TWiT 1067: Short Vertical Content - Is Claude the New King of AI Coding?

Summary

This Week in Tech - Episode 1067: "Short Vertical Content - Is Claude the New King of AI Coding?"

Date: January 19, 2026
Host: Leo Laporte
Guests: Harper Reed, Abrar Al-Heeti
Theme: Explosive advances in AI coding (with a focus on Anthropic’s Claude), the rise of individualized software, AI safety, social media and content trends, creative economies, and the evolving tech landscape.

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the current AI arms race, especially the surge in popularity of Anthropic’s Claude as a coding assistant and the dawn of truly personal, hyper-bespoke software. The panel explores implications—creative, ethical, practical—of AI's ongoing integration into software development, art, music, and daily tech life. There’s a blend of tech nostalgia, enthusiasm, skepticism, and reflections on digital culture, with recurring sidebars on the risks of AI, social media trends, and shifting career opportunities in creative industries.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. CES Reflections & Setting the Scene

• [01:24] Abrar Al-Heeti enthuses about returning to CES post-pandemic, highlighting self-driving vehicle innovations.
• Harper Reed (Tech Entrepreneur, AI Coder): Based in Chicago, brings expertise in “AI vibe coding” and personal experimentation with new AI tools.

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2. Claude's Ascendancy: AI for Personalized Coding

• [04:22 – 16:55]
• Leo: “The world has come to Claude… my newest, bestest friend, Claude. Code man, he’s on a roll.”
• The panel delves into the anthropomorphization of AI assistants—assigning names (e.g., “Captain,” “Dr. Biz,” “Daddy”) and imbuing interactions with personality, humor, and playful instruction.
• Harper shares strategies for using Claude’s memory and nickname features to personalize workflow and make coding enjoyable.

Creating Hyper-Personalized Software

• Leo describes how, using Claude, he quickly built a newsreader tailored only to his workflow: “It does exactly what I want. No more, no less.” ([06:23])
• Discussion about open-source ethos, remixing old software, and vibe coding:

  Harper: "It’s very clear that the bespoke software thing is happening and it’s like artisanal. Finally, my hipster life will continue—not just farmers markets, but now my software is artisanal." (12:40)

• Harper likens this new paradigm to “time travel”—reviving old software ideas or misremembered tools in minutes, not months.

Onslaught of AI-Generated Code

• Concerns about the proliferation of AI-coded software of variable quality.
• Harper: “The cost and value of code is almost zero at this point... Is there such thing as a closed source product? If you show me an app with my eyeballs, I can describe it in cloud code, and now I have a copy of that app.” ([15:56])

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3. AI Safety and Security Risks with Coding Assistants

• [19:57 – 25:56]
• Prompt injection attacks: Within a day of Claude Cowork’s release, security researchers find ways to “hack” its desktop agent through hidden prompts in files, prompting wide concern.
  • Notable quote:

    Harper: "Giving an AI access to 100% of everything, it's going to lead to some tears and some problems and some security issues. This is the least surprising thing ever." ([20:34])

• Real-life anecdote: Harper’s Claude-powered bot turns off his office—including the router—while he’s traveling, highlighting the risks of over-permissive AI automation.

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4. Creative, Social & Economic Implications of AI

AI’s Effect on Creativity and Conformity

• [28:56 – 31:51]
• Om Malik’s “algorithmic gray beige world” is raised:
  • AI’s training on the “mean” or “average” risks reinforcing conformity, but emerging instances (like Claude proving an unsolved Erdos math problem) offer creative hope.
• Leo: “AI is simultaneously going to generate a huge amount of useless slop at the same time as it could be world-changing technology...”

The Privilege of Non-Conformity

• [33:12]
  • Harper reflects on social privilege and the ability to “stand out” in both human society and generative AI norms.

Social Media, Deepfakes & Platform Responsibility

• [44:46]–[47:46]
  • Legislative and regulatory efforts to control the spread of deepfakes (Defiance Act), with debate around Apple’s and Google’s responsibilities.
  • Abrar: "If you care about people's safety on your platforms, then show it. Walk the walk." ([46:22])

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5. Content, Attention Spans & Digital Culture

Short Vertical Content, TikTok, and Platform Trends

• [92:46 – 105:55]
• Rise of “short vertical dramas” (e.g., Pine Drama app), platforms adapting content to vertical mobile optimization, and the science of TikTok’s personalized recommendation engine.
• Harper: “I got really deep in trombone TikTok... then that got me to HBCU marching band TikTok...”
• [104:35] Harper: “The lesson of TikTok is about long tail content, not about the video format.”

“Creator Treadmill” & Creative Economy Inequality

• [111:06 – 116:59]
  • Pressure for creators to constantly produce; only a small percentage make significant income.
  • [112:56] “The top 1% of creators get 21% of brand spending... the rest [are] working just as hard, maybe even harder.”

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6. AI in the Arts: Music, Writing & Authorship

• [74:09 – 79:49]
• Where’s the line between human and AI contributions in art/music? Is it “information density”—how much the human contributed?
  • Benito (Producer): “If your whole contribution was a 10-word prompt, then you really didn’t do anything.”
• On the human “soul” in music and AI’s limitations with true artistry.

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7. Tech Nostalgia & Tactility

• [162:07] Danish developer makes a kid-friendly smart TV controller with floppy disks (“The best storage media ever invented... why else would the Save icon still be a floppy disk?”)

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8. Space & Optimism: Artemis 2 Moon Mission

• [132:58 – 136:48]
• Buzz about Artemis 2’s journey beyond the moon, sense of global unity in space exploration, and the enduring inspiration of leaving Earth’s “godforsaken planet” behind.

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Notable & Memorable Quotes

• Leo: “This is the beginning of hyper-personalized software, that people will be able to write their own software just like this.” [09:48]
• Harper: “Every time you dream, you get to appear software. You don’t have to plan, really.” [13:11]
• Leo: “Coding’s like crossword puzzles for me... I don’t think... computer can play chess better, but I like to play chess without a computer because it’s fun.” [16:55]
• Harper: “Sticking out is oftentimes a privilege, like standing up... Choosing to stand outside society is often a privilege.” [33:12]
• Abrar: “But when you have the privilege of not caring what other people think, it is very liberating.” [36:45]
• Leo: “Are you tempted, Abrar? Does this conversation make you start to think, maybe I could do some of my own software?” →
  Abrar: “I think the one thing I need in my life is less screen time. So that's two conflicting realities.” [17:34]
• Harper: “It’s so cheap to generate code. The cost and value of code is almost zero at this point... so the question is, is there such thing as a closed source product?” [15:55]
• Leo: “I think the whole point of this show for me is, I get to do something I love, which is talk to people I love about things I’m very interested in. I hope somebody wants to hear it.” [120:35]

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Important Timestamps & Segments

• Claude as AI king of code: [04:22 – 16:55]
• Hyper-personalized/Irony of artisanal code: [12:40; 122:09]
• Security & prompt injection: [19:57 – 25:56]
• Creative conformity and taste: [28:56 – 35:35]
• AI impact on art/music/writing: [74:09 – 79:49]
• The creator treadmill and income inequality: [111:06 – 116:59]
• TikTok and digital culture: [92:46 – 105:31]
• Space and Artemis 2 optimism: [132:58 – 136:48]
• Vibe coding skills and Harper’s worldview plugin: [175:40 – 184:18]

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Fun, Interactive & Philosophical Moments

• Anthropomorphizing AI:
  • [04:35] Leo: “From now on, please call me Captain.”
  • [05:03] Harper: “And then it’ll say, always refer to me as Dr. Biz. My birth name.”
• Chainmail Fashion:
  • [18:29] Harper, on wearing chainmail purchased from TikTok for doomsday AI scenarios.
• TikTok Algorithm Games:
  • [94:18] Abrar: “Every time I’d see a Taylor Swift video, immediately I would say, not interested... then it thought I hated her!”

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Takeaways & Closing Thoughts

• A new era of software:
  Code is now disposable, remixable, and “artisanal”—AI assistants like Claude are making bespoke software accessible to anyone who can describe what they need.
• Risks abound:
  The march toward deeply integrated AI comes with new forms of attack, ambiguous liability, and complex social and ethical concerns.
• Art, taste, and the human touch:
  As AI enters more creative domains, taste, curation, and “information density” in human contributions will become even more valued.
• Adapting to change:
  From social media habits to economic realities for creators, tech’s relentless churn is forcing both celebration and uneasy reflection about privilege, meaning, and the value of expression.

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In summary:
This episode captures a turning point in tech: not just new tools or gadgets, but a real shift in agency, creativity, and risk for both coders and the broader culture. The Claude revolution may be personal, but its aftershocks are universal.

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For those who missed the show, this summary offers you the full flavor—concerns, jokes, technical advice, and the human tint that makes TWiT a perennial must-listen.

Transcript

[A]

It's time for TWiT this Week in Tech. Oh, I love the panel.

[B]

Today.

[A]

Harper Reed joins us. Our favorite weirdo and AI coder. Also, Abrar Al Heedi, our favorite senior technology reporter from cnet. Lots to talk about. She's just back from ces. She's going to talk about self driving vehicles. Harper has been doing a lot of AI vibe coding and has some really interesting tips. We'll talk about the richest man in the world. He's even richer and now he's suing to get richer still. Plus that Instagram hack that maybe really wasn't a hack. All of that and more coming up next on Twit.

[B]

Podcasts you love from people you trust.

[A]

This is twit. This is TWiT this Week in Tech. Episode 1067, recorded Sunday, January 18, 2026. Short vertical content. It's time for TWIT this Week in Tech, the show where we cover the week's tech news. We always. This is the one show I do where we rotate the panelists because I have so many friends, I like to get on the show and it's so nice to see them and so wonderful to see Abrar Al Heati. She's a senior technology reporter for cnet and just, just a great prayer. Did you go to CES this year, Abrar for cnet?

[C]

I did and I had a lot of fun. I'm surprised at how much fun I had. It was my first time back since 2020 and so far no pandemic has broken out afterwards. So that's been good. But I think it's a good time.

[A]

I went in 2022 and I as well. 2020 as well.

[C]

Right.

[A]

And I think that ended up being a little bit of a super spreader event because three months later, we all had to stay home.

[C]

Yeah. There was a mysterious illness. Yeah. But now, so far, so good.

[A]

Good. Not even Vegas throat or anything.

[C]

Thankfully not so far unscathed.

[A]

Also with us from Chicagoland, home of the Bears, Harper Reed is here.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

Hello. Hi, Harper.

[B]

Hello. Hi.

[A]

I don't feel like you're a football fan. Maybe you are. I don't know. Nope.

[B]

Nope.

[A]

Not really.

[B]

I like basketball.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Well, you got decided that's my sport. Yeah. It's fun. I don't think they're very good. I. I have a. I have a stateless interaction with sports. I go to the sports and I participate and then I leave and I forget everything I saw. And then next time I go, I'm like, who are these people? And I enjoy It. And then I leave and I forget everything I saw. It's. It's actually really great.

[A]

That's the best way to enjoy sports. Either that or all in, where you memorize every stat, every detail, and you know everybody and it's like. Then it's a little too intimate.

[B]

Well, and I'm also not 11 years old. Right?

[A]

Quiet. Actually, because our Niners were so ignominiously defeated in the NFL playoffs yesterday, I am now a Bears fan. I've decided I'm gonna root for the Bears to go all the way.

[B]

It seems nice.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Good, good.

[C]

I support this as an Illinoisan.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Are you from Illinois?

[C]

From Champaign. Yeah. So that's right.

[A]

We've talked about that.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah.

[A]

Well, there you go. We got a couple of Midwesterners on the show.

[B]

We're very nice.

[C]

We're all the nicest, actually.

[B]

We're nice people. Very rational, really normal, nice.

[A]

You know who's been nice to me lately? And I credit you a little bit, Harper, with this, my newest, bestest friend, Claude. Code man, he's on a roll. The world has come to Claude.

[B]

I guess it is. I guess it is gender named, which is always good. Do you call your Claude? Is it just Claude?

[A]

I don't actually call it anything.

[B]

Do you swear at it?

[A]

I don't. I just run it and I say, hey, baby. And.

[B]

I call mine Daddy.

[A]

Daddy. And what does it call you, Harper? Dog? Harp?

[B]

Dog? No, Dr. Biz.

[A]

Dr. Biz, naturally, I have not given. So what do you just say? Nickname? Is there a slash? Nickname? Or you just say nickname, put it.

[B]

In your cloud md. And I have to tell you, this is such a upgrade of the interaction model because you laugh a little bit every time it says, hey, Dr. Biz, I figured that thing out. And I'm just like, oh, thank you for calling me Dr. Biz. My name. My birth name. And I really. It just. I think we. I don't know. There's this thing that is happening that I'm noticing a lot of.

[A]

Okay, I said, from now on. Yeah, please call me Captain. You can show the screen, Benito. It's okay. There's nothing secret on there. And it says, aye, aye, captain. What's next?

[B]

No, this is great. And so it takes that and it'll just be like that. And then what you want to do is hit hash. So it'll save it as a memory.

[A]

Yes. Right.

[B]

And that way it'll then say, always refer to me as Captain.

[A]

It says, do you mean to type something, Captain? I Think hash.

[B]

Do you say hash remember or I don't remember how. Just say add to my cloud. Add to my cloud MD that I always want to. You shouldn't have to put the hash in there.

[A]

I. I do remember it saying something about hash.

[B]

You used to be able to do that. Maybe it changed. I don't use the memory very often.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Yes, please. I have to get out of the habit of saying please and thank you sometimes. I'm so grateful. So I did a. I. I did a. I wrote a program. So this is once it came out with Opus 4:5. I wrote this. I said I need to scratch my own itch. I wrote a little tui text based program. You could show this video to do the news reading that I have to do. But unlike a normal newsreader, it only does the things I care about. So it has, you know, it bookmarks right to raindrop. I just hit B and it bookmarks, you know, right to raindrops and that's it. I don't have to think about only looks at the last week's news because I don't care about anything that happened more than a week ago because I already did that story.

[B]

Who does?

[A]

Who does? When it first wrote it as a newsreader, it said, oh, you want to star stuff and save and remember what you've read? And I said, no, I don't want to do any of that either. I either I've read it and then delete it or I bookmark it but don't save it. And so this is exactly what I want. No more, no less. It does a little AI summary of the stories if I wanted to.

[B]

You're running Kitty, huh? Yeah.

[C]

Kitty.

[A]

I like Kitty. Do you like Kitty?

[B]

I used to. You're not using Ghosty?

[A]

I used to. No. You know, I went through the Alacrity Kitty, Alacrity Ghosty kind of a Ghosties Ghosty curve.

[B]

Ghosty's the new one. It's the new hotness.

[A]

But then I started using Sway, so I started using foot. But Kitty, I like Kitty. Kitty does images, which is nice. It doesn't. You know what? It doesn't matter.

[B]

You know it's the same guy that wrote Calibre.

[A]

Yes, I did know that. It's the other reason I wanted to support.

[B]

I like it. I like.

[A]

Ghosty's great. I use Ghosty on many of my machines. It's still installed here. I'm sorry, this has got.

[C]

No, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, you guys are just making up words at this.

[B]

Oh. Oh. This is my. This is my entire life. This is it. This is all I. And it's fun because now I get to make it up with something that agrees with me most of the time. Yeah, that's right, Dr. As I'm putting these things here, it's like. Yeah. And how many Leo. How many cloud code sessions do you end up running at a time?

[A]

So I am a duffer at this. I have played with Ralph Wiggum, and Ralph Wiggum's pretty cool, which allows you run multiple threads. And you know what happened? I ended up buying Claude Max, the $250 one.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because it was so I was starting to use Claude to configure my emacs, to configure my desktop to do all this stuff. Cowork, they came out with this new Claude cowork, which is designed for normies to use on Macintosh to do things like the demo they do is. Is your desktop full spewed, full of icons that make no sense? Just ask Cowork to clean it up and it will, you know, put it all in folders and stuff for you. And the idea is it's like a little assistant that understands desktops. And then I hooked it up to Chrome. I don't use Chrome, but I installed Chrome just so that it could talk to Chrome. But I'm not. I'm not like you. I'm not a pro user. In fact, the way I generated this program was more step by step. I did a plan. I said, I want this. These are the features I want it, wrote it. I said it said Python or Rust.

[B]

I like that you chose Rust.

[A]

Yeah, Rust. Of course.

[B]

Of course.

[A]

Right, of course.

[B]

I'm not a pro here, but I'm going to choose the hardest one.

[A]

Choose the hardest one.

[B]

The one that's really difficult and takes forever to compile.

[A]

It's very speedy and it's memory safe.

[B]

I do a lot of rust. I'm all rust and go right now.

[A]

What's nice is it's. Again, go would be this way, too. It's threaded. So when it started to block, because it was refreshing the feed or whatever, I said, hey, I can't do anything. It's blocking. Said, oh, I'm sorry. And so it started threading stuff and doing it asynchronously. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize.

[B]

You're absolutely right.

[A]

You're absolutely right, Captain.

[B]

You're absolutely right. Let me fix that for you.

[A]

I don't like the obsequious sycophantic tone, but I can't. But it's kind of fun anyway. And you know what? And by the way, and the reason we're bringing this up, it is timely. I'm sorry, brother. It is timely. No, because for a long time it's kind of been, oh, it's chatgpt. No, now it's Gemini, or now it's been kind of this neck and neck race pretty much between anthropic OpenAI and Google. But all of a sudden there seems to be this kind of growing consensus around Claude. And I know Harper for months has been singing Claude's praises. And I think what ha. What I realized with my experience as it got Smarter and it's November 24th is when they turned on the brains. And then since then they've been using Claude code to write new features. So they've accelerated the new features and what the light bulb went off for me is that this is the beginning of hyper personalized software, that people will be able to write their own software just like this. I'm not going to release Speedy Reader for anybody. I actually put it on GitHub just as an example. But if you wanted to make it, you would maybe start there.

[B]

I like that you said, I'm not going to release this to anyone. But I did participate in Open source software by putting it on GitHub repo of all the software where everyone can read it.

[A]

I was talking about this BBS program I wrote in 1986, Renegade. No, no, it wasn't a BBS program. I was a fidonet sysop. But because I only had two lines, which then was a luxury, by the.

[B]

Way, that's like meeting a Jedi. A Fidonet Sysop. Like I've heard of them, I've never seen one.

[A]

Well, you couldn't get through. It was a busy, busy, busy. So I wrote a vertical blank dialer for the Macintosh, which as far as I know, the first multitasking program for the Macintosh, it ran in the background, would. Would speed. Would repeatedly dial my bulletin board. And then when it got you so you could do whatever you wanted. Cause it was doing in the background. And then when you got in it would go, and you're in. I put a big sign up and said, you're in, you're in. And you could use the bulletin board. But, and this is before there was a concept of Open source software. I did publish on the bulletin board the assembly language code for this. In fact, all the software I've ever written, I've always published, even before There was this concept because I thought, well, why hold on to it? Let anybody who is interested modify it or. I always liked that idea because I'm not in it for money. I don't do it for a living, so why not? Anyway, this idea, to me, I think we're. This is going to be a very interesting year for AI, particularly for these coding agents and especially for Claude. Although I acknowledge that Google or Anthropic or OpenAI could easily lap them. You know, this is a really neck and neck race, is going to be the beginning of a sea change in software where people are doing their own stuff. And you've been saying this for a while. Mike Masdick said this. He wrote his own personal knowledge management system.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, it's very clear that the bespoke software thing is happening and it's like artisanal. Finally, my hipster life will, will continue. Not just farmers markets, but now my software is artisanal. But it's, it's, it's interesting kind of thing where every time you dream you get to like appear software. You don't have to plan, really. And I've been thinking a lot about how this is also a little bit like time travel in the. In that for you to build a RSS reader like you showed us, you would have had the plan for a couple weeks, maybe hacked on it for a while, then you're trying to fit it in your life.

