Windows Weekly 962: Peak Bloat

Summary

Windows Weekly #962: “Peak Bloat”

Date: December 10, 2025
Host: Leo Laporte
Panelists: Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell
Location: Live from the Microsoft Office, Malvern, Pennsylvania

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Episode Overview

In this holiday edition, the Windows Weekly crew gathers in-person at a Microsoft satellite office in Malvern, PA, for a spirited discussion of the final Patch Tuesday of 2025, major Windows and AI updates, the ongoing debates about AI’s impact on content and society, Xbox’s "peak bloat", and, as always, tips, picks, and a deep whiskey-and-history segment. The team also grapples with the ethical and economic dilemmas surrounding AI training and copyright, illustrating the complexities of modern technology.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Patch Tuesday & Windows Updates

Timestamp: 03:49

• Final Patch Tuesday of 2025: Considered a significant one, with many visible and under-the-hood changes rolling out.
  • Richard: “It’s been a big year for updates. I keep thinking it’s going to slow down and every month they surprise me.” [05:20]
• File Explorer Improvements:
  • Enhanced dark mode now extends to file copy progress, properties dialog, and sub-windows (previously caused a ‘flashbang’ effect).
  • Streamlined context menus—more use of submenus for common functions like OneDrive, Photos.
  • Paul: “Progress, not perfect.” [07:24]
• AI Agent and Copilot+:
  • New features for Copilot+ PCs, such as improved Studio Effects and semantic search, relying on local AI models and hardware NPUs.
  • Non-Copilot+ PCs get smaller updates, such as revamped Widgets board now hiding the “stupid Discover feed”… “it’s actually a little hidden, which I like.” [08:44]
• Settings – Advanced Page:
  • Power users should check for new advanced/system settings, developer options, addition of ‘sudo’ command for Windows (with attendant debates over security vs. usability). [10:40]
  • Richard: “If you have ‘end task’ in jump lists, you can crash an app without going into Task Manager.”
• Insider Previews for 25H2:
  • MCP (Model Context Protocol) public preview (to connect AIs with apps in standardized ways).
  • Unified Update Orchestration Platform: more updates can come through Windows Update.
  • Support for MIDI 2.0 via Windows MIDI Services.

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2. Microsoft 365 & Copilot Pricing News

Timestamp: 13:22

• Price Hikes: Starting July 2026, nearly all Microsoft 365 commercial SKUs will increase—up to 33% more per month on some tiers.
  • Richard: "The company has been posting record profits every quarter for two straight years… and they need to raise prices.” [14:25]
• Copilot Premium Confusion: AI features are packaged unevenly; only account owners get full benefits on family plans, causing frustration.
• Negotiation & Real-World Impact: While enterprise bulk-buying negotiates discounts, smaller orgs and individuals will feel the brunt.
• Copilot Add-on: Stays at a $30/user/month “street price”—though most companies reportedly pay less in practice.
• Broader Trend: Bundling more AI features and justifying price hikes with “millions of new features” (most AI).

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3. The State of AI: Good, Bad, Semantic & Real Use Cases

Timestamp: 22:27

• AI Hype vs. Reality:
  • Discussion of "agentic AI" (autonomous agents), noting that despite hype, most practical AI is not “agentic”, and actual real-world use cases are more limited but powerful.
  • Richard: “For all the marketing, for all the hype, there’s actually a bunch of stuff that does work well … none of it is agentic.” [23:08]
• Semantic Apps/Web:
  • Paul coins the term ‘semantic apps’ - applications with machine-readable interfaces to allow granular AI integrations, akin to the semantic web for websites.
• Meaningful AI Features:
  • Summarization (articles, meetings), question answering, visual search ("what is this?"), writing and brainstorming help, automation (natural-language IFTTT for the enterprise), and accessibility (translation and live captioning).
  • Paul: “AI is not a product, it’s a feature.” [26:41]
  • Richard: "Transformative … it’s about intent. In the past, you had to master the tool; now you just say what you want." [30:49]
• Software Dev Renaissance:
  • AI co-pilots dramatically accelerate coding, code review, and debugging—“it’s like having a programming partner” [43:55] (Leo).
• Real-Time Translation:
  • "Doing those things live, on the fly, is amazing… babelfish!" [33:10]
• Cultural Resistance:
  • Ongoing backlash (“AI is always the bad guy in sci-fi… it makes a good enemy” [47:12]), but panelists see parallels to every previous tech revolution (typewriter, PC, internet).
• AI Bubble or Lasting Change?:
  • Panelists agree the AI “bubble” (investment/funding) is likely to burst, but the underlying tech isn’t going anywhere: “No one is taking away spell and grammar checking because you think you can write better than anybody.” [49:06]

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4. AI Security, Regulation, and Content Legal Debates

Timestamp: 56:01

• Agentic AI Foundation:
  • New Linux Foundation umbrella group for open standards for "agents" – companies like Microsoft, AWS, Google, OpenAI involved.
• Security Risks of AI Browsers:
  • Gartner warns AI browsers (Edge, Chrome soon) with agentic features = major, poorly understood security risks for orgs.
  • Recommendation: block these org-wide until further maturity/controls exist.
  • Paul: “A browser has so much privilege in a system… to have risks on that interface introduces a tremendous amount of risk.” [64:02]
• Copyright, Fair Use, and AI Training:
  • New York Times now suing not just OpenAI/Microsoft but also Perplexity over content ingestion.
  • Paul and Leo receive letters about settlement for past book copyright infringement by Anthropic—debate whether to take the money (“I did spend time writing it, it was a long time ago.” [78:48] – Paul), and whether this undermines the possibility of viable, up-to-date AI models.
  • The “moral conundrum” for creators: is it good or bad that all available content is scraped for AI? Is it analogous to Google indexing the web?
• Information Wants to Be Free vs. Creator Rights:
  • Leo: "I come from a hacker ethic… information wants to be free… that's the greater good of mankind."
  • Richard: “Anyone who’s created anything has run into this. I don’t understand not embracing technology that makes your life easier and better.” [46:59]
• AI & Public Content:
  • Perplexity AI controversy—how AI searches/summarizes/reports on content, and whether aggregating/summarizing is “theft”.

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5. Xbox, Gaming, and “Peak Bloat”

Timestamp: 97:08

• Xbox Sales and Black Friday:
  • No discounts or deals, attributed to razor-thin margins and rising tariffs; Xbox did not make top 3 in November console sales.
• Call of Duty Bloat:
  • Call of Duty installs: Modern Warfare and Black Ops together now take up nearly 500GB (!), leading to the episode’s title, “Peak Bloat.”
  • Richard: “If you think Windows is a nightmare to update and maintain … Call of Duty makes it look like a Commodore 64 title from 1981.” [101:33]
• Fortnite on ARM:
  • Testing Fortnite on Windows 11 ARM yielded good results, again with large install size (~80GB).
• Flight Simulator 2024:
  • Now on PS5; literally massive (another “half-terabyte” game).
• Netflix Games:
  • Red Dead Redemption and other AAA games now available on iOS/Android via Netflix subscription, raising questions about the future of Netflix and movie/content distribution.

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6. Tips, Apps, and Picks

Timestamp: 121:08

Paul’s Tip: De-‘Insurrectify’ Windows 11

• For users who want to “de-bloat” Windows 11 and make it behave more like it used to.
  • Tiny 11 Builder + Win11 DeBloat (PowerShell script) + ExplorerPatcher + MsEdgeRedirect
  • Paul: “Making a clean version of Win11. God help us. But it’s nice.” [128:04]
  • ExplorerPatcher: roll Explorer back to Windows 10 UI for speed and cleanliness.
  • Tweaks for power users, including getting rid of nags, default Edge usage, etc.

RunAs Radio Pick

• Richard: “A great storyteller… a deep dive on incident management from the CrowdStrike event, emphasizing how interconnected and delicate modern SaaS and cloud dependencies are. Even if you weren’t directly running the affected software, you were impacted.”

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7. Whiskey & History – Old Farm Pennsylvania Rye

Timestamp: 132:31

• Old Farm Pennsylvania Straight Rye Whiskey:
  • Paul gives a deep historical tour through Pennsylvania’s colonial/whiskey roots—George Washington, the Whiskey Rebellion, and the legacy of Pennsylvania rye.
  • Discussion of the role rye played as America’s first whiskey, the economics of early distilling, and Prohibition’s impact on both products and methods (the three-chamber stills of yore).
  • Paul: “If you talk about the original names for Pennsylvania whiskey going back that far, you talk about a German immigrant named Heinrich Obelhartzer—anglicized to Henry Overholt. Overholt’s a very well-known name in whiskey.” [149:02]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "I've had a few days in the Thorat household... You've learned you can tell when Paul's working. He's got four or five laptops going at once, and they're angry noises." — Richard [03:59]
• "AI is not a product, it's a feature. That's the future." — Paul [26:41]
• "Paul: Sudo, make your machine potentially more vulnerable, but you get to do what the cool Linux kids do." — [10:42]
• "There is a visceral reaction among people. Anti-AI reaction. Right. That's what I mean." — Leo [45:21]
• "If you think Windows is a nightmare to update and maintain… Call of Duty makes this thing look like a Commodore 64 title from 1981. It's the biggest, bloatiest piece of junk." — Richard [101:33]
• “If you have ‘end task’ in jump lists, you can crash an app without going into Task Manager.” — Richard [10:16]
• “I'm not saying what I'm doing is right or the best thing or the only thing… but I do the same thing. If you want to pay for it, you can… anyone can come and see it if they want.” — Paul [89:19]
• “Anyone who's created anything has run into this. I don't understand not embracing technology that makes your life easier and better.” — Richard [46:59]

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Timestamps Reference for Key Segments

• Patch Tuesday & Windows Updates: 03:49–13:19
• Microsoft 365/Copilot Pricing Hikes: 13:22–21:47
• AI: Use Cases, Culture, Automation: 22:27–56:01
• AI Security & Copyright Battles: 56:01–91:09
• Xbox “Peak Bloat” & Gaming: 97:08–116:19
• Tips, Apps, RunAs Radio: 121:08–131:12
• Whiskey & History (Old Farm Rye): 132:31–160:00

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Tone and Style Notes

• Lively, at times irreverent (“It was like a Sanford & Son reference!”), but also unafraid to dive into deep debates and roll up sleeves on complex moral/technical quandaries.
• In-person dynamic gave the show a more personal, festive feel, with playful teasing, detailed storytelling, and a bit more rambunctious energy.

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Summary

This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in the intersection of Windows, enterprise software, and the seismic changes being wrought by AI. With detailed overviews of practical updates in Windows, behind-the-scenes revelations on Microsoft 365 pricing, hard questions about AI’s impact and future, and fun explorations into gaming bloat and American whiskey, it epitomizes the thought-provoking, sometimes contentious, always entertaining spirit of Windows Weekly.

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For technical references and the latest in Paul's ongoing “make Windows sane again” crusade, see thurrott.com.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurat and Richard Campbell are in Malvern, Pennsylvania in a Microsoft satellite office there to do the special show today. They're in the same room with some. A little something extra to celebrate the holidays. We'll talk about that at the end of the show. It's also the final patch Tuesday of 2025, and there are a lot of updates. Plus the good things about AI and the bad things about AI and where are those Xbox Black Friday specials? All that more coming up next on Windows Weekly.

Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit.

This is Windows Weekly with Paul Ferrat and Richard Campbell. Episode 962, recorded Wednesday, December 10, 2025. Peak bloat. It's time for Windows Weekly. Hello, you winners and you dozers. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you for your delectation in this holiday season. They're in the same room.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Hard to believe.

[Richard Campbell]

The call is coming from inside the house.

[Leo Laporte]

It's inside the house.

[Paul Thurat]

It's inside the Microsoft Office. Anyway. Oh, you're at Pantry.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you in Redmond?

[Paul Thurat]

It's my camera. Yeah. No, we're in Malvern, Pennsylvania, and we're in one of the big Microsoft meeting rooms. They've lent it to us.

[Leo Laporte]

That's nice of them.

[Paul Thurat]

So we can do this. And then after this, I'm going to do a dot net Rocks Live coming in and we've got a couple hundred people showing up and the topic is.

[Richard Campbell]

The future of software. Back of the room and be like, liars.

[Leo Laporte]

Not going to stream it live soon, but you will offer it next week on Net Rocks or for the Christmas.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, next week.

[Leo Laporte]

Next week. By the way, that is Richard Campbell of Net Rocks and Runnersradio.com and to his right, my left, your upside down. Mr. Paul Thurat of Thurat.com.

[Paul Thurat]

That'S right. He's so subjective.

[Leo Laporte]

He's not in the Upside Down. He should be, though. You could be, because that wall is.

[Paul Thurat]

So green and it's very neutral, kind of. It's corporate green. It's like an institutional color, isn't it?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it green or is it just the shading or is it white?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it's kind of a greenish blue.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, there's a little greeny.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Okay.

[Paul Thurat]

Are we going to try and name it?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you know what the color of the year is according to the great folks at Pantone? White.

[Richard Campbell]

It's.

[Paul Thurat]

It's a white, isn't it? Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

They call it like cloud. It's all Colors.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, they have a name, but it's.

[Richard Campbell]

It's inclusive this year.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

It's not that orange color from the iPhone.

Somehow.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I don't know how that happened. But anyway, this. That is not the color of your wall. It is last year's pantone color of the year. It is.

[Richard Campbell]

Although the we're facing is that orange color.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, some kind of orange.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it orange? Wow, that's interesting.

[Paul Thurat]

There's another wall. It's a color wall across from us here.

[Richard Campbell]

Wait a minute.

[Leo Laporte]

I take it back. The color of the year 2025 is Mocha Mousse. Oh, that is not mocha moose. Oh, my God.

[Richard Campbell]

That's unfortunate.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's not fortunate at all. Yeah, I thought it was a white.

[Richard Campbell]

Somebody told me mocha that's been put in a blender.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, maybe. Maybe this is 2025 and 2026. Because Cloud Dancer is the color of the year for 2025, so they give it the year coming. It's like a car company. So the color of the year 2026 is Cloud Dancer, which is a lot better than what we might call poop brown. All right, enough of that silliness. Let us do a show. Gentlemen, let us talk about Windows. It's the most wonderful time of the year.

[Richard Campbell]

Tuesday.

[Paul Thurat]

And I've been. I've been patched. And so have you.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, you noticed.

[Paul Thurat]

Oh, no, I. I could tell when you're updating computers. You curse a bunch.

I've. I've had a few days in the Thorat household and been very enjoyable. But you've learned you can tell when. When Paul's working. He's got four or five laptops going at once, and they're. They're angry noises.

[Leo Laporte]

You've learned your lesson.

[Richard Campbell]

Wow. It's. It's that one time of the week. I kind of move around a lot.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, kind of touching walls. Are there holes in the walls? Oh, wow. Sorry.

[Richard Campbell]

There are holes in the walls.

[Leo Laporte]

Something's. Something's gone terribly wrong.

[Richard Campbell]

There we go.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, no, no. Okay, we're going back.

So, fellas.

As you say in your show notes, it's the big one. Elizabeth, what is that? Yes, I know. It's a reference to.

[Richard Campbell]

That's a Sanford and Son reference.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Red fox.

By the way, he did eventually have a heart attack. And because he.

[Richard Campbell]

Irony.

[Leo Laporte]

Because he had been joking around for so many years, nobody believed joking. They thought he was joking.

[Richard Campbell]

He was the boy that cried wolf.

[Leo Laporte]

The boy that cried, Elizabeth. Yeah, that's kind of sad.

[Richard Campbell]

It is sad.

[Leo Laporte]

So What. So are you saying if it's. Are you. Is it really a big one? Like, you're a lot of change.

[Richard Campbell]

It is a big one. Okay, yeah, maybe it's not the big one, but it's. It's in the top half, I would say for 20, 25.

It's been, it's been a big year for updates.

It really has. I mean, you keep. I keep thinking it's going to slow down and every month they surprise me.

[Paul Thurat]

So next month will be slower because it's going to be, you know, the holiday season.

[Richard Campbell]

That's the theory.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah. But then again, they've even said as much, haven't they?

[Richard Campbell]

I guess we'll find out because I. Well, we'll talk about this in a moment because there's some insider stuff too.

But yeah. So if you remember last week we were talking about what was the Week D update, which went out in week A of the next month because of timing and holidays, whatever. So this is essentially that.

The big one that people will notice is, is I'm gonna see I take out one of these earbuds. Cause this is driving me crazy. Hearing my echo.

Is the File Explorer dark mode stuff has been improved dramatically. So File Explorer has had dark mode for a while, but now what they have is dark mode in the file copy progress, the about or the properties box, whatever, et cetera. The sub windows. Essentially, if you did install a preview update, you might have noticed what we lovingly call a flashbang, which.

You bring up a dark mode window for the first time and it flashes white and then goes dark.

[Paul Thurat]

It's awesome at night when that happens.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. If your eyeballs were working well before, they are not now. But they did fix that.

So that's good. So it seems good. And then this has the streamlined context menus, actually, I want to see. I'm just going to look at that now myself because I haven't seen that yet. But no, that's not.

I'm not looking at some good content here, but extremeline, that's what I'm looking for. You know, it is. Okay.

[Paul Thurat]

Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

So you know, in the sense that they have an open with menu, there's an AI actions menu, of course, there's always been a menu. And then a lot of these things that used to have individual items are now submenus. So OneDrive has submenus, which may have been there already actually, but photos does as well. So edit with photos, create with the designer, etc. You have an image.

[Paul Thurat]

So progress.

[Richard Campbell]

You said progress, not perfect.

[Paul Thurat]

Right? Yeah, I didn't talk about perfect. I just said progress. Oh, good.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay, that's good. If you have an A Copilot plus PC, a bunch of updates in here. So AI Agent and Settings. Click to do Windows Studio Effects, which is the external camera deal. What I'm going to call semantic search. But Windows Search all have been improved in various ways.

[Paul Thurat]

And do any of these things actually have dependencies on the hardware of a Copilot plus PC? Like are they using the.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, every one of them is using a local AI model and. Or the mpu.

[Paul Thurat]

Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. So now do they have to.

[Paul Thurat]

The fact that this thing, the Studio 2, has an NPU but doesn't qualify as copilot plus PC means I don't get any of these.

[Richard Campbell]

That's right.

[Paul Thurat]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

So I would imagine on your PC, even though it should work, they're not going to use an external usb, webcam or whatever they external. Like the rear. If you had a rear camera, which you might actually notice.

They won't let you. They probably won't let you use that Windows Studio effect on those cameras, but your computer could absolutely handle that.

[Paul Thurat]

That's me and my Nvidia 4060.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

Right. You can feel the heat coming off.

[Richard Campbell]

This thing right now.

[Paul Thurat]

Put your hand right there.

[Richard Campbell]

Microsoft AI has no idea that exists.

[Paul Thurat]

Nope, doesn't exist at all. But a 4060 in my laptop burns my fingers, can't use it.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep. And then, you know, for the normal people that don't have co pilot plus PCs, bunch of stuff just across, you know, widgets, which is. By the way, it's going to look awesome. I don't think I have it on this computer. Actually. I do. So Richie can see it, but you can't see it. But the. They've changed the widget board pretty dramatically. And now, honestly, it's. I think what people thought this was always going to be, which was widgets not used. Not the stupid Discover feed, which is still there, but it's actually a little hidden, which I like. So that's nice. And then just small things across Taskbar, Windows Share. Because it's been another month, we have to keep changing that. The full screen experience for Xbox is available on our computers and anyone can install it soon.

