Windows Weekly 968: Uncharted Territory

Summary

Windows Weekly 968: Uncharted Territory

Date: January 29, 2026
Host: Leo Laporte
Co-Hosts: Paul Thurrott (Mexico City), Richard Campbell (London)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into a turbulent Patch Tuesday for Windows 11, the shifting landscape of AI-powered coding and workflows, and the ongoing “earnings season” with a focus on Microsoft (plus a late-breaking earnings update). The hosts debate the reliability of Intel’s hardware, touch on mass layoffs at tech giants like Amazon, and share intriguing thoughts on how AI is reshaping app development. The show retains its signature banter, international perspectives, and even a dash of whiskey lore.

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Main Discussion Themes

1. Weather Banter and Global Check-in

• The hosts check in from different cities, joke about cold weather in the U.S. vs. elsewhere (00:00–04:00).
  • “When it gets to 40 below, it doesn’t matter, does it?” — Leo (01:39)
  • Richard shares quirks of British breakfasts and being locked in a London venue.

2. Microsoft Earnings Watch

• Microsoft’s quarterly results were expected during the episode; Paul and Leo discuss what impact AI expenses and layoffs may have (06:34–08:00, 27:09–30:14, final 132:22).
• The hosts note increasing costs of AI R&D, workforce reductions as a way to “conceal costs,” and speculate on how companies plan to “hide” AI spending.
  • “Concealing it is by firing people.” — Leo (06:56)
  • “I'm trying not to be cynical about this, but I do feel like they're hiding information.” — Paul (07:03)
• Breaking Update: Microsoft’s quarterly results arrive for a quick summary:
  • $38.5B net income, $81.3B in revenue, AI investments continue to soar (132:22)
  • “Productivity and Business Processes” up 16%, “Intelligent Cloud” up 29%. “More Personal Computing” division declined slightly.

3. Windows 11 Patch Tuesday Fiasco

• Patch Tuesday (January 2026) created more bugs than it fixed, requiring two emergency patches to address issues like failed hibernation, remote desktop bugs, and apps freezing during cloud saves (16:28–21:32).
  • “This thing literally was so buggy that they... had to issue two sets of emergency patches…” — Paul (16:28)
  • Discussion on teams in flux, “lost knowledge,” and hasty patching over holidays.
• Debate whether users should wait before applying updates (19:39).

4. Windows 11 Updates – New Features and Fixes

• Cross-device resume improvements for Android phones: Continue Spotify, Office, and browser sessions between phone and PC (09:00–11:25)
  • “The Spotify playback thing is cool... comes over the speakers on the PC.” — Richard (10:34)
• Smart App Control now togglable in UI, giving developers relief from overzealous app blocking (11:37–13:08)
• Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-In Security (ESS) updates: external fingerprint readers now compatible with higher security tier (15:09–16:07)

5. Intel Earnings and Chip Reliability

• Intel's financial woes continue. Data center and AI units grow, but overall the company still posts losses (29:37–34:14)
• In-depth discussion of ongoing reliability challenges with recent Intel chips, user experiences with sleep/wake, presence detection, and the variability across OEMs and chip models (34:14–39:50)
  • “Snapdragon is by far... on a different planet [for reliability].” — Paul (37:56)
  • The hosts agree that ecosystem (OS, hardware, manufacturer) is vital in determining user experience.

6. AI Coding and the Rise of “Vibe-Coded” Apps

• Key insight: AI is making disposable, task-specific coding accessible to non-programmers (84:55–98:23)
  • Discussions of “vibe coding” as a new paradigm where English prompts replace traditional code for creating tools, automations, and app mashups.
  • “We are now at the point where English, which was always the holy grail, is the programming language.” — Leo (94:53)
  • Community and sharing: prompts and “apps” can be rapidly remixed or shared (“prompt stores”).
  • AI-generated programs increasingly integrate information gathered from the web, APIs, GitHub, etc.
• AI subscription models and the evolving economics and pricing of cloud-based and local AI (74:00–78:51)
  • “I wonder why this is possible. I don't think this is going to solve the problem of the cost of AI.” — Paul

7. Societal Impact of Tech and AI

• Mass layoffs at Amazon (and tech in general) discussed. Hosts ponder the dilemma of record profits and large-scale layoffs, the morale crisis, and the restructuring of tech workforces (62:39–68:29).
  • “The morale is in the tank… People are so tired.” — Richard (65:00)
  • Riffing on “fear-based” employment strategies.
• Broader philosophical reflections: The end of traditional apps, the rise of disposable, user-prompted tools, and the impending flood of software solutions that bypass legacy development hurdles.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “It's the mundane stuff that's going to kill you. It's every time.” — Paul (17:47)
• “The British invented those racks that you put nice hot toast into and it cools them off optimally, like as fast as possible.” — Leo (05:23)
• “You want the 1Password manager, not 18 of them like we all actually have.” — Paul (113:12)
• “We were in uncharted territory making things up as we went along.” — Leo, quoting Terminator (100:01)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------|------------| | Intel earnings and reliability discussion | 29:37–39:50| | Windows 11 patch debacle & update features | 16:28–21:32| | Mass layoffs, morale, and AI cost equations | 62:39–68:29| | “Vibe-coding,” AI-generated apps, new paradigms| 84:55–98:23| | Microsoft earnings break (breaking news) | 132:22 | | Whisky of the Week: Tullibardine 18 | 124:31 | | Password Management Tips (Back of the Book) | 113:10 |

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Fun Tidbits

• Whiskey recommendation: Tullibardine 18 (a “bargain” 18-year-old Highland single malt) – detailed distillery history from Richard (124:31)
• Listeners can find all of Richard’s whiskey reviews on a fan-compiled YouTube playlist (“weirdstufffrommyclawset.com,” 143:52)
• AI User Group and lively “club-only” community content part of TWiT’s Club offerings (111:46)

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Tone & Style

The show remains relaxed, irreverent, occasionally self-deprecating, and rich in anecdotes—whether about technology history or the quirks of international travel. The hosts are candid about frustrations with software reliability and big-tech corporate shenanigans, but equally enthusiastic about the innovative promise of AI and "vibe-coded" tooling.

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Episode Takeaways

• Patch quality and software reliability remain serious pain points for Windows users and admins.
• AI is rapidly democratizing coding and automation, lowering barriers for customization and mashups.
• Tech layoffs and AI investments are reshaping the workforce and business priorities for even the mightiest companies.
• We are at a true inflection point for software development, with natural language “prompting” threatening to supersede many traditional app paradigms.
• As always: Choose your password manager wisely, and your whiskey more wisely still.

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Recommended: Listen for in-depth analysis on AI and app development, and a peek into the “vibe of the moment” in tech’s topsy-turvy evolution.

Transcript

[A]

It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurad is in Mexico City. Richard Campbell's in London, England. I'm here, though, and I'm glad you're here. We'll Talk about Windows 11, that Patch Tuesday update so bad it required two emergency fixes. Earnings come out for Microsoft this week. We'll have the details as they come in. And we're going to talk about AI coding and how it changes everything. All of that's coming up next on Windows Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit. This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurat and Richard Campbell. Episode 968, recorded Wednesday, January 28, 2026. Uncharted territory. It's time for Windows Weekly. Hello, you winners. Nice to see you. And you dozers too. Don't have to wake up for this. It's just Paul Thurat coming to us from Mexico City in beautiful Mexico, where there is no ice storm.

[B]

No, no, it got down into the 50s last night. I mean, it was.

[A]

Wow, that is chill.

[C]

Oh, my goodness.

[A]

Got to put on a Sarah.

[B]

Wear a long sleeve shirt. I don't know.

[A]

I mean, meanwhile, back in Makunji, it's probably still sub zero.

[B]

I handed my phone to this guy we know in a bar last night to show him the weather back home, and he was looking at it and he goes, is this Fahrenheit?

[A]

It's a big deal, actually. When it gets to 40 below, it doesn't matter, does it?

[C]

It crosses over.

[A]

You know, who knows that? Mr. Richard Campbell, because he's from Canada, joining us now from the other country that uses imperial measurements sometimes. Have they gone to metric in the uk?

[C]

They have. Officially. They're a metric, yes.

[A]

So it's only us in Liberia, I think now in North Korea too. And North. Well, North Korea.

[B]

Good company. Good company, yeah.

[A]

When you get your airplanes from North Korea, you got to make sure you use imperial socket wrenches.

[B]

Good to know.

[A]

I'll keep that in mind.

[B]

Will you feel like Amazon should mention that, you know, at the time of.

[A]

Purchase, but these socket wrenches are from North Korea. That is Richard Campbell from Runasradio.com. what are you in London? Londinia.

[C]

London, yeah. I'm in Westminster. Like literally a stone's throw from Parliament.

[A]

The Elizabeth Towers right out your window.

[C]

Yeah, well, we're at the Queenie To Convention center, which I've shot at before, although I've gone back to the hotel now because if you recall, the last time I did it there, they missed me and Locked the building up with me in it. And what did you do? I don't even like 11 o' clock at night. There was one security guard left on, so I started walking around, realizing I couldn't get out. He saw me on the camera and tracked me down and then led me out the employees entrance. And there was much chastisement in the morning of you. Yeah, the comments.

[A]

You were the one locked in. You were the victim here.

[B]

I don't think when you were here, Richard, that you. We ever brought you up to the. Something just made a sound.

[A]

The roof.

[B]

I don't know. Wherever my phone is probably. Anywho, I don't think he went up to the roof, but we have this roof thing and the door, if you will, if you close it behind you, just locks and you can't get out. There's no key on the. Even though there's a key to get in, there's no key to get out. So that's where our storage is and everything. Right. So every time I'm kind of weird about it, like I. Because I'm thinking if I get locked up here, you want to bring your phone, you know, so you can call.

[C]

Someone, make sure you have your phone.

[B]

But we were just watching TV last night and we heard this girl or someone go upstairs and Stephanie looked and she usually the guard goes and makes rounds, but she was just going upstairs and you could hear opening the door, slammed the door shut. And I'm like, yep, she's going to get locked in. And she got something out of her storage and then she went over and you could hear up there going, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like she got really excited and I went up there and I was like. She was like, thank you. I'm like, no, we know it's going to happen.

[A]

Been there.

[C]

Yeah, we heard you. We knew it was that happening.

[B]

She might have been up there for hours otherwise if we weren't around.

[C]

Yeah, if you guys were in town.

[A]

Ladies and gentlemen, we, we want to be grateful for OSHA and other governmental bodies that make sure that there are fire exits at all times.

[B]

There's an exit, there's four sides. You could go over the side. How many states? Well, up there, it's the seventh. There's no fire escape or anything like that. There's no ladder, there's no nothing. Nope. Again, if you're lucky, there'll be an earthquake and the building will come down that way you'll get back on the ground. I don't know, not a lot of good outcomes there.

[A]

Well, all right. Don't go to the roof and.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Did you have an English breakfast this morning, Richard?

[C]

Yeah. Well, I mean, they have. They have a good breakfast spread in.

[A]

They little blood sausage, some baked tomatoes, beans.

[C]

Yep, all those things. And good toast, but only on one side.

[A]

Cold toast.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I love it. The British invented those racks that you put nice hot toast into and it cools them off optimally, like as rats.

[C]

As possible, so that you no longer have good toast because you want your.

[B]

Toast of butter ready.

[C]

And as soon as that toast comes out of that rotating toaster, like butter, immediately you want it all melted.

[A]

I'm with you. I'm with you.

[C]

You want poached eggs on and I'm good to go.

[A]

So we are waiting. I'm stalling because we're waiting for Microsoft's.

[B]

Oh, no, it's not going to happen in time for the beginning of the show. This is going to be an hour and a half later or something.

[A]

Looks like I've taken a hard fall. I'm okay. Thank you. Watch. I did not fall. I must have pounded something. Maybe I was emulating the woman in the upstairs. I could do that, actually. She should have an Apple watch.

[B]

I just put the Microsoft investor site in dark mode and now I've got Dark Satchel looking at me. It's good.

[A]

Are his eyes laser?

[B]

Yeah, the whole thing is bizarre.

[C]

It's laser eyes.

[A]

All right, so probably before the show's completely over, we will probably do. We'll get a quick earnings, a quick grab of.

[C]

What do you think?

[A]

Is it going to be a good quarter?

[B]

Yeah, I'm sure it is. I mean, but the, the question, like the question we're going to have about Alphabet and Amazon, too, is just going to be the cost of AI stuff and what that looks like. So we'll see. And how they massage that, because that's going to be.

[C]

What you're really asking is how well are they going to conceal the price of AI in this latest quarter?

[A]

Well, one of the ways concealing it is by firing people.

[B]

We'll get to that. We're going to get to that.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, it's. Yeah, right. I'm trying not to be cynical about this, but I do feel like they're hiding information.

[A]

Yeah, well, we'll. We'll be taking a quick cursory look in about two hours. And then. And then, of course, next week, the Earnings Learnings, the quarterly Earnings Learnings episode. What's going on in Windows 11?

[B]

Well, last week, you may recall there was a beta build, but not previously on Windows 11 on this bat channel. There was a beta build but not a dev build. So I speculated at the time, well, maybe dev is moving on to the next thing, which would be 26H1. And then several days later they just released the same build to dev for some reason. So I was like, okay, maybe not. But then yesterday came around and they issued, well, three builds but for four channels and they did split dev and beta. So I don't know why they bothered releasing that thing last week. They're not calling dev 26h1. In fact it's still 25h2, but it's a different, you know, build series, if you will build number series. So I mean this is very clearly going to be 26H1. I don't know why they do this sometimes, but. But whatever. So they released two separate builds. Right? I want to make sure that's true. Yeah, I think it's two. Yeah, two separate builds, one for dev, one for beta. Both have the same changes. There are no new features, oddly, just fixes. They did say going forward it's likely that these things would remain consistent functionally, which is what we've seen over the past few years. So as it goes to 26H1, 26H2, whatever, we'll have 25H2 with the same features.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It makes, you know, that's the way that's been. So that was interesting and sort of a confirmation. But then they also released the same KB, the same update for in release preview for 24 and 25H2. So it's the same update, but it updates both to different build numbers. Right. Depending on which you have. And this one is a preview of what patch Tuesday will be like in February. And there are a bunch of new things. I wouldn't say most of these are major. They're mostly improvements to existing features or whatever. I just point out two that I think are semi important. One is Microsoft is really trying to get this cross device functionality going. So cross device resume in this case. And right now I think it depends on your phone, honestly, but it has to be Android. But you can resume Spotify playback, you can resume working on documents in Excel, Word or PowerPoint. You can continue a web browsing session. I think that works with your default browser on either side. But that's kind of up in the air and they're updating that to support more phones. So it's Vivo phones, if using Vivo browser will work with that and honor Oppo, Samsung Vivo Xiaomi phones can now resume working with online Microsoft 365 documents in the app.

[C]

I work on Excel spreadsheets on my phone very often. Like, that's. I know, look something up. But actually editing it, like, that's what loop is for. OneNote is for. Goodness.

[B]

Yeah, same. The brown.

[C]

You know, the Spotify playback thing is cool. Like listening to a podcast in the car, carry the phone inside, comes over the speakers on the PC.