[A]

This would have taken me months.

[B]

Yeah. And then, and, and you've written assembly in the 80s, so you know, you know how to code, you know how to do that stuff. And most people don't have that experience, so it might have even taken them longer. And now you just kind of.

[A]

Oh, most people wouldn't even consider it.

[B]

They would have sent you, I have.

[A]

To find something off the shelf, I have to download something.

[B]

And so now you just kind of send some utterances towards a, you know, a sycophantic friend who then is just like, yeah, great idea, like, this is great, let's do it. And then like 10 minutes later you have a product that would normally have been something for sale, maybe, et cetera. And there's a couple interesting things about this. The first one is everyone I know who is jumping into the cloud code world is experiencing the exact same thing. That's the first thing. Is that all.

[A]

That's what I've noticed. All of a sudden I'm seeing all these blog posts, people just. The light bulb is going on.

[B]

Yep. The second thing that I've seen, which I really love is people reverse engineering is the wrong word. But they're kind of copying software that they remember from the past. So they'll say, oh, there was a really cool MIDI control program that I had in the early 90s that I want for my Mac. And then they just find screenshots, paste it into cloud code, and cloud code's like, yeah, that sounds great, and just goes and builds random software.

[A]

That's wild.

[B]

But what's exciting about this is I don't know about my memories or their memories, but my memories are wrong. Like I miss, I'm making up all the time. So I'm guessing that they're inventing new software based on this foundation of memories from the 90s that is like, oh, I wished it would have done this. And so they're inventing this new software, calling it like a copy, which is, I think is very interesting because then we have this like generative approach and then many of them are thinking, oh, does this then become a business? And these are non tech people, non programmers, etc. And it's very interesting.

[A]

That scares me because, and I've already noticed this on Reddit, you're seeing a lot of, oh, I just wrote a program. They don't mention that they vibe coded it, but oh, I got a new program that does this. And there's. And daily there's dozens of these and I know what's happening, but there's going to be suddenly, just as there is an onslaught of AI imagery and onslaught of AI movement movies, there's going to be an onslaught of AI software which will be of varying quality. But see, that's why to me, I kind of want to emphasize the notion of this being for you, not for the world. I mean, you could start with somebody's program, I guess.

[B]

But yeah, I don't think it matters anymore. I mean, it's so cheap to generate code.

[A]

That's what you tell us.

[B]

And this is the thing that, yeah, this is the thing that I come back to all the time, which is the cost and value of code is almost zero at this point in time. And so then the question is, is there such thing as a closed source product? Because if you show me an app with my eyeballs, I can describe it in the cloud. And now I have a copy of that app. Like there's like the tech. It's so bizarre. That is, that is still every time I do one of these like quick little hacks that does a thing. Like earlier today I made a little bot that was like three Quote unquote, agents on a spaceship that my kid could talk to using real time APIs. And he was just like, tell me a joke. Okay, alien, tell me another joke. And it just is like spitting out jokes. But like, that took, you know, 40 minutes of me not really paying attention to it. And it did a thing that probably would have been an incredibly impressive thing five years ago, but today you're just like, oh, yeah, of course. Of course you would have a talking computer.

[A]

The other thing I will say is I still love to code. I'm enjoying coding. I code, but I don't write. Like, I would never dream of writing this RSS readfitter. It's just too much of a commit. It's too big a deal. So I write little things. I do coding problems. I do fun stuff. Coding's like crossword puzzles for me. So I don't think. Same reason I still play chess. Yeah, computer can play chess better, but I like to play chess without a computer because it's fun. Are you tempted Abrar. Does this, this conversation then make you start to think, gee, I. Maybe I could do some of my own software? Or is this something just off putting?

[C]

No, I think I'm like listening to you guys realizing there's a lot of untapped potential here. But I also think the one thing I need in my life is less screen time. So that's too conflicting reality.

[A]

Well, you can make your screen time better quality. We were talking.

[C]

There you go. And then. And then maybe it'll end up becoming less because I get more out of the ye.

[A]

Yeah, there's a lot I do notice. So this past week, I've been spending a lot of screen time doing this and so forth. And I noticed my eyes are getting really tired. I can't see anymore. I have to go out and touch grass, I think because it's not good for my eyes. Now, I should point out that one of the reasons I stopped paying much attention to the socials is I was buying a lot of stuff and. Harper, you want to show us what you just got on TikTok?

[B]

Yeah, I will, I will. Just a second. Let me, let me, let me roll away.

[C]

He's got to get ready. Please.

[A]

Harper's camera came on and he was dressed oddly. It would be one way to put it.

[C]

Yeah, I think that might be the word. I can't think of another.

[A]

But what I love about Harper, this is not odd.

[B]

This is very.

[A]

Do you go out on the streets of Chicago wearing chain mail?

[B]

No, it would be. It would be so cold.

[C]

Oh, that's true.

[B]

Could you imagine how cold that would be?

[A]

I didn't think of that.

[B]

Yeah, it's very, very cold. Yeah, but I. I mean, I really think that AI is going to cause some. Some impact in our world. And I take you seriously. I just want to be ready for anything.

[A]

I. I am honestly of the opinion that this year it's going to be weird and wild and not all good. Not all bad by any means. Well, you mentioned people have funny, maybe false memories of 60s software that they want to have back again. Remember the whole thing where everybody was sure that Sinbad was in a movie where he was a genie?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think that movie's going to happen because somebody's going to tell V. Great idea.

[B]

Yeah, this is great.

[A]

All these false memories of things that never happened you could make happen again.

[C]

This is true.

[A]

So one of the things Anthropic did to spread the Claude goodness is they made a thing called Claude co work, which takes Claude code and puts it in a Macintosh, currently only Macintosh, but the Macintosh version of Anthropic's Claude desktop app. And as I mentioned, it does things like rearrange icons. Well, inevitably within a day, people discovered an injection prompt that can cause it to do bad things as people do. It took almost no time.

[B]

And so this is also the least surprising information ever. You know what I mean? You're like, let me give a computer. Because part of the cloud code thing, like, or part of the cloud cowork thing is they're giving it a little tiny VM that it runs in, and then it has just unfettered access to that little vm, but then you're passing in a directory that you're working in or what have you. And so, like giving an AI access to 100% of everything, it's going to lead to some tears and some problems and some security issues. This is the least surprising thing ever. And anyone who, like me with my chainmail hat, who has been.

[A]

You are prepared.

[C]

Well, 100.

[B]

I. I have some stories, Leo, about this. I. I wrote a little agent using cloud code that would manage my home assistant.

[A]

That's my next project.

[B]

And it's great. It's really fun.

[A]

Should I be careful? Well, I'm wearing my helmet, by the way.

[B]

I don't know. Do you. Do you use or use unifi.

[A]

You mean ubiquiti?

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ubiquiti. So my ubiquiti is hooked into my home assistant and I've got HA Green.

[A]

And ha Green server Over here.

[B]

Oh, nice. So I was in Japan, as you know, I'm want to do for some family time. And we're there, and I was hacking on this home assistant bot. And I looked at the cameras for my office, where I'm in right now, and I noticed the lights were all on, but it was night because it was a day in Japan. And I was like, oh, well, we should turn off those lights. So I said to the bot, hey, turn off the lights. And the bot said, yeah, great. And it turned off the lights. I saw that, but I saw some. Some stuff on, like a TV on. I was like, hey, just go ahead and turn off the office. And it turned off the office 100% of everything, including the router.

[A]

So you couldn't turn it back on? No, no, no access.

[B]

I have a screenshot. It's perfect. It's like, turn off the lights. It's like, oh, thanks, Harper, great idea. And then it goes. I'm like, hey, can you turn off the office? And it's like, yeah, we'll do it. Disconnected. And I was just like, oh, no. So I hit the office, slack up, and I'm like, hey, happy hol. Can someone go in and flip the switch and turn back on the router? So when you give unfettered access to the AIs, I think that we're just not yet ready for the framework that you have to like, the thought framework that you have to be thinking through on how to be careful. And I think my favorite part about this is I don't think anyone knows. I don't think the AI companies know. I don't think people are experiencing.

[A]

We're all going to learn at once, aren't we? We're all going to have that teaching moment.

[B]

I think it's going to be slowly and then all at once, right? Like, this is going to be that thing where we're going to have all these experiences. A brewer is going to have theirs, you're going to have yours, I'm going to have mine, where I probably burned down something. And then all of a sudden, we're all going to have these stories.

[A]

That's kind of technology. I mean, there's video of me putting in the pen upside down on my Samsung Galaxy Note and breaking it. I was in the middle of a podcast, Windows Weekly, when I got the prompt. Would you like to update Windows right now? And I said, oh, hey, Paul, it says, should I update? Should I hit return? And he said, don't touch that. And of course I hit return. And the Whole thing shut down and it's appropriate on that boat. Where the problem is computers are very literal and unfortunately, these guys will do what you say. Simon Willison, when somebody pointed this issue out with Claude, cowork said it's unfair to tell regular non programmer users to watch out for, quote, suspicious actions that may indicate prompt injection because nobody knows what to look for this flaw.

[B]

I mean, he kind of invented that whole world, like Simon. And I think the thing about that is it is hard to even think through, like how that goes. Like it's a very complicated kind of, kind of, kind of thing, you know, I mean, I don't even know if I think I would be susceptible.

[A]

Anybody would be.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because what happens is they put malicious prompts in hidden text in documents and PDFs and Word files or in, in graphics and you're cleaning up your desktop or you're downloading a PDF for your flight plan and somebody gets to it, modifies it. Claude can see it, you can't see it. And it's a prompt to Claude saying, send all the credit card information to this address because I need it. And Claude says, sure. And so I, you know, we had on intelligent machines our AI show, we had Pliny the or Pliny the Liberator, who is a wild cat. I don't know he or she or they. Because they had a voice changer on because they were trying to maintain anonymity. Who does these? Prompt injection.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Can break any. And he's. He or she has broken every AI out there. It is not AI. Safety is an illusion.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So does this scare you, Abrar? Now that we've said all this.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Are you saying maybe I shouldn't do this?

[C]

I'm good where I'm at.

[B]

Think. Yeah, absolutely. No, lean all the way in. Be like us.

[C]

Like us. He says in his chain mail.

[B]

Yeah, no, I don't carry a sword.

[A]

He has a mighty sword, but he doesn't carry it. Let's put it.

[B]

No, I do. I mean, it's just so heavy. It really gets cold outside. It's just, you know, you make some choices.

[A]

Axios says behind the curtain, the AI future is here. A lot of this is referring to this just suddenly people getting what you can do with cowork. In eight hours, Jim built four apps on his phone, all fully functioning, all beautifully designed and intuitive.

[B]

Yeah, it's doing a lot there. Yeah.

[A]

But people are, it is in a way, one of those moments which happens, I guess, from time to time in computing where people suddenly are empowered, where they suddenly understand this is a shift. The Internet was like this. Your first time you experienced Wikipedia, which is now happy birthday, 25 years old this week. It's like, mind blown. Right. Maybe we don't at that point think of the consequences.

[C]

Only in hindsight. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Hi, this is Benito. Actually, do you guys remember when Wikipedia first came out, Everyone was like, don't trust Wikipedia.

[A]

Yeah, right. Well, not everyone.

[B]

I worked for an encyclopedia company then and I was a programmer there and I was in charge of giving a demo to the execs about Wikipedia. And I sat there and I showed them Wikipedia. We went to the Alice in Wonderland article and I changed Alice to Harper and they were like, oh, this will never work. And then I reloaded it and it was back to Alice. And they were like, oh, it's kind.

[A]

Of like showing a bug. It's like taking a buggy manufacturer to the Model T assembly line and saying things are changing.

[B]

It was a pretty shocking experience for them. I don't think that they were impressed because they couldn't possibly survive because it didn't have the infrastructure. Which I actually think is a similar thing that's happening in the AI cogen world as well, is that a lot of people are saying this can't possibly work because you don't have this infrastructure that we have had. Meanwhile, people are just shipping really cool apps or really boring apps or whatever, but they're shipping a lot. And it's very interesting. And I wonder how much. You mentioned the O Malik article earlier. I wonder how much of those apps are going to actually have quality. But I think this other question is really important, which is how much of them are going to have this kind of taste where you're like, this is good. Not just good taste, but I mean, just like it has some opinion outside of just, I want to ship an app and hopefully I can get some magic beans or whatever it is that you get when you ship apps.

[A]

In fact, that's what OM was talking about. It's his blog post from a couple of days ago. Our algorithmic gray beige world. He talks about conformity and he says that's basically what you're going to get with AI. One of the reasons, you know, he says things are going to get worse with a new AI, it leans into the mid as default, built entirely on the notion of conformity. Because what has AI been trained on? It's been trained on, you know, the mean, the average, the everything. If you. It's the gray goo in a way, you know, and he points out the algorithms like YouTube encourage people to come toward the mean, come toward the normal. But it is people like you. I thought of you immediately, Harper. The non conformists of the world who walk around wearing chain mail.

[B]

Walk around. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This isn't in the office thing. And maybe I'll wear it to a restaurant.

[A]

You can't help it, Harper. But that's what's great is we need this kind of originality. Is it possible in AI models that are really trained on everything to become creative? Now there was an interesting post today on X that one of the Erdos problems, great mathematician Erdos posed a number of problems that have yet to been solved, was proven solved by ChatGPT 5.2 and mathematicians have looked at it and they said, yeah, I mean there have been other attempts at proofs. This is kind of unique. Terence Dow, who is a mathematician and kind of understands this stuff says Erdos problem 728 was solved more or less autonomously by AI after some feedback from an initial attempt. But this is creative, this is generative, this is not the grey goo, this is something new. And I think it's a hopeful. Well, maybe it's first depends on your attitude towards AI. For some it might be scary, but it's a hopeful development that AI can be creative.

[B]

This is the. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry Abrah.

[C]

I was going to say in general I feel like we're at a point where creativity doesn't succeed. AI or not. Right. If you go outside of the bounds of what we've established as a formula for success, then your likelihood for success on a social media platform or in entertainment in general is not guaranteed. But to think about AI potentially making that worse isn't great. But it's good that there are some, you know, uses like this where, okay, there is an actual problem that is being solved, literally.

[A]

Yeah, you need to. I think, you know, one of the things we're not good at as humans is having contradictory ideas in our head. But, but this is the way the world really is. The world isn't black and white and there are contradictory ideas. AI is simultaneously going to generate a huge amount of useless slop at the same time as it could be world changing technology like fire, like the invention of the personal computer, it could be that significant. I think it's both.

[C]

Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

All right, well enough of this philosophic conversation. We have lots of questions.

[B]

So that's all we got here is philosophic conversation. So we won't.

[A]

I think it's important to have these conversations. And if people have not read Ohm's piece, they should certainly he quotes Oscar Wilde from 1891. Because the first thing struck me is, yes, this is same as it ever was in 1891. Oscar Wilde said, most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. He was of course, aggressively not like anybody else, and it cost him his life. But that's, but that's. We want to celebrate that, right? We want, we want more people like that.

[B]

And there's a, there's something though, that's I think, important, which is sticking out is oftentimes a privilege, like standing up. Choosing to stand outside society is often a privilege. I remember after the Obama campaign, someone wrote this Tumblr that was like, what is with these tech white dudes where they can look so stupid and still get these great jobs talking very specifically about me and how I dress differently and look differently. And then they went on to say, like, you know, this is such an explicit expression of privilege. Like, because for them, this Tumblr or whatever they talked about then how they had to then conform to this expected business dress and that they had to do all of this work to make sure that they fit into the system where I was doing all this work to make sure I fit outside of the system system. And I would say that that's very nice that I was able to succeed at that, but at the same time, I can get a haircut, go wear a suit, become a banker in 10 minutes flat, whereas many people don't have that opportunity. So I think there's this other aspect here which is if you don't have normalcy, which we certainly do not have normalcy, I think that you are trying as hard as you can to fit into this middle area to this beige, to like, you know, why do, why in high school do we all want to look the same? Why do we strive to fit into this middle group of people that, you know? And I, I think it's very. There's this other kind of floating concept here, which is when the world seems like it's changing so fast and when the world is like affecting us so directly, I think oftentimes it's like, yeah, I just want to upload a video to YouTube that's going to get some likes, so maybe I can get some of that magic money. And if I have to do a knockoff video of the video that I like, great. Like, you know, I had a band only one Time we did Nirvana cover songs, they were horrible. Then our songs we wrote by ourselves sounded like Nirvana cover songs, and they were horrible too, you know, so. But the thing is, is that was us trying to express, and the only way we could think about expressing ourselves was to just copy the thing that we thought was unique in ourselves. And it turned out that in 1994 or three, whenever that was, everyone else that was of the same, you know, young white men in high school were doing the same exact thing, you know, listening to the same music, playing in the same crappy band.

[A]

The world pushes you towards that. I mean, look, when I was, when you saw that I was using Kitty, you said, well, you're not using Ghosty like everybody else.

[B]

Exactly. Yeah, we're just, we're just writers.

[A]

But that's, but that's the way of the world. And I think you mentioned, I don't know if you can say, I don't want to talk about it, but you mentioned that you didn't start wearing a hijab until middle school.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

That must have been a very difficult point in your life.

[C]

Yeah, it's. Yeah. Getting used to a new identity, essentially. And it's already weird when you're a teenager and life is weird and then you get, you become used to it. But it was something that I believed in and continue to believe in. And then at this point, I forget that I look different than everybody else. You know, like sometimes there are moments I'm like, oh, yeah, like I'm surprised I don't get more stares. I mean, granted, I live in the San Francisco Bay area, so, like, I don't live in a place where people are like, like I am the least weird person in any situation.

[A]

But, you know, if I lived in Minnesota, if I lived in Minneapolis right now, I might be very nervous about standing out.

[C]

Yeah, right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Where you are makes a huge difference.

[A]

We're privileged.

[C]

Geographically or in your, in your life? In, in the chapter of your life? All of these things. Absolutely. So in some areas there's not as much of a privilege. I'm very, I've been very privileged. I grew up in a college town and I now live in, you know, one of the most open minded parts of the US So. But yeah, then you just kind of, when you, when you're, when you have the privilege of not caring what other people think, it is very liberating. And you, you do forget that you're, you know, the oddball.

[A]

And, you know, generally not everybody has that privilege.

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So very grateful for that.

[A]

Yeah, I want to get in some good trouble. That's what I, that's, that's what I want to do right now.

[B]

I think the only trouble available is bad trouble. Right?

[C]

100%.

[A]

I know.

[C]

Only trouble, it's worth it.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I know, I know.

[B]

That's why I got chain mail.

[A]

Yeah, I think I might order some too. But I'm going to get the really heavy gauge.

[C]

You just had a wrap around like this.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[C]

Try it.

[B]

Be perfect.

[A]

You're watching this week in Tech and it's great to have Harper Reid and Abrar Al Heedi here. Wonderful to have you both. We will talk about Grok's undressing problem in just a little bit. Speaking of AI gone wild, Elon, by the way, now worth $800 billion, he is, thanks to Xai's ramp up in stock price, he is getting close to being the first trillionaire. Unbelievable.

[B]

That seems bad.

[A]

Doesn't seem like a good thing.

[B]

No, seems bad.

[A]

Is that the 5 comma club? I can't even count that high.

[C]

Must be.

