Windows Weekly 977: Moonshine University

Summary

Windows Weekly 977: Moonshine University

Date: April 1, 2026
Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell

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Episode Overview

This light-hearted but information-dense episode covers the latest in Microsoft’s world and the broader technology landscape. The team discusses Windows updates (including the infamous “week D” updates and recent patch chaos), Microsoft's focus on quality and app development directions (native vs. web tech), GitHub’s AI ad mishap, competition in AI, shifting trends in gaming hardware and pricing, and closes with a fascinating segment on bourbon from Moonshine University. As always, the trio mixes deep technical analysis with banter, history, and entertaining side stories.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. April Fool’s in a Post-AI Era (00:43 - 03:39)

• Main Idea: With the rise of AI-generated content and misinformation, every day can feel like April Fool’s for tech journalists.
• Quote:
  • "Now somebody pointed out it's April Fool's every day, thanks to AI Slop. You never know if it's real or not." — Leo Laporte (01:48)
• Hosts reflect on past tech announcements on April 1st (Google's Gmail, Apple's founding) and how AI has blurred reality versus parody.

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2. Windows “Week D” Updates & Patch Quality Crisis (03:39 - 09:28)

• Summary:
  • The latest “Week D” (late-month) updates for Windows 11 are here, bringing features mostly via Controlled Feature Rollouts (CFR), meaning not everyone sees them at once.
  • Notable adds: Smart App Control toggle, performance improvements for Windows Recovery on ARM, enhanced image descriptions in Narrator.
  • Issue: Preview and regular patches keep causing problems and require emergency patches—despite recent claims Microsoft is focusing on quality.
• Quotes & Humor:
  • "Microsoft has had to release several patches for patches. Sounds like the name of a presidential dog." — Paul Thurrott (09:03)
  • "Just because you pull the throttle back doesn't mean the ship slowed down." — Richard Campbell (09:28)

Timestamps:

• Week D updates recap
• Patch upon patch problems

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3. Native vs. Web Apps on Windows (09:35 - 25:01)

• Topics:
  • Microsoft insiders promise more 100% native apps, but Paul challenges feasibility, noting flagship apps like Outlook and Clipchamp are and likely always will be web-based for cross-platform consistency and extensibility.
  • Discussion on developer hiring trends, platforms (WinRT, WinUI 3, WebView2), and why web tech is so common.
  • The promise of “all native” is likely more a feel-good talking point than a practical shift.
• Notable Quotes:
  • "It's absolutely not possible." — Paul Thurrott on 100% native Windows apps (13:01)
  • "If it just worked and it worked well and it was web based... would anyone care? I think the answer is no." — Paul Thurrott (17:40)
• Timestamps:
  • Native vs. Web Apps debate begins
  • History of Microsoft’s developer philosophies

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4. Windows Insider: Chaos and Features (25:01 - 31:49)

• Highlights:
  • Insider channels now more confusing; “Canary” split into multiple tracks.
  • Only real “new” feature is a set of upgrades for Windows Console (regex search, inline images).
  • UAC/admin protection changes resurface, and users can now adjust trackpad right-click zones—a highly-requested tweak.
  • More visibility into NPU usage in Task Manager.
• Timestamps:
  • Insider channel updates
  • Trackpad and NPU discussions

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5. Hardware News: AMD, Intel, and Unified Memory (32:14 - 38:38)

• Recap:
  • AMD and Intel announce new chips; AMD ups the ante with larger 3D cache, taking a lead in gaming.
  • Discussion of Apple’s influence: bundling RAM onto CPUs for performance (unified memory).
  • Component prices rising everywhere—console and Raspberry Pi prices reflect global shortages.
• Quotes:
  • "208 megabytes of anything does not sound like a lot... but for the cache on a processor, that's humongous." — Paul Thurrott (33:50)
• Timestamps:
  • AMD/Intel chip news
  • Unified RAM, Apple’s effect

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6. Main AI Segment (43:50 - 59:24)

• Topics:
  • Microsoft’s Copilot and the possibility of choosing between AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.), with “Researcher” soon using both GPT and Claude together for more accurate results.
  • Apple's panic over Siri and their stuttering entrance into large language models; hosts reminisce on the history and limitations of voice assistants.
  • “Switchers” are no longer just for phones—AIs now including export/import of chat history to facilitate user migration (e.g., to Gemini).
  • OpenAI’s massive valuation versus actual revenue; skepticism on future sustainability amid over-inflated expectations.
• Quotes:
  • "I think they're on the cusp of like one of the biggest collapses in literally history." — Paul Thurrott on OpenAI (59:19)
• Timestamps:
  • Copilot’s multi-model future
  • AI orchestration and Apple’s struggles
  • Switching AI platforms
  • OpenAI valuation critique

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7. Gaming Hardware, Nintendo Switch 2 & Game Trends (61:38 - 73:19)

• Talk Points:
  • Leo acquires a Switch 2, praises screen quality, discusses pricing, SD card expansion, and game library (including “adult” titles).
  • Nintendo’s pricing is rigid—no third-party “Steam-style” sales, digital downloads often cheaper than physical.
  • PS5 and other hardware seeing price hikes due to shortages.
• Quotes:
  • "Dedicated game machine, there are certain advantages to that." — Leo Laporte (64:00)

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8. Firefox & “AI Kill Switch” (73:22 - 78:06)

• Highlights:
  • Mozilla’s balanced approach: not an AI company, but offers opt-outs, especially for features like translation.
  • Firefox brings user choice, AI toggles; AI sometimes overly influences best practices (e.g., recommending Rust for everything).
• Quotes:
  • "One of the problems with AI is that you get into a situation where it’s an echo chamber.” — Paul Thurrott (76:37)

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9. Swift Comes to Android (80:59 - 82:45)

• Summary:
  • The Swift programming language, born within Apple, is now open source and available with an Android SDK, potentially narrowing the gap for cross-platform app development.
• Quote:
  • "If you’re a mobile developer... this would allow [you] to release versions of their apps more easily on Android as well.” — Paul Thurrott (81:03)

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10. Xbox & Gaming News (82:46 - 95:57)

• Xbox Marketing Reset:
  • New Xbox head changes branding; “This is an Xbox” campaign retired, aiming for a brand reset.
• Upcoming Game Showcase:
  • Next major Xbox showcase event to mirror the old E3 window in June.
• Hardware Pricing Woes:
  • Raspberry Pi and PlayStation 5 see price bumps; speculation that Steam machines will be pricey too.
• Digital vs. Physical Games:
  • Nintendo to charge more for physical cartridges; digital pricing unchanged.
• Memorable Moments:
  • Banter about Keanu Reeves, The Rock, and classic gaming reveals.
• Quotes:
  • "If they put a new version of a new Half Life game on it, charge whatever you want." — Richard Campbell (90:56)

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11. GitHub AI Training Controversy (98:13 - 100:46)

• Main Points:
  • Ads inadvertently inserted into GitHub PRs via Copilot—Microsoft claims it was a “mistake.”
  • GitHub will use public repo data to train AI unless users opt out.
• Tip:
  • Opt out at GitHub > Copilot > Features > “Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training.” (100:46)
• Quote:
  • "They're going to start training AI models by default on that data unless you opt out. So...opt out now.” — Paul Thurrott (99:15)

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12. Proton Workspace: Google/Microsoft 365 Alternative (101:00 - 111:08)

• Overview:
  • Proton launches an encrypted, privacy-centric suite (mail, calendar, docs, sheets, VPN, pass, drive, meet/video chat).
  • Attractive especially in Europe as data sovereignty and anti-Big Tech sentiment rise.
• Quotes:
  • "Their angle—called 'not a tech giant'—is a pretty good angle." — Richard Campbell (105:52)
  • "I feel like what they’re doing to Google is what Google did to Microsoft back when they started." — Paul Thurrott (105:40)

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13. Brown Liquor Pick of the Week: Jephthah Creed Bourbon (116:42 - 133:13)

• Whiskey Geekout:
  • Richard tells the rich story of Jephthah Creed in Shelbyville, Kentucky—a family farm distillery using rare heirloom Bloody Butcher corn.
  • Emphasis on grain-to-glass craftsman approach, small-scale (nine barrels a day), mother-daughter leadership.
  • Tasting notes: rich color, smooth and full-flavored, surprising depth from the high corn content without undue sweetness.
• Notable Quotes:
  • "Boy, oh boy, that's sipping bourbon. You wouldn't want to do anything else with this." — Richard Campbell (130:14)
• Memorable Moment:
  • The story of Joyce Netherly attending Moonshine University and ultimately founding the distillery herself.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On AI April Fools:
  "It's April Fool's every day, thanks to AI Slop. You never know if it's real or not." — Leo Laporte (01:48)

• On Windows Update Chaos:
  "Microsoft has had to release several patches for patches." — Paul Thurrott (09:03)

• On Native Apps:
  "It's absolutely not possible." — Paul Thurrott on the promise of all-native Windows apps (13:01)

• On Microsoft’s AI path:
  "I think they're on the cusp of like one of the biggest collapses in literally history." — Paul Thurrott, on OpenAI valuation bubble (59:19)

• On Gaming Consoles:
  "If they put a new version of a new Half Life game on it, charge whatever you want." — Richard Campbell (91:00)

• On Jephthah Creed Bourbon:
  "That's sipping bourbon. You wouldn't want to do anything else with this." — Richard Campbell (130:14)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:43 – On blurred reality in tech news
• 03:39 – Windows “Week D” updates and quality woes
• 09:35 – Native vs. Web App philosophies at Microsoft
• 32:14 – AMD and Intel hardware news
• 43:50 – Big AI talk: Copilot, Siri, ChatGPT, switching AIs
• 61:38 – Gaming hardware chat, Nintendo Switch 2 segment
• 73:22 – Firefox’s pragmatic AI approach
• 80:59 – Swift language arrives on Android
• 82:46 – Xbox news and marketing/biz direction
• 98:13 – GitHub Copilot ad/AI controversy
• 101:00 – Proton launches Workspace, privacy discussion
• 116:42 – Brown liquor pick: Jephthah Creed Bourbon deep dive

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Tone & Style

Conversational, irreverent, and deeply knowledgeable — mixing technical depth with friendly, often humorous exchanges.

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Summary Takeaways

• Windows updates remain fraught with chaos despite new promises, as Microsoft’s development approach continues to frustrate.
• "Native app" push is more marketing than reality; web tech dominates for good reasons.
• AI models, orchestration, and platform switching are the new competitive battlefronts, with increasing skepticism about the real value and sustainability of unicorns like OpenAI.
• Gaming hardware becomes pricier and more fragmented; digital distribution continues to transform how and what we buy.
• Privacy-focused services like Proton are gaining traction as alternatives to Big Tech’s productivity suites.
• The bourbon world is as innovative as tech—don't miss out on family-run, small-batch gems.

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For deeper dives, see the full show notes and transcript.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurad and Richard Campbell are here. We're going to talk about the week D updates, the shocking insertion of advertising into by copilot into GitHub PRs. Apparently it was just a mistake. And There's a new Microsoft 365 alternative in town. Plus an amazing farm grown brown liquor. It's all coming up next on Windows Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is twit.

[Leo Laporte]

This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurat and Richard Campbell. Episode 977 recorded Wednesday, April 1, 2026. Moonshine University. Hey, all you winners and dozers, guess what? It's Wednesday morning. At least here in sunny California. That means it's time for Windows Weekly. I give to you our two stellar hosts, Richard Campbell, who is in British Columbia, where it is in fact same time zone. Hello, it is for now from rennesradio.com it will. Yes. You're never changing ever again, you lucky dog.

[Paul Thurrott]

Don't ever change. Canada.

[Leo Laporte]

And down from Mexico City. I don't even know what time it is there. They don't change there though. That's the good news. Mr. Paul Thurat from Throt.com.

[Richard Campbell]

in fact, I'm the only guy Mexico needs. No time.

[Leo Laporte]

It's always Mana. Happy April Fool's Day. I did realize something, you know, in the past, in many years gone by, as a tech journalist, I've always eschewed stories that shipped April 1st.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right?

[Leo Laporte]

Which wasn't always good because that's when Apple incorporated. That's when Google announced Gmail. So sometimes they were real, but a lot of times they were stupid and wrong. And I didn't want to report those. But now somebody pointed out it's April Fool's every day, thanks to AI Slop. You never know. You never know if it's real or not.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's April Fool's every day, thanks to our government, I think is what you're looking for.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that may be too, so. And of course you're talking about President Sheinbaum, aren't you? So

[Paul Thurrott]

I am not.

[Leo Laporte]

When you say our government, yes, so. Or maybe. Maybe we're talking about Prime Minister. What's his name? Mulcahy. What is his name?

[Richard Campbell]

Carney.

[Leo Laporte]

Carney. Art Carney of the Honeymooners fame.

[Richard Campbell]

I know.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. You guys change prime ministers like I change underwear. Once every few years. And I think that that's confusing.

[Richard Campbell]

Weirdly enough, we do an election roughly every four to five years.

[Leo Laporte]

Does it? It works out that way. You could have them more often. But you don't.

[Richard Campbell]

We could. Yes, because we can actually have a vote in non confidence and follow every parliamentary Harley.

[Paul Thurrott]

What an idea.

[Leo Laporte]

What a concept.

[Paul Thurrott]

Seems like that would be working out pretty good for us right now.

[Richard Campbell]

And then your members get together and have a vote and now he's an election all of a sudden not being fixed in a date and time. So you can't spend two years campaigning.

[Leo Laporte]

That's also good.

[Richard Campbell]

45 days.

[Leo Laporte]

Now does Canada allow PAC money in contributions to election?

[Richard Campbell]

That is a distinctly American thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we're unique in that respect.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

I think getting money out of politics

[Richard Campbell]

people in your town allowing no confidence

[Leo Laporte]

votes and eliminating the electoral college and Bob's your uncle. We're Canada.

[Richard Campbell]

But how.

[Paul Thurrott]

How on earth are we going to count all the votes? I mean, that's crazy.

[Leo Laporte]

That's crazy talk. Anyway, enough politics. Let's talk about week D, baby.

[Richard Campbell]

So.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well,

[Leo Laporte]

you're not here for that. You're here to talk about week D as opposed to week t. Mr. Thurat, would you like to kick things off?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, but I will. Yeah. So last week, I guess I don't have a calendar in front of me I can look at easily, but I guess it was week D. I feel like this should have happened previous to that, but okay. Anyway, after the show last week. So apparently Thursday I think it was. We got.

[Richard Campbell]

Because patchd too hard.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Well this is as we'll soon see, this is also too hard.

[Richard Campbell]

Nice.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Previews of the next patch Tuesday Update for Windows 11, 24 and 25H2 and also 26H1 because. Hilarious. Nobody actually has that yet, but we're still updating it and we'll get to that. This is. I feel like this is going to be the rest of my life now describing these updates because we've already talked about this before. Right. So the Preview update for 24 and 25 H2 is the same. It adds the same features. Obviously most of these are CFRs, meaning they're not going to show up immediately for most people. They'll show up randomly. The only ones of any note are that smart app control will be something you can toggle on and off like a normal feature, which I think everyone wants. The Windows recovery environment will perform better on Windows 11 on ARM if you have to run x64 apps in that environment. I guess that was a problem before.

[Richard Campbell]

I've never.

[Paul Thurrott]

I can't say I've run into that. And then Navigator is getting rich audio. I'm sorry, rich image descriptions in audio and then a bunch of other small things. Right. So all features, you know, cfr, the

[Richard Campbell]

whole, you know, feature release idea is kind of a compelling thing for regular applications. I just don't think people want randomness from their operating system.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. You don't think chaos is a strategy.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Or it's a style.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. We don't know what you're going to get.