Some other things. So it's a bunch of stuff. And actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I kind of want to look at this system. So I should have.

I do not have. Never mind. All right. Oh, no, I do. Yeah. So if you. One way to know if you're up to date is you'll have an advanced page in Settings under System.

This stuff used to be around all over the place. Like the developer stuff is in here. So like developer mode, if using Visual Studio with modern apps, etc. But this is a good thing for a lot of people to go in and look at because there are things that I find to be really useful that you can enable in here. So for example, when you do a jump list on an item that's on the taskbar, right. So you right click, essentially you can add the end task item to it, which is a way to crash an app without having to go into Task Manager.

[Paul Thurat]

Nice.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it's. In a way it does the same. It works the same way. It's really nice. But the virtual workspace stuff is new in this build and that's where you get things like Hyper V, Sandbox, et cetera. If you have those, if you have support for that. But everyone listening to this show, check to see if you have this and wait for it to happen if you don't. But check out the option Center. This is worth looking at.

[Paul Thurat]

The advanced stuff is worth looking at.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Sudo, you can enable sudo, turn on.

[Paul Thurat]

Sudo, make your machine potentially more vulnerable, but you get to do what the cool Linux kids do.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, I actually think it's better to use sudo than to have an admin terminal window. Right. I mean, everything is admin that way. This way you can just do it.

[Paul Thurat]

That's when you just escalate. When you.

[Richard Campbell]

If only there was some operating system that invented this before Windows had it. It's hard to say now you're just talking crazy talk. That would have been nice.

So this is a big one. This is a big one. So there's that now as a potential preview for what Patch Tuesday might look like in January. Let me think about that. Yeah, we just got a new Devon beta builds through the Windows Insider Program.

25H2. And there are some big things in here as well. Right. So the first public preview of MCP support, which Microsoft technically announced it ignite, but said was coming at build right back in May.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So now it's starting to occur. And this is where you can connect different AIs to different. I'm going to call them apps, for lack of a better term. But it's basically a connection between apps and AI that standardized. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a bit. But that's starting to roll out a good improvement to quick machine recovery. I think we had Mentioned before that it won't go into an endless loop now like it used to. So that's there. But also it's automatically enabled now if you have a pro or above.

On a non domain joined computer. So like a normal person or whatever. An individual. Something Microsoft also announced at Ignite called this is because we need new acronyms. Unified Update Orchestration Platform. And this is a way for more updates to go through Windows Update rather than through the store or through some back end of whatever kind that someone might have. Maybe if you wouldn't get it an app and they have their own updating system, whatever. They're going to allow more and more apps to use Windows Update. For Apps Update. Fantastic. And then for you people still living with an Atari st Windows MIDI Services is finally there with full support for the midi 2.0 standard. Wow. I bet this hasn't been updated in 25 years or more.

[Paul Thurat]

No, no, there's been some updates to it. You can get USB to MIDI interfaces.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay. All right, well that's, that was 25 years ago.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

So. So that's happening.

I think that's most of it. Yeah, that's the most of the important stuff. So that's, that's what we can look at for next month. You know, for, for people on stable or whatever. Nice.

[Paul Thurat]

All right, good.

[Richard Campbell]

Now the bad news.

[Paul Thurat]

Oh.

[Richard Campbell]

So the past year we've gotten price up price increases on Microsoft 365 for consumers and they added the premium SKU, remember which has more AI stuff in it basically. But like family that was. Is for six people. But only the, the account owner gets all the AI stuff. There's no way to manage that. I'm hoping that changes at Ignite. They announced a bunch of new AI features and really kind of confused the matter frankly for people that are not paying for copilot for Microsoft 365 or Microsoft 365 copilot. So the main Office apps are getting a chat interface and you get some form of AI interaction without having to pay for it essentially is how that works. That's cool. You're thinking oh, Microsoft's giving me something for free. But they're not. So in July 2026 they're going to raise the price of virtually every Microsoft 365 commercial SKU. So I think there's two exceptions.

I shouldn't be totally cynical about this. I don't understand. I don't know why you're not going.

[Paul Thurat]

To be totally cynical about this. The company has been posting record Profits every quarter for two straight years.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't see how that's related to this, Richard.

[Paul Thurat]

They need to raise prices.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. Well, but they're also laying off people.

[Paul Thurat]

So it's not like clearly that makes total sense. Like this is a desperate time.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

For somebody.

[Richard Campbell]

There's been some shuffling of feature sets where you used to have to have the E5 for certain features, but I didn't get them any three, etc. It's still confusing because they have some that are named Office 365.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And not Microsoft 365. The most confusing, of course is there's a Microsoft 365 e3.3 and also an Office 365 e3. Because we're just screwing with you now. We have no idea what's going on.

[Paul Thurat]

I thought they were going to get rid of all the Office.

[Richard Campbell]

I did too.

[Paul Thurat]

Excuse. It's just, it's all Microsoft. Yep. All right. So I'm sure they're in some. Locked in some long term contracts that were early customers before.

[Richard Campbell]

The thing we're not seeing here too is that big companies get discounts on, you know, for volume.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

None of these numbers.

[Richard Campbell]

These numbers are just if you're retail prices that don't exist.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Remember I used to go to like Fry's Electronics and buy a box of Windows Server and it was like a thousand bucks.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

People don't buy things like that that way. Like, that's not how you buy that and this is not how you buy this. But, but some of these, depending on the sku, one of at least one of these is, I think, 33% higher than it was before per month. And you got to remember on the commercial side, this is per user per month. So if you have a bigger organization, this is big bucks.

[Paul Thurat]

If you, I mean, I don't only. Yeah, you're up a dollar. You're up two dollars. Like.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. But per user per month and that adds up.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. You know, I don't know if you know how math works, Rich.

[Paul Thurat]

I'm trying to figure it out, man. It's trying to keep up with you here.

[Richard Campbell]

This isn't compound interest. This is basic, basic math.

[Paul Thurat]

But yeah. No, if you're sitting, if you're sitting a couple of thousand seats, this is a bunch of money. But it's also. If you're sitting a couple thousand seats, you can negotiate.

[Richard Campbell]

Exactly. Yeah, that's true. That is true.

[Paul Thurat]

All you had to say really loudly is Google workspace and see what the numbers look like.

[Richard Campbell]

And because this is Microsoft. This was announced as a giant benefit to users because they've added like 3 million new features to Microsoft 365 this year.

Most of which are based on AI, of course. Right. And so I don't know.

[Paul Thurat]

Well, that's. The other part is like, where are the copilot pricing in all of this?

[Richard Campbell]

Well, that's in addition, and that hasn't changed, or at least not yet. And so they're maintaining that.

Street price, so to speak, of $30 per user per month on top of whatever these things are.

[Paul Thurat]

Right. But we still have some debate as to how many people are actually paying that.

[Richard Campbell]

Exactly. So they don't talk about that. But a lot of companies, you know, according to reports and so forth, are paying half that amount or 20 bucks per, you know, whatever it might be. Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

And there's been a lot of criticism. You know, how effective these tools are coming into the end of the year.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes.

So there's that, there's that, but that won't affect individuals.

[Paul Thurat]

Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

And then is this actually the next story? I guess it is. Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

We should take an average.

[Richard Campbell]

All right. So.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice. Very nice.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, yeah. You're gonna come back on the screen, Leo. I'm waiting to see how this goes for you. I'm really excited about it.

[Richard Campbell]

It was like a. It was like a. Really reluctant to.

[Leo Laporte]

Push the button.

[Richard Campbell]

Leo, push the button. I don't want to see what happens.

[Leo Laporte]

Hey, they fixed it while you. While I was awake. Away. Asleep.

We're gonna have more in just a bit with your genial hosts, Paul Thurat and Richard Campbell. But first, let's take a break for a word from our sponsor, 1Password. You know, it's easy to assume when you're a small business like ours or yours, maybe that you're flying under the radar. Right. No ransomware goons are going to attack you. Well, no, that's not true. The reality is small businesses are being targeted more and more by bad actors. I'm not sure why. Maybe cyber criminals know that small businesses have lean teams. Right. That they don't have the resources to prevent or respond to a breach, so they're vulnerable. Right. In short, there's bad news. Teams of any size can be a target. You know, I gotta tell the truth. The good news is even the smallest teams can foil cybercrime. And you do it with 1Password. 1Password provides simple security, affordable security to help small teams manage the number one risk, bad actors exploit and by far weak passwords. 1Password provides centralized management to make sure your company's logins are secure. It's a simple turnkey solution that can be rolled out in hours whether you have a dedicated IT staff or not. So however complex your security needs may get, 1Password will stay with you every step of the way. A password manager should be. I think you know. Do you agree? The first security purchase you make for your team. I presume you know that, right? Small businesses have to plan for the worst case scenario. You don't want your employees putting the post passwords on post it notes. But that's even less dangerous than reusing passwords on multiple sites. All it takes is one of those sites to get breached and you're dead in the water. You gotta guard against cyber attacks from the very beginning. Eliminate password reuse. Store passwords securely. For small teams, responsibility for security is often on one person who's already doing other things right? Juggling other business functions the most effective security solutions have got to be intuitive, EAs, user friendly so that everybody at your company will use it right. You don't want Joyce in accounting to go throw up her hands. I don't understand. I can't. I'm just going to always use monkey 1, 2, 3. There's what could possibly go wrong.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh.

[Leo Laporte]

1Password'S Enterprise Password Manager helps your company eliminate security headaches and improve security by identifying weak and compromised passwords and replacing them with strong, unique credentials. And Joyce and accounting will love it. It's intuitive. It's easy to use. Don't let one Password's name fool not just a password manager. One Passwords. EPM lets you securely store and share developer secrets and other sensitive data. Isn't that one of the ways you know these secrets get exfiltrated? You accidentally commit them to GitHub. How often does that happen? All the time. It's an easy oops, not if you store all those secrets in one Password. It'll also help you in the transition I think important transition to passwordless authentication. By transitioning to passkeys with EPM's simple automated workflows, your team can enforce security compliance and prevent breaches and potentially prevent millions of dollars in losses. Losses you can't afford. We can't afford. No one can. It's a single most impactful investment you can make in your company's security. So take the first step to better security by securing your team's credentials. Find out more1Password.com/Windows Weekly and start securing every login that's1Password.com Windows Weekly. We thank him so much for the support of Windows Weekly and the lovely and talented Paul and Richard in Malvern.

[Paul Thurat]

Our institutional background.

[Leo Laporte]

Malvern sounds like a Revolutionary war kind of a town.

[Richard Campbell]

You probably wore the name of like a battleship.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

From, you know, Galactica or something.

[Paul Thurat]

Melv. We did drive past Valley Forge, like.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah. Well, there you go. There you go.

[Richard Campbell]

Also by the Valley Forge Casino and.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah. Casino resort and buffet restaurant.

[Leo Laporte]

The Native Americans getting theirs back, by the way.

[Paul Thurat]

And I am going to do a little, you know, Pennsylvania history as part of the whiskey this week.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, exciting. Now, does there a plaque on the wall of that meeting room that said George Washington slept here?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, pretty sure.

[Paul Thurat]

No, no.

[Richard Campbell]

But it's going to say Paul Threat slept here because I'm exhausted.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, let's talk about AI. I think we've left that little.

[Richard Campbell]

First, I just want to mention that Keith, Keith S512 missed the first 30 minutes of the show. So I'm just going to go back to the beginning. I don't want to start over for Keith.

[Leo Laporte]

He just got here. Huh?

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, I know. I don't know what's going on. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

For some reason he says.

[Paul Thurat]

I thought it was Thursday weekly.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, he is in the uk. It is a little confusing back there, you know.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Speaking of the Revolutionary War. Yes.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah. Time is an illusion. Lunchtime. Doubly so.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

So, AI.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes, AI. I don't know if you guys noticed this, but there's some companies have been marketing this AI thing pretty hard this year.

[Leo Laporte]

No kidding.

[Richard Campbell]

And I know it hasn't really been in the news. I don't think it doesn't cost that much, so it's not really impacting anything. But the big thing, and this is at least a year old now is this agentic AI thing. Right. And I thought to myself, for all the marketing, for all of the hype, there's actually a bunch of stuff that does work well, that is we would call AI and it's. None of it is agencic. Like none of it, Almost none of it. So I thought maybe I could come up with just a quick list, you know, of things that actually work.

So whether you're an AI cheerleader, an AI denider, or somewhere in the middle, whatever it might be, we can have this kind of middle ground where this is where AI actually is making sense. If that makes sense.

First thing though, I wanted to say is for weeks, months maybe, I've been talking about this thing. I didn't know what to call it as we make apps in Windows or apps on your mobile device.

Controllable by or accessible to AI. I've been calling it programmatic, like a programmatic app, and I've compared it to the Comm la decom, whatever stuff from the 90s. But the idea is that this thing has public interfaces that you wouldn't see as a human being, but a service like an AI agent could access to get at features of those apps. We just talked about the streamlining of the context menu and file expo. That's an example of that type of thing where you.

Basically publicize or publish however you want to say it, individual features of apps that you can take, like actions you can take on certain files. So you right click a document and you can say rewrite this with Word or whatever the capabilities. Turns out there is a term for this and I've heard it before, even in this context. I just didn't make the connection. I was watching an OpenAI podcast video about their browser Atlas Chat, GTP Atlas, and they were talking about the Semantic Web and I thought that's it, that's the term, it's semantic. And semantic basically means in this context, machine controllable. And in the future we're probably gonna have websites that will have two versions. There'll be that public facing version that you see with your eyes usually and interact with your hand or a mouse or whatever it is. And then there's gonna be the semantic version version, which is the machine readable thing that AI agents will interact with instead of scraping the screen, which is really unsophisticated. And so I think we could apply that term to apps as well. I don't know that this is how people are describing this, but if there is a semantic Web, I think we could argue there will be semantic apps as well and that we see the beginnings of that in Windows. Like I said, I'll right click an image. And so you have AI Actions is what we're calling them in Windows. So you can visual search with Bing, blur a background with photos, erase objects with photos, remove background with paint. So those are kind of semantic capabilities of the app. Now in this case, the app is going to run, you're going to see it, you're going to interact with it, but this is how AI will buy things for you in the background and that kind of stuff. So I just wanted to throw that out there as a term. So I asked Richard, I asked my wife, I asked Laurent just for some examples. I came up some on my own. And I think the best use cases, if you will, which is features, right? AI is not a product It's a feature, you know, generating summaries. Right. And so we all know you can get summaries of an article you read on the web.

[Paul Thurat]

I just used Google to ask, what did Washington do at Valley Forge? And he gave me a nice summary.

[Richard Campbell]

That's, that's the second one. Wait, we're gonna get that. Web based articles, documents of all kinds, obviously. Those were obvious. My wife is saying that she gets zoom meeting summaries.

AI is just good at that kind of thing, and that's kind of cool. And the meeting thing is interesting because whether you're using teams or zoom or whatever, it might be a meeting you were in, but it might also be a meeting you were not in. And you might want to see what the summary is and then you might want to go listen to key parts of it or whatever.

[Paul Thurat]

I'm also seeing now policies for some meetings where no AI are allowed. And I was at Microsoft, I was on an MVP call.

[Richard Campbell]

We said, curious.

[Paul Thurat]

I just booted all your, the, the MVP note. All of the AI note takers.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay.

[Paul Thurat]

I mean, they put out a summary, so you don't need to.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, I see. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I think summaries are. This is just not universal, but I think it's, it might be the most common use case. And then the whole. You ask a question, get an answer, which is what you just did. Right. This is typically a Google search scenario when you think about it. Not all times, but many times what you're looking for is the answer to some question. You're not looking for a list of links, you know what choices you want the answer.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And I think that's when people say, like chat GPT or something will take over for Google search. I think this is what they're talking about because.

[Paul Thurat]

And it's Google doing it.

[Richard Campbell]

And Google. Well, Google is now doing it too. Yes, exactly. So that's very interesting to me. My wife had really like specific queries that she used that worked really well. One of them was our daughter had to renew her license. What is the best DMV to go to in eastern Pennsylvania tomorrow morning? And it spit out this answer that explained where and why. And it was like, you know what? And it worked, by the way. We're great. She, she got in and out of this place. It worked great.

The meeting thing, as a follow on to the summary is here's the summary of the meeting. Maybe you weren't there. Maybe you were. You can say, did my name come up? Right. So if you have an action item or you know, something to do from that meeting, you'll know. Like that's useful. When we first moved into the house, we had this.

Like a clog in the sewer under the house and this metal thing came out of it and the guy was like, I don't know, he's like, this looks like it's from the 1800s or something.

[Leo Laporte]

And I'd be baffled there.

[Richard Campbell]

No one knew what to do. Yeah, how do you search for that? So at the time my son put it on Reddit and said, what is this?

[Paul Thurat]

Oh, that's.

[Richard Campbell]

We found out within 15 minutes.

[Leo Laporte]

Sure.

[Richard Campbell]

And you can do that type of thing, right? With. With AI, Right? What is this?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I've done it all the time.

[Paul Thurat]

I was Picture feature now.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurat]

Does that really.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I was walking down the street in our neighborhood and there were these things that look like snowshoes on the wires, right. And I thought, I don't know. And then I thought, oh, I could probably ask AI.

[Richard Campbell]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

And it immediately said, oh yeah, that's for five.

[Richard Campbell]

There's a, there's a wire with a ball in the middle.

[Paul Thurat]

What's the ball?

[Leo Laporte]

What's that?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, so actually that's number four is visual search. Every one of us now. Well, most of us now have a phone that will do some form of that. You point it at a thing, could be a business, it could be an object and say, what is this thing? And if it's a, if it's an object, you can then go and say, well, where do I buy it? Or if that's what you wanted, you know, anyway, we don't have to go through every one of these in detail. But writing help, everyone needs writing help. This is going to be. Is everywhere and will be everywhere. Automation, which I think is the. This is the dark horse, this is the productivity scenario I think is going to be a big deal next year, which is we in the Microsoft space have had various ways to automate kind of workplace productivity scenarios, whatever, but they require code, they're complex. Normal people will never do them. But now that we can talk, we can kind of babble our way through this. Every time Richard emails me, I want an alert, that kind of thing. You might not have to do that in the interface of your email application, but you can ask that. And this is just a no brainer so that kind of thing.

[Paul Thurat]

There is this idea of a new UX just from.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes. And you know, we all made fun of Satya Nadella when he was. He said, you know, I see Copilot as the Future Start menu. We're like, you know, but, but I hate to say it, but you might be onto something. Because the big difference between everything I'm describing here and the other things we'll talk about is that a lot of this is about intent. It's like you have some goal in mind. In the past, you had to understand how the commands worked in an app, maybe what the UI meant. You had to kind of master a tool. And now you can just say, look, I just want to get this done. Here's the thing I want, you know, and as, as it progresses, that will get more and more sophisticated. It's rather incredible.