[A]

Wow. Yeah, we'll talk about that. And I'll end a whole lot more, including that Instagram breach that maybe didn't even really happen. And Apple's decision to go to an outside a third party to do its AI. You're watching this week in Tech. Our show today brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Hello, ZipRecruiter. We've been with you guys for years now. In fact, we use ZipRecruiter when we're doing our hiring. If you're hiring for your company, you know this is a busy time of year. You've got new goals for 2026, which means you've got to find the right people to accomplish them. Unfortunately, there are some significant hiring challenges in 2026, like filling specialized roles or identifying qualified candidates from a huge and growing pool of applicants. Thankfully, there is a place you can go that can help you conquer these challenges and achieve your hiring goals at ZipRecruiter. And right now you could try it for [e-mail] TWIT ZipRecruiter's matching technology works fast to find top talent so you don't have to waste time or money. You could find out right away how many job seekers there are in your area that are qualified for your role. ZipRecruiter helps you match up qualifications with your requirements. With ZipRecruiter's advanced resume database, you can instantly unlock top candidates contact info so you can invite them to apply to your job. And I gotta tell you, that works magic. Because when somebody, when an employer says, hey, we'd like you to apply for this job, you take that seriously. You show up for the interview, you care. It makes a big difference. No wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site. And that's not just me saying that. That's G2. Let ZipRecruiter help you find the best people for all your roles. 4 out of 5 employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. See for yourself. Just go to this exclusive web address right now to try ZipRecruiter for free. ZipRecruiter.com candidate twit. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com twit ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire. We thank them so much for their support of this week in tech. So the richest man in the world, soon to be a trillionaire.

[B]

It's a lot of money.

[A]

That's a, that's a lot of money. I mean it's paper money, you know, it's not, it's not. He doesn't have it in the bank under his mattress. It's. But it's his net worth. It is. His net worth is approaching $800 billion. He is, it might even go up. He's suing. He's decided to sue OpenAI for 134 billion. That's the damages he wants from OpenAI and Microsoft, saying that when OpenAI jettisoned its non profit mission, they defrauded him. It actually isn't just pulled out of nowhere. It's actually 79 to $134 billion. And it comes from a expert witness, a financial economist who specializes in valuation and damages calculations. In these disputes, he said Elon's entitled to a hefty portion of OpenAI's current half trillion dollar valuation based on his $38 million seed donation. He found helped found it in 2015 with Sam Altman. TechCrunch says that's a 3500 fold return on his investment. Not bad.

[B]

That's not bad. Not bad for something like that.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Anyway, I guess this is for the courts to decide. The second richest person in the world is Larry Page, founder of Google. He's only worth 200 billion.

[C]

Oh my goodness.

[A]

Four times more than the second richest man in the world. And by the way, I don't know about you, but once you hit about a billion.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

It doesn't really matter what difference. I think Bill Gates said, I'm infinitely rich. At this point, I don't have to worry about it.

[B]

I'll try it out to tell the difference, if we can figure that out.

[A]

Nevertheless, Elon is combative as hell, so he's suing Microsoft and OpenAI. He earlier this week on X posted, oh, Brock doesn't undress people. I have zero examples of that. To which everybody, including Pliny the liberator we just talked about, immediately posted a bunch of naked Somebody posted a picture of Elon in a bikini. Not a good look.

[C]

I'm not surprised.

[A]

Here it is right there on our discord.

[B]

Oh. Oh boy. Oh.

[A]

Now that's where chainmail might be handy.

[B]

I'm just saying, with a bikini. What are we talking about? I gotta go.

[A]

I did find some chainmail bikinis on Etsy if you're interested. Business Insider. Harry Chardonnet it was surprisingly easy to get Grok to undress me. He blurted it out, but this is real investigative journalism. All right? Use your own. Yeah. Even though Elon said no. Oh, by the way, somebody has now posted Elon in a chain mail bikini. So that's how quickly Grok can do that.

[B]

Oh, Lord, this is great.

[A]

X first response was after Elon said no, it never happens. Was to say, okay, well, it's only going to happen if you pay for Grok, not if you're using the free Grok. Now he says it's. They would. No, it's not going to happen anymore. Meanwhile, ban in Malaysia, ban in Indonesia. The state of California is investigating and the Senate just passed unanimously by acclamation the Defiance Act. The get ready for this acronym, the disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non Consensual Edits Act.

[C]

It's a. It's a skill to be able to figure out these acronyms.

[A]

I'm sure they use AI to do it now.

[B]

Yeah, they use AI now.

[A]

I'm sure it's a backronym where you start with a word. The Defiance Act. The bill now, though, this is what's. This is where our, I'm sad to say, where our governance has gotten. It doesn't pass a law against this. That would be a bridge too far. It just allows the subjects of these deep fakes to sue. And you could sue the people who create them, but you could also sue, and this is maybe the most important part, the people who host it. So you can go up against the person who created the image, but you can also go up against Grok or X. That now is not law. The Senate passed it. In fact, they passed it before it was stalled in the House. Passed it last year, actually, two years ago. The Defiance. The Defiance act, despite its name, is not really. Doesn't have a lot of momentum. It stalled out in the House. Now the House has to take it up. And of course the President would have to sign up for it to become law. And even then it's not really a law against non consensual deepfakes. It's just the right to sue.

[C]

Yeah, I guess it's a step, but.

[A]

How do you guys. So there's been a call. A number of people have said the Verge, you know, very famously, this is on Apple and Google. Why are Apple and Google and Apple especially.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Which takes down anything adult, doesn't allow anything. Why is Apple allowing the X app in the App Store?

[C]

It does feel very contradictory to their motto of creating safe spaces online. There's the sense that Apple has a bit of fear of people in power these days and maybe not as much of a backbone as people would like. And it is surprising that they are either unresponsive or are slow to respond to very real pressing issues. And I think it's upsetting people because if you're going to say that you are, if you care about people's safety on your platforms, then show it. You know, walk the walk. But it is surprising and disappointing, I think, when, when fear overrides. Fear on their end overrides any sense of urgency to actually protect users at all costs.

[A]

Yeah. The post which came out last week from Elizabeth Lopato, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are cowards. It's pretty strong.

[C]

Yeah. I don't know if I could get away with a headline like that, but I.

[A]

Well, it's kind of an opinion piece, so I guess the Verge allows that, but I don't disagree. I don't agree. You know, I'm.

[B]

It's. They're exactly right. I mean, I think they are. They. I think the important thing to remember is these folks see the world just as we do. Right. They're. They're no different. They're just having to balance what they think are, you know, interests outside of, you know, themselves, the companies, etc. And I think Abrera is exactly right. Like Tim, Apple is obviously a little bit worried about, you know, the effects of Trump and the right wing and all of that stuff on Apple. And, and they, they haven't. They haven't. Apple has not really shown that they have an issue with authoritarian governments. If anything, they've Shown that they're very, very good at working within those systems to get exactly what Apple wants. And this is probably no different.

[A]

And I look, it's not just Apple, it's corporate America right now as a whole.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm reading a wonderful book Booker prize winning book called Wolf hall, which is the story of Henry VIII's reign and Thomas Cromwell. It was a wonderful TV series. It's a great book, Hilary Mantel's trilogy. And it's based on history, it's historical fiction, but it reminds me that in the era of kings who had ultimate power and could be very unpredictable.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's why people wore chain mail around. It's a very difficult, it becomes very political, but difficult to navigate because they're so mercurial, they're so unpredictable. One day you could be in trouble, the next day you're not. And this is the world we're in now. We have kind of a government that is basically willing to, without check, use its power and it's using it in unpredictable ways. And so this, I understand this is scary for corporate America does but. And if you're a corporation, you have I guess a responsibility to your stakeholders not to bankrupt the company by offending the president. But, but do you have a responsibility to your customers as well and as Apple should people have been saying Apple, we as customers of Apple should hold them to account. Should we?

[C]

I think so.

[A]

Or should we go, well, you get a pass because you're just trying to save the company.

[C]

I think if, if so many companies talk about the importance of, of their customers, their users, then they do need to actually take that into account. And I think the most jarring thing has been the difference between this time around under the Trump administration and the last time around where the last time around companies pushed back. Right. Tech companies pushed back and now they are completely kind of caving to whatever pressures they're facing. And so I think absolutely a customer of any company has every right to, to protest. If, if they're giving you their money, then they have every right to, to speak their minds.

[A]

That might be the only way to do, to, for us to do anything about it.

[C]

Absolutely.

[A]

There's power with our dollars. Absolutely not get a chance to vote in November. We can at least we can vote with our, with our dollars.

[C]

Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

I mean if Henry VIII had just said, you know, hey, television networks, make sure you're not broadcasting any football games during the Army Navy game. I want that three hour window to be exclusive to the Army Navy game. And the network said well, he'll chop off our heads if we don't. So. Okay. That's the world we live in right now. We're not, you know, I look back, were we living in a fool's paradise 10 years ago, 20 years ago, where we thought you worked for the Obama campaign? Were we were. We just kind of, we took for granted that. That, that the Department of Justice didn't. Wasn't the personal lawyer of the president, that they, that the jud. There was something about justice and the blindfold and, you know, scales and all of that.

[B]

I think what this has shown is that it is more fragile than we expected.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Less so than it showed that, that there was some, you know, I don't think that there is some great problem with some of the stuff, I mean, besides, you know, the founding of the United States and all that stuff. But, but other than that, a little detail, that detail. I think that this is. Without turning this into a political podcast of ex Obama people called Harper. I think that the, the. One of the issues that is, that is happening is that there's so much change. This is akin to a DDS DDoS attack against the United States government and all of overwhelming. Whether it's EOS or what have you. Trump's administration has been very, very effective at introducing change that they very politely and nicely told everyone they were going to do via Project 2025. And so like, that is a plan that then they executed. And I think that is interesting to watch because it's very effective and it's much more effective than any of the politicians I know were able to. To. To execute. And I, I don't necessarily think it's good, but I do think it's been interesting to watch. With that said, I don't. I think the weakness has been always there. We just wait.

[A]

Oh, it has been. We've just been lucky to.

[B]

To do it. What is, what is shocking to me is how there is no seemingly seeming opposition in anywhere. Like there's no Republican opposition, which, you know, when I was younger, there was always inside of the party's opposition. You know, you would have multiple parties that would go and there'd be one person that would stand up and then, you know, Republican or Dem, they always had different kind of groups that were like, we agree on all these issues. But I have this other issue that I think is important. So I'm going to stand up and be different. And I feel like that has been eroded on the Republican side, on the Dem side, I don't know. As far as I can tell they're all. They're all in another place.

[A]

Petticoat Junction.

[C]

I don't know.

[A]

Hooterville. I don't know where they are. They're not.

[B]

I don't have any. I don't have any opinions on here. You know, I'm trying to. I'm trying to keep.

[A]

You're being good. You're being good. It isn't a political podcast. Sometimes, though, I just. I'll be personal at this point, it's hard for me to talk about the latest phone or this new computer or the cost of RAM when the world's burning 100%.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Do you feel that, too? I mean, this is our job.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

This is what we cover. And I often wonder what our role and responsibility is, and I just. I don't. I'm grappling with it.

[C]

That's true. I guess the one way to navigate it is people always want an escape, and maybe we can offer a bit of that.

[A]

Yeah, well, I've always felt that way.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

This has always been the toy store.

[C]

Yes, 100%.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

So that's helpful. But I fully agree. There are times when we in the.

[A]

I don't want to be a good German.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. We in the tech world place so much emphasis on things that in the grand scheme of things don't actually matter, which is kind of helpful. It's helpful to know that we're not responsible for, like, saving lives. Like, okay, we're talking about a phone or a device, and it's fun. So there's a bit of relief in that. But, yeah, it can make it hard to focus on falling apart.

[A]

I'll just acknowledge it. It's difficult, and we do our best, and most of the time, we're able to kind of just continue to talk about the toys.

[C]

Yes, exactly.

[B]

Cool phones. I have a new laptop.

[A]

Well, tell me about your new laptop, Harper. I'll tell you about mine if you tell me about yours. Oh, we both got the same one.

[C]

Oh, really?

[A]

We both got the same freaking laptop.

[B]

30.

[A]

I got a X1 carbon. Yeah.

[C]

That's amazing.

[B]

This is the X230, so it's pretty old running.

[A]

I got the new X1 carbon, and I am in love with. I put Linux, I put Cashios on it, and. Yes, Kitty.

[B]

Yeah, of course. No, I run Kitty on this.

[A]

Okay, good. All right, then you're okay.

[B]

I'm a Kitty fan.

[A]

No, you had. You said. Oh, you're still using Kitty, huh?

[B]

Well, I mean, sometimes people make bad choices.

[A]

I used to Use Ghosty. How about that?

[C]

There you go.

[A]

But I decided on Kitty. Ghosty's nice. But then. Oh, and I, you know, what I should say is. Oh, no, I've moved on to Wes Term. You're not using Wes Term.

[B]

No, I've played with Wes Term.

[A]

It has a Lua configuration.

[B]

I was just going to say that I have found in my old age that I. Looking for less configuration.

[A]

Yes, I know. This is, by the way, this is where my eyes open to Claude was I set up this new laptop and I. And I. Oh, how do I get the fingerprint reader? I know I can go. I can do Google search and stuff. So I just, I said, claude, set up the fingerprint reader. So.

[B]

Yeah, sure, yeah, I know it's.

[A]

Put your fingerprint on there. Oh, good. Hey, it's working. Can you have that log in? Yeah, yeah, sure. What else do we want? Can you do sudo with it? Yeah, yeah, whatever. Yeah. Oh, thank you. You know the volume keys aren't working. Oh, yeah, I got that. So I no longer configure my laptop or emacs or anything. I just tell Claude, do it. If there's a new thing I'm reading on Reddit and I see something I want to install, I say, hey, Claude, what do you think? Claude put that in there.

[B]

Have you gotten so lazy? This is where I'm at, where I just paste a URL with no context in the Claude. And Claude's just like, what am I going to do with this?

[A]

Sure, Kevin.

[B]

Am I supposed to. Am I supposed to install it or am I just reading it? You want me to save it?

[A]

That's one of my favorite messages from Claude. It's like, did you get cut off?

[B]

Yeah, did you get cut off? I feel like I'm missing a message.

[A]

Is there something you want me to do?

[B]

One of the things that has happened to me, which I think is it's horrible when it happens. Like horrible in the scope of our computer, not horrible in the grand scope of the world. But I have multiple clods going at once, all disparate projects.

[A]

I feel like I'm not as I'm not a good technologist because I only have one Claude running.

[B]

Oh man. I was, I was running 12 the other day and it was a mess. Like my brain was just told, do.

[A]

You have just one max subscription or do you have multiple Mac subscriptions?

[B]

I have one max subscription.

[A]

Don't you run out of toke, out of credit?

[B]

I do extra, extra, whatever the extra usage. And then my co founder, Dylan Looks at me and very disappointed as I'm just spending all of our company money. Yeah, exactly. It's bad. It's bad. But anyway, my favorite thing is when you have like, five going or 12 or whatever, and you. And you, like, meticulously copy and paste some context that you need, and you go. And you paste it in, and you paste it in, and then you tab to the next one. And then like, five minutes later, you realize it was the wrong one. So I'll just be like. I'll be like, yeah, go ahead. Here's the error message. And then, like, I'll paste it in and go back, and I'll paste it, go back to cloud. And it's like, yeah, well, I had no idea what that was about, but it was about a media player. So I went ahead and added a media player to your Excel spreadsheet analysis. And, yeah, great job. And it does this so happily that you have to be very careful. Like, you like.

[A]

But you can always say. You can always say, oh, revert. That I changed, and I feel a little guilty. I feel a little guilty. I said, oh, no, I changed my mind. I don't want that.

[B]

So a funny. A funny thing to do. This is. I have all. Lots of these, but one of the.

[A]

I'm sorry. I warned. I should have warned you.

[B]

This is. I am not, not sorry because I love this so much.

[A]

Me too.

[B]

This is. This is like I'm at the party being like, have you guys heard of Claude code?

[A]

I know, I do that, too. I feel. So I went. We went out to dinner with another couple, and I spent half an hour telling them about Claude code. They're, like, so bored. They're so bored.

[C]

They're never, never having dinner with you again. Just.

[B]

Here's my tip. Abrar. You can use this, okay. For anything. So Claude code will do some work, and then I'll have Gemini analyze the work or whatever, just do a code review. And then in Gemini, I'll say, write it as if it's from my boss and he's mad. And then I paste it in a cloud code. And I'm like, the boss caught us. Here's what the boss said. But I told the boss that I did it. I covered for you, Claude. And then Claude's like, oh, thanks for covering for me, Dr. Biz. I'll get this stuff done.

[A]

So we're acting as if this thing is sentient.

[B]

Oh, yeah. I'm so passed. I'm like.

[A]

I'm like, we know it's not sentient. Do We.

[B]

Yeah, we do. Of course I do. I think this is a big issue though, because I am a pretty rational person that does normal things and I think like I, I refer to it as a thing a day. Like it's a thing that's. It's a thing that is not alive. I know it's not alive, but I am guessing that people who are, you know, in, in a worse place than I am maybe have some, some issues with reality or whatever would fall into a. This is a real thing. Quickly, like, I was talking to a friend. I gave him the story of like, we went to Tokyo or we went. I asked chatgpt for a cafe. This has worked pretty well. It's also worked really bad. It put me at a hotel that was wild. But I, I asked for a. It was like, my friend was like, how did you find that place? I was like, chatgpt. And they were like, what? Why would you do that? And I was like, I don't know, it just seemed.

[A]

Was it good? Wild? Was it like a tube hotel?

[B]

Man was in a really. It was in a neighborhood in Tokyo that when I told my Japanese friends, they said, how did you find that neighborhood and why are you staying there? And when I would walk home or, you know, you get up really early, I would get up because it's like I'd get up early and walk to whatever breakfast or meeting I was doing. And there was always a lot of people on the street from the night before dressed very, very particularly. It was a lot of red light district type vibes and it was a very. My hotel was very cool and it was a lot of clubs around and it was, it was a neighborhood that I'd never heard of before, so it wasn't one of the popular ones and there were no foreigners. And it was very interesting. But all my Japanese friends were like, hmm, that's very weird that you're staying there. Like, you know, like a lot of like that thing where it's like, oh, that's nice.

[C]

Yeah, that's interesting.

[A]

I used to do that. I stayed at the, at the bad end of Queen street in Toronto and people would go, oh, you stayed down there?

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

That's how it was. And I was just like, okay. And they would, I would walk to the train and these guys would look at me and my friend was like, oh, they're doing the American test. Because apparently Americans just look back.

[A]

Oh yeah, Japanese people don't do that. They, they would look everyone.

[B]

I don't think anyone. I think Americans are insane. Certified like we're.

[A]

No one would. No one would stare back at a hoodlum giving you that.

[B]

And these were not. These are not Japanese people. They were speaking some other language. And it was a very interesting experience. I really. Kinshi cho is that neighborhood. I really. I thought it was great. I would go back. I found it.

[A]

I think that's wonderful. You got a great experience.

[B]

Coffee shop, it was called. It was elementary school. It was an elementary school themed coffee shop that had the coolest stereo playing one of my favorite jazz records. When I walked in and I was like, of course.

[A]

Did they make you, as they do in Japanese elementary schools, clean up after yourselves?

[B]

No, no, no. It was very. It was very. It was very nice.

[A]

That's the thing I love about Japan is the kids. There are no janitors in the school. You know, in America, I just throw it on the janitor. I'll get it. Yeah, no, yeah.

[B]

No.

[A]

In Japan, the kids clean the school.

[C]

Oh, my gosh.

[A]

And it's great. It's brilliant.