[B]

This is not in the notes and it's apropos. Nothing in a way, but there's a YouTube music feature that they've just added where if you're listening to something on your phone and you start it on your computer in the. In a web browser on a different device, that thing will. The thing you're playing is supposed to come up as the indicators, press play and keep playing. And to me, this is like that. And I think a lot of us email things to ourselves. Like you might be browsing something on your phone. You're like, I want to save this. Maybe you save it to like, document or. Sorry, these days, be Instant Paper or whatever using. Or you just email the address to yourself and then you go to your computer and then you, you know, paste it in, I guess so. It's obviously Apple does this really well within their own environment, but we don't have anything.

[C]

And the existing. I think somebody just said this in the comments, too. The existing Spotify app says it's just fine. Like, if you run the Spotify app on your PC, it knows on your same account, it knows where you are on the phone.

[B]

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot I kind of don't like about Spotify, but that's actually one of the really good features. The other one I just wanted to highlight was Smart App Control. So this has been in Windows 11 for a while. Most people don't know about it. People never experience it. But the way it's supposed to work is the first time you sign in on a new install, it runs in the background. And I think it's called experimental mode, or I can't remember the name, the term they use, but it basically looks at what you do running apps, and if it doesn't see anything that it doesn't understand, it will just turn itself on and then you might see it block something. So if you're a developer, you'll see this all the time because there's all kinds of stuff in Visual Studio that will trigger this thing. And the problem with it was that you couldn't toggle it on and off. Technically, you could actually get around this with some registry hacks, but once you turned it off, which you could do, you couldn't turn it on normally, at least not in the ui. And they have enabled. Well, it was grayed out. Right. And they just would. Even though technically you could always kind of do it if you knew how. And I'm sure I had a tip about this at one point. But now with this update, you'll be able to just toggle this thing on and off on the fly. So developers are probably going to just want to leave it off, frankly, because they're always testing apps and things, and that's the type of thing that's going to trigger this warning. But I've even had it blocked. Part of an app one time. It literally said that it was part of one of my apps and I'm like, oh, that's fun. So now I can't tell why my app's not running or running properly.

[C]

Correct me if I'm wrong, the smart app Control is the worst possible name here. This is actually a security feature.

[B]

Yep. Okay. So actually I should say the way that you get to this is to run Windows Security and go into app and browser control. It's the top option. And it's not experimental, it's evaluation. What's that thing? So, but on this particular computer, I'm just running unstable. So this thing is off right now because no doubt I was running Visual Studio and ran into the problem. But the other two options on an evaluation are grayed out my case. So once I get this update and anyone else does. Right. You'll be able to toggle it on the fly. But yeah, it's basically using what Microsoft used to call heuristics, which they probably now call AI because those terms are synonyms to basically look at app behavior and look for anything that might be malicious or suspicious or maybe it's an unsigned app. Those trigger a different warning as well. But. And you know, you'll see it. I mean, I see it all the time because of the developer angle. I think most people probably wouldn't see it, but you could download a random utility from the website. This thing you've been using for years, you just kind of use it and trust it and you don't care. And there's no granular control here. You can't, you know, there's not much you can do like it just kind of blocks it. So if you run into that problem, you might have to use some app all the time that causes it. You might want to just turn it off.

[C]

But yeah. And you know what the difference between heuristics and AI is?

[B]

Yeah. One is real.

[C]

Will raise a billion dollars.

[B]

You're right. Right. Okay. So heuristics does not have a dollar sign attached to it.

[C]

That's right.

[B]

Boring. What's this old?

[C]

One's a working technology and one will raise a billion dollars.

[B]

Actually, I should mention a third feature because this is a big deal, I think for some people. Windows 11 has a feature called Windows hello, ESS Enhanced Sign In Security. Right. It's on all copilot plus PCs, but it's also on other PCs.

[C]

Yep. It's on the screen.

[B]

Yeah. So it doesn't have to be called Pilot PC, but if you get one of those computers, it's automatic. It's the short version, more secure version of Windows Low, I guess is the easiest way to say it. But you can't use it with external devices. So if you have a laptop, it's going to work with the fingerprint reader or the camera that's built into that device. But if you plug something in, it's just not going to work. You can turn it off, you know, ess, so that just works. But now you just have normal hello. And so they've been talking about this, working on this for a while. But there are now Windows hello, ESS compatible external fingerprint readers, or soon will be. And you'll be able to use those with this update.

[C]

And this has always been my idea of how I would build a desktop Copilot plus PC, because you need that ESS feature. So I'd get one of those fingerprint readers.

[B]

Yep. Yeah. It's neat that you can do that. It's over, I assume USB like you said. And I. I've never seen one, you know, but I'm sure any days. No.

[C]

And there's other problems, too. Like, I also really want a Qualcomm processor and I can't get that on an ATX motherboard at this point.

[B]

Right, Right. Never say never, but probably never. So. But yes, I haven't abandoned all hope.

[C]

I'm just being crushed to death. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Boy.

[B]

So the January patch Tuesday updates were minor by all accounts. Right. We didn't have a preview update in December, so there were no new features to worry about, which was kind of nice. But apparently this thing was not. Apparently this thing literally was so buggy that they have now had to issue two sets of emergency patches to fix the problems caused by this update. So One can.

[C]

There's only a couple of people working over Christmas trying to make a patch for January.

[B]

And maybe it was bring your kid to school day or bring a kid to work day or whatever. I don't. I. Yeah, I can't explain.

[A]

Let the intern do it, you know.

[B]

Yeah, maybe. Leila.

[C]

I also get the sense the teams are being realigned right now. And, you know, the merger of the. Of core and client, like, there's a lot of. I really get a sense over the past few weeks, we're seeing the teams being shuffled around and nobody really knows what they're doing yet.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And a lot of workflow stuff, like everything going into insiders just seems erratic right now. And I think it's.

[B]

Yes, it does.

[C]

People have moved around or left and they didn't leave notes. Right. And you've kind of got a bunch of lost knowledge on the workflows to these various insider pipelines.

[B]

God, I hope it's not that, but. Yeah, that could be.

[C]

I hate that it's this mundane, but it typically is this mundane. It's literally some God.

[B]

Well, it's the mundane stuff that's going to kill you. It's every time. Yeah. So I don't. The first of these came out on the 19th, so that was what, almost two weeks ago, not quite 10 days ago. So a week ago Monday. Not the usual day for an update. Right. But how do you feel about Sunday night? Because they released the second one over the weekend. Right. And the previous one, as I recall, was about computers not going into hibernation or turning off. They would just reboot, remember? In some cases. And there was also a remote desktop bug in there. And then this one has to do with apps becoming unresponsive when they try to save documents or files to cloud storage services. And it's like, guys, what are you doing?

[C]

Testing's a good idea.

[B]

Yeah. And I don't have any memory of them ever having to do this twice with one update, but it's possible, right? I don't want to preclude that possibility, but I don't remember it. Plus, you get that, you know, it's a weekend. Right? You're. This is not like an admin level nightmare. Something's gone wrong in your environment per se. But the guy Laurent who writes the.

[C]

Fixes for Print Nightmare took several iterations, but that was the security vulnerability.

[B]

Yeah. This is not right. This is not crowdstrike, like, whatever, but. But for individuals. This is your little insight into what that might be like, Right. Where, you know, in my case, I'm getting texts by the guy I work with on Sunday. It's like I never hear from him. I'm on Sunday, what's going on? And, and yeah, sure enough, I. You have to. And you. This is a rebootable thing. You have to install it and reboot. I actually told my wife you might want to do something you never do, which is look for updates and get that thing fixed, you know, so well.

[C]

And suddenly we're back to that whole, shouldn't I just wait a week before I do that update?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, can you or does it just.

[B]

Yeah, no, you, you, you can defer to some degree, but you are going to take it. This is the thing, right? You're going to take it doesn't matter.

[A]

You're going to like it, right?

[B]

Well, you don't have to like it. They don't care about that. But you do have to take it. But yeah, you can. You know, back when this started, this would have been the early 2000s. I remember Brian Livingston, who I was working on the Secrets books with. His policy was really hardcore. It was like, you are not installing anything from Windows Update. I was like, yeah, I don't, I don't agree with that. Yeah. And there were like, there were. Yeah, we're. There were still raw feelings. I think at the time over there was a particularly bad. I think it was Windows 2000 SP4, if I remember correctly. Maybe SP2 that everyone talked about for 10 years, you know, as the low point, you know, and other issues, of course. I mean, there always are. But I. This is one of those good ways, the bad type things to me. I think, I think you're better off.

[C]

Well, it's certainly been a thread on run as for servers especially that the risk of a zero day is now higher than the risk of a bad patch.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

And how widespread were these issues? I mean, they weren't that widespread. Right.

[B]

These particular issues were not, I don't think are particularly bad. I mean. Well, let me. In the sense that this is not a zero day.

[C]

No.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

Some people would have noticed nothing. Right, right. I think a lot of people.

[A]

Most people, I think especially with the first one.

[B]

Yeah, first. Especially the first one. But this one, I saw this across all my PCs, so.

[A]

Oh, you did?

[B]

Oh, yeah. I mean, I saw the update. I mean, so it did apply to me of the update.

[A]

But you didn't see the problem that it fixed. Not that.

[B]

I mean, I have so many problems I don't even notice anymore.

[C]

So.

[B]

I'm not sure I'd be.

[A]

You got 99 problems. But this patch Tuesday update.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, maybe it was. I don't know.

[C]

Well, it's also how much RDP do you do? Right. Because this was mostly affecting rdp, right?

[B]

Yeah. And I don't do any rdp, especially here, so. No, that was no problem. Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Well, I noticed my stock portfolio is back. We'll talk about the earnings that propelled the s and P500 to a record high today in just a little bit. You're watching Windows Weekly. Paul Thurat and Richard Campbell, both of whom have fled the country.

[B]

Well, fled is a strong word. It was too far to watch the border. I, you know, it's a.

[A]

It's a matter of interpretation, I guess. I'm still here. I'm still here.

[B]

Yeah, we will Free state of California.

[A]

In the free state of California. You know, it's interesting, you're seeing a lot of people in the neighborhood flying the bare republic flag. The California state flag I guess is a way of saying, yeah, yeah, we're, we're Californians. Anyway, I bought my ice whistles. I'm ready. I'm ready. If we have an ice storm here, I'm ready. But first a word from our sponsor then we will continue on with earnings learnings. Our show today brought to you brand new sponsor want to welcome. I'm thrilled to welcome Trusted Tech. Now you really want to know about TrustedTech? They offer us based Microsoft certified support using a simple ticket based model that helps businesses save money and get faster better help and proactive support. They are the number one global replacement to Microsoft Unified support and Trusted Tech will work to get you better service no matter what size business you have. In recognition of that support quality, Trusted Tech was one of the first partners in the world to earn Microsoft's new solutions partner designation. Congratulations. That's for support. Solutions partner for support announced recently at Ignite in July, Microsoft will implement a significant. Oh you probably. I hope you're aware of this. I hope it's on your radar. A significant price increase is coming for M365 and it's more than just increase in cost. There's a lot of nuance in the licensing. So that's another thing. Trusted Tech does really good. They are experts on Microsoft licensing. So if you need guided Microsoft support that's more straightforward, more predictable and actually responsive, get a free consultation at TrustedTech Team WindowsWeeklyCSS okay, it's TrustedTech Team not.com TrustedTech Team Windows Weekly CSS and as I said they do support but they also do licensing and they'll give you a consultation on either one. Certainly now is the time before July's increase to check that out. Now I know you know they got the name Trusted Tech, but do you trust them? Well, ask Kevin Turner. Kevin Turner, you know that name? Former Microsoft coo. This is what he said to Trusted Tech. He said you Trusted Tech have an incredible customer reputation and you have to earn that every single day. The relentless focus you guys have on taking care of customers gives them value and differentiates you in the marketplace. End quote. That's a, that's pretty high praise from a guy we all know. Trusted Tech elevates the Microsoft support experience with its Certified support services. That's important too. It's certified support services from Microsoft and look who uses Trusted Tech. It's all on the website, but I'll give you some examples. NASA, Netflix, Neuralink, Apple, intel all use Trusted Tech and they all say 32 to 52% compared to the average Microsoft Unified Support Agreement. Trusted Tech's Microsoft Certified engineers first respond within 10 minutes. That's they achieve an average 85.7% in house ticket resolution rate and 99.3% customer satisfaction rate. Can't get much better than that. Trusty Tech's flexible ticket based monthly or annual pricing model offers direct escalation to Microsoft from a managed partner. And that's important. They are a managed partner when needed. So you, you get the best of both worlds. Another Great example customer TaylorMade, the principal architect for TaylorMade, says We don't break glass often, but when we do, being able to quickly leverage Trusted Tech's professional services through the CSS program and get immediate engineer level support has been invaluable to us. You probably don't want to ever break the glass, but when you do break glass in emergency, whether you're looking to fine tune your Microsoft 365 licensing, improve the way your organization receives proactive Microsoft support, or both, Trusted Tech offers free consultations to help you understand your options. You owe it to yourself to at least do that. Go to TrustedTech team WindowsWeeklyCSS and submit a form to get in contact with TrustedTech's Microsoft support engineers. That's TrustedTech. Thank you Trusted Tech for your trust in us and we're welcoming you to the Windows Weekly family. Great to have you. TrustedTech Team WindowsWeeklyCSS and now back to the show.

[B]

Paul, hello again. So not too much on the earnings front yet. Like I said up front, Microsoft will be later Today Apple is this week. It might be Apple might be tomorrow. I assumed that Alphabet and Amazon were also this week, but actually they're next week and then of course they're going to be the hardware companies, you know, Nvidia, AMD and Intel was the one that has released earnings so far. That's all I got. So next week's going to be terrible, but we'll see.

[A]

It's been good so far, hasn't it?

[B]

No, I mean for me. Oh, for you. Like having to write personally, yes, this is terrible to write up, but. And then PC makers, which kind of follow. But a.

[A]

This is actually a really good place to use AI. I think it's quite good for me.

[B]

To use AI too.

[A]

Yeah, you're going to still want to write it, I guess, but AI is really useful for just analyzing.

[B]

You've reminded me. I point. I, I was reading Apple News the other morning on my iPad and there was a, There's a section on the main page that's local news and of course the storm is happening back home at the time and it was Lehigh Valley, blah blah, blah, some inches of snow, whatever it was. And so I clicked on it just to kind of see what was going on. And literally at the top there's a warning from Apple that says this is AI generated content. Well, I've never seen, I've never seen that before.

[A]

So interesting.

[B]

I read through this article and I thought, I don't, I don't think I ever would have noticed.

[A]

I don't think you could tell anymore. You know, Apple used to get in a lot of trouble for the Apple Intelligence news summaries. Right. Because it's things like know Luigi Manon's dead, stuff like that. And I have to say I left them on because I thought they were hilarious. But they're really, at this point they're reliable. They're pretty robust.

[B]

This was a. Not a thousand words, but maybe 700 words of whatever. And I, it's amazing. It read very normally to me.

[A]

I, I think we're really enter. This is going to be an interesting year. We're entering a year where AI, all of these things we didn't like about AI, the hallucinations, the, you know, the weird, you know, anodyne, the hand, six.

[B]

Fingers, the, you know, all that weird.

[A]

Stuff, the 12 finger, all of that seems to be getting better. The companies are working really hard to fix that.