[Richard Campbell]

It's going to be fun. But it's your operating system.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So I feel like there's been an indication they're going to fix this or at least work on it for the Insider program. But I hope they do for Stable as well. Right. I mean, I, you know, I, if I understand. Well, I don't think you were saying this, but to extend on or to expand on what you just said, you know, apps will update when they update. Right. And you don't usually see that it happens through the store, if that's where you get the apps, hopefully. But you could go to the store and you could go to downloads and you could say, check for updates and then it will update the apps. Right. And I feel like we need that in Windows Update as well. Right. So if you are what we used to call a seeker, you should be able to get in there and just say, look, no, I actually want. I want the update. You know, give me. Give me the features. Right. I don't mind that there's some filtering at the source based on, you know, maybe compatibility with certain PC configurations, et cetera, et cetera, but that's not what they're doing. Right. This is just literally random. So I don't quite get that.

[Richard Campbell]

I keep looking for a new hand at the hand of pavan to show up.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Some order.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. I'm curious what form that will take.

[Richard Campbell]

And we'll see all these emergency patches,

[Paul Thurrott]

man, we'll get to that. One second

[Richard Campbell]

in the past two months.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So before we get to that real quick, this 26H1 has other features we've already talked about. These have already rolled out and stable to everyone else. So emoji 16.

[Richard Campbell]

That's the arm only version.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. Which is bizarre. So this is the canary. Yeah. This is when think about this for a second.

[Richard Campbell]

Really broke the model.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Which we're going to get to too, because there's more stupidity coming. But anyway, okay, so there's that. This came out Thursday and today Microsoft issued another emergency patch, another emergency out of band update for 25 and 24H2 to address issues that have been preventing users from installing the update. I just Mentioned the first of the two. Yeah. So if you installed the patch update from March, which you pretty much had to have by this point, if you're an individual anyway, and then tried to install this optional update from last week, you might have run into some problems. There's a patch for that now because that's what we do. I don't know what's going on anymore. This is. The timing is weird because the decision to focus on reliability and quality and however you want to say that the pain points, as pavan put it, would have come months ago, but this year has been particularly bad, not just for Microsoft stock price, but for Windows updates. And we've had. Richard said we've had to release. Or that Microsoft we. Microsoft has had to release several patches for patches.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Paul Thurrott]

Sounds like the name of a presidential dog of some kind.

[Richard Campbell]

So if you've steered clear of this, you know, really well.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean the January ones at least were for the stable version. This at least was a preview update. Thank God. But yeah, so. But the timing feels weird because, you know, didn't he just say we're focusing on quality? But I think these are symptoms or effects of the problems that they're trying to fix with this quality push. Right. Like this does.

[Richard Campbell]

And it is, it is a big ship. Just because you pull the. Pull the throttle back doesn't mean the ship slowed down you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, thoughts and prayers. I'm sure we'll be fine. So since pavan's big announcement about here's what we're going to do this year. Right. Yeah. Which is good stuff, but raises questions. I raised a bunch of them myself last week after going through that post and thinking about it. But the people who are involved with this are now starting to tweet and it's actually getting kind of interesting. I don't know how or if Scott Hanselman is involved in this, but apparently

[Richard Campbell]

he is some work Windows related on the dev side.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So he's been. He's been. If you don't follow him on Twitter, you should. He's been tweeting a lot about this stuff and then some. Some people have been around for a long time like Rudy Huhn and others. Sorry, I'm drawing blanks on some names here. Marcus Ash is another one. People I've known for a long time are involved in this effort. Right. Which is good. I mean I think when you think about Microsoft responding in the case of Pawan' memo or post to insiders, basically you're talking about enthusiasts who's left in the country that is an enthusiast for Windows. They're kind of gathering up this crowd and we'll see what happens there. I know Jen Gentleman is going to be involved with this and some others. So people have been asking questions and so someone on Twitter x said hey, I hope you're not going to do any PWAs lol. And actually what Rudy Hoon said was that he is building a new team working on Windows apps. He's looking for people that might want to join and he's claiming that these will be 100% native apps, not web apps. Now that's the type of thing.

[Richard Campbell]

Also jump on the whole you shouldn't have to have a Microsoft account to set up Windows.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, that's. So there's been no official word on that changing. Right. Scott Hanselman is one of the people who said, yeah, you know, actually that's one thing I don't like either. He's going to see what he can do about that. I don't, I don't know that he can do anything about that frankly. But.

[Richard Campbell]

But you know, whatever has a lot of weight but you know, it's a big machine.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. So I just want to throw out a couple of thoughts here because I know that with when people for certain, it's like web apps are like AI, you know, some people are like, yeah, okay. Some people like, oh, you know, I don't want any of that. And I don't quite understand that reaction. Although I think I mentioned this last week, you know, the, a lot of the start menu UI that we have in Windows 11 today is actually JavaScript web app technology. And is that is being credited or debited with the performance issues. Right. That this might be the problem. And so I know for some people they're going to hear like we're going to do 100% native apps in Windows. They're like nice, you know, and if you take a step back a little bit, I mean you could kind of make a good argument. You could make a good argument that the Inbox apps in Windows 11, meaning the apps that ship with the operating system, should be demonstrative of what's possible with the platform. You know, that these things should.

[Richard Campbell]

What has been done for the past, I don't know, years.

[Paul Thurrott]

It is weird to me that if you launch an app that nobody ever launches, but do it now. Just take a look at it. The modern Media Player app is an example of a nicely designed app, modern looking, with the modern controls and all that kind of stuff. It's something Most people just do not need. But it's also a little bit of an outlier. The problem with this promise of 100% native is that it's not possible. It's absolutely not possible. So the two big ones I'll throw out as examples are Outlook, which is a written from scratch, brand new version of the app that is written entirely with web technology, in part because the extensibility system that runs throughout Office today is all web based.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's not changing over. Yeah, it's like, sorry guys, like that's not changing

[Richard Campbell]

React Native for Windows. You can just compile your web app.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm going to get to that in one second actually, because that's part of the problem as far as I'm concerned. But the other big one is Clip Champ. Clip Champ is literally a web app. You can run Clip Champ in Chrome, on Chrome os, on a Chromebook and it works fine. You know, it's a web.

[Richard Campbell]

The point, there's certain apps that are intended to be cross platform and everywhere and yeah, you know, breaking that seems unwise.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Now look, maybe these things will be exceptions and we'll see. But I'm trying to imagine what's left. Right. So I. There's a presentation you could find on YouTube that has to do with React Native and Microsoft's use of it and how it's actually more used throughout the ecosystem. And maybe a lot of people understand Office and Windows being big users of it that might be changing in Windows. So I could imagine, like I said, the Start menu or whatever little web UI bits are in there. Not web UI, I guess webview2 or whatever they are, the Microsoft Edge piece, The Copilot app. 100%, 100% web app. It's, it's, it's an instance of Edge, you know, so are they. You know, I sort of understand people celebrating this notion that we're going to go 100% native. I feel like that. Sorry.

[Richard Campbell]

The issue here is that they've been hiring young developers.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And you can't hire young C developers. Like that's a, that's as rare as hen's teeth. Like they. The dev you can get is a

[Paul Thurrott]

web dev if you go back to Windows 8 and the introduction of WinRT and the way it was at that time, because it's changed a bit since then. Right. We went through UWP and now we're on the Windows app SDK. But the original vision, the original implementation of this was that you could of course use C or C and write these apps and they are native. Really. They're a thing on a thing on a thing. But whatever they are, but they're, they're native.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh no, dude, it's turtles all the way down, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but some of the main.

[Leo Laporte]

It's one reason you would use an electron like flow is because it's portable. I know Windows is the only operating system in the world, but if you write codecs in Electron or Edge or whatever, you can put it on any platform.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's true. But the original WinRT platform you could write in JavaScript, HTML and CSS and that would be a native app and it would be Windows only. Right. Because it was used.

[Leo Laporte]

It's React, it's a java, you know, TypeScript app that compiles to JavaScript.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I guess. But what I mean is source code.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay. But the app that was not, I don't think it was called Outlook at the time. It was just mail that was written in JavaScript. Right. They talked about this at the time. They were pretty proud of it, you know, and you know, the modern version of that, which is Outlook now the new Outlook is, you know, a web app. It's just a web app. Sorry. I mean, you know, it just is. And I don't. It's not a web app because they can bring it cross platform per se, but it is a web app because a lot of its components and extensibility parts especially are cross platform, meaning they will run in Outlook on Mac, on Mobile or whatever. Right. That, that's, that was. There's a real strategy to it, there's a real reason for it.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I don't, I don't know what to say to this. I mean, I, there's, there's certain places

[Richard Campbell]

you don't expect web to show up, like Start Menu.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I, but I, yeah, I don't

[Richard Campbell]

know he actually cares whether that's what I mean.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like I like what does it perform? If it just worked, would anyone care? And I think the answer is no.

[Richard Campbell]

Nobody cares.

[Paul Thurrott]

If it just worked and it worked well and it was web based and Microsoft was kind of promoting that, that might entice developers to work on, you know, React native apps or whatever that may be. Yeah. If you're a third party developer, first of all, unless you're inside of a company and there's some very specific need, you're not creating apps for Windows. So creating them in whatever web technology, Electron, whatever, React, native, React, whatever is, you know, that's a, that's an argument

[Richard Campbell]

to this, to going native, like that which is. You're now making the Microsoft slash Windows developers even less like the rest of the development community.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right? Yes, right. I mean, look, I have this book, it's called Windows Everywhere and it's about the history of like software development on Windows and all the different things that have happened over time and blah, blah, blah, whatever. I had, I originally started it as a series of articles on my site and I stopped about at the halfway point because I had to reintroduce myself to the. NET Era and use those languages and frameworks and things that I had never really used actively. Whereas I was more heavily involved in software development before that point. I realized during that break that where Microsoft lost the script, so to speak, on software development was actually when they reversed their original plans to make Windows like web based. You know, it was good. The HTML was going to be the thing that drew the user interface. CSS was going to be the thing to style the user interface. They were going to use JavaScript. This is 1998, 1999, somewhere in there, that one.

[Richard Campbell]

As opposed to the win eight time

[Paul Thurrott]

frame, which was the same thing, kind of, except. So here's the. Yeah, no, actually, you know, actually, yes, I'll just say it. No, not kind of. You're right, it is the same thing. Because in both cases the point was to embrace and extend an existing technology. It was super popular with developers and let them into the Windows fold. You know, that was kind of the point. Microsoft announced they were doing this, took steps to do it, started to ship a version of Windows 8 that had it in it. And then I think it was Jim Olson convinced Bill Gates not to do this and they literally just backtracked on the whole thing. You're not talking about.

[Richard Campbell]

Not the WIN A version, the earlier one?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, this is the earlier one. This is where NET happened. This is where.

[Richard Campbell]

This was a bridle between Brian Valentine and Jim Alchen.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I would say Valentine. Brad Silverberg and Brad Silverberg.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Silverberg was the advocate and got the sun deal and all of that sort of stuff.

[Paul Thurrott]

When he lost that, I think he went to Office briefly and he left. He was not happy with this and I think it was the wrong decision. I do understand the rationale at that time for what they did, but it was probably the wrong decision. For whatever reasons. There was a distress between Sanofsky and. Net and Windows 8 happened and it was something different. It was like. Net but not net and based on. Com. And we're still dealing with it today. It's like whatever but, but yeah, that original vision for 8 was you could take web. And the idea was, look, we get it, you're out there, you're making web apps. You can take your skills and apply them to Windows apps now. But they weren't apps that you could create for Windows that you would then put on the Mac or anywhere else. They were native, so to speak, on Windows only.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, the terror that in Windows 8 was WinJS.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, that's exactly what.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, the JavaScript interfaces to get into the Windows SDK, which Windows people didn't need because they could already talk to the SDK. And the JavaScript people looked at, went, that's not JavaScript.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, look, there's one version for a reason. What's the. Oh, God. It's got the. There's a.

[Leo Laporte]

It's.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's web something. WebAssembly is like this today for JavaScript developers. Right. You could target the web and using WebAssembly, maybe with Flutter or something. And maybe on the back end or I guess the front end, what it's really spitting out is JavaScript or whatever. But that's not JavaScript. It's like, it's, it's like. But that's the thing when you're running

[Richard Campbell]

a different language where the JavaScript engine would normally run inside the browser.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So you really are coding in C.

[Paul Thurrott]

WebAssembly is like the cross platform, modern version of ActiveX. It's like we have this problem, it's called the web and we want to bring our stuff to it. How do we do that?

[Richard Campbell]

There is no easy way to use WebAssembly. You just have to haul too many bits.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. So I. Native apps. Okay, sure. What is the native app that anyone's looking forward to in Windows that would make a difference to anybody. Can you think, can you name one thing?

[Richard Campbell]

Anything you're using that isn't fast enough.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's all. Yeah, okay, right, sorry, that. Maybe I should have phrased that differently. Yes. So obviously the Start menu, the taskbar, the desktop, the File explorer, explorer exe, that stuff. Yes, 100%.

[Richard Campbell]

The question of course is, is it going to be faster if it's native? Like, that's no guarantee.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's what I'm. That was the issue I raised last week. Like in my experience. Yeah. The problem has been WinUI 3, which is Windows App SDK, which is the modern version of this thing we've been talking about. And I'm not really sure that's the solution to any problem. Unless your problem Is things just super

[Richard Campbell]

common behavior in development when people are angry with your product? Say if we'd only rewritten an X, then it would be better because that's a way to get me left alone for six months while you rewrite it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I feel like the. I feel like this thing was designed like when you say, yeah, we're going to go 100% native, it's like it's to shut people up. It's that bullet point on the list. It's like, see, we listen. We're listening to your concerns. But if you look at the list of apps that are installed in Windows and you think about the ones you actually use, which of them are web based and I don't think I could come up with one. Well, clipchamp. But it's a web app. I mean, Paint and Notepad.

[Richard Campbell]

That apps aren't going anywhere.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, those are C apps from a million years ago that have been modernized in some ways. I mean, what are we talking about here? The web browser. The web browser is literally a web browser. What is the app we're fixing here for you? I don't know. So anyway, yep, this is going to excite people for two seconds and then we'll see what comes out of this.

[Richard Campbell]

But we could call it Happy noises.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's exactly what it is. But to me, like I said, so I listed the two and actually it's three. So Outlook, which I don't think is ever going to change. Sorry, Clipchamp. Which can't change. It's a web app, literally an acquisition. And then copilot, which that one could change. And maybe that will be the.

[Richard Campbell]

But the performance forms, the copilot have nothing to do with this interface.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, no, it's right. Right. This app could be just as crappy if it was written in native code. So who cares? I don't know. So I'm just. I don't quite understand. I mean, I like that it's hard for me because I like that they're paying attention to this. Right. Like all of a sudden people are energized again and we're going to get this right and it's exciting in a way. But I also look at the promises and I'm thinking like, I don't. This is. There's a clash with the reality here that I don't think people are acknowledging.

[Leo Laporte]

Sure.

[Paul Thurrott]

So we'll see. They mean well. That much is very clear. All right, so. God, I hate that my life has become this. So the Windows Insider program released four builds last probably Friday, but I don't remember. It doesn't matter across three channels, because now channels don't mean. Well, they mean something. But whatever. Canary has been split into two paths, right? So that you. You have the normal Canary, which has got nothing going on. It's always behind. This is the basis for 26H1.