[Paul Thurat]

There was a time when you went to a computer to do a task. Now you just go to the computer. So you're kind of reminding us, like you could now be just focusing on the tactic.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm never going to talk to my computer, Richard. It's like, you know what? Give it a day.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

You are going to talk to the computer. I mean, he knows I talk to my computer all day long.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah. It's just not listening.

[Richard Campbell]

It's, it's just mostly profane.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

I can't tell you how I've seen some of the conversations. I see people, especially developers.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes.

[Paul Thurat]

With the bots, the coding generators, as we're calling them these days. Like they're really quite mean to them. Like they. Yeah, it's an HR violation, except it happens to be software.

[Richard Campbell]

It's okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's okay then. Right?

[Richard Campbell]

Take it out on the bot. Yeah. I don't know. I think.

That'S interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

There are different camps on this, by the way.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

On what?

[Paul Thurat]

On whether you should, whether you should be cursing at the software.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Lisa, routinely when Amazon's Echo is talking or Siri is talking, says, shut the F up.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. And see, I, I relate to that. Yeah. That's how I interrupt.

[Paul Thurat]

Interrupt me.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I'm. I'm working here. I'm busy here. And so I. Yeah, I understand that. And it is just software, but then I've talked to parents and parents have, you know, some parents say, you know.

[Richard Campbell]

We don't want just the basic kids.

[Leo Laporte]

To be rude in any fair enough circumstance, so. I understand both points.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, No, I, Yeah, I see both sides.

[Leo Laporte]

It's not in my nature to say mean things, even to an age.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, it's in my nature.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I know that very well, Paul.

[Richard Campbell]

Accessibility wise, language translation and captioning are amazing.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Doing those things live on the fly is amazing.

[Paul Thurat]

Astonishing.

[Richard Campbell]

Doing those things together is babelfish. And that is amazing. So if you have like these headphones or with the Google thing or whatever, it doesn't matter. And you can sit there and have a conversation with someone else where for them they're hearing in your voice, their language, and then for you, you're hearing in their voice, your language. That's a. That's magic. Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

Earlier this year, I went to a wedding entirely in Dutch, which I do not understand. Right. But I turned on Translate and it was doing it real time for me.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. 100%.

[Paul Thurat]

Just expect it to work, really.

[Richard Campbell]

It's amazing. It's straight up. It's amazing. Software development, I think, is the first obvious win for AI. Not that it's perfect, and that's not really the point, but this is also an important indication of what this relationship really is between the developer and AI, which is not that I tell the AI to make a game and walk away, and I've made a game. You have to know what you're doing. You have to make sure you know someone is looking at the code. It's helping them get something done. And to me, this is just the difference between spending all day looking through stack overflow answers to questions and just getting the job done and moving on to the next thing, you know. So to me, that's a win.

[Paul Thurat]

And certain personalities, and I know a few of them can have 6, 7, 8 of these running simultaneously on a project.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, yeah. Like, because it will come back later with some big.

[Paul Thurat]

That's right.

[Richard Campbell]

Part of it. Yes. Yep.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, it's. It, it's changing. It is a new way to approach software development. It's not the only way, and it's certainly not set. But we're starting to see this emerge.

[Richard Campbell]

Fundamentally, to me, AI is about making or saving you time, saving you money or saving you both. And if you think about a developer 30 years ago, 35 years ago, they would go to a bookstore, buy a big book, and they have this reference and that they would slowly, ponderously find answers. The questions are hopefully correct. The Internet happened. It became faster, but we're still looking, scrolling through lists of blue links, in and out, in and out, trying to find the answer. This is. This is the next step. It's. I don't mean to say it's perfect, but it's a faster way to get to the same place. That's the point. Saving you time, which saves you money.

[Leo Laporte]

I use it all the time. This is a huge fan.

[Richard Campbell]

Transformative.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, just mentioning AI. We have coming up on the next show, intelligent machines A very interesting guest. He jailbreaks AI. He does it both for companies and for fun and has become his basic.

[Paul Thurat]

Kind of pen tester.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, kind of Pliny. And he. Steve Gibson talked about him.

[Paul Thurat]

Red teamers.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, Steve Gibson talked about him a few months ago. Basically the premise was there is no AI known that cannot be jailbroken. And then asked for, you know, illicit things or whatever. It's just taken off track.

[Paul Thurat]

Anyway.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it's impossible. So he, because of his kind of interesting sideline, he will be hidden and will use a voice changer.

[Richard Campbell]

I love it. Oh, that's right. Like an old 60 Minutes interview. Yeah, yeah. So Jim Morrison is alive, he's living in Paris.

[Leo Laporte]

So I think, I don't know, it's going to be very interesting. I just wanted to put a little plug in for that because you're not going to want to miss it if you're interested in all this and it is a relevant topic. Because.

The whole idea of AI safety might be.

Bogus, to be honest.

[Richard Campbell]

Or it's so different from traditional technology security that requires a new way of thinking.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, right. You know, most of the best pen testers I know can break into pretty much any system no matter how hard you try.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly.

[Paul Thurat]

Really the question is what happens after that?

[Leo Laporte]

Right, yeah, so. So plenty. The prompter will be plenty.

[Richard Campbell]

The prompter.

[Leo Laporte]

Pliny the Liberator, he calls himself sometimes.

[Richard Campbell]

I love it.

[Leo Laporte]

He'll be our guest coming up in about an hour and a half. That's cool. The intelligent machines. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. I'm sorry, I didn't, I didn't mean to continue on. Continue on.

[Richard Campbell]

Completely relevant. So questions and answers. But there's also this, the next step, like more advanced kind of research based queries, I guess, for lack of a better term. A lot of this stuff is one off. This is the thing I talk about a lot where I'm saying once a year I have to make this chart. I don't want to master Excel, just want to make the chart, you know, or I'm going to go to Paris for a week. It's the only time I'm ever going. I want to make sure I don't miss anything. But I don't have to become an expert in Paris. I just want to, you know, get the trip, you know, figured out. Education, learning, white paper, whatever you want to think of this as. This is often this is the one thing that edges into this agencic area where something might go off for a while. Do that deep thinking thing or whatever and come back and maybe you have an interaction over time or maybe you're doing something like, I want to get surround sound speakers for my living room. This is the system I have now. This is what I'm looking for. I'm only going to buy this thing once, then I'm going to be done forever. You know, I don't have to become an expert in standards of, you know, how sound works or whatever. Like I just, I just want to do it the one time. Then I'm going to make this purchase and I'm going to be done forever, you know, that kind of thing. So it's research, for lack of a better term. And then this is like a, this is a semi controversial because people think about it in terms of AI is making music or making poems or making books or making movies or whatever it might be, but not that type of entertainment, but rather you're a Spotify user and there are AI based playlists, you know, based on your likes or something. You play online multiplayer games like I do, and it can create maps or locales or I guess Alexa this week turned on a feature for Prime Video where you can say, just talk to it. Go to that place in the video. You watch the Jurassic Park. Go to the part where the Tyrannosaurus is attacking the Ford Explorer, which is a wonderful natural language way to interact with something. It has nothing to do with the way we've ever navigated through a movie before at all. You know, does that work?

[Leo Laporte]

You can do that?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it just came out. This is a new thing. I've not used it, but just wow. So there's probably a lot more. But I'm trying to, I'm trying to separate the hype from the reality. Right. This notion that agents are going to go do things on your behalf is mostly science fiction today. It doesn't mean it doesn't happen literally. But some people are starting to do this kind of things, but.

But this is all they talk about. And this is not what most people's experiences are. But I just listed, I don't know how many that was 10 or more. That stuff's all real. It's happening right now.

[Paul Thurat]

It's.

[Richard Campbell]

You can all get this right now. It's free basically for everybody. And it's real, you know, so. And again, there are these extremes with AI and I get it, but if you kind of land in the middle somewhere, this is, I think, where we're at. It's pretty good, by the way. Right? That's a good set of stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

I think I. Gemini has blown me away. The new Gemini 3.0.

[Richard Campbell]

Same.

[Paul Thurat]

And I use it totally for granted now that you can take a photo of any of anything and your phone will tell you what's in the picture.

[Leo Laporte]

Y.

[Richard Campbell]

The. It's amazing. So good.

[Paul Thurat]

You've forgotten. It was impossible.

[Richard Campbell]

You forgot you couldn't do two seconds ago. I mean, the image that I used for the. That article, which Richard can see here, looks like a photograph. It's not. It's generated by Gemini. And, you know, I've been generating images for a couple years now. Two and a half years, almost three years. And most of them are pretty cartoony. You can tell they're generated. You can often tell they're generated.

[Leo Laporte]

This one? No.

[Richard Campbell]

This one? Not so much.

[Paul Thurat]

It's getting harder.

[Leo Laporte]

This one? No. Which article?

[Richard Campbell]

No, it's the. When AI works.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, okay. I'll find it.

[Richard Campbell]

It looks like a photo from an ad.

[Leo Laporte]

We used to say. Oh, yeah, you can always tell. No, no, you can't tell.

[Richard Campbell]

No.

[Paul Thurat]

Tough. No, no, no.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah. This does look like.

[Richard Campbell]

It looks like a photo.

[Leo Laporte]

Looks like a Microsoft ad.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah, that's. I didn't mean that. But yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

The only thing that's wrong on it is that the text is not backwards. He's looking through it, reading through a screen, and it says, AI Optimization complete. But you can read it. It should be backwards, but you could easily fix that with just a secondary prompt saying, can you mirror image that text? And it would do it perfectly.

[Richard Campbell]

I just think it's like in the shortened amount of time we've had this stuff, it's a. It's amazing what you can do. It's amazing how much it's improved. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, he's even got audio engine speakers. I don't know what these boxes are, though, in the left. I feel like those are a little.

[Richard Campbell]

Don't overthink it, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

This is like Joel Spencer is hiding in the next Xbox console in the background or something.

[Paul Thurat]

I am just excited. There's the right number of fingers.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you say he should be an Asian guy or was just random?

[Richard Campbell]

Nope, that's random.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I. I think. Is this used anthropic for this or. Gemini. What did you.

[Richard Campbell]

No, Gemini.

[Leo Laporte]

Gemini Nano, Banana. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. I think that Google has kind of trained it to be diverse.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, that's fine. As soon as I saw this, I was like, yeah, that's it. We're done.

[Leo Laporte]

Don't tell Trump, but I don't mind it. No, it's fine.

[Richard Campbell]

You shouldn't mind it. You should embrace it. It's great.

[Leo Laporte]

I embrace it.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And you know, I've been using. So, you know, every year we do these advent of code challenges, which are a lot of fun coding challenges. And I used to have, you know, I have a library of Lisp books and I used to. I'd have to go and look up, oh, what is the name? I'm sure you do that too. Anybody with coding, you know, you don't remember always a syntax and you're. Your editor might help you with that. But sometimes you need to kind of look stuff up. I just use AI now, and I gave it all the books because almost every. This is the beauty of using an ancient language. Almost all the books are available online because they're not being sold anymore. So I just uploaded all the PDFs. It's got 20 different Linux, classic Linux, Common List books in it, and it knows everything. And I can even say, well, if I want to use this library, how would I do it? And it will just go and say, yeah, you just do it this way.

[Paul Thurat]

Nice.

[Leo Laporte]

It's incredible.

[Richard Campbell]

And even in what you just said, what you're really describing in a way is you're communicating it with it naturally. You're not doing the machinations of. I see this example in a book, but I want to do it in a different way over here. And you're doing it. You're just describing what you want.

[Leo Laporte]

It's even great.

[Richard Campbell]

That's the.

[Leo Laporte]

It's even great debugging. So if. I mean, occasionally I'll do something. And I just.

[Richard Campbell]

It's.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know, I can't see what's wrong with it. It's like having a programming partner. And you just say, can you.

[Richard Campbell]

Someone you can throw something against?

[Leo Laporte]

And it goes, oh, yeah, you have an extra parenthesis here. Oh, thank you.

[Paul Thurat]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

It's amazing, right?

[Richard Campbell]

This is why, you know, again, so many people are so down on this stuff. And I know, I get it, I.

[Leo Laporte]

Try to correct them.

[Richard Campbell]

We feel threatened and all that stuff. But, yeah, there are these. Everything I described is not. Is transformative in some way, most of it in some small way, but it's just happening everywhere, you know, and it's making things better.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

How come your laptop is curiously angled?

[Leo Laporte]

You guys are leaning to the right. I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm leaning against him.

[Leo Laporte]

And I think, Richard, push back.

I just said in the club two Discord. Paul's on the decline.

[Richard Campbell]

And Richard.

Yes, I would call it the Recline, but, yeah, fair enough.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you see there's a lot of talk in the discord now about the AI ad from McDonald's, which is, you.

[Richard Campbell]

Know, the dystopian Christmas? Yeah, it's pretty.

[Leo Laporte]

I can't play it because I. McDonald's will get mad at me, but y. And I need my Big Mac fix, but it looks like it's in Dutch, so it might be.

[Richard Campbell]

Not available worldwide, but it's not available anymore at all. They pulled it.

[Leo Laporte]

They pulled it.

Because this is. And this is what you're countering. There is a visceral reaction among people. Anti AI reaction.

[Richard Campbell]

Like. Right. That's what I mean.

[Leo Laporte]

We hate all AI and we're never.

[Richard Campbell]

Going to the thing. I don't know if it was last week or the week before I blurted this out, just in talking about this, because you were talking about there is a visual reaction. And I said, well, what if we just called it technology? Does that change the opinion of people at all? And it's like, when you think about it like, this is just another thing that's making something you use better.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you think this is the same reaction that we've seen time and time again to new technologies?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, 100%. This is like, this is from pencil to pen to typewriter to electric typewriter to word processor to word on a PC. You know, like, there were people like, no, I'm writing on a piece of paper. That's how. I think Dan Brown writes books like that now.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, right.

[Richard Campbell]

What is he, some kind of a psychotic idiot? Like, what? Like, what are you doing? It's crazy. No.

[Paul Thurat]

Plenty of artists is like, if you haven't put pen to paper, you haven't put paint to canvas, you're not really creating art.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. And then the guy who's over here with Photoshop is like, really? Look at this masterpiece I created. Screw you. When I was a kid, I was into art.

[Paul Thurat]

I did art.

[Richard Campbell]

I won all these art awards. And one of the things I really struggled with because computers hadn't happened yet for this kind of stuff, was you could make mistakes on a paper with pencil, erase, pencil, erase, pencil, erase. You would wear the paper through, you know, the ability to undo forever or whatever. And to have a design where you're like, okay, this is good, but I want to do it again. But do this part over. Like, this is. Anyone who's created anything has run into this. I don't understand not embracing technology that makes your life easier and better.

[Paul Thurat]

Well, and part of this is. The name is terrible. There's science fiction connected to it. So people's perceptions are distorted. It's helped them raise a ridiculous amount of money.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurat]

But it also has upset people because of. They believe the science fiction part.

[Leo Laporte]

Because when has AI ever gone well in sci fi?

[Paul Thurat]

Never. Because it doesn't make for a good story. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a good enemy.

[Paul Thurat]

It's reality.

[Leo Laporte]

It's.

[Richard Campbell]

You never hear the stories where everything worked and everyone was fine. Yeah, that's, you know, hell got us.

[Paul Thurat]

To Jupiter and we figured everything out, went home happy.

[Richard Campbell]

That was a joke on SNL about some new Jurassic park movie. The guy had never seen the movie and he says, oh, this is great. He goes, everyone went to the island, the dinosaurs were friendly, no one died. He's like, what is, what movie is that?

[Leo Laporte]

Amazing.

[Richard Campbell]

You know?

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm not like an AI cheerleader at all. I'm not.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I kind of stupid about it, but in fact, I hate it when people said, oh, the bubble's gonna burst and all that. That's about finance. That's not about.

[Richard Campbell]

To me, I was gonna say the bubble bursting is a financial problem. It's not a technology problem. Right.

[Paul Thurat]

And I think there's such technology with this much money and now that it goes away, we're going to continue to use it.

[Richard Campbell]

That's right.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Look, any of us who have been around for any amount of time have seen this pattern before, which is the.

[Paul Thurat]

Web disappear in 2001.

[Richard Campbell]

No, no, I, if I'm not mistaken, we're using it more than ever.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

It becomes more accessible, it becomes less expensive. It becomes, you know, more people can do things with it. It gets more powerful. I mean, this is what happens.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, the, the downturns are useful for focusing on what's actually valuable instead of just trying things non stop. Like, yeah, it's.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't care about, I mean, I do, but I focus, I care about technology. Like I just, you know, I care about the products and services that, you know, the. Okay, they're making money or not making money, whatever. It's a conversation. But that's not where. I don't approach it this way. So you can get lost in that. Especially with AI because the numbers are so skewed and so enormous, we don't even know how to make sense of it.

But whatever. This bubble bursts or it doesn't, but this stuff isn't going away. Guys. I'm sorry, like, this is. No one is, no one is taking away spell checking and grammar checking because you think you can write Better than anybody. And don't need that, you know, because I have news for you. Maybe you can, but the rest of the world does need that.

[Leo Laporte]

So let me pause. We have more AI to talk about and some negative stuff. Oh, yeah, we're not. We're not all cheerleaders here, but I do want to talk a little bit about this thing, which is because the holidays are coming and our sponsor has a great gift for you to give. If you're looking for a gift to give, it is. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the aura frame. I have my aura frame right here. I want to show you. Now, there's something you might say, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. That aura frame is plugged in? Yes. Because after having it for three months, it finally has this thing says, please recharge your aura frame. So I'm going to unplug the cable because here's the beauty part. Doesn't need to be plugged in for three months. And what's cool about. So it is a digital frame, but it's using E ink. There's baby's first Christmas, by the way. That's me. I'm the baby. You take all of your old family photos, all the pictures that are stored on a hard drive somewhere that you never get to see, and now you can put them on your wall and see them whenever you're, you know, looking up. The beauty of the Oura Ink frame is it looks. Look how thin it is. It's just like a picture on a, you know, picture frame. A very slim bezel because there's no wires. It doesn't look like something hanging on your wall that is digital. It is a photo. It's Aura Ink is Aura's all new cordless color epaper frame. Now, I know you know the name Aura consistently year after year picked as the best digital frames, but this is something brand new from Aura and really, really cool. The whole point of this is it doesn't look like a digital frame. It doesn't look. It's not a LCD screen. Meet Ink, Aura's first ever cordless color E paper frame. Featuring a sleek 0.6-inch profile. And it's a softly lit 13.3-inch display. Ink feels like a print. It functions like a digital frame and perhaps most importantly, lives completely untethered by cords. With a rechargeable battery. Lasts up to three months on a single charge. Unlimited storage and the ability to invite others to add photos via the Aura frames app. It's the cordless wall hanging frame. You've been waiting for and they just announced this week a new feature. You can, with a phone number that's registered in the Aura app, text images to the frame. In fact, let me, let me do that right now. What's cool about that is I'm going to give this as a gift to my mom who's in the old age home and she just loves looking at old pictures. We brought over all the family albums because we wanted to.