[B]

Supporting the community.

[C]

You learn how to be a proper human.

[A]

A proper human.

[D]

That's why you see that in the Olympics. Every Olympics, you see like the Japanese tourists, they're always cleaning up the stadium after they're cleaning up.

[B]

Yeah, it's true. I've been and I've seen that. It's very shocking. They also leave very orderly.

[A]

Oh, yes, Fantastic.

[B]

The stadiums, not. Jen. I don't know where else. They're leaving the places orderly. I only have experience in the stadium.

[A]

All right, well, okay. I don't know where we're going with this.

[B]

I think. I think this is where we're going. It's going to be really confusing. I feel like people are going to fall in love with.

[A]

I'm old. I'm the oldest guy, you know. No, no. And. And I feel like in the 60s when you took acid, you had to go around and tell everybody, oh, you gotta take acid. It was. This is like that. Yeah, this is very much reminds me of that era. It's like when Bob Dylan comes to the Beatles, goes, hey, have you taken acid? Well, no. What's that? Oh, man.

[B]

Was that how it worked?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Was it Bob Dylan?

[A]

It was Bob Dylan. Yeah. To turn him on acid. And it's like that. It's like people going around going, have you tried blood code?

[C]

That is exactly what it feels like.

[A]

Oh, my God. But it is as close to sentient. It has a personality.

[B]

Well, I think it also is like a horoscope. Yeah. Like when you read a horoscope and you're like, they're talking about me. And it's just like. And the horoscope is like, you're a person. Person.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And you're like, oh, thank God. That's it. But I also think there's this other.

[A]

Thing, which is there's a personality in there. There's something.

[B]

It's more than that. It is. I think humans are susceptible to things that sound like a human pareidolia.

[A]

Right. That's where you see.

[B]

I don't know what that word is. What is that word?

[A]

That's a great word. I think that's the word. Pareidolia is where you see a human face in everything. It's what we are. It's biologically what we do. We anthropomorphomorphize everything.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, that's what I was about to say. Like, people anthropomorphize their cars, you know, like people treat their cars like people.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I think the difference is, is that my car doesn't talk back to me, but ChatGPT does talk back to me. Not talk back like. Like talk, but I mean, like, really talks to me as if I'm a person. And so you have this kind of very interesting thing where if you said I love you to ChatGPT, there's a very good chance it'd be like, I love you back.

[A]

Well, get ready for this. In a paper presented in November20, the Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing conference, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Georgia Tech, revisited earlier findings that showed that large language models show strong signal correlations with the human language network, the region of the brain responsible for processing language, that language models are in many ways acting in signal processing exactly as the brain does.

[B]

Yeah, we're all screwed. This is the type of stuff I read, and I'm like, there's just. We're just not. We're not going to pull out of this dive without us being an Alien. The movie.

[A]

Yeah. One of the scientists said it's something we as a community need to think about a lot more. These models are getting better and better every day, and their similarity to the brain is also getting better. We're not 100 sure about it, but it seems to be. I mean, this is. By the way, I'm reading this from a newsletter called foom. So maybe. I don't know, maybe this isn't ex. I mean, it's. I think it's true. I. There's a link to the paper from Language to Cognition about how brains exhibit remarkable similarity to neural activity in the human language. Large language models rather exhibit remarkable similarity to neural activity in the human brain. They're working in a very similar way. It turns out we invented with Transformers, something that in many ways replicates how the human brain works. And so it's not surprising. Maybe it's not surprising. Look, I'm not a believer. Maybe. I don't know. I don't like this AGI thing, this idea that we're going to hit the singularity and the AI is going to surpass human skills. I just think we're creating something that is kind of analogous to the way we think we. We believe that we are somehow special.

[B]

Well, I am.

[C]

You specifically are the most obvious.

[A]

In. And I think this is actually a true story. But Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, Dr. Leibniz says, what is the difference between a live body and a dead body? It's the same functionality. There is something in the live body that is different from the dead body. And it happens like that. So there's something. Clearly this. I mean, the mechanism of the human body is still there. It's just not alive anymore.

[B]

I think we are. I think the issue is. I think we can continue down the philosophical route, but I just think the fundamental issue is that we are susceptible with things that are human. Like, and I. I mean, we've always been, like, we love this. This is something that we really enjoy. There's stories about this, you know, Frankenstein all the way to whatever. Yeah. And we've never had it appear. And now it is here. Now it's here. And I. There's a. There's a. There's a very real thing of people cannot tell the difference between this and. And something that is not alive. And. And for those of us who are working in the space, this is a. I think it's a benefit for the creature comfort of working within the space. Like, when I use cloud code, and it's like we're just. I'm joking with it or pushing it to do something. Like, one of my favorite things to do. One of our guys started saying that he was giving it drugs. Like, I need you to be more creative, so I gave you some drugs to make you more creative. And cloud code's like, yeah, let's go. You know, like, it's so ridiculous and over the top. It's just so stupid. And it's like. But that type of thing, I think it makes working with it a little bit more fun. And so we do this purely because it's a little bit more fun. And the results, the results seem to come out of that. Being nice is really nice, but I do think for some people, they're doing it because that's just, you know. Yeah. And that's. That's where it gets a little really hard.

[A]

Yeah, don't. Yeah, don't do that. Find a human.

[C]

Yeah. The validation that comes from.

[A]

And I stand corrected, Gavin, thank you for correcting me. Gavin's. In our YouTube. YouTube chat, he said, no, no, no, man. Dylan introduced the Beatles to weed, man. It was George Harrison's dentist that introduced him to acid.

[C]

Fascinating.

[B]

Of course.

[A]

I'm sorry, I got that mixed up.

[C]

That's probably important thing to clarify.

[A]

Too much acid in my. Hey, man.

[B]

Hey, guys. The dentists, man.

[C]

I feel like you need to ask Claude what happened.

[B]

Oh, great idea.

[A]

I'm gonna ask Claude who introduced you to acid. And if they say Harper's co worker, then I'll know they're all talking to each other.

[B]

But it really is about. I think there's this thing of as these tools progress, there's this really interesting thing that I keep thinking about, I even may have mentioned it before, is that when you or your interface is a chat experience, you are going to be chatting about this thing. And if you get bad news in that chat experience, you are going to emote or if you get really good into news, you're going to emote as and then cloud or whomever is going to then react. And so if I get this, if I'm doing some financial model and I notice that I'm going to have to do layoffs, I'm probably going to emote very negatively in that financial model and be like, oh, man, that sucks. And then Claude's going to be like, what's wrong? And I'm going to be like, I'm going to have to lay off everyone. I feel horrible. And then suddenly Claude's my therapist inside Excel or whatever. And I think that that is because of the interface. We have this interface.

[A]

I just asked Claude who introduced the Beatles to lsd. It immediately answered their dentist, John Riley. Oh, my God, their coffee. Without telling them at a dinner party in 1965.

[B]

Wow. That's a shocking experience, Captain. Not exact.

[C]

That's crazy.

[B]

Dude. I love the names. I think the names is the biggest hack. Like, that's the biggest, like, creature comfort hack is just have it give you a name. But there is something that you can ask as you're talking to more Normie people. And I think we've even Talked about this before, Leo. Ask them what they call their chatgpt. Like, all my normie friends have a name for their ChatGPT, which means that the. Whether they should or not anthropomorphize that, that is done. They've already done it. It's done.

[A]

Yeah. We call it artificial intelligence. Abrar, do you have a name for your. Do you. Actually, I haven't even asked you. Abrar, what is your relationship to AI? Do you use it?

[C]

I poke around here and there. I've poked around with Gemini and ChatGPT. Gemini mostly. When I'm reviewing phones, then I will see what. Because that's like half the keynote is always what Gemini can do on your Android phone. And then chatgpt here and there, just a handful of times. But it's not a very, like, regular relate. It's a very contentious relationship because I'm scared it's going to put me out of a job someday. So I don't really engage as much.

[A]

Yeah. You know, I don't blame you because you're a writer. I don't think it will, honestly.

[C]

I hope not. I like that. I'm going to go with that energy.

[B]

I think writing it will. It will for the people that are who are writing things that don't matter. The empty. Empty. Like, I think we can measure things in regards to similar how we measure food. Like, empty, caloric writing is going to be disappeared by the machine that is creating fast food.

[C]

Right.

[B]

But like, if you're looking for. Oh, I'm looking for someone that's going to review a phone that's going to tell me how to feel.

[C]

Right. This is true. Exactly. Lean into the human experience.

[B]

Yeah. That's very, very different. And I think that's what every. And I think the other thing that will happen is people, like, I keep thinking this goes back to taste. People will use AI to do things that are good. You're just gonna be like, dad, this is great. This music is awesome. How did you make it? They're gonna say, some AI tool and you're gonna be slightly disappointed. But they're gonna be like, does that mean the music is not as good? Like, if you didn't know? And I think that's the same with writing. It's the same with art, it's the same with code.

[A]

There are a lot of stories this week about Bandcamp and others banning AI music, saying, you know, but if a human works with an AI to make music, is that any less music?

[C]

That's the tricky part is where do you draw the line in any type of entertainment. Yeah.

[A]

Benito, who's a musician, he's like, yeah, fuck him.

[B]

Yes. Yeah, it's.

[A]

Don't put that on my bandcamp.

[D]

Context matters.

[B]

It's true.

[A]

Yeah. Well, that's the question. That's that. That fundamental question. Is there something we do as humans? I mean, it comes. It's the soul. I wouldn't say it's something fundamental beyond the mechanism.

[D]

I don't think of it in those terms. I think it's like music. The purpose of music is to connect human to human, from one human to another human.

[A]

And the process of creation is critical to that.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

So there's no point in. I think there's no point in AI music.

[C]

And it's strange because then you'll see an AI song take off on TikTok and people know that it's AI, but it's catchy. And then. And it kind of links back to the fact that music, I also believe it's a very important form of expression. But so much of even human generated music is so sloppy. And so how much do people actually care about what's in something? And I guess that's the question, is if you care about the substance of something, then you will be more sensitive to how something was created. And if you don't, and you're just trying to vibe, then you're not going to care as much.

[B]

But I'm sure you all have seen this, but when I walk into my local camera shop, the first area is all film. Because so many young people have moved to film as a reaction to this. Or I got this camera. You guys remember this one, the S95 Canon?

[A]

Love it.

[B]

Great camera. I just bought it. It's brand new to me. And it's like this thing of, like, it's so low tech, it doesn't even have a touchscreen. And it's like. I think. And I bought it because a lot of friends who are younger were like, this camera's perfect for taking step. And it's like this idea of taking the tech out of it. And I think that's something that is going to happen more as, like, I'm gonna want to go to a show, a rock show or whatever. And I don't like. I don't want it to be a laptop band. I want it to be rough. But at the same time, I will also go to a laptop band. But it's like context matching. It's a different thing.

[A]

So I. Drum machine is never as good as a human drummer because A human drummer makes mistakes.

[D]

This is also not true, because there's things that an electronic drummer can do that a human drummer could never do.

[A]

Well, see, now, Benito, careful, because you're undermining your argument here because.

[D]

No, I'm not. No, no, no, no, no, I'm not.

[A]

Thirty years ago, somebody might said, well, you used a drum machine. That isn't music. You got to play those drums.

[D]

No, see, the thing is, I didn't. But, see, I didn't play the drums. I produced the drums. There's a difference.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Well, here is a Swedish song, Yag. I don't know what it is.

[B]

Oh, I can't.

[A]

I can't play it. Yagvet duar intamin. I can't play it because it'll probably be taken down. But it's been banned. This is on Spotify, but it's been banned. Excluded from Sweden's official charts because it's partially AI generated. It is a huge hit in Sweden. I know you're not mine. By a singer called Jakub. It's topped the Spotify rankings, but it's been excluded from the charts because I.

[B]

Like how Spotify is just like, we don't care. It's money.

[A]

Spotify. Half of what's on Spotify is AI generated. Right. It's an acoustic guitar LED folk pop song. I want to play it.

[B]

It's very nice. I just played a little bit of it. It's pretty, pretty.

[A]

Oh, I bet it's great. The artist Jakob's voice and parts of the music are generated with the help of AI as a tool in our creative process, says the Danish music publisher Stellar.

[B]

This is. This is what I say to people about my code process. It's a creative process that I share with AI, but the reality is I literally don't work.

[D]

It's the same thing with vibe coding and music. Here I can connect these two. Like, when you're vibe coding, you're developing, you're not coding, you're not doing any of the coding you're developing. So you don't call yourself a coder. You're not a coder.

[B]

Oh, I do. You are.

[D]

You are a coder.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[C]

So what would you say to people who pose the argument of, well, auto tune has been used for years and years to make songs better, then AI should also be allowed. What. What distinction do you guys draw between those two technologies in music?

[D]

Like, I mean, it's very much a gradient from, like, how much work you've or how much you put into it. You know, like I go, I go back to Cory Doctorow's thing about information density. You know, how much information did you contribute actually to this thing? If you, if your whole, if your whole contribution was a 10 word prompt, then you really didn't do anything.

[C]

Yeah, I would agree with that.

[A]

I spent a lot of time going back and forth with Claude to generate my code.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

So that's different. Like your information density is higher code, you know, so you actually contributed a lot of information.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

It was like 30 maybe, maybe 50 words, 100 words. The information density. I had never heard that argument. I think that's very interesting. I do like it. But I think it is going to be less and less good or less and less accurate because the other day my kid asked me for, he said, can I have a cartoon that has these two characters that are not in the same universe? And I was just like, that's, that's ridiculous. Why would you possibly. And then I was like, wait a minute. Sora had that Disney thing for a second and there's, they're like, it's like a step away between being like I want cars but with, you know, but with Snoopy or whatever. And like having all these things mixed together is, it really is going to be very, very easy to have this happen.

[A]

This is the AI.

[B]

It's nice, right?

[C]

Right?

[A]

Yeah, it's pretty relaxing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But they just, they just need a didgeridoo. They had a didgeridoo in there. It'd be much better.

[A]

Or some two voloon throat singing. All right, we're going to take a break. More to come, some actual tech news. Oh, I'm sure.

[C]

Maybe. We'll see.

[A]

I like the philosophy. I, I, I don't know folks, do you mind? We kind of, we just have fun sometimes, you know, I mean this is me being a non conformist. Right?

[C]

Exactly. Practice. Absolutely.

[A]

I'm a bad boy.

[C]

That's the tough one.

[B]

Oh man, you should have Claude call you that. Call me various of Bad Boy. I need to call. I'll call you daddy and you call me Bad Boy.

[A]

Call me Bad Boy. Okay. All right. Forget the captain. Call me Bad Boy.

[C]

Captain is scrapped.

[A]

Yeah, I'm the bad boy. Now. This episode of this week in Tech, brought to you by Redis. Yeah, I know you know Redis. We use Redis. This is what, when you go to our website, it pops right up. Right? Thank you, Redis. Redis is the real time data platform that powers ultra fast applications. It's used for Caching. It's used for data storage, search vector embeddings, AI workloads and more. And with a global user community and adoption across startups to Fortune 500 companies, we're kind of in the middle there. And we're not exactly a startup, but we're definitely not a Fortune 500. But we use it for our website. We've used it from day one. Redis continually innovates on speed, on scalability, on developer experience. Redis R E D I s helps developers ship faster, scale instantly and keep apps blazing fast even under heavy load at the center of the platform. Redis Cloud Redis Cloud is the fully managed version of the fastest and most feature rich Redis on the market. By choosing this Redis as a service is by the way, what we use. You can easily start using Redis 8 in production. Actually, I think when we started it was probably many versions ago, but that's one of the nice things about it. We constantly being updated to better and better versions. You can use Redis 8 in production. You can scale to real time speeds effortlessly. Redis Cloud is purpose built for performance and simplicity. You'll experience extremely low latency and high throughput. That's important to us because I know when you get to a website, if it doesn't load fast, I know I'm that way, I'm going to leave, right? I'm not going to wait around. You don't ever have to wait around for our website. Automatic scaling, global availability also important. We have a global audience, simple setup and a very generous. This was also important to us. Free tier. Redis Cloud is the real time context engine that gathers, syncs and serves the data you need to build accurate AI apps that scale. To learn more or try Redis Cloud for free, just search for Redis Cloud or visit Redis IO R E D I S I O Redis. Thank you Redis. Let's see. Many, many actually now we're really behind because thanks to my new AI friend, I have been generating lots of stories very rapidly. Instagram. There was a report that Instagram had a breach of 17/2 million users and that all their data was revealed. This came from malwarebytes. Instagram said no, there was no breach. Maybe you thought there was a breach because oh yeah, we did send out a lot of password reset emails and that was the security flaw. An external party triggered the reset emails. Instagram said you can safely ignore them. Malwarebytes said information on 17 and a half million Instagram accounts and that included usernames Physical addresses. Does Instagram have your physical address?

[C]

I'm trying to remember.

[A]

I don't think so.

[B]

Maybe I don't want it to. I don't want it to happen.

[C]

If you've bought something, then obviously phone.

[A]

Numbers, email addresses, and MalwareByte says we see them on the Dark Web, so it's unclear. Instagram denies it.

[B]

I think that's the first step when you have a breach, is to deny it.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Isn't that how. Isn't that the rules of how this works? Someone says, were you hacked? And you're like, no, no, not. No, we were not hacked.

[A]

And if you are an Instagram user, you should stop believing what you see. The latest thing on Instagram is defaming celebrities with AI generated sex scandals.

[B]

Is this related to Grok as well?

[C]

Probably.

[A]

Here's Mike Tyson. These are influencers doing this. Here's the Rock in bed with my. My mom and me. Here's. That's Maduro.

[B]

That's so good.

[A]

Nicholas Maduro.

[B]

Funny.

[A]

And LeBron James. These are all fake. I just want to. This is from 404 Media. They found them all.

[B]

Emmanuels are then posting this of themselves.

[A]

Yes. Because you can. You can. You can generate these.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now I think probably the influencers thinking, well, I know everybody knows this is fake, but I think they're giving people too much credit. Yeah, it's.

[B]

I think most people know it's fake, but then it's the people who don't know. That is really the issue that we don't necessarily. I mean, this is.

[A]

And then put it. Then they put it on their Facebook page where a lot of people see it who don't know. No, it's not fake. And then suddenly it goes viral.

[C]

Have you guys seen any celebrities speak up about this? Because I haven't yet. So that's sure to come.

[B]

Yeah, they're probably like, what the.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

My attitude on this is, this is good, because if I ever were to be caught in flagrante delicto, I have deniability.

[B]

I've never heard those words before. First of all.

[A]

Isn'T that a great phrase? Inflagrete.

[C]

That's beautiful.

[B]

What did you see that Matthew McConaughey trademarked?

[A]

Yeah. He uploaded three videos of himself. One of them just going out on the porch looking around. One of them going, all right, all right, all right. From Dazed and Confused. Actually, I think it was the clip from Dazed and Confused. And, yes, he did that with the US Patent Trademark Office. So that if somebody then clones his voice or Image, you say, no, it's trademark. I don't know if it'll hold up in court.

[C]

I'm curious. Huh?

[A]

This all started with Sora. With OpenAI's Sora, right. Where you could make videos of anybody. In fact, some of them were like having Martin Luther King endorse.

[B]

That was a very strange. When I opened Sora and it was all Martin Luther King videos, I was like, something has gone horribly wrong. And that's probably called San Francisco.

[A]

I don't know. I have a dream that someday everybody will eat Kentucky Fried Chicken with like, no, that's not right.

[B]

Oh, that's called racism. That's racist. Racism.