[B]

I think this always seemed like solvable problem stuff to me, but yeah, it's definitely getting there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If anyone was holding out Hope that Intel was going to have some awesome rebound. You might want to just turn this off for about the next two minutes. Last year was a disaster for this company. The most recent quarter was a disaster. So net loss is $600 million on revenues of 13.7 billion in the quarter for the year. Net loss of $100 million on revenues. Oh, sorry, sorry. That's the year ago quarter. Sorry, sorry. Net loss of $300 million in revenues of 52.9 billion for the year. Yikes.

[C]

That's single digits, percentage points. There are way larger disasters than this.

[A]

Well, but it's not making money.

[C]

It's certainly not making money, but it's kind of stemming the bleed.

[A]

More than half a billion dollars a year. It seems like a long term.

[B]

Yeah. So the interesting notion, I literally updated notion at this before we started the show because it always has to update and it just popped down a little thing. It says, click here to update the latest version.

[A]

Like, no, again, again.

[B]

Something bad just happened out there.

[A]

Anyway, it was the girl trying to get off the roof promptly.

[B]

Yep, she landed.

[A]

Did you let her out?

[B]

She got to the ground. So the problem for intel is manifold, I guess. But if you look at their major business units, there's only two. Now, client computing is what makes the PC chips, right? Their revenues were down 7%. Revenues for the year were down 3% year over year. The rest of intel is actually doing better. They could have done more on the Data center and AI side, right? So that business had 4.7 billion in revenues in the quarter. So it's about half the size of the PC business now, but I bet that changes. But that's up 9% year over year. And for the year, their revenues were up 5% year over year. So that's going pretty well. And then even Intel Foundry, which by the way, zero customers, is doing better year over year, you know, which is kind of interesting, right? So the Intel Foundry business is reported as if it were a separate business, but four point. Oh, sorry, four. Yeah, 4.5 billion in revenue. So about equal to the data center AI business, which is up 4% year over year. And then 17.8 billion for the year, up 3% year over year. Unfortunately, it is also warned, intel that is has warned that the current quarter will not meet expectations. And you know, their stock price, which had been flying high since the investment, which I added air quotes to, if you're not watching this just fell through the floor because there's no. I, I don't know. I think there's a Future here for the foundry, if they can get that off the ground. I mean there were no.

[C]

So you just saying the investment didn't work or the money didn't arrive? Like what's wrong with the.

[B]

I think the expectation was intel is back, baby. There was this kind of irrational exuberance, I think about intel for some reason I, you know, I'm not a financial.

[C]

Analyst club up and running in Arizona that's actually making current generation chips, right?

[B]

Yep. Yeah, sort of. I mean, you know. Yes, but most of those latest Panther like chips are actually still made by tsmc, right. I mean they assemble them in Arizona, but I don't know. Yeah, they'll get there or they won't. I don't really care. But I vaguely sort of agree that we need competition in space. There are rumors that now that Nvidia is prepping their long awaited entry into the Windows and ARM field, with several PC makers, you know, coming on board as well, that's going to be super interesting, if only because Nvidia graphics are obviously fairly amazing. So we'll see what happens with that. But you know, and AMD is going really gangbusters honestly in the PC space too. So if x86 is still your thing for some reason, there's a good option there. I don't know about Intel. I don't know.

[C]

All right, it sounds like they need a couple more quarters that they're really going to turn the ship around. But at least they're, you know, they are executing the plan. They have stripped the company down and focused on the two business models and yeah, doing all the things now can.

[B]

They need money, they need badly to announce a win though, like a major, really do.

[C]

And they clearly did not.

[B]

Right. Yeah, we'll see.

[C]

This all, I mean the Panther Lake chip looks good, but there's been a lot of problems with the chips no matter where they were made.

[B]

Yep, yep. No, they've had design problems for a long time.

[A]

What do you mean? But what are the. How do those manifest?

[B]

Is it reliability problems? They just die? Well, the chips don't just die, but I mean you just run into reliability problems. This is something. Before they went to Carolta, I was pointing this out. In fact, I think it started here because I was starting to use USB docks and stuff and there was something about, I want to say it was either 11th and 12th or 12th and 13th gen where I had huge reliability problems on docs. And no one else saw this, no one else said anything about it. I, you know, I kind of moved.

[A]

On but the problem is it's subtle. Right. So you don't know where it's coming from.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And the response of intel when you run into these problems is to simply replace the chips. Like they don't hum and haw around. They know they get an RMA claim on a problem and then the new chip has.

[B]

Yeah, but so that assumes that you bought a chip, right? So most people buy a computer and that puts the PC maker on the line for support. And that's the same relationship Microsoft with Windows has with you, which is, yeah, you have some chip in there, but the, the other factor for reliability or anything else with these chips of course is the PC maker because they're on the hook for fixing the bugs that are in these chips. And these chips all have incredible numbers of bugs, but they also make their own hardware. Right. So they have their own, you know, cooling systems and thermal systems and other chipsets that they pick and choose from and you know, they assemble them on whatever kinds of motherboards they have and whatever. And like they can introduce problems as well. So it's not always clear, you know, where the problem is. But I, you know, moving to Windows on ARM with Snapdragon has been eye opening in my case because then you see what a truly reliable computer looks like and it's, you know, it's nice. And then you realize it's not like this on, you know, I haven't noticed.

[A]

Any issues with my lunar lake, but. So is it all newer?

[B]

No, there, there are some intel based laptops that for some reason are just fine. Yeah, that's true.

[A]

You may, although you wouldn't really necessarily know, would you? I mean you might, something might crash and you might say, oh, it's the program, when in fact it's the chip.

[B]

To me the obvious one is what happens when you open the lid.

[C]

Right.

[B]

No, I mean it sounds stupid but ideally like with a Mac or a Snapdragon X based computer, it comes right on and it comes right on and it just doesn't just come right on, but the Windows hello. Kicks in and it finds you. Yeah, yeah, well, using so, but. Right. So the other variables. Fair.

[A]

I'm using Linux.

[B]

I was gonna say the other variable is the operating system too. Right. But whatever, you know, obviously Microsoft supports all the, you know, modern power management capabilities, etc. Etc.

[A]

It's so fast. I have to really, I'm, you know.

[B]

It could be, I mean you can't doing.

[A]

Doing it, but I have to do it really slow.

[B]

Doing it back to back is hard. Yeah. The. I'm pretty sure that screen never turned off, but that's okay. I'm not, I'm not blaming intel for this. I'm just. But I see this.

[A]

Yeah, no, I could see it. Watch. I have to just crack it. You can't. I can't demonstrate it because it's just like.

[B]

Yeah, that's good. That's what you want. I mean, you want it to be that fast.

[A]

It's so fast that I. Yeah, you don't know. Yeah, but I like that about it.

[C]

Yep.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I, And I did get used to that with Apple, but this is arguably faster. So that's an intel thing.

[B]

It's. I feel like it's an x86 thing, but in my experience, like I do 25 plus laptops every year, the intel ones are the worst. There's no doubt about it.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

If it's the Intel, Snapdragon is very good at that. Snapdragon is by far. It's not even close. Like they're in a different planet.

[A]

I think that might be an ARM versus.

[B]

Could be. That's why I sort of put it on x86. AMD is a little more reliable than intel in my experience. But I also review far more intel computers because that's what's out in the world.

[A]

I think the way Lenovo's designed, this is it. This. It senses the opening, of course, quickly. So I can only have to just do it like this and then it goes up.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So, yeah, I mean there's all these.

[A]

But that's amazing. It means every time it's open, it's. It's on. It's. It's on. You know, it's fully on.

[B]

And if you leave it open. Right. So if it's sitting on your desk, it probably has presence sensing capability. So that I don't know about because.

[A]

I've turned off the locking.

[B]

I don't. I hate it. Yeah, I turn that off too, honestly, because I find it to be annoying. But I think many, many people would find it to be handy to walk up to the computer, have it turn on, go, hello. And then because it's on now, your Windows Lo thing comes on and it sees you and to your mind, that's as instantaneous as that can be. And that's good.

[A]

Right. And hello is pretty quick. I use the fingerprint.

[B]

It can't be. It depends, you know, that's the thing.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

It can be.

[B]

Best case. It is, yeah.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, ideally it would see you coming from a distance.

[B]

Well, they do. They Can. They can unlock.

[A]

Right.

[B]

If that's. If that's what you want. I mean, you can configure that.

[C]

Right.

[B]

You don't. You don't have to use this feature, but.

[A]

Yes. And then. And your co worker can't do that.

[B]

I turn it off because I'll be. I'll sometimes have two laptops side by side. So I'm doing something over here. And this screen dims because literally I've turned away from it. And I find that to be incredibly annoying.

[A]

No, that's why I turn it off. I don't want it to go off unless I close the lid. But because it really. I think, honestly, closing the lid is good because it comes on so fast. That's a very positive way of saying, nope, go to sleep. And opening it up and it's there is all I need. I don't want it to go to sleep when it's open.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Whether it's plugged in or not. And that's partly because it doesn't drain that fast either. I think Lunar Lakes a pretty nice chipset. It's my only experience with it, so I don't know. And I'm not running it out of Windows.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I don't know. I know you're the expert. I defer to you.

[B]

No, I will say, you know, Lenovo is the world's biggest PC maker. They have a good relationship with Intel. That's an R Edition thing, which is a further partnership.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, yeah, they're doing something right. And, you know, back when Surface Gate was happening and Microsoft was having those reliability problems with the. Was it Server Lake? No, Server Lake. Whatever that series of intel chips was, they were blaming intel, and intel was like, no, it's you. You got to fix that. That's on you. And I talked to my friends at various PC makers. I talked to them, and the Lenovo guys were brutal. They were just like, these guys have no idea what they're doing. We, We. We know how to fix these problems.

[A]

They've been doing it.

[B]

This is what we do. Yeah. Yeah.

[C]

I have to say intel workstation at home, which was being so flaky, got a firmware update.

[A]

Nice. I have to say, with this ThinkPad, it ran long.

[C]

I wasn't home long enough to really believe in it. It ran for the couple of hours I had, but it's like, it's better than it had been. It was landing for minutes. There you go.

[B]

Wow, that's good.

[A]

Well, that really underscores that it's a ecosystem and that the Operating system, the chipset, and the manufacturer all weigh in.

[B]

It all matters. Yeah, for sure. 100%. 100%.

[A]

Dell's pretty good. HP is pretty good, right? Lenovo is pretty good.

[B]

All the big ones are good.

[A]

You were saying that, Richard, you said in the in discord that hello wasn't always either worked or never worked.

[C]

It didn't work, it just fails. Yeah, just this laptop is absolutely.

[B]

That.

[C]

It's like most times, and that's a surface. Pop the machine. Yeah, I pop the machine open, it's just, boom, you're in. It's so quick, you don't even notice it. But if you notice it, it isn't going to work.

[A]

Right.

[C]

It's going to ask you for a pin and make it manually log in and tell you about how you haven't set up ESS correctly and you should recuperate.

[B]

Oh, I love when it says, hey, you know, do you need some help figuring out how to take a picture of your own face, you idiot? Yeah, it's like, no, I think I got this.

[C]

You need some help because, you know, some gremlin hunted you down again.

[A]

To me, that's a flaw in face recognition. I have the same problem on the iPhone. That's why I kind of like fingerprint face recognition. If it were totally reliable, it always worked and was reliable would be the best way.

[B]

Obviously, my bigger issue in mobile is that you have to use a PIN sometimes, which I hate. Like, it just forces it on you. But I find it works pretty good Most. Most of the time. But again, x86 this just happened. I was just doing this this morning. You know, the one in the lab, every once in a while, one of the laptops, it's always intel, you know, but it doesn't. It's like, maybe something's in front of the camera. Yeah, my face is in front of the camera. Can you just see it? And like, let's go. And then you get the, you know, the. The annoying notification afterwards. It's like, dude, I did this three times. I approved the, you know, the accuracy thing. I rebooted. I did it with glasses. With glasses off. You know, like, could we just maybe work for a change?

[A]

But that's the thing. If it doesn't work, it's more annoying.

[B]

Oh, it's just the worst.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Intermittent. It's the worst.

[C]

Kind of every time the machine gets in your way, it's annoying.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. You want it to be transparent. That's why I kind of still. The rumor is that Apple, on its next iPhone, the folding one is going to go fingerprint only. And I actually celebrate that. I think that's great. I mean, the fingerprint on the Lenovo works perfectly.

[B]

I'm sure that's a necessity from the form factor.

[A]

It is. Because they can't put a. Yeah. Camera and the. They don't want to put cameras on both sides because you'd have to have.

[B]

Two for that to work.

[A]

And they don't want to do that. And I understand that, but I honestly, I'm.

[B]

I mean, I'm happy with. Yeah, I like having the choice, but.

[A]

Yeah, I guess.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Hey, let's take another break because guess what? AI is coming. Plus, we're stalling because we're about an hour away from.

[B]

I mean, there's no reason to stall. It's just, you know, probably gotta know.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Gotta know. No, I'm very happy. The. All of the losses that I've suffered over the last two weeks in my 401k been returned to me.

[B]

That's nice.

[A]

Returned to me. I guess it's almost hard. I mean, I don't invest in individual tech stocks for journalistic reasons, but I have index funds like the S&P 500.

[B]

Yeah, of course.

[A]

They're all so tech heavy now. AI is driving the S&P 500, though. Magnificent seven. AI companies just drive it. So I guess in a way, I am invested in tech. Maybe I should get into something else. You were saying, Richard? There's an EFT minus the Magnificent Seven, which is hysterical. I'm not sure I want to do that either.

[B]

I know.

[A]

I want to. I want to bet on Silicon Valley a little bit. Don't.

[B]

Yeah, there's gonna say. It's like, I wish they were better as companies. Right.

[A]

I wish it weren't the. What I'm living on. I wish it weren't my. You know, like, when you get to my age, there's not a lot of time to recover. Right.

[B]

I know.

[A]

It's. This is it.

[B]

I know.

[A]

This determines whether I'll be living in Mexico, eating from the taco cart, which.

[B]

Is not a horrible outcome.

[A]

I might want to do that. I'm thinking.

[C]

Mexico City. I can't even tell you.

[A]

I'm so jealous.

[C]

Eternal spring weather's always nice and you.

[A]

Get used to the altitude. Right?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Because I am altitude sensitive.

[B]

No, I am, too.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't like noise or high altitude. So obviously got to be here, you know?

[A]

And when you come to Makanji, it's like you got here.

[C]

That is SB 500 minus 7.

[A]

What's it called?

[C]

It's called the Defiance X Mag eft.

[A]

The Defiance X Mag eft. Okay. For those who are interested, for those who are defiant. Defiant ones, our show today. Hey, you want to defy I. You want to defy something? Let's defy data brokers. How about that? Let's defy them. Our show today, brought to you by Delete Me. This is the best way to get out of the privacy nightmare that we're all in. If you have ever investigated how much of your personal data is on the Internet, you know, but I don't recommend it. I really don't. Don't enter your name in there. But. But just trust me when I say it's a lot more than you might realize. Your name?

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Contact info? You bet. Steve Gibson and I searched for our Social Security number a couple of months ago. There was a big data breach and they had a database of all the different data that had been revealed. And Steve and I searched and yes, we found our Social Security numbers. The thing that gets me this is completely legal in the United States. Your home address might be up there, information about your family members. The reason is this is all being compiled by data brokers. And it's a big money business sold online. They get the data from everybody, your isp, the websites you visit, the purchases you make, they collate that data, they build a dossier on you, and then anyone on the web can buy those private details, including, yes, your Social Security number. And I don't think it takes much imagination to think about what could be done with that. Identity theft, phishing attempts. That's what actually prompted us to use Delete Me at twit. People were impersonating Lisa, our CEO.