It's a great way for her to kind of connect with the past and with the family. She's got a little bit of Alzheimer's and so this is nice. It's a really wonderful thing. She loves the pictures. Let me just send a picture over via text. So I'll be able to do that in the Aura frame. If I take a picture, you know, of our Christmas tree or the grandkids around the Christmas tree opening presents, I just text it to grandma and it's there. What a great gift, right You. The Aura software is the best. It's great adding this new feature. This text messaging is great but you can always add stuff from your albums remotely. You just connect it to WI fi and it's automatically getting the new photos. This is a transformation in E paper technology. What they've done is really cool. There are millions of tiny ink capsules in here that they transform into your favorite photos. It renders them in, I would say vintage. It looks like a vintage photo. In fact, these are vintage photos of me as a kid. Can't wait till grandma to see this. They've done some real design innovation. They've really, they've really worked on this. I think to make it something extra special. That's me again. Baby's first Christmas. And I apologize that I have to charge this. It's been three months. It's been before we started doing the ads. I haven't plugged this thing in so I will as soon as we're done, I'll plug it in now.

[Richard Campbell]

It.

[Leo Laporte]

It has a. This. The graphite inspired bezel, the paper textured mat, the glossy front make it completely. It looks completely like a framed photo on your wall. Not a device which I really like. It's not another screen in your house. Unlimited free photos. The Aura app is fantastic. This would be such a gift for any family member, any friend. You know, if you have a friend group you want to share pictures with them. This would be perfect. Aura Inc. The perfect gift for anyone who appreciates innovative design and cutting edge technology and maybe doesn't want a screen hanging on the wall a u r a f R-A-M-E-S.com ink ink is the name of the. Of this frame. It's sleek, it's subtle, it's stunning. Ink blends the warmth of a printed photo with the versatility of an E paper frame. Again, no chords, no fuss, just your memories beautifully displayed wherever you want them. Head to auraframes.com Inc. See for yourself. Mention the show at checkout. It supports us. That's auraframes.com Inc. Act now because they're offering a limited time holiday discount which ends soon. We called him and said, hey, I see you got a discount. And he said, yeah, just say it in the app. But we don't know how long we're going to leave it up. I said, okay, well, and soon, folks, now's the time. Or frames.com Inc. I am a fan. Richard and Paul are in Malvern, Pennsylvania at the Microsoft office. Do they have offices in every community? Is that how it works?

[Richard Campbell]

No.

[Paul Thurat]

Why Mountain used to be they closed a bunch of them.

[Richard Campbell]

It's been here a long time. It's Philly, basically.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, okay.

[Paul Thurat]

Philadelphia.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a suburban Philly. And it's a sales office probably, right? More than anything.

[Paul Thurat]

Mostly. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

It's a lot of display structure and stuff outside this room for various verticals.

[Leo Laporte]

And you're gonna do a special live.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

Meetings and so forth.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah. So there's a user group meeting being held here. Philly.net and we're.

[Leo Laporte]

Carl, that's kind of neat. So they do it, they leave it. They have it for user groups too. That's cool.

[Paul Thurat]

It's been a while since we've done one of these, so Byron's looking forward to.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice.

[Richard Campbell]

Be fun.

[Leo Laporte]

Very cool.

All right. More AI news.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. So I think a year ago, Ish Anthropic came up with mcp, which is the. What is the model context protocol, which they gave out and was instantly adopted by all the big players, Microsoft including.

And Flash forward a year. And now Microsoft is one of the founding members of something that's called the. What is it called? The.

Agentic AI Foundation. So aif, which sounds like an Apple sound format to me, audio format of some kind. But Amazon, aws, Anthropic Block, Cloudflare, Bloomberg.

All the big tech players, Google, OpenAI as well are all founding members. Three key contributions at the beginning, I should say this is going to be under the Linux Foundation.

This is basically an open, transparent organization for creating standards for essentially for AI agents. I guess. So MCP is One of the first contributions Block made something called goose with a lowercase G which is for local on device. Device AI agents I should say sorry. And then agents MD, which is the OpenAI kind of ad hoc standard for instructing AI agents on how to work using, giving them the context they need to complete whatever the task is. So they're building off of that. But then the rest of the. I don't know what to call this thing, the program, the foundation, whatever it is, consist of like every big tech company you can think of except for Apple and Meta by the way, conspicuously absent from this list. But if they're probably going to be part of it or using technology that will be part of it anyway.

[Leo Laporte]

This is actually related to one of our sponsors agency. There's also a Linux foundation project.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, they had come up in our space about a year ago because they started that. It's a stupid name but supporters of Chromium based browsers program and the idea it's essentially a lot of them. Yeah, yeah. But not just browsers but also just kind of Chromium based applications essentially. Right. And I think just trying to not take it away from Google but. But take it away from Google, if that makes sense to.

[Paul Thurat]

To seems to be the theme with everything AI. Yeah, I mean that is open AI. We're taking all your stuff.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm not calling it that but.

[Paul Thurat]

But that's kind of what the dip.

[Richard Campbell]

Sort of what it is. Yeah. So anyway, interesting. Maybe a natural thing and this had come up months ago on the show we were talking about AI and why are these companies.

Collaborating on this stuff so much? It's kind of notable in this market but I think it has to do with the current regulation, climate and the way politics are right now, et cetera. These companies are like let's move quick and get this stuff in before anyone can put a stop to it. And they're all working together. So this is kind of interesting. I mean, you know.

We'Ll see what comes with that. But the point here is that you will create AI agents so you might be Microsoft, Google, whatever, open AI, whatever and these things will all be interoperable. So an AI agent that can work off of OpenAI models will work off of copilot models, will work off of anthropic models or whatever. So.

[Paul Thurat]

But it seems like they're heading on the path of W3C or IETF. Just try to put together a group that maintain some standards and certainly early on here these various teams are just going to be submitting stuff People can decide they're going to adopt it or not.

[Richard Campbell]

That's right. That's right. And look, I mean, I'm sure Anthropic had a couple of geniuses that came up with mcp. Other people looked at, said, oh my God, that's amazing, we're totally doing this. But this will allow that to happen on a grander scale where it could be some contributor from someplace you would never expect is going to walk and say, hey, what about this thing? And it might, it will become part of the standard. Right. So it's good in the less good department. The researchers, industry analysts at Gardner have warned their customers that AI browsers are a security or cybersecurity risk that we do not understand and that organizations should block their rollout across the board, like universally. And they're specifically looking at things like perplexity, Comment, you know, chat, GPDAplus. But their definition of an AI browser is that it has to have two things. So there's an AI sound sidebar where you're looking at content on the web and interacting with it over here, summarizing, rewriting, etc. But also those agenda capabilities. And that's the thing we always talk about the autonomously, this thing is going to go out and do something on your behalf, complete some task, it's going to buy a product, it's going to charge you credit cards, whatever it's going to do. We hear a lot about this stuff. We don't see a lot of it happening. It's not that it's not happening, but it's basically not happening. By that definition, Microsoft Edge is an agenic AI browser. It has both of those things. So now in preview, right.

The new Copilot features, I think actions and discoveries qualify for this. This is absolutely there. Google will be there soon with Chrome. They've announced that they're going there. They have the sidebar, of course, but they're.

[Paul Thurat]

They don't have.

[Richard Campbell]

The agency stuff is not just there yet, but obviously they're doing this. And I have to say, like, I'm not, like, not an AI cheerleader, but also not an AI alarmist, but they make a pretty good case, honestly, that these things may be. And this is not that I think it was. Yeah, Vivaldi basically came out and said, look, we're never putting AI in our browser. There's plenty of ways to do AI. If you're using our browser and want to use AI, you're not ever going to be limited. And then you have the other end of the Spectrum, where it's like, it's just going to be AI. Everything's going to be AI.

It's weird because I feel like people read less than ever and there are people who are saying, I don't need this thing doing things on my behalf. I want to read the web. I want to browse the web. And it's like, yeah, I'm not sure many people are actually doing what you're describing, per se, but don't even know.

[Paul Thurat]

If you're doing it.

[Richard Campbell]

You're saying it exactly. So I'm not sure what to say. But I do know that automating things on the back end that have access to your private data, not just your credit card information, but just your health data, whatever it might be, this is dangerous. And this does need to have secure controls in place that we know work. And right now we don't know of any that work. We just talked about this. You're going to have someone on the next show that will make this case. And it's correct. It's. There is. We don't know of a way to actually effectively secure these things. Even the companies that are pushing this really hard will say, you know, be careful. Maybe don't put your credit card in there. Like, you know, start small.

[Paul Thurat]

Make sure your data estate is in order.

[Richard Campbell]

Dear Data Estate, it's going to be your state soon if you're not careful because you're not going to be around.

So fair enough. I don't think that this is something that will be the advice forever, but maybe part of this AI foundation we were just talking about. One of the things they can work up is what Microsoft is working on, as I'm sure these other companies are working on as well, separately, which is how do we actually secure this stuff? It's a good question.

Plus, gardeners, they know more about anything than anybody. So they're probably right.

[Paul Thurat]

No, I don't know. I don't.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know.

[Paul Thurat]

Any Assist admin. It was installing version one of anything. And that's definitely what these AI browsers are. So.

[Richard Campbell]

Which is my only problem with this in a way because I feel like that can be a little too aggressive.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Generally speaking. But. But with this thing, a browser has.

[Paul Thurat]

So much privilege in a system, you know, it is the.

[Richard Campbell]

And so much capability.

[Paul Thurat]

This is security context for most software. Right. Because most stuff, especially in the enterprise, is just running through a browser. So to. To have risks on that interface introduce a tremendous amount of risk.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep. And they. We literally have no way to secure what they're doing right now. We just don't understand.

[Paul Thurat]

I mean, it's good. It's going to take time. You're going to have to take the time to put it in a. A honey pot kind of situation where you can watch everything that it's doing and have some sense. But yeah, it's such a moving target. It's like, you got enough problems, you don't need this one.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I know, it's. I know. I hate to sound the alarmist thing, but I actually, I don't know, I think that. I think I have a point here.

New York Times infamously suing the New York. Sorry. OpenAI and Microsoft for stealing content to train their models. The OpenAI argument essentially boils down to we think we should just be able to steal your content. That's not a good one. So they're doing pretty good.

But now they're suing Perplexity as well because obviously this company is doing the same thing. So we'll see where this goes. But I don't know what the answer is here as far as establishing some program or programs that, I don't know, pay content model of some kind. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. We'll see what comes out of this. I didn't write about this, but I got an email and then a letter in the mail from Anthropic or from their lawyers. And I am owed up to $3,000 per book for the content they stole from me.

[Leo Laporte]

I got the same letter and I was gonna ask you what.

[Richard Campbell]

And I have seven books. Yeah. So here's the thing. Should I. I mean. Yes, you should absolutely decide to go into this. Right. So once you found.

[Paul Thurat]

It's the class action letter, I presume.

[Richard Campbell]

What's that?

[Paul Thurat]

It's class action letter.

[Richard Campbell]

It's classics.

[Leo Laporte]

Right? It's already settled. The settlement's done.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, it's. I don't know that it's finalized in the sense that. I don't think the judge has yet approved it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, the judge approved it. It's done.

[Richard Campbell]

Are you sure about that?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay. I thought that this.

[Leo Laporte]

The judge stopped it and said no, look, I have to look at this because I'm afraid that the lawyers are getting the lion of money and then looked at it. You're saying no, no, it's fine.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know how I. Okay. I'm not sure how I missed that. You can't opt out of this.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. You don't get it unless you ask for It.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. And if you ask for it, you can't sue them again later.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

For the same content, of course. But in my case. So seven books. Yep. Most of them have co authors, so there's going to be some revenue sharing there. However that works out.

There will be fees, et cetera. I'm sure what I end up getting is $13 per book, not $3,000 per book.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. We'll see how much the lawyers.

[Richard Campbell]

But when you think about like the old. Or.

[Leo Laporte]

But I feel. Here's my quandary, okay. I. I'm glad that Anthropic ingested my books. I want all of them to ingest my books. It's good for the AI and I'm.

[Richard Campbell]

Would you like to have been able to opt into that before they just did it. Okay. No.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm a believer in AI.

[Richard Campbell]

You're free to ignore it. You're free to tell them it was completely.

[Leo Laporte]

That's my quandary. Because at the same time, Anthropic is.

[Paul Thurat]

I think you would have opted in if there was an option to opt in for free.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know. It depends. So in my case, most of these books are very old, I think. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You're not making any money on them. In fact, it's probably more money than.

[Richard Campbell]

That's the point. So if I made. I would have made more than $3,000 on each of those books at some time. But you flash forward 20 years or whatever it might be. This is found money in the sense that I. Those books were never going to generate any money today. They're all for out of date things. One of them is a Windows XP book.

I think the most recent one might have been the second edition of the Windows Vista book, I think. Or maybe Windows 7. I don't remember.

[Paul Thurat]

But I just like that you made two editions of the Windows Vista book.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, well, we had to rush the first one up. The.

[Leo Laporte]

I haven't got. You go to the database and enter your ISBN number and it will tell you if you're.

[Richard Campbell]

You get to search for your name. You know, I haven't done that yet.

[Leo Laporte]

So I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

But I did it. Like I said I had seven. Yeah. Look, I'm gonna. I'll take a check from these guys. Like AI Perplexity has stolen my content. I know they have. I already. I know that.

[Leo Laporte]

Is this stealing? It's just training AI. Is it stealing?

[Richard Campbell]

It's.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't think it's stealing anymore.

[Richard Campbell]

You're like the lawyer, like representing Perplexity here. Like. Yeah, that's the question. Is it stealing? I don't think what the New York Times is saying is. Yeah, stealing, because you're reproducing it verbatim.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

If you go to the library and read the New York Times in the library, are you stealing it?

[Richard Campbell]

I don't think we're going to be able to judge this case right here on the air, like live. But, but this is the case. So it's done. The, the humor to this is if they had just bought these books, they would have spent a lot less money.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

If they got it, by the way, because they were found to have done this and known they were breaking the law. Technically, they're on the hook for $150,000 per work. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

That's why they were happy to settle for.

[Richard Campbell]

That's why they were settled.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep. So they could have paid a lot less than the. Whatever it is, billion plus that they're going to pay. Out of which, yes, the lawyers will get some huge chunk, but they also could have just done the right thing, you know. So this is going to be the problem for OpenAI.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, in fact, they did the right thing with a bunch of other books and the judge eventually, yeah, that's good, that's fine. You don't have to worry about those.

[Richard Campbell]

Books because, well, that's like saying you wrote you robbed a store, but you also went back and bought one item later. So you're like, you're an okay person. Like, you know, you still rot. Like, you still.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, it was a, it was a legitimate fair use case and a very important.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay, well, they settled, so they're, they're going to pay. So we'll see. I'll see what comes out of that. I mean, that's interesting. I think OpenAI and Microsoft are going to have to do the same or something similar.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, yeah, there's a precedent set now. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep. Yeah. So we'll see what comes out of that. The OpenAI New York Times one is interesting because it's totally. OpenAI has done everything they can not to give them their, like, chat histories.

[Leo Laporte]

And as they should because that's our chats.

[Richard Campbell]

It's anonymized. It is. It was only started being deleted after the New York Times sued them and they were told not to do that. And.

They then, well, like they, they then came up with this kind of privacy argument and it's like. But the judge said, but you said these were anonymized, so what's the privacy? I don't understand what you're talking about.

So this is not. Basically they are going to have to turn over. I think it's 20 million Chachi P logs, which sounds like a lot, but it's also. They also have 200 billion chat logs or whatever. The number is some crazy number. So it's like some tiny percentage of the chat logs. But. And the point here is to see that New York Times content has just been regurgitated back to users, which is what they're trying to find out in the case they've made. So we'll see. We'll see.

Let's see if I can keep this straight. Opera. Yes. Opera was the company that had Aria.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And then they just did a deal with Google on Gemini. Am I doing the wrong one?

[Paul Thurat]

Isn't Aria the.

Browser guys?

[Richard Campbell]

The browser guys?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

You mean the DIA guys?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that's dia. Yeah. Aria.

[Richard Campbell]

I think Aria was Opera, but now we're calling it Opera or I think we're just calling it Opera AI or AI for Opera.

[Paul Thurat]

Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

There's been a big separation between desktop and mobile browser capabilities across the board. Not just AI, but just across the board, you know, because mobile phones are concerned. Well. And mobile device makers lock down their platforms to some degree, especially Apple, but Opera's kind of closing that loop a little bit. Like Opera for Android, which has more of an opportunity to do, you know, to modify that product than say you do on Apple, at least worldwide.

They're bringing their AI capabilities from the desktop browser to the mobile browser. So you can do the ask AI stuff in the search bar. You can attach a file and have it use that for context. You can use the current context, but not multiple tabs for context as well. And you know, this is like a little mobile browser on your phone. It's kind of cool. Like it's, you know, it's turning into some like full AI platform. It's pretty good.

And then tied to that discussion we had earlier about like real world use for AI, et cetera, I mentioned automation and this was actually the inspiration for this. Although Microsoft has this too. Right. So Copilot Studio is this for the Microsoft 365 space, but Google Workspace Studio is now available for Workspace customers. So I actually just use this and I have to say this is the first thing I've seen that's like an if this, then that type solution but for, for normal people and they have a lot of pre built templates that basically boil down to the thing I said earlier. Like the types of things like if Richard Emails, me, I always want to be notified no matter what's going on, even if my phone is on, do not disturb or whatever it might be, you know, that kind of thing. And there's a, there's a lot of them and they span multiple categories. And this is, this actually was the inspiration, not just for that part of the article, but for the article in a way. Because the way this was described and how it looks when I use it, I thought, there we go. This is something we had for a long time. Automation is not new. I think we talked about the stuff that Apple's been doing for decades now and Microsoft in the Microsoft space. There are many, many solutions. Over there, we have Power Automate today, et cetera. But these things are complex. They're like power user tools. And this is something I think normal people can just use. And it's natural language, you know, it's not. You're not connecting shapes in a flowchart. You're. You're saying, you're just talking to it. Like you could type, but you can talk and say, if this isn't, if this happens, do this. And it will. It's. It's a conversation, I think, that makes sense to, to people. So it's exciting. I mean, it's good.

So some good and bad on AI, I guess is the way to say.

[Leo Laporte]

The nature of the, the only reason I, I wouldn't want to take the money. I feel guilty because I am, I'm a supporter of AI. I think AI needs to have as much genuinely good content as possible. We use.

[Paul Thurat]

They should have bought it instead of just using everything.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I don't, I don't think there's.

[Leo Laporte]

Enough money in the world to buy all the data, all the information in the world.

[Paul Thurat]

Well, need all the data you need. Said all the good.

[Richard Campbell]

All they had to do was buy it. No, I mean, so a copy of my book from a used bookstore, it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Ingested the entire Internet.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Is it supposed to pay for everything?

[Paul Thurat]

It's not good.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, are they supposed to pay for nothing? I don't understand. Like, it's just on the Internet, so it's just free for everybody. A lot of the stuff was behind paywalls. Yeah, that was the problem with the New York Times stuff. They're like, this is for our customers. You know, even I'm not saying I agree with this, but they're saying something like someone could go to Perplexity comment and say, I would like a summary of this New York Times article. And it generates it well, they're not paying for the New York Times. The New York Times is. Excuse me. This is behind our paywall. Like you're supposed to pay for this.

[Leo Laporte]

Go ahead, try that just to see what you get.

[Richard Campbell]

It's not, I'm not literally taking their side. I'm just saying it's a question. Like.