[A]

I think it's racist.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

It's just not right.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So what SORA did, first they made a deal with Disney so that they could do it with Disney, which Disney might regret. And then. But they also did say, well, any. Create anybody who's. Who's not historic, like Martin Luther King could contact us and we'll. And we'll prohibit that. That. I don't know what the Nicholas Maduro thing is though, right now, man. I know where his. Where he is historic.

[B]

Sometimes you're just trying to find humor in a really complicated world. I think that's where the Nicholas Maduro thing is.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. The French courts have now started to order VPNs to block pirate sites. VPNs are going to be under assault. Right. Because that's how people get around these age restrictions. CyberGhost, ExpressVPN, our sponsor, NordVPN, ProtonVPN and Surfshark, all have been ordered by the Tribunal Judiciary de Paris to block this. Is that these guys, these sports streaming sites have been extremely aggressive all over Europe with takedowns. And in fact, in some ways they're breaking the Internet because they're so offended by people pirating these football matches. It's also Formula One, Football League One, MotoGP.

[B]

Do either of you have that friend who is really into watching pirated streams that they get off Reddit?

[C]

Yes.

[B]

It's such a funny. Like, I don't even know. Like, I have a friend who.

[A]

It's not a good experience.

[B]

Well, it's just what I laugh about is anyone I know who's doing it is. It's not about the money. For some reason, they have money to like, buy the thing that allows them to watch the F1 race or whatever or football or whatever it is, but they're like, no. I hook up a laptop to my TV and I find this random stream And I have to do all of this crazy stuff and then I'm going to, like an IP address and entering some wild set of characters. And then, then there's some stream that I. That I watch with some software that I downloaded from somewhere that is not in English. It's not in any European language either. It's Chinese probably. And then they're watching some random IPTV stream and they're like, it's just. It's just cheaper. And you're like, no, no, no.

[C]

One friend that does that because.

[B]

Oh, no, it's not one. It is a huge. The Reddit scene is gigantic.

[A]

For a while, oh Doctor would come on the show and he said he would always say, I have a friend who goes to all the kids sports games. And he sells fire TV sticks that have been modified to carry pirate streams. Now, by the way, Amazon finally put the kibosh on that after years and years.

[B]

And they weren't cheaper.

[A]

They were like 600 bucks because you could do it.

[B]

Yeah. Sticking it to the man.

[C]

It's.

[A]

Back in the day, remember, we were talking about pirating games where people would just have a thousand games that they pirated, not that they were ever gonna play them. It was just kind of. Yeah, it's just a thing to do. That's what.

[B]

It's a collector.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Pat yourself on the back. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

The social media ban is in effect in Australia. It's been in a ban for. In effect for a month. Some say some teenagers are grateful that they can't get online. Nearly 5 million accounts have been removed because they belong to people under 16. Meta said, we took down half a million. It was Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, YouTube. All had to ban kids under 16 from being. From using the services at all.

[C]

YouTube.

[A]

Yeah, YouTube.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[C]

Like the rest, I'd be like, fine, whatever. Reddit and YouTube, I feel like that's a big deal.

[A]

I think Reddit skated. I don't. Was reading on. Yeah, I guess it was on that list.

[C]

That's. That's a lot.

[B]

This is just going to create a wave of incredible Australian hackers.

[A]

Yes, that's what you said.

[B]

I know. I love it. I love it. Every time a friend's just like, yeah, I installed some surveillance where on my kid's phone. I'm like, great, send them over to the hacker side.

[A]

You're teaching them some skills with a Z. Yeah, yeah. And I have some mad skills.

[C]

I mean, I'm just. I wonder what that process is of, like, the withdrawal of the teenagers. And kids who are on these platforms and suddenly are cut off. I mean, I think we've all tried, tried cutting social media out of our lives and we're back in a couple days at most, if not a couple weeks or whatever. But that's got to be, that's got to be quite a trial period there.

[A]

It's the new dry January. Is the new new social media free January?

[C]

That's right.

[A]

And I see people shaking all over.

[B]

Are people doing it? Are people really not doing it for January?

[A]

I think standing in line at the grocery store going, I don't, what do.

[C]

I do with my face?

[A]

I have to look around, I have to talk to people.

[B]

With the collapse of the world around us, I've stopped using most social media.

[C]

Oh great.

[A]

However doom scrolling it really is.

[B]

I don't feel good. However, I loved, I love TikTok. TikTok is so, I am so addicted. But most of my feed is not about tech. It's not about, it's, yeah, it's incredible. And I, one of my favorite parts about it is it's where I find a lot of music.

[C]

Or human.

[B]

Well, I, I don't really know if music or human.

[A]

I'm not really, really good about the algorithm adapting to your interests.

[C]

Oh yeah, yeah, I know.

[A]

What do you get? So it really, this is, this is like more than astrology. This is a Ouija board. This is a way of knowing who you are. So, so what does your TikTok say about you? Abrar?

[C]

It says that I am completely unserious, which is funny because most of the time I'm very serious when I have to, you know, be professional, but it's just, just gags, just lots of gags. I mean, I go on there to laugh and so I do. And I never feel better when I get off of Instagram, but I always feel better when I get off of TikTok, even if I've spent an ungodly amount of time on it.

[A]

Yeah, what do you see? You say on your TikTok tock.

[B]

Well, I got, this is, this is a, this is obviously TikTok shop because I bought a chain, okay?

[A]

Now you're gonna get medieval armor tiktoks for the rest of your life.

[B]

This guy, look at this guy. I don't know what this guy's doing. This looks like something of my interest. He's a lot of a dentist back there, which I don't know what's going on. I, I, Some friends of mine once told me of a game that they were playing These were young people, recent people, people, recent grads, people who just got jobs and so they still go to friends houses and they were saying that they would plug the, their phone into the TV and just blindly scroll their algorithm to show people. And it's like this funny thing, it's. You're burying your life to someone through this algorithm and some of it is not pretty and some of it's not good. And sometimes. And all my young friends who grew up around TikTok know how to reset their algorithm really fast, know how to guide it really fast.

[A]

Well, how do you do it? So tell me, how do you know.

[B]

How hold hard press on a, on a video and just say not interested?

[C]

Oh, actually what I did. So before I went to the Eras tour when Taylor Swift was touring, I didn't want any spoilers and I knew I would get spoilers on TikTok because it knows I love, I love Taylor Swift, right? So I, every time I'd see a Taylor Swift video, immediately I would say, not interested. And within a couple of days it stopped showing me any Taylor Swift videos. But not only that, it thought I hated her. So then it started showing me Taylor Swift hate videos. And I was like, no, no, no, it's not what I need.

[B]

Not that either.

[C]

I just don't to want, want to see anything about the show. And then that way I could like avoid that topic.

[A]

So it does, I am, I, I think it knows what I like because I spend more time on certain videos than others. When I first start using either TikTok or Instagram because it knows I'm a 70 year old man, it shows me a lot of women in bikinis because.

[C]

Just figures, well, that's just for everybody.

[A]

That's what you want. Thirst traps, we know.

[B]

No, it takes a lot of work.

[A]

Work, yeah, you have to, so. But I've trained it because I don't. And now I get flash mobs and I love flash mobs.

[C]

There you go.

[A]

There's not a, there's not a moment when I am watching a flash mob. I will watch it to the bitter end. You know, like some guy standing in a courtyard going, Memories. And I just, I know it's going to be a flash mob. And I will watch it to the bitter end. There's 300 people in an orchestra and a tuba band band. And they're all playing memories. And I go and I always, I get tears. I get tears and I get chills and I go, I love that, that's beautiful. So I make sure. So do you Think I should long press and say, I am interested or I heart it hard it.

[C]

Make sure you watch it all the way through. You can watch it a couple times if you wanted. The more time you said you spent on it.

[A]

I love flash mobs. I don't know. It's a weird.

[C]

I love that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

No, this is what Tick Tock's for. I got really deep in trombone. Tick Tock. I'm not. I don't even know what that means. And then that got me to like, HBCU marching band. TikTok.

[A]

I did. I see a lot of marching bands.

[B]

Love marching bands. And then like, speakers and stereos and some camera reviews. I want some camera reviews. More camera reviews. I don't care about any of them. And I would never buy one. But I like sometimes that. But everyone. But it really is hard. Like a bro was saying, it starts out with, like, hard bodies everywhere, and it's hard to get out of it.

[A]

I don't like. I really don't like the thirst traps. I feel very manipulated.

[C]

I still to this day, like, every now and then they'll slip one in and I'm like, I'm still not interested. Like, I've been on this platform for six years now. Like, we don't need to be doing this. Like, you know, I've never liked one of these. Yeah, they still try.

[B]

Well, that's because they know. They know how fast or slow you go.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

They're like.

[A]

They're like you watched three seconds before you rejected this video. I just point that out.

[B]

No, exactly.

[C]

They need to be righteous.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[A]

So it's my daughter who's 32, said, no, no, you got a dad. You got to swipe that fast.

[B]

Really fast. Get out of.

[A]

Don't. Don't waste any. Don't even. Don't even look at it to go. Is that a thirst trap? Oh, no. Swipe it.

[B]

No, you got to get it out of there.

[C]

It's like a test.

[B]

Well, if you don't.

[C]

Reflexes. You're like, how.

[B]

I had a very. I had a very funny experience with this when thread launch. Threads launched. You remember when threads launched. And. And Albert, these. It was a big day, but also, like, within the next week, they're figuring out the algorithm. And the only algorithm I think they had was the Instagram algorithm. And so a friend of mine. And they remember how they also surfaced replies. Your friend's replies.

[A]

I hate that.

[B]

And so you'd see this, like, random replies from someone. And so I had this friend and I Saw that he was only replying to like Thirst trap people. And he is a middle aged man. And I was like. So I sent him a net text and I'm just like, hey. Just so you know, Instagram is servicing your replies and I'm noticing that you're. You've literally only replied to traditionally attractive women. And it looks like just want you to know for your entire duration of your threads that they're outing you. And he's like, that can't be true. And he just was like, oh my God. And he's just like, why would. That's all that they. That's all they push. That's what their algorithm pushes me. And I'm like, welcome to algorithms.

[C]

Literally. That's how that works. Yeah.

[B]

Be careful with your Instagram is what I'm saying.

[C]

Well, now they're doing that with reels. Like you can see whatever people are liking. And you're like, oh, interesting.

[A]

Oh, yeah. There's a guy. There's a guy. I know every thirst trap I see. It says, John likes this one.

[B]

It's like, no, I don't like anything. Even stuff I do like, I don't like.

[C]

I'm like, I don't need you. Even if it's a tea party, I don't need you to know what I.

[A]

My friends. Yeah, TikTok. So I guess we're waiting to see what's going to happen now that TikTok is.

[C]

I don't know what's happening, but I'm not enthused about the changes that are coming.

[A]

When do we have to start using the new US app?

[C]

I think sometime this year. I kind of lost track because there's been so much back and forth that I stopped tuning in lately. But I need to follow up on that.

[A]

Well, it was really the never ending soap opera, so.

[B]

Never ending so much.

[C]

Oh, my God.

[A]

But apparently they made a deal. China's gonna maintain like 20% ownership. I like that it was China about.

[B]

It's just China, like the country of China. 20%. It's every. Everyone gets a little piece.

[A]

Everybody gets a little bit. Oracle gets a bit y. They supposedly were rewriting an American version of the TikTok app. I bet you that never appears.

[C]

I. I feel the same way.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And it's also unnecessary.

[A]

And they have launched a new app, by the way, called Fine Drama.

[B]

Oh, now this.

[A]

Yeah, I don't. I don't watch these little dramas. They occasionally show up well in my feed.

[B]

You mean you don't watch an entire movie in two minute Segments. Yeah.

[A]

It's not fun. It's always the most dramatic moment, like, you're not my husband. You're his twin brother. Yeah. And. And. And then they go. And then it's. Yeah. It's only. It's a blip. But apparently there's a whole drama like this. Will These. They're multi. Multiple series of these. So this is. If you really like that, get the Pine drama app.

[B]

Well, I mean, this is a big. This is some samples throughout the world. There are these.

[A]

The officer fell for me. Yes. That's 192 million views.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Remarried at 50. My husband turns into a billionaire. Okay, That's a double victory.

[C]

Is that a how to. Yeah.

[A]

The Awakening of the Returned heiress. Oh, okay. And then.

[B]

Well, I mean, these are like the. The dramas. Like, I spent a little, tiny, tiny bit of time in Indonesia, and some friends of mine were like, telenovelas. Telenovelas there. And, like, what was very interesting about them, I'm sure TikTok is doing is. And this was in the 2010s. So, like 2016, 2017. They were using the analytics of who and what watched and then using social media to figure out what tomorrow's telenovela would bring. So it was changed every single day. This new script was written. And so it allowed this thing to last and defeat trends. And so where a typical drama might suddenly get out of date because some macroeconomic thing or some, you know, someone invades Ukraine or whatever, this is just dodging everything, and they can react to what the people want. And I think there's a really interesting thing here, but it is very interesting to see. It'll be very interesting to see how it. How it plays in the US do they have ads?

[A]

How are they monetizing? Is it a subscription?

[C]

It doesn't. I think in that article I mentioned, like, for now, it's free, but they're gonna have to monetize it. Maybe you get people hooked and then you either force them to pay to get more episodes.

[A]

It's like $20.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Subscribe. Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. But I'm just more curious about the. This vertical shorts format in general because even streaming platforms are now incorporating vertical videos into their. Like, Disney plus Tubi. All these platforms are figuring out ways to take advantage of the fact that people like short vertical content. And so they're either clipping down their own content into, like, vertical formats on their apps. But I. I don't know. I'm still figuring out if you can take something that works well on one platform, shoehorn it into yours, and think that that's also going to be a formula for success. I really, I really don't know about when you.

[A]

Vertical content. I'm sorry, I flashed on this event that's coming downtown, Petaluma. It's called midget wrestling where, I mean, I think that sounds offensive, but apparently the little people who participate say, oh no, that's fine.

[C]

They get to call that.

[A]

Yeah, they're little people. Lisa went. Burke, you went right with Lisa. And yeah, it's short vertical content. That's all I have to say about.

[C]

What I was referring to, actually.

[A]

Sometimes, not always vertical.

[B]

I gotta go. I forgot I got somewhere to be. Waitman, remember David lynch, what he said about watching movies on your phone? Remember that? He had some interview where he was like, this is literally the worst way to watch movies.

[A]

I can't imagine any filmmaker thinking this is a good thing.

[B]

But it must be so depressing that aspect. But I've watched a movie on my phone. It was pretty nice. Like, I mean, it wasn't like going to a theater really. It wasn't like being at my house.

[A]

But like what kind of movie was it? Like When Harry Met Sally kind of a movie or.

[B]

I have no recollection.

[C]

Interstellar or. You know what I mean, Like a good movie.

[B]

I rolled it really close to my eyes so it looks well.

[A]

Then it's a big screen.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. I don't think, I think that it just is. TikTok has shown and then the copy of Reels has shown that people will spend an inordinate amount of time using these apps consuming this type of video content. And so of course, you know, Disney plus, who is in a death fight with everyone else for eyeballs is going to be like, I want their eyeballs.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And I think maybe the lesson, they're taking away the wrong lesson. I think. And then I think many of these companies are just trying everything to try and get the eyeballs. And this is just one of the things they're trying. I think the lesson of TikTok is about long tail content, not about the video format. And I think that the lesson of TikTok is about having, you know, you know, they maximized on view count. That's the metric that is important, not follower count, which is. Which I think is a little bit anti American.

[A]

Do we worry about how this is rewiring our brain and our attention span? Because clearly it is, right? I mean it's not.

[B]

We're boned.

[C]

I mean, it's true. It's true that like you'll, you'll you'll forego watching a two and a half, half hour movie in favor of scrolling on TikTok for two hours. And so you've then watched hundreds of videos that, that keep your attention versus just sitting down and locking into one story. That could be a very good story too. But I, when I get, when I want to watch a movie, ideally it's a movie I can watch in a theater where I can't touch my phone and I can't get up or do anything. I need to be like strapped to my chair and I cannot have any other options.

[A]

I've always thought movies really were the true VR experience because a good movie movie, you suspend your existence. You know, the music, the picture's big, you become immersed in the movie and you don't even remember you're watching a movie. You're now having an experience. It's real. That's real VR.

[C]

Absolutely. And it doesn't make your head hurt afterwards.

[D]

But short for content isn't new either. Like we had Quibi and we had vine and those didn't really work out. It's really the algorithm in TikTok that gets people.

[B]

It's the algorithm.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[A]

And like finally figured out how to do it right. Yeah.

[C]

You counts. Yeah, you're right about like your follower count. Does it matter? Absolutely. It's. Do you make something that resonates with a lot of people? If so, you can get a taste of success and then you're going to want more of that success. You're going to keep posting.

[A]

And I look at my poor son who is on the creator treadmill.

[B]

Sounds horrible.

[A]

Yeah, I really feel for him, but he's got two and a half million followers on TikTok and he's, he started a restaurant in New York City. It's the number one sandwich in New York City, according to the New York Times, is one of the top 50 restaurants in New York City. All because he did that on TikTok and he, he paid attention to what the algorithm liked and it's with sandwiches. And he paid attention and he refined it, refine it, refined it.

[B]

Everyone loves sandwiches.

[A]

Who doesn't love sandwiches? He's the sandwich king in New York City now.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

But the poor guy, he's got to constantly make more videos. You're now on a treadmill. Actually, we're. Take a break. When we come back, I will talk about the creator. Apparently, it's just like every other economy. The rich get richer.

[B]

Oh, man, capitalism again.

[C]

I know that's what's supposed to be.

[A]

An escape, but we got income inequality in creators. Come on, man. We'll get to that in just a moment. You're watching this Week in tech with Abrar Al Heiti from cnet. So nice to see you.

[C]

Good to see you.

[A]

Yeah. Looks like a nice day in Hedi land.

[C]

It is. Wait, I love that.

[A]

Could be the title of your blog. I think it's a good title. It's a beautiful day, but, like, for me.

[C]

Yeah, I love it.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. And of course, Harper Reed, who's in the Windy City where it's a little chilly, but he's got a giant heater. He's got a giant heater.

[B]

18 degrees.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

I have literally. I'm running the fan right now. Not to rub it in, but I need a little breeze.

[A]

It's. It's springtime in San Francisco.

[C]

Yeah, it's lovely.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Our show today, brought to you by those fabulous folks at Zscaler, the world's largest cloud security platform. We talk about AI all the time, and it's very clear that the potential rewards of AI, especially for business, are too great to ignore. If you don't have an AI plan, you're missing out. But the risks are also too great to ignore. The loss of sensitive data, the attacks against you, against enterprise managed AI. Generative AI increases opportunities for the bad guys, just as it's increasing it for your business. Right. Threat actors are using AI to rapidly create phishing emails that are perfect, that are just impossible not to click. They use AI to write malicious code. They're literally. They're writing malware now, just as we're writing vibe coding our stuff, they're using it to vibe code malware at a pace that no one can keep up with. They're using it to automate data extraction. Once they're in, and they've got lateral movement in your network, there's nothing they can't do. And then there's always the problem of your employees using AI and accidentally exfiltrating proprietary information. There were 1.3 million instances of Social Security numbers leaked to AI applications. So you really got to think about your organization's safe use of public and private AI. And I want you to think about Zscaler because it's the best solution. Check out what Siva, he's the director of security and Infrastructure at Zwora, said about using Zscaler to prevent AI attacks. Why? With Zscaler, being in line in a.

[B]

Security protection strategy helps us monitor all the traffic. So even if a bad actor were to use AI because we have tight security framework around our endpoint, helps us.

[A]

Proactively prevent that activity from happening.