[B]

And.

[A]

It scared the pants off of us because the bad guys not only knew her phone number, but all of her direct reports, their phone numbers. And the more they know about you, the more credible these phishing attempts can be, Right? There's also the issue of doxxing and harassment. Well, you can do something about it. You could do what we did, protect your privacy with Deleteme. I recommend Deleteme. We use it every. You know, and the nice thing is it's. It's a subscription. It's not a one time. Yes, you could go one time and delete all this stuff. There's more than 500 data brokers. The problem is there's new ones every day. In fact, sometimes what happens with these people, data brokers, is they change their name so that they can go back to business with Your data. And I think, I don't know, but I think they also, even though they have a way to delete your form, they're required to. To delete your data. I think they, as soon as you delete it, they go, fine, okay, it's blank. And then they start collecting it again and rebuilding the dossier. So Delete me goes out and removes your personal info from. They know all the data brokers. When there's new ones, they know those. They know exactly where those forms are kept. They know how to do experts on this. You sign up, this is what we did. You provide Delete me with exactly the information you want deleted. You have control over that, and then their experts take it from there. Now here's the thing. We just periodically, every few months we'll get a personalized privacy report showing what delete me has found, where they found it, and what they removed. So you, so you know, this is an ongoing effort. And that report always has more data brokers, more stuff. It's like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. You get to one end and you have to start over. That's why Delete me is not a one time service. They're always working for you. They're constantly monitoring and removing that personal information you don't want on the Internet. But it works. When Steve and I searched for and found our Social Security numbers, I thought, let me see, let's try it with Lisa. Because we've been using DeleteMe for some time. There's no information about her at all in that dump. To put it simply, DeleteMe does all the hard work of wiping your personal information and your company's personal information and your employees personal information and your family's personal information from data broker websites. This is the way to. This is the only way until the United States passes a comprehensive privacy law. Good luck on that. This is the only way to do it. Take control of your data. Keep your private life private. Sign up for deleteme. We've got a special discount for individual users. 20% off your delete me plan. But you gotta go to this address. JoinDeleteMe.com twit okay? So make sure you use that address. Join DeleteMe.com twit joinedeleteme.com twit Use the promo code twit at checkout to get 20% off. This is the only way. JoinDeleteMe.com TWIT Enter the code twit at checkout. JoinDeleteMe.com TWit Offer code twit we use it. We recommend it. It works. Join EliteMe.com Twitter for code is twit. I love it. You know, it's funny because I do ad blockers, of course, as any sane person does, even though we are an ad supported network for a lot of good reasons. So I use next DNS, but I can't put it on Lisa's machines because she says, I want to see the ads. We're ad supported. I want to see the ads. I want to know what's okay.

[B]

This is her job.

[A]

I mean, that's her job.

[B]

You can also. Well, no, you can't. So I just ran into this. Right. So Ad Thrive, which is now called Raptive, I guess, which is the company that serves ads on my site, puts up a blocker that looks like it was written by me, which I love.

[A]

I've seen it. Remember we showed it.

[B]

Yeah. When I browse on mobile. Okay. So I spent some time today trying to configure next DNS to prevent this. And what I realized was, well, I could whitelist thorat.com, but that's not where the ads are coming from. Right. So then you get into that situation where you're like, okay, I'm not going to whitelist for Aptiv. They serve ads everywhere. Like I would just be enabling ads.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know, how do you, how do you configure something like that to whitelist something only on certain sites is, I don't believe is a feature. It's kind of an interesting problem.

[A]

Let me look. Because I did whitelist therot.com on a next DNS and that, by the way, the, the issue went away and I don't know.

[B]

Oh, interesting.

[A]

Well, no switch to the new membership system. This isn't. Which I still have to do. But this, it's not blocking it, it's blocking ads. But it's not keeping me from logging in because I'm. I think I'm logged in.

[B]

I got you. Okay. So you. This is on your computer though.

[A]

Yeah. Obviously it would be the same. I'll just show you what I, what I did.

[B]

No, I mean, I did it.

[A]

I probably did the same thing.

[B]

Yeah, I did. I just.

[A]

There's a white list.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Go to allow list. You see, there's the.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. No, I, I did. It didn't. Yeah, I didn't saw. Okay, well, maybe I'll try it again. Reboot.

[A]

It allows sub domains. But you're saying that the ad network is not a subdomain.

[B]

Yeah. So these are coming from another company. They are Serving ads on my site like they serve in many, many sites.

[A]

Yeah. As all ads are. Are usually from another site.

[B]

Yeah. It's like, it's not like we have a, you know, look at it, host ad system or something.

[A]

It's very rare. Most people include, you know, including when we do direct ad insertion.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That'S. That's coming from a third part. Another. Another place.

[B]

I'll look at it again. I just, I was waiting for lunch and I was like, I gotta try.

[A]

To figure this out.

[B]

I can't get on my website. I bet you.

[A]

So you don't use Ublock Origin?

[B]

No, I use next DNS. Okay. But I mean I can toggle it off. Right. If I have to and do whatever on my site. But that's, that's stupid.

[A]

So you get. When you go to your site. Okay. I'm always logged in because I'm a member, so I probably don't experience.

[B]

I'm also a premium member, but I don't like. It's one of the perks. I don't know. I don't know what's happening anymore but. But I'll figure it out eventually or I won't. I don't know. We'll see.

[A]

Yeah. So if, if you are a premium member, you don't see ads on theright.com, right?

[B]

No, no, that's correct. Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That's one of the reasons to become a premium member.

[B]

Yeah. But it's not just my site. Right. It's the whole world. So I'm trying to block all this tracking that occurs. The 1 pixel things in every email and everything.

[A]

Well, one thing, I was very annoyed. I've been a trip at Matt member since they. Yeah, since 2009. And all of a sudden I can't get in. I can't even get in to cancel my account. It says.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's blurry. It says you've got an ad blocker. And I'm a pro member. I pay for it and I. And it still won't let me in. What I figured out after doing a lot of searching is that if you have Firefox set to strict, it'll block it. So I had to turn and in order to go there and cancel my subscription, which I did because that beefed me a little. Of course I had to turn off my strict ad. My strict content blocking on Firefox. So that annoyed me a little bit.

[B]

Yeah, that's no good.

[A]

I found it's probably vibe coded and I'm sure it'll be gone instantaneously But I found a replacement that's 10 times better.

[B]

Then.

[A]

Then trip it Pro.

[B]

Oh, then trip it. What's that? If you don't mind. What's the.

[A]

Oh, gosh, now I gotta remember the name of it. Yeah, it was. It was. I found it on Reddit. I think it was Teneo. It's a weird name.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

T I N E O AI And I think it. I. I get the sense. I'll tell you why. I think it's vibe coded. Okay. This is an example of how you can kind of tell when you go to a site. So it looks good. It's the future of travel planning. Does everything Tripit Pro does. I found it really is very good at interpreting the emails. You know, you forward your emails from your confirmation emails and it builds an itinerary and all that stuff. The thing that made me a little suspicious, I went to the blog and a lot of posts there, but each one has a different name as the author. Jessica Martin, Emily Rodriguez, Michael Thompson, Ashley Turner, Sarah Mitchell. They're all different. There's not one. And so what I. I think this is a dead giveaway that there's one guy, right? And he had AI generate a blog and each one has its own unique byline.

[C]

So is the whole app AI or is it just the marketing?

[A]

Well, that's a good question.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

I could log in and show you. It does a really. Does a really nice job, I have to say. Oh, I have to. Yeah, I'll log into my bitlock Bit Warden and do this. But it does. I would say it does a much. It's better than Tribit Pro. And so I'm gonna let you know. What if the guy disappears? Big deal.

[B]

Right?

[A]

So far it's been doing great. I'll show you the. Oh, it supports passkeys. So I'm going to log in with my passkey and I will show you now that I have done all that. So you forward your emails to it and then it builds a trip. I'll show you the trip that we're building. I built Zero Trust World, did it all automatically for me. It interpreted everything perfectly. Got everything. I was really pleased. This is a very nice. And it's free right now. It's early access, so Tripit, you lost me. As a longtime customer, you lost.

[B]

I'm thinking about leaving thorat.com because of the same age.

[A]

Yeah, same thing. It must be a better.

[C]

No, no, no, no. What Was wrong with TripIt in the first place?

[A]

When I went to TripIt.com. it wouldn't let me in.

[C]

No, see this.

[A]

Ah it. Now that's because I think. Because I didn't know.

[B]

You're not signed in.

[A]

Yeah, no, no, it wasn't that. I think I've downgraded my. Yeah, I downgraded my browser privacy if I go to strict. Which I want to use.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because I think tracking protection is a good thing. Let me see if this. They may have, you know what? They've realized they screwed up. It's not doing it anymore. It was blocking me. It said you have an ad blocker iq. Can't let you in anymore.

[B]

You're bad.

[C]

Wait a second. You're not an ad site.

[A]

I know. I'm a paid. I'm a paid subscriber. Yeah. I've never seen ads on TripIt. So this may be the same thing that happened to you, Paul, in the process of switching over. There may have been issues, but I think tripit's looking a little dated. They got purchased by a company called.

[C]

Concur and yeah, they've just been. They put minimal money into it. It's gotten progressively slower. It used to be a time where as. As soon as I flipped my phone back on after landing, there'd be an email from tripit going here's your next gate. Here's your baggage claim location, like everything you needed. And now it generally arrives several hours after I needed it.

[A]

What do you use? Because you of all people would need something like tripit.

[C]

I mean, yeah, I use tripit. I mean and pay for it as well. But it is not delivering the quality that.

[A]

Take a look at this. T I N E O A O Tinio.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And then I also use Flighty. I'm sure you use Flighty.

[B]

Is that the. That might be an iPhone only thing, isn't it Flighty Thinking of the right thing maybe. I think that one might be iPhone only, I think.

[A]

Let me see. The only app that gets you everything. Yeah, it might be. Yeah. Apple design winner app of the year. Yeah, it might be. What's nice is it picked somehow as soon as I did Tineo it picked up and I don't use Gmail but it picked up that my flights and automatically added it. Flighty is great because it will tell you before the flight the, the people.

[B]

At the counter pretty good about that. I mean it's always been good, you know, better than the airlines in my experience.

[A]

But yeah, the airlines I will. I'll be listening to, you know my flighty going on my Apple watch says oh you're delayed another two hours and then literally 30 minutes later.

[B]

Oh, I. Multiple times. I'm. I'm getting my bag out of the overhead thing because we've landed. We're about to get off the plane. I'm usually near the front somewhere. My phone buzzes on my watch or something. I look at. I'm like, good news, everyone. United called me. They said we landed. So, you know, everything's good. You know.

[A]

I do like knowing where my bag at the baggage carousel is. I'm sure you regular travelers don't check bags, but I'm with.

[B]

I would throw my. Sometimes I have to luggage away before I checked it.

[A]

I know, but I travel with somebody who likes bring.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I'm going to Scotland after this. I brought the check bag for a reason.

[A]

You need it for Scotland because you got to have layers.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

You gotta have rain, you gotta have tweed.

[C]

I need room for bottles.

[B]

And you.

[A]

Oh, and then coming home, you throw out all your underwear and you replace it. That's what Dick D. Bartolo used to do. He would bring. When he traveled, he'd bring his oldest underwear and then leave it in the hotel.

[B]

Why?

[A]

Because. So he could bring stuff back. Because he'd be gone. Gadget convention. He wasn't bringing whiskey back.

[B]

I mean, how big was his underwear? What are we talking about? He just.

[A]

He needed room in his luggage, so he would. I thought it was a clever hack. The only problem is every once in a while, you have to be careful how you throw it out. The hotel staff will package it up and mail it back to you.

[B]

I've had that happen multiple times, actually. Not that I wasn't doing that, but, you know, they actually sent. They'll send it to you.

[A]

Yeah. They'll send it to you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I leave stuff in the hotel all the time. And subterranean. I'm sure you have learned not to do that, Richard, as a. I do.

[C]

The best I can, but it still happens occasionally.

[A]

The most traveled person. I know.

[C]

I have my patterns of behavior too.

[A]

Anyway, I. I do think thanks to vibe coding, the improvement of these tools like Claude code, we're going to see more and more stuff like this Teneo, which I'm betting is vibe coded from the ground up. And yet, I mean, I can't find any flaws with it. Looking at the Reddit posts, it's. I pretty sure it's one guy. And he. And he just coded the. Maybe he coded some of it up. It's very beautiful. It's interesting. Who knows, you know, who knows what the privacy is. It's some boilerplate privacy statement.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Anyway, let's talk a. As long as we're talking AI, let's talk AI.

[B]

Yeah. We didn't talk about the Amazon layoffs.

[A]

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. That is a big one. In fact, it's starting today.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Amazon accidentally. Did you see this? Sent out an email.

[B]

Yeah. Kind of confirming it to all of its employees. Yeah. Good stuff. Well, that's why you want to eliminate humans with AI. I guess so, yeah. That sucks, though. It's too.

[A]

So what do they say?

[B]

16. 16,000? Yeah. Across Amazon. Some guy on my site was like, this is why I don't spend money at Amazon. And I'm like, you predicted these job losses, like, well, they've been doing it all along.

[A]

I mean, this isn't the first. These are executives, right? These are.

[B]

Apparently it's across the board, so. Yeah, I don't think it's warehouses too. It's hard to.

[C]

Yeah. I don't know.

[B]

I mean, six, 16,000 rolls. I mean, how many. How many EVPs can they have? You know, like, I don't know.

[A]

They're saying it's corporate jobs, which I think means not the ware, maybe like right in the warehouse. So they laid off, according to THOT.com.

[B]

Which I think is a very. You can get into the site. So what does it say?

[A]

They. They laid off 16, 14,000 corporate employees late in late October.

[C]

Right.

[A]

And they're going to lay off another 16. So this is, this is where they were going. They said around 30,000.

[C]

Yep.

[B]

So there you go.

[A]

It's kind of amazing that there are 30,000 corporate workers.

[B]

Right.

[A]

To lay off.

[B]

Well, yeah, they. Obviously, it's a big business. I mean, you know, I, I suppose.

[A]

One and a half million employees according to Thorat.com.

[B]

Yeah. But the vast majority of those are the drivers, warehouse workers, etc. Right.

[A]

350,000 corporate jobs.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So that's less than 10%.

[B]

I don't remember. Maybe Richard knows off the top of his head, the, the number at Microsoft has grown tremendously in the last several years, but it's got to be somewhere in the 150. 200,000.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Somewhere in there.

[C]

Oh, no, it's 200. 220.

[B]

Yeah, 220. Higher.

[C]

And it was flat. You know, the big thing about the annual was that basically employment was flat. For all the layoffs they did, they hired as many people back.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, okay, interesting.

[A]

But you were saying, we were talking before the show, you were saying that you've Noticed some morale.

[C]

Oh, the morale is in the tank. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[C]

New threat of another leather layoffs. Like just. People are so tired.

[B]

Well, last year was such a. Just the way they did it last year was so terrible.

[C]

Was so horrible.

[B]

Yeah. I'm sure there was a master plan there somewhere. I'm just not privy to it.

[A]

But you have to wonder though, if a company has hundreds of thousands of managers.

[B]

Yeah. Well, you're saying managers, but it, it's.