I mean, it's like, we can't pay for this. It's too expensive. But we're just going to do it anyway. It's like, what? Wait, what?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but there's. Don't. Well, we were just.

[Richard Campbell]

Why do you rob the bank? That's where the money is. Why do you steal the data from the web? That's where the data is.

[Leo Laporte]

If you believe that, you shouldn't use AI at all.

[Richard Campbell]

If I believe? I don't. Oh, not because you still gotten gains.

[Leo Laporte]

You're using the fruit of the forbidden tree. You shouldn't use A.I. okay, well, seriously, you can't have both positions.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know what we're talking about here. I'm talking about a. I'm talking about companies that have billions of dollars in funding. And you're. I'm saying it as an individual who, if I ran my business like they ran it, the country and my state would tell me that I have a charity now.

[Leo Laporte]

How dare you use. How dare you use this ill gotten.

[Richard Campbell]

What do you mean? What are you. I'm talking about a legal. This is a legal thing.

[Leo Laporte]

You're using the benefit. You're getting the benefit. You do not understand what I'm saying.

[Richard Campbell]

Is it.

[Paul Thurat]

I paying them for it and they should be paying their share too, right?

[Richard Campbell]

I don't understand. Like it's okay for them to steal it and it's okay for me to pay them for the thing they stole. I don't understand why.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, so, okay, so I go into a bank. No, no, let's go to a jewelry store. I buy. I steal a ring and I sell it to you. It's okay because you bought it.

[Richard Campbell]

I. I'm not saying it's okay. What do you mean?

[Leo Laporte]

You're using stolen from content that was stolen, which you don't.

[Richard Campbell]

It's not on okay for them to have stolen it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but you're buying the goods that they stole.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm not buying the goods. What do you mean?

[Leo Laporte]

You're saying it's okay for you to use AI because you're paying them for it.

[Richard Campbell]

No, I didn't stole it.

[Leo Laporte]

It's the same thing as buying a ring that was stolen.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay? In that case. I'd have to give back the ring. I don't.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, because you're, you, you're using AI you love this AI. We just talked about it.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know what if the premise is actually on either side of this argument, I don't think. I'm not arguing against what you're saying. Saying. I, I'm, I'm, I'm raising the. I'm just say. I'm just describing what's happening. I, I, that's why I'm saying I have settled. Like, it doesn't actually matter what any.

[Leo Laporte]

About taking the money because the courts have said it.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

I would never be conflicted about taking money for something, for something I created that someone stole. So I don't know what, I just don't, I don't even know what to say to that.

[Paul Thurat]

Like, I, this is what the law has said. This is why just come down. It's.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm not getting $3,000 per for each of these books. That I have no doubt.

[Leo Laporte]

So you're okay because the judge also said that the, all the content that Anthropic got by buying used copies of your book and ingesting. That's fine.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

That's fair use. So you're okay with that part?

[Richard Campbell]

I'm. No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that's what was decided. That's the, that's the law. That's the law.

[Leo Laporte]

But you're not okay with it. It's just, that's the law.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm not saying that either. I don't actually have an opinion about it.

[Paul Thurat]

Professionals have figured this out. Out for us.

[Richard Campbell]

That's.

[Leo Laporte]

You're allowed to have an opinion just because a judge has made, by the way, this final judgment.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm saying I don't have an opinion. I just don't. I don't think it matters.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't. I've not considered it. Like, in other words, I, There's a. Definitely a debate to be had about what's fair and what's not fair. Whatever. But the Lars, the Lar and I, they're paying out a billion dollars. I'm going to get some of it or I'm not. Why would I not get some of it? They did steal my content.

[Leo Laporte]

That's true.

[Richard Campbell]

I did spend time writing it. It was a long time ago.

[Leo Laporte]

They didn't steal it. There was a database created of pirated books which they used. And by the way, everybody else used.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep. I wanted to be paid by them too. Yeah, so if that happens, I'm happy to take it. If it doesn't, I'm not going to raise the issue. I'm not going to argue about it every week, like, how come I'm doing this?

[Leo Laporte]

What if by doing this you undermine the entire Uff Duke, say crude, that this AI thing was a bubble and you undermine the entire enterprise and we no longer have AI?

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, that's a, I, that's like a science fiction speculation thing.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, no, it, right now it is, I don't, I can't. You can't? Are you gonna, like when our economy collapses 10 years from now or whatever? Are you going to be able to point it back? Like, if you didn't take that money?

[Leo Laporte]

I think it's widely agreed there's not enough money generated now by AI to pay for the company content there.

[Paul Thurat]

Well, there's not enough money to pay for the hardware they're using, but that's just because they haven't been able to.

[Leo Laporte]

Find, but also in the, in the realm of this conversation, the content that they are ingesting hardware independent of that is there's not enough money for them to pay for all that content. So if in effect this happens, you could say, you'd be saying, well, we don't have AI anymore. Is that okay with you?

[Richard Campbell]

I don't think that's, I don't think those are the two outcomes. I, I there I if, you know, Deep Sync is just one example of how this could be done more efficiently. So I, I just think this is, these are some of the best funded companies.

[Leo Laporte]

The efficiency of Deep Seq has nothing to do with the continent suggesting it has to do with the hardware it's used.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, you asked the, Sorry, no, I'm.

[Leo Laporte]

Talking independent of the hardware. I agree with you. The hardware is, is also expense they can't afford, but let's say they could afford it. If you make them pay for the information they ingest. This is not a viable right.

[Paul Thurat]

We don't actually know that. We don't know the price. We don't know what they sell it for. Like there's no way to know that.

[Leo Laporte]

Leo, it's widely, it's widely agreed.

[Paul Thurat]

Well, it's certainly enthusiast by the folks that might have to pay. They certainly feel that.

[Richard Campbell]

So I think I, I think if I read between the lines here a little bit, I feel like what you have is a moral conundrum here.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, there's also, you're working through it practical.

[Richard Campbell]

Or maybe you're very.

[Leo Laporte]

There's also. I have a moral conundrum. I agree, about whether I should take the money. But separate from that, there's a practical conundrum which is that AI does rely on ingesting as much information as it possibly can.

[Richard Campbell]

But there are a million possible ways that this could have occurred. You could say, look, this is a national security issue. It's important that we get this. The Chinese are just going to steal it anyway. We got to just do it. In which case, perhaps the United States government should be fending this or whatever. But instead what we have is the world's richest companies funding it.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, independent of that, if they have to pay for everything that's behind a paywall, they only get the stuff that's not behind a paywall. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Is that a useful AI?

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

It isn't.

[Paul Thurat]

AI trained on public domain Infinite source of data. AI trained on public domain proven either.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, I think that's.

[Richard Campbell]

There's.

The fact that it never occurred to these people to try to even pay for. This is the problem for me.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, look, I think the judge made the right decision that they should pay up for the stuff they pirated. And they should, and they should. And it is fair use for the stuff that they bought. Even though it was bought, it wasn't. The money didn't go to you, Paul. It went to the used bookstore.

[Richard Campbell]

No, that's for sure.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, but that the judge said is fair use. So I guess, look, we have this.

[Richard Campbell]

Concept of copyright and this lasts for some amount of time and then it goes and things become public demand, etc. They obviously wanted more recent data than that and they decided to steal.

[Leo Laporte]

They should. Don't you think? If you want to use AI, don't you want recent data?

[Richard Campbell]

Well, but you said that after I said they decided to steal it. I mean, they, they could have. One of the things we'll never know is what if they just went to all of the. You know, somehow I don't know how you would do that. But like, here's what we're going to pay.

[Leo Laporte]

Should Google pay for all the stuff it indexes?

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know, Leo. I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it's the same question. But anyway, we'll move on.

[Richard Campbell]

It is actually sort of the same question, but by the way, Google has been sued in every continent on this planet for exactly what you just described, scraping news sites. And now they have a Google publishing program where they actually pay content creators. And it's because of that, it's because they stole. So actually, Google, I'm not saying it's perfect, but they. They've addressed it in the sense that now they don't do what they did. Yeah. To what we know. You know, things have changed.

I don't want. I just want to be super clear. I'm not actually. I'm not even sure I'm disagreeing with you at all. I just don't.

I don't. I don't know enough about this, and I actually don't. I know it sounds like I'm dodging this, but I really don't. I'm not sure I have strong opinions about most of this. I just. But your question, though, originally, what kicked.

[Leo Laporte]

Us off was, I will take the money.

[Richard Campbell]

No, I don't. Don't do it. Because I'm doing it. I mean, look, it's perfectly fine for two rational, thinking people to look at the same situation and both go in different directions.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the moral conundrum versus the other.

[Richard Campbell]

That's what I mean. I. I think that's what I mean. I think you're actually having a moral canon.

[Paul Thurat]

You have a. You're having a visceral reaction about it.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, no, no. I've been thinking about it all. I've been thinking about this a lot. This is a fundamental question, frankly, in AI that has to be resolved. But it's one of the fundamentals.

[Richard Campbell]

Talk about it all the time, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Every creator says, well, wait a minute, you can't just. The nano ban you love so much is trained on content that some poor schlep created and is now out of work because Paul can't afford to hire them, so he's going to use Dano Banana.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay.

But the truth is, I was in fact paying for stock photo service.

[Leo Laporte]

No, we talked about this last week, and you made a very good point. That isn't taking away somebody's job because I couldn't do it.

[Richard Campbell]

It's something that never existed before. AI saves you time, AI saves you money, saves you both, but also creates this new thing. But I understand about job loss.

[Leo Laporte]

I understand the feeling of the place.

[Paul Thurat]

Where we know if these technologies are economically viable. They haven't been charging what they actually cost. Yeah, they have not paid for the development costs.

[Richard Campbell]

So they're not there. They're essentially being subsidized, and in this case, they're being subsidized by some of the world's richest companies, for the most part.

[Leo Laporte]

But this is kind of the same thing that the whole Internet in the beginning was based on, remember the Internet, Everything was free. But it wasn't really. Facebook is not.

Why we led to.

[Paul Thurat]

You are the product. I don't know if it was right.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know if it was Marc Andreessen or Sam Altman. I don't remember. Someone in this space said something we made. Actually, it might have been Tim Bernes Lee. Someone made the point that the web could have gone in two directions. There could have been like this free ad supported version and a paid version. And it could have been like, maybe Spotify is today or something. Spotify is a terrible company too, but, you know, in the sense that we have these choices, but we just took the easy way out and we kind of insuredified the Internet because ads, more ads, more ads, more ads, more ads. And then it becomes this terrible, terrible thing. And so what happened was some content creators, belatedly, after the fact, the New York Times did this, locked it down.

[Paul Thurat]

After the fact, said, okay, paywall, now.

[Richard Campbell]

We'Re doing a paywall. And it. The argument is like, maybe it should have been like this from the beginning. And then there could have been some subset of the user base that was paying more and it was helping the whole thing make sense. But we didn't do that. We made everything crappy. And now we have ads everywhere. We started with blinking and there were tower ads and banner ads and ads ads ads and pop over ads and pop under ads and the whole mess. And you know, you can't rewrite history, you can't redo it, but it's what happened. Yeah, I don't know. I don't really. I don't have.

[Leo Laporte]

These are big questions. They're not going to answer them today, but it's one of the things we talk about on intelligent machines all the time, too.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So.

[Richard Campbell]

And I think that's why it's important you have that. That's good that you have the show.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, no, it is. And it's good that we're just not cheerleaders for AI but we really want to figure this out.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, I have a pom pom.

[Leo Laporte]

Here, but I am a cheerleader for AI I admit it. But fortunately, Paris and Jeff are not. Other opinions? No, I mean, as do you.

[Richard Campbell]

I actually don't think. I don't. I bet you aren't. I. You're more. You're a personal technology enthusiast and you see this as part of that. So of course you see the good and the bad. You're not stupid about it. Like, you see Both sides of it. And that's what it, that's all. That's my, that's my point. I'm just trying to.

[Leo Laporte]

I come from the hacker ethic going way back. One of the chief rules of the hacker ethic was information wants to be free and that people who are kind of putting paywalls in front of information or somehow saying that information, you know, you wrote your books, you didn't create them out of whole cloth. You wrote your books based on information that was freely shared with you and work that you did. Admittedly, you know, I'm not saying you didn't put effort into it, but yeah, I believe information wants to be free and should be free because that is the greater good of mankind. But we don't all agree on it.

[Richard Campbell]

A lot of people say, I want to get paid for my information.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't. I would never put a paywall up to keep people from ingesting our content. For instance, in a.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, right.

[Paul Thurat]

So except for the, except for the club, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Everything that the club does is eventually available publicly. It's all creative licensed.

[Richard Campbell]

I have a you of us, what I would call a small company in some ways. I have a way smaller company. And I, I, this is one of those lead by example type things. Like, I'm not saying what I'm doing is right or the best thing or the only thing, but I do the same thing. I, if you want to pay for it, you can. And we, whatever benefits we might have for that, but we also, anyone can come and see it if they want. You know, and I look as a writer, I want everyone to read my stuff. I want everyone to see it. But I also need to live, I need the power to come on, find.

[Leo Laporte]

A way to make that work. And that's one of the reasons for the club that works quite well. It's a chance for people to support what we do, but it isn't of paywall. I've always felt very strongly that all of our content should be available to, even to people who don't want, can't, don't want to or cannot pay for it, including AI by the way. But, and you know, I have hundreds of thousands of hours of content that AI has presumably ingested.

[Richard Campbell]

And I just feel like, I got an email, I talked about this last year. Someone's like, I'd never heard of this company at the time. It was perplexity. And they're like, I just asked you this question. It spewed up one of your articles basically. And they were like, I don't remember.

[Leo Laporte]

This is another larger conversation. I've had a debate over this with some.

[Richard Campbell]

But as someone who creates something, when you see a copy of your book being downloaded for free on a torrent site or whatever it might be, however, people still do that.

[Leo Laporte]

But that's not what. But understand Perplexity is a search engine that orchestrates AI. So don't confuse that with OpenAI. What perplexity is doing is going out and searching the stuff that's online that you put out online in public and is getting that information and summarizing that using AI. So it is not. It doesn't just your stuff to train itself. Perplexity does not train any AI models. It's not what it does.

[Richard Campbell]

Saying when someone republishes something I wrote, I know what that feels like. As someone who took the time to create that content when I see my.

[Leo Laporte]

Do that all the time with their.

[Richard Campbell]

Browsers on some others I know they do and it hurts every time I see hurts. It does what?

[Leo Laporte]

Wait a minute. If I go to therot.com and read an article, you're upset?

[Richard Campbell]

No, if someone else just steals it. I've had so many instances.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, republishes it.

[Richard Campbell]

Sites were just republishing my articles.

[Leo Laporte]

But that's not what Perplexity's doing. Perplexity is doing a search based on a user asking the same thing. A browser. That's what a browser does. Somebody types in thorat.com and gets your content.

[Richard Campbell]

You're not going to ever take away the fact that I saw my content on their site and I was not getting paid for it. So I. You, you can tell me what they do. But what I'm telling you they did.

[Paul Thurat]

Was still for me, that is to agree with you. Okay, because they're suing. They're going after Perplexity for the same thing.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep. No, we'll see what happens. I'm not saying they're right and they're wrong and whatever. We'll see. We'll see.

[Leo Laporte]

But I didn't want to go after.

[Richard Campbell]

Myself for open AI having been stolen.

[Leo Laporte]

Google, who are taking your content, ingesting it and creating AI out of it, perhaps. I mean I'm not.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, and those are hard because you don't know what's happening.

[Leo Laporte]

If I buy a browser and I use that browser to go to thorat.com it's absurd to say, oh, well now the browser company should pay Paul. Because I used it to go to thorat.com?

[Richard Campbell]

I never said that.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I know, but some people are. And that's what perplexity does.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay?

[Paul Thurat]

Perplexity thinking that way, because that's what's happening next.

[Richard Campbell]

Perplexity made a melange of three different sites worth of content and put it into an article, of which 5, 7 of it was mine. Literal sentence I had written, interspersed with other people's work.

[Leo Laporte]

Go after somebody who creates a site doing that. That's different from what perplexity is doing. Perplexity is doing what it is.

[Richard Campbell]

What I'm telling you is I don't care. To me, it felt exactly the same. It was my stuff being stolen by something, someone else. And I'm sorry, but that felt exactly the same. It was a bad feeling. I wrote about it. It was terrible.

[Leo Laporte]

Are we done with the AI segment?

[Richard Campbell]

Yes, we are.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, let me do the Helix ad and we'll do the Xbox segment, if you don't mind. You are watching Windows Weekly. Paul Thurat, Richard Campbell, and Leo laporte, your ad meister. This is my turn to tell you about my mattress, our sponsor, which I love. Helix Sleep. If you're preparing for the holiday hosting season, it's a very busy time of year. It can be exhausting. You know what? It is, right? But sleep is still essential. Don't forget, while you're shopping for everyone else this season, you might want to gift yourself.

Maybe the best gift you could get all year. A great night's sleep with a brand new Helix mattress. That's what Lisa and I did. We realized our mattress was eight years old. And I saw somewhere, I said, you know, you should get a new mattress every six to 10 years because they wear out. Who would have thought a mattress wears out? But then I thought about it and I thought, you know what? It's sagging a little bit. It's not. As you know, Lisa gets in bed and the whole thing moves. I do need a new mattress. So we did some research and we settled on the best mattress we've ever had, the Helix Sleep. No more night sweats, no back pain from a sagging mattress, no motion transfer. The cat jumps on the bed. I don't go earthquake. Rest assured, your Helix mattress is made to order. When you order it, it's assembled, packaged, and shipped from Arizona within days of placing your order. They've got a really great system, and when you open it up, it smells like the beautiful Arizona desert. It smells wonderful. You can also take the Helix Sleep quiz. We did do this because you want to match your sleeping style and your with your mattress. Your preferences, you know, do you want a soft one, a hard one? Do you sleep on your back? Do you sleep on your side? You sleep on your stomach. We went through the quiz and we got the perfect mattress. And I have to say I know because I do my sleep score every night. What a difference it made. Actually Helix did the study. There's a Westper sleep study they did. I think it's on their website. They measured the sleep performance of participants who switched from their old mattress of a variety of makes and models and ages to a Helix mattress. And here's what they found. 82% of the participants saw an increase in their deep sleep cycle. That's the most important part of the whole sleep cycle. Participants on average achieved 25 more minutes of deep sleep a night. That's a lot. In my case that was double. And that made a huge difference in my overall health and well being, how I fell every day. But also in all kinds of diseases. Participants on average achieved 39 more minutes of overall sleep per night. They slept better. They slept longer time and time again. And by the way, I have the same results. I know, I mean that's just anecdotal, but that study says it's true. Time and time again, Helix Sleep remains the most awarded mattress brand. There's another measure. We saw these reviews too. Wired. They just tested a hundred plus bed in a box mattresses. Their top pick was the one we bought. The Helix Midnight Luxe hybrid. The best bed you can buy online, they said. Which in my mind makes it the best bed you can buy. But anyway, that's what they said. Forbes has tested 90 beds so far this year to find the very best mattress for every sleeper. They also said as their top pick they recommended the Helix Midnight Luxe. It's a nice mattress. You know what you're buying gifts for everybody else. Get yourself something nice for Christmas. Go to helixsleep.comwindows right now. 20% off sitewide during their Cyber Monday sale extended. That's helixsleep.comwindows for 20% off for the Cyber Monday sale extended. This offer ends December 11th tomorrow. Make sure you enter our show name into the post purchase survey so they know we sent you. And if you're listening, after the sale ends, check them out. Helixsleep.com Windows but go there right now. You owe it to yourself. Helix H E l I x sleep.com Windows I hear snoring in the background. I hope Paul is not asleep. See? Is he okay? Oh good.