[Richard Campbell]

This is the X64 Canary, as opposed to the arm.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I mean the one you can get in the Insider program. So anyone, anyone could do this if you want it. If you want to be like slightly behind and super chaotic, you know, enjoy this. It's hilarious. But then you could also, optionally, and I assume this is still available, but it was available for a couple of weeks, there at least was opt into a different series of builds and these are even further out than Canary. I don't know if Canary Pro, Canary R2, I don't know what you call this thing. And this one is the. This is the way Canary has been for a while. But you actually have to install the whole build. It's not like a. You don't get a kb. You like download the build and install like the old days. This one is interesting because this one actually has some new stuff in it and actually it's all related to

[Richard Campbell]

the

[Paul Thurrott]

Windows console, which is curious. Right. So the Windows console is the engine Behind Command Prompt CMD, Windows Terminal, PowerShell, etc. And they're actually adding a bunch of new features to it, like regular expression search, the ability to bold fonts, various enhancements to paste inline image support, which they specifically said that Winget will use, so that it will display an app icon for the app when you do a thing like a search. Right. So you will say, Yep, we found PowerToys, here's the PowerToys icon, etc. So the theory there is that this is probably 26H2, and that's the one that's going out to everybody. And I don't know if this is correct or not, but I feel like this might be the first time it's like, oh, look, there's something new, like something different that is not elsewhere in the Insider program. Yeah. So. So that happened. And then Dev and Beta, which are on different series of builds for 25H2.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Which is the stable version of Windows 11, have gotten a few small updates. One of them is the return of administrator protection. Right. And so that was the feature they announced and released and then took back late last year. This one's going to be very disruptive. This one is like u. Yeah, exactly. And this ties into that thing where I think they're trying to fix this in Windows as part of the pavan announcement, which is that with uac you got this prompt that appeared over everything else on the screen. So it was kind of like an overlay. I mean, it's still there, but I mean, when it first appeared, it was kind of a new thing. Like it wasn't just a dialogue, like it took over the screen and you had to address it. I sort of, at the time, this is 20 years ago now, but I sort of equated it to like the third middle brake light on a car. It's like another, like, just like actually, please see it, you know, deal with it. In administrative protection, they don't use that kind of a prompt. They actually use a Windows hello sequence of authentication. So if you have Facial or finger or whatever you're using, you'll have to deal with that. And that's the one where I said. And then you have to click OK at the end or whatever the button is. And is it that additional step? And it's going to, it's going to come up a lot. If you enable it, it's going to be really disruptive, you're going to hate it and most people are probably going to turn it off and so we'll see what happens here. But they're reintroducing it. And I think one of the promises. He didn't say this explicitly, but I believe one of the promises pavan was making was because he talked generally, we're going to improve the. I think he described it as performance or speed or whatever of Windows Low. I think that's what he's referring to because that's a, it's a big problem. Like if you. I had enabled this, you know, whatever it was six months ago, and I was like, man, people are not going to like this. Like, it's, it's pretty bad, but they're bringing it back. I also saw, I saw this and I thought to myself, oh my God, they're fixing the problem. I just, I brought this up on Windows Weekly, like three, four weeks ago. You have a touchpad, you do a double finger, you know, to right click, and it registers as a single click, like a primary click, however you want to identify that. And that drives me insane. And as these trackpads are getting bigger and bigger and I've used bigger laptops, you have to really move over to the far left for this to work the way you expect it to work. This is a problem I've had lately a lot and so I saw that we're going to change the right click zone size. I'm like, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God. They're doing it. They're like, no, they're actually going to make it easier to right click using a single click. In other words, by default, the way the trackpad is set up in Windows is like the. The 20 or 25% over on the right. If you just single click over there, that's a right click, not a primary click. Right. And they're going to let you make that bigger? It's like, no, I don't want it to be bigger. I want it to go away. And I want. What's that?

[Richard Campbell]

Because that helps.

[Paul Thurrott]

It might literally be related to the thing I was talking about, which is that these trackpads are getting bigger and bigger. It might be harder for people who are used to doing it with a single finger. It might be getting harder to hit over to that far edge because it's so far over. And so some people might want to make that bigger. And that's great. But I also want to feel. It's like two fingers is always right click no matter where it is on the trackpad. Could you add that feature, please? That's not a feature. I don't know why that's not a feature. It works on the Mac. And then there's some NPU stuff going on with Task Manager, which is kind of interesting. So across different pages and task managers, you can enable new columns for things like NPU, MPU engine, NPU dedicated memory, NPU shared memory, etc. So they're going to give more visibility into that stuff, presumably for developers who are creating local AI apps. I can't imagine a normal user would ever need to know that, because if your MPU is getting hammered, it shouldn't affect anything. Right. Other than maybe the action that's driving. That's fine. Yeah. Okay. That's mostly it. So nothing's dramatic, but, yeah, nothing is here.

[Leo Laporte]

Move along.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, exactly. Yeah. I always think of Microsoft as the. What's it. The combine in the beginning of Half Life 2, where the guys kicks the can and makes you pick it up. It's like they have the announcements in the background. It's like, everything's fine, everything's fine. Move along. There's nothing's fine. You know, we expect your obedience as a citizen.

[Richard Campbell]

It's your compliance.

[Paul Thurrott]

Exactly. We rely on your compliance. That's how dictatorships work. And then last week, and I think the week before, there were new Intel Processor announcements. And then AMD had just announced this out of the blue. I love the way AMD announces things because about. It's actually a year and a half ago now. They both announced the major new generation of chips at the same time. It was at IFA, so that would have been 2024, if you can believe that. And then intel didn't do anything for like a year. But then AMD in January was like, we have new chips. And they're still pretty much on Zen 5 across the board. But intel just did their new desktop chips and mobile chips and now. So there's been some debate, like, oh, is the new desktop chip the best for gaming? And intel says it's their best chip for gaming. But most of the reviews I've seen have said, actually, whatever the highest end, Ryzen 9 is still better, you know, for that kind of thing. And they were like, yeah, it's not good enough. We're going to have a new one. And so they announced a new version of the. I think there's two. There's probably a Ryzen 9. I got to figure out what. There's two models. But basically what they're doing is doubling the cache and they're doing it in 3D, so to speak. So it's not spread out on the chip die. It's going up like a skyscraper.

[Richard Campbell]

I guess it's not that unusual.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, no. Intel does something like this too.

[Richard Campbell]

Need to.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So it's like a 3D V cache is what they're calling it. And it's now innovation is they're doing

[Richard Campbell]

it with the cache.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. Right. 208 megabytes of anything does not sound like a lot to me. That sounds like the size of an MP3 file. But apparently for the cache on a processor, that's humongous. And it's bigger.

[Richard Campbell]

It doesn't need to be that big.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So that's kind of interesting.

[Richard Campbell]

And the whole. The whole point here is that the processor loop is faster than the memory transfer loop. So you're trying. You're pulling from the memory and loading into the cache for the process to execute it. You're trying to stay ahead of the cache demands.

[Paul Thurrott]

I love that this stuff has become so sophisticated that distance matters. And distance we're measuring now in like nanometers. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Bus speeds.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, right, Right. Yes, that too. Right. And. And so. Right. So if you have RAM off to the side, it's on the motherboard over here, separate. However, whatever technology, whatever speed it is, whatever the bus is, too many hoops

[Richard Campbell]

for what the CPU wants.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's always going to be slow, slower.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean processor is crazy fast. Right. Like it's just nuts how fast processors are.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. So when you. Yeah, I mean and I feel like, you know, we can pretty pretty much credit Apple with this in the sense that, you know, like just like they didn't invent the GUI or anything but they kind of took it mainstream if you will. I feel like Apple did this with Apple silicon and chip design where understanding the trade offs because you know, from the mass market kind of PC point of view you're like, well we could have ram, you know, we have these DIMM slots, we can change ram, we can add ram, we can do whatever you want. We have like storage, we can do the same thing, blah blah, it's modular,

[Richard Campbell]

it's all going to be one module and you're going to like it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but the point being like yes, we hear you, we agree, we know, we get it. But you will sacrifice that expansion capability or upgradeability, whatever you want to call it by incorporating this stuff on the chip itself. And you buy what you're always going to have. You're not going to ever upgrade it, but it's super fast. And I feel like everyone who makes chips knows that this is the case and just no one ever really in a mainstream way anyway was like, yeah, we're not doing that. It makes sense on mobile because mobile devices are so small and that space really matters. And Apple was like somebody into computers. And it's kind of interesting, but it

[Richard Campbell]

also simplifies the supply chain somewhat. There's a bunch of benefits to that, but let's face it, when Cook got his M series processors built with everything integrated, it changed the game again. You know, the error changed the game and forced the Ultrabook into existence and the M series has done it even more.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, that's what. Right. I mean, so the nice thing in the PC space is we can still take advantage of this stuff because we copy everything Apple does, but now we have multiple providers and all the choices and all that kind of stuff and that's great. And so even in something like Snapdragon X2, which by the way, inexplicably still not here, there's a high end version of that chip and probably a couple, I guess that incorporates the RAM directly even though the RAM is non upgradable, it's on the board, but it's actually incorporating it into the die of the CPU to enhance performance. So people who buy those laptops later this year will benefit from this kind of thinking as well. But in the PC space unit.

[Leo Laporte]

Unified RAM they call it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, exactly. Yep. Yeah, unified because that's a better marketing term than non upgradable, you know, non user serviceable.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And actually AMD does that with some of their Ryzen chips. That's right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. The Zen 5 chips do that. The mobile ones.

[Richard Campbell]

Well then you get to skip over the standardized interface, the, you know, MVME and things like that. It's still the same actual RAM chip like the.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, still DDR5 in the die. That's all.

[Richard Campbell]

That's right up close and with a simplified bus because you know it's only for ram.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. Yeah. I mean intel did that with Lunar Lake and then two seconds later said, yeah, we're never doing that again.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, you know, intel came from ram. That was their original product. So I think they.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, and this is. There's just too much expectation in this space for this kind of upgrade ability. Especially on a desktop, obviously. Right. You know, Apple just canceled the Mac Pro. That architecture that they made with Apple silicon doesn't make a lot of sense for, you know, they actually had PCIe whatever version and you could have add in cards but not for graphics.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know like. And it's like. Well, that's what we, that's what most people use that for.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Well actually now with a Thunderbolt 5 you can do eGpu.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh yeah, there you go.

[Leo Laporte]

So yeah, that's probably.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm actually surprised EGPU is not been bigger. You know that would.

[Leo Laporte]

They had a little period of time. Apple provide the drivers. That's the problem.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean just mean in general, like.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean. Oh yeah, instead of having five, you have the bus, you have enough.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean even thought about four depending you know, back in the, you know, a couple years ago. But yeah, things are true.

[Leo Laporte]

Take a little break and come back with more Windows Weekly. We are brought to you today by somebody we know. Well, Threat Locker actually they've got some announcements. It's very cool. Threat Lockers Zero Trust platform, we've talked about this before, now delivers the industry's most comprehensive suite of zero trust solutions. Protecting endpoints. Okay. But also networks and the cloud. By extending zero trust enforcement to cloud services and company networks. This is huge. Threat Locker ensures that, okay, you got the endpoint protection but now it ensures that devices are validated through, through a secure broker before they connect to platforms like Salesforce or Microsoft 365 or Asana or Google Workspace or GitHub so that you know the end result. Even if a user is successfully phished and the laptop's compromised, attackers cannot access resources. They'd actually have to have physical possession of the user's trusted device. And of course, you know, if you're using, you know, biometric authentication, things like that, that's not going to help them either. It's really a great way to lock this all down. Works across what's nice about ThreatLocker works across all industries, PCs and Macs and Linux24.7 US based support. And of course it's almost a side effect, but it's a great side effect of this. You get comprehensive visibility and control because if something can't act unless it's authenticated, you know who did what when exactly, at all times. Actually I had a great conversation with their Threat Lockers chief product officer and he was telling me, and this is really cool, that when they'll go in and do a demo, you know, and you should try this in your enterprise and try it, they just put it on one thing and see how many endpoints are accessing that thing. You, in almost all cases, especially as the enterprise gets bigger, you're going to have, you know, access credentials for remote access that you forgot about. He was telling me about one customer who discovered that they had something like eight or nine remote access tools all at once that you know, they didn't even know about. So ThreatLocker gives you, it's a great diagnostic for who's accessing what where. It's just another nice benefit to this whole system. Rob Thackeray is the end user technical architect at Heathrow Airport. Now Heathrow has had problems in the distant past. They cannot afford to go down. That is a busy airport. They use threatlocker. He said this Threat Locker was the most intuitive solution we tested. And the responsiveness of the organization, the willingness to engage with us, to set up a demo and to work with us on weekly audit reviews was very good. It's great to have an ongoing relationship with a company that's so responsive to our requests. That's the quote. And I think that's a great testament to the amazing benefits of Threat Locker. It's trusted by companies that just can't afford to go down even for one moment. JetBlue, for instance, the Indianapolis Colts, the port of Vancouver, I mean these Heathrow Airport, these are people who, it's mission critical, mission critical. And there's such benefit to this. Threat Locker receives consistently high honors and industry recognition. Peerspot ranked number one in application control. Getapp's best Functionality and features Award in 2025. You can confidently ensure users have access to a consistent, safe network connection. Offices, remote users, internal servers, critical services can maintain smooth operations without the need to open inbound ports or deploy traditional VPN solutions. Your end users get the secure, reliable internal system access they need without complex infrastructure changes and without the risk. Get unprecedented protection quickly, easily and cost effectively with Threat Locker. And by the way, if you want to see that conversation I had with Rob Allen, their Chief Product Officer, that is in our RSEC thing, we put it [e-mail] twit he was great. He's. He's fantastic and had a lot of interesting things to say. Visit threatlocker.com TWIT to get a free 30 day trial and learn more about how ThreatLocker can help mitigate unknown threats and ensure compliance. That's threat locker.com TWIT we thank them so, so much for their support. They've been a great partner for us at Windows Weekly. On we go with the programme. Let's talk about AI.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it has been a while. So everybody I think knows that Microsoft went to mark. Microsoft kicked off this kind of AI era by capitalizing on Chachi PT. Was it 4 at the time or 3.5? I think it was 4, but yeah, it was 3. Whichever. 3. Okay.

[Richard Campbell]

November 22nd.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And. And they released approximately 117 different products and services with the word Copilot in the name, most of which 25, but

[Richard Campbell]

okay, sorry, 200 plus internally.

[Paul Thurrott]

Sometimes I exaggerate to make a point, but the. But all of it based on OpenAI technology. Right. Then late last year they added optional or alternative support, if you will, inside of kind of a limited range of things inside of Copilot for anthropic cloud models, which is kind of interesting. Right? And there's a lot going on there. Microsoft obviously is also working on its own models. I think that there is a future where Microsoft and I guess Apple will maybe do something similar where you'll have your choice of models and I don't think that's a choice a normal human should ever have to make.

[Richard Campbell]

But that's the whole Foundry product, right? Like every model you can imagine is available in Foundry.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, in Foundry. But I mean like literally in Copilot, if you want to do like a research type thing, you could say that I want to use cloud for this. For some reason I feel like this is the thing the OS should be or the product in this case should be orchestrating for you. But okay, Whatever.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, the other way to phrase this is Apple would never do this.

[Paul Thurrott]

Apple is going to do this, by the way. So we're going to talk about that in a second.