[A]

I don't think janitors.

[B]

No, but there are still actual employees. You know, like you, you have teams of people. I don't think it's all, I guess. Oh, yeah, you're management layers necessarily. I mean, you have whatever teams working on whatever projects. I don't know. I, they do a lot of stuff. They. There's. It's a, A big complex company. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know most of it, which I do not care about. But I'm always, you know, you don't want to see people get laid off, obviously.

[C]

No, no, especially. You said record profits too.

[B]

I know. Well, this is. Right. So I, Maybe you guys know, maybe there's a term for this and I just don't know what it is, but invariably. So I'll just make something up here. Like I'll. You write a story like, Microsoft, fix this problem with Outlook. Right. There's a million to choose from, but whatever. They fixed one problem. You'll always get the feedback from someone who's like, okay, but what about. And it's like, okay, those things are not related. They're not the same team. Obviously, it's not. Whatever. Like, I, it's not. They didn't not do that because they were doing this. You know, it's kind of hard to say. So I don't know what you call that. Like, it's like, so the record profit thing, it's like, oh, you know, Amazon could have funded their salaries and health plans for perpetuity with the money they just made, you know, from profits. But it's like, are these things actually related? Like, I don't, I don't know.

[C]

It's like, well, you want to presume that the employees working at the company are part of the strategy that made the money. So, yeah. Now that you're making records amounts of money from your existing staff, do you really.

[B]

I mean, but, but is it these guys? I mean, this is the thing we don't really know. Like, it's kind of hard to say. Like, I, maybe these were people working in a Part of the company or parts of. In many parts of the company that were underperforming or, or overemployed or whatever it might be, however you want to say it.

[C]

And it's not. I don't headcount per se because they kind of kept the headcount in the same place so they really allocated them to different locations. Are they hiring less expensive people? Like, like it's hard to know all of this, but yeah, you know, generally you have companies struggling when they do layoffs. Not, you know, just knocking out of the park quarter after quarter.

[B]

This is the new math. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's bizarre. But this is going to come up every single time. So Microsoft today will eventually release their earnings and it'll be like, well then why did you lay off whatever number of people the past year? It's like, well, I don't know know. It's, I don't know. We're always going to have this conversation.

[C]

Yeah. And it seems to be this element of just keeping the employees afraid that they could be laid off at any time.

[B]

Such a good strategy, you know, it worked great for the Empire in Star Wars. What's the other example? That's it.

[C]

Uncle Satcha put out the letter saying I understand you demoralized and then put Judson Ad Hoff in charge and continued on. Like they actually do anything about. Your people are demoralized.

[B]

Yeah. If only they could figure out why, you know. Yeah. Like what happened?

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

It's weird. Like something happened. It's the strangest thing. It is very strange. All right, what do we have for AI? We have AI stuff. A couple of ignites ago, Microsoft announced their first what they called AI accelerator. So a processor for the data center called Maya. Maya 100 was the first gen. This past week or the other day they announced the Maya 200, the second generation chip so optimized for inferencing 3 nanometer process from TSMC, by the way. Lots of numbers. I don't know but basically if you.

[C]

Accept that big chips are like, they're like side plate size, they're bent for servers.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, these are.

[C]

It's only in their data center.

[B]

Yeah, you don't need a microscope to see this thing. It's, it's pretty big but apparently it's the, you know, three times as fast at 4.4 bit, sorry floating point performance compared to the latest Amazon Trainium and it exceeds, but we don't know how much, probably by a small single digit percentage. The eight bit floating point performance of Google's seventh generation TPUs, which is the chips those folks use in their own data centers. So basically the big number here I guess is 30% better performance per dollar than the latest.

[C]

Right.

[B]

We're not talking per watt anymore. Yeah, over their previous channel. Yeah. I don't know a lot about this stuff, but yeah, but yeah, they've already, they've already.

[C]

I'm glad they're comparing it to the Amazon chip and the Google chip because it's not like the Nvidia chips. You can't buy these, you can only rent them, their servers.

[B]

Yeah. If you go to the Google cloud or you go to the Amazon whatever. The Amazon cloud, whatever that's called, you go to Microsoft with Azure obviously. Yeah. They're going to be running a lot of this stuff on their own hardware. Right. And it's been deployed in the U.S. u.S. West 3 data center region near Phoenix is going online next and then it will, you know, spread to their other data centers around the world. So. Okay, that's nice.

[C]

Yeah. Good to see a second generation of these chips because many times when these tech companies got into getting fab work done, it's a one time thing, they do it, they are unhappy with the results and they move on. And in this case it's like, nope, that worked. We've got a third more out of the next generation which is a reasonable improvement in the architecture. Great, keep iterating.

[B]

I just sort of wonder if this would have. Well, see the thing is I feel like Amazon a bit, but also Google specifically, they. They've kind of always done their own thing with chips. Like Microsoft might have been happy to stick with Nvidia forever if Google's on.

[C]

Seventh gen where Microsoft's on two.

[B]

Right. Yeah, yeah, no, they've been doing that for a while. I mean that's their, you know, back. They were building cobbling together servers when they first started the company.

[C]

I mean, yes.

[B]

Kind of the thing.

[C]

They were, they were commercial servers. I never perfectly.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, right. They weren't like white box PCs except some of them probably were. But. But whatever. Anyway. Yeah, but they've been making their own chips for a long time. I don't want to spend too much time on this, but if you are an Apple fan and waiting for Cyr to do something more than just light your phone up to be pink and purple, There'll be a 26.4 release soon, February and beta and then, you know, whatever that is. April probably for the broad release. And this is the release that will finally deliver on the Siri features they promised at WWDC 24 back in June. 2024.

[C]

Yes, the great Smoke and Mirrors demo.

[B]

Yep. Yeah, fake it till you make it. It's taken them a lot longer to make it than they anticipated. But then they're going to do the full overhaul thing and both these will be using Gemini in the back end and that's coming in the next release of all their platforms and September. So yeah, they're gonna have a little chat, but stuff will be fun.

[C]

Yeah, I hope it's. It'll be really interesting. Good. Like I kind of like Apple coming late to this game, picking the best of the bunch, then doing what they think their customers expect.

[B]

I haven't written this yet, but I have this story idea that's basically it was always going to be Google like you know, as they kind of face planted and face raked and whatever. When Microsoft came up with what eventually they called Copilot, I was, you know, it was very common for people to make fun of them and like, oh, they did it. You know, they've been caught with their pants down, they're dead, blah blah blah. And I was like, yeah, I don't know, they, they pretty much own the online experience. Like I, they have so much data, the search thing is so key. I know it can be scraped to some degree, etc. Etc. Obviously, but I just always felt like they were on the leading edge of this stuff to begin with with Deep mind.

[C]

Let's be clear. OpenAI was invented, invented to try and keep beat back Google Brain who was in the lead back in 2015. Yeah, like that's where all of this comes from. And so yeah, you know, they did respond and you know, and it delivered a phenomenal product.

[B]

Yep. Yeah. So yeah. Anyway, I just feel like we should not have discounted them necessarily but now they're looking like geniuses as well.

[C]

Let's see. You know, there's plenty of opportunities to fail still. You just got to give them time.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

It's not like LLMs are great. Like I'm really interested in the governments that, the governance that Apple's going to put around this thing in Siri that's going to keep people from doing bad things. You know, when do we get the story of someone, you know, killing their dog because Siri told them to? Like that's, that's what I'm interested to see is how the heck did they, I mean Apple users allow this psychosis problem to happen through their product.

[B]

We'll See, I don't know. We'll see. Yeah, we'll see. One thing I'm a couple of like kind of AI related kind of just thoughts I guess is and the first one's the smaller two. But we all know that cloud based AI is dramatically more effective today than local AI. We also know it's dramatically more expensive, like exponentially more expensive. It's interesting to me that in the past week or two, let's call it 10 days, OpenAI and now Google have both introduced lower cost versions of their respective AI solutions, you know, like the chatbots or whatever in like major Western markets, right. It's one thing to go to India or Mexico or something and say look, we understand the financial situation here isn't what it is in the United States or Western Europe. We're going to have a version for you that's low cost. But they're actually doing, they're both doing this everywhere. And the OR roughly everywhere. When OpenAI did this with ChatGPT go the big news was oh, and we're going to have ads like that's how we're going to help make up part of the financial loss. But Google today, or yesterday maybe yesterday announced a lower cost AI plan. So they have those Google AI whatever plans, right? So the mainstream one is basically it's a Google one plan. So you get two terabytes of storage but you get really good writes across all their Gemini stuff and all the integration with apps and all, blah blah, blah, whatever. But now they have one that is so that's $20 a month and then they have more expensive obviously business plans, et cetera, et cetera. But now they have a what is like what used to be like a 200 gig, it still is but storage plan but with Gemini rights across the board that you don't get some things obviously you get lower numbers, et cetera, et cetera, you know, 7.99amonth and that gets like these price. And ChatGPT go I want to say is pretty similar. I think it's the five, six dollar range. I don't remember. But these things, you know, at some point it's like, yeah, no, I'm sorry, it's $8 a month, so same price. And you're like, okay, well this is less than half the price of this thing. I think a lot of people would be on the fence about yet another 20 per month subscription of whatever kind.

[C]

Right.

[B]

They might not use it that much anyway. And they're like, okay, like I wonder, I wonder why this is possible. And I don't think that this is going to solve the problem of the cost of AI. Like, I don't, I don't think that's.

[C]

Two possible reasons here. One is you're thinking the $20 number was a barrier. So let's go find out and make a non $20 one.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Another possibility is you've analyzed the traffic from various kinds of customers and realize there is a lower stratum customer that we can charge that because they're costing us less. Which I think is less likely. I think. Yeah, I think your momentum of subscript subscribers are falling off. So you're now testing if a sub$10 price tag has helps. Yeah, and interesting that it does. But you know, both are possible.

[B]

No, I'm not either. I mean, I'm kind of confused by this frankly. But I, but that's why I raised this issue is just kind of.

[C]

Because there's another thing that happens after you make that plan, which is you make the $20 plan go to become a $30 plan.

[B]

Yeah, well, they have a $200 plan, so there is. How many plans do we need? Yeah, I mean we pay as you go. Make any sense in the A space? I don't know. Probably not.

[C]

I mean that's part of the battle. I'm dealing with folks that have four or five all you can eat plans because they run multiple agents against each other nonstop and have anthropic calling them going, why are you using this many tokens on your all you can eat plan?

[B]

No, because I have an all you can eat plan, that's why.

[C]

And yes.

[B]

And I'm going to pin it to.

[C]

The wall until I actually see your servers catch fire. Right. They're literally running an agent, generating tests against a prompt set another agent writing the code and they're reading back and forth to each other and feeding the problems back until they finish. And that 2430 hour runs like that with your all you can eat plan generates a lot of code. On the other hand, they're wildly productive. Like what used to be a six week sprints, less than a week in the dev space. Torturing agents has become highly productive.

[B]

Oh boy. Interesting. Well, okay.

[C]

And so it's like, hey, $1,000 a month for five of these. Worth every penny. Goodness knows what it's actually going to cost when the real price tag comes down.

[B]

Right. Right. Yeah. It doesn't seem like this is.

[C]

Well, no.

[B]

I don't know.

[C]

We have this itch about the end of the bubble. Right. In the beginning of a cost Shakeout and real price is starting to appear. And so I mean, I am very glad for the folks I know that are running those all you can eats at this level because they're the guys who bought the all you could eat data plan and said, so how many terabytes is this? Right? Like that's what they're doing as well as getting results.

[B]

Okay. And then this is just kind of a, this is almost like an ongoing meandering series of thoughts about AI and whatever. Because you know, like everyone else, I'm trying to figure this out in real time, but a couple of months back or I don't remember when I wrote this, who cares? At the time I didn't have the word, but it turns out the word is semantic. But I was talking about the programmatic capability of apps and that they could expose their interfaces so that AI or whatever services can access those capabilities. So we see this in Windows through things like AI actions where you can right click on a file and through a series of right click menus get to something that says paint and then remove the background or something. And then. Okay, and that's kind of interesting. It's kind of interesting. But the real capability there is that Copilot or whatever, AI could also use that interface and then you tell it to do something with an image. And one of the tasks it might do as part of that is to remove the background. It would, you know, use that thing. So there's that. And my, my kind of thought at the time was like, this is like the end of apps, you know. But now we see the AI builders, the main, you know, the big guys starting with ChatGPT or OpenAI with ChatGPT. And now anthropic has done this as well. Microsoft will do this inevitably, which is introduced this notion of apps where you're explicitly making connections with these online services typically or apps locally if that's, you know, depending on the system. And you can use those data sources as you're talking and interacting with the chatbot. Right. And so the Anthropic version just came online this past week. They have partnerships with a lot of companies I've never sort of heard of myself because I'm just not in the space. But it's amplitude Asana Box. I've heard of obviously Canva, Figma and Slack Salesforce, you know, obviously are some of the bigger players in there. But the idea is you're, we're working toward this thing where maybe this is like the interface like this, you know. Satya Nadella said Copilot's gonna be like the new start button. So it knows everything about you. If everything about you is in these apps, you know, or if that's part of. Can use that as context as you do things. Right. You can send out agents like this.

[C]

For stuff like an ERP system. Like if you're responsible for accounts receivable, your job is a series of queries for fetching the data on who owes the company money and how long they've owed them. That could be a set of prompts.

[B]

Yeah. Tied to this, and I think we talked about this last week, is this notion of last year, we were talking about vibe coding, and vibe coding was one of those things I. I think we. Everyone kind of misunderstood. The guy who invented the term didn't mean it the way people were using.

[C]

It, but the way it's gotten interpreted now.

[B]

But now I would say it's caught up to it. So in a sense, people can do the thing you were just describing and make an app. You know what we would. Maybe it's not an app in the traditional sense, but it's an app of sorts. To them, it's an app. It's the thing they go to. To run, to do a thing. And it's something they've invented with their natural language, but they don't know how it's made on the back end. And who cares really? But it does this thing. It could be something silly, like a little game you could make, like Pac man game or whatever it is, a lot of versions of that. But it could be something productive, like tying together data from multiple sources, perhaps multiple online services, etc. Etc. But you don't. You're just talking to it. You say, I want this thing that does this thing.

[C]

Right?

[B]

Yeah. And I'm fascinated by that.

[C]

In a way, you prompt your way into the equivalent of a mashup up of fetch data from two different sources to give you.

[B]

Absolutely you could. I. There's no doubt about it. This re. This reminds me of at the dawn of the. What would they now sort of call the personal computing era, before we had the PC, the IBM PC, the personal computer. We used to refer to those first computers as home computers, remember? So Commodore, Atari, Apple, ti, whatever else. Right. There was a. And then obviously Europe had their own companies as well, but there were these early computing platforms. They were all completely or mostly incompatible. And as an enthusiast, like I was a little kid, so when this stuff came out, I was like, oh, my God, I gotta get one of these. I gotta do it. I gotta do it. And it was understood that you were going to write your own programs because there maybe weren't a lot of them or you couldn't afford them or whatever it was. And it wasn't sure which of these were going to survive if any turns out actually none of them, but whatever. And that was part of it. And so there was a real enthusiast thing to it that I feel maybe went away. I think Visual Basic was like the last dying gasp of that, and then that was kind of the end of it, Right? I mean, at some point, you just go into Best Buy and walking down racks and racks of professional, you know, apps and games, and then eventually you just download anything for free or whatever from the Internet. So, you know, the enthusiast angle kind of died. You see it a little bit in the Raspberry PI space, right, with creators and makers and things, which I think is really cool, trying to bring that element of it back. But I feel like this, without the technical requirement, right? Like, you don't have to be. You don't have to say, look, all right, I want to write this game or this app, whatever it is, so I'm gonna have to learn Basic. It's going to be Microsoft basic. It's gross, you know, whatever. And it's going to take a long time. You can just skip that step, right? You can just say, look, I want this thing, you know, that does this thing. And I. And it's not. It's. It's more mainstream in the sense that, you know, it doesn't require an enthusiast mindset. You. You. You're just trying to get stuff done.

