see how it goes. I got a few YouTubers coming in, so I figured I'd get them a rig and.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, nice. Aren't you kind?

[Paul Thurot]

Do my best.

[Leo Laporte]

Everybody's saying we should do a joint show with. Who's that Windows YouTuber that they all like, used to work at Microsoft? You know who I'm talking about?

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, Dave Plummer.

[Leo Laporte]

Dave Plummer.

[Richard Campbell]

So I would. I love him in a sense. Like, I watch every video he's ever made and I watch them as they come out. I, I don't know that I. From a personality perspective. I don't. I don't know. Not a good fit.

[Paul Thurot]

Well, YouTuber. Yeah, YouTubers are characters too. So you don't know what the guest's experience would be.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, I know what I was like experiencing meeting him in person and I could just tell you that. I don't know, you know, like it was, you know, I don't know. So I don't know. Maybe. Maybe.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's fine. He doesn't.

[Richard Campbell]

Obviously he has a good show, though. I like his show quite a bit. Yeah. You know, his whole shtick is he worked on NT in the heyday and like, you know, the latest show, he was. He does a Q A thing sometimes, which was the one I was just watching, listening to.

[Leo Laporte]

And he was, you know, everyone has your skill set. Paul just.

[Richard Campbell]

No, no, no, no, no. Or his skill set. He's a, you know, he's actually kind of a genius. He's a program. Knowledgeable. No, he wrote Fear the. A lot of the shell that went into 95 and NT4 and someone was asking about Windows me, and he's like, look, I never even installed this thing. I, I know that people seem to hate it for some reason. He doesn't quite understand why, but he said, I, you know, it's 9x, so my code was in there. But he's like, I could tell you my code wasn't the problem. So, you know, like, he's like, he may have had problems, but it wasn't my.

[Leo Laporte]

It wasn't my fault. That's all I'm saying.

[Richard Campbell]

I thought that was kind of funny, but it's very funny. Yeah, no, I like, I like that. I like his video quite a bit. His.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, he doesn't need us. That's fine. People can watch both.

[Richard Campbell]

He clearly doesn't need me. Yeah, he made that one. He made that pretty clear.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't need you, Thad. I just don't need you.

[Paul Thurot]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay. Well, it's nice to meet you too, sir.

[Leo Laporte]

Youtubers are a breed apart. That's why I was very impressed that Richard has invited some YouTubers.

[Paul Thurot]

I invited the nice ones.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. I mean, yeah, well, There are the YouTubers who are like wearing the hats backwards and doing the hey dog, you know, blah, blah, blah thing. But I, I think the YouTubers that he would have on his show are, you know, they're talking about it topics. These are not showy, you know, idiots.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. YouTube is not.

[Richard Campbell]

Dave Plumber's not like that at all. Yeah, he's just highly technical.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, he's great.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So what are you. So are you gonna go to. Well, you don't have to. Well, you're gonna go.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, no, I'm gonna.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm gonna watch online. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

I think Mary Jo's not going. I talked to her. She seemed pretty adamant that she was. She might be done doing the traveling stuff, so we'll see. But I'm gonna go. I. I need to. I need to see people that aren't my wife every once in a while and. Yeah, you work from home for too long and it's like there's a. There's a world out there. Right.

[Paul Thurot]

There's a thing out there.

[Richard Campbell]

And then I gotta go.

[Paul Thurot]

The evenings are particularly fun. We usually round up a bunch of WWE folks and go to a dinner somewhere. And. You know, I think when you live.

[Leo Laporte]

In New York, you just expect the world to come to you.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah, pretty much.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't need to go out.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, sure. No need to come. I can tell you, living in Mexico City, the world does not come to me.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

But. Yeah, I keep trying.

[Paul Thurot]

You're just not there.

[Leo Laporte]

All right. You know, I have a big announcement. Can I take a break? And then we'll talk about AI and. And Microsoft 50th. Because there's a lot of partying that has been going on. But I might have a cause for a party right now. Oh, we are. This is. We're responding to a long time request from our club Twit members to. You're going to be very happy to hear this. Restore our yearly plan.

[Richard Campbell]

Now, Leo, you know what that means, though?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that's why I turned it off.

[Richard Campbell]

Kind of like a promise here.

[Leo Laporte]

That's why I turn it off. Well, I want to promise no refunds. I get hit by a bus.

[Richard Campbell]

Guarantee you're not getting money back. It comes. What money goes one way.

[Leo Laporte]

But I. I really do understand that people hate it that they get a bill for seven bucks every month. Right.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So Lisa has persuaded me and she has some persuasive capability. I sleep with her so, you know, she can kick me and say, you know, the yearly plan. The yearly.

[Richard Campbell]

We should do that to me one time. Yeah. You know.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. No, and she's right. So we're going to reinstall. Now, here's how this works. When we got rid of the yearly club Twit membership, we made everybody into a monthly. In fact, I just got an email from somebody said, what happened? I was a yearly member Now I'm getting to seven bucks a month. Go back into your membership page and turn on the yearly subscription. That option should be there now. It's 84 bucks a year, once a year. And it doesn't save you money, but it just saves you, like, the pain. And for some people in the EU and other places where their card will charge them every time, that does save you money. So if you were annual at any point, you'll have to. And you want to go back to that, go into your subscriptions page and change it to annual. If you're not yet a member, may I encourage you to join the club. Seven bucks a month, $84 a year gets you ad free versions of this show. And every show we do, you get the good feeling of supporting what we're doing. It does make a big difference, especially now where the economy is kind of. Can I say rocky? Is that a good word? And so we're, you know, we don't, we don't know what's coming. But if you. And that's one of the reasons we brought back the yearly plan, because then we kind of have a kind of consistent flow and that's good for us. So if you're not a member TWiT TV club TWiT, choose the monthly or the yearly plan. Sign up today. We would love to have you. There are some great events coming up. You get access to a. A Club Twit Discord, which is full of really interesting people, including Paul and Richard, talking about not just the shows, but all kinds of things that geeks are interested in. We also. The Club Twit Discord has become my social network. You know, it's kind of preferable, frankly, to a lot of what else is out there. Oh, we do have a thank you. Patrick has given us Twitter TV Club Twit FAQ switch will explain how to switch plans. But if you just go to Twitter TV Club Twit, everything, everything. Is there some big events coming up? We've got Micah's crafting Corner on the 16th, a great chance to get cozy, chill and do your craft while Micah does his, which, as it turns out this time is going to be Lego succulents on the 18th.

[Richard Campbell]

You're just mixing words around now.

[Leo Laporte]

I know. Word salad. Coffee time with the coffee geek. Mark Prince returns on the 18th and he's bringing Liz Happybeans with him. We'll talk specialty coffee with Liz Happy Beans. Our AI user group is every fourth Friday. Anthony Nielsen's put that together. Show us how you use AI in your daily life. We've got also Stacy's Book Club and one of the things that's coming up, May 16th in a month. And one of the things we've decided to do because we've been getting some heat from the dear and lovely folks at Apple. When we restream their keynotes, they don't. They, you know, they have this thing, they say, what are you doing? And they give us strikes and YouTube and we got hit on Twitch the last time. So we've, we've surrendered. And from now on, when we do keynotes, you know, we, you know how Micah and I and others will. Richard's done it, Paul's done it. We'll talk over the keynote to kind of annotate it. From now on, those will occur only in the Club Twit Discord, which has two advantages. One, the lawyers can't see it. And two, you can participate, which I think is actually better. So that first one will be June 9th, WWDC. Maybe we'll do build. I don't know if there's a reason to do that. Probably will. Right. Oh, Marcus said that if I. If I say Lego succulents and Liz happy beans in a sentence, it will activate the Manchurian Candidate.

[Richard Campbell]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Ah, now I understand. All must. Wait a minute. Where? Why there?

[Richard Campbell]

You know what? That's the, that's the verbal version of Control Alt delete. It's such an unusual combination. You would only do it on purpose. Also, there are two LEOs. What's happening?

[Leo Laporte]

The Venturian candidate is one of them. I won't tell you which one. Anyway, it is a great club and it is a great benefit to us. Advertising only covers about 90 to 95% of our expenses. We need the club to do the rest. And I don't know how to turn off that extra leo. Where is it? Where is it coming from now with extra Leah. There you have it. A brand new membership plan for Club Twit. Tell friends, tell family, and thank you for all to all of our Club Twit members. And thank you in advance for your support because that's. We want to keep doing what we're doing and with your help we can Twit tv. Club Twit. Enough said.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm Lisa. Are you happy?

[Leo Laporte]

I just hope she'll stop kicking, that's all I want. No, Elise and I have been going back and forth on it. Yeah, I didn't really want to be committed for a year, but you know what? I am. I'm in. I'm all in. I'm committed. As long as we can keep doing this, we will.

[Patrick Norton]

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[Richard Campbell]

Race the rudders. Raise the sails. Race the sails. Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching.

[Leo Laporte]

Over. Roger.

[Paul Thurot]

Wait. Is that an enterprise sales solution?

[Leo Laporte]

Reach sales professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title, and more. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Get started today at LinkedIn.com results, terms and conditions apply. All right, I'm dialing out. It's now your show once again.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, last week we briefly. Well, not briefly, actually, we spent a lot of time talking about the Microsoft 50th anniversary. Yeah, I was getting a lot of pressure to kind of write something about this, like a retrospective of some kind. You know, I've been covering the company for 30 years plus, and yada, yada, yada. I'm like, I wrote a book about this and you can have it for a buck, you know, and. Or at the time. Now it's back up to normal price, whatever. Actually, it might be a little. Oh, no, I think I made the Windows 10 super, or everybody call it feature. What is it called? My stupid book field guide. Less expensive because it's Windows 10.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, even know that. Okay, whatever it's called, ask Laurent. Maybe he'll know.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, the thing I wrote over many years, do you remember, you'd be like, yeah, it's called. Hey, we'd know Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Now I don't feel bad for forgetting. Sometimes I forget and I'm.

[Richard Campbell]

I can't keep anything in my head anymore. I'm just pushing out childhood memories at this point, so I don't really feel like I have any. You know, anyone could run down a. Here are the big milestones, the big things that. You know, Windows 95 was a big launch. Remember that? That was huge. You know, but for many years, being kind of, you know, a Microsoft guy, right. You'd have to defend yourself to these Apple goons or whoever. And it was always like, oh, you know, they never innovated, they never invented anything, blah, blah, blah. The one thing I would always say about Microsoft like the over many years was, you know, actually democratizing tech and bringing tech to the masses is in its own way maybe the most important innovation of all. Because in fact that's what Apple does today. Right. I mean, Apple gets a lot of credit right now for not entering a market until they have something truly differentiated. And the result is they don't really invent anything new, but they come in late and they usually do a pretty.