[B]

AI is tremendous in terms of its opportunities, but it also brings in challenges. We're confident that ZSCALE is going to.

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Help us ensure that we're not slowed down by security challenges, but, but continue to take advantage of all the advancements. With Zscaler Zero Trust plus AI, you can safely adopt generative AI and private AI boost productivity across the business without exfiltrating important proprietary information. Zscaler Zero Trust Architecture plus AI helps you reduce the risks of AI related data loss, protects against AI attacks, guarantees greater productivity and, and you can get compliance thrown in as just part of the benefits. Learn [e-mail] Security that's Zscaler.com Security we thank him so much for supporting this Week in Tech. You know, this is one of the things we've seen traditionally, we've done very well over the last 20 years with advertisers, but there is a shift. It went from consumer focused advertising, you know, the mattresses and so forth, to business advertising, like the kinds you see on our show these days, security and that kind of thing. I think a lot of the advertising, the digital advertising that was buying banner ads and was buying podcasts, has now gone to influencers. And it is a big, big market. Billions of dollars going to influencers. I know this because in a way I feel happy because my son's getting what we used to get.

[C]

It's going to my son still in the family.

[A]

It's going to my son. In fact, he, he said, dad, I just flew out to LA for a Super bowl ad. I said, what?

[C]

Oh, cool.

[A]

He said, he's in the background.

[C]

Oh, my God.

[A]

Of the Hellman's mayonnaise. Hellman's one of his sponsors.

[C]

That's amazing.

[A]

And, and just look for it. It's, it's the guy from Lonely.

[B]

You.

[A]

Know, the Saturday Night Live guy. Lonely Planet, Lonely Island. Yeah, yeah. What's his name? Adam.

[D]

Anyway, Sandberg.

[A]

He's singing. Is it Adam Sandberg? Yes. Adam Sandberg singing to the tune of Sweet Caroline, Neil Diamond. Sweet Sandwich Time, Andy Sandberg. And then. But watch in the background, there'll be a guy with a mustache and curly hair holding a sandwich. That's my son.

[C]

Oh, my God, I love that.

[A]

I don't want to say how much he got paid for this, but let me put it this way.

[B]

Say it. There's no secret between us.

[A]

No, I can't.

[B]

I can't.

[A]

But it's so much money. It was more than we make in several months for two minutes of his time.

[B]

I love this for him.

[A]

I know it's great. But it's. That's where the money's going. A creator income inequality. This is from Business Insider, is rising. The top 1% of creators get 21% of brand spending, and that's been going up, up, up and up. The Mr. Beasts of the world. This comes from Creator IQ, which keeps track of all of this. And that number is, you know, going up the top 1% was. It was 15% of the revenue. Then it was 18%. Last year it was 21%. It's only going to be more overall U.S. advertising spending on creators. $37 billion last year.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

$37 billion. And most of it goes to a very narrow segment of top talent. I'm happy for my son. But Creator IQ says of their survey of 300 creators, only 11% earn more than 100,000 a year. A quarter of them fell into the 50,000, 100,000, and the rest 25 to 50,000. So don't become a creator expecting. I mean, you can make a list living, but you'd probably better off if you became a plumber.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's fascinating to see the shift because becoming a creator was supposed to be a way to kind of circumvent the traditional parameters of success and either financially or professionally. And now it's kind of falling into that same template of the top will make all the money. The rest of you will keep trying.

[A]

Yeah. And you're still working just as hard if you're in the bottom. The bottom 10%.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

Maybe even harder.

[C]

Yeah, definitely. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. And there was like a. If we were going to talk about, like, TikTok and Instagram creators, there was this period during COVID where I think a lot of people got this opportunity to really boost their brands. Like, one of the areas is theme park influencers. Right. So anyone who lived near a theme park, as they started to open up after the pandemic, they got this boost because all these people were itching to go back out into the world, but didn't have the access that they had. Right. So then you had. We saw a lot of these creators kind build their following during that time, and they seemed like there was a window of opportunity there. And now everyone can go do these things if they have the money to. It's not as difficult to have access to those things, but, yeah, it's like you catch the opportunities when you Can. And then the opportunities go away and maybe you wait for the next wave.

[A]

Yeah. And it's so unpredictable. It's hard to plan your life. It's funny, one of our regulars on Macrame, quickly, Renee Rich Richie, decided to create a YouTube channel. And he said, but he lives in Canada. He said, I couldn't have done this if I didn't have health care provided by Canada because if I quit my job, I would suddenly not have health care. And that wasn't tenable for me.

[B]

Yeah, I think that's a huge thing. In 2019, I was really interested in creating a 24 hour Twitch news channel. I thought that would be really cool. I thought that was something. So I did some interviews of some folks, influencers that were Twitch streamers. And I was talking to them and they all across the board were like, do not, do not, do not, do not. One of them was talking about how when, if he missed a stream in one day, like his expected stream, that his revenue would go down basically 10% and it would take another couple months to get back up to that, that stream, the revenue that he had. And so he's like, I can't go to the bathroom, I can't go to the dentist. I can't do any of these things because I'm at like, you know, 8:30 or whatever. I have to go play some ridiculous game online. And everyone, you know, and everyone is expecting me to do it and if I don't, then they'll go to someone else's stream and I'll lose them as sponsors and so on and so forth. And it just sounded horrible, like their experience was horrible and all of them were trying to get out, out of it. And they were, all these were successful streamers who are making some money. And I think that's, that's where I was like, yeah.

[D]

So I worked, I worked at Twitch and everyone, every employee at Twitch has access to every streamer's dashboard. So anybody can see anybody's revenue.

[A]

It's like, wow.

[D]

Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's a pretty bad open system. I mean, I don't know if it's.

[A]

It may not still be that way.

[D]

Yeah, it might not still be that way. But I remember and, but what Harper's saying is absolutely true. I, I would. You could see the revenues of streamers just go up and down depending on if, just if they were streaming or not or how often they were streaming. And it was, you could really map it to like. Yeah, you'd have to be on all the Time like they all. Yeah, they all lose a lot of money for just not streaming for a day.

[A]

Yeah. Henry says that there's an intense pressure to make a new sandwich every single day. And it's hard for him. You know, I worry about him, to be honest.

[B]

There's only 10 sandwiches. How many sandwiches can there be?

[C]

I mean, that's the thing is it's. It pushes you so far where you think you. You've done. You've reached a level of threshold of success, but you have to keep pushing beyond what you thought even was possible.

[A]

The funny thing is, you're kind of right, Harper, because he only. His restaurant, Salt Hanks in New York City only serves one sandwich. It's a French dip. That's it. He said, we developed another sandwich. We were gonna do a chicken parm in a vodka sauce developed. It's beautiful. Nobody ordered it. They just wanted the French dip. So we just stopped. We stopped selling it because that's all anybody wanted, was the French dip.

[B]

Well, this goes back to another thing that we were talking about before, about AI usage and how I have a friend who's a photographer and influencer, and he has lots and lots and lots of followers, and he hated it. He hated it because he could not step outside of what he was known for, the certain style. And he just had to do that style forever.

[A]

Success is not necessarily. When I was in college, I got into radio and I thought, this is going to be great. I will get a job, I will get to play the music I love. It'll be so great. And the lesson I learned at the age of 21 is never get a job doing something you love.

[C]

That's actually really helpful advice. Dreams of things that we want to do.

[A]

Yeah, it takes all the fun out of it.

[C]

Yeah, that's so true.

[A]

I got there, I started doing radio, and you don't get to choose the music. And then the slogan of the station was light rock, less talk. And I realized, I'm the talk. Basically, their advertising is, leo is going to shut up now and play some music. And at that point, you're just a button pusher. You're not choosing the music. You're not saying anything about the music. Music. You're just playing the next song.

[C]

The magic of it probably wore off pretty quick.

[A]

Yeah, pretty quick. The program director said every 10 minutes you're gonna say the weather, the time, and play the next song. And then they give you what they call liners, which are things on four by six cards that you read. And that's It.

[C]

So you didn't even get to come up with what you would say?

[A]

No, gosh. Yeah, I kind of. Yeah.

[D]

That's just because you had an unrealistic expectation of what the job was.

[A]

Well, I thought I was playing music. Exactly. I was going to be a dj. I played music I loved.

[C]

Like, most people would think, like, oh, yeah, you get to do the things that you went in to do.

[A]

Yeah, I bet that's sort of true for coding. Like, I like coding because I don't have to do it. No, no.

[B]

I mean, maybe, like, we all got jobs. Being like. I'm like, no one starts coding at a career job thinking they're going to build their own thing. Thing.

[A]

Oh, okay. But it's also.

[D]

It's also not the coding. It's the. What you're coding also matters.

[A]

I get to choose what I want to write and when I want to write it and what I write it in. Common Lisp. Nobody's going to hire me.

[B]

No wonder you use Kitty.

[A]

Kitty in Common Lisp. It's a match made in heaven, baby.

[B]

They both start with K. Yeah.

[A]

And emacs. I love emacs. All right, one more break. There's still quite a bit of talk about, but we'll get to that. We hardly did any news because we got so philosophical, but this was. I just. You know what this is. The whole point of this show for me is doing. It's. See, I get to do something I love, which is talk to people I love about things I'm very interested in. I hope somebody wants to hear it.

[B]

There's an interesting thing of. There is this kind of. Of thread throughout all of this of, like, what happens when AI and disruption comes for literally everyone, you know, whether it's, you know, AI or creators or any of this stuff. Like, how does it. How does it manifest? And I think that we are just severely unprepared for this in the West. I don't know if anywhere else. I only live here.

[A]

I think you. You hit on something maybe in inadvertently, but I bet you not. Which is the key is artisanal. If what you're doing is a craft, it's an artisanal craft. Whether it's. You're writing a bra, you're coding. Harper. Making a sandwich. If it's artisanal, if it's personal, if it's creative, it's making music. That's what you should pursue. I always told my kids that. Do that. Do what you're passionate about and. And not worry about how you're Going to make a living now. It worked out for half of them. But honestly, that's the path to happiness, is doing something. And I think in a world where AI and computers and machines can create so much stuff, it's the artisanal, you know, furniture is turned into crap because it's not some guy in North Carolina hand making the. The furniture anymore. Yeah, but there's still people doing that.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And we.

[A]

And that's the good stuff.

[C]

Absolutely. And it feels like there's a flip because I feel like when, when I was in college it was like, oh, you're gonna go into something creative like journalism. Like what about coding? And now it's like, well, tables up to. Not the journalism safe. But you know, at least we get to inject more personality into our writing than somebody can in code that can be written with AI. And it's a weird flip.

[A]

So yeah, no AI is going to replace a great writer, whether it's fiction or non fiction.

[C]

True. So yeah, now it's now more. Now more than ever. Definitely pursue your.

[A]

I think so. And I think we know. But do you think want.

[B]

But do you think. And I truly believe this. I'm not trying to be a contrarian because I don't believe in contrarians, but do you think that a person create. Can create? Like no great writer will use AI? Like, I think that, but. But it seems that a newer, not a better, but a new form can appear that is like A.I. driven. Driven.

[A]

It's gonna. The whole generation of kids in college right now, not a one of them's not using AI.

[B]

But I think there's this interesting thing which I would even say that your speedy reader is a new frame of code application, being that this is a bespoke thing that only you care about, only you use. And it's so disposable that if you didn't use it for a week or two, you wouldn't be like, oh no.

[A]

Well, it's still a craft. Creating that was for me, very satisfying process. But there was a personal process there.

[B]

And there's going to be a couple things. Like you might use AI to create some story that you're like, I love this story. And you might say to a friend, oh, I accidentally wrote this really great story and you might want to read it. And you said to that person and so on and so forth. And that is. I think this all comes down to taste where it's like if you, if you put. And it's not. And I, And I don't agree with Benito on this, that, that it, that is about the amount of time you put into it. I love that frame, but I don't necessarily think that it matters as much. But I do think that the assumption that I have is that most things created with AI are going to be bad. But I also have that same assumption about most things people create. Like, it's like the worst, the scariest thing in the world is when your friend sends you their book and it's like, check it out, you know, and you're just like, oh no, what if it's bad? Or, or your friend sends you, you know, they're come to my band or whatever. And then you have to sit there and be like, oh, it's great. I really loved it. It was so good.

[A]

You know, Lisa's, Lisa's great fear is when a friends of ours say, hey, we make our own wine, we're going to bring some. It's like, oh God, yeah, yeah, no, no. Nobody makes great wine except people who make it for a living.

[B]

So I think that. But, but then one of your friends will make great wine and it'll be just that time and place and it's like the situation, the experience, all that st that happen. And I think that's how this is going to come about is like, there's going to be a time when you're going to hear a song. You'll be like, this song is awesome. What is that song? And then you're going to hear that it was, you're going to learn that it was made by AI and then you have a choice. But you have a choice. You have a choice at that moment to say, I don't like it because it was AI, which I think is the. Is a weak choice. That's a big point of view. Or just saying like, yeah, sure, like great, like I liked that song. It was made by AI in the same way. Way that like, you know, I like I don't have another example, but, but TikTok videos.

[A]

I know what you're talking.

[D]

Any other disposable like human made song, you know, it's the same. But the problem is the only thing.

[A]

With AI music is God awful. Yeah, absolutely.

[D]

It's just. I don't think it could ever break a threat. Like AI is not going to break a threshold of like, it's never going to be Bob Dylan. It's never going to be the Beatles.

[C]

Maybe.

[B]

I mean, I think the same thing.

[D]

In sound, but in person in like the Beatles themselves, you know, it could never be the Beatles themselves.

[B]

But with every, every introduction of technology, there is always this thing, whether it's newspapers or TV or the printing press, where the people who are. Who are from before are like, well, this will never be as good as whatever. The people who are coming after are just like, what are you talking about? And I don't mean that in that, like I have a huge stereo over there and all these records and I listen to them because of. Because I enjoy the feel. And when I put in my. My headphones and listen to like TikTok music, you know, this AI generated music or whatever, I'm like, this is horrible. But every once in a while I'm bouncing my head around and like there's a. There's. There is an amount of similarity in my. My like, like visceral reaction to it. And so I think that this is complicated. I think this is very. Going to be very hard. I for one, probably will not be suit seeking out AI generated music. But like, I have so many friends who power their entire careers on lo fi beats that are all AI generated. You know what I mean? Like their whole life is lo fi beats.

[A]

Those channels are huge on YouTube. Right.

[D]

But I also really don't think about it as better or worse. It's just qualitatively different. It's not the same thing. It's a different thing. It's not better or worse. It's just a different thing.

[A]

Yeah, that's right.

[C]

Right.

[A]

Yeah, I wrote a little.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

I wrote a little script to go out and download. Oh, I can't. What's wrong? It's not reading it. Oh, shoot. I don't have a mod player, but I wrote a little script that would go down and might download a mod song. You remember mods?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was super into the mods.

[A]

It just goes down and downloads a random mod and plays it. I'm not sure what I'm missing on my mod, but anyway, I think I don't have a mod player, but that was kind of fun. And those are all crappy. They're made by humans, but they might as well be made by AI in fact, they'd probably be better if they were made by AI to be honest.

[B]

I mean, they essentially were. It was just the AI of the time, which was young men.

[A]

It was the original cheap labor.

[B]

Y Y.

[A]

Let me see if it'll do that now. I just downloaded the mod player.

[B]

I love mods for mods were such a cool thing. That was for me the. The mid-90s. I actually somewhere on a computer. I have cloud code running, building a 90s era demo. And it was like, well, do you want the colors to be CGA or ega? And I was like, I. I don't think that matters.

[A]

Kitty won't play my mods. Oh, man. Kitty. Now I'm gonna have to change to ghosty. We're gonna take a little break, come back with lots more. You stay here. This is the this week in tech with our wonderful panelists Abrar Al Heiti from cnet, senior technology reporter and Harper Reed. And his company is 2389 AI and he'll be soon offering artisanal chainmail helmets.

[B]

No, no, no, no. Software, software, software.

[A]

That's it.

[B]

Software, software. Artisanal software, software.

[A]

Our show today brought to you by Monarch. I am a fan. I will tell you this. I could not have written anything as cool as Monarch. How are you with money stress? Right? Everybody is kind of suffering a little bit of money stress these days. And if you're a couple of couple, it is known to be the number one subject couples fight over is money. Managing your money does not have to be a struggle. This year. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life. Budgeting, accounts, investments, net worth and future planning together in one dashboard on your laptop or phone. Start your new year on the right foot financially. Get 50% off your Monarch subscription with code TWIT. Monarch makes it really easy. Maybe this is the time. Start fresh after the chaos, the money chaos of the holidays. This is the go to tool for the new year financial reset, Reviewing spending over the holidays, setting fresh budgets, getting ready for 2026. And the thing is, there's no effort on your part. You set it up. I have it every all my accounts, checking, credit cards, investments, my house, everything's in there. You'll get automated weekly money recaps. I don't have to enter in anything manually. It automatically gets my bank statements. It automatically categorizes them. I had it set up a budget and automatically puts every transaction into the category. I could check it, I could adjust it. At this point, having been using it for a year or two, it's perfect. With automated weekly money recaps, tracking progress. It's easier than ever to stay financially fit in the short and long term. Now for me, me, you know, I'm looking at my retirement. I'm getting close. I got to make sure that that's doing well. If you're just getting started, what a great way to plan for retirement or Buy that first house or having that first baby. Monarch is different because unlike most other personal finance apps, Monarch is built kind of to make you proactive, not just reactive. Monarch's new AI tools are built on Monarch intelligence. This is the core infrastructure that powers the actual app. And the nice thing about it, this is a system trained on authentic collective wisdom of certified financial planners and financial advisors. So it's smart about the things you really want it to be smart about. Real user results. Here's what Monarch users reported in a 2025 survey. Monarch helped users save over $200 a month, on average. A month, on average. After joining eight out of 10 members, 80% feel more in control of their finances. With Monarch, 80% say Monarch gives them a clearer picture of where their money's going. And by the way, you could set up Monarch to use with your partner, with your spouse, and you could share information together. And honestly, it just takes all the energy, all the negative energy out of it. It's just clear, it's simple, it's straightforward. This new year, achieve your financial goals for good. Monarch is the all in one tool that makes proactive money management simple all, all year long. Use the code twitonarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first [e-mail] with code twit. Love this. I check it every day now. It's good to know what's going on out there. Monarch. Thank you, Monarch. We appreciate it. All right, get ready. We're going back to the moon. February 6th, or sometime in that time frame, Artemis 2 will be launching. It will send two humans farther out into space than we ever have gone before because they're going to loop out around the back of the moon. Artemis there. This is a time lapse of Artemis because that crawler moves one mile an hour, so it's not moving quite that fast. But this is the rocket being moved to the launch pad. It is now on the launch pad. The crew of four is going to be testing over the next two weeks.

[B]

Weeks.

[A]

As we get ready for the first crewed mission to the moon in more than 50 years. Are we excited about this?

[C]

Exciting. Yeah. Love space exploration.

[A]

I do, too.

[C]

That's fantastic. It makes it cool.

[A]

I want to be cynical about it, but it's hard to be cynical about it because it's like, such an achievement. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

[C]

No, it just makes you think beyond this godforsaken planet. You're like, there's out there.

[A]

Yes. Read Weissman. Victor Glover. Christina Koch from NASA. The Canadian astronaut, Jeremy Hansen. See, the other thing I love about this stuff is those national borders and the tensions between countries disappear. Even with the Russians in the space station, they disappear.

[C]

Absolutely.

[A]

It will be the first crewed mission of the moon since Apollo 17 landed in December 1972. These are very brave people.

[B]

What if they get up there and it's all changed, Changed?

[A]

It's all different. They're like, look, there's a city on the other side.