[Richard Campbell]

But, you know, you talk now, you talk about the problem that these underlying brands are brands and people have opinions about them, whether they're qualified or not.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. To me, a real orchestrator and, and the real power of this multimodal kind of capability would be that it does it for you and does it for you, so that it chooses the best choice every time. Right. Not I have this adherence to whatever brand or, you know, look, if you're paying for it, I mean that you can make that case. And that's part of what Apple is going to do. But. But they just did something. And this is still not broadly available, but there's a. An AI agent feature, or an AI agent, I should say, called Researcher, Microsoft Researcher, built into Copilot. And it has. Or it is getting a new feature called. It's getting a new feature called Critique that will actually use chat, GPT and cloud together to improve the quality of responses. Like, it's going to do that automatically. You don't have to choose that. Like, it will just do it. And that is.

[Richard Campbell]

This is a good idea, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Like, yeah, this is a really good idea. This is orchestration.

[Richard Campbell]

It's awesome.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So that's actually really interesting. And they're doing it for quality, I would say accuracy, which is what we're looking for in AI. So we'll see, we'll see how that turns out. But as time goes on, you see the rift between OpenAI and Microsoft kind of growing and growing, and that hole in the middle will be filled by other companies like Anthropic, but also by Microsoft's own Microsoft AI models. Over time, we'll see. But

[Richard Campbell]

yeah, I keep feeling like the model's just not going to matter that much. The tooling is more important around it. But then you start seeing some results and going, okay, well, this model is probably compelling. Although then you talk about the problem with these learning models is they're really good at tests and not really good at work.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think we're also just in that phase where it's happening in real time. And so we will look back and think, how quaint that we could ever go to a boxer and pick from a list and say, that's the one I want.

[Richard Campbell]

Like, we were qualified to you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, exactly. I'm just doing my own research. Rashid, what's your problem? You know? Yes, exactly. Yes, you you noted researcher. Yes. Thank you for doing that. So I'm not going to go through all the Siri stuff because. Jesus. But I, I will say Siri is in the news every second or third day now.

[Richard Campbell]

Which is crazy.

[Paul Thurrott]

Almost two years ago Apple promised, said, showed they were going to make this conversation video. Yep. Have been never delivered on it. I just love they.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean deep in my heart I'm just happy they blinked that they actually panicked and made a FUD video like because they've been so confident in this in the consumer space for so long. But apparently AI scared them.

[Paul Thurrott]

If you use an iPhone, you are. You may be familiar with the notion that you can configure open AI ChatGPT as a kind of a handoff for Siri. So if you ask Siri a complicated question like what's the weather right now where I live and it can't handle it, it will push it off to chatgpt. Right. Which shouldn't be able to handle that one either actually, but whatever. And in the next version of iOS and these other platforms they're going to have an extensions API where any third party AI can plug into this. And I think this might be Apple's real end game. Other than actually shipping a Siri something, something that makes sense is going to be internally.

[Richard Campbell]

Clearly this whole Siri product needed a full rehab. We've seen the gory details of the various teams that are trying to control Siri killing each other. Like.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Very anomalous for Apple.

[Paul Thurrott]

Siri's tough because it was first. Right. It was the first of these kind of. And it was a lot of processes.

[Richard Campbell]

Also relatively rare for Apple. Right. That's Stanford Research Institute.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. No, it's. And then they just kind of sat on it and it. And whether that's been behind or whatever, I don't know. But the thing.

[Richard Campbell]

I think they didn't merge the cultures well. And it was literally living on its own and thought it had. It was all out in the bag of chips until suddenly it wasn't.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. They had to know Google was going to do this, you know, for starters. Right. Amazon did it, Microsoft did it and then didn't do it and now is doing it again. But they had to know that Apple

[Richard Campbell]

pays any attention to so called competition. Like they, they're not. They just don't present themselves as those people they know better than their customers. You are holding it wrong.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but they are paying attention. That's the thing. They really are. Right. So look, like I said, I don't. I Don't necessarily care too much about Siri. What Apple is doing a Siri. But it did occur to me, because I write about technology and I focus on Microsoft and Windows and. And I can think of these, like, dark times, you know, in the past, where times were tough. I remember when the first Microsoft, the big US antitrust trial was going on. We had the Bill Gates deposition and all that stuff, and I was just like, I don't know about this anymore. I just don't know. That was a rough time. But the modern rough time. Well, the AI stuff, obviously, but right before AI kicked in was, remember, Microsoft, for about three to six months, was going to buy TikTok. Then we had to deal with news about TikTok and Microsoft's involvement with TikTok and how maybe this thing could be spread out with different companies, and part of it would be in China and part would be in the US and someone would blah, blah, blah, blah. And the whole time I kept thinking to myself, I don't want to write about this. Like, I don't. Things I care less about than TikTok is a small list. Like, you know, Sheryl Sandberg's on the list. I'm trying to think, like, there's not much on that list, and I just do not care.

[Richard Campbell]

Community Presentation Foundation 1. Like, then it'll be great.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I was so excited when it didn't happen, you know, And I got to think, if I were an Apple guy instead, like, if I had focused on Apple and that was my beat or whatever, right? This Siri thing, this is the worst year of your life?

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, God, yes.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, two years, right? It's just going on and on and on about, like, you could stand in the rain and ask it what the weather is, and Siri will not get it right. But now Siri's gonna have multimodal conversations. It's gonna extend into other AIs. It's gonna be able to do multiple things that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure it is. And so the Germans are gonna come up with some super weapon that's gonna end World War II. Like, what are you talking about? Like, it's insanity. And I. I, look, I guess it's important. I mean, it's important to some people. I. I have written about Siri lately. I hate myself for it. But someday, and that day will probably be in September, and then there'll be improvements throughout the next six months. They will actually ship this thing. Finally. It will be two to two and a half years later than they promised, and it will happen Let me tell you, I feel very strongly that when that happens, it's not going to matter in the slightest that this is for Apple, this great white whale situation where you can't not do it now. You know you have to do it. Yep. And when you do do it, it's like the moving the taskbar to the top of the screen because three people asked for this, they'll do it and they'll hate themselves when they're done doing it because no one's gonna use this thing. It's just gonna be a complete frickin waste of time.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And I, it speaks to this. The bubble of confidence wasn't worth it if you just not blinked and said, hey, we're just gonna sit back and take a good long look at this and see where it's going.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And what we decided was, who cares?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, I don't know. I, I look, I know there's a grandmother somewhere sitting, barking at like a little smart speaker in a kitchen, looking for it to tell jokes, to tell it the news or whatever the heck it is people do with these things, the weather, but come on. I mean, like, come on. I just, whatever I feel for them,

[Richard Campbell]

suddenly they, they are much more mortal, you know?

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah, it's.

[Richard Campbell]

And the fact that their dirty laundry has been public, which Apple was so good at not doing.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know. They get so much right to never fight. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

It's just a purse fight over Siri.

[Paul Thurrott]

Here's the good news. I will throw it for anyone who covers Apple for a living and writes about Apple and has to keep writing articles about how everything they do is so perfect and wonderful and great and the narrative is going to be, you know, it turns out Apple had the right strategy after all. They sat on this, they waited. They didn't spend tens or hundreds of billions of dollars on a infrastructure. They were right. And it's like, guys, they tried. They tried so far and they failed. Like you are. I know you're going to turn this into an Apple victory, but I mean,

[Richard Campbell]

I do presume that Gruber will tell the best story of this eventually.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh my God. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

No Apple. Apple won by losing. Yeah, sure they did.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't think Gruber's that much of a sycophant, but.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, a lot of them are.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, a lot of many of the normals are. That's why I go read John, because yeah, some fate. He has some proportionality around what Apple does.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's probably true.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then beyond this, we have. So it was actually a lot of AI news I had to call. I called this down because, dear God, you know, who cares? But if you are, you know, to be too old to remember the Mac, I'm a Mac, I'm a PC. Ads that Apple used to have. You probably are familiar with the notion that today iPhone and Android are vying for, you know, supremacy in the mobile space and pretty much splitting the market. So we've, we've had this concept of switchers for a long time. You know, Apple wanted to get PC switchers in the early 2000s, mid 2000s, whatever. Android and iOS both now have tools that help you migrate from one platform to the other. People are. You know, companies that own these platforms are always trying to get people to switch. So it is perhaps not surprising that this has now moved on to AI. Right. And so Google, I believe, was the first, at least, certainly the first of the big guys to kind of formally come out and be like, look, we have a page now for switching. You're on any other AI you can export. We're going to tell you how to export your memories, right, which is the sticky part of AI, if that makes sense. And then your chat history, which I guess actually is also part of the stickiness, and then import them into Gemini. All AIs can basically do this, by the way. But it's just interesting that one of the kind of veterans of this kind of personal computing switching phenomena is kind of boldly going after this exact same thing, but with AI, the idea is like, oh, maybe ChatGPT isn't doing what you want anymore. Well, guess what, we have this thing.

[Richard Campbell]

They are such the whipping boy right now.

[Paul Thurrott]

ChatGPT. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, you fly too close

[Richard Campbell]

to the sun for a long time, right? Like, literally they become the Xerox, the technology. So their product name.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's absolutely true. And it's amazing when any brand could do that. But, you know, they're also ostensibly an American company and if there's anything America loves more than success, it's failure and

[Leo Laporte]

point of view.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it is. I mean, like, you know, like, oh, I used, I used to like that band before they got popular. You know, like, okay, like, whatever. You know, people like, start to hate things when they get too popular.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, nobody goes there anymore. It's too busy.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's kind of. Yeah, it's a weird. Yeah, right. I don't want to be part of any club that would let me be a member. Yogi Berra, I think. But, yeah, so ChatGPT, I think is heading, or OpenAI, I should say is kind of heading for a fall. I'm not going to get these numbers right. I'm not a financial guy and this is not really my space. But I did see this little blurb this morning where through funding and whatever, their valuation right now is almost a trillion. It's 852 billion, I think was the number. And part of the story was like this company generates a, and this is run rate revenue, not real revenue, but we'll call it revenues of $2 billion a quarter, which if you follow Microsoft, Google, Apple, whatever you'll know is a tiny percentage of their revenues every quarter. Right. You know, Apple is, generates I think over $100 billion in profit every year. I mean, so that would be 25 million.

[Richard Campbell]

Boggling.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's astonishing. Yeah. The company that could makes a mouse that you plug in through its butthole somehow is worth $4 trillion. Whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

When you put it that way.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I know it doesn't make sense. But anyway, in the financial world there's this notion of like earnings to earnings per share earnings. You know, there's different ways of looking at how successful companies can be. And I feel like the $2 billion in revenues versus 852 billion in value is going to be the biggest stretch in the history of valuation and mankind's history. I just feel like this thing is, it's weird to me. Did you really think that putting ads in ChatGPT or selling $20 a month pro subscriptions, that was going to put you guys over the top, that you were suddenly going to be a Google, a Microsoft and Apple? I mean, really. So we'll see what happens. But yeah, to Richard's point, I mean, I, I think they're on the cusp of like one of the biggest collapses in literally history. I mean, as far as companies go.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, well, we'll see. One needs a harbinger to propagate a collapse. They kick this one off, the least they could do is take us down with it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm reading a book about Berlin during World War II right now, which has some interesting resonance with modern day America. But. And I've read a lot of books like this. Of course I'm really into history and especially World War II history, but yeah, I see these kind of weird parallels between that time period and some of these companies where it's like, how are you going to win? Well, you just have that German spirit. It's going to happen. It's like, yeah, you can literally see the Soviets from your house. How are you going to win?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you're reading it. You're reading the fall of paragraph.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, no, that's an older one I'm reading. It's called Stay Alive. It's a new book.

[Leo Laporte]

Interesting.

[Paul Thurrott]

Which is. That's fantastic. Anyhow, I just OpenAI. I don't know. I just don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

You keep asking whether they're Netscape or Google and they're looking very Netscapey these days.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's a great way to.

[Leo Laporte]

Interesting point they just made. I just read an opinion column in Bloomberg is that SpaceX is about to go public. IPO. That's one way to raise money. But when you have a billion users, you can go to the private capital markets and raise, as I just did, $122 billion. You don't need to go public.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, I mean, well, it's there

[Paul Thurrott]

at some point you kind of have to go public, right? I mean there is a point where you do have to.

[Leo Laporte]

122 billion is

[Richard Campbell]

the shareholders, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

They are. I believe Google was forced to go

[Richard Campbell]

public because their shareholder count got too high in the sec.

[Paul Thurrott]

They were.

[Leo Laporte]

Ah, that's interesting.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think the third of their current size when they were at that time the biggest publicly privately funded company in history.

[Leo Laporte]

So I didn't think about that. But they're legal rules at some point where you have to go.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, you do have to.

[Richard Campbell]

Shareholder market. You are now a public company whether you want.

[Leo Laporte]

I imagine the number of investors in OpenAI is fairly still small. But how many people? Billions. Well, that's true.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

You got to give it to your employer. I mean the former supporters of.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what got Google. That's right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, Jeffrey Epstein's gone. The money's got to go somewhere. You know, I'm just. Geez Louise. Just saying.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's just take a break so you can absorb and think about all that we learned here. We're coming up on the Xbox segment. I did end up buying that Switch too.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, you did?

[Leo Laporte]

I love it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I didn't know how much better that screen would be. It's not just bigger, it's beautiful.

[Paul Thurrott]

And I think there was some big software update that this went out that I guess improves the performance of original Switch games.

[Leo Laporte]

Dlss in there and it's, it's, it's interesting.

[Paul Thurrott]

Do you like the. How do you like the controllers and all that stuff? Okay, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, look, I'm not like you, I'm not a professional gamer, so you know, I don't.

[Richard Campbell]

But that one just hang.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm glad about that one.

[Leo Laporte]

But no, seriously, it's Xbox PS5. I. You know, it's not those.

[Paul Thurrott]

Teabag E. Maybe it's not those.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know if they have the joystick drift. That was a problem earlier. I haven't experienced it, but it's brand new, so I don't know. But it seems fine. You give it time, it seems fine. And you can always cast it to your TV with hdmi. And then I guess other.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, you can dock it too. They could just plug it in.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what I mean. Have it in the dock.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, it comes with a dock.

[Leo Laporte]

But I was just impressed. I bought it because I thought, well, maybe for vacation it'd be nice to take something.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm not gonna be. I always like. Yeah. The idea of pulling that thing because you could watch a movie, you could listen to a podcast or something, like play a game, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it looks.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And on a dedicated device, it's kind of nice for that kind of thing because you're not taking battery from, you know, the laptop you have to do work on or whatever it might be.

[Leo Laporte]

And you know, the Steam Deck was not only pricier, but I think the screen is not as big. I really. This is an oled. It's a nice screen.

[Paul Thurrott]

Steam Deck is in desperate need of a new version.

[Leo Laporte]

Sorry, sorry. What?

[Richard Campbell]

You're making Gabe sad.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I'm sorry. Gabe, I love you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Somewhere out on his luxury yacht in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, wherever he is, eating baby seals for breakfast or whatever he does.

[Leo Laporte]

But I'm glad, I'm grateful to Gabe because he's made Linux gaming a reality. So. Yeah, thank you for that, Gabe. I do appreciate that. But, you know, a dedicated game machine, there are certain advantages to that. And I don't really. I like the idea of just a little thing I can carry around and.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty close to one of yours.

[Leo Laporte]

Face is just like a Vision Pro.

[Paul Thurrott]

Nice, nice.