[Paul Thurot]

Good job of it with a definitive product.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, Microsoft, we can't really credit them with that. Exactly. But Microsoft was more of that kind of Commodore, Jack Tramell thing where they.

[Paul Thurot]

Were the commoditizers, right?

[Richard Campbell]

Yes. We're going to bring, we're going to get rid of the white suits and the lab coats and everything and we're going to bring this stuff down to the masses. Like the Prometheus thing. And that's for me, for a long time was the big deal. But I have to say today, honestly, their crowning achievement is. That's still true. I mean, everything I just said is still the case, but it just is a company. Microsoft avoided that thing that so many companies fall for. That happened to IBM, happens, happening right now to intel, which is you have this one dominant product, you do everything just like that. Nothing else succeeds. The world changes and then you can't change with it and you become irrelevant or disappear. They have made amazing shifts in strategy, first with the cloud and now with AI that has made them or kept them relevant over a period of time when they should have just disappeared, frankly, or at least become irrelevant. Right. So I give them a lot of credit for that.

[Paul Thurot]

Compare this to pretty amazing. I mean, arguably both companies missed mobile.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Paul Thurot]

And one of them is, you know, circling the drain and the other one has credited.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep, yep. And I, you know, by the way, Apple did this as well. Apple is maybe the only company I can think of that's done similarly. And by the way, the two biggest companies in the world. It's kind of interesting. It's so there's really not a lot to say. I wrote a thing about it, but it's not a big deal. It's just that to me, their big deal, the thing that they've done, the thing that will be studied is not some tech product or service or whatever. It's this ability to change with the times. They didn't always do it. Right. There was that period in the 2000s where the world was changing Web and eventually the cloud and Google came around and did their stuff and Amazon was able to do their thing and Apple had resurgence and took over in the mobile space. And those were maybe markets that Microsoft of a decade earlier might have addressed a little better. But, you know, but faced with these defeats or whatever, they, they pivoted and they did a great job.

[Paul Thurot]

So, yeah, they rolled with it, that's for sure.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep. And they were more successful.

[Paul Thurot]

But he didn't miss Cloud. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurot]

And we don't, you know, the. I, I'm going to say the jury's still out on AI. Obviously, Satch is all in. It gets to be his thing that he gets to hang his hat on, but.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurot]

I don't think it's going to disappear. I think we've gotten to the bottom of the trough of disillusionment in this crazy hype train right now, and we're on our way. Have we really managed not to, actually?

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, I think this is a new kind of roller coaster and we might have, you know, we'll see, but.

[Paul Thurot]

Stupid still coming.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurot]

But we do seem to be leveling off in some respects and saying, what's the practical thing you can do here?

[Richard Campbell]

Right, right. Yeah. And, you know, even just in the confines of Windows, if you look at that tracker, a lot of that stuff is AI based. Right. I mean, as it would be. It's. It's a big focus and, you know, tied to this, not coincidentally is this Microsoft consumer AI event they had Right. Last week on the campus. And I was invited. I didn't go. Mustafa Suleiman, who is now leading this part of the company, which is a new part of the company, did the, you know, led the presentation. So I think it was his first big public moment.

[Leo Laporte]

Said some interesting things.

[Richard Campbell]

I thought he also had some interesting protesters. Oh, really?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's the person they fired, right?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, there's two of them. Yeah. The employees interrupted his speech and then interrupted the three CEOs. Wow. Thing to complain about, you know, Palestine and Israel and all this stuff, you know, stuff that's central to our industry. Anyway, it was, you know, whatever. It's a big world event and I get it, but I was trying, I mean, I talked to my wife about this. Just like, is this, you know, what do you. What's your take on this? You know, and it's like, it. I feel like we both felt like there's, there might be ways to protest that maybe weren't against your employee contract and maybe illegal, I don't know.

[Paul Thurot]

But yeah, I question the effectiveness of it. I appreciate their sentiment. Suleiman said, I, I hear your protests.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, like, yes, Gates. The way Gates handled the other one was crazy. He was, they never said it.

[Leo Laporte]

Word.

[Richard Campbell]

He just said, okay and then just went back to what he was doing. I, like, it had never happened that time.

[Paul Thurot]

It was the second go around. The audience all booed, right.

[Leo Laporte]

Like, oh, interesting.

[Paul Thurot]

The first round, the first one, everyone.

[Richard Campbell]

Was, well, I think everyone was so shocked, right? It's like, what's happening?

[Paul Thurot]

Because that was an employee only event. These were employees.

[Richard Campbell]

That's right. That's right.

[Paul Thurot]

And then the second time, people reacted more quickly.

[Richard Campbell]

I think, you know, you could have done a respectful thing where some group of employees is outside with signs and the reporters have to walk by them and they see it and, you know, CEO could have acknowledged this and said, look, you know, we obviously, we disagree with their sentiment, but we also respect them as human beings and want to give them the right to voice their opinions. And that's not the way that went down. But I. That unfortunately kind of falls back on those people who protested, not necessarily on Microsoft, because we don't know what Microsoft would have done if they had been given the opportunity, you know, to. I think, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

First of all.

[Richard Campbell]

It'S a tough one.

[Leo Laporte]

You got to respect somebody who believes strongly enough that they're going to risk their job.

[Paul Thurot]

Well.

[Leo Laporte]

And ooze to state their opinion. And I think that's their right to do.

[Richard Campbell]

Leo, you're talking to. People have supported Microsoft for entire careers. Of course we know what that's like.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, but, you know, I've been reading this really provocative, shall we say, book by Alex Karp, the founder of Palantir, called the Technological Republic. And while I don't agree with everything he says, one of the things he says is if you want to defend the west, you know, technology companies have spent all this energy in this century on crap consumer products, gadgets, selling better ads, surveilling consumers. If they would bend their intelligence and their abilities towards protecting our nation and promoting our national identity, that might be better. Now, whether you agree that or not, I think, you know, there were protests, of course, at Microsoft for a military contract. Google famously canceled the maven contract because the engineers said no.

[Richard Campbell]

He said, well, I'm sorry to interrupt. This is part of the problem for me because Microsoft at one point refused to sell facial recognition technology, law enforcement because it was biased against people with darker skin. So they took this moral stance at this point and it seemed like the right thing to do. But now every tech company is not Microsoft, but we're all going two feet in to bow down to despots so that we don't get regulated hopefully and.

[Leo Laporte]

Get to get to preserve our profits in this case.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. And expand them so it's a little less morally defensible, maybe a lot less.

[Leo Laporte]

But I do think companies, and I include Microsoft in this and maybe they're doing it should have a dialogue with their engineers because there's not engineers. They have to, you know, they're reliant on the engineers to write this stuff and write it well. So they should have a dialogue. And I think there is a case to be made on both sides and this debate needs to happen. Not somebody shouting at the CEO and getting fired. Not the CEO saying oh well, never mind. This is a real time.

[Richard Campbell]

Just because of the way everyone is kind of kissing the ring right now.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's maybe now's not the time.

[Richard Campbell]

It's maybe not the right time.

[Leo Laporte]

This book was written before the election.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm just thinking about them, you know, the protesters. But I.

[Paul Thurot]

Well, and have you read the letters?

[Richard Campbell]

Yes.

[Paul Thurot]

So I mean they knew they were going to be fired. They. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh yeah, of course.

[Paul Thurot]

They were actually one of them anyway.

[Richard Campbell]

One of them gave their two week notice. Guys either quit, you don't give you a two week notice. And they were so they were since fired. They're like, no, you're fired. You can't quite.

[Leo Laporte]

I fire you.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it's just.

[Leo Laporte]

But I think that neither way of handling it is the right way to handle. I think these companies really need to have a parlay because they need the engineers.

[Richard Campbell]

So we don't. Yeah, we don't know, we don't know what the dialogue took place. But that was without knowing. My thing was I feel like they should have given Microsoft the opportunity to formally allow them to address this in a way that would be okay with the company as well and respect their rights maybe or their opinions or whatever it is. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a case to be made that, you know, just as in the 20th century Big Tech, you know, we wouldn't have the Internet, we wouldn't have had the moon missions, you know, we wouldn't.

[Richard Campbell]

Have had DARPA led to the Internet. And you know. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

If engineers hadn't worked with government in the national interest, now maybe we can no longer agree with the national interest is that's possible.

[Richard Campbell]

But I think it's their KARDASHIAN now, isn't it?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, and that's one of the arguments against this book. And again, it was written before the election is okay, fine, but remember, you're giving these tools, I mean Palantir does basically AI warfare. You're giving these tools to.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, you said the founder or co. Founder of Palantir and I was like, no.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, he's a very smart guy. I mean he's not a dummy.

[Richard Campbell]

So I don't know if I mentioned this, but the, the book about Meta that was written by the woman, you know, careless people.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Is mostly non technical.

[Leo Laporte]

You did mention that last piece.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes. So did you read this yet?

[Leo Laporte]

I haven't gotten to it. I've got, in fact, let's go down and get it.

[Richard Campbell]

The central premise is that Meta is doing everything it can to bow down to the Chinese because this is the biggest market in the world by far.

[Leo Laporte]

And I would, I would guess that test.

[Richard Campbell]

They're giving everything up to China that you can imagine, including all of our stuff, like not just against the people who live in China, they're going to give them all of our data as well.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So there are, one might say, I don't know, possibly national security implications this. But the reason that Meta is doing the open source LLM thing is because that will benefit China as much as anybody and it will help them get ahead in a world where big tech is actively, and the United States is actively trying to keep them down. And that is a messed up accusation that reads as true. I, again, I don't know the details of true. It's crazy. But that's crazy. Right? I mean, so that company is horrible and I, you know, I'm kind of handcuffed here with a lot of things with Twitter and with Facebook where I just, just don't see an out for myself, but I see people leaving and taking this kind of moral stand and I, I sort of respect it. I mean, I understand it certainly, you know, but yeah, so these protesters, these, that at the Microsoft thing and then this, you see what Big Tech is doing and how horrible they really are and it makes you kind of question everything, you know, it's, it's just horrible.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Anyway, I think there should be a conversation and I think companies understand they're dependent on their engineers and they, I.