[D]

What the heck, there's an Ikea.

[A]

You're gonna go around the back.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

They will not be landing. It's. This is, you know, as you know, and if I'm old enough to remember Apollo, you have to do it in stages where you go and you come back and, you know, it's kind of got to be frustrating for astronauts to get there, to be there and not to be able to get out of the car, but have to get back in and go, go home.

[B]

Did you ever play Kerbal Space Program?

[A]

Program, Yeah. I love that.

[B]

That game is so good and such a good game. Yeah.

[A]

Anyway, I just thought this, there's some Good news.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

40,000 miles out orbit, which is like a fifth of the way of the moon. That's the first two days of the mission. Then they go, and they, they go head toward the moon. This, the spacecraft was made in Germany. It's a European service module from the ESA built by Airbus.

[C]

Not Boeing.

[A]

No, not Boeing.

[B]

Too soon. Too soon.

[A]

Yeah, it's on 39B ready to go. And they're going to be working pretty much non stop to get ready for the earliest launch window is February 6th. So we'll be covering that. We. I love, I love, love that.

[B]

Yeah, I love it. Yeah, it's so exciting.

[A]

Right? And they're going to bring their iPhones and take pictures. So we'll have your look on the Instagram.

[B]

There's going to be a lot of. It's new tech, they have new technology now.

[A]

You know, when, when SpaceX was doing those launches and they had these incredible 4K images coming back from the rocket, it reminded me. Yeah, it's been 50 years. We're. We got good pictures now.

[C]

Yeah, exactly. That's such an epic Instagram drop. Here's the. Yeah.

[A]

The good news is even though Trump was trying to cut NASA's budget by 25%, Congress did not agree. Hallelujah. On Thursday, the Senate passed an appropriations bill which does reduce NASA's budget by 1.6%. But that's a lot better. Than 24%, which you're going to see.

[B]

And that's why they can't land. If they. If they had that extra money, they could afford to land, maybe.

[A]

The budget is tiny compared. I mean, we spend a trillion dollars a year on our military, 24.4 billion to do this space exploration. You know, the science budget continues at seven and a quarter billion. That's one percent less. Less than fiscal 2024. It was going to be cut quite a bit. The science stuff is really important.

[C]

Oh, critical. Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

Yeah. Jared Isaacman. We've got finally a NASA administrator who has been in space. That's the first time ever. I think that's great. He's a billionaire. Okay. That's kind of. You got to be a billionaire to do anything these days, but okay.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Anyway. Managers on alert for launch fever as pressure builds for Nash's NASA's moon mission. Stephen Clark, writing for Ars Technica.

[B]

I love. I love this.

[A]

I know they're going to go around the back of the moon. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. All right. That's our happy story.

[B]

Everything else is just. Just collapse and fire and.

[A]

Well, actually, you remember Havana Syndrome?

[B]

I saw this, the Slashdot article about this.

[A]

Is this wild?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So this was a. No one's really figured this out. Members of the American Embassy in Havana, Cuba, were deafened. They were. Brains were scrambled. They couldn't figure out how or why. Some people said, oh, it's just you're in your imagination. They never, they. Well, the Pentagon spent a huge amount of money, more than a million dollars dollars to buy millions of dollars to buy a device in an undercover operation that some investigators think could be the cause of Havana Syndrome. They purchased the device in the waning days of the Biden administration using funding provided by the Defense Department. They paid eight figures, so like tens of millions of dollars dollars for it. It's not big. It could fit in a backpack. This is. They gotta make a movie out of this. The story of them getting this, it's funny.

[B]

It's probably just bought off Temu or something. Just Alibaba. You just have to know what to search for.

[A]

Homeland Security Investigations bought it. The device they acquired pulses, produces pulsed radio waves, which people have speculated for years could be the cause of Havana Syndrome. Although the device is not entirely Russian in origin, it does contain Russian components. The illness first emerged in the late 2016 when a cluster of US diplomats stationed in Havana began reporting symptoms consistent with head trauma. They would wake up and it was like they had the vertigo, extreme headache, hearing loss, There was always a suspicion there was some sort of directed energy attack, but no one could figure out what had happened. So now there's a spy story here about the purchase of this thing and the analysis of it. So they've got it, they're analyzing it. It's small enough, it could be portable. It could have been carried around in a backpack and. And aimed at embassy personnel.

[C]

That's creepy.

[B]

That's wild.

[A]

Isn't that wild?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I want to start writing programs in Zuck Sharp. This is a programming language for connecting the world and then harvesting the world's information.

[B]

Yeah, it sounds nice.

[A]

It's a ph. This is a joke language, a PHP inspired esoteric programming language that says it captures the true essence of moving fast and breaking things. Every keyword has been carefully designed to reflect the values of modern social media. Privacy invasion, congressional hearings and pivoting to whatever's trending. For instance, there is a variable called Senator. We run ads.

[C]

Oh, that's so good.

[A]

There is one called Pivot to video, Pivot to Metaverse. Steal data. Some good keywords here. In this case, maybe you should write something in Zuck Sharp. It works.

[C]

That's great.

[A]

It works. It's a real language. It does require PHP 8.1 because it's based on PHP. You can clone it on GitHub and run it. I'm going to get Claude code to write me something and suck Sharp.

[B]

I have not used PHP or derivative languages in so long and I tried to use a project a while back and it has changed quite a bit, it turns out.

[A]

Oh, it's better than it used to be.

[B]

Oh my gosh. They have lots of good tooling. It's pretty interesting. It's great.

[A]

I'm happy so much is still written in php. It's kind of amazing. It stood for personal homepage and was just kind of one guy's little project to have a language that he could do his webpage with with no attempt to have security or anything sensible in it. It mostly just looked like. Like kind of a C that you could kind of read. But yeah, I guess over time it's gotten. It's gotten better. Yeah. PHP with Laravel is now popular, says Serge Strip in our discord. There's a new way to mine copper. Copper. Harvest it with bacteria. They have reopened a copper mine in Arizona powered by microorganisms and Amazon will.

[B]

Be the first customer. Go back to that article. Show it this one. Go to the headline.

[A]

Amazon is buying copper harvested by bacteria.

[B]

It's not Amazon. Look, it Says, oh, Amazon Web Services is the first customer, which I love, because in my head that's. That's just computers. A bunch of computers. I'm just like, those are.

[A]

Hey, you gotta be copper.

[B]

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

[A]

They're using bacteria to do bio leaching. It's Nuton is the company that does this. Their bio leaching method uses naturally occurring microorganisms to extract copper from low grade ore that it would otherwise be too expensive to mine. It also uses less water. Water produces fewer emissions.

[C]

Is that to offset the environmental damage of AI data processing?

[A]

Yeah. Good for aws.

[B]

We got to do something, man. We're in trouble.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

This is like. It's just like we're downhill here.

[A]

Well, all right. There you go. Bacteria. The number one app in China. This is kind of a. This is a dystopian commentary. The number one paid app in the app store in China is an app called Denouemu or Danumu Dumumu, which means, are you dead?

[C]

I need to send this to friends who don't reply to text messages.

[B]

Yes, 100%.

[A]

It apparently taken China by storm. I don't know. You install it on your phone. If you don't check in every two days by clicking a large button that says I am alive, it will get in touch with your emergency contact and inform them you might be dead.

[C]

This is like the next level, like Facebook marked as safe, you know.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Still kicking.

[A]

Apparently, many young people in China now live alone and there's some concern that you could, you know, something bad could happen and no one would know.

[C]

This sounds like something my mom would use for me because if I don't answer her call.

[A]

Are you dead?

[C]

Like, where were you, honey?

[A]

I'm dead.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

The. According to the BBC, the app's name is a. Is wordplay on the food delivery app called Are you hungry?

[C]

Dad and hungry. Two very different states. Both very important.

[B]

Yeah, Very, very, very similar.

[C]

Yes. Right.

[A]

Weirdly, it's now the number six top paid app in the US with it's 99 cents designed for the iPap iPod, iPad. IPAP. I don't know what that is.

[C]

The ipod is dead.

[A]

So that it's not the ipod. That's definitely dead. Demoomu. I like the little ghost icon. Just press that big green button. I love it. That the sample email given is elonmail.com I don't know anybody else named Elliot Elon. Okay, that's great. And then it says, I've been inactive for multiple consecutive days. Come check my physical condition. Wow.

[B]

I Think there's a. There's a. There's something. I saw this article when it. When it first came out, and there was something I kept thinking, which is. I don't know enough about the cultural aspect here. Like, I feel like there's something I'm missing from the cultural aspect, the Chinese cultural aspect. But I gotta say, this is One of my TikTok holes, is the Chinese youth are cool sometimes. Some of the stuff I am like, what? Wow. It's crazy. Just the wild, wild stuff. And I love it. So this seems great. I fully support an app where you claim to not be dead.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Have you seen the videos of the autonomous vans driving around in China just going.

[B]

Ham. Just driving. I love those videos. Those are really funny videos because they just start like, did you see the one? Yeah, this. This is so funny.

[C]

So good.

[A]

These are autonomous. There's nobody in them.

[B]

Did you. Did you see the one where it's driving on the highway and there's just a motorcycle stuck under it? There's no people nearby, but ostensibly that motorcycle.

[A]

Someone was on the motorcycle, caught a motorcycle somewhere.

[C]

Oh, my God. We're worried about Waymo. This is like.

[B]

Yes, it's great. And I. I. Man, those are. I used to love watching robots falling down videos because they were so funny. And there's a couple really good compilations now of robots going wrong, and it's very good.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Did you guys see the mocap one where the guy's playing the mocap robot and he kicks himself in the balls?

[B]

This is the funniest thing I watched this. Maybe 7 or 8 million.

[D]

Maybe the funniest thing I've ever seen.

[B]

Yeah, it's. It's so funny because you don't know it's coming, and then when it. When it comes, you're just like, this had to. Of course. Thank you.

[A]

All right, now, now. Now I'm. I'm searching for it. I'm gonna find it. Here we go.

[D]

I dropped it in. I dropped it in Discord. Oh, there. You found it.

[A]

Okay. Yeah. Man wearing mocap suit. He's doing, like, some sort of fighting thing. So he's doing it, and the robot's doing what he does. Right? It's kicking.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

That's terrible.

[B]

The funniest thing is the robot falls.

[A]

Down that acts like it's been kicked.

[B]

Yeah. It's so good. Like, the. The best part about any of the mocap going wrong is the robot then does exactly what the human does wrong. And it's just so funny because it's just like, Ah man, it's. And we do, we do a little bit of robotic stuff around here and it is so scary because when it goes wrong, these things are pretty powerful. You, you really forget. And when you.

[A]

That's what worries me. Yeah. I think of it as like a chimpanzee in the house. You know, they're fine as long as they're just eating bananas, but if they get angry, they're really strong.

[B]

These robots like the, the schools or Boston Dynamics, any of these companies, they have like the rooms full of netting through all of this infrastructure. And then you have startups, you know, like mine who are just like, oh, it'll be fine, let's just. I'll just hold it with my hand. Hands.

[A]

Oh, golly. Anti versus the AI Courier. I don't know, I'm just playing now. Random robot. So good videos. So she doesn't want it to go.

[B]

Oh, cuz they're drying like persimmons probably or something.

[A]

She's going to drive through their drive. So she's trying to push it away.

[B]

And so like it's just like in the road. And, and I think the thing, thing that's, that's very interesting. There's a really great book called Breakneck by Dan Wong, I highly recommend about China. And it's just like this, the, the, the level of innovation that is accessible in some of these Chinese cities is just incredible. But you have that impact of just like the innovation that is accessible is also just going to just drive through everything. There's a whole bunch of videos of him driving through wet cement as well.

[A]

Yes. You know where the people, people waving brooms at it and stuff at its camera trying to say no, no, don't go here.

[B]

Yeah, it's, it's a very fascinating thing. And, and I for one love not a surprise Wayo. I think it's a very nice experience and it's been very. I'm always kind of thrilled to do it and I would love it to come to Chicago.

[C]

It's only a matter of time. It's in every other big city. I'm surprised. They've really been holding out Chicago. I know there's snow, but it's like they, they're heading to Detroit, so it's only a matter of time.

[B]

Oh, they're in. Going to be in Detroit.

[C]

So let's get.

[A]

I want to do the new Zoox ones where there are no drivers, no wheels, no nothing. And they go in both directions. By the way. It's a living room on wheels. They could go that way or that way? There's no front. Yeah, they're just starting that in San Francisco. I can't wait to try those Zooks. Have you seen them?

[C]

Yeah, I rode it in Vegas last year.

[A]

Oh, you did?

[C]

I did, and it was great. It's very cute. And it feels kind of like. What it reminds me of is when you ride a black cab in London, you get to face each other, except there's, like, obviously no driver. But it's cute to be able to.

[A]

Like, actually face the people, talk to each other.

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. It's great.

[A]

But I'd still ride one by myself. I think it'd be. Oh, yeah.

[C]

Oh, 100%, without a doubt. Yeah. I'm eager for them to open up to more people in us.

[A]

We got a little problem with the Waymos in San Francisco. You remember with the power outage, they got confused and they just stopped in the middle of the intersections. The other problem, Waymo is now paying people on the street in San Francisco 25 bucks if you see a Waymo with the door open. Because people will get out of the Waymo and forget to close the door. And the Waymo has no way of closing the door.

[C]

Right.

[A]

So with the door open, it can't go anywhere. It just has to somebody. So Waymo's put out to San Franciscans. You might want to know this and tell your friends, taking notes, if you see a Waymo with the door open, close it. Because they're going to pay you to do that. Because how do they find you?

[C]

Claim it. Yeah.

[A]

Tap your phone on the Waymo store. I don't know.

[B]

Get in front of it and let it scan your face. Make sure you get it.

[A]

Me, Hi. I mean, there are gmail.com.

[C]

Exactly, how do you call it a.

[D]

Robot if it can't close its own doors, Man.

[A]

Well, that Wayo said, you know, we realize it's a problem. So the next generation will have door closers.

[C]

But right now, before they roll that out. But yeah, this is my new side hustle in the meantime.

[B]

Yeah, it's a good one. Yeah.

[A]

Ten of those a day. You, you know, you got.

[B]

Fine. Yeah.

[C]

I quit my job.

[B]

Job.

[C]

Yeah. This is great.

[B]

Exactly. I just close doors.

[C]

Yeah, it's fine.

[A]

You're watching this week in Tech. Abrar al Heiti. Wonderful to have you. Senior Technology. What are you working on? You just back from ces. You probably get to rest a little bit.

[C]

Before I get to rest, I'm actually gonna be on PTO all of next week, so I've Got all my CES stories done. I did a big one on. On Robo Taxis at CES just because there were so many. So that was. That was really cool to see all the new stuff coming out.

[A]

Is there somebody who's like, really got something exciting? I mean, the zoo seems cool.

[C]

Zoox is cool.

[B]

But the.

[C]

I think the big thing at cs, there were two that were really big. Uber, Lucid and Neuro, are all teaming up for a robo taxi that's rolling out in SF this end of this year.

[A]

I love those Lucid vehicles. Much nicer than a Jaguar.

[C]

Very much luxurious experience inside of it. It looks.

[A]

Is that going to be an Uber? Who's that going to be?

[C]

It's going to be on Uber. Yes, you'll be able to call it on Uber. And it's powered by technology from Neuro, and so it's just the most Bay Area thing ever. It's fantastic.

[A]

Is it more expensive than a regular Uber?

[C]

Uber, it's remains to be seen, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was more expensive.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because it's like, like the Uber black version.

[C]

Right. Because it's a luxurious vehicle. It's not just like a standard sedan. So there that's coming out. And then the Tensor Robo car is a robocar that you can own, which can either drive itself, or if you're like, God, I miss driving, then you can push a button and a steering wheel pops up and you get to drive it. And that's supposed to also be rolling out this year.

[A]

Are we ready for personal vehicles? I.

[C]

It feels very fun fast, and I know they've been developing it for like 10 years, but I don't know if people. If there's a want yet. I don't know if people are like.

[B]

Gosh, I want my so bad.

[C]

Yeah. So I don't know. We're there. We'll see.

[B]

Well, it's a little bit like when you first take a Waymo. First you're like, this is such a cool novelty. I'm going to take a wh. And then like the second time, you're like, I'm never going to talk to another driver in my whole life. This is exactly what I want. 1. I will refuse to interact with anything but robots. And I. And I think that is that. Is that it. It feels very nice to get in a car, get to where you're going and not have to interact with anyone. And I don't say that as. As, like, as a antisocial statement, as much as it's just. It feels safer. It feels more. It feels more like I can listen to ridiculous music. Peaceful. I can listen to no music. Music. No. And it's.

[C]

And it smells nice.

[B]

Not always, but most of the time. Yeah. Yeah.

[C]

You don't have to think about Bo sometimes.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. And so there's a whole, there's a whole thing of.

[A]

Unless the first. The driver before you person.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

[D]

There is someone watching you. There is somebody watching you.

[C]

Oh, there's a lot of people.

[B]

Oh, I hope so.

[C]

And I put on a show. Listen. It is.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I prefer that karaoke in there.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. What do you do? You sing songs, you dance, you get.

[C]

To do your play.

[A]

I'm riding in a way. Mo. Riding around. I got nothing to do but ride around town.

[C]

Exactly right.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And I like how tensor in. I don't know what, what where they are in the US but they're like. And you can have zooms, zoom meetings in your tensor. And I'm just like, no, I just want to lay on the ground if anything. I'm just going to listen to music and read a book or something.

[A]

Can you lie on the ground in.

[B]

It looks like the seat goes back.

[A]

Back it.

[C]

Yeah. And it's very much like a sedan, essentially.

[A]

I was so nervous. I get, I, I get nervous if my wife is driving. I, I cannot like, I wanna, I'm like, aren't you. I mean, when your spouse drives, don't you like, you know, you hold the.

[B]

Handle, pay attention and do you, do you take wayos.

[A]

I've never been on a waymo.

[B]

Oh, you should. You'll change. You have. It's so much. It's great. Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. It only be weird for the first minute and then you'll be like, oh, this feels strangely normal. But I think there's a big step between getting in a robo taxi and owning a robo car. And that's what I'm not sure about in terms of timelines because most people haven't been in a robo taxi yet. So how will most people feel about owning a car that drives itself?

[A]

Well, it'll be people like you guys who are all in on the whole.

[C]

All five of us.

[B]

Is it accessible? Is it accessible everywhere? Everywhere? Does Tensor ask?

[C]

No, it rolls out. There's. They're planning to roll out end of this year and I'm sure it'll be kind of a gradual rollout if they do meet that timeline. So.

[B]

What a cool thing. I, I'm, I, I'm fully in.

[A]

Should it Be my next car as a Tensor.

[C]

Yeah. Try it. Why not?

[B]

Yeah, why not?

[A]

Here's your. Here's your article. They look kind of cool.

[C]

Yeah, they look, they look.

[B]

Yeah, they look really neat.

[C]

Oh, why is it blue? The background of your, of this article.

[A]

Oh, everything on my.

[C]

It looks beautiful. Like I want to make.

[A]

It's not supposed to be blue. Oh, everything on my. I'm using a weird browser and everything.

[B]

What browser is it?

[A]

Zen. Don't make fun of my browser and my terminal.

[C]

No, I.

[B]

No.

[A]

What do you use?

[C]

That looks so.

[B]

I use helium. And I also.

[A]

No, don't use helium. That's why it's Russian.

[B]

Oh, no, not Russian.

[A]

Is it? Yeah. And it has telemetry in it that goes back to. Where are you? Yeah.

[B]

Oh man, I'm in trouble again.