[C]

And it's a different kind of enthusiasm, an enthusiasm for crafting prompts and building feedback loops to know if you're doing things correctly, like, think it's all doable. I could see clubs forming around that, the same way we did around basic. And it's just a different way of.

[B]

Well, this is actually. Yes. So this is actually, to me, the most important component of it. It's the. I'll just call it the kind of community aspect because there will be, for lack of a better term, stores, you know, or catalogs or whatever, where. Because you're basically just creating a prompt. Literally, I guess, creating a prompt.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

This is something you can easily share with anybody. So you could, you know, you'd have to make something up. But someone does a really good job of making, like, the travel app that Leo was showing or whatever, so someone else could take the prompt that makes that thing and say, okay, this is good for this thing. But I want to use something. I want something like this for something else. And it's easy to tailor the prompt to your own needs.

[A]

Let me give you an example, because I've done exactly that. We have a user group, by the way, where we talk about this kind of stuff every first Friday in the club. But remember, I created that program for myself, just for myself, using Claude code that was. I call it Beat Check. Now it's an RSS reader, but it has very simplified UI that allows me to very quickly, every morning, go through, you know, dozens of RSS feeds and say, yeah, this one, this one, this one, this one, and tell it which show it's for and all that. So I think this is soon going to be the standard for this. And I think a lot of people are doing this. You post it on GitHub, you say it's personal. This is a, you know, this is, I say, an opinionated TUI reader. But I post not only the code that Claude wrote, but all of the Claude conversations, everything that Claude would need to basically clone this and start over. And then you could say to it, okay, Claude, I didn't like what Leo did with this. Or let's add this command here.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, just check, whatever. Just change one thing, make it mine, turn it into something. Right?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So, but here, I think this is.

[A]

Going on right now.

[B]

I think. No, no, it is. No, I'm not. I didn't mean this to be. I didn't mean this to be speculative. What I'm saying is this is what's happening and I'm fascinated by this because a, it reaches out to. It's going to impact mainstream people. But you got to remember, we have this whole industry right on the PC side. The notion of, like what we would call native apps is going away. There's no doubt about it. There's no reason for Microsoft to create a modern framework for Windows. It just doesn't make sense. It'll never do it. There's no audience for this. It's just. It does not exist on the mobile side. We have this. These gatekeepers that have their app stores, and this is a primary revenue source. It's a big problem. And Apple, you know, there was part of the US antitrust case against Apple was their artificial behaviors toward what they were calling super apps. So things like WeChat that are apps that run apps inside of the apps, right? Little apps, mini apps inside the apps. And that's what these are, essentially. And so this is the type of thing, plus the regulation and antitrust stuff that's happened already and is continuing that kind of chips away at that. And I feel like in the sense that, like it's the end of apps, but it's like, long live these new apps. Like, these are new apps.

[C]

Like, we're many more of them.

[B]

Yeah, we've come full circle or we are in the process of coming full circle. It's fascinating to me because when you talk about AI, you will say things like, you don't have to know exactly the commands or the whatever to make it do something, it just has to understand your intent. And it's getting, getting really good at that and you apply it to this kind of thing. So instead of, you know, setting up a new iPhone or something, we're like, okay, I need Gmail, I need Google Maps, I need whatever apps I use, right? You're like, I just need an app. I want to have. This is going to be an app that gives me all the notifications for email across messaging, things, services, blah, blah, blah. And like, I think the notion of these like silos, essentially, it's going to be interesting to see what happens. Like, I feel like it's, I feel like it's going to go away.

[C]

Very disruptive. And there's, I don't think it's all apps. I think there's certain forms over data has been threatened by the low code, no code tools for quite some time now.

[A]

Like, it's really hard to justify, doesn't it?

[B]

That's the thing. But AI is to no code, low code that we've had over many, many years. As I would say Snapdragon X is to like PC, processors, processors, where it failed, it failed, it failed. And then when it finally succeeds, you're like, it can't be true. Let's figure out the problem. Something's wrong. You're not telling us something, but it's a miracle because it works incredibly well. And I feel like that's where it's going to be.

[A]

I'll give you another example because, you know, as I've been using cloud code, I come up with more things. So I, I have Obsidian, but I also have a journaling program called Day One that's on the Apple and I've used both kind of casually. And I thought, you know, what I'd really like to do is get all of the posts that I put in one into the other. And I'm sure there's a way to do this. And so I said, claude code, would you do some research, find out if there's an API, figure out how to do this. Within 10 minutes it had written a program that took everything out of Obsidian, put it into day one, automatically converted it did the whole thing. It tested it with one thing. It said, does this look right? I said, yeah, it's 300 entries moved over. That's a one time only program. I'm never going to use it again.

[B]

Right. This is like a playlist mover app, you know, that moves between the different services.

[A]

You could write it now in 10 minutes.

[B]

100%, in fact, that might. The example I just gave does exist. Like people, you know, I've done this a lot. I've tried to move playlists between whatever services. I have various problems because I use YouTube music, where a lot of my music and playlists is actually YouTube videos and they work as songs in YouTube music. But the other services don't know what to do with this. And you can just go to ChatGPT and say, just here's a playlist, turn it and turn it into one for this other service. Just it works. But you start thinking differently. Right.

[A]

The key is that there is on the Internet an almost infinite treasure trove of blog posts, GitHub entries, API description that Claude can search for. Now, this is one thing MCP has changed. Can find, can learn, ingest and write something.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And it's because we have all, for the last 30 years, been assiduously putting everything we could think of up on the Internet.

[B]

So I feel like this is going to change things pretty dramatically. Like, we'll see there are all kinds of outcomes. I mean, big tech is not going to go down without kicking and screaming, of course, and so we'll see what happens. But I feel like on the desktop we've pretty much given up anyway and mobile's going to be the biggest point.

[C]

And we just have this explosion of software.

[B]

Yeah, that's what I think.

[C]

It's conversation with a few shops now where it says, like, how much software never gets to the requirements phase because it's just not the resources or just not high enough priority.

[B]

You as a person just say, okay, I want to, you know, Leo uses Obsidian, you know, I use Notion, you could use Joplin and the other million things that are just like our loop or whatever. But you might experiment with the app and like, oh, it doesn't do this the way I lie. Or this doesn't do this. I can't, whatever the thing is. So in the future, you know, you could just, you're like, look, I want this thing But I want it to do this one thing different and you just make your own rendition of it. And I, I, I, that is transformative. I mean that's amazing.

[A]

I think, Yeah, I think the world is kind of catching on. This is the, the exact conversation because.

[B]

It doesn't happening and it doesn't require the white lab coat guy, the scientist who knows all the hard stuff. Like it just is something people, general users.

[A]

Yet it's still, I think if you're.

[B]

Technical, you know, you could do it right now if you're technical.

[A]

For sure, it's a certain amount of.

[B]

To some degree technical skill, I think. But I think that eventually that barrier comes down. You can see, you can see that it's going to come down. Oh yeah, that's, I feel like it's.

[C]

It'S like getting good at searching. Right? I mean that's the key.

[B]

Yeah, well, but also. Yeah, so you know, Dave Plumber, the guy did a, provided a prompt to, I think it was chat GPT Make a Pet sold style Notepad app in C and C. And it was, I'm not saying it was perfect, but it looked, I mean it looked identical, you know, to Notepad. It was kind of amazing. And so you want to do that kind of thing. You're like, all right, so I like notion, but I don't want this, this and this. And I do want the ability to save the files locally, make it, you know. And I know that it sounds like science fiction. It's like, like in the Matrix, right? They're running across the rooftop and they, they dial in and like I need a helicopter and also I need to know how to fly that helicopter. And they're like on it.

[A]

It's exactly like that.

[B]

Right? I mean that's, this is, I mean that's, that was the height of science fiction in 1997 or whatever. Yeah, that movie came out.

[A]

But we're gonna see this. And what it is is really something that was a holy grail for computing from day one, which is natural language interface to computing. And we got better and better. We started with assembly language, then we got higher level languages that were more English. Like we talked about this last week. Then there was HyperCard and you know, that all.

[B]

Yeah, that stuff.

[A]

And we are now at the point where English, which was always the holy grail, is the programming language, ironically the.

[B]

Hardest of the programming languages. But.

[A]

Oh yeah, because it's ambiguous.

[B]

But if you know it. Okay, fine, if you know, if you know it, you're good.

[C]

Look at the pro level devs Love, love, you know, sophistication of prompts or doing this multi agent approach. These are pages and pages. Yeah.

[B]

But this stuff will build on that and that's the point. Like in other words, people have gone to the trouble to do this work and you'll soon be able to just say I want this. It's like when you make an image, right. You say this is very good. But. And I don't know why we talked to the AI. Like that's stupid. But. But I do this all the time. I really like this. Very nice.

[A]

Oh, good job, good job nailing it.

[B]

One little bit of feedback. But you go in and you're like, well remove the person from the beach or you know, add this sun or something, whatever it is. And ideally it takes that image and makes that one change. And this is the same. Sorry, the same process. Right. But for creating, you know, again, apps. I'm not sure apps are the right word, but.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, we need a better word actually.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Tools. They're just little tools.

[B]

Yeah, they're little.

[A]

Have a workbench that you can create your own tools at. And some of them are tools you use day in and day out and some of them are tools you use once and throw away. One of the things that's very interesting. Harper Reed was telling us this on intelligent Machines by the way, when we. In about an hour, Intelligent machines. We're going to interview the president of the Mozilla Foundation.

[B]

Oh nice.

[A]

They have just announced a big initiative.

[B]

A really, a really good interview with him.

[A]

I'm trying to.

[B]

Sorry, I can't remember the publication Ink or something like it. Really, it's worth reading.

[A]

They're doing some very interesting stuff. Anyway, we thought we'd get them on because they have a new kind of AI charter about how they're going to handle AI that I think is really right on.

[B]

Anyway, ask him about the Rebel Alliance.

[A]

That's what they call it. The rebel. He wants to be the Rebel Alliance.

[B]

That's one of the terms he is using.

[A]

But Harper Reed was saying that the thing that you've got to learn about Claude code is it's disposable. That what you're creating is disposable.

[B]

Which is fine. Right. I mean think about it.

[A]

It's key because if it doesn't work or you don't like it, you should just start over.

[B]

It. It was cheap to make three years ago.

[A]

Ish.

[B]

I went through this huge process of organizing all of my photos across all the services, bring them all in, use Several apps to do different things around metadata and naming of files and, and putting them in folders, blah, blah, blah. And right now I think I could do, anyone could do this, like here's my photos, organize them in folders and it would just happen and I wouldn't have to have paid for a couple of those apps or found them and experimented and found ones that didn't work quite as well or whatever it was like it was, it's just gonna do it. And this is, I know this is already when you talk about this, it's like every, every AI complaint comes down to like what about the jobs, you know, what about the programmers?

[A]

You're not going to hire somebody to do that. You're not going to pay for a program to do that. You're going to bang your head against the table for a while to do it.

[B]

And oftentimes it really is that one time thing, like my photo thing. I mean, I actually do an annual thing too, but for a lot of people that would be a one time deal or the playlist move thing. You're like, I don't want to think, I don't want to invest in a playlist app. I just want this to be there and I don't want to think about it and I certainly don't want to think about it tomorrow. Yeah, there's so many things that fall into this.

[A]

I had Claude, I was downloading images from my icloud to the Linux box, but of course they're in exif format and the Linux box wants JPEG and various programs want jpeg. So I said, claude, from now on.

[B]

Write a little automatically.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, write a little script for me that downloads the photos, converts them to jpeg. You know, you could say resize them, whatever you want. And it knows. Oh yeah, I will. He says, said, you know, I can use Image Magic. I can use. Sometimes they'll ask you. I, I like Claude to ask me, so what do you want to use Image Magic for this? I said, okay. He said, you know, there's another way to do this. It's faster and simpler. And I said, oh, what? And do that right? It knows it, it wrote it, it's just a little bash script. It's kind of. And I would, I could probably have spent time figuring that out.

[C]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[A]

Or not.

[B]

Or, or you could have a life, you know. Yeah, I mean I, you know, this is, and this is the thing, like I, I mean you could, you know, I've been working on this.

[A]

A secondary effect of this is it Makes your stuff, your computing platform, whether you're mobile or your laptop or your desktop, more useful to you. And suddenly now we're in a kind of a new world where there's a. More of a partnership between you and your computing devices.

[B]

Yeah, Right. I'm fascinated by this. We'll see. But I really feel like this is a big thing and it's happening and I think it's going to continue to be big.

[A]

I keep thinking of the Terminator line. We were in uncharted territory making things up as we went along.

[B]

Sorry, was that the Elizabeth Holm biography or the.

[A]

It's.

[B]

It's this.

[C]

We were in uncharted territory now, making.

[B]

Up history as we went along.

[A]

And of course that was because of Skynet. Right? That's still a possibility.

[C]

But science fiction, well, that's the thing.

[A]

There's all this dystopian stuff around this conditions.

[C]

Because it makes for good tv.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When things just work. That's the most boring movie ever made.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

It's like a day in a life everybody lived happily. Every night you're like, is anything going to happen? No, everything's fine.

[C]

It was wonderful. The end.

[A]

No conflict. Yes.

[B]

I mean, it's just what you want in real life, but it's not what you want.

[A]

We've been. We've been talking about this and I just. I mean, I'm glad we do intelligent machines. I'm glad you guys are on this. I really feel like this is for those of us who've been covering computing as you have and Richard has forever, since practically the beginning. This is a new era. That's very interesting.

[C]

Things are different.

[A]

Yeah. It's not boring anymore.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Let me take a little break. We will talk more about development. We've got Xboxes, we've got, I'm sure, some luscious elixirs of the gods. Some meads coming up in just a little bit.

[C]

I had a yummy last weekend.

[A]

A yummy. Richard is practically in the home of all of this. Being in.

[C]

Going up this weekend, the uk.

[A]

Paul's got a brass mug of something delicious. It looks good. Can you get poke? Can you just go get Pokemon?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I could, but I have taste buds. I know it's not for everyone.

[A]

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[B]

Yes, this one I don't Richard, maybe I don't know if you knew this was coming or knew about this or had heard about this in advance, but this past week Microsoft released a public preview of something called the Windows App Development CLI or WIN app. It's a command line tool, Right. Which is designed to simplify the development lifecycle for people who are creating modern Windows apps.

[C]

More importantly, to duplicate what the node guys have.

[B]

Yeah. So I mean, part of me, my two reactions to this because I played with it just a little bit is, you know, having set up computers, a lot of computers actually, in recent years for development purposes in the micro, you know, for Microsoft oriented native apps, I guess, for lack of a better term. Yeah, I mean there are things you got to know and then, you know, things you got to do, et cetera. But I mean I feel like the people who do this are developers and they can kind of handle that. And I don't quite understand what the issue is, but I also wonder why.