[Richard Campbell]

What's wrong?

[Leo Laporte]

Nothing. Let's talk Xbox Paulie.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh yes.

As everybody knows, Xbox consoles are selling gangbusters and so Microsoft don't think that's true.

[Paul Thurat]

Pretty sure that's not true.

[Richard Campbell]

I, I didn't make this point. I, I read this somewhere but someone made the point that there are no Xbox consoles for sale anywhere at any time. Like during Black Friday.

[Paul Thurat]

Like no discounts.

[Richard Campbell]

There were no discount. Yeah, there was just. They were not part of it. Like if you look at what Xbox did for Black Friday.

[Paul Thurat]

Not that there's ever been a margin on those things anyway, like.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I think that's why. Plus the tariffs have raised the costs.

[Richard Campbell]

To them significantly, like astronomically. Yeah, but we can't afford to give.

[Leo Laporte]

You a break this holiday season.

[Richard Campbell]

Sony's selling PlayStations. Those are going gangbusters.

[Leo Laporte]

Do they have, do they have Black Friday deals?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

So much of a discount on a PS5.

[Richard Campbell]

Only Microsoft was not part of it to the tune of I. And this was some. I don't Analyst report for the month of November. Top selling consoles were Sony PlayStation 5, Switch 2 and some thing from China no one's ever heard of. That's only sold there. And Xbox was not in the top three. It's like that's not good. So it's kind of interesting.

Call of Duty or Activision announced that they're never going to do what they just did twice, which is sell 2 call of duty games from the same series of games like Modern Warfare and Black Ops, back to back. So they did this with Modern Warfare 2 and 3, the newer versions, a couple years back and then they just did it with Black Ops 6 and 7. Didn't say this, but the reason they're doing this is because Black Ops 7 has been one of the worst received Call of Duty games.

[Paul Thurat]

So it's basically giving seven away. If you buy six.

[Richard Campbell]

They'Re the same game. Like the thing I. Richard, you installing all morning this morning I was bringing up a new review laptop and I thought I'm going to do something I haven't done first I'm going to do something I have done which is I'm going to install all of Call of Duty, like whatever that might be.

[Paul Thurat]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

300 gigabytes by the way. 310 gigabytes I think was the total.

[Paul Thurat]

Size then how many games is that actually?

[Richard Campbell]

So four. I thought it, I thought it was going to be Black Ops 6 and 7 and Modern Warfare 2 and 3 and then Warzone.

[Paul Thurat]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

And zombies or what. Each one of them has like a zombie thing and that's what it Said it was. But the thing I had hadn't done like ever was I played Black Ops 6 and 7, but I've never tried to play Modern War 3 or 2.

[Paul Thurat]

So tell me when you went to run them and had to install some more stuff.

[Richard Campbell]

So I went exactly. So remember the. The baseline figure was 300 gigabytes. 310. I call it 310. When I went to run Modern Warfare 3, I had a 150 gig download.

[Paul Thurat]

Like so if you've got a 1 terabyte drive in that laptop.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep. It's half. It's half.

[Paul Thurat]

Half of it for this game set.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Black.

I later then did Modern Warfare 2. That was only it said it was going to be about 100, 110 somewhere in there. I looked at it later and it was. It said it was at whatever of 86 gigs. So it wasn't actually quite 500. But it was close. It was pretty close.

Yikes. So. And it's astonishing how the same these games are actually. Right. Obviously graphics gotten a little better, but the. The actual engine of these games, they're.

[Paul Thurat]

All might even be the same.

[Richard Campbell]

They aren't the same.

[Paul Thurat]

This is just the assets apparently. Just the graphical assets.

[Richard Campbell]

Crazy.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah. That's nuts.

[Richard Campbell]

Now on this laptop, I've never played any of these games. I spent the whole day downloading them. But I. So if you think if you play Call of Duty you will know more about this than I do. But when they. After they did the sec. The new version of Modern Warfare 2, the thing that became Modern Warfare 3. Well, they were always going to call it. That was just going to be an add on for two. And someone at Activision was like, guys, we make a billion bucks a year on these games. We can't give this thing away as dlc. Like it's got to be a game. So they called it Modern Warfare 3 and they tried to bulk it up a little bit, but it was. No one was very happy with that one.

[Paul Thurat]

It was meant to be a DLC. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And then Black Ops 6, they didn't intend it to be DLC. There was always going to be a 7. But it's like it's the same freaking game. Like they added wall running again, but it's like there's not much new going on there. And it's astonishing. Like how big anytime. If you think Windows is a nightmare to update and maintain or down whatever Call of Duty makes. This thing looks like a Commodore 64 title from 1981. It's the biggest bloatiest piece of junk. I know what's going on. But anyway, they're going to. Activision had gone to a system many years ago where they had two and then finally three studios making these games. So every two to three for years that a different studio would come up with a different Call of Duty. And, you know, it worked or it didn't work, it doesn't really matter. But, man, they've really. They've really stalled. So they're not going to do that again. They're. They'll. They sort of seem to confirm, like it's just going to be Modern Warfare, then Black Ops and Modern Warfare, then Black Ops. Like this is the game.

[Paul Thurat]

Are you saying we're at maximum bloat at this particular moment?

[Richard Campbell]

Peak bloat.

Hopefully.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, I know, but don't bet on them. You know, it's.

[Richard Campbell]

I know.

[Paul Thurat]

I could use up your storage. No problem.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

It's a terabyte.

[Richard Campbell]

It is a waste of space.

[Paul Thurat]

It's amazing.

[Richard Campbell]

Crazy. Anyway, so it's astonishing. I didn't put this in the notes too, but I did. Yesterday, for the first time ever, I downloaded Fortnite to a Windows 11 on ARM PC. A laptop. 80 gigabytes, by the way. Still pretty big game. Cartoony graphics, whatever. But I used the Snapdragon control panel to optimize it. It's supposed to be native on the system, although I never saw a way to download the native version. I just got the X64 version. I don't know if it's just part of it. Whatever. It ran great. Like, it really ran great.

[Paul Thurat]

So it was running the emulation? It was fine.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know. Actually. I'm not sure if it was doing.

[Paul Thurat]

I don't think there's a big flashing sign when it's running an emulation.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, according to Epic Games, it's native on arm.

[Paul Thurat]

Interesting.

[Richard Campbell]

But the download I got was not. Didn't say anything. All right. It said X. I don't know. So. I don't know, But. But it ran great. And I played. I know, five or seven matches. Whatever. I came in third one time, by the way.

[Paul Thurat]

I'm proud of that. Do you play badass?

[Richard Campbell]

Well, I'm probably playing against children, to be frank, but.

[Paul Thurat]

But they're better at it than you are.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Well, no, they're not. Not some of them, anyway.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, 97 of them weren't once in one game.

[Richard Campbell]

But it was pretty good. So it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Wait, you got to third?

[Richard Campbell]

Third place, yeah. Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice.

[Richard Campbell]

Just like OG Whatever. It's called the. The base game.

[Leo Laporte]

I've never. I've always died, like, right away.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it's. It's hard because you land with like a pickaxe, you know, like, it's like. So you got to find that. Obviously got to find good weapons pretty quick, but it's. It's okay. It's better than it was. Like, you used to have to sit around and wait, you know? Now when you get knocked out of a game, it's like, do you want to just go to a different game? You're like, yeah, you know, of course you do.

[Leo Laporte]

I thought the smarter thing they did, at least at the beginning, was you could watch the game progress.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. And you.

[Leo Laporte]

You can later.

[Richard Campbell]

You can do that. And I saw when I was playing, like, it. It would be like, Bob is watching you now or observing or whatever the term is. Like a bunch of guys like, actually stuck around to watch, see if I was going to win. And I came in third.

[Leo Laporte]

But I. I thought that was clever because it. Because otherwise you're the game. Game over, man.

[Richard Campbell]

I know. You're like, no, that was fast.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, it's a good way to learn to watch.

[Richard Campbell]

Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

You can build stuff.

[Richard Campbell]

Everyone. Not everyone. Most of the people I played against were building things.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Like a guy. The guy would throw a wall up so I couldn't shoot him or whatever. And I'm like, I have no idea to do that. I was just shooting people. But it was pretty good.

[Paul Thurat]

Fortnite started out as a.

[Leo Laporte]

That's actually.

[Richard Campbell]

It wasn't. It wasn't as toxic as Call of Duty, so I didn't like it as much, but.

[Leo Laporte]

No, that's one of the things that makes Fortnite different, is there. Is that. That building component you can.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

It was originally a building game. Became a shooting game later.

[Richard Campbell]

And it has a. You know, it's cartoony looking, so it almost looks like a Disney.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you. Did you buy a Sabrina Carpenter outfit?

[Richard Campbell]

No, No, I did not. Not 100% sure. Taylor Swift, but I know she was on SNL.

[Leo Laporte]

No, it's funny because you can play the game as, you know, Taylor Swift, right?

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Paul Thurat]

Well, did you buy that?

[Richard Campbell]

So in Call of Duty, you can. You can play as Beavis or Butead. You can play as Seth Rogen.

[Leo Laporte]

Do you have to buy those?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

You do?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. See, this is purchases. That's never. That money is.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, that's decorating. At least it's more constructive than Pay to Win. Right. It's just decorating your character.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Well, I was Determined not to pay anything. I just wanted to see what it was like. It was.

[Paul Thurat]

I've seen you do that before. Definitely not pay anything.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't like to play for content. You know, I think it.

Was. It was. It was pretty good.

Flight Simulator 2024 is now available on the PlayStation 5. I know that's a big deal for a lot of people.

[Paul Thurat]

So huge game.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep. Literally huge. Like, literally like size of download.

[Paul Thurat]

There's another half terabyte game.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. It's a beast easily.

[Paul Thurat]

But it's got most of the world's, you know, 3D models.

[Leo Laporte]

Have you played the new version where you can jump? Well, I mean plane. You land the plane and you jump out.

[Richard Campbell]

So that's the thing. Like I don't get it. Sampled it. I've sort of. There's nothing. Stream it. You kind of see what it's like. It's not my kind of game, but if you watch the trailer for it, like the one. Not the Stranger Things, they just came out. But the. The that we're here on PS5 thing. The. The World's Hammer. Gorgeous, like beautiful.

[Paul Thurat]

But you got to get there. But they don't show in those sequences. Is all the time to get to.

[Richard Campbell]

Those moments that are really cool.

[Leo Laporte]

They must.

[Richard Campbell]

I assume they slip. Stream that if you want.

[Paul Thurat]

I mean, yeah, you're a little speeding up, but yeah, still.

[Richard Campbell]

So it's, you know, it's a beautiful game and whatever. Like get it out in the world and super realistic.

[Paul Thurat]

Really.

[Richard Campbell]

Really.

[Paul Thurat]

You really want to get into flying. Teaches you a lot.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. This is not Xbox related, but it is video game related. And I'm one of those people who. I don't like when there are things like audiobooks in a music app or podcasts in a music app or games like a. Netflix has games. Like I don't want to see ads for games when I'm on Netflix on my phone. Like I. To me those are two different things. But this is big tech and whatever. Everything's eating everything. But they did just do something that I think is pretty cool. So Red Dead Redemption is one of the best reviewed games never created. It's got to be the top five or 10 phenomenal game. It's got to be 15 years old. I think it. I don't know, it was 2010 or 2015, whatever that game come out.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Still looks good though.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it looks great.

[Richard Campbell]

They've done up a few remastered versions and so they just did a new one for PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2. And if you have a Netflix account. You can play it on an iPhone, an iPad, or an Android device for first time. I wonder how that would looks with a controller. It looks great. I installed it on my iPad, actually. I could show it to you if you want to see.

Looks great.

[Paul Thurat]

Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

This game was so good. They sold the soundtrack like. It was like a good the bad and the ugly style.

[Paul Thurat]

It's Rockstar. I mean, Rockstar really knows how to create paint worlds. It's a great world.

[Richard Campbell]

This is neat. I mean, you could kind of say, like, look, it's super old.

[Paul Thurat]

You know, whatever.

[Richard Campbell]

It's like. No, it's just. This is still a good game. It's. It's very interesting. So if you have a Netflix account, you have one of these devices. Everyone has one of these devices. You want to do this. It's included with what you're paying for the play mode. Yeah. Pretty cool.

[Paul Thurat]

It's interesting. And there's always RDR2.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurat]

Which was.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. So this. Right.

[Paul Thurat]

A much bigger.

[Richard Campbell]

And that's.

[Leo Laporte]

Does it look a lot better? Because I. I must have played the newer one. Yeah, I don't.

[Richard Campbell]

Probably. Probably does, right? I mean, but. But when you play on a small screen, like you, like if you especially have a phone, I think the original. Okay. Plus we'll play great, you know.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

It was fun. You'd get out, you'd ride a horse, you make a fire.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Shoot somebody. It was great game, great game. Just.

[Paul Thurat]

Do you think that's tuberculosis and slowly die.

[Leo Laporte]

You're dead.

[Paul Thurat]

I had a character I lost at tuberculosis.

[Leo Laporte]

You were killed by a Chupacabra.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Parenthetically. Do you think Netflix is going to stay in the game business or is this a failed.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, if they buy Warner Brothers. I, I thought they were maybe walking away from this, but then they did this and I'm like, I don't know, maybe they're still trying to make it. I, I don't pay attention to any of it. But once they, when they did this, I was like, oh, well, this is.

[Leo Laporte]

The funny thing because you just go.

[Richard Campbell]

To the App store, you don't. You don't launch Netflix and play the game from there. You actually download it.

[Leo Laporte]

It's just another game. It's just another game.

[Richard Campbell]

Just another game.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, what's the Netflix Association? It's just made them a game publisher.

[Richard Campbell]

If you're. If you have Netflix on the device and it has the account there.

[Leo Laporte]

So you just have an account.

[Richard Campbell]

It just works.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Yeah. But I don't, I didn't understand it. I Have a feeling. Well, so this, and that's really fascinating.

[Richard Campbell]

Think about their model, right? They buy content and they put it online and this is what they did here, right? So some third party company did this remastered version. It's got some Undead Nightmare add on, etc. They were probably different companies or teams working on the different console versions and someone did, or someone's did the mobile versions and so they probably put it out like, who wants to publish this? And Netflix is like, we'll do it. But it's not just like they do.

[Leo Laporte]

They have a lot of games and they're not streaming. I thought, oh, they're going to stream. No, it's, but it's not, it's just a game.

[Richard Campbell]

It's not, I'd never done it before. I, I like obstinately ignored the game stuff. I hate that, that it's in the app. Like I hate it.

[Paul Thurat]

I agree that's my only attitude problem.

[Leo Laporte]

But like I, I, my prediction, what.

[Paul Thurat]

It does to the battery.

[Leo Laporte]

It's the same as a regular game.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, I wonder, I wonder if it's.

[Richard Campbell]

All, look, they're way more powerful games than this. Like some of the newer Resident Evil games are in there. I think Assassin's Creed is or will be soon. Where these are, these are like AAA games like from, you know, the past five years.

[Paul Thurat]

They're gonna get them on a phone.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, absolutely. Like a knife, like a newer iPhone or an iPad, have like awesome processors. How much horsepower is in a phone now? Yeah, I mean it will heat that sucker up. I'm sure it kills the battery, but.

[Paul Thurat]

That'S what it's thinking.

[Richard Campbell]

But it will play like, it will play pretty good, I bet.

[Paul Thurat]

Probably look great too. Yeah, it's amazing.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I was very confused by the Netflix story because Friday Netflix announced they bought Warner Discovery and then so I talked about it on Twitter and then Monday, along comes David Ellison, Larry Ellison's son, and says, you know, yeah, we'll see. I'm going to give you 50% more. How about that? And because they have money from, you know, the Saudi Arabia, they have all these sovereign wealth funds and they can, they can overpay. I think they're going to overpay for it. Plus it's, it said sources said that Ellison, Skydance went to the president and said, by the way, if you approve this merger, we'll make CNN more to your liking.

[Paul Thurat]

That's a way to get a good deal.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, but that is in, in an authoritarian world, that's what you do. You, you say, hey, you know, you're the one who's going to decide whether or not this gets regulated.

[Richard Campbell]

None of these companies are good. I'm not voting for anyone to win this. But the only thing I will say is the Netflix model, whatever, I don't think so. But I mean, it's. There's a lot more of it. So it, there are fewer really good, high quality things anymore, but there are still some. This is hbo. You know, there's a. This is going to be a good body of con. So if they do get it, I mean, I'm sure, just like Microsoft 365, I'm sure they'll raise the price eventually to pay for it, but.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, as long as it's raising conspiracy theories. There's also. This came from Variety, the theory that Netflix just wants to put movies out of business. Warner is, it turns out, one of the last movie companies still making movies, spending a lot of money on movies. And the concern in Hollywood is if Netflix buys them, they're going to really go away. And the only thing Ted Sanders at Netflix said, yeah, well, the only thing we might change is the exclusive window, because there is a window of exclusivity for theaters.

[Richard Campbell]

That window has become nothing. Right, Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, if you make it a day, you're killing theaters either way because people just say, well, I'll wait till tomorrow and I'll watch it at home.

[Richard Campbell]

So I'm not defending Netflix. This is sort of like the AA thing. I'm not taking their side or anything like that. But Netflix is one of those democratization of what I'll call movie making or film, whatever you want to call this, where Hollywood has given up on kind of smaller movies because they're just not profitable. And, and people aren't going to the movies as much. The theater, like actually theater suck. So you only have like Marvel movies, like these big budget movies that they know are going to make their money back. So everyone's like, oh, we're gonna, you know, we're not gonna have experimental movies. And it's like, well, actually, I feel like that's the stuff is more likely to show up on Netflix or HBO Max or one of these.

[Leo Laporte]

Look at Frankenstein. Look at Coda.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes, like that movie that would never have been in the theaters, not in 2025, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, they're still winning Academy Awards. They still are putting it in theaters for a week just so they can get an Academy Award.

[Richard Campbell]

But that's the system, right? I mean, they're playing.

[Leo Laporte]

That's only going to be for A little while longer. So somebody's saying, well, why would Netflix kill the content engine? They're not going to kill the content engine. They're still going to make movies. You're just not going to put them in movie theaters, is the idea. Because a movie theater competes with Netflix.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep. So there are some good Netflix movies.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, Frankenstein be incredible.

[Richard Campbell]

Frankenstein may be a good one. Yeah. But you know, even someone like Ryan Reynolds, who I love, if you ever watch like Red Ship, what was the thing called? Red Shift or Red something, whatever. It was some Netflix thing. So it was him, the rock, the woman who was Wonder Woman. Gail Gal Gadot. Yeah, Gal. They were all paid tens of millions of dollars to be in this hunk of unbelievable crap. And it's like this beautiful looking movie that's all backdrops from places they never visited. They weren't there.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

It was supposedly taking place all over the world, but you can tell. But they. They sent the money in the three people. And the rest of it was just garbage. So it was beautiful garbage, but garbage that.