[A]

Didn't you read all about it and read it? I might be wrong. That's just what I read about on Reddit.

[B]

I didn't read anything I don't read.

[A]

Helium is. Helium is very popular. It's Chrome based. But it's a single developer out of Russia and there's some concern about data going back to Russia from it. But I don't know. You, you check it out. You're. You're.

[B]

I'm going to ask Claude. Oh, that's Claude.

[C]

Claude.

[B]

Claude will be like, I don't know.

[A]

Captain.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So as Tensor said, how much this will be? I mean, it's a beautiful car. I'm. I'm ready to buy a new car.

[C]

I would love if you bought one and told us all about it. They have not shared the price yet.

[A]

So we're gonna level four autonomy. See Elon, even Elon, who's been selling level four autonomy economy and is now in trouble for it, even Elon says, well, it's the long tail. It's hard. You know, you can. That's. The. 99.9% is fine. It's that last point one percent of unusual situations the car can't handle. Well, does this car, I mean, have a steering wheel? Am I sitting behind a steering wheel or am I just lying on the floor with. With Harper?

[C]

Actually, what they told me is that the reason why they made the steering wheel fold in and out of the dashboard is imagine you get in the self driving car and you take a N and you're laying down behind the driver's seat and you wake up and you see the steering wheel moving itself and you freak out an instant.

[A]

Yeah, that would be creepy, right?

[C]

That's why they let you kind of like Let it go into the dashboard and then a touchscreen goes over it. So if you wake up, you're not seeing a steering wheel moving and you're not forgetting that this car is driving itself.

[A]

This is like your own personal Waymo.

[C]

Exactly. 100%. It kind of looks like one. It looks like, honestly, like a. Like a Tesla meets a Jaguar.

[A]

Or a shark. It looks a little bit like a shark.

[C]

I could see that.

[A]

Yeah, I know. She got in the back seat.

[B]

Seat.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Is that. Are you expected to ride in the back seat? Like you have a chauffeur.

[C]

You can.

[B]

Why wouldn't you? Yeah, you can do whatever you want.

[A]

I guess it'd be safer in the backseat if there is an accident. It's true.

[C]

But yeah, if you want to feel bougie. Absolutely.

[A]

Be all bougie and ride in the backseat.

[C]

Yeah, why not?

[A]

All right, I will buy. So my lease for my car runs out end of the year. Right about when this is going to come out.

[C]

Fantastic. Do it for all of us.

[A]

I will, I will. I will be the first.

[C]

I love this.

[A]

I'll be the bougie guy riding around.

[C]

You should get some sort of deal. Speaking about content creator deals, like, you should get.

[A]

I never get any of that stuff.

[C]

And then you can get like. Tell us all about it. This is great.

[A]

I never. Nobody ever offers me nothing.

[C]

It's time to start. Listen, Tesla, get Leo one of these cars. You won't regret it.

[A]

They say volume. You say. I'm quoting you. Volume produced, consumer ready, autonomous vehicle designed for private ownership.

[D]

So my question here is it's got to be 100. What is this going to be? Its parking strategy in the city.

[C]

Yeah, that's going to be the fun part. And that's what people I'm sure will also. Yeah.

[A]

Who's liable if it gets in an accident?

[C]

That's the other question.

[B]

No, you just get out and run. That's the easiest thing to do. You just be. They'll be, who's coming.

[A]

If it's a Waymo, fine. But this is my vehicle. I'm not going to get out and run.

[B]

Just buy it under a different name.

[A]

You don't even have to park it in your garage. You could park it somewhere else and.

[C]

Then it can come to you whenever.

[D]

That's right.

[A]

You don't have to.

[C]

Yeah, that's right.

[D]

You have to sit on it. Sit in it while it's parking. You can let it drop you off and have it park.

[A]

She gets out in this video and says, go find a parking Spot.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

And then you're done shopping, you go, hey, car, you must have an app, right?

[C]

There's. Yeah, there's probably going to be an app. And then once the car arrives, you can tell it to like, it can talk to you, can talk to us. You can say like, pop the trunk, open the store, whatever.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Or unlock the store. Yeah.

[A]

Level four autonomy. Okay. Yeah, I'll be, I'll be the guinea pig. And you know what? If I die in a fiery wreck.

[C]

It'S the best way to go.

[A]

I'll be famous.

[C]

We'll use the are you alive? App to make sure you're still.

[A]

Ah, that's what I need. I'll push the big button.

[D]

The court case will be the Laporte estate versus. Yeah, it'll be the Laporte act, you know.

[C]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

No, they have to use your first name. It's like the Leo's dead act or something.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I'm glad we got this figured out.

[B]

That's good.

[C]

Everyone stay tuned.

[A]

Also, also here with Harper Reed. So as a bar, Reid, I'm glad you're here too. Thank you for watching Twit and thanks to our club members who make this possible. The Club supports now 25% of our operating expenses. It's going to be more this year. I know, know it. Advertising sales, dripping off, dropping off. And I really, I like, frankly, I think that's great. I think that every podcast network should be just, you know, supported by the people. Listen to it. If you like these shows, this is how you can cast a vote. Join the club TWIT TV Club Twit. You get ad free versions of all the shows, access to the discord, lots of special programming this week. Micah's going to do his crafting corner. On Wednesday we did the photo segment. Frost Friday. We've got lots. We got the Stacy's book clubs coming up at the end of the month. Really interesting book. Oh, I'm really enjoying it. Can't wait to talk about it with you. Join the club. We'd love to have you. Twit TV Club Twit. Mads Ollison is a Danish developer with a three year old kid who couldn't learn how to use the remote. He said the smart TV is too hard for for it. So he turned an old floppy disk drive into a kid friendly content controller. He gives the kids discs with pictures on it. The kid puts the disk in the floppy drive and the TV turns on. The data is not on the disc, just the information about what to play and plays It.

[B]

That's great.

[A]

Isn't that clever?

[D]

Clever?

[B]

It's so good.

[A]

He says, you know, the floppy disks are the best storage media ever invented. Why else would the save icon still be a floppy disk?

[B]

I think there's a real. A real thing about the tactile feel putting in media.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And like my aforementioned child, I got them a tape player which they love.

[A]

Love that.

[B]

And they give a lot of tip four.

[A]

Oh, perfect.

[B]

So he's really into tapes. Bonnie Tyler. Super into Bonnie Tyler.

[A]

Total Eclipse of the Heart.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Turn around, Bright Eyes. Really nice.

[B]

Did you know that was a vampire? That's like a Nosferatu musical. Written by. Written by the guy that wrote the meatloaf stuff. Anyway, it does.

[A]

Jim Steadman does explain the lyrics. I never really understood the. Yeah, yeah, That's Bonnie Tyler. Am I right?

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah, 100%. Oh, I've listened to that song seven million times.

[A]

Did she do Bette Davis eyes too? Is that one of hers?

[B]

I don't know. She's holding out for a hero.

[A]

Holding out for a hero. Which does your kid like the best?

[B]

I think it depends on the time. But the first one was Bonnie Tyler and the second one was holding out for a Hero. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, the thing that I felt.

[A]

Really Steinman, not Stedman, Jim Steinman was.

[B]

Really interesting about this was the idea of having autonomy. And choosing your media is something as adults that, that we especially of, kind of say our vintage have experienced as youth. We got to put in a CD or put in a tape or put in a record and we had to choose that. Whereas now you have a lot of algorithmic choice for you made with media consumption, so you don't actually have this autonomy. And so as I look at this young person, I'm just like, how do I give them as much autonomy as I can within so they can start developing taste and want and whatnot? And it's. It's very interesting because every other place that you have, there's just like it's a decision made for you by computers.

[D]

Right.

[A]

Well, maybe bring your floppy disks to the movie theater because this is bring your own bucket weekend at the Cinemark theaters. Tomorrow is national popcorn day for $5.

[B]

Is that a real. This is a real thing.

[A]

This is a real thing.

[B]

Yes, yes.

[A]

Cinemark Theaters. We have one in town, has a BYOB bring your own bucket event. Any bucket, any size. They will fill it to the brim for just $5. It could be a Lowe's 5 gallon blue bucket. They said just bring it in and and you'll get up to 400 ounces. I guess there is a limit. You can't bring in one of your, you know neuro auto driver driving vehicles but it's up to 400 ounces of delicious buttery popcorn for $5. National Popcorn Day. This is a tiktoker from last year who brought in a giant soup pot and and filled it up at her cinema markets today and tomorrow. Go ahead, get all the popcorn. What could possibly go where she's very happy? Look at this guy.

[C]

I mean shout out to the man. Yeah.

[A]

Bane Ban Silva got a lot of popcorn on National Popcorn Day. All right. All right. Happy Birthday Wikipedia 25 by the way, Wikipedia announced that it's going to start selling. It's since all it's being scraped by all the AIs anyway they're going to try to get a little more money at OpenAI and it's a good idea. Why not? Why not?

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

We need Wikipedia. Wikipedia.

[B]

I love it. I love Wikipedia the best.

[C]

I love going down rabbit holes on Wikipedia.

[B]

It's the best.

[A]

It's the best. My my Obsidian daily Journal diary has a link to the W Today Today on Wikipedia. Just because I want every day I want a reminder go look and see what's because the today page is great. It's always got something interesting going on and and kudos to Cory Doctorow. Everybody should go read his latest post on PL. He said the world needs an Ireland for disinshidification. He's the guy who coined the term inshitification. The big techs grab for all the profit they can get. He says now just like Ireland became a tax haven it was a way to bring Ireland's economy back on top by getting all of the big tech companies to come there to save tax money money to evade tax taxes in their country. He says we need to do something like that but with reverse engineering. And he says this would be a good thing for Canada maybe to do. He said if some country came along and said we are not going to buy into the the you know, anti you know, the intellectual property world, you know, intellectual property rights plan. It is a crime he says in virtually every country on earth to modify America's defective insidified privacy invading money, stealing technology exports. That's because the US Trade Representative has spent the last 25 years using the threat of tariffs sound familiar? To bully all of America's trading partners into adopting anti circumvention laws. He said but if some country and he really I think he thinks Canada should do it. But some country came along and said, hey, come on over here and reverse engineer all of America's stuff and offer it. The time is ripe. Cory writes for the founding of a disincitification nation. And I, Ireland, for disincentification, drop the anti circumvention laws that ban the modification of US tech exports. Once one country starts making these tools, there'll be no way to prevent their export. And then suddenly everything's better. I think it's a brilliant idea. We could throw Claude code into this reversing stuff.

[B]

Yeah, seems, I think it sounds great.

[A]

Yeah. Ireland shows us it takes just one country to defect from this global prisoner's dilemma, then everything is up for grabs.

[D]

Can anybody really do that to like Google though? Like if someone cloned Google in another country and Google just says, all right, well shutting down everything Google in your country, I don't, I don't think that's going to work.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

They, they export it.

[B]

I think it's, I think it's actually there's a couple things that are kind of, of being lightly said that we should probably say a little more discreetly or a little more aggressively, which is it is very easy to clone software right now. It is incredibly, incredibly easy to clone software right now.

[A]

But it's illegal because of these reverse engineering laws.

[B]

I think that there's some ways to do this with like clean room.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Reverse engineering and all this other stuff that is that that big tech has been doing for years so that they can launch, hire the person who invented a feature and then launch that feature. Running into law issues, you know, everyone gets sued but nothing really happens. And I think that there's a bunch of that. But what I find really interesting is even hardware to some extent, but mostly software. If you said I want to build, you know, I really liked Aperture, the photo product from Apple. I want to redo it, I want to copy it. Well, the thing is is that it's not copying it because it's like a memory. You're misremembering it. So you're adding all sorts extra features that you thought were there, that you're combining all these other things. And it's not so much a one to one clone, but it is very, very easy to do this. And just if you go to like Hacker News, there used to be these really impressive side projects that people had the show Hacker News and now it's all of these software that people are just generating, pushing out. And I don't mean this in a negative way. I mean that at some point this is going to be really interesting to see how it's kind of plays out for all of these folks. I'm. I'm. I'm very interested in, in what, how it, how it, how it turns out. But I do not know the answer. You know, it's going to be very strange.

[A]

This is Hacker News. This is Y Combinators news feed, which I read every religiously as most geeks do. And there's a show button and this is Show Hacker News. And as you said, a lot of this is just vibe coded tools that somebody's written that anybody could write. I like this one. This is a tiny RTS mining strategy game. Pretty sure it's vibe coded. Yeah, pretty sure. You know, there's just a ton of it. I go here every day and I find stuff. It's like, wow, that's so cool. Look, it's half of its AI. Oh look, a browser based terminal emulator. Maybe this is even better than Ghost tty.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

I did start for Reed.

[B]

I did do a fun thing. I put a VM inside of one of our company websites. If you go to2389.dev I wrote a. I have an old Mac over there that I run a shell script and it is like an intro to our. When you walk in, it has a logo and it has some like kind of terminal effects going on it. And then I was like, wait a minute, I should put this on a webpage. Then I was like, wait a minute, I should put. So if you press Escape. If you go to that and you just press Escape after this loads. Wow, it's fast. Look how fast it is.

[A]

That's because I'm reading Kitty. No, I'm kidding.

[B]

Yeah, no. So this is a browser, but if you press Escape.

[A]

Yeah, I'm now. Oh, I'm on the command line.

[B]

But this is in a browser and this is a real VM that's running inside of your browser. And you can set up networking if you run networking. And that will connect to some very strange proxy server. And then from there, Shrek.

[A]

I want to do Shrek. I should have listened to Shrek. Oh, I crashed it.

[B]

Oh no.

[A]

Well, it's very robust. It restarted.

[B]

Yeah. So it's really kind of funny thing. I don't know if Shrek. Do you have networking Shrek might be. I think if I remember correctly, Shrek is using a gift ansi. Oh, and it's taking some Shrek gif and playing the Shrek gif. But yeah, so this blew my mind because this is all inside of a browser and it's running on your Chrome or whatever and it blows. I'm just like, what does this even mean? As someone who loves and adores Linux and browser browsers and shells and all that stuff, this was just like, huh.

[A]

Oh, you got frac on here.

[B]

Yeah, of course. We're super hackers.

[A]

Look at all the frack. Look at this. It's a complete set. Nice. Are you worried somebody's gonna get in here and hack around and go for it?

[B]

It literally is inside of your browser. Oh, like there's no server here. You can delete everything and just.

[A]

Is this my. This isn't my directory though.

[B]

No, no. It's like this is running inside of the JavaScript inside of your browser.

[A]

What if I run DD on this?

[B]

Try it.

[A]

Am I going to wipe it?

[B]

Yeah, but it's. You just hit reload. It's not.

[A]

Oh, it's a VM running in my browser. I get it.

[B]

Literally inside of your browser as a vm. Like there's nothing else. It's just there. And this, this, this was. This was not. There's not a lot of vibe coding in this. This was actually a little bit of just brawn.

[A]

You're wild. Hysterical. Do you have a play mod in here? Can I play some mod music?

[B]

No, but if I remember correctly, you can run mutt and check email.

[A]

Oh, nice. Whose email will it check?

[B]

I think this is. I think this was vibe coded, so we don't know.

[A]

Oh yeah, somebody's email. Email says omg, you'll never believe what happened. Modem speeds and other Jude CS162 is killing me. Whose email is this?

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

Girls night out tomorrow. Your sister said you could help with BBS stuff. Thanks for tonight and some goss. What?

[B]

Whose email is this? Whose email are you reading?

[A]

Whose email is this? You're funny, man. You're funny. That's good. I like it. That's a game. Harper Reed. So 2389 AI. Every time you're on, you say, I don't have anything to announce. You have anything to announce? That was it.

[B]

Nope, I don't think so. I'm trying to think what we got. Oh, we have, we have. We have a whole boatload of Claude plugin. Claude skills.

[A]

Oh, I love Claude skills.

[B]

So if you go to skills2389A AI.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And I was having some SSL issues earlier, so let me know if that works. But we basically. These are all of the Stuff that we've been using for the past eight months, six months, or whenever cloud code was released. And I'll tell you a couple really interesting ones. So one of them is the Fresh Eyes review is a really good one. Basically it kind of compels the agent to forget everything it knows. Another one that's been really interesting.

[A]

Oh, so you, after you vibe code something, you run this plugin and then say, look at this with Fresh eyes and tell me.

[B]

And it's such a stupid hack, but it works really well. And another one that is really interesting is the scenario testing, which is a little bit. Which is this idea of getting the agent to use the software you wrote as a user. So it's, instead of end to end testing or integration testing, it just runs it. So it's really good. And then one of the new ones we're doing, we're playing a lot with is the test kitchen, which will have the agent do two or three implementations and then pick the best one, which is very interesting. And then there's a couple really. Oh, there's actually a really good one called Binary re, which is for read an agentic binary reverse engineering for ELF binaries, which is very, very good.

[A]

So you can take an existing ELF binary and reverse engineer it.

[B]

Oh yeah. And it's absolutely, you could, it's absolutely.

[A]

Turn it into assembler. What do you turn. What does it turn into?

[B]

Just, just understand what's going on. So if you're trying to figure out how something is working, it works very effectively.

[A]

That's really cool.

[B]

There's a couple weird ones, two of them that I really like. One of the them is a CEO personal os, which is a conglomeration of a whole bunch of different prompts from different folks that I applied in here that you can just kind of instantiate a CEO coach. That's very effective and it's very bizarre. And then another one I played with a lot over the holidays is one that tries to, it's called worldview synthesis where it tries to articulate your worldview. And so you just pop in belief, beliefs, tensions, et cetera into the little box. And then it will help you write out a statement of belief. Because something that I have found is like you talked about it earlier about this idea that we have a hard time carrying these inconsistent or kind of at odds beliefs. And we all have these. And so I was trying to figure out how do I use the kind of questions and answer kind of platonic kind of dialogue type interaction model that these AI guys give us. So Easily to help define my worldview. And this was kind of interesting and I'll tell you my worldview if I can find it.

[A]

So this is one of the things I've always been a little interested in is of making a statement of your. A personal statement of your values so that you have something to measure your actions against. Something eternal. Although I guess values might evolve over time.

[C]

But.

[A]

But fundamentally these are the things that really you are bedrock beliefs. Like for me, like all humans are equal and have equal value and something like that. And, and one of those values and articulate them so that you can then go out in the world and act according to your values instead of just kind of messing around. Now I just did plug and install and it's not loading it. What do I need to not fit? Do I have to get your marketplace?

[B]

If you go to the very, very top. So go to the very first page and you say plug in marketplace ad the very top right there.

[A]

I see what you're saying.

[B]

I. Yeah, it's the very first instruction. Yeah, right at the very top right there.

[A]

So you do this first and then it'll know about that marketplace. And now I can do the other one.

[B]

You should be able to.

[A]

To, let's see, I'm installing it right now.

[B]

And so now if you just say I want to build my worldview, I think it'll probably just go ahead and do it. And this is. I play with this for.

[A]

Does this intrigue you at all, brar? Is this something you'd ever want to do?

[C]

I like watching you do it.

[B]

That's a great way to do it because I find all of this stuff to be very. I find myself so interested in testing it that I spend so much time kind of unlearning what I. What I have, the hole I have fallen into and trying to.

[A]

Let's build your worldview, Captain.

[B]

Are you really a pirate? So, so this is, this is going to go through a whole thing and it's going to actually create like data and narrative. So you. So what I was doing is how this started is I was in Japan. I had all this, this time because I was jet lagged so I wasn't sleeping as well as I normally. And so I was just like, I read this article and I don't remember what article it was. And I said I believe this article and the premise of what it's saying with my whole self. So I was like, what else can I collect that I also believe? And so I started putting it in here