[C]

The tools came down to they need to build a Windows app and they don't use Visual Studio and they don't understand MsBuilder world. You know, they want another way to build. You know, you're making Electron app clients for phones and you want to make the Windows version and you don't taught your name. Microsoft Dev Tools.

[B]

Okay. So if you're doing a JavaScript type thing in Electron, this is more like. It's the scenario. Yeah. It's the folder based thing rather than like a big Visual Studio project. Okay.

[C]

Because it does work with anyway, right?

[B]

Yeah. Yes.

[C]

I mean coming from that part of the world, it's why they have the Azure CLI too is I want to push to the cloud and I'm not firing up Studio for this. I just want to do it from the command line.

[B]

Yep. Okay. I was just kind of confused by it.

[C]

But I and I would just argue like this is not for you. You work in the Microsoft dev environment, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

All right. A tool for people who need to work with Windows but don't live in the Microsoft dev environment.

[B]

Okay. I accept.

[C]

It literally is a response to customers that are using Microsoft Tools.

[B]

All right. And then Xbox and gaming. Just a couple of things. The other day Microsoft refreshed the Xbox cloud gaming web experience. Right. So if you go to I think it's xbox.com play, it's nice looking. I'm not sure it's all that different. I don't spend a lot of time there because I don't, you know, streaming the types of games I play as a non starter. But. Okay. And the first thing that went through my brain was this is a rumor, not a fact. But there were rumors within the past couple of weeks that Microsoft was going to introduce an ad based Xbox cloud gaming tier. And I wonder if that might be tied to this because there's no super change to how it looks or works. I mean it's tagging mechanisms to allowed.

[C]

An ad network to function perhaps.

[B]

Yeah. And then there's also this notion that Microsoft is consolidating their Xbox UIs and maybe this becomes the UI for everybody right across the board. So whatever consoles look like in the near future on the Xbox side or just the Xbox app on PC, which kind of looks like this in a way, I'm sure. And by the way, it's probably a web app, but whatever. And then the other one is just that fable which is being I guess remade. I guess is the way to say the remake.

[C]

Great Xbox games. That isn't Halo. Yes.

[B]

Yeah. And it was a fairy tale game.

[A]

What's the name's Weird Fable.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. It's like a open world RPG sorcery kind of game.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, I might want to play that.

[B]

Well, you're going to be able to because they're putting it everywhere. So this was what you know, like everything else that Xbox does these days, it will be on Xbox, PC and PS5. Right. It was the biggest game they showed off at that developer Direct event last week. It was the finale, actually. It looks beautiful. I mean.

[A]

Oh, it does. This is like Fable Remastered or something. Yeah, it looks like Unreal Engine. It's beautiful.

[B]

Yeah, it looks like the opening scene of the Fellowship of the Ring, you know, like the movie. Yeah, it looks neat. So we don't have an exact release date, but it is coming this fall.

[C]

And across, they've committed to all the platforms for it too.

[B]

Yes. Yep. That looks great. I'm sure There was a PS5 footage you were seeing. They wanted to look so good.

[C]

Okay. Anyway.

[B]

Sorry.

[A]

Okay. Well, that was the shortest Xbox segment in, in the history of the world.

[B]

Yeah. Sometimes it's long, sometimes it's this. I don't know.

[A]

Well, let me just, you know, take, take a little tiny time out just to tell people to join the club. Join the club. Join the club. Club twit. 10 bucks a month, which I know that's a lot, but you get all of the shows ad free and, and it's not just the many shows we do, you know, as our big shows like Twit and Windows Weekly and Mac Break Weekly and Intelligent Machines and you know, Tech News Weekly with Micah Sargent. But it's also all the club shows. You get access to the Club Twit Discord, which is really a great place to hang out whether you're in a show or not. I mean, there's always great conversations. You get all of those club shows like the AI User Group we're going to do tomorrow. It's Johnny Jett, the return of Johnny Jett, our travel guru, to talk about traveling better with technology. Friday, Stacy's book Club. And it's really good. It's a fun book. It's called the Theft of Hollow London.

[B]

London.

[A]

And the best thing, it's Sci fi book. But it's like Brave New World meets Ocean's Eleven. It's in the future, but it is a caper book and I'm really enjoying it. I think you will too. So join us for that conversation on Friday. Those are some of the things we do all the time. Micah's crafting Corner. But the most important thing to know about Club Twit is without it, we would have to cut back. We would have to get rid of shows, get rid of staff. We would have to sometimes do our shows in the dark because we couldn't play the power bill. Increasingly, Club Twit is the future of twit. And that means we need you to join. If we got right now it's about one and a half percent, 2% of the audience, if we got 3 or 4% of the audience, we wouldn't have to worry about advertising. We wouldn't even, probably wouldn't even do advertising. We could do more content, we could hire more people. And I want to do that, I really do. So if you will. Twit, TV club, Twit. Would you join the club? We would, we would love to have you. Twit, TV club, Twit. Please think of the children or no, that makes no sense. Just join the club, will you please? All right, now let's do the tip of the week. It's time for the back of the book.

[C]

Woo hoo.

[A]

Paul Thurot.

[B]

Yeah. So related to I'm sure what I talked about last week. I've been doing an ongoing kind of security series this month. You know, it's January, blah blah, blah, whatever. So I'm finally tackling the big one, which is password management. And you know, most of this, you guys, everyone knows this, but you know, you want the 1Password manager, not 18 of them like we all actually have. You want to get rid of your password, passwords and everything else from the other ones you're no longer using. You want to set this thing up to work everywhere you are, which is your computer, your mobile devices, whatever, autofill, turn off the stuff built in to the system, whether it's a web browser or your platform, just use the one thing, right. Most password managers just all do the same, you know, things, right. But be sure to choose one that does like all the things, right. Passkey management, payment management, proactive scanning of your accounts and vulnerabilities, dark web leaks, et cetera. One of the. This is time consuming and it's terrible. But having it change your passwords to longer, more complex passwords. Good. Or helping you through that, it can't just change in most cases. But identifying accounts that support authenticator apps or other two FA means passkeys, whatever. But you haven't configured it on those accounts key. They also just store arbitrary information now, right. So it could be anything like photos, files, documents, whatever. And then some kind of emergency for.

[C]

BitLocker, things like that.

[B]

Exactly. Tied to this. Oh, and it should work everywhere you are. Right. So you know, Apple has their thing. But that's great if you're an Apple and only an Apple. It's not, you know, it's not going.

[C]

To Work or work well.

[B]

If you're using, you know, Chrome on a Chromebook or something like, you want to make sure the thing you're using works everywhere. From an app perspective, there are many good password managers. I don't actually understand why 1Password is so popular. I find the interface to be kind of screw in. They almost mandate like having what is essentially like a 2Password thing for it, which I think is kind of weird. But Bid Warden is a great choice. My. My personal choice is Proton Pass and that's my pick of the week, I should say. Those two are the only ones that are available in free versions that actually work really, really well. And if you choose to pay, they're inexpensive. The other ones that are good are, well, highly rated anyway, like 1Password or a Dashlane are not free. They don't have free versions, but. And none of them are super expensive. But this is something you might be paying for every year to some degree, but you can get away with not paying with Bitwarden and Proton Pass, if that matters to you. And then, you know, I guess if you have to, you could use the Google Password Manager because it's built into Chrome, all their platforms. You can use it for autofill in that browser on Windows. You can use it for autofill in apps and in web pages on mobile, like even on an iPhone, obviously. So that would work.

[A]

Proton's to be praised because they did. It was only last year they open sourced all of the Proton applications, which I think is right to be trustworthy, especially nowadays. You want to know that?

[B]

Exactly. I actually, I write about Proton a lot and I think it might have been in the context of their Authenticator app, which is.

[A]

I started using it, by the way, based on your recommendation. Yeah, very happy.

[B]

Awesome.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And someone said, well, I mean, can we trust a company this small? I was like, that's kind of the point. Get this stuff off the big companies. The better question maybe is, can we trust these big companies?

[A]

And I think, well, you know what's happening in Europe. We had Patrick Beja from France on Twitter on Sunday and he said there is a concerted effort in Europe to get off of American technology.

[B]

Yeah. This is Cory Doctorow's new pushes for the, what he calls the post American Internet.

[A]

He wants Canada to become.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think he's smart. I don't know if Canada will do this. In fact, I know they won't. But he wants them to kind of abrogate all the agreements that they have with the intellectual property world, Intellectual property.

[B]

Organization because we are violating the tariff laws that they might.

[A]

They might be pissed off enough to do that. And if they. So what he wants is for. If the reason, you know, wipo went around at the behest of the United States to every country in the world and said, no, you got to make sure reverse engineering is made.

[B]

Reverse engineering is key to all of this. This is the.

[A]

He says, if there were one country that just said, look, you can reverse engineer here. We're not going to. We're not going to do that.

[B]

Oh, my God. That would be the.

[A]

All of this stuff could be reverse engineers.

[B]

Exactly. This is. You can use the ink you want in the printer you want. You can fix your own tractor or you can, you know, whatever it is.

[C]

Canada, it might be Ukraine, you know, it might be.

[A]

It could be the Bahamas. It doesn't. It's just. There needs to be one jurisdiction in the world that is not enforcing this.

[B]

Reverse engineering prohibition and advertising it as we're going to. You can do whatever you want here with that with regards to reverse engineering.

[A]

It could be the Bahamas. When I was in NASA many years ago, they said, we want to become a data free zone. We think our, you know, we understand that we have no economy. It's not. It's tourism and that's it.

[C]

Right. A free zone.

[A]

If we became. He said, we used to be a place for pirates.

[B]

Yeah, right. I don't understand. I don't. I'm not a legal expert of any kind, of course, but I. One of the, the center confusions I have here is we have specific laws in the United States around ownership. And so you could say something like, well, this is my iPhone. I own this phone. This is my phone. But once you make anything that could be reverse engineered part of it, the DMCA kicks in and now you can't. This is. Now you can't do what you want to your device. I don't understand why that supersedes my right of ownership as an individual. Like, I just don't understand. How does that take precedent? I mean, they just artificially create Eulas and software systems specifically. So it would have to be reverse engineered for you to do what you want. Yeah, sorry.

[C]

This is the right to repair laws.

[A]

It is.

[C]

It should be fixable and it should be.

[A]

I wish somebody do this. I want something that's. It doesn't have to be as good as the iPhone, but close to as good as the iPhone or the Pixel. I think we're really open.

[B]

I feel like this is inevitable. It's just there's going to be so much pushback and it's going to take a while. But I. Yeah, why some company hasn't stepped up. The EU should just do this. Look, the whole point of the tariff thing was that we're going to, you know, we will have something like the DMCA because you require that. But now you're just overcharging us on tariffs. So guess what? You're violating that agreement. We're going to violate the agreement and not reverse engineer your technology.

[A]

Here's a good example.

[B]

That's what happens.

[A]

This little mini E Ink reader. It's a little Chinese device from XTE Inc. And it has a magnet on it. It clips to the back of your phone and then you can read your. Let me boot it up. You can read your books on it. It's a little teeny weeny thing, but its software is crappy Chinese crappy software. So somebody wrote something called Crosspoint. It's really great and it's easy to firmware update it. And now I have an E Ink open E Ink reader that can read all epub stuff. Little. It's little, but I can keep it in my shirt pocket.

[B]

See if your phone could use that as a secondary screen and send like the Kindle app to it or something. Right.

[A]

Well, I use Calibre, Caliber has web sync.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So we have these open source ecosystems that sort of exist. All of this DMCA stuff keeps a lid on it. Yeah.

[B]

I don't understand why. And if I literally have no idea why this is even allowed, I don't understand it.

[A]

Yeah, well, I know why. Because I'm sorry.

[B]

Right, Sorry.

[A]

I know exactly why.

[B]

I mean, I don't know why we as a people, why do we put up with it? I understand why those companies want this.

[A]

Well, I think the world economic, you know, for a while we were in this kind of. I thought it was pretty good.

[B]

As an American, I thought it was pretty freaking good.

[A]

Milton Friedman, free trade. Everything's free trade. You know, whoever makes it best, sells it to whoever doesn't make it. And it was actually pretty good. That's why we have the iPhone. We have all this stuff and now we're not. We're shutting it all down. We're closed. Putting up the walls, putting up the borders. This is the time.

[B]

Yeah. For the rest of the world to step up. Yeah.

[A]

Step up, somebody. I'm not rooting against the US by any means, but I am rooting for users.

[B]

This would benefit the citizens of the United States as much as it would benefit citizens of any other country. Yeah, so this is. Yes, this. When you, someone who is patriotic, might hear the phrase, like the post American Internet, you don't get freak out. It's like, dude, you know, this is going to be better for us. So I don't know why we're rooting for companies, we should be rooting for people.

[A]

Well, there you go. I think we're kind of. The tech lash is real.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

AI is kind of throwing a monkey wrench into it.

[B]

But yes, it's bizarre how much bad has had to happen for us to wake up to the reality of this industry. Yeah, yeah, it's too bad.

[C]

Still resting with whether we're actually awake or not.

[A]

All right, let's cheer up. Let's talk about Run as radio with Mr. Richard.

[C]

This is a show I shot back in, in Lithuania with my friend Ian Cooper, who's here with me in London too. I just saw him a little earlier and he's. Well, you can say about Ian, he's one of those polyglot sort of architects, the kind of guys like, look, we're going to be able to do this together, let's go build the thing and so forth forth. He works for a company called Just Eat, which runs a bunch of the infrastructure for delivery of food services and things in and around the uk. And so business process automation, which is a common phrase in the IT world, is just this idea of anything I've got to repeat multiple times, I should automate it so that it's perfectly repeatable. There's lots of different tools in this place and what we're really talking about is building automations that are maintainable, that multiple people can use, multiple can work on that over time, they can evolve and improve and so forth. So that's a documentation flow and source control and so forth. And often with these BPA tools, they're sort of done seat of the pants one timers and kind of unmanaged, usable by you, but really no one else. And that creates its own set of problems. So we're trying to talk through the governance side of being responsible with automation so that it can be maintained and to be able to know when things are working properly and when they fail, how they fail and how to recover from them.

[A]

Hey, everybody, it's Leo laporte. It's the last week to take our annual survey. This is so important for us to get to know you better. We thank everybody who's already taken the survey and if you're one of the few who has not you have a few days left. Visit our website twit tv survey 26 and fill it out before January 31st. And thank you so much, we appreciate it. Now, let's talk whiskey.