[Leo Laporte]

What was that?

[Paul Thurat]

Red notice.

[Richard Campbell]

Red notice. Thank you. It's forgettable. It's immediately forgettable.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So I don't know. This is going to be good and bad.

[Leo Laporte]

Netflix makes some. Remember Gray Man? That's awful.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep. Yeah. It's another one of those movies. It makes Looks good.

[Leo Laporte]

Terrible movies, stupid.

[Richard Campbell]

But they still have good shows. Like, you know, Wednesday. That's probably not our demographic exactly, but it's really well made. Great actors, great. It's. You know, Danielle, they have knives out.

[Leo Laporte]

They have the third knives out, though.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep. That's coming out on Christmas Day. I can't wait to see that. So it's good stuff. You know, I.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, we're in a. We're in a very, very rapidly changing world. That's just another.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, for sure. And that's the thing. It's. We're all so afraid of change. You know, you don't want to get rid of the movie company that made the original King Kong, you know, if that's what. And it's like, yeah, but that was 1931, guys.

[Leo Laporte]

I honestly, I just don't want Larry Ellison to own.

[Richard Campbell]

That's all. I 100 agree with. I don't want him having anything.

[Leo Laporte]

That's all I care about.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

Talk about tech billionaires you're concerned about.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

That guy is a rotting carcass of terribleness.

[Leo Laporte]

And I know it's his son David, but look at him.

[Richard Campbell]

Is it really Damian Omen Ellison?

[Leo Laporte]

That guy?

All right, we're gonna take a break and then the back of the book is coming up. We've got tips, we do have an app, we have a runners radio, and we have a Pennsylvanian brown beverage.

[Paul Thurat]

And a little bit of story behind it, too. Oh, a little bit of a story. That's what. Okay, let's be clear. I went totally into the deep rabbit.

[Leo Laporte]

Hole and George Washington drank here.

[Paul Thurat]

It's gonna go for a little while. George Washington does play into the stories.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, my gosh.

[Paul Thurat]

I'm in Pennsylvania. I have no choice. I couldn't. I couldn't. Not right.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, well, we'll get to that in just a moment. You're watching Windows Weekly with Paul Thurat and Richard Campbell. Our show today brought to you by Vention. I had a nice conversation with Glenn over at Vention and I was really impressed, really impressed. Vention helps you with AI, you know, in a big way. AI is supposed to make things easier in your business, right? But for a lot of teams, it's made the job harder. But see, now you got some heroes on your side. Vention has 20 plus years of global engineering expertise and they can cut through the hype and help you use AI to your advantage. They build AI enabled engineering teams that make software development faster, cleaner and calmer. You'll like that. Calmer clients typically see at least a 15% boost in efficiency. And we're not talking hype, we're talking real engineering discipline. That's what you really need to apply to this. And I know you know your teams, they are top engineers. This is, this is why you want to call invention. There's another thing Vention does that might maybe even be the best starting point with them. They have really fun, interesting interactive workshops about AI and the whole goal of it is you. They sit down with your team and they, they work to find practical, safe ways to use AI across delivery, across qa. It's a great way to get started with Vention to test their expertise and to and to focus your AI projects. Whether you're a cto, a tech lead, or a product owner. You won't have to spend weeks figure and you may have already started this process figuring out tools and architectures, what model you use. Vention has the expertise to help you and a system in their workshops to help you assess your AI readiness, to clarify those goals, and then to build an outline, a practical plan of the steps to get you where you want to go without the headaches. And if at that point you need help, you say, I think we need help on the engineering front. Their teams are there ready to jump in either as your development partner or as a consulting partner. They've got real expertise. It's the most reliable step to take after your proof of concept. I bet you've been in this position. I know we have. Let's say you're building a promising, you're, you know, you prototype. You're doing an unlovable, let's say, all right, and you got it. It's working, it's running well in tests. But I mean it's, it's not a finished product. What's next? Do you open a dozen AI specific roles just to keep moving? I got a better idea. Bring in a partner who has already done this across many industries. Somebody who can expand that idea into a real full scale product and do it without like tearing up the roadmap, without disrupting your systems, without slowing your team down, working with you to get this thing out. Real people with real expertise and real results. They're really impressive as heck. Learn more ventionteams.com and see how your team can build smarter, faster and with a lot more peace of mind. Or get started with your AI workshop today. Ventionteams.com TWiT that's V-E-N T I O-N teams.com TWiT benchinteams.com TWiT say hello to the team. They're great people. Now.

Let us talk about.

Your tip of the week. It's the back of the book. Paul.

[Paul Thurat]

Freeze.

[Richard Campbell]

Where'd you go?

[Paul Thurat]

I said hooray, hooray, hooray. It's back in the book.

[Richard Campbell]

So I'm going to mix and match tips and apps because it's the, the central tip is just de insurrectifying Windows 11. Right? I've talked about tiny 11 builder a lot lately, but it's not, it doesn't do everything. So you need a couple of other things. But you also need this solution for. I already have Windows 11 installed. I have all my apps installed. It's all customized. I've got, you know, signed in with my accounts. I just want to, I want to de insertify this thing. I don't want to reinstall from scratch, right. And there, there are many solutions for that. I looked at least a couple, maybe two or three on hands on Windows over the past year or so. But I just went back to one of the ones that I thought was one of the better ones and I wanted to Compare it to tiny 11 builder. So over here you have this Clean install computer you did with Tiny 11 Builder. Here you have this normal Windows 11 install. Can I get this to that? And the answer is yes, as it turns out, I think. I mean, so far this one I haven't been using steadily for as much time, but I've done it on multiple computers. It seems to be the case Working.

[Paul Thurat]

Slews well on ARM too.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes.

[Paul Thurat]

That's cool.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. So this One is called Win11 DeBloat. You can find it on GitHub. It's a PowerShell script. The way it used to work is you would download the script and then you had to type in a specific command line to turn off all the controls that prevent you from doing anything terrible to your computer. It's only for that session. You make the changes and then you close the terminal window and those permissions go away. The way it is now is they actually have this command line you run that does effectively the same thing, but you just copy the command line from the GitHub page, paste it in the terminal, and then you go through the script.

Like Tiny eleven Builder. There are certain things it doesn't do and it's. In fact they're the same things. And so.

[Paul Thurat]

For the same reason.

[Richard Campbell]

For the same reason, mostly. So Rufus is. Instead of using the Microsoft tool to create installation media, or just launching the process straight up the ISO, use Rufus to create the installation media and it will take away the forced Microsoft account, sign in, the hardware requirements, et cetera, et cetera. There's a bunch of other stuff, but those are the big ones.

MsEdge Direct, also available on GitHub, will take away the parts of Windows 11 that require to use Edge, like the widget stories or search results that always go to Edge, even if you chose Chrome or Brave or whatever.

[Paul Thurat]

So you de. Edgify, you de. Edify.

[Richard Campbell]

You can leave Edge on there if you want. That's a different story. We'll get to that in a second.

[Paul Thurat]

Never hurt anybody.

[Richard Campbell]

But.

You can redirect the Edge links.

[Paul Thurat]

To go to your browser to follow the browser default.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. There's that and the most recent one. I was talking to you about this.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

You were blown away by this.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. And this is one also x86 and ARM is called Explorer Patcher. This one's been around for a long time. Used to have a slightly different name, but this is just a utility run. It does a bunch of things, but I do basically one thing, which is I keep the Windows 11 taskbar. I like it the way it is. It's fine that to Me is not a problem. But Explorer is this app that like, by which I mean File Explorer comes up very slowly. It's unreliable. And all these problems are tied to this winui front end that they've done in recent years. Instead of rewriting it, they've taken the old Win32 app and they've modernized parts of it. Not all of it, just parts of it, the UI parts. And they're slower than anything. They're terrible. So this thing lets you go Back to the Windows 10 or Windows 11 versions of File Explorer. Also a version, the early Windows 11 version where they have a non WinUI address bar area. But I just, I use Windows 10. That is the big ribbon, which is ugly, but you minimize the ribbon. So it's a nice kind of streamlined look.

These things together create this version of Windows that doesn't nag you, doesn't bother you, doesn't do things wrong. Like it works the way you would expect it to work. Like you click a link and it opens you to your browser. You expect that, right?

Tiny Eleven Builder and Win Eleven DeBloat both allow you to get rid of Edge if you want to uninstall it, which you can do legally or, you know, in the box, if you will in Europe, but you can do it anywhere with these things. And you can get rid of OneDrive if you want, which you can. You can actually just uninstall onedrive. But.

Win 11 to bloat does get you to that same place as tiny 11 builder if you wanted to. Yeah, it's a script, so it's not for everyone, I guess, but they have three top level options. I never do the first one, the first one is that person's recommendations for what to remove. And I feel like, no, you want to go through this.

[Paul Thurat]

Think more.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, you can go through a list of apps that are installed on your computer. Check the ones you want to get rid of, we'll get rid of, including Edge and OneDrive if that's what you want.

[Paul Thurat]

Cool.

[Richard Campbell]

Gets rid of telemetry, it disables. These are. Some of these things are things that you can just do otherwise. But it gets rid of all the tips, suggestions, all that kind of junk, all the Bing junk, the.

Window, Spotlight, whatever, bunch of stuff.

There's one little fun thing in here for me and I'm sure there's a reg key. This is just a reg key I just never found even looked up. But in doing keyboard shortcuts, sometimes if you hold your finger down too long on it's probably controller I don't remember which key, but you get that sticky keys thing comes up and it makes a horrible bong sound. You can just disable it. Yay. It's like, yeah, that's fun, you know, so it's good.

So I'm gonna. I'm gonna actually look at more of these, but I feel like even where we are today, between. If you want to do a clean install, do tiny 11 builder with Rufus. If you already have the install, you don't want to screw around with it or you don't want to reinstall. I should say you are going to screw around with it. Use win11 to bloat and then in either case, use Explorer patcher for File Explorer and use the Ms. Edge redirect or direct. I'm sorry, MsEdge direct to, you know, actually have the thing use your browser like you wanted in the first place. Right. So there it is. It's all. That's pretty much it. I mean, that's. That pretty much does anything anyone should ever want. I'm going to look at other utilities, but I. This is. This is pretty much it. It's good.

[Paul Thurat]

Making a clean version of win 11.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. God help us.

[Paul Thurat]

But it's nice.

[Richard Campbell]

My life's work. Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

Well, now that it's the only version of Windows.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, Right, right.

[Paul Thurat]

It's good to get new shape. It makes it a little happier.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that was very exciting.

[Richard Campbell]

It's a good one.

[Leo Laporte]

Maybe we could talk about Rena's radio right now.

[Paul Thurat]

You want to do that?

[Leo Laporte]

Why not?

[Paul Thurat]

All right, this is. I. Every so often I get a good story show and Liam Wesley, my friend, is an excellent storyteller. And when I found out what he'd done during the crowd strike event, I said, we gotta sit down and talk about this. It's a long show, by the way. We went over 40 minutes because there's just so much to talk about. Wait a minute.

[Leo Laporte]

You think 40 minutes is a long show?

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, I make half hour shows. This was the 40s.

[Richard Campbell]

This is 33 longer than usual.

[Paul Thurat]

You know, system mins don't have a lot of time. If my show gets too long, people get grumpy at me.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure people are grumpy at me, but I never listen.

[Paul Thurat]

So. So Liam has been. Was head of engineering for a company called Free Market fx. So there's a fintech startup. They do foreign currency trading. So, you know, a lot of their stuff is regulated, you know, real time and so on. And specifically they did not run the Falcon Sensor. Suite by CrowdStrike. So when the CrowdStrike event happened, which was July of 24, we all remember that exciting day and wiped out a lot of machines. You would think those guys were fine, except that they don't live by themselves. Right. They have suppliers and customers and services that dependent on. And some of them, they were disrupted. And so, you know, the question for a head of engineering when an event like this is, are we affected? And the answer, you know, is not that simple to. To actually get to, no, we're not a customer of that. But. And now it's not like all of their vendors and things are talking about it either. So he really had to kick off a call chain to find out who's depending on this. What can we expect to be down? Is it a regulatory problem that they have to report to admit that part of their services is impaired by other people's outages? So just the conversation that we had about all of the thought that had to go into how do we respond to an event, even though we're not even a customer of this product because we depend on other people. Because that's just the nature of software today, the interleavings. It really broadened my thinking about just what disaster response even looks like in this day and age in this SaaS and cloud world where your dependencies are bigger than you're thinking. You kind of want to know the software bill of materials of every company you interact with, whether that's possible or not, just to be aware of the potential scope of issues. So well worth the 40 minutes. Liam's a great storyteller and it was an unbelievable day for him.

[Leo Laporte]

Very nice. It's run his radio. This week's Run his radio. Oops.

Make you a full screen.

[Paul Thurat]

Came out this morning.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice incident management. Yeah, that must have been a. Interesting.

[Paul Thurat]

It was a very long day for him and he happened to wake up really early, early and so was literally like a half hour ahead of everybody else that day when he saw that was going on. And immediately, you know, they had a playbook, they did know what to do. So he was working on answering questions before they were asked.

[Leo Laporte]

It's one of those. One of those days. Like, you know, you can always ask somebody, do you remember where you were when Kennedy was shot? That kind of thing. It's one of those days you remember.

[Richard Campbell]

Where you were, where were you when. CrowdStrike.

[Paul Thurat]

CrowdStrike blue screen computer servers all over the world. I would say we feel that same way about Cloudflare going about, but it keeps happening. So what day are we talking about?

[Richard Campbell]

But that.

[Leo Laporte]

But the second one wasn't their fault. So it was that react. That really awful react.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Which by the way, if you suffering.

[Paul Thurat]

Do not throw stones in these situations. My house is way too much made of glass.

All I can do is empathize. I have been the man on fire too.

[Leo Laporte]

So you've been on pager duty.

[Paul Thurat]

You know, I know how hard it is. It's a very tough day, so. And sometimes many days.

[Leo Laporte]

What happens after a tough day?

[Richard Campbell]

Drinking.

[Paul Thurat]

Drinking. And I get to drink, my friend, today we'll use the little paper cups. They're very cute. This bottle is already here.

[Leo Laporte]

What is going on?

[Paul Thurat]

This is a bottle of Old Farm Pennsylvania straight rye whiskey.

[Leo Laporte]

Old Farm, Pennsylvania straight rye whiskey.

[Richard Campbell]

Old Farm, remember?

[Paul Thurat]

And it's specifically a Pennsylvania whiskey, which got me chasing down whiskey making in Pennsylvania. Right. And. And curiously, because it is a rye whiskey, we were just last week when I was in Lithuania talking about rye, so I was kind of lubed up, so to speak, on the rye thinking and just that, you know, it's an old grain, it's been around a long time. And it was actually the original whiskey in America. Now, it's not the first booze that was in America. The first alcohol manufactured in America would likely be beer because that was just safe to drink versus the water. But the first distilleries were all rum distilleries. You know, long before the United States was the United States, those colonies on the east coast, the English were growing and making sugar in the Caribbean, and they take the molasses to the colonies in the east and they would make rum also. Even all the way back to the 1600s. We talk about original alcohol in the colonies, apple cider, because of the propensity to bring. You know, apples are originally from Kazakhstan, of all flippant things. But the seeds propagate extremely well. They grow almost everywhere. But unless you're grafting apple trees, like, because apples are inherently genetically unstable, the only way you get good tasting apples is from grafting from good tasting apples.

[Richard Campbell]

Are inherently genetically unstable.

[Paul Thurat]

That is correct. Which is to say if you take the seeds from an apple you like the taste of and you plant them, you will not get that apple.

[Richard Campbell]

That's fascinating. Right.

[Paul Thurat]

The way you get that apple is to take a branch off of the tree of the good tasting apples and graft it onto another apple tree. And so people not knowing this, when they planted all these apples all over the place, got terrible apples. But you know what you do with terrible apples you make them into booze.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, there you go.

[Paul Thurat]

And you can ferment apples just fine. And in fact, because the water content is so high, you can do apple jacking.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

And apple jacking is just freezing the water out of the. The cider to increase the alcoholic concentration. So you don't need to still, you don't need anything.

[Leo Laporte]

No, we used to. It was like I was a kid. We'd get that, we'd go to the apple picking orchard and then you'd. And then you'd get a big jug of apple cider and you'd put it on your porch because it was freezing cold and it would slush up. And then you get rid of the.

[Paul Thurat]

Slush and you gotta skim the ice out and you get stronger. Right. And that's. This is the way of things.

[Leo Laporte]

And you can see it wasn't liquor exactly. I mean it wasn't super more of a beer.

[Paul Thurat]

It's a cider.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

But you can see how this even happened by accident where you dump our, you know, apples in a barrel, let that back. Those eventually go soft and ferment and then same process happens. Right now we've done it far more intentionally. But when you talk about domestic whiskey production, in the original colonies, it was rye from Europe. And there's a good reason for that, which was that rye grew really well in the northeast. In those colder areas, wheat not so much. And corn comes later. Corn is actually a North American crop and it mostly grew on the west side of the Appalachians, did not grow well on the east side. So that's. We eventually get to corn. But initially, because it grew absolutely everywhere and it was needed for fodder for animals, it was good for cover and so forth. They planted a lot of rye, something we talked about last week on the Starka episode. Barley also was grown, although it's a little tougher to grow. And you needed it for beer and bread, so you wouldn't drink it as much. The fact that you use rye as a cover crop, there's not even intended to be eaten because you even growing the versions that are particularly good, but the animals like it. It also is often made into booze first. And it.