[Leo Laporte]

Just strap, like strap it on my face. Yeah. Our show today, brought to you by. This is actually in all seriousness, very important these days. Delete me. Yeah. We in this country do not have comprehensive privacy protection. In fact, the federal government has pretty much not only avoided it, but attempted to negate all state laws as well. Because why should we have privacy? How. How dare I? How dare I try to keep my personal information private? And the good news is here in the United States, we have this. This industry called Data brokers. And they do all the hard work, all the heavy lifting of collecting your personal information, aggregating it from hundreds, thousands of sources, and then just making it a bundle it up, make it a simple, easy, inexpensive purchase for anybody who comes along. That includes, of course, bad guys, marketers, includes governments, law enforcement, anybody nation states. If you've ever wondered how much of your personal data is out there on the Internet, you wonder no more because, well, I think you probably know it's not just your name, your contact info, it's your Social Security number. There is no law in the United States that prevents a company from selling your Social Security number for a buck 50 to anybody who comes along. Your home address, even information about your family members, your employees. This is a really important protection that businesses need. We learned that when, you know, we started getting phishing emails and they knew everything. We thought, how could they know? You know, our, our, our structure, our employees, phone numbers, you know, the names of direct reports. Well, because it's all there in the data brokers and they're constantly making new dossiers for you. Anybody on the web can buy this stuff. And you can think of the hazards. Identity theft, sure. Phishing, yes. Doxxing, harassment. There is a way to protect your privacy. It's what we ended up doing. And I recommend it's Delete me. I highly recommend you use delete me especially if you're a business. You should have it for your middle managers, all your management, so that they are not suddenly the source of phishing attacks. Right. I mean, I can go on and on. You don't want this stuff out there. Delete me is so smart. There's a subscription service. I'll tell you why that's important in a second. By law, the good news is data brokers are required to have a page somewhere hidden within their site that says please remove me. But you'd have to go onesie twosie. You have to find that page. There's new data brokers every single day. There's hundreds of them out there right now. DeleteMe's experts, they keep up on this. This is a full time job. You don't want to do it. You want delete me to do it. You sign up, you give delete me exactly the information you want deleted and let them take it from there. They send you regular personalized privacy reports. This, we found this really valuable. It shows what info they found, which is kind of a shocker, where they found it and what they removed. So you know exactly what they're doing. And this is why it has to be a subscription. It's not a one time service because these data brokers, even after you remove the data, just start repopulating your dossier and there's new ones all the time. Or they, and they're slimy sometimes what they do, they change their name. Oh, we're a different company now. This happens a lot. It's shocking. Delete Me is always working for you. They're on our side. Thank goodness they exist. Constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want online. To put it simply, Delete me does all the hard work of wiping you, your family, your business's personal information from data broker websites. But I, but I want to underscore this. The name Deleteme is not unique. There's a European company that has the same name and I got an email from somebody said this doesn't do what you said. They are a GDPR takedown company. It's not the same thing. You have to go to the American company because it's an American problem. I hate to say it. Joindeleteme.com TWIT you need to take control of your data. You need everybody to keep your private life private. Sign up for Delete me right now. Special discount for our listeners today. You'll get 20% off your individual delete me plan. When you go to JoinDeleteMe.com TWiT and use the promo code TWiT at checkout. That's the only way to get 20% off. Go to JoinDeleteMe.com TWIT the offer code TWiT. Use that at checkout. One word. JoinDeleteMe.com TWIT offer code TWiT. This is worth getting, right? It really is. This is so important. Everybody ought to do this. Joindeleteme.com TWiT and the offer code is TWiT. Thank goodness they exist. That's all I can say. Ah, okay. I've done my. And I'm gonna make this a regular segment on the show. Nintendo Switch 2 gaming segment.

[Paul Thurrott]

There you go.

[Richard Campbell]

What do you plan?

[Leo Laporte]

Yesterday, Christina Warren. I only have the one game. I bought the, you know the Mario Kart world that came with it.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, sure.

[Leo Laporte]

They're so expensive, these games.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And if you buy them physical they're going to get more expensive.

[Leo Laporte]

So Christine Warren said, oh. I said, what should I get? She said, pocopia. You like Pokemon? It's the best of Pokemon. So now that's my new, that's my new one. But there's Other like there are. There's no Call of Duty, Paul, as you mentioned.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know. I want, I want there to be more adult games. I mean like, you know, like there's Resident Evil.

[Leo Laporte]

There are a few.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, there is Resident. Okay. Yeah, that's.

[Leo Laporte]

There are a few, you know, first person shooter games. There's one I'm really interested in, has a weird name, Hiran that everybody's raving about too where. I mean there's some really interesting. This is a kind of a Dark Souls type of.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, there must be like a modern like Metroid title.

[Leo Laporte]

There are a lot of Metroidvania. Oh, there's a lot of Metroid stuff. Yeah, if you like that.

[Paul Thurrott]

But you know, I also feel like Switch is a good opportunity to go back to some of those kind of sideways scrollers. Yeah, it's probably really good at that kind of thing.

[Leo Laporte]

There's some really good ones all the time.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Gorilla Bonanza.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's like, it's like between like it's like a AAA Call of Duty type game on one end of the spectrum and then there's the kind of super casual, you know, mobile whatever game that you play in line at the supermarket. But I feel like Switch could be right in the middle and that there's a pretty, you know, wide space there for.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, I wasn't. I thought, oh, this is gonna be kind of kiddie. Right. But I know they have, they have some pretty good strategy games and stuff. And of course there's always you know, the, the Zelda stuff which everybody.

[Paul Thurrott]

Can you install games on like an SD card type thing and not have to worry about.

[Leo Laporte]

You have a Compact Flash or a TF card. Right? The little mini one. You have to buy a super fast one. Yeah. To buy one of them.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Of course I put a 256 gig in there. So there's plenty of space. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's good.

[Richard Campbell]

I have a lot of games to have more than one. You're just going to lose them.

[Paul Thurrott]

Listen, sometime in the next 24 hours season three of the current Call of Duty is going to go out and I'm looking Forward to a 60 to 125 gigabyte download on. Yeah, yeah, I. Oh my God. You know, I bet you don't deal

[Richard Campbell]

with that on the Switch Micro sd. The terabyte. Like I don't need a terabyte. Lost up my nose. That's too much storage.

[Leo Laporte]

The other thing is I feel guilty about playing games.

[Paul Thurrott]

Why do you feel guilty about reading?

[Leo Laporte]

I mean No, I don't. But games seem, I get. Okay, that's interesting.

[Paul Thurrott]

Come on, man. I don't feel good about watching veg out in front of a. Yeah. Screen to watch a movie. Or you could interact with something. I mean, at least you're doing something for your brain.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Cyberpunk, by the way, is supposed to be pretty good on it.

[Paul Thurrott]

The 27.

[Leo Laporte]

27.

[Richard Campbell]

There you go.

[Leo Laporte]

There's another that might be in my list at some point.

[Richard Campbell]

It's. You know, the funny thing about the cyberpunk games, honestly, wildly fun. It's got a really deep story to it, like, emotional.

[Leo Laporte]

And I kind of like that with a. That's worked well with a portable device because you're, you're really kind of engaged in it.

[Richard Campbell]

You're not.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't have to go to the couch to sit down. You're kind of, you know, it's almost

[Richard Campbell]

as hard a punch as how Last of Us Ends. Right. Like, there's, there's Hades.

[Leo Laporte]

Hades 2 is supposed to be very good. I have that from the old days. I don't know. There's a whole Yakuza series that's, that's pretty violent. I know you're to kill things.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know that's a, that's big in your world, Paul.

[Leo Laporte]

I know you like, I know you like that.

[Paul Thurrott]

If it doesn't end in the depths of something, what's the point?

[Leo Laporte]

You know, the best. Honestly, part of the reason is the best game right now is Claude Code. It's a really fun game.

[Paul Thurrott]

Is that, do you buy that on a cartridge for the. Or, how does that work?

[Leo Laporte]

You buy that with tokens, and those tokens can add up fast. Yep, yep, yep.

[Paul Thurrott]

Interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, I'm sorry, this is the Xbox gaming segment.

[Paul Thurrott]

Actually, I have a couple more things to get to from the AI thing, if you don't mind.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I thought we were done. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, no, it's okay. You know, Firefox or Mozilla has made a bunch of announcements lately about how they're going to handle AI in Firefox. I like, they're just taking a different

[Richard Campbell]

position than everyone else.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like, yeah, I, I, maybe I'm not saying this right, but I feel like they're taking the right position, but also the correct position. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Interesting.

[Paul Thurrott]

Because on the one end, they have you. You have these absolutists, you know, like the big platform companies like Google and Microsoft that are jamming AI down everyone's throats, you know, and there's been pushback to that, if you didn't notice. And then this company's like Vivaldi, which is a small company, but they're like, yeah, we're not, we're just not doing it. You know, if you want to do AI, you have your own thing.

[Richard Campbell]

There's other place to go.

[Paul Thurrott]

The Mozilla stance, which is in the middle, there of course is a. We're not an AI company, right? You don't have to worry about the intent of what it is we're doing, but we're going to give you the option, you know, and they offered me a chance and me. And like this guy has probably, I think, spent the past two months just talking to every tech journalist or blogger on earth. But the guy who runs Firefox Asia, Agent Varma, I spoke to him last Friday and I have to say I really like where he's coming from and where the company's coming from. And I was joking with him. I said, when you guys announced the AI kill switch, I was like kind of looking forward to a switch with a little fire burn button or something. And he goes, yeah, I know, I pushed for that, but apparently we have lawyers, so I guess they weren't able. But they're taking a very pragmatic approach to AI. And among the things that they're doing that I think makes sense are they do have that AI controls section in Firefox Settings where you can just turn it all off, right? One switch, all off. But there's also, this is something we've talked about where AI is such. He's described as an overloaded term. I almost feel like it's a compromised brand. Some people have such a visceral negative reaction to the term AI, they stop thinking clearly and stop listening. And on this show, I know I've said at one point or another something like, well, what if we called this feature technology? Would it have the same impact? And it's like, yeah, no, probably wouldn't, right? But in the case of Firefox, they can see that a lot of their users want to turn the stuff off, but they also rely on certain features that objectively are AI, like language translation, right? And so what they did was they top loaded this interface so that you can be like, I want all the AI off, but the first one you can turn on is translation, right? And then they go down the list from there and these are kind of interesting things. And I did not realize this, although it kind of does say this in the ui, when you download a language for the translation of thing to Work, it can work offline. It's literally downloading a model that Firefox uses on, on your PC. It doesn't download that unless you ask for it, right? And it tells you it's going to, you know, you can see you're going to download something. But again, it puts the choice into users hands, you know, and this, he never said Apple, Microsoft, Google or anything like that. But you know, one of the comments he had made to me was that he's, you know, we, we don't do dark patterns, you know, like, oh, I know a company that uses dark patterns. That's interesting. And we talked about why people hate AI and blah, blah, blah. And this will be interesting, I think, to you guys, Leo and, and Richard especially. But people listening to the show as well, because we talk about Rust a lot and he says one of the problems they see because they have mdn, right? This is the Mozilla Developer network, which is an awesome resource for web technology, for developers, WebTech for developers. They get submissions like anything like this. And they can always tell when it's AI because the solution to every coding problem when your AI is Rust. And he's like, look, I'm not saying Rust is great. He's like, that's not the thing. But he's like, one of the problems with AI is that you get into a situation where it's an echo chamber, basically, where it's always making the same recommendations. He brought up the fact that AI or ChatGPT especially, I guess, tends to write with EM dashes and semicolons a lot, which is not the way most people write. I write that way every day. And it is, it's freaking me out that people, I know it has not happened yet, but someday someone's gonna be like, I can tell this was written and look at all those em dashes. I'm like, I've been doing this for 30 years.

[Richard Campbell]

This is the way I got that first. I'm what they modeled after.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, exactly, right. They trained on me. Right. I'm like the guy behind Skynet who had no idea.

[Richard Campbell]

I cannot tell you how many people send me AI generated podcast links. And it's like, this sounds like you. Yeah, I have 3,000 episodes of podcasts, so yeah, it could sound like me.

[Paul Thurrott]

You do have a good podcast voice.

[Richard Campbell]

Oddly enough, yes.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, you might want to look into that.

[Richard Campbell]

But the ones that there's no opportunity there.

[Paul Thurrott]

The one thing he did say to me that kind of ran contrary to my thinking to date, which was, you know, when I Think about Firefox and they're losing share and they, they're one of three rendering engines, right? Essentially big rendering engines. Right? That's left, that's left. And that's worked for developers. I mean, in some ways I've sort of thought. Not in some ways, I'm sorry. And not sort of, I have literally said explicitly, you know, maybe that's not the right place for a web browser maker to try to innovate. That's where we need standardization and that you should be innovating in the ui, user experience, whatever. But you know, he sees Gecko, the rendering engine they have is a big strength for them and, and how they can push for this open web, open Internet, and that it is the only independent major web rendering engine. And he says when you look at these other Chromium browsers, whatever they are like Brave, Vivaldi, whatever, he's like, they all look the same. And a lot of them, not all of them, but the bigger ones, like when it's Microsoft with Edge or Google with Chrome, they're using this as a way to, you know, spam you with AI, with their AI, right? And their whole thing is like, look, you come here because you want choice. You come here because you want independence. You come here because you want it to do what you want, you know, and, and you do get that choice. And okay, you know, I, I can see it. I mean, I, it was an interesting conversation. Anyway, so it's. If you're interested in this topic, I, I have the couple of articles you can read about that. And then just real quick, because this is just a fascinating outlier for me, we'll see if this ever goes any. Someone within Apple created the Swift programming language as a kind of a replacement for Objective C, which in my mind is hot garbage, not Swift, Objective C. Yeah, they ended up open sourcing it. So there's an organization, Swift. Org, that is now responsible for releases of the Swift language. Apple has in house things like SwiftUI, which is their framework for creating apps that go across their platforms. But the language itself is open source. There are implementations like on Windows for example. So when ARC came to Windows, and I think if the ever does come to Windows, it's actually Swift, you know, is the code. But they started working on an Android SDK sometime last year and they have just released the first version of that with the latest release of Swift, which is 6.3. And what this means is that if you're a mobile developer who to date has had to either maintain different teams for different Android iOS versions of an app or you use some kind of a cross platform solution like a Flutter or React native or whatever. This would allow those that are focusing on Swift because they are heavily into the iOS space or whatever to release versions of their apps more easily on Android as well. Yeah, so that's, that's interesting.

[Richard Campbell]

Like you have to look at. Can I come, come now. Use the SDKs to get over to Android.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I'll say. I'm, you know, it's interesting.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm always going to worry you're going to have a lesser experience. I mean the nice thing about using something like Flutter is at least it's equally poor in the deployment on both platforms. Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like, yeah. So like. So Flutter is what I. This is not the right. They don't call it this, but to me that's a framework. Right. And the underlying language is Dart and Dart is ostensibly cross platform. It is cross platform. But no, no one's writing command line tools in Dart and Wind or something like. But I mean you could. So yeah, trying to make that a

[Richard Campbell]

JavaScript alternative and then found a home with. Nobody cared about it till Flutter came along.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So to me this is Swift is to Flutter, as you know, is really to Dart. Right. It's the language and so that's good. And then, you know, we'll see if there's some cross platform framework or frameworks that maybe come up out of this or something or some cross porting tool where maybe you're targeting Swift UI on Apple's platforms and there's some transition or translation tool that will allow you to get that over to Jetpack or whatever it's called on Android, you know, like something like that. So we'll, we'll see. I mean, but you have to do. These are the foundational steps that have to occur and they just ship. The first version is pretty good.

[Richard Campbell]

So cool.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Good for them.

[Richard Campbell]

All right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Halo music. Yes, Xbox.