[Richard Campbell]

Hope they understand they're dependent on their democracy as well.

[Leo Laporte]

And their democracy. Yeah. And so, you know, traditionally corporate governance has not been democratic. Right. But.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, it's been democratic and that's shifted a lot in the past. Four years. Right. So. And, you know, there are reasons for that, and I don't actually agree with all of them, but whatever, whatever. Our world's changing, so I don't know. We got to figure this out.

[Leo Laporte]

It's tough when things are in flux.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Because kind of throwing the cards up in the air and you don't know how they're going to land. So I. I recognize that also that's.

[Richard Campbell]

How big search works.

[Paul Thurot]

This healthy number, this unhealthy number, generated problems that don't give us time to work on real problems.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's a very good point.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So Microsoft has hosted.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. So anyway, Microsoft had this AI day that was supposed to be a really big thing. So the. What came out of this is what I would call a metric ton of new AI features for Copilot across the various places that you access Copilot. So the Copilot vision that all of a sudden we're testing in the Insider program everywhere was something they announced was coming to the Copilot apps for Windows and mobile. And this is where you can. On Windows, you do. It's a little different. You kind of click. It's sort of like click to do. You click on something and then it goes into Copilot and it tells you more about that thing, whatever it might be. On a phone, that would be a lot more useful because you can point your camera out at the world and see things. But, you know, Copilot Search and Bing, which I wrote about separately because they talked about it at the event, but then actually released it. So you can go see this thing on the web if you want. Copilot actions on the web. So there are actions in Windows and those are the things where Copilot in Windows can interact with Windows features and apps and app features and so forth. But actions on the web are what gives this thing this agentic capability where it can interact with web services like Expedia, OpenTable, VRBO, whatever. Right. And so there's going to be more and more of that stuff coming online all the time. And yeah, I mean, I think the extensibility stuff is really important to all these AI chat bots or whatever we're calling these things now. But if you were to go back over the past six months and look at all of the little AI advances, whether they came out of Gemini or Chat GBT or whatever it is, and then looked at what they announced last week, it's everything that everyone else has ever announced, but with the word Copilot in front of It So like Notebook LLM. I'm sorry, Notebook lm, which is the Google feature that makes those kind of a podcast, is now a feature called Copilot Podcasts. Right. So they're kind of doing what everyone is doing.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it use it, but it's not using Notebook lm. It's using.

[Richard Campbell]

No, it's using their own stuff. Yeah. Yeah, well, see that. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

That's another question yet. What models are they using? Do they reveal that? I mean.

[Richard Campbell]

No.

[Leo Laporte]

So, because Microsoft has their own.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. So two things coming into the show that I was talking with Laurent about this and I said, one of the things I really want to see is whether they talk about that. Are they going to say we're starting to use our own models now or we are using our. Whatever it is. And they did not say that. However, if you just mentioned the build session list. Right. And if you look through there, you'll see that bringing other models into various copilots is a big part of this show that's coming up. So the one I can remember is the Copilot runtime for Windows. You can mix and match or you're going to be. I don't, you know, it's not out yet, but you're going to be able to mix and match models there. We've seen this in GitHub Copilot already, right. You can choose now if using that. I think it defaults to. I think it's OpenAI whatever version, but you could switch to Anthropic and I think some other choices as well. And I think that's going to be a thing and that's fine. But I think we've talked about this. Ideally this would be orchestrated for you that in any interaction you have with Copilot, wherever it is, whatever the context is, it should do the thing that's best to give you the best results. And you don't have to think about that. This is a problem that Sam Altman has brought up for ChatGPT. He says you click on the model choice and it's like 12 things there. It's like, this is confusing. Just look at the thing I'm doing. And it can be the thing that makes the most sense where it's going. And for Microsoft, to Leo's question, I think increasingly that will involve them using neural models where it makes sense.

[Leo Laporte]

Interesting. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I think they don't want to be dependent on ChatGPT.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, well, it's not, you know, they're not particularly volatile or anything. I mean, I feel. Yeah, I Know, whatever you thought of our industry, you could magnify it with those guys. It's crazy.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

All right, so there's that copilot search in Bing. Interesting. I mean, it's exactly what it sounds like. But the one unique thing they're bringing to the table, which I sort of appreciate as someone who publishes content on the web, in addition to providing you with an AI overview of whatever it is you asked, or the exact answer to some exact question, and then at the bottom, citing the sources and all that, which is fine. There are actually hyperlinking each parts of sentences to go to the original source where it got that thing from. Right. So the, the idea, the hope is that this will lead to more click throughs because people will read that summary and it will be, you know, linked and they'll say, well, I want to learn more about that thing and they'll go to the original source. So good idea. It's Bing. So, you know, it's like whatever that is, 7, 17%, whatever, some small number of the Internet searches. But it seems like a step in the right direction because this is why Google held on to AI for so long, generative AI, because they saw that this could hurt their advertising revenue model from Google search. They didn't want to screw it up. Right. So these companies have been kind of trying to figure that out.

[Paul Thurot]

And this is innovators dilemma, Right?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it seems reasonable. I'll have to see how it works in real, in real life, you know. And then I wrote this. This is just kind of a weird set of coincidences. I wrote this article that I called stupider, which is a great word. And it's just based on this notion that you hear someone say, writers say whatever, AI is making us stupider. There was a headline I riffed on, on Twitter a month or two ago that was something like, you know, using AI to write software code is going to make developers stupider. And I was like, you know, it's been out for 10 seconds. When you give it a, give it a minute, you know, like we're rushing to judgment here. Or you know, Microsoft sponsored a study that was in part said something like, you know, didn't say it this way, but AI is going to make people stupider.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

The thing is you could point to any technology through history and you will find the people saying this exact thing. Right?

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

The printing ballpoint pen is going to make us stupid. There was a, I misquote this all the time. I don't know the exact context of this anymore, but in the show Deadwood, which was on hbo. Fantastic show. That swear engine guy sitting there on his porch and he's watching something occur in the horizon, drinking his coffee. And this number one guy comes in, he's like, what's going on down there? And he goes, oh, those are. Those are polls for the telegraph. He's like, what's a telegraph? And he's like, well, it's like the male, but you can respond instantly. And so he does one of those pregnant pause things. He drinks coffee and he goes, why would anyone want to respond instantly? You need to take the time to, you know, figure out your answer, right? Like the way we correspond now made sense to him because he's of that era, right? So the guy's like kind of. Kind of like a mobster type, you know? And he, the number one guy says, do you want me to tear him down? And he's like, no, leave him up. It's fine.

[Leo Laporte]

I love Al swearing. And that's a really great conversation.

[Richard Campbell]

It's just excellent. And it's. And that's the other than his decision to keep it up. Because a lot of people would have been like, nope, tear it down, anything. You know, this is just. I think it's like generational bias. Like, the car is maybe the best example for people. Like when cars first came out, you had to be a mechanic to own a car. You couldn't own a car otherwise. You had to know how the thing worked. When that stopped being true, the guys that did know cars, that were mechanics, hated the fact that normal people can now own cars. They're like, you don't even know how the engine works. Well, you know, whatever. As stick shift, same thing, right? Automatics take off, obviously, because they're automatic people losing their minds now over this notion of like, self driving cars. And like, you're never gonna. I'm gonna drive. I like to drive. You know, it's like, yeah, you're the reason we have traffic, idiot. The people like you caused this butterfly effect, that if this thing was actually controlled by computers, everything would just be on time. Like, I. It's. You're of your age, like, you just get stuck. You. You think like, it's always been this way, but especially with technology, it's been this way for 10 seconds. But you're so stuck in this rut, you have a hard time, you know, seeing your way out of it.

[Paul Thurot]

I remember doing, being in a university class talking about futures, and we talked about automated driving, and one of the. One of the students put up ahead and Says, but if we don't know how to drive, what happens if the computers fail? It's like, ah, we'll all be dead anyway. You know, driving is going to be the least of your concerns.

[Richard Campbell]

That's a fascinating way to approach that problem. You know, like, but what if, like, but what if you have a heart attack while you're driving? What's going to happen to the people around you? I mean, I. Yeah, what if in a weird coincidence. So tying together the last thing we talked about and the next thing we're going to talk about, the next major topic is at this AI event last week Microsoft showed a demo and you can actually go see it now. I linked to it in the show notes somewhere. They used basically vibe coding to create a Quake 2 that runs inside of Copilot. So this is causing people to lose their minds. Right?

[Paul Thurot]

Because making Altair BASIC didn't do it.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. So first of all, just because they've gotten charges of theft, Microsoft owns this game. Right? You understand that, right? ID software which made this game was purchased by Bethesda, which is now owned by Microsoft.

[Leo Laporte]

So was Carmack unhappy, the guy who wrote it?

[Richard Campbell]

No, this is part of the story. So some guy gets on Twitter and this is not, I don't mean to, I'm not. I'm only singling this guy out because Carmack replied to him. Yes, but.

[Paul Thurot]

And this eloquent too, by the way.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, of course. The, the, the complaint was this is an abomination, right? We are, we're gonna, we're losing developer jobs and you're doing this like. And then there's all these people, like the, the way people chime into this is astonishing. I put some in the notes just because these are amazing. So people are kind of responding to this guy. The way I am talking about AI and things, you know, about AI in general, like the goal is games, not jobs. Right. Jobs don't inherently deserve to exist. The goal of technology is to cut the number of jobs and increase efficiency. No one cares about your jobs like many people do care about their jobs. If the goal is jobs, we should just dig dishes with spoons, not tractors, right? It's like, which is the point, like, where does this end?

[Paul Thurot]

You know what, you're going to use spoon technology that takes away people's jobs.

[Richard Campbell]

What about your hands? Why are your hands good enough, princess? Get them in the dirt. Yeah, exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

So this is an AI generated level is basically what's going on, right?

[Paul Thurot]

Yes.

[Richard Campbell]

So here's the thing. The best comment though is collision and think about, think about video games today. Video games today made. The biggest video games are made by these giant companies, hundreds of millions of dollars. The budgets of Hollywood movies, and if they are successful, the revenues of Hollywood movies or more. I mean, video games actually make more money than Hollywood. This guy says, wasn't Quake made by a handful of people.