So it was far more prevalent and there was more than you needed. And so often they were made. It was being made into alcohol early on. So if you think about the original colonies. Right. They are not the same as the states they are today. They're mostly focused on the east. On the east side of the Appalachians, everything on the west side is Very much still Indian territory, but there was negotiated treaties that were repeatedly broken to, to clear the. To have control of the land on the east side and just the coastal, just partly inland. And so when we talk about Pennsylvania, this is one again, one of the very early colonies founded in 18. In 1681, William Penn, the Royal land grant. There was already people there in that land grant. Includes in the southeast, there was an area called New Sweden. And so this is now the province of Pennsylvania in British America. And Penn was a. Was a bit of an egalitarian. He established an interesting set of laws that was a lot of religious freedom and economic mobility. And he also worked hard with the Lenape Indians in the area to negotiate more land and starts creating some of the early counties, including the Bucks, the Philadelphia and Chester counties, which is roughly where we are today. And those treaties continue literally for decades, largely pushing the Indians further and further west. Right now, the Indian perception of land is not ownership, but use. And so they were more flexible in that because there was other land to lose, it to use. But it becomes, it reaches a certain point where it becomes a crisis. Now, before the Revolution in the. In the 1750s, the American colonies are growing and they're starting to get onto the west side of the. Of the Appalachians. This is where you get the Ohio Company, who's now working with the Iroquois Confederacy, which was a collection of fairly organized native groups all. And this, this is before the Canadian border and all of that sort of stuff exists. And this group decides that they want to build a fort and settlement at the confluence of the Allegheny and the Monongahagan Helen Rivers. This is where Pittsburgh is today. Okay. This is a. There's a. There's a little triangle point where these two rivers come together, become the Ohio River. This scares the French, right, which is. Be the north part, the northern part, above that, which will eventually be Canada. But that point is largely controlled by France. And again, we talked about this when we were talking about Missouri and the, The. The Louisian land purchase where New France stretched all the way from the Gulf of Mexico right up to Hudson's Bay. So the French response was to build other fortifications further up on the Ohio river area that we now know as Erie, Pennsylvania. And that's around the time that the French and Indian War. Lights off. Now, this is also called the Seven Years War, all depending on how you measure it. It's either seven years, nine years, or 20, 23 years, because numbers are hard. In fact, Winston Churchill calls it the first real World War because the conflict is really between Britain and France. And while it may start with the native allies in North America, it also involves a land war in Europe which is the Prussians and the Austrians along with the English and the French. And also in India where there's a conflict between the Moguls and the English and the French there too. And the argument is that the first shots of this world war start in Pennsylvania by a 22 year old George Washington. So Washington came from well to do family and he felt that it was appropriate for him to join the militia. And so as the this conflict over what would become what's known as Fort Duquesne, before the English could build on that site and what would be Pittsburgh, the French pushed them out and they moved out. And then the French built the Fort Duquesne in that location. So Washington put together a force to come and push them back and in the process ended up in a battle called the Battle of Jumonville Glen. Some call it an ambush, may have just been a surprise. The one of the officers was killed in the. In the process. And Washington himself was captured but then later released. And then they were sent back. And these could be called the first shots of the Seven Year War. About a year later in 1755, the British respond by sending General Edward Braddock and a full set of regular troops. Now they perceive the British regulars as infinitely superior to the colonial militias. And so they couldn't actually join as peers. They would all be inferior to any of the regulars. And so Washington who still wants to be involved, manages to get himself to be an aide de camp to the General Edward Braddock. They then head back to the to the same area and Monongahelin Valley about 10 miles from Fort Duquesne. And there's an accidental conflict again. They sort of run into each other by surprise and becomes a bit of a rolling battle. And the general gets hit many. Washington even had a couple of horses shot up from him. There's almost a thousand of the British regulars and colonists that are killed to only about 20 of the French and Indian forces. Washington miraculously is unharmed. They found bullets in his jacket, shrapnel in his hair, but no injuries at all. And he helps organize the retreat and evacuation very wells and is encouraged encouraged by the general to to pull the forces together. He's lauded as the hero of Monongahela. And that's sort of his first mark as a young soldier. At that point I think they make him a colonel and he goes on to continue to be a part of that that conflict. Right in this area of the valley in the western part of Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh, that largely this is over by 1759 when the French realize they've been cut off at Fort Duquesne. So they destroy the fort and retreat and then.

They re establishes British control over the area. Washington returns home and tenders his resignation from the ministry entirely surprising everyone. Don't worry, he'll do that a few more times. But now it's establishes, you know, credibility as a, as a significant soldier. And one would argue that the debt incurred by the World War, the worldwide conflict that is seven years war is one of the main reasons that the English raised taxes on the colonies so severely to try and pay things off. Which of course becomes the justification for an American Revolution. Now by the time the revolution comes around and of course a lot of this happens in Philadelphia, right this is the First Continental Congress in 1774 war and the Western counties including Westmoreland in Pennsylvania are now founded. And that's when they formed the Continental Armory under once again George Washington who's a few years older. And they have the Declaration of Independence here. And then this is by 1776 as the war starts up the William William Penn's family largely ousted from control of Pennsylvania. Things are reorganized. This went the Delaware count. Delaware part of Pennsylvania spins off to be its own state. And so that Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the Constitution in 1787 and then Pennsylvania the second. And of course Washington becomes President 1789. And of course both George Washington and John Adams are headquartered in Philadelphia until the White house in Washington D.C. are actually defined. So by 1789 you got this new federal government and like every other conflict you're in, they've incurred a lot of debt.

[Richard Campbell]

Cheers.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way, those are the exact same paper cups that George Washington used.

[Richard Campbell]

100 the old paper cup.

[Paul Thurat]

So the US Fed had. The US Fed has about $54 million debt. The various states combined about 25 million worth of debt. And if you've ever watched Hamilton, you know that Alexander Hamilton can be convinces the Congress to consolidate all the debt in 1790. He's put in as many import duties as he feels are reasonable to try and pay this debt down. So he proposes the first excise tax on domestically produced goods. And he focuses on distilled spirits, largely because they're kind of a luxury product anyway. And he figured it would be the least objectionable tax.

Now it's 1790. There's about 75,000 people living in western Pennsylvania centered around Pittsburgh and part of the rules of this tax, you got to realize the west part of Pennsylvania at this time is the hinterlands. It's nowhere.

[Richard Campbell]

It still is.

[Paul Thurat]

By the way, I like Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh's good fun. They got a hell of a hockey team, too. And part of the rule of this tax is you have to pay for it in specie, in coin. And in that part of the world at time, coins are just rare. Most products are paid for in barter, often in whiskey. Like that's kind of a normal way to do things. So the tax is set up in two different ways. There's a flat fee per still, which is fairly expensive, but it's a flat rate for the whole year, or you pay by the gallon. And so big producers all pay flat fees because they produce enough to. That the cost of the tax relative to the amount of alcohol produce is reasonable. The small producers can't afford for do it. So all these small patricias in the west are really resisting it, and they refuse to pay the tax. And so they get fined. And if you get a fine, you can protest to show that it's unfair. But the only way to do that is to go to a federal court, which would be In Philadelphia, some 300 miles away, which you'll have to do by horse, which takes time, costs money. Then you need somewhere to stay. So, again, the west feels very unfairly treated, and they fight back. And the way they. A lot of these guys are veterans of the Revolutionary War, right? They feel like it's taxation without representation once again. But one of the things they do is they just discourage anyone from being a tax collector. They also go after anybody who would dare rent space to a tax collector. And so literally, years go by without any tax collectors in and around Pittsburgh. In Western Pennsylvania, there's also a new Indian war going on, the Northwest Indian War. And there's not a lot of support coming out of the federal government to protect the colonists on the. On the west side as well. So they're good. They're feeling pretty hard done by. And the focal point around all this is within a year or so this is 1791, is these new.

These new counties like Allegheny, which is where Pittsburgh is in Fayette, and Washington, and Westmoreland.

A guy named Robert Johnson, who actually tries to be a tax collector in the area, is grabbed by a mob and tarred and feathered, which sounds hilarious, except that it actually involves spreading hot tar on the guy, like it's really freaking horrible. And anybody that tries to support him is also tarred and feathered so it gets pretty violent. And Hamilton's freaking out because it's, you know, questioning the federal government entirely. Like he'd undermine the whole thing. And so they end up putting out more proclamations on this. And it's. The whole situation peaks by 1794. It's been four years since the thing was down. There's hundreds of men involved on both sides. And it finally gets to a level where they call it a sedition or rebellion. And so Justice James Watson calls out the militia. Washington, who's now the President, actually leads that militia. And he rolls out with 12,000 troops in his huge display of force and negotiates without a shot fired. The end of the Whiskey Rebellion.

[Richard Campbell]

So the fun rebellion.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, you know, and again, I think Washington did his best to handle it was a very difficult situation. The taxes are, of course, amended. They get away with the species requirement. They allow for trials in state courts instead of just federal court. So it becomes a little bit more practical cycle. The whole thing's very tough. And in all of this comes the story of making Pennsylvania whiskey. So if you talk about the original names for Pennsylvania whiskey going back that far, you talk about a German immigrant named Heinrich Obelhartzer, who will be anglicized to Henry Overholt. Overholt's a very well known name in whiskey. So he had been distilling in Buck County. Old, overhauled old.

So he'd been distilling in Buck county, that's in eastern Pennsylvania. And as the chaos of the 1790s settles out, he and all of his extended family and others move to the Westmoreland County. So Conestoga wagons, you know, the big covered wagons and so forth, to go 250 plus miles through dirt roads largely built by the army through the Revolutionary War, the Whiskey Rebellion, all the way to Westmoreland county, right where all of those battles for during the Indian War and the Whiskey Rebellion had taken place. They buy a huge amount of land in that area. Multiple families setting up simultaneous. This area is now known as West Overton. Now, Henry Overholt does make whiskey, but it's his son Abraham Overholt or a Overholt, that becomes sort of famous in the whiskey business. He. He and his brother started it, took over from their father at one point, but he eventually buys the brother out in 1810 and makes over Holt whiskey, sells it all through the Civil War by builds additional distilleries in areas like Broad Ford. He finally passes away in 1870. His family takes it on and then it's handed off to Another famous name in the area, Henry Clay Frick, who takes it over. He's a grandson to. He's related in the family. She's got a different last name, but he is related to eight.

And he makes it. He gets a relationship. He partners up with a guy named Andrew Mellon, one of the original robber baron types. 1881. And Mellon becomes Secretary of the treasury in 1921. So that's when Prohibition comes in. And so he gets a medicinal license for overhaul to maintain production through that whole thing. By the way, this, that original farm and all this facilities, so forth in the 1920s was made into a museum. You can go to it today. And Overholt was then acquired by national distillers in 1935 after Prohibition was over, which is later acquired by Beam and Suntory in the 1980s. And so today Beam still makes a, now makes a whiskey called a Overholt Monongahela mash. And again, they're talking about that particular region. And what makes it distinct is it's mash bill of 80% rye and 20% malted barley, which is very much the same mash bill that Abraham would have made in the early 1800s. But does it really follow what exactly is Mongol Nahella whiskey? So first, anything you notice is it's a whiskey made in America with no corn in it, right? It's rye and barley, but it was made in a different kind of still. We've only ever talked about pot stills and column stills, but in 1800, the column still hasn't been invented yet. And pot stills are not particularly efficient, especially with rye, because rye foam so much. So they use a different kind of still, a still that's essentially not known today, called a three chamber still. And that three chamber still will only put out about 50% alcohol at the end of its processing, which is pretty low for typical barreling. But then they'll put it into wooden barrels in dunnage storage, which is your earthen floors. They sort of moderate temperature, and under those conditions, after four years of aging, still, 50% really doesn't lose a lot of alcohol that way. Now, I, until I'd done this research, I had never heard of a three chamber still. So I did a lot of digging on this. And I'm not alone. There's a guy named Todd Leopold out of Colorado who's a whiskey producer and historian who was also fascinated about it and has actually built one because they largely all disappeared during Prohibition. But it's actually a kind of column still that has four distinct chambers in it. The topmost one is just a preheater. They put the wash into it and warm it up with a coiled coup. The lower three chambers each are a kind of small still. The bottomMost chamber, chamber three, has been run the longest. So they're literally moving from layer to layer and running the still for extended periods of time, although each given run it's only about 20 minutes. And so they'll quickly take the heads, hearts and tails out and empty the chamber three, and then move everything content in chamber two down to chamber three. Everything chamber one down to chamber two. And then the stuff that's in the preheater goes down to chamber one. And then they fill the preheater with more of the mash and go again.

And so it's heated by steam that stacks through the different chambers. And it's actually the steam that carries the alcohol. So this is relatively low temperature steam below boiling, but it's got enough heat in it that it's picking up alcohol, lots of reflux involved, and then ultimately goes through those coils at the top, which is where the preheater is before it goes in the condenser and they collect the alcohol. So these cycles are really short. They're about 20 minutes, but they run all the time. So it's sort. It's not as continuous as a column still, but it's a heck of a lot faster than a pot still. But it means that there's multiple treatments taken to the same mash in each of those chambers. And so it pulls a lot more flavor out of rye. So you're running at a lower temperature with a lot less urgency. So you don't have the foaming problems, but you do get to really extract flavors deeply. And this is because there's a more. There's more things going on in the rye than just the starch being converted into sugars. Which brings up our next issue, which is that modern cereal rye has been hybridized and optimized to increase its starch levels by from where it used to be, about 60% in the old style rises over 80% today at the expense of a bunch of flavor. And so if you're really going to make a traditional Pennsylvania Managa Helen rye, you need one of these old ryes, right? So not the dankos or the hasletzers or the current ones. You need a low starch rye. And back in those days, the popular rye in the area was called a Rosen rye. And it's making a bit of a comeback today. Although most of the places that are making the rye are actually down in Kentucky. But that guy Todd Leopold used a bruzy rye, which is only about 60% starch. You got to use a third more to get the same amount of alcohol out of it, but it gives you a completely different flavor. And again, you would not use that rye in a pot or column still. You need the three chambers still. So you have this combination of a different kind of rye and a different kind of still to make a really special kind of whiskey that I don't think anybody's made yet. Leopold's done his first run with this stuff. It's called the Leopold Three Chamber Rye. Again, it's out of Colorado, so you wouldn't really want to call it Pennsylvania whiskey. Good luck finding a bottle. He only released an edition in 2022, and the last time I saw any bottles of it, $250. That is not this. This is a Pennsylvanian rye. And I will happily pour for you, my friend, sir. But it's got a funny story to it. This particular rye is made by. Is owned by someone named K.R. overholt Critch Field.

[Richard Campbell]

So.

[Paul Thurat]

So this is a woman who's an author and a historian who has direct relation back to the Overholts. And so she tells lots of stories in that space. And she decided that she wanted to have her own spirit, and so she registered the trademark in 2016 for Old Farm Pennsylvanian Rye. Now, she has no ability or any competence, I think, in actually making whiskey. So she did the production out of Mountain Laurel Spirits, which is in Bristol, Pennsylvania. And they follow the traditional mash bill. The original versions were only aged for six months. They apparently were not very good. In 2019, she made this version. This is a version made by Hidden still out of Hershey, Pennsylvania. And again, they follow. It's a pretty traditional mash bill. 86% rye, 14% malted barley, aged for two years, bottled at 40% and only about 30 bucks. And as we have been drinking this.

When I talk about a rye, we usually talk about it in the context of bourbon. And it's very. We talk about the rye being the spicy part. Right. It's got a lot of sharp flavors of. This is not that sharp. Right. It's got a distinct flavor to it, but it doesn't come. It's not really hot. It's only 40%. It's pretty smooth. But it's got a different dynamic to it, too. It's a very different style of whiskey. It's also only available in Pennsylvania, so I. I include a link in the show notes. But that link really only leads to an online store to buy it. Although it's available in a few shops here in Pennsylvania now. Middle East Hidden stills. Hidden still has a bunch of their own product as well, which they sell more widely. If you go looking for hidden stills, you'll find it, but you won't find this. This is an odd duck. This is somebody's personal pet project to have a brand. They're leveraging off the fact that they're related to the Overholts and to that original farm back in the West. Certainly no old school to anything. But nobody at this point is really making a true Pennsylvania rye. But the ingredients are all there. You know, Leopold's doing out of Colorado. Think if someone would take the cues from him and actually set up shop properly in western Pennsylvania. You could bring bracket to 200-year-old rye whiskey. And I'd love a bottle of that.

[Leo Laporte]

I, I note that it's made in Hershey, Pennsylvania, which is a town that smells like chocolate.

[Paul Thurat]

That's right. It's a chocolate town.

[Leo Laporte]

This chocolate leak into the.

[Paul Thurat]

Not a bit.

[Richard Campbell]

It's got a little bit of an apple flavor, honestly.

[Paul Thurat]

It does, doesn't it? Yeah, it's got a little sweetness to it. It's. This is really pleasant stuff to drink.

[Leo Laporte]

Old farm Pennsylvania rye Farm, Pennsylvania whiskey.

[Paul Thurat]

And like I said, it's just a branding exercise that's being made by a third party that he's. She's already shifted once.

[Leo Laporte]

It's got so history.

[Paul Thurat]

Hardly a heritage whiskey.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

But it does. You know, there's nothing wrong with it. And it. And it definitely led me down this path of the amazing whiskey culture that once existed that was again totally destroyed by Prohibition along with a particular kind of still, by the way, those three chamber stills.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurat]

I've seen drawings of them made of wood.

[Richard Campbell]

Wow.

[Paul Thurat]

Because they run at such low temperatures, they literally could take modified barrels and assemble them and do a still.

[Richard Campbell]

Wow.

[Paul Thurat]

Now what Todd Leopold's done and I, I should. If you go searching for Todd Leopold in that whole story of the three chamber still, you'll find it. He had it made properly out of copper by Vendome, which is a American still manufacturer. So it does seem like a. In a time when we're really interested in these kinds of heritages. When you like the old grains and we were like original experiences, this is a experience, I think screaming to be made. It may have already been done. They just. It's going to take a few years for us to even know about it.

[Leo Laporte]

But you know, the heritage Interesting.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah. Remember I was showing we had with the Missouri Whiskey holiday. You know, I think Pennsylvania could be doing the same thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, absolutely. Well, my friends, you have a show to do. Richard, you're going to go do your live net Rocks lives in about an hour. Very nice. Paul, you have a nap to take, I believe. So.

[Richard Campbell]

What? Sorry, what to take?

[Leo Laporte]

Never mind.

So I will bid you a FL fond adieu till next week. We do Windows Weekly every Wednesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 18, sorry, 1900 UTC. We stream it live in the club. Of course, in the Club Twit Discord. But you can also watch it on YouTube and Twitch and X.com and Facebook and LinkedIn and Kik if you don't want to watch. Live on demand versions of the show available at our website, Twitt TV www.there's a YouTube channel with all the video and there's also, you know, we're a podcast, so you can subscribe at any podcast client. Choose audio or video or both and you'll get it automatically. You don't have to think any more about it. Just listen. Every week, that's all we ask. A special thanks to our Club Twit members this. This time of year. I like to be really thankful and grateful to them for making this possible. We wouldn't be here this year if it weren't for you being here this year. So thank you, you. And if you're interested in joining The Club Twit TV Club Twit, we do have a coupon for 10% off now through Christmas Day. So now would be a good time if you're not a member, to consider joining next week. We'll do a regular show.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah. For the first time in 10 weeks.

[Leo Laporte]

Sorry, you'll be home.

[Paul Thurat]

Next week's show will be from home.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurat]

First time in 10 weeks.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, I'll also be home for the first time in 24 hours. What's the big deal?

[Leo Laporte]

And then the following week, which is New Year's Eve, we have a special show which we recorded earlier this week. I feel like I just saw you guys two days ago. I did, but it was a lot of fun, just storytelling. Yeah, there was a nice bottle of whiskey.

[Richard Campbell]

There was a fire, slightly different clothing.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, Santa came to visit.

Anyway, that'll be our December 31st show and then we're back in business on January 7th. So thank you very much.

[Richard Campbell]

This month is disappearing.

[Paul Thurat]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Leo Laporte]

Years over fast. Get you. My Christmas shopping is done. I'm pleased to say it's never been done. So quickly.

Thank you, everybody. We will see you next time on Windows. Oh, I didn't say Paul. Ths.com don't steal his stuff, okay? And his books are sensitive about it. Little sensitive about something. And his books, including the Field guide to Windows 11 and Windows Everywhere, [e-mail] Richard Campbell, of course, at Dotnet Rocks. And you'll see that show he mentioned earlier there. But soon you'll see his special live episode of.

Net Rocks. So runasradio.com, i think I said it wrong. Runasradio.com it's the website. Dot Net Rocks is the show you're doing next. Thank you, everybody. We'll see you next time, all you winners, all you dozers on Windows Weekly. Bye bye.

[Richard Campbell]

Race.