[Leo Laporte]

Sorry. I should always wait to the Halo music before I, I now when I play Halo think the music's wrong. So that's I guess a success.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. You're like, why is this off? It almost sounds backwards. Yeah, I don't know. So I'm sorry. So the, the, the new head of Xbox, Asha Sharma obviously entered the, entered our world with a lot of controversy. I feel like she's been doing the right thing frankly all along she was responsible for them getting, removing the. This is an Xbox marketing campaign from the Xbox website.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Which isn't the same as we're not doing that thing, which I think is the important part.

[Richard Campbell]

But stop putting on the front page.

[Paul Thurrott]

But, but impressions matter and I think what she's trying to do here is. Well, I mean, she said this explicitly. I'm sorry. She is trying to kind of press reset on the brand and have people that are fans feel good about it again. She said that? Or a Microsoft spokesperson said that she retired the this is an Xbox slogan and marketing campaign because it didn't feel like Xbox. But what does feel like Xbox apparently is Microsoft partnering with Fresca or whatever stupid soft drink thing they just partnered with because that's what they do now. And it's like, seriously. But yes, I think they want to market more of the. Frankly, it's the hardware platform which I think is the weakest part of the whole thing. But I sort of get that. The problem is we are one and a half to two years away from us getting a new console. So we have what we have and what we have is actually pretty good. Unless you care only about the console, in which case it's not that good. But I don't really think this is the end of, you know, the, the, the capabilities that exist that. Cause this is an Xbox to be a thing are not going away like this.

[Richard Campbell]

They're still doing to the ROG allies. Got to stay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Like. Yeah. So I think this is, this is more about marketing and branding and things like that. But, but yes. I mean, anyway, the point here is it's.

[Richard Campbell]

To me, this is an Xbox was a hit either it was a mate.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I don't.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, right.

[Richard Campbell]

It always seemed a bit on the desperation side, like nothing else is working. Let's do.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think. Yeah. So money in hardware for hardware for hardware. For enthusiasts. The reaction to this was negative, you know, by and large. And then for the broader world at large, I have to say I would guess it was just a non event. Like I don't think it resonated at all. I don't think it meant anything. You know, I think what will matter to people maybe is if you're a gamer anyway, you'll see an ad for some game you might want to play and it looks awesome. You're like nice. And then it's going to run across PC, Xbox console, PlayStation, maybe Nintendo and then probably mobile devices through the Xbox cloud streaming thing. You're like, oh, that's great. Like, like, like without saying oh. And by the way, that, you know, Android phone you have, that's an Xbox. Like wait, I'm sorry, you lost me at the Last one. What. What are you talking. It's a. It's an Android phone. What do you mean? Like so. Yeah, anyway, we'll see. We'll see what comes up.

[Richard Campbell]

Tell me what my Android phone is.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, exactly. This is not the right one. Did I. No, I did. I think I linked to the wrong thing or something here. So after last week's show. Oh, I got it. Right, okay. I got it, I got it, I got it. I recovered. I think it was Thursday or Friday. They had. So back in January they had an event like this partner preview event. They just did one Thursday, Friday, I forget which day. And basically this was a chance to show off. It was 19 upcoming games from third party developers, 14 of which will be day one on Xbox game Pass Ultimate. And you may remember I kind of questioned this because the term or the name of the title came up last week, Super Meat Boy 3D. And I was like, wait a minute, three. Is that a new game? It is a new game. So Super Meat Boy is a. Is one of the big indie games of the past 20 years. So this is apparently some kind of a follow up and that will be one of the titles that is coming day one on Game Pass, you know,

[Richard Campbell]

expansion spend on ultimate or at least.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, I.

[Richard Campbell]

So there, there is people. Anyway.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's fair. Super Meat Boy 3D came out yesterday by the way. And then some of the other stuff that's in here is most of the Expanse, Osiris Reborn, Alien Deathstorm, which is an awesome name. There is an. It's not on this list for some reason, but there's an expansion for the Stalker 2, that Ukrainian game, kind of a sci fi dystopian shooter, whatever. Yeah. So cost of hope expansion is coming, et cetera, et cetera. So a bunch of stuff. So that's cool. And then on the heels of that, they announced the next event like this, which is tied to when E3 used to be.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

We don't do E3 anymore. But in early June, June 7th, the day before WWDC, there's going to be the 2026 game showcase, which is the thing they used to do at ED E3. Sorry. And also something called Gears of War. E Day Direct. And this will be promoting the next Gears of War game and Prob. Imagine, because I know there's a. I think it's a prequel actually, but a new game. And then I believe yet another remastering of the original Gears I think is also coming down the pike. But the next big set of announcements for new games will be when E3 used to be. So we'll pretend that that's still a thing, I guess, which is kind of fun, but okay. And then in the bad news department, and this is something we see across the board. In fact, Raspberry PI just today announced price increases of anywhere from 10 to 50% depending on the product. Because of these component shortages, Sony announced

[Richard Campbell]

they're starting to do their pre orders for the next wave and realizing how much it's going to be.

[Paul Thurrott]

Raspberry PI is an interesting organization because they want to keep the prices down. So they've said, look, this is a temporary condition. This will end someday. When it does, we will revert to our older prices or bring the prices down, which is nice. And they also introduced, this is not the current gen, but Raspberry PI 4. I think previous was 1, 2, 4 and 8 gigabyte versions. They introduced a new 3 gigabyte versions to have something that's in the sub $100 range that might be better than 2. You might have bought a 4 and 8 before if you can do more with less, so to speak. They're trying to meet that need, which I have to appreciate that Sony announced that starting tomorrow, meaning if you're listening to this in the future, probably previously, but on April 2nd, they're going to increase the price of the PlayStation 5, you know, for the same reason. And in the United States, it's going up. It's going up a lot actually, from 549 to 649 for the base. You know, the normal model with the drive, the Pro, is going from 749 to 899. That steam machine thing, if that thing's less than a thousand bucks, I'm going to be impressed. I don't know how to do this.

[Richard Campbell]

There's just no way.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah. I just don't know how they're going to do it. No.

[Richard Campbell]

And it's. Yeah. And then the good news is they don't need the money. They could wave it off for a year.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. That what they should do is just give you a little kit with the software and let you just install it on an whatever PC.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, I think they, I think they did do that originally.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

With steamo. I think. I think you can.

[Richard Campbell]

For the, for the developers. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. I mean it seems like, like, look, there's an audience for that box, you know, no doubt about it. But I think there's an even bigger audience of just enthusiasts who are like, look, I'm already taking an Old laptop and running Linux on it. It has an Nvidia GPU in it.

[Richard Campbell]

Like, let's be clear, they can, if they put a new version of a new Half Life game on it, charge whatever you want.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that was, that would be the kit, right. It's the end of it. The OS and Half Life and Half Life three, I guess. Right?

[Richard Campbell]

Or, you know, if you really want, if you got the nerve to do Half Life two part three, fine, that's delightful. But Half Life three, yeah, I want to taste the ashes.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then Nintendo, related to Leo's recent purchase, is going to charge different prices for physical and digital media, which arguably is maybe a long time coming.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, because it's 80 bucks for the card.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's the thing. Like I thought, when I first saw this, I thought, well, this is nice. Because people who. You should be buying games digitally at this point, I know there are reasons not to. You can save some money that way. Except that actually all they're going to do is just charge 10 bucks more for the physical version. So they're not lowering the price on the digital version, they're raising the price on the physical.

[Leo Laporte]

So because I just bought Cyberpunk, the Ultimate Edition, and It was only 60 bucks, so.

[Paul Thurrott]

Only 60.

[Leo Laporte]

What a deal.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, well, in Nintendo, you're kind of stuck. It's not like there's not, there's not a Steam or third party.

[Leo Laporte]

There's no third party store. You're. You're gonna buy.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is the thing, like in the PC space. One thing that's really nice is you can shop the sales. Right. And so Steam, in fact, right now might be still in the middle or at the tail end of a spring sale, whatever it is. But, but between GOG and Epic and Steam and Microsoft too, on the Xbox side, Xbox, PC, you know, games are on sale. So like if I want to buy a game, I'll look and see where, you know, if it's in different places, see if I can get it for cheaper.

[Leo Laporte]

What they do is they give you virtual game cards. Like that's like you have a card, but it's not. It's just been an icon.

[Richard Campbell]

You've got a QR code, effectively a token of something that allows you to own the game.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's what I. You're buying an EFT in the shape of a NFT.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, exactly.

[Paul Thurrott]

NFT. I'm sorry. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

By the way, it's 60 gigabytes for Cyberpunk and it is the full game. So that's pretty good.

[Richard Campbell]

And it Loads in. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I bet that fits in. That game on Xbox has got to be twice that size. Yeah, it's got to be.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know how they got it so small.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Assets.

[Leo Laporte]

Assets.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's lower, Lower res. Assets.

[Leo Laporte]

They got a little asset.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, but that's great. You had a nice little asset there, buddy. Yeah, baby.

[Leo Laporte]

You got a good asset. It looks good. It looks good. I think it is. I think it's 4K on the TV.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, that's great. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

It would be reasonable to expect a mobile thing like that just to be full hd. I mean that's great.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean on this it only needs to be hd but, but yeah, I think maybe I should check because I, maybe not all games are 4K. I don't know.

[Paul Thurrott]

But, but that's a big AAA title. I mean that's a legit.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, high end game. So.

[Leo Laporte]

And I bought it when it first came out I was so buggy.

[Paul Thurrott]

I didn't get very, I never played it partially for that reason. I knew there were so many problems. But yeah, you can get that kind of cheap on PC now, sometimes on sale, so. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Maybe it's been around for a while.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Maybe it's not.

[Leo Laporte]

I think it's just going to be fun to have a game with a story that you know, you can pick up. Then, Then it's more like I'm reading a book because I don't want to feel guilt. Guilty.

[Richard Campbell]

Use multiple ways to finish a tune. Like there's no one ending in Cyberpunk.

[Leo Laporte]

Plus there's hookers.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's like GTA but white gta.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know what's in it. I, I shouldn't say that. I, I, I've heard it's kind of sexy.

[Paul Thurrott]

Is Kano Reeves in?

[Leo Laporte]

It is Looks like a guy who looks like Keanu Reeves. Is it?

[Paul Thurrott]

I see.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know if that's actually a thing.

[Richard Campbell]

He voiced it, man.

[Paul Thurrott]

Did he?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, neat.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. He was on stage about it.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's neat.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Back in the day, I think. Yeah. Him being on stage was one of the cooler kind of video game announcement moments. Him and the. When the Rock was there for the Xbox with Bill Gates. Bill Gates said something like, well, I think. And he goes, nobody cares what you think, Bill.

[Leo Laporte]

It was really a good moment. I really enjoyed that moment.

[Paul Thurrott]

It was the best.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a classic.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think that's my favorite of all time.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's just him shutting down. Bill Gates was just Beautiful. He was still a wrestler at the time, right?

[Leo Laporte]

And he's scary looking too.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Newman's saying in our discord that Idris Elba is also in the dlc. So that's great. It's a star studded cyber.

[Richard Campbell]

When he came out on stage on the E3, I think somebody shouted, your breath. He's breathtaking. Or you're breathtaking. He said he pointed back.

[Paul Thurrott]

He's like, you're breathtaking. Yeah, exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, you're breathtaking, baby.

[Paul Thurrott]

He's like, what am I at again? Yeah, yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, seems like one of those really present guys. Actually,

[Leo Laporte]

we are. I think he wants to run for governor, doesn't he? Or maybe president. I've heard he has political aspirations.

[Paul Thurrott]

As long as he brings Ted with him. Or Bill or wherever the other guy is.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, not Kano. I was talking about the Rock.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, the Rock. Oh, never mind.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, no, I like Keanu. Kenny's great president.

[Richard Campbell]

He's not born in America.

[Leo Laporte]

I'd vote for him for president. What could possibly go wrong?

[Paul Thurrott]

Whoa.

[Richard Campbell]

Keanu's a Canadian.

[Leo Laporte]

Dude, this White House rips.

[Paul Thurrott]

What's with all the gold?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, you really wonder what's going to happen with the next president. He's going to inherit a White House with a big pit in the east Wing.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

And a bunch of gold.

[Paul Thurrott]

Gold painted. Exactly. Well, that's why we have sandblasting. And you know, last time he got run out of office, I was thinking, man, they must have like fumigated that place for two months before anyone even went in there, you know?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, Paul, losing us listeners by the dozen.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, I'm sorry. There's still people thinking.

[Leo Laporte]

No, no, nobody's left.

[Paul Thurrott]

Come on.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm sorry.

[Paul Thurrott]

Please. There's no defense to be made.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, the President will be speaking tonight and I will be watching.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh really?

[Leo Laporte]

With interest.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'll be watching a spaceship takeoff. Tonight will be my.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yes, we're gonna. By the way, I wanted to mention that to our space buffs. Artemis is scheduled to launch during. In the middle of intelligent machines. If it, you know, if the countdown gets down to a minute isn't scrubbed due to thunder and lightning. Very, very frightening. We will go to it. And you can watch it. We can all watch it together. Which I think is a fun thing to do. So don't worry, you won't be missing anything.

[Paul Thurrott]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying Big Wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try. @mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months

[Richard Campbell]

only, then full price plan options available,

[Paul Thurrott]

taxes and fees extra.

[Leo Laporte]

See full [e-mail] you're watching Windows Weekly with Mr. Paul Thurrott, Mr. Richard Campbell. So glad to have you. And you're going to be glad because guess what? Already before, almost before I even knew it, we are to the back of the book and we kick things off with Paul's tip of the week, ladies and gentlemen.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, so There have been two GitHub related controversies in the past week or so. The first one I think Richard might have brought up earlier where they had, or maybe it was before the show started, they were inserting advertisements into push requests. I think it was the pull requests or whatever it was.

[Richard Campbell]

They were supposed to be tips.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, well, the things in the start menu are supposed to be recommendations.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, those are, those are recommendations for a product.

[Paul Thurrott]

So it's, Those are recommendations. It's a, it's like an ad, but it's not. We don't call it.

[Leo Laporte]

I never saw the GitHub stuff. What was it? Well, nothing should be in a GitHub commit.

[Richard Campbell]

It was as part of a PR because, you know, it writes all the PRs it was supposed to included tips on. You know, a better way to do this would be xyz. And then one of them came up you could use.

[Paul Thurrott]

They're like, you know, you could turn your, you could turn your phone into a PDF scanner for $20 for life. You know, that kind of thing.

[Leo Laporte]

That was a mistake.

[Paul Thurrott]

That wasn't mistake. That makes sense.

[Leo Laporte]

That's AI makes mistakes all the time.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's very helpful.

[Richard Campbell]

The big difference between in the lab and in the wild. And as soon as it got in the wild, it went wacky.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Just ask Tay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Or don't. Do not ask.

[Leo Laporte]

Don't talk to Tay.

[Paul Thurrott]

I want to say like Tay and Siri battle it out. You know, Siri's just like, I don't know what's going on. Why are you so mean to me all the time? Anyway, the other one though is that if you have a code repository or whatever else you might have stored in GitHub, like I use GitHub to store my books, for example. It's how LeanPub gets to them, they're going to start training AI models by default on that data unless you opt out. And so the tip, so to speak, is if you do not want that, you should opt out now because that goes into effect. I'm not sure what the date is, but it's. I think it's sometime this. Yeah, April 24th onward. Specific inputs, outputs is their terminology, code snippets, associated context across Copilot, free Pro Pro plus, but not business and enterprise will be used to train and improve GitHub's AI models. So if you don't want that, going to get the settings for your account on GitHub, copilot features, copilot then features and then there's an option you'll see there called git. Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training. It's under privacy and you can set that to. Nope, I think the technical word is disabled. I don't think they use the word

[Richard Campbell]

nope, but nope would be better. Nope, nope.