[Leo Laporte]

It was very small group and it was.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, this will enable that to be the case again. Right. Like, this is the Exchange server job thing I always talk about. The guy is like, you mean to tell me the last thing I'm going to do is hand off my Exchange install to Microsoft? Yeah. Your company is not here so you can serve email. Email is just a tool you use. You sell widgets or whatever your company does. You're not here for email. Like, we've lost track of the point of this stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, and also, this is not. I mean, creating a quake 2 level is probably easier than writing a short story or a paragraph of text. It's just cobbling.

[Richard Campbell]

It's going to do that stuff too. Right. So to me, I've not heard anything about the next Call of Duty game. I don't know what it is. I know it's going to be more of the same. Right. Most of the work's already been done. Like, what we need are, I guess for the single player game, a story, characters, arc, whatever, and then all the assets that go along with that. And then what we need for multiplayer are game types, which you already have, and then levels, levels, you know, level design. We know we can examine levels, see which are the most popular, literally by usage, and figure out what makes those things good, some sense of balance and whatever. Like, one side's not off. It's just like, what, you know, weapon balance, same thing. AI is going to be really good at that stuff, you know, And I just, I'm not saying. Well, I'm sort of saying, I guess at some point, maybe completely AI generated, whatever, but it will happen in stages or whatever. But the idea, the goal here is to make better games. And if this can do that, and it can, this is smart. And as Richard said, John Carmack's response to this is basically what I said, but more eloquently. I mean, you know, like, this is just as the guy, you know, someone else pointed this out in Twitter, he said, you're telling this to the guy who came out with game engines that were so much more sophisticated, years ahead of everyone else, and then released them openly so everyone else could copy them. What do you think he's going to say to this? Yeah, of course he thinks this is great.

[Paul Thurot]

Do you know how many programmers he put out at work by giving away that engine? Are you kidding?

[Richard Campbell]

Right, right. But how many great games came out of the fact that this engine was now available? Right. Or what. Or the source code or whatever it was. Or in the beginning, it was extensibility. Like they would do Doom. And, you know, here's the. You can make your own wad files for Doom or whatever, and then in the next version, they're like, okay, now here's an editor you can use that will help you make these things even more easily. And now we're doing 3D, and here's how you can do it, you know, in 3D for quake. This stuff is astonishing. Like, it's just.

[Paul Thurot]

It's how. And it's how progress has come all along.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep, yep. Yeah. So I, you know, it was, again, just a weird coincidence I had. I didn't see or know anything about this John Carmack thing when I wrote it. And then in the wake of that, I was like, yeah, okay. It was a great example. Like, this is. There you go. Perfect, right? I. I don't know. We'll see. I'm sure the next Call of Duty will be terrible, but I'm also sure that as we go forward, they can be made better.

[Leo Laporte]

Humans can make it terrible just as well as AI.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, I think they excel at making it terrible. Yeah. So maybe someone at Activision will just talk to ChatGPT and say, hey, what have we been doing wrong? And they were like, you don't have enough time. So let me just highlight the top hundred and whatever and go. Just fix this stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Because bug fixing would be good, right? That seems like a good thing.

[Richard Campbell]

Here's what would be good. This is. This is my Call of Duty experience. I play, you know, two. Well, as many as to five times a week, maybe let's say two to five times a week. I would say, on average about once a week. I'm like, all right, I got a couple hours to kill. I got nothing to do. I'm going to do this thing, open the laptop, run the game. It's like, please wait. Stalling. 132 megabyte or 132 gigabyte update? What? And I. Oh, God. Could you just do this while you're asleep? Why? You know, like. And then. I can't. I don't. It takes two hours to update the game, you know? Yeah, that's a little. That's a little. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe AI could do that too.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Is there anything it can't do? I was reading Carmax Reply, I think. Right on. You know.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

This is what tools do universally, he says. Will programmers be around in the future? I don't know. There are fewer farmers than ever because of farm implements. Farm tools.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. That's a great example too. Like the way you make farming ever more efficient and unfortunately the end game is factory farms and seeds that have a patent associated with them that blow into people's farms and then they get sued by these giant companies. So like everything can be made terrible, but the aim is to make it better.

[Leo Laporte]

Does it. I'll have to ask Corey this. Does it always have to end in shitification? Is the question.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, that's. I'm going to talk to this just to a minor degree. The answer, I believe is no. But the answer real world is almost always yes. It doesn't have to, but I feel like often does. It pretty much does. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

The exception proves the rule.

[Richard Campbell]

We need that Star Trek future where there's no money and no companies essentially. Right.

[Paul Thurot]

And that then we can all just make Call of Duty levels.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I want to make the Call of Duty level. I want to play. Exactly.

[Paul Thurot]

It's not hard to be.

[Leo Laporte]

Imagine a world where machines write music and romance novels as well as humans.

[Richard Campbell]

This is. I'll take it a step further. We are two seconds away from those things winning awards and five seconds away from that being almost the only way that those things happen. Not really. Right. I mean, not really. People will always create. Right. But you know, in the. In, you know, I'm such a smart ass that in the front matter to my most recent book, it literally says so stupid. No AI was used or harmed in the creation of this book. Oh, that's not going to age well. No, that was. I've still not really. I've not actually used AI for the book. But that's not the point. I should.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you use Grammarly?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. Well, I used language still. Fair enough.

[Paul Thurot]

Yes, the time.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

No, no.

[Leo Laporte]

Part of the problem is what is AI?

[Richard Campbell]

Maybe. Yeah, maybe what I meant was generative AI.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. You didn't use Gener.

[Richard Campbell]

I didn't use it for any. Anything ever related to writing like the creation of words or whatever or the rewriting of words or anything like that. But. But you know what? That's really short sighted on my part because that could, you know, could be better.

[Paul Thurot]

Imagine putting your time into more valuable things because automation can take care of the list. Valuable things.

[Richard Campbell]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Right now though, of course, you have to put a lot of time into AI and using it fruitfully almost as much as you would put into actually doing the work.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. But hopefully the aim here is that you're beginning the automation process. Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Time well invested.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Learning to play the piano, learning to play AI. But in the end, you can make music.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, boy. Yeah, okay.

[Leo Laporte]

All I can make right now is lavender blue, dilly, dilly. But I'm getting better. I just learned.

[Richard Campbell]

Jeez, that's tough.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a. It's a long haul.

[Richard Campbell]

That's like basic language with the line numbers.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, it's really similar. Learning to play the piano is really similar. Learning to read, I feel like, I feel like I am at a kindergarten level, you know, learning to read. But it's kind of fun at my age just to learn something brand new.

[Paul Thurot]

I applaud you, Leo. I think that's awesome.

[Leo Laporte]

This guy's really fun.

[Richard Campbell]

You know who Bill Burr is? The comedian? Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I love Bill.

[Paul Thurot]

So this is probably a fine commentary. A commentator on our.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, no, he's incredible. So he. Five, seven years ago, whatever, he made the, you know, he started learning to play the drums. So he plays in some kind of a band and he's nice playing the drums, you know, so some talk show host complimented him. He says, yeah. He goes, you know, what the world was looking for was for a middle aged white guy to learn an instrument. You know, but fair enough. I think anything that. Like that, you could, it could be coding, writing, painting.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm learning coding too. I'm learning.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. This is learning. This is super healthy for the, for your brain.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't want to ever get to this point where I have nothing to learn. That's awful thought.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah. Well, and it's the. Yeah. What is aging but losing the desire to learn?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

That's one thing I have noticed, Richard. You, Neither of you guys are anywhere near this. But as you get. One gets older, one loses one's motivation. I think back, we're, you know, I'm kind of doing this now because Sunday is our 20th anniversary twit.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

And I don't think 20 years later I would. I could start this again.

[Richard Campbell]

Right, that's exactly.

[Paul Thurot]

But is that more to do with the wisdom of knowing just how much work you're committing yourself.

[Richard Campbell]

Differently?

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah. We do these things not because we thought they were hard, but we thought they, you know, we thought they would be easy.

[Richard Campbell]

Right, that's exactly right. Yeah. Not because they're hard, but because we thought they would Be easier. Yeah, exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. But I also, it's, it's a lack. I just don't care anymore. It's like. So I, I lost my mojo.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

She misunderstood me. But I, I had this conversation recently with my wife and I, I, I compared this to when your kids become teenagers and they become unbearable for about four or five years.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And by the time they have to go off to college or in the olden days, they would go off and just go off. But now that, whatever, they're leaving, you're both ready for the separation.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, gosh, you need this.

[Richard Campbell]

This is a life phase. It's important. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

They're pushing you away. At the same time, you are pushing.

[Richard Campbell]

Them even harder back.

[Leo Laporte]

Get out of here.

[Richard Campbell]

So I feel like what you just described and I, this is how I said the same thing. I said, I think this is a natural phase. You just, at some point, you're like, you're like, I'm done. I don't care. I just don't care. You know, I, I, I'm done with it. This, this would have involved me when I was 35 forever.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly.

[Richard Campbell]

And now I'm like, exactly. What time is it? Yeah, I think I'm done.

[Leo Laporte]

I, I don't, you know, can I watch TV now?

[Richard Campbell]

She's like, what do you do?

[Leo Laporte]

We have yellow for digging a grave.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm like, yeah, read a book. Like, what do you know? Just, I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

I think that's true.

[Richard Campbell]

And you, I think it's very natural.

[Leo Laporte]

But I think it is. And it's what I've noticed. It's just a stage of life. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And it's, I don't think it's a certain age necessarily, but different people have different motivation, different things. And I, you know, we're in this industry that we're in.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you live in the land of Manana, let's face it.

[Richard Campbell]

By the way, these are the hardest working people on earth.

[Paul Thurot]

I don't know. That's the joke, isn't it?

[Richard Campbell]

That is, that is the least.

[Paul Thurot]

When they take a break, it's because they've done more that day than you could have done in a month.

[Richard Campbell]

I hope. I would love to find out that they were the ones who propagated this myth.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

That would give me the greatest pleasure.

[Leo Laporte]

Of all those scenes. We don't care.

[Richard Campbell]

These people get up. We comment on this all day long. So if you walk up and down the street, we're on all these restaurants we love. We know of all the people we will Come home. We will go out early in the morning, just walking, whatever. We'll come back late at night after having gone out to eat and gone out to the bar. We know everybody. And there's a sandwich shop. I just use one example. These guys, same people, they're always there. They are there from 8 o'clock in the morning until 10 to 11 o'clock at night. Same people every day doing the same thing. Repeat, rinse, wash, repeat.

[Leo Laporte]

And they're fairly cheerful about it. They don't.