[C]

Yeah. On my way out to this trip up to London, I needed to come in a day early so that I didn't have to rush to the airport and things. And fortunate timing. A buddy of mine was having a birthday and also could put me up for the night. So I came, you know, arrived with gift in hand. And that gift was a fine Highland whiskey by the name of Tullibardine the 18. In fact, Tullibardine is not the oldest whiskey and not the oldest distillery in the world. It's in an. It's in Perthshire, which is just north of Edinburgh, about 75 minute in a little town they call Blackford, named supposedly for the fact that a Nordic queen died there in the 10th century trying to ford the river. So they called it Blackford. But if today you would drive out of Edinburgh on the M9 and get up to Blackford, which is where Televardine is. Blackford is famous for the first recorded sale of beer in Scotland. So Telebardine is also a hill and as well as had a castle and things on it as well. And in 1488, King James IV bought beer from that area in Blackford. Barrels of beer for his coronation beer had been made there since the 12th century. The water there, the spring is absolutely phenomenal. So it was a great beer making place. He was so happy with that beer in 1488 that the first Royal Charter of Scotland ever given was to the brewery there in 1503. So this is super old school and has nothing to do with the whiskey made today, except that you will not notice on a Tullibardin bottle it says 1488. And the only reason is because that's because of King James and his beer. What is at Tullibardin that is that ancient is the Tullibardin Chapel. That chapel was originally built in 1446 and had expanded and so forth until about the 16th century, where it still stands today, largely untouched since the 16th century. And that's where the name Tillabardine for the distillery actually comes from. There were several attempts to open distilleries in that area. So 1798, William and Henry Bannerman started the distillery, but it only ran for about a year and it shut down. But they did name it for the chapel, which at that point was already 300 years old. So that, you know, they use the name for there. There was another distillery set up in 1814 which ran until 181937 that burned down and wasn't replaced so that by 1900 there are three breweries, two of which are soon about to bankrupt in a maltings facility. The last brewery standing there runs until about 1927 and then all alcohol production stops in the Blackford area until the last distillery standing is bought by William Delm Evans. This is the guy who, who built the Jura distillery and facilities and the Craig Lache. And so in 47 he buys the land that this the shutdown brewery and in 49 starts producing spirit from it. And that's essentially the distillery that stands till this day. A few years on by 1953 William is. Has health problems and so he sells it to the Brody Hepburn Group who run it for 20 years or so. When it gets merged into Invercorating Gordon Distilleries. This is one of those few stories where it's a Scottish distillery not owned by Diageo. In 1971, when Invre Gordon has control of it, they go up to. They double the number of stills, expand the washbacks and so forth. Lot of what is at Tullibard need today comes from the Invergordon expansion. It's acquired by White And Mackie White McKay, which is the blenders. And they use a lot of the. Their intent in acquiring it was to use a lot of the alcohol that was in storage, the laid up barrels for their blends. But they find that a lot of those barrels are in fairly rough shape and not the quality they want in their blends. And so by 1994 they shut everything down and it stays mothballed for almost a decade until a private consortium run by Michael Beamish and Douglas Ross acquired the distillery for maybe a million pounds like a bargain again with a lot of laid up barrels. They had intended to take those old casks and sell them, but they too found they had problems and so actually started running the stills and brought in some specialist distillers and got things up and running again. So that by 2011 they sold it to Picard Vin and Spirits, which is a French conglomerate of wine and spirit making these days. That that group has been reorganized. By 2013 it was called Tororo Distillers. They also own the Highland Queen blend and that's been the controlling interest of Tullibardine ever since. So these, this is nominally a Highland but it's the very, very southern part of the Highlands. You know, the south side of Edinburgh, you'd be going into the lowlands. So it's kind of its own space. It's not that close to spay. They're big on bourbon casks, but also use a lot of wine casks because they are ultimately owned by a vintner as well. So they have access to a lot of wine casks. Production is a sort of mid scale. 2 million a year. 2 million liters a year with a 6 ton mash ton, 9 washbacks of about 38,000 liters each. They use wooden lids on those 52 hour fermentations. Very middling. Two 20,000 liter wash stills, two 16,000 liter spirit stills. So nothing massive. And again, you'll find many. Most of their whiskey is aged in bourbon casks. They're big on first fill and second fill. So first fill means fresh from, from America, used once, second fill, they've already had scotch in them once and now they're, they're using it again. But most of the first fills and now most of the aging will happen in those remade bourbon casks and then they will do a year or nine months in some kind of finishing cask. Might be sherry, might be any number of the French wines they have access to. Marseille, Sauternes, Burgundy, Pinot. So there's lots of choices there. That is not what happens with this 18. This 18 is almost, it would almost be a speyside in a lot of ways because it is just first filled bourbon. It's finished in sherry and it is very spayish. It is light and fruity, full of caramel and vanilla. And I had brought it as a gift and said you can put this away if you want to keep it. No, no, we'll open it. And we finished it at the party because it was that good. 43% probably has some color in it. They don't say it doesn't, so it probably does. But for an 18 year old, little off the beaten path. Most people haven't heard of tillabardine because they don't have the marketing budget that a Diageo has. $140, you know, you can barely get there like a Dalmore. Twelve is that price. And this is an 18, 18 year old. So it's a bargain for a nice light drinking island and a beautiful bottle, A beautiful box that it comes in. It's a nice gift and I can't recommend it enough. That's one of the cheapest 18 year olds you'll ever find anywhere in a whiskey.

[A]

Nice.

[C]

Yeah, just a good find. Very pleased with it, with it. And as you can see the box is pretty with the, you know, old, old picture, you know, drawings of people making whiskey and. Yeah, just been a ringer, ran easy winger and ever. It was very appreciated by everyone around, so I would recommend it.

[A]

Well, now while we've been talking, Paul has been writing because Microsoft's.

[C]

Guess what just happened.

[A]

Paul filed a story while we were talking. I'm impressed, Paul. You're muted still. Is that me or is that you?

[B]

No, that's me. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, I'm sorry, Richard. I missed your segment because I was busy cobbling this together. But I'm impressed. It's out. Just a quick report and then I do a longer analysis piece later. But Microsoft's doing pretty good. Net income. Yeah. $38.5 billion in revenues of 81.3. I haven't had a chance to look, get into the AI side. Just laid out the basic, you know, three big businesses and I'm ignoring Microsoft Cloud because they made it up. But 17% gain year over year in revenues, productivity and business processes. That's the business that does. Microsoft 365 is again their biggest business, up 16% to 34.1 billion. Intelligent Cloud, Azure revenues up 29% to 32.9 billion. So pretty close. And more personal computing to 14.3 billion, a decline of 3%. Revenues from PC makers and devices for Windows were up only 1% and Xbox content and services revenue declined 5%. So I need to dig through their. What do you call it? Presentation and then listen to, or at least read their post earnings conference call, which is probably happening pretty soon. So there'll be more next week, but that's the high level.

[A]

So 60% increase in revenue. In profit?

[B]

No, 60 in profit.

[A]

Yeah, 60%.

[B]

Yeah. I mean that's.

[C]

That might have been through the roof and it's not.

[B]

Yeah, 60 is not possible.

[A]

Yeah, net income of 38. This is profit. 38.5 billion on.

[B]

So Capex. Capex is a week. Yeah, yeah, they're doing okay. That most business is doing great. Oh my God, they're.

[A]

But the Capex is probably.

[B]

AI is a, is 100% AI right now. It didn't go up that much quarter over quarter. So remember last year they were saying they were going to come in around 80. I think they came in closer to almost 90 billion. But you can see the, the amount per quarter go up. So it was 24.2 billion and then 34.9 billion in the last two quarters. This quarter was 37.5. So.

[A]

There'S no way of knowing whether they're making money in AI though I.

[B]

Think we can safely say they are not. But. Yeah, there's no. They're not going to.

[C]

But they're not telling us those numbers, right?

[B]

No, no.

[A]

So they're telling us numbers but they're all bundled up together. We don't know at the end, and.

[B]

I didn't do this math, but remember, I don't know, two quarters ago they actually gave an Azure revenue number, which means we've seen the gains each quarter since, which means we can actually come up with the number for this quarter for Azure. I just haven't done that. I have to look it up. I haven't had time for that.

[A]

Nice. Well, congratulations, Satya.

[B]

You can go back to blogging or whatever it is you do now that you know.

[C]

I am curious to see how the stock price shakes out here.

[B]

I think a lot of it's going to depend on what they have to say. So I got to listen to this call and, and I'm curious, I'm really curious.

[A]

Do you think the market's skeptical about the 90 billion a year AI investment?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I. Yeah, because what you're not seeing is the result at the other end of that where it's like, see, this all made sense. Like I. Like there's not even a hint of it.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

Instead what you have are people like Sachin, Adele and the people that run all these other companies complaining because we're talking about AI slop and when no one's paying for AI, you know.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. They're also complaining about stop calling it AI slop.

[B]

And, and yeah, that's what stop me. Stop making slop. Just stop making slop.

[A]

Yeah, the stock's down quite a bit, actually.

[B]

Yeah, I mean we'll see. You know, they'll. They need to talk about things and we'll see after hours.

[A]

I mean, of course the market's closed. That's why they released this at 4.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But 21 bucks down after hours trading. You can see that huge drop and now it's come back up and call is going to happen in.

[B]

This is not. I wouldn't call what I'm about to say analysis. But what did I say it was? 30, 32.9 billion in capex. 29% gain quarter. No, that must be year over year. And then what did I say their profit was? 38.5. They actually made a bigger profit than they spent on AI infrastructure. So something happened. I don't think it was AI by The way I think it was a one time a year ago something, something wasn't so great and that might have explained it.

[A]

But one of the things that happened recently in the last couple of weeks is Microsoft say we're going to pay for all of the data centers. We're not going to put the burdens of those data center costs, electricity and water on.

[B]

Yeah, but was he doing like this thing behind his back or was he winking a lot or did he have like a twitchy thing going on?

[A]

And there's pay, there's different, there's different ways of people.

[C]

It's also the part of they're using shell companies to set these data centers up. So I suspect we're only going to see this follow those rules when they actually get rolled into Microsoft. Right, right. You know. Right, right. There's a real conversation going on about who's actually building these data centers because all of the big players are using shells.

[A]

Well, and there's also concern that these shell companies could be go bankrupt because.

[C]

Could be evaporated intentionally. Like it reminds me of the undersea cabling crisis. 2000, 2001.

[A]

Interesting.

[C]

Where all these shell companies fund it, you know, set up for cables and disappeared before they were finished.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

So this is space.

[C]

Yeah, it's a, it's a strategy. It's a strategy to hide the liability to be able to over order. Right. The old I'm opening 10 windows to buy two tickets to Taylor Swift and you know, only keep one of those windows in the end the rest will disappear. Like there's all these mechanisms that they're using to optimize their ability to build what they want. But they are ordering far more than they need.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Just amazing.

[C]

I can't wait to discuss the studies that should lead to regulation about this is this is disruptive to economies. This is what happens when you have too much money concentrated in one place.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

Well, and loopholes like crazy this that you pay CPAs a lot of money to use.

[B]

As my wife observed. You know, if we were running our business or a little business like OpenAI, we would be called a charity at this point.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Oh well. It's the world as we know it. Paul Thurat, thank you for that last minute update. I knew we would be able to do that next week. Week. Of course we'll spend more times on the earnings learnings. But I think the top line stuff is pretty clear.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I would say not much has changed at the top line.

[C]

Right.

[B]

This has Been the way it's been for the past, I don't know, three.

[A]

Five quarters, whatever apples are tomorrow. And it's going to be. We were taking wagers on MacBreak weekly whether it'll be Apple's best quarter ever or whether it'll be Apple's best quarter ever.

[B]

Right. It's gonna be. It's pretty. It's gonna be both.

[A]

We're pretty sure it's Apple's best.

[B]

I'm actually super happy that Amazon and Alphabet aren't until the following week.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

That. Yeah, that is. Having these things dump on me all at the same time is the worst.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that actually, that, that's good for me. So thank you world, for once, you.

[A]

Know, one, one liquor segment for you to write up that article. I'm impressed.

[B]

Well, it was a quickie.

[A]

He's a pro, ladies and gentlemen.

[B]

I've written. I've written before once or twice.

[C]

Not his first rodeo. And it was not exactly a long whiskey bit either.

[B]

No. I was getting nervous at the end because I could tell you were kind of wrapping up and I'm like, oh.

[A]

Man, can we talk about the War of 1812 a little bit more and how it affected.

[B]

Thank you. I was like, all right, I got two more paragraphs.

[A]

Paul Thurat [e-mail] that's where you'll find his intrepid analysis. Become a premium member. It's absolutely worth it. Great stuff there for everyone. T H U r r o doublegood.com his books are at leanpub.com including the Field Guide to Windows 11 and Windows Everywhere. Some couple of really good [e-mail] Richard Campbell [e-mail] that's where you'll find the Run his radio podcast and Net rocks with Carl Franklin if you're a net fan. And they joined together at the Hip once a week to do this show every Tuesday. Sorry Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday for Run as.

[C]

Thursdays for dot net Rocks. And to be sure we time shift. So I record recorded advance.

[A]

It's a magic thing. It's a magic.

[C]

It's really great, you know, to know I have all my. I'm recording Run as is tomorrow at the NDC conference for March.

[A]

And by the way, you're going to be going with us to the Zero Trust world that threat lockers putting on in Orlando. And I think you're going to get some interviews there as well.

[C]

We'll pick up a couple of security shows.

[A]

I'm excited. Smart man. Get those.

[C]

I'M efficient.

[A]

Yes, yes, we do Windows Weekly every Wednesday, Wednes Day at 11am Pacific. That's 1300 now, 1400 East Coast Time, 1900 UTC. Math is hard. You can watch us live if you want. You don't have to, I mean we record it after all. But you can, if you wish, watch us live on a variety of platforms. We're in the club Twit Discord for our wonderful club members. Thank you, club members. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But you also can watch, as many club members do on YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, X.com, facebook, LinkedIn or Kik. There's chats in many of those. I watch the chat, I see everybody's comments. Thank you. After the fact, on demand versions of the show available at [e-mail], but also at Twitter, TV, WW and on YouTube. There's a video channel on YouTube dedicated to Windows Weekly because we do video as well as audio. So you could go there. That's a good thing for clipping little segments to send off to friends and family. Everybody can watch YouTube after all. The best way to get the show or any of our shows is to find a podcast client you like. There are lots of choices. I like Pocket Casts, but there's many others and you could just select Windows Weekly. You can do the audio or the video or both if you want. We don't mind. And if you would, if you like the show anyway, give us a nice review. You, wherever you download your podcast from, we appreciate it helps people discover us. There is, as Yarno says in our Discord, there's also a YouTube channel dedicated to Windows Whisky called weirdstufffrommyclawset.com Something weird from my closet. Something weird. I never get that right. Something weird.

[C]

It's called Windows Whiskey.

[A]

Yeah, Windows Whiskey. Something weird from my closet dot com. You'll actually go to that playlist that Kevin King's been maintaining of all the.

[C]

Whiskey segments, movements 112, 111. Like it's a lot Incredible. Incredible. Where I think the last one is from the last of my friend Nile's rare collection.

[A]

Yeah, Kevin says a little behind, so he's catching up hunger.

[C]

He's not that far behind. It's like four or five.

[A]

It's a lot of work.

[C]

There's some real good ones coming up though. You know, you as you've already experienced that weird whiskey from the Rusty Rum place, the Lithuanian experience and the one.

[A]

You should never ever under any circumstances try.

[C]

Yeah, every so often we get a dud, don't we? Every so often. Anyway, this weekend I'm headed up to the Mothership. We're going flying to Glasgow, going up, spending the night at the Craig Elache, gonna do the new Macallan Legends tour, hit Ben Dromak and try a few new things. I'll be in the Quaish at the Craig Elache, taking pictures of bottles I've sampled and keeping notes. So is there someone.

[A]

Do you have an Instagram or somewhere people could follow that?

[C]

No, that's not. That's not my thing.

[A]

No.

[C]

No, not even. I share it here. If you want to, you know, keep watching.

[A]

We'll see it all here eventually. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. We will see you next time on Windows Weekly.

[B]

Sa.