[Paul Thurrott]

And this is an aside because we're talking about GitHub. I've been working on that notepad clone that's now called winui and the multi document multi tab version of it, which still has bugs but is now available on my GitHub account. If you want to fork it and play with it and do whatever you want to do with it, who cares? You can have it says there and then the app pick is something I'm seriously considering switching to. Honestly. When I came to Thorat.com, which was almost 10 years ago, I joined a company called BWW, which was originally Blue Whale Web, but became BWW Media and they were using a Google Workspace infrastructure and that's what I still use. It's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. It's fine. But Proton, which is a company I really trust and they make apps like Mail, Calendar, Drive Docs, Sheets and vpn. And also they have an awesome authenticator app from. Well, it's everywhere. But use it on mobile typically has kind of closed the loop on this and they've added a Meet app which ee, not ea, which is like Teams or Google Meet, also EE in that you can have chats and audio and video calls, but of course this is Proton, so it's all encrypted, end to end and zero access, blah, blah, blah, whatever. So now they're offering what is essentially a replacement of for various Google workspace or Microsoft 365 tiers called Proton Workspace. Right. And so Proton Workspace Standard is about $13 a month per user when paid annually in the United States. And then there's a premium version that's $19.99 per month. That one adds. It goes from one to three terabytes of cloud storage per user. There's email data retention policies and, and you know, higher limits in the meet calls, et cetera, et cetera. It's, it's worth thinking about. They're extremely signed up.

[Richard Campbell]

My Proton account for the vpn, no VPN I did. So I use, I keep looking at the mail to think, am I going to use this as the housemail? Right. Because with all the IoT stuff, having a separate account is kind of smart, but.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep, yep. So I've never made the switch to Gmail. I use, I use Google or a Proton Pass, which is the password manager and Proton authenticator.

[Leo Laporte]

So every Proton ultimate you get all of the above or.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

So, yeah. So Proton. I. I'm not sure what Proton ultimate is. Probably an individual.

[Leo Laporte]

I maybe have made that up.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay, I'm sorry. I know.

[Leo Laporte]

I have that. Like some high end.

[Paul Thurrott]

So they've had. Had plans for individuals for some time and families. Right. I think the way they do it is they have, you know, an individual plan, maybe multiple. There's one for couples. Right. So if it's you and your wife or whatever, they have family, of course. And now they have. But they've had these business offerings too. Right. So Proton mail Calendar, et cetera, has been available for businesses as well as individuals. And so the workspace plans are their plans for businesses like where it's all, all the stuff, you know. And as an individual, you can do this as well. Not. Not works. I mean, you could. I don't know why you would, but you could. They have plans like this for individuals. So the, the new bit is that a. They. They've kind of completed what most businesses would need by having a meeting app. And now they have the, the plans where you can get multiple services for less than you would pay if you were paying, you know, per service or whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

So let me just look what I have here because it seems like I have a lot of.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I'm not even sure what.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I do have Meat.

[Paul Thurrott]

You do?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So I have mail, calendar, pass, VPN drive, docs, sheets, wallet, Lumo and meat.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Wallet. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So it's not Google Meat. It's their own meat.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is protoning.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a little confusing.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's like, I can't believe it's not butter, but it's meat.

[Leo Laporte]

Butter.

[Paul Thurrott]

Meat.

[Leo Laporte]

Meat.

[Paul Thurrott]

What's it called? What's the, what's that? Meat replacement thing. That's the worst thing that's ever happened in the environment.

[Richard Campbell]

Beyond meat.

[Paul Thurrott]

Beyond meat. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's beyond meat.

[Leo Laporte]

Proton meat is beyond meat.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's beyond. It's the beyond meat.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So I guess whatever this account is that I have here, which I'm now giving away the email to, which is too bad because it's no longer private, but I don't use it, so I guess it's okay. I, you know, I, I sign up for this stuff so I can.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So maybe they brought meat to the individual plans as well. I'm not even.

[Leo Laporte]

So this is, I even have a bitcoin wallet in here. I wonder if there's anything in it. This is, is really. They're really going after Google, aren't they? Docs Sheets Drive.

[Paul Thurrott]

I feel, Yeah, I feel like what they're doing to Google is what Google did to Microsoft back when they started, you know, Gmail was the beginning of it. And I think their first product, Protons, was mail, I believe was proton mail.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

The angle called not a tech giant is a pretty good angle.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, and not. And not in the U.S. not in Switzerland anymore.

[Paul Thurrott]

And 100%, you know, privacy based. All open source. So anyone can review the code and

[Leo Laporte]

make sure it's CERN scientists. So you like that, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, there's a lot of crossover between CERN scientists. Wait, what?

[Leo Laporte]

The World Wide Web?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Weird.

[Paul Thurrott]

Usually it's like a guitarist CERN scientist, but. Okay, that's fine.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what's missing is a slack competitor.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, I think that's what meat is. That's essentially meat. Because meat will do chats. Oh.

[Leo Laporte]

It does audio and video. Oh, it is then. Okay. Yeah, I don't, I never liked the name for chat video Huddles.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, God, I can't. I literally. You caused a chili up the back of my spine. I hate that word so much. So much. Because we would have these meetings like when I worked at that company and we had an outside contractor we worked with and you know, say it was like Tuesday, 2 o' clock in the afternoon. We're meeting, you waiting. You're waiting and you're waiting and it's like seven after and then suddenly one of the people that gets in is like, you guys ready to huddle? It's like, yeah, we've been ready to huddle for 10 minutes.

[Leo Laporte]

Can we, can we just startle?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, I hate that Term so much.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, okay. So it looks like you. I have to. There's an upsell on this premiere. €215 a year.

[Richard Campbell]

I could then put the icon there to encourage you.

[Leo Laporte]

More meat or something.

[Richard Campbell]

They need more meat. Extra meaty.

[Leo Laporte]

Extra meaty now with extra meat. 60, 18 bucks a month. So. Okay, so I. I have Proton Unlimited.

[Paul Thurrott]

Is that what. It's. Okay. Is that the real name of it?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Is that the.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay. I don't even know which one I have, but I have access to all this stuff as well. I saw the same screen you just showed.

[Leo Laporte]

They're suggesting. I. I currently.

[Paul Thurrott]

I also have Proton Unlimited.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And they're suggesting Proton Duo, which is lesser than.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, I think it's. Isn't that unlimited for two people? I think that's.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Oh, I get it. So if I want to have a slack with two people.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, you're looking at meat.

[Richard Campbell]

You need someone to meet with, so get the duo.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right. It's not. Yeah, it's not Proton Solo, Leo. Come on.

[Leo Laporte]

That's cheap. Oh, yeah. You know what? Duo is more than limited. Unlimited.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I think it's unlimited for two people, I think is the point of it.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. I believe I get it. So if I could just find somebody who wants to do this together.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, okay, but you still. But you're looking at it. These are the individual. These are the plans for people. Right. And so the thing I just meant the workspace stuff is for businesses.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Yeah. So they don't. Yeah. Don't show all my stuff. It's not as private as it ought to be. Oh, well, I'm gonna have to get a new email account, I guess. Truth is, don't email me at that account because I don't use it. So I just. I bought it to see what it is.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

That's part of my job to look at this stuff.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. But it's a different thing to actually make it part of your workflow.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's. You can't. Yeah. You can't really assess it unless you live it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

No, I appreciate it. Having hung around with Paul a fair bit. His ability to take a laptop he loathed and continue to use it to review it successfully. That's a special kind of masochism.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's a definitely special. It's like short bus special, but. Yeah, it's okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Ah, there are business plans. I see now.

[Richard Campbell]

There you go.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. Now we're. Now we're getting into the real money. So if I Wanted to use it as slack.

[Paul Thurrott]

So yeah, part of my reticence, I guess, other than just normal switching stuff and moving to Proton is the drive stuff to date for individuals has been a little weird. Like they don't. They haven't offered like really big drive like storage allotments, but when you look at the business stuff it's like 1 terabyte and the base level and then 3 user at the higher level it's like, okay, now we're, you know, you're getting into this is. This is more where I think they need to be. So I'm gonna think about a 24

[Leo Laporte]

hour meeting if you really want to go crazy.

[Paul Thurrott]

Every meeting I've ever been felt like it was 24 hours. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Interesting. And. And the idea behind media is that it is, you know, more secure. It's encrypted.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

Like everything else Proton does. Yeah. Yep. Well, you know what, I should probably. We're at Google Drive House. You know, Twitter.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, we are the same. Exactly. Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

But we maybe should look at this. It's not.

[Paul Thurrott]

You should look at it. I mean. Yeah, that's the issue. So it's not just the cost. You want to make sure it works. Does it work as well? Right. And that's the thing I'm not entirely clear on. So I suspect it is very good. I mean honestly, I just, I think

[Leo Laporte]

they're really good and it. Because it's open source. I really like that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

I think there's a lot of company. The company.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And it's not big tech.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know. That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

And one of the reasons they're beefing up like this is because there's a huge move in Europe at least.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh yeah. This is such good timing for this company.

[Leo Laporte]

Big tech. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

100.

[Richard Campbell]

The polite way we talk about it is data software sovereignty.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. HIPAA compliant.

[Richard Campbell]

One of my suggestions, as I do at the beginning of each year on run ass radio to the admins was to talk to legal about. About data sovereignty. Just in general, like that's a big deal. I got, I got two talking points for you to take to legal. One is dealing with supply chain attacks is now a legal risk like you will be sued. There's someone to sue. And the other one is data sovereignty is, you know, top of mind.

[Leo Laporte]

Ironically or unironically. This is the first time I heard data sommetry was out of Satya Nadella's mouth. He was talking about that a few years ago.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Well that's a big issue for Microsoft because they, you know, they're hitting those regulatory issues, especially in Europe. And one of the advantages, Sorry, they

[Leo Laporte]

were the, they were the subject of shrems. That was, the whole thing was, let's get Microsoft.

[Richard Campbell]

So, yeah, yeah, I mean, there definitely was a time when they were saying, no, we're protecting people's data. You don't have a right to this.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

And now they're saying, you know, if someone asks, I mean, we'll, we'll, I mean, we'll listen to them. I don't, you know, I don't know,

[Richard Campbell]

we'll follow the law. Follow the law.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the out, that's the weasel words.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Nobody wants you to follow the law. What I want you to do is what I want you to do, you know, and in Proton's case, I would just say like they, they don't have a way to access this information. So that's the point. No one can get to it, including them. Whereas in Microsoft's case, they're like, well, no one could get to it except for us. And, you know, if you ask nicely, we'll see.

[Leo Laporte]

We are going to get to the brown liquor pick of the week in the runners radio pick of the week. Just a moment. I just want to give you a little pitch for Club Twit. Actually, that was a demonstration of. Without Club Twit, this is what Twitt would look like. Nothing. Club Twit keeps us alive. At this point, 30% of our revenue or our operating costs come from you, our club members. So first thing I should always say is thank you to our club members. We really appreciate them. Now, of course, most club members aren't going to see this because if you're a member of Club Twitter, you don't get any ads. You don't get these, you know, minutes of begging. But there are some club to it members watching live in our club to a Discord, so they get to see this. So thank you. I really, I really appreciate it. Ten bucks a month. You get ad free versions of everything we do. You get access to the club, to Discord. You get special programming just for the club, like our AI users group, which is really fun, really great. We have some very smart people in the club. It's one of the best reasons to join the club is the smarty pants who hang out in Discord. You can ask them questions. They're great. I've learned a lot from them. We also have Micah's crafting corner was very chill. He's doing the paint by numbers thing. But you don't have to do that. You could do any craft and hang out with Micah every month. Home theater geeks with Scott Wilkinson this Week in Space. The guys, by the way, are at Cape Canaveral for the Artemis launch this afternoon. They're very excited about that. You can bet there'll be some good coverage on this Week in Space. We do Stacy's book club. We do the photo show photo time with Chris Marquardt every month. There's just a lot of reasons to join the club, but the most important reason, I think, is if you like the content that we provide at twit. Yes, it's free, it's ad supported, and we welcome all of our listeners. But if you want to show a little extra support, that's the way to do it. TWIT TV Club. Twit. We thank you so much for your support. Support.

[Richard Campbell]

Refreshing Wild cherry cola meets smooth cream.

[Paul Thurrott]

The treat you deserve.

[Richard Campbell]

Pepsi Wild Cherry and cream.

[Paul Thurrott]

Treat yourself.

[Leo Laporte]

Now, ladies and gentlemen, this would be a good time to focus in on Mr. Richard Campbell and run at.

[Richard Campbell]

I got a real special show this week, so folks have been asking about my home lab. And so I decided I would explain a little of what's going on up here since we moved up a few years ago.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, how cool.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, so it's. It's not a real long show. There's only so much story to tell, but it's a. It's good fun. So, yeah, I will.

[Leo Laporte]

I will be watching this. I want to.

[Richard Campbell]

I've had a few folks come back to me.

[Leo Laporte]

We've got it all set up. Episode 1030 or it's not April Fools. This is the real deal.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, don't go that far.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, oh, oh. Now I really want to. Now I really want to. Listen. Are there beakers? Will there be a Jacob's ladder? Welcome to my home lab.

[Paul Thurrott]

Actually, to me, what it sounded like was Dr. No describing his island. Yeah, like there was a real Bond villain kind of nature, too.

[Leo Laporte]

Here I am.

[Paul Thurrott]

How he's powering his.

[Leo Laporte]

In my mountain lair. Let me show you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, okay, never mind. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to spoil that. Okay, everybody should listen.

[Richard Campbell]

And if you find out, you go to the website there in the show links. The last link is, you know, a video tour of the home lab.

[Leo Laporte]

Can't wait to see it. And now, the moment you've all been waiting for. Richard Campbell and his liquor. Pick of the.

[Richard Campbell]

This is not an April Fool's Day thing by any stretch. Of the imagination. This is. I was at the MVP summit and I often come home with special whiskey. And this is certainly one of them. This is Jephthah Creed. So when we talk about Jeff the Creed, we're talking about Shelbyville, Kentucky. So this is about half an hour drive east on the 64 out of Louisville on your way to Frankfurt, which is, you know, where Papi and all those other whiskies are made. So this is, you know, in bluegrass country, this is exactly what you're looking for. This part of the world was explored by Daniel and Squire Boone back in the 1700s.

[Leo Laporte]

Daniel Boone, I didn't know about. Is Squire his brother?

[Richard Campbell]

It was his brother, yeah. And I mentioned Squire because the very first settlement in the area was called Squire Boone Station. And he also, because they were the first Europeans mapping out the area, they. They named a bunch of the land. And one of the things that Squire pointed to was a. He called it a mountain and he called it Jephthah Mountain after the character in the book of Judges A later it's been renamed Jephthah Knob because it's the bluegrass country. That's not really a mountain, that's a knob. Yeah, it's. When Kentucky becomes a State in 1792, there's a competition for the various counties as to where they're going to run, operate the county from and the state. Squire Boone Station was one of the candidates, but the other one was this area here, Shelbyville, where a farmer granted enough land for the county facilities, so forth. So they won it per se. At the time, Shelbyville was built on the western bank of the Clear Creek, where it meets Mulberry Creek. Today, the town, which covers about 18, 000 people, is on both sides of all of the creeks because it's gotten bigger, oddly enough.

[Leo Laporte]

And you've been there, right?

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, I. I have driven through. I did not stop at this distillery, but yes, I've been through throughout this.

[Leo Laporte]

It sounds like it's really pretty.