[Richard Campbell]

They are delightful.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And I have one little store. They are great, but. But wonderful human beings. I'm so one of a million of these things. People with the little trash carts or their taco stands rolling out in the morning, tearing them down at night every day. Repeat, repeat, repeat. You've never seen people work as hard as you. They don't. I don't think anyone on earth works as hard as.

[Leo Laporte]

They love that.

[Richard Campbell]

That's incredible. Yeah. Okay. I don't know why we're talking about that, but.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. I'm noticing that I've lost my mojo.

[Paul Thurot]

Oh.

[Leo Laporte]

Somebody said in the discord I should just. Or twitch. That's true.

[Paul Thurot]

Leo, I've been testosterone. It's one thing to look at your Windows Weekly, but I've been on a couple other shows with you. You're kind of up to stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I'm up to stuff. I guess that's a good way to put it.

[Richard Campbell]

No, it's important to stay.

[Paul Thurot]

You're arguing with me and Jeff Jarvis at the same time. Takes a lot of nerve, man.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, wait a.

[Richard Campbell]

Wait a.

[Leo Laporte]

Later, where it's Cory Doctorow. Oh, boy.

[Paul Thurot]

Kidding.

[Richard Campbell]

I said the good thing about Jeff Jarvis is that I just agree with him pretty much in mass. You know, Jeff's great.

[Leo Laporte]

I love Jeff.

[Richard Campbell]

I love him.

[Leo Laporte]

But you and I have the same relationship. It's like brothers where we tussle.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

But we respect each other and we have a great time doing it.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, my God. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Yes. No. And he. I would hate to disagree with him.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Because I would immediately doubt myself.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, exactly.

[Richard Campbell]

You know what I mean? Like if he challenged me on the.

[Leo Laporte]

Same for Richard, by the way, I feel the same way about Richard.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You know Richard. You know, I just know he's gonna say, well, as a matter of fact, Leo. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

The first guy who got me. The guy who got me into writing and I was gonna become a software developer. So we wrote. We were writing a book about Visual Basic 3, but the guy was a genius. And back then you would print out everything. And he was sitting, we sat down. We didn't have laptops. It was 1994 or something. I'm sitting across from at the kitch table and he's going through the papers and he's. And then you see his finger stops and he goes, sure about this? And I'm like, I was, you know, like, not anymore, I'm not. And then he got up and he went in the other room. He's like, click. Like he goes, nope. And he comes back, he's like, he's like, this is all right.

[Leo Laporte]

Love it.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

We all need that. We all need that person.

[Richard Campbell]

We need that person. Yes. Everyone does this. Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

AI recaps for book series and Kindle.

[Richard Campbell]

Two small things. Just. And this is, it's funny because this inspired part of that stupider post I wrote, which was when you watch a show on Netflix. Right. So, for example, this month the show you is going to come back on, Netflix is the show my wife and I really like, like a lot of these long form series. The first season or two was really good and it kind of goes downhill a little bit after that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't remember almost the previous season, but what they do is they, they.

[Leo Laporte]

Show you that they go previously in this book series.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. So they're doing this on Kindle.

[Leo Laporte]

I love this idea.

[Richard Campbell]

And they're doing it with AI and it's not. This is not why you buy a Kindle. It's not the marquee feature where everyone's like, oh my God, this is it. It's a little thing. But that's the point. It's you. You see this and you're like, yes, I need this. I we. If anyone is still reading a book, God love you. And if you can pay attention across a long book, if you can pay attention across a series of books, let me tell you something. You're a unicorn, God love you, but most of us need this.

[Leo Laporte]

How do you turn this on? Where does this.

[Richard Campbell]

It appears automatically. You have to get the latest software up. Right now it's only on the Kindle device. It's coming to iOS Kindle app soon. And they haven't said anything about that beyond there. But it will come, you know, it will come everywhere at some point. But yeah, it will just be made available if it's there for that, if it detects it's a book series, you know, in Kindle, I think this is by default, book series. Just like magazines. Well, they don't really do magazines anymore, but what else? Like comic book series like this where it's one icon. It's like a folder, essentially. And you go in there and then you see the constituent parts of it. There's a, there's a recap option in there that should just appear. I haven't seen it. But personally, then, just real quick, GitHub Copilot was updated because it's updated every 10 seconds. The big thing to me here is that this thing that was in preview is now available. Generally, I think it's visual studio code only right now, but it will do that project level code review, the thing I've been using with cursor. So if you want to get that type of thing, you're using GitHub Copilot, but there it is. So cool.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice.

[Paul Thurot]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. All right. Well, that brings us right briskly along to I believe the Xbox segment. Before we get to that, though, I would like to say that you, dear viewer and listener, you, brilliant person, you, you have tuned in Windows Weekly with Paul Thurat from thurat.com and of course his books [e-mail] completely written by humans with no AI intervention.

[Richard Campbell]

*, *.

[Leo Laporte]

See footnote for disclaimers. It's probably going to Terms and conditions apply. And Mr. Richard Campbell of Runasradio and dot net rocks. It's great to have you both on. Great to have you watching. If you want to watch the show live, we do it on Wednesdays at 11am Pacific. That's 2pm Eastern, 1800 UTC. And the streams are multivariate. There is discord, of course, for our club members, but we've also got YouTube, Twitch, TikTok for as long as it lasts. X.com Kik so we want to put all the Nazi things together. Facebook. Oh, wait a minute, let's add that one. And LinkedIn. There's a Microsoft property. Anyway, eight different places you can watch. You pick the one you want, but you don't have to watch live. The show is also available as a podcast, as you probably know. You can download it from Paul's site or my site, Twitter TV ww. For Windows Weekly, there is, if you go to that page, a link to the YouTube channel for the video. That's nice for sharing clips, little things that you want to tell friends about. Great way to spread the word about our show. And of course, it is a podcast, so you can just use any podcast client. Subscribe if you would. Do us a favor though, leave a review. Turns out those make a big difference in our audience and even advertisers pay attention to them. Five stars preferred. Okay, you can knock us down a star if you feel like it, but it would really help if you like the show to leave us a five star review in your favorite podcast client and thank you in advance. Once again. If you're just tuning in, we have restored yearly Club Twit memberships. So if you are on a monthly membership and if you're a member you are, go to your membership, your subscription page and turn on yearly if you want to make it once a year instead of 12 times a year.

[Corey Doctorow]

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[Patrick Norton]

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[Leo Laporte]

Back we go to the show and the world renown Xbox segment.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh boy.

[Leo Laporte]

It's all yours, Paulie. Time to pad this sucker.

[Paul Thurot]

Um, it's a big bar.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. So Microsoft has been doing an annual Xbox games showcase each year since E3. Bit the dust. Actually, since before that, I think. So they're doing another one this year. It'll be on Sunday, June 8th. And then they're going to do a kind of a what they're calling a deep dive into a game called the Elder Worlds 2, which is the next game from Obsidian Entertainment, which is like a studio that made Avowed, that game that just came out recently. The focus here is on games that they believe are going to ship soon. So for example, Fable is being rebooted, but that was delayed to 2026. Probably not going to be a part of this.

[Paul Thurot]

Fun title though.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. And Call of Duty end of year, probably not going to see any of that stuff. But they have talked about a few games that are potentially, you know, could be in here. New Gears of War game prequel, Perfect Dark remake, State of Decay 3, kind of reading like Hollywood, it's all remakes and sequels.

[Paul Thurot]

That's the normal.

[Richard Campbell]

But that's the world. Yeah. So we'll see. But that's. It's usually. It's usually pretty good. This is not the event that Leo and I watched, although. Well, maybe it was. It was. I feel like this was in August, this particular year. But there was that year we did the live coverage of the Microsoft game thing and it was the new Halo at the time and it looked like garbage time and it was terrible. And we were like, those graphics are going to get better. Right. I thought they were going to pull a Wizard of Oz things where wizard of Oz goes from dark white to color. I thought they were going to go from like 16 bit graphics to the real thing. We're like, see how much better it is. And it never happened. It was like, oh. And then they delayed it anyway. They try not to do that anymore. So we'll see. That should be pretty good. Microsoft Edge Game Assist is actually something I'm trying to use and I can't get it to work on the computers that I'm playing games on.

[Paul Thurot]

I don't want it supposed to do for you.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. So what you're supposed to do is go into Microsoft Edge, the browser, enable it, and then you can go into the game bar. So you can hit like Windows key +G or if you have an Xbox control, the white button, the light button, and it comes up and then you can add it. It's a widget. And if you've ever used Game Bar, you know, there's like a main bar and then the widgets are these separate little floating windows. So the one I use most frequently is the performance one. And you can turn everything off except for frames per second, pin it so it's always on the screen. And then for games where you can't see the frames per second, this shows you the frames per second. Right. So it's pretty useful. What this thing is, is a mini version of the browser that you can also pin to be on screen. So it can kind of be on the side next to the game you're playing. And it will, because I don't know the figure, but some huge percentage of people who play games on PCs will pause the game, go to either a different device or just switch to a browser, type in how do I get past this thing on level two or whatever, and Google it or whatever to figure out the game. So you can do that stuff. But they also have enhanced it to know about specific games. So there is a website you can go to to see what all the games are. But in the most recent update, they added support for Assassin's Creed Shadows and the idea and other games, I'm sorry, World of Warcraft, Genshin Impact, etc, a few others. But the idea is that you're in the game at a particular point and if you bring this thing up, it will know where you are in the game and then say you need help. You know, it will just proactively try to help you. But there's a big list of games. Call of Duty, Black Ops 6 is one of them. Which is why I was like, okay, let me see what this thing can do. And I can't get it right. I haven't got it to work. But the latest Indiana Jones game, the new one, is in there. Minecraft Overwatch 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, Heart of Chernobyl, that new game from last year is one of the games is probably about 25:30, but it doesn't have to be enhanced. It will still work. So they've been expanding this thing. It will support some extensions now, including sidebar apps like Edge sidebar apps that will work. And they're automatically. There's some new tab work they've done to make it work more like the browser does, actually just, you know, kind of improving it. So there's a big update to this that just went out, you know, kind of interesting. I want to try this. Like, I just haven't done this. I haven't done it yet, but someday. And then maybe we'll come to the Xbox, right? They talk, they showed off something called. I think it was just called Gaming Copilot or something like that, or Copilot for Gaming. But at some point this will definitely come to the console as well. But whatever. In whatever form, right? Last week we talked about some of the new games coming to Game Pass across PC console and cloud for the first half of April. Since then, they announced GTA 5 is coming back to the Game Pass library starting next Week. One week from yesterday, I guess.

[Paul Thurot]

And is it a refresh version or is it. Or it's the exact.

[Richard Campbell]

It is on PC. So the version going Xbox is the one we had from before, the one going to PC. This is the first time it's been on PC. Game pass. And it's actually an enhanced version of the game that they released.

[Paul Thurot]

Just if you're a game.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep, I know.

[Paul Thurot]

And this is the year GTA 6 is supposed to show up and they're still milking GTA 5.

[Richard Campbell]

Hey, you gotta love. This is like being the Beatles, you know? Yeah, exactly. Like your music catalog just keeps going. Yeah. This is the second best selling game of all time. 210 million copies sold since 2013.

[Paul Thurot]

What? Sold more than that? I thought that was number one.

[Richard Campbell]

I thought it was Minecraft.

[Paul Thurot]

What's the best possible. Yeah, yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

I think it might be Minecraft.

[Leo Laporte]

Minecraft, yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Game of all. Let's see.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe.

[Richard Campbell]

No, it's Minecraft.

[Leo Laporte]

It's got to be Minecraft.

[Richard Campbell]

350 million.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, everybody in Hollywood was shocked that the Minecraft movie.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Because you've seen the trailer. It looks ridiculous.

[Leo Laporte]

It probably is ridiculous.

[Richard Campbell]

It looks.

[Leo Laporte]

But what they underestimated was how much people of a certain age love Minecraft. And it turns out the same people who go to movies still.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurot]

Almost generational now, Right?

[Leo Laporte]

It's generational.

[Richard Campbell]

I just think it looks terrible.

[Leo Laporte]

Of course it does.

[Paul Thurot]

It's a video game movie.

[Leo Laporte]

It probably is. Is terrible. But if you love Minecraft, you're gonna see it.

[Richard Campbell]

The rock was in a movie version of Doom. Right. And there's a scene in the game where he. You do a first person view where you're looking down like you do in a game. And it was ridiculous, but it was like, okay, like, you know, you're. You're at least respecting the original or whatever. It's like. It was like. But this. What this guy.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it's also running around a generation that grew up on Jumanji, so they like Jack Black. I think Jason Momoa is a suitable rock.

[Richard Campbell]

Might actually be something wrong with you. I. I'm. You know, like, you might actually want to see a doctor.

[Paul Thurot]

He'll probably go with you to the movie anyway.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm not gonna go to the movie because I am of a different generation, but I will sit in my leather lounger and watch it at home.

[Paul Thurot]

It'll be on an airplane, so.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a good airplane movie.

[Richard Campbell]

There was a video game movie that came out last year. It was a borderlands yeah. So my wife. Yeah, I watched it. I. I thought it was fine. And by the way, Jack Black was in that too, actually. He was the voice of the little robot. Right. But it was. It was really dumped on, but I thought it was okay. And then there was of course that the TV show that was on Amazon for Fallout, which was amazing. Like that was fantastic.

[Paul Thurot]

And gonna get another season. Like it's.

[Richard Campbell]

I know. I can't wait. I. I thought that was so.

[Paul Thurot]

Well, great job of it.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Fantastic. So it can be done.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, this is how generations diverge.

[Richard Campbell]

It's generational bias. It's what I was talking about earlier. You kids. Your stupid Minecraft movie. No one's gonna watch that crap.

[Leo Laporte]

My. My 21 year old cannot wait. He's. He's not gonna go see in the theater though. But.

[Richard Campbell]

But he is very can wait.

[Paul Thurot]

Leo movie will be. How many people go to it more than once? Like nostalgia regions. Everybody's gonna go once.

[Leo Laporte]

It was a very expensive movie. It was hundreds of millions of dollars. But it's already grossed more than half a billion.

[Richard Campbell]

64 to render this thing. What are they doing?

[Leo Laporte]

Best selling game. Best selling movie. There you go.

[Paul Thurot]

Which begs the question, where's the GTA 5 movie?

[Leo Laporte]

Actually, that'd be. You know, I would go see that.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Huh.

[Leo Laporte]

I might go see that.

[Paul Thurot]

It's got to be in development somewhere.

[Leo Laporte]

Sure it is.

[Paul Thurot]

Sure it is.

[Leo Laporte]

You want to. You want to. Is that it? Are we done?

[Richard Campbell]

I got a couple of. A couple of switch things to mention. One is that it looks like the chipset that's in the Switch 2 is pretty good. Like Nvidia is involved with the graphics.

[Leo Laporte]

I would order one.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. 4K. When it's plugged in.

[Paul Thurot]

I know.

[Richard Campbell]

It will do. It has dedicated cores for graphics, tensor cores for ray tracing.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

It also supports deep learning, super sampling, DLSS.

[Leo Laporte]

That's how it does 4K. Because it does have 4K output on HDMI.

[Richard Campbell]

That's fine. You know, 120 frames per second in 1080p.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's good.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, they were kicking it with the other one. I mean, this one's going to be great. Except that it's never expensive. Yeah, it's too expensive.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's going to be more expensive now.

[Richard Campbell]

They're delaying it because of this tariff stuff. I don't know if you heard this. It's been in the news a lot, apparently.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe not now though. Maybe they knew because I think that the terrorists against Japan have been dropped to 10%.

[Richard Campbell]

So yeah, we'll see. This has the feel of something that will change every single day because, you.

[Paul Thurot]

Know, every hour, goodness knows, by the time we finish it.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. So we'll see. We'll see.

[Paul Thurot]

Tough time to buy the gear, though.

[Leo Laporte]

This must be an error.

[Richard Campbell]

What's that?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah, the Switch V2. It's not the Switch V2. It's a Switch 2 because Walmart's selling the Switch V2. But no, that's. That's confusing. That's the OLED version of the Switch.

[Paul Thurot]

Oh, so it's a red two of the Switch one?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, boy.

[Leo Laporte]

So careful, everybody. This is the kind of thing that bites me, you know? Hey, Merry Christmas. I bought you the new Switch Switch. Dad, it's the V2. Yeah. No, it's not what I wanted, man.

[Richard Campbell]

Guys, you got to learn how to shop for kids.

[Leo Laporte]

I do not.

[Richard Campbell]

You know what?

[Paul Thurot]

If you just bring them the 24 port switch, then they'll be happier.

[Leo Laporte]

I bought you a Switch. It's Poe.

[Richard Campbell]

The same day I was in Best buy in the mid-1990s, and I wanted to buy a CD, but I couldn't think of the name of the band. So back then, they had these giant aisles full of CDs and people that would just work there, you know, that's the world. So I was like, hey, I'm looking. These guys said, can I help you find some? I said, yeah, I'm looking for this band, but it's like collective love. Collective something. He goes. He kind of looked at me like collective soul. I'm like, maybe. And that was the band.

[Leo Laporte]

It was great, but Jamiroquai.

[Richard Campbell]

But I'm checking out and there's a grandmother in front of me paying at the register, and she says, I need a present for a. Whatever age girl. Do you think this would be better? Or this? Or whatever the choices were? She's asking the guy at the counter, and I was like, please get her a gift certificate. I was like, do not do that.

[Leo Laporte]

Don't let her buy it. So this is just in from the Nintendo page. Switch to pre order 6, 5 or. No, that's just. They were going to deliver it.

[Richard Campbell]

Wasn't it April? No. What was the original date?

[Paul Thurot]

Or is that May or June 6th or June?

[Leo Laporte]

The Japanese people. It's got the big American flag on the site. I don't know how to buy because I do. Really. I do want it.

[Richard Campbell]

This thing is going to look like a Eula.

[Leo Laporte]

Register your interest.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Paul Thurot]

And then what Nintendo's doing here, right, is to stop them from being squatted. You have to use your Nintendo account to go on.

[Richard Campbell]

That's right. You don't want disappointed young fans, you know, losing their minds because you don't want this thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Nobody wants disappointed fans. So get a grandma, get a gift certificate. Kevin says June 5th is the ship date, which is unchanged. The pre order date is the problem.

[Richard Campbell]

All right. Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, you're watching. And you show great taste by doing so. Windows Weekly, that's Paul Thurot, that's Richard Campbell, and ladies and gentlemen, we'll continue the show with the back of the book, Mr. Paul Thurat.

[Richard Campbell]

So, Leo, last week you brought up programmers at work. You had the book. You're the original Microsoft Press version. But the original. That was the first edition of that. There was a later edition. It went to a different publisher. Someone reached out to me on Twitter and said, hey, listen to Windows Weekly. Looked up this book and then found the website from the woman who wrote it. And she is. Now these are, these are not like from two days ago. They're from five, six years ago, whatever. But she has republished the interviews and in some cases expanded on them.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's worth getting. Yeah, I mentioned it's on the Internet archive.

[Richard Campbell]

The book is. Yes, but if you go to her website, it hasn't been. I'm sorry, it hasn't been updated in four years, but it has. The interviews haven't been updated in 12 years. But. But these are all from the 80s. It doesn't matter. The point is these interviews are now on her website.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's.

[Richard Campbell]

So you can actually go find these.

[Leo Laporte]

It's. It's so worth reading.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it susanlammers.com what's the website?

[Richard Campbell]

It's programmersatwork.WordPress.com. yeah. And then there's a sidebar that has the links and it has the years and whatever. But you know, she went.

[Leo Laporte]

Fantastic.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. This is just. Yeah, really neat.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you. Unnamed Twitter user.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, his name. Well, code is the K O D E. Mr. Anderson, the first. So none of those are his real name, I would imagine. But yeah, thank you for that. Really cool.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's really a great book and it is unfortunately out of print, but you can go to the website and get.

[Richard Campbell]

The one I had was a later edition. It had a different cover and it wasn't Microsoft Press. By that point it had moved to some other company. I don't remember.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, there's a kind of a follow up called Coders at Work.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, no, no, it was. No, it's Programs at work. I looked this thing up after the show because I was really curious about this myself. And there were two versions of it, but one from, I want to say 85, 86, and then one from 88, 89.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

I think it was just a republish, you know, it wasn't updated. Oh, well. Well, I don't think it was updated.

[Leo Laporte]

But this is great. She is. I mean, this is an older blog. The last post is four years ago, but there are updates on all of the people she interviewed and so forth. This is really. It was a great. To me, it was. You know, we've talked before about those kind of seminal books, like Pascal Zachary's Showstoppers, like Stephen Levy's Hackers, like Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine. These are books that, if you want to understand how we got here, they're must reads.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. Like San Bullock's the Net. You know, I think these are all.

[Leo Laporte]

Who could ever forget?

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, if we're going to go back to basics, sneakers.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's not forget.

[Richard Campbell]

It's like the files coughing on the floppy and it's like the tension. I can't take the tension.

[Leo Laporte]

No, but we've talked about this before you, Michael, about these great. These great books. And I know you, like, love Showstoppers.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Which is every.

[Richard Campbell]

I reread that every couple years. Like, I just reread it, reread it, reread it.

[Leo Laporte]

And I don't know, for me, they inform my understanding of what's going on, how the industry works, who these people are. It makes. It makes me better at covering these stories. And programmers at work was.

[Richard Campbell]

This was the golden era, too. There were so many books, like, between about that time frame, maybe the mid-90s, that were all about the start of the industry. The start of the IBM PC, the start of Apple, the start of Microsoft. You know, it was just great. And then, you know, when Microsoft became dominant, it was all like, who's going to stop Bill Gates? There were a million of these things, you know, barbarians at the gates, et cetera. And then thank God, antitrust happened because we had five years of that, you know.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

But since then, it's been all downhill since 2000.

[Richard Campbell]

You can see the slope.

[Leo Laporte]

But this last century was great. The 20th century was really great for this stuff.

[Richard Campbell]

That is maybe the oldest person thing you've ever said the 20th century was. Okay. I don't know about this one.

[Leo Laporte]

It's new century. I don't. I don't understand it.

[Paul Thurot]

I question it.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't get it.

[Leo Laporte]

Can you believe we're a quarter of the way into the 21st century?

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes or no?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

21St. That's amazing. I still like the old one better. You know what? We didn't understand that. I wish we did. We were living in a golden age.

[Paul Thurot]

Living a remarkable time.

[Leo Laporte]

Time.

[Paul Thurot]

Flush toilets. Maybe the. Maybe the Matrix was right. 1999 was the year.

[Richard Campbell]

Sometimes I have hot water in the shower here. It's fantastic. I don't know. It's. It's not overrated.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, so that was your. I guess that was your pick or your tip.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay, picks. I guess it wasn't a pick. Speaking of the 20th century, again.

[Leo Laporte]

The best TV too. Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

I know. Yeah. Eventually. Yeah. So Apple Music is now available with Dolby Atmos. Supported Windows. Right. So since it came out in that kind of new, you know, it's like a modern app now, I think Microsoft helped them create it. Same thing with Apple tv. It has supported lossless Music but not Dolby Atmos. But now it does. And so I was actually testing it out the other day. It's nice.

[Paul Thurot]

I don't think about Dolby outmost for home play. I think about that in movie theater, but okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah, Yeah. A lot of systems now have Atmos. I have Atmos at home. The problem is it's not real atmos unless you bounce it off the.

[Richard Campbell]

Of course. I mean, but you could. I mean, you know, headphones can do a decent job depending on, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Apple Spatial is basically Dolby Atmos.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Even a computer, if you have like four speakers, they can do. You know, at worst, what you're getting is kind of like a nice stereo separation.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

If you're lucky, you'll get that feel of like, you can almost see the. You know, each instrument is in its own place, if that makes sense. In space. Even with speakers, it's pretty good. You know, so it's good. I'll try to do this quickly. I. This. I added this as like a weird little addendum, but it's. It's a. I wrote an article today that sort of about the tech, product, services, whatever it is, that are not insured. Right. Like, and not to. Not as a. Like a list. I mean, I don't mean like these are all awesome. I don't mean like that, but. But it's interesting how the industry has been disrupted over the years. And if you think about like I went back and looked at this crazy, like in 2006, Google bought a company that made something called Writely, which was one of the first web word processors. It looks ludicrous today. And they turned it into Google Docs.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

And they developed a spreadsheet program in house. They put them together, they had different names over the years, but now of course this is like Workspace or Google Docs, whatever we call these things. There was this shining moment. Not shining, but for me it was kind of a weird moment where I'm going to call it 2005-2010 12, where Google just set out to do everything. Did Microsoft do something? Let's do that. And they would make. They made their version, they did their Office productivity suite. They did this, they did everything. Right. And this is what that came out of. And it forced Microsoft to go from traditional Office suite running on Windows or Mac to having versions on the web eventually to having versions on mobile to having office. Well, BPOs, which by the way came out announced that same year and it became Office 365 and then now Microsoft 365. Right. You know, we can kind of credit Google with lighting a little fire into them because this was like Stephen Sinofsky had wanted to do a web based version of these Office apps for years and kept getting shot down. Because this is going to kill our paid Office business. What are you talking about? We don't put this on the way.

[Paul Thurot]

And he was over on the Windows side doing the same thing. He switched roles.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Paul Thurot]

They actually had it written. They sat on the shelf for two years. They were done in 2011. They didn't ship till 2013 and only after win 8 failed.

[Richard Campbell]

Sometimes you need. Yeah, you need that push. Right?

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

It's interesting because this is happening to Google now. Right. We've always had these alternatives. You know, back in the day you could have any number of open source Office suites, many of which still are around, like LibreOffice or Open Office or whatever. I used. God, I'm going to forget the name of it. Doesn't matter. I used to use this kind of third party word processor because it was lighter, small or whatever. It was pretty good, whatever. But I feel like we're suddenly swimming in all these apps and services that you can use either ad hoc, Right. Things like Notion markdown editors, Proton Pass, you know, Proton has Mail and Calendar and whatever else or so you can kind of mix and match. Like Slack, you could have like Google. I'm going to use Google Workspace, but I'm going to use Slack, you know, as well. Right. Kind of, you know, like pieces of a puzzle. Like obviously bigger businesses Go after like the big monolithic thing. Microsoft, it gives you everything, you get everything. And that's, you know, good to some degree, whatever. But, but I do feel like an AI is accelerating this because now we're getting these capabilities on even free things, right? Like Grammarly or language tool or whatever. And it's interesting, but in the same way that Google Docs workspace came along and kind of prodded Microsoft back in 2006, I feel like Notion and to a lesser degree, but maybe Proton are also doing this now to Google, right. That they come up from the bottom, their Notion. I don't know why Notion hasn't given me a bill. I use Notion so much. I don't use Notion Calendar or Mail, but they do have these standalone apps if you want them. I believe at least Calendar also integrates directly into the Notion main app. But between those things, they have the.

[Paul Thurot]

Start of a really nice thing.

[Richard Campbell]

We used to be. Yeah, Proton, like I said, Mail Calendar, but also Drive with an online word processor just like Google Docs and they have all their other stuff. Right. I mean maybe there's some combination of these two things or maybe one of these two things. I don't, you know, it's whatever. But we've kind of gotten to an interesting point and everything. I just mentioned Notion, Typora, Proton, whatever. They're not crap like they're, they're actually, they're often free or can be depending on how you do it. They're not, not, you know, they're not like these ad delivering things that. Yeah, right. That's the thing. That's why that, that's why I qualified what I said earlier. Leo asked, is it at some point.

[Paul Thurot]

The investors say, when are we going to get paid?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurot]

And then the certification begins.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, okay, so in the case of Notion, for example, I, I've talked to my wife about this because she uses this all the time as well. I keep waiting for them to come down and say he's been kind of using the hell out of this thing. I'm thinking, I don't know, five bucks a month, something, you know, like, which honestly would be reasonable. Yep, perfectly reasonable. And that will happen eventually.

[Leo Laporte]

I pay for it. You don't pay for it?

[Richard Campbell]

No, I don't. I've never had to.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't have to, I guess. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

I just showed you a database on the web.

[Leo Laporte]

No, that's pretty impressive.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't even understand what, what are you doing anyway, that like Richard said, this will change. There's no doubt about it. The Question is how much it changes. And you know, you have.

[Paul Thurot]

How well you respond to the pressures.

[Leo Laporte]

There is a notion watermark on it. Maybe you wouldn't have that if you.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, I don't know. There's something you get.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. If you look at Proton, the company, they did some change in their corporate architecture at some point last year. I think it was where they will persist and exist forever. It will be open source. They do charge, but it's. They charge to pay the cost and pay employees and things like that. Like they're not. It's not a for profit company. Privacy focused. There's something going on there that I think is really special. It's worth looking at and I where Proton falls short in kind of the notion space maybe. I think there are two great tastes that go together here. So I'm saying, you know, it's something to think about for sure. And I think all this AI advance that's happening now over the past couple years, which feels like the past 48 years is going to help make that happen. Right. I think this is another era of disruption.

[Leo Laporte]

Isn't that interesting?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I think so.

[Leo Laporte]

I hope so. Hope you're right.

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[Leo Laporte]

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[Richard Campbell]

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[Richard Campbell]

I do.

[Leo Laporte]

Mr. Richard Campbell's. Well, hello, Run As.

[Paul Thurot]

Fancy meeting you here.

[Leo Laporte]

Radio rocks.

[Paul Thurot]

This is Run as. Yeah, and this particular show is talking about Security Copilot, which I've visited before and talking about, you know, these Things starting to mature. Security Copilot was one of the very first copilots announced and it was the one where I looked at him when you guys are out of your minds. Come on. That is such a huge topic. On the other hand, from a Persona perspective, thinking about the average sysadmin, especially in the SMB world, you don't have a full time security person. You maybe put the tinfoil hat on once a month, if you're lucky, maybe once a quarter. And so the idea that there might be a tool that would help you prioritize the most important security issues for your organization at the time. Still, how is this even possible? And now we're seeing in Security Copilot what's actually going on, which is that it is an integration point for various security related data sets. And this particular show, the one I did with Ari Shore who is part of the Entra team, showed this because the Entra team has now added an integration to Security Copilot specifically for evaluating the authentication security of internal applications. This is awesome because if you think about any mid sized business or even a larger one, there can easily be 100 internal or a thousand internal apps. So answer the question, are they all using the current generation authentication? Which ones aren't? And the fact is this is a tool that would lead you exactly to that. Here are the apps who do not have good authentication security in place. And so you can basically make a checklist of the worst problems in front of you right now that can get remedied the quickest and start doing some triage around all that. So bit by bit I keep going back to the Learn page on Security Copilot and seeing the integration list is getting longer. Not just different Microsoft Teams, but also third party integrations now as well. So there's more shows here for me to tap into, but it's starting to manifest this vision of exactly that Persona, the part time security person, not knowing what to work on next and having a tool to help them prioritize that list and get working on fixing them. But arguably when somebody cases and Ari talks about this, there's some of them where you can literally hit the button that says fix it for me. You know, enforce that security requirement. Require TLS 1.2 like those kinds of features are emerging from this tool now.

[Leo Laporte]

Very good. Run his radio. Episode 979 yeah, here we are.

[Paul Thurot]

Location shows away from the big 1000.

[Leo Laporte]

That's amazing. Good job Richard.

[Paul Thurot]

I don't know what I'm going to do, honestly. I'm not running out of shows. That's not a problem. That's not even close to a problem.

[Richard Campbell]

No.

[Leo Laporte]

But how to celebrate. How do you celebrate that?

[Paul Thurot]

Very difficult. Yeah. I don't know the answer.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know what to do. Yeah, we're as. As I mentioned. Well, let me. Let me go back to this. As I mentioned, that's not what I wanted. We are celebrating our 20th anniversary Sunday.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And I didn't really know what to do either. We got.

[Richard Campbell]

Patrick.

[Leo Laporte]

I think Patrick Norton's coming back. Kevin Rose sent me a note, said, you know, I just got off the plane. I went to Switzerland and London, Stockholm, and now I'm going to Sweden. And then I have to go to Santa Fe. So I don't. I'm busy.

[Richard Campbell]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

I said, you're doing well. He's like a big shot now, right? So I said, sure, no problem. You're doing great. Thank you. You. We're going to have a good show anyway because Patrick will be there. One of the originals, along with Sam Abulsamet, who's our car guy, has been with us for a long time and good person to celebrate, Alan Milvantano, also former host of this Week in Computer Hardware. And most importantly, videos from our fans that have been fantastic. Keep sending them. It's not too late. I want to just celebrate our audience because that's really what makes all of our shows exist. We wouldn't and be silly for me and Richard and Paul to get together once a week and just talk to each other. That'd be weird.

[Richard Campbell]

Damn it.

[Leo Laporte]

Damn it. I know. But thanks to you, we have an excuse. So we're going to celebrate that. That'll be this Sunday, Twin. Now you're. Maybe you could recommend a little something, a little a beverage of coif to go along.

[Paul Thurot]

So this. We'll call this the end of MVP collection. Because coming into the MVP Summit, I have been given a lot of whiskey, six or seven bottles.

[Leo Laporte]

Is this a tribute thing? What happens there?

[Paul Thurot]

I don't know. I think people listen to the show. They really like the whiskey bit. And so knowing they were going to see me at the MVP summit, they literally asked, can I bring you a bottle?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you are sure.

[Paul Thurot]

That's awesome. So this is one of them. This comes from my friend Charlotte. She prefers to be called Lottie and it's called the Heart Cut. And now Lottie's not a whiskey expert, but her brother is in adjacent business in London. And so, wanting to get me something unusual, achieved that with the Heart Cut.

[Leo Laporte]

Now I see it's mostly gone now by the way.

[Paul Thurot]

We all drank it together.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurot]

It's a 500 mil bottle. It's a smaller bottles, quite little actually.

[Leo Laporte]

Sure. It's not the, it's the bottles that got small, I understand.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah. This comes from a, a distillery called the East London Liquor Company. So this is in the East End of London, which is literally an area defined almost 2,000 years ago as the east side outside the Roman walls around Lord Wow. And today the, the eastern edge of that was further changed when at 1066 in the battle of Hastings. And then the White Tower gets built, which now known as the London Tower is now that east edge of that wall. So that's, you know, 1078 is when the Tower goes up. So the east side has been. The East End has been the East End for a long time north of the Thames, but east of the walls now we're talking a little bit more contemporary time. The East London Liquor Company is on Regents. It's actually on the Hereford Union Canal, which you go up the Regents Canal to get to by Victoria Park. It was created by a fellow by the name of Alex Wolpert. And Alec Warport is a former actor and producer. And while he was an actor, he was also a bartender because he liked to eat and so became enamored of cocktails and ended up opening his own restaurants and bars. And in 2014 decided to expand one of his bars to have a distillery in it. A small one, but right away making gins and vodka is. That's how you make money. You can produce very quickly. Took a few years to actually get to whiskey making. His stills are very small. A 2000 liter wash still, 650 liter Holstein style hybrid still very small. But because it was deeply connected to the bar community of London, this is where he sold this stuff. And today he does make a single malt made out of of barley out of Norfolk. He tends to use a mixture of spring and winter barley, so winter barley being harder and higher protein counts. And you. He does a couple of his own barrelings, including a version that's currently laid up in an Isla barrels. We don't know exactly which one, but you can also get your own casking if you care to. It's about 3, 500 pounds and you can get in a bourbon cask, cask for yourself and get a couple hundred bottles from it. In fact, this particular edition I have here is one of only 344 bottles. But it's actually derived from his whiskey known as London rye, which is 55% rye, 55% barley. Fairly common. The original edition released in 2018. But this bottling was not done by East London Liquor. It was actually done by a third party called Drinks One. And so Drinks One is based in London, and they select barrels and. And various alcohols from various liars to create a select group. And that's what this is. So it's from the East London Liquor Company, but it was actually produced by Drinks One. And in this case, they barreled it in Hackney Brewery. Chocolate Stout cats.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, my.

[Paul Thurot]

So the Hackney Brewery, again, a local London brewery making their own beers. They make a very sturdy stout. And so this was age for about four years in the stout casks. And so look at the amount of color that comes in that for what is such a young whiskey. Three, four years old. And again, so good. Only 344 bottles. I don't know there's any left. It comes in about 50 alcohol at about 60 pounds, about $75 US and it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but you won't be able to find it if there's only 344 bottles.

[Paul Thurot]

Very, very good. Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, here he goes. He's drinking reasons.

[Paul Thurot]

344 bottles.

[Leo Laporte]

My goodness, I'm so jealous. Lottie, you did good.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah, that's because there's only 500 mil bottles. So they actually got far more from what they would typically get from a cask. Normally there would be only about.

[Leo Laporte]

So that's a single cask.

[Paul Thurot]

Single cask.

[Richard Campbell]

Bear.

[Leo Laporte]

Does it taste like rye whiskey at all, or did the.

[Paul Thurot]

It definitely has that rye flavor, spice to it. The bang of. Of being rye forward and then. But it's got that chocolatey. It, like, literally makes your mouth salivate of a stout. Right. Like a. Like a Guinness or very strong dark beer is right there on the tongue. So you're a little confused because you thought you were drinking whiskey, and yet you still kind of got that creamy, rich feel from the. From the beer.

[Richard Campbell]

Always confused. That makes sense to me.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah, but it's a. It's delightful. And so when it was brought to me, when they, Lottie and a few of our other friends came up and stayed at the boathouse before we all went down to the MVP Summit together. So we drank this together, and I thought I'd save a little for you all. But just sitting off frame here, some of the other whiskies, like this is a Tasmanian. This one's a Hawaiian. Who knew? So I'm researching them now for later editions. And in the. The summit was very, very good. To me.

[Leo Laporte]

You can't buy it in the US I'm trying to buy it.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah. I think we might have to take a trip to London, see if we could still score one.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, you can go on the website, but it won't let me.

[Paul Thurot]

They're not going to deliver to the U.S. yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I think that's. They're not alone anymore.

[Paul Thurot]

Nope.

[Richard Campbell]

We feel alone.

[Leo Laporte]

I feel alone. We Brexited.

[Richard Campbell]

Brexited the world.

[Leo Laporte]

Brexit of the world.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, boy.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow. That really you now you make. You made my mouth water.

[Paul Thurot]

That looks really good Happening to me too. And I had a taste.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

Very nice. Nice job, Lottie and all the others.

[Paul Thurot]

I'm gonna call everyone out. The one I did a couple of weeks ago, the. The Kempish Veer was from my. That's the Belgian peated that I talked about a couple of weeks ago. That was from my friend Hannes who was also up here, which is why I did that one early. But the others, the other two that I'm going to talk about will have come from the MVP summit. So we'll have a definitely call.

[Leo Laporte]

Gifts from the MVP Summit. Yeah, it's a new series we're going to start on YouTube.

[Paul Thurot]

Yeah. A couple of the others were ones I've already talked about in the past, like the. The Cavalan, which is the Taiwanese. I got a fresh bottle of that and those are always stunning too. Yeah. This I got the new. Casper brought me the stoning. The new edition of the stoning Peted which is I haven't opened yet, but I know it's going to be great. But we already talked about stoning.

[Leo Laporte]

Don't feel you have to be original, but if you are.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, I'm not always original, but when.

[Paul Thurot]

I am, I figure once we get through all of them, then I'll go back and do a different editions of the first one.

[Leo Laporte]

That's who Richard is. The most interesting man in the world.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't always drink whiskey. Yes, I do.

[Paul Thurot]

No, I pretty much always drink whiskey and I usually a different one each time. There's like five of them sitting on the desk right now.

[Leo Laporte]

Unbelievable. Gifts are welcome.

[Paul Thurot]

Please feel free and we'll be put to work.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Most importantly, Richard Campbell [e-mail] He also does net Rocks with Carl Franklin. You'll find both at his website Run his radio joins us every week. So good to have you, Richard. Thank you. Paul thurat [e-mail] T H U R O double Good. It's Also, he's got his books. Windows Everywhere. The Field guide to [e-mail] How'd that sale go?

[Richard Campbell]

Good. I made a lot of 73 cent sales. It was nice.

[Leo Laporte]

No, it's good, you know, 73 cents there, 77 cents here. It adds up, up someday to a couple of, I don't know, Rich.

[Paul Thurot]

Pretty soon you have some sense.

[Leo Laporte]

You got tacos?

[Richard Campbell]

I finally have some sense.

[Leo Laporte]

We do Windows Weekly as I mentioned, every Wednesday, 11am Pacific. I hope you will join us. If not, of course you could download a copy of the show. Please do join the club again. Annual memberships are back. If you're currently a monthly membership member, you just just check the box in your subscription page. It'll change automatically. We thank you all for being here and we look forward to seeing you again next week on Windows Weekly. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Richard.

[Paul Thurot]

Pleasure.

[Richard Campbell]

Bye.

[Leo Laporte]

Bye.

[Patrick Norton]

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[Leo Laporte]

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