[Richard Campbell]

This is lush green, it's beautiful land and it is a humid subtropical climate, if you'd use those categories. So hot, humid summers, very mild winters is. It's a beautiful spot and it is agricultural land. So around Shelbyville, there is corn, hemp that used to be tobacco, lots of wheat, pork, beef, like it is a farming area. The most famous person out of there, besides the mention of the boons, are only there briefly. The Colonel Sanders. Yes, that Colonel Sanders of KFC fame.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Richard Campbell]

Moved there in 1960 and stayed there until he passed away in 1980.

[Paul Thurrott]

He's still alive.

[Leo Laporte]

He is. He lives on in our. In our memories, anyway.

[Paul Thurrott]

Nothing goes better than whiskey, than Kentucky Fried Chicken. I'm just saying

[Richard Campbell]

I'm a little prone to burnt ends, but I'll take you. I'll take.

[Leo Laporte]

I like burnt ends, too. I do like the burnt ends.

[Richard Campbell]

For me, you know, Kentucky Fried Chicken is one of those things. It's like your childhood memories of it are amazing.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And if you have it today, it

[Leo Laporte]

doesn't quite live up to it, does it?

[Richard Campbell]

I. I eat.

[Paul Thurrott]

I eat KFC regularly when I'm the United States. I. I'm just saying.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

You still love it.

[Leo Laporte]

You know where they love kfc? China.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, huge in China.

[Richard Campbell]

Lots of part all over the Caribbean. Huge lineups of the kfc.

[Paul Thurrott]

Do you know where they ruin it is Mexico. And it's really depressing to me. It's still here.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, but that's pollo country.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know.

[Richard Campbell]

Just not that one.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's just not good.

[Leo Laporte]

No, you shouldn't eat KFC if it

[Paul Thurrott]

makes me so sad. Every once in a while, I'll be like, I got to try it again. No, still terrible.

[Richard Campbell]

Now, one of the things you'll love about Shelbyville is there's actually two distilleries there, and they could not be more different. One of them is the Bulleit Distillery.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I've had Bullet Bourbon. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

This is not the original Bullet distillery. This is after it's acquired by Diageo. We haven't done the Bullet story. At some point, I will. And Diageo spent $140 million building a mega distillery that opened in 2017. There's still another distillery elsewhere that makes Bullet as well. This one produces about 6.7 million liters a day a year. It's huge, huge facility.

[Leo Laporte]

And. And many other brands, too.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. I mean, that one is specifically just for Bullet.

[Leo Laporte]

Just Bullet. Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

Because it's one of the well whiskeys, right? Like, yeah, pretty much everywhere you go alongside Jim Beam, Wild Turkey, you'll often see Bullets.

[Leo Laporte]

It.

[Richard Campbell]

It's got its own style. And then the exact opposite of that is Jephthah Creed. So this is the Netherly family. And the Netherly family. The first name for Netherly was a guy named James Netherly that comes to the area in 1715. So you're talking about 300 years of family heritage in this area, farming around Jep the Knob. And in the current generation, the grandfather was encouraging his younger generations to buy more land whenever it came available. In the area, you know, farming is challenging. And so Bruce Netherly, who grew up on a dairy farm, although every picture I've ever found of him, he was working tobacco. Actually bought a farm when he was 18 and was doing tobacco and beef farming in there. And he married a woman named Joyce, who's also from a local family. And Joyce Netherly was actually educated as a chemical engineer. And she spent 15 years doing industrial distilling. Not alcohol, but other fun things like methyl metacrylate, that kind of stuff. Don't be a chemical engineer. That's an intense job. So as they, as they're, you know, raising a family and so forth, she dials back, becomes a high school teacher, because that's relaxing and stays closer to the area. And Bruce is the real ambitious one. He's the entrepreneur, always trying different markets, trying to expand product. You know, they're working, they're working cattle, so they were also trying to make cheese, things like that. And he pitched the idea to Joyce about doing distilling. Now her actually being a chemical engineer, so she has a pretty good picture of how hard it is. She's like, that's really not that good of an idea, but it keeps coming back around. And I read a couple of great interviews, was like, he clearly wasn't letting this go. So she signs him up for a course in Louisville at Moonshine University. So it's like a one week class sort of teaching everything about doing distilling to get him up to speed. And Bruce doesn't go. He suddenly has a trip to Detroit. Like there's a whole subtext story about was he avoiding the class or what. But Joyce being the kind of person is like, we've already paid for this. I am not wasting this. She goes and loves it. Just, it's a very different style, you know, the whole craftsmanship and so forth. And so they, by 2013, are touring around different distilleries in Kentucky, talking to different folks. They have a daughter whose name is Autumn, who at that time is like 19 years old, which is not legal drinking age in the us and so she's going on these drinking tours essentially where she's not allowed to drink, but she's also very interested in distilling. The whole family's into that. So there's lots of people willing to teach her up to a point, because she can't actually taste the product legally. Her answer then is to go to school in Scotland where the drinking age is 18. And so she enrolls in the Harriet Watt University in Edinburgh and realizes she's not going to be good at distilling, but she is good at marketing. And so she comes back home, she's like, I don't have my mother's mind, but I get this. And she has a degree in marketing at Kentucky University. And so this ends up being a mother daughter team to set up the Jep. The Cree distillery. Not necessarily by plan, but it's what ends up happening. Bruce sticks to farming and one of the things that Bruce does is he switches the farm over to growing corn, specifically a species of corn they call Bloody Butcher corn. Now this is an heirloom variety that was developed in the US in Virginia in the 1800s. And it's a deep reddish purple. If you see pictures of the corn on the cob, it's what they call a dent corn. So instead of the kernels bulging out, they actually sort of push in a bit and it's this dark red color that when you strip the kernels, the milk that splatters from that is red enough that it says it looks like a bloody butcher's apron. That's where the name comes from.

[Leo Laporte]

Interesting, huh?

[Richard Campbell]

Now, den corn is very common. It's not your normal. It's not typically for eating, you can eat it, but it's.

[Leo Laporte]

I think we had corn for dinner last night actually. It was early season.

[Richard Campbell]

It could be. Yeah, yeah, really corny season.

[Leo Laporte]

It wasn't red, but it was dented definitely.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it was probably yellow corn, which is far more common. Dent corns are generally known for having these high soft starch content. So they actually produce of a lot, lot of sugar, relative weight and yeah, most den. The majority of corn grown in the US is dent corn, your sort of sweet corn, so forth.

[Leo Laporte]

But it's used mostly for feed, I imagine.

[Richard Campbell]

And yeah, dent corn is normally used for feed and, and yellow corn, the yellow hybrids that come out of the 1960s have dominated the market because their yields are like two and a half times. Like you'll get about 100 bushels an acre out of Bloody Butcher, but you'll get 250 bushels per acre out of a yellow corn. So, you know, if you're in the business of farming, it is very hard to argue with. Plus this kind of corn, the Bloody Butcher corn grows extremely tall. 10 foot tall is not unusual. And so one of the challenges is as it starts to mature, it will fall, flop over and drop the seeds on the ground, which makes harvest much more difficult and expensive. Like this is not easy corn to work with, relatively speaking. It's also an open pollinator. So you're not buying seedlings, you know, a la Monsanto. You're actually keeping seed stock and reseeding in a very traditional way. And so your pollenization is tough to control. One of the things that the Jephthah farm has done is they do their own beekeeping now and they sell honey on the side as well because that helps to control the pollination nation. There was a really interesting section in their whole story about what they called the critter share the this kind of corn is also preferred by wild animals. They will walk past yellow corn to get to bloody butcher. And so the around the edges of their property planted more of this corn specifically to let the animals eat it. Just sort of recognizing they're going to invade anyway. So let's leave this over and it's kind of a good gesture on this. So Bloody Bridger corn is relatively rare and relatively costly. It does not produce in the same kinds of numbers and there are a few whiskeys out there that use it. But typically it's a flavor grain that they'll do yellow corn with a bit of butcher corn and so forth because it is so costly. By 2016, Jephthah Creed is up and running as a distiller. Of course takes a few years to actually make products. So they're. They're laying down their first barrels. They also get into making vodka so they can have some sales early on and do very well because they are doing corn based vodkas. That's the product they've got probably not butcher corn. That's kind of a waste because you're just doing high distillation on the column still. Their whole motto is grain to glass. They are growing the grain. They're right down to they're doing their own bottling right in the same facility. They've got a pretty typical what I would call a craftsman production setup. So stainless steel mash cookers. They got eight 1000 gallon open top wooden washbacks that are made of white oak. Again very local but also very small. You know we in Scotland those washbacks would be 30,000 gallons. These are 1,000 gallons. 12 inch column still. 500 gallon copper pot still probably a Vendome. Again all very local and very traditional barreling. Charred American oak. They use the number three toast and they've got some fairly substantial rack houses on the property. Up to about 15,000 barrels with no temperature controls. Super traditional. Even down to doing their own bottling.

[Leo Laporte]

They this makes me want to drink this. I think this is Totally.

[Richard Campbell]

They've done such a good job of this. And the story fits. They make nine barrels of whiskey a day. Nine. Wow. As compared to down the road at the Bullock distillery, who does 92 barrels a day.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

So this is just a small production, small team Craftsman whiskey. So their first, they started up in 2016, so it takes three years to be able to call it whiskey. So 2019, their first production whiskey they called the four grain bourbon with 70% bloody butcher corn, with 15% malted rye, 10% malted wheat, and 5% malted barley. That is not what I'm drinking here today. This. This is the six year old weeded bourbon. So obviously took a little longer. Right. The first production versions of these come out in 2024. This, I believe is a 2026, 93 proof. It is 75% corn. That's a lot of corn. With yellow corn. This would be very sweet. 20% malted wheat, 5% malted barley. So the wheat's nominally the flavor grain. And then 5% multibody is your typical amylase provider. That's not unusual and immediately wins gold medal awards. So let's look at the color on that first.

[Leo Laporte]

It's beautiful.

[Richard Campbell]

That is that corn.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

That corn gives the lens a lot of color. So no heady nose. Remember we're talking here. 46, 47%. This ought to had a little more heat to it. Wow. So big, caramelly rich notes. Got almost no heat on at all.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's just sort of.

[Richard Campbell]

It's nicely warming. You're not used to getting character flavor from the corn, but that's what you're getting here. It's just a really rich, mouth filling sip of bourbon without any of the fire. There's no rye in this.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

None of that heat. It's all kind of smooth like, boy, oh boy, that's sipping bourbon. You wouldn't want to do anything else with this. And priced accordingly. This is $66. Now that's not an outrageous amount considering you get a bottle of bullet for 20. And you know, most nice bourbons go somewhere in the 40 to 60 range. So this is on the high side, but you're talking about a pretty rare product. And the only reason I have this is my buddy Ed Charbonneau brought it to me at the MVP Summer summit. He knew, he knew I'd love it. And he was right. It's fantastic product from a remarkable company.

[Leo Laporte]

They're drinking the wheated.

[Richard Campbell]

This is the weeded bourbon, the six year old. So this is the oldest that they Got gold medals in San Francisco, in New York last year.

[Leo Laporte]

Boy, now I want to try some.

[Richard Campbell]

It's really brilliant. Yeah, it's stunning. And it's. And it's that craftsmanship story I love so, so much. I mean, totally intentional. This is a family that set out to make, make whiskey. They fell in love with it. They're not long term whiskey makers. You know, I'm sure their family back in the day did because they've been there for 300 years and prohibition probably shut it all down. And then you throw in the loss of the corn, which has now sort of been rekindled. Like it's just taken a while to get to this place, but they've made it an awesome thing.

[Leo Laporte]

I like it that it's, it's a family farm and that they're.

[Richard Campbell]

Didn't plan to be a mother daughter thing, but that's what happened. And so more power to it. Yeah. And look at that corn. Like what a beautiful. Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You can see where it goes too, right in the bottle. That's really amazing.

[Richard Campbell]

Jack Daniels. One of the things I've loved about Jack Daniels is everything's made in the one place, right? It's. And this is the same thing. They've done this little operation, nine barrels a day, little bottling runs. It's very special whiskey.

[Leo Laporte]

Wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

Neat.

[Leo Laporte]

Jephthah Creed. That's from the Jepta Knob.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's crazy.

[Leo Laporte]

I haven't either.

[Richard Campbell]

No, and why would you. It's Shelbyville. Like, this is not Frankfurt, Kentucky. This is not Louisville. This is a whistle stop it between the two.

[Leo Laporte]

Small town bourbon. Yeah, but the real deal, right? I bet this is, this is closer to the real deal.

[Richard Campbell]

Very legit. This bottle is not going to be around for very long.

[Leo Laporte]

You mean specifically his bottle?

[Richard Campbell]

Listen, I have a lot of bottles of whiskey. Oddly enough I talk about them every week. And people, you know, I was just at the MVP summit. I have a few more. But I know perfectly well when she who must be okay gets a taste of this. This will disappear.

[Leo Laporte]

It's good. That's good stuff. I love it. Well, Richard, you've once again you've brought us something. You're going to turn me into a drunk yet?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, you're pretty careful working on them.

[Richard Campbell]

Just need a taste of this. You need to know.

[Leo Laporte]

I do want to taste it. I'll get some for. For when friends visit.

[Paul Thurrott]

That sounds really good.

[Richard Campbell]

You will impress with this one. It's special. And the bloody butcher corn story is good fun. The stunner for anybody who loves bourbon is 75% corn. Because any other bourbon at 75% it would just be sweet. And this is not.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Lovely. Once again you've capped off a fun Windows Weekly with a great little brown liquor. Thank you. Richard Campbell. You'll find him as at run his radio and of course dotnet rocks and listen to the geekouts. And I think later this afternoon you'll probably be sitting in front of the TV or the Internet watching the Artemis 2 launch as we know I will.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm also working on I can't believe I'm doing this, but Lars has built bullied me into it. I'm working as I am expanding the network on the property here. I'm going to make a YouTube video of building out the new data point.

[Leo Laporte]

I want to see that.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it's. I've shot a bunch of pieces for it now and. And it's going to take a while to assemble it, but you're a hard working fella. I like making stuff and then I'm. I was. It's slowing me down actually deploying this. I just want to build it to actually film it all. But it's like, okay, I'll film it too.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah. Mr. Paul Thurat, you'll find [e-mail] Strangely enough, it's a coincidence, but it happens

[Paul Thurrott]

to be just worked out.

[Leo Laporte]

It's worked out that way. He has his books [e-mail] although if you. I don't know if this is still available, but if you become a premium [e-mail], you get all the books as part of your membership or you can get them direct if you're already a member. @leanpub.com they gather together every Wednesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1800 UTC to do this fine show Windows Weekly and you can watch us do it live. Now of course, club members get to watch in the Discord, but everybody else you can watch on YouTube, Twitch, X.com, facebook, LinkedIn and Kik. We stream it on as many platforms as we can get so that you can watch it live. But you don't have to watch it live. There's audio and video versions available at the website, Twit TV, WW. The YouTube channel has the video. Great way to share little clips. Everybody can watch it on YouTube. That makes it easier. And of course you could subscribe in your favorite podcast client. That way you get it automatically the minute it emerges from the editor's den.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep, yep. Like a Proto life forum of some kind.

[Leo Laporte]

Amazing.

[Richard Campbell]

Kind of amazing. Kev's having hammered out a few more of the whiskey weeklies, too, so there's.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Oh, good. Something. Something weird from my closet.com for the all of those.

[Richard Campbell]

Probably should grab a shorter Domain for that, but, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

No, it's a great name. How could you forget that, right? Something weird from my closet. I guess that's all I have to say. Thank you, gentlemen, for joining us. Thank you all, you winners and your dozers. And we will see you all next Wednesday right here on Windows Weekly.

[Paul Thurrott]

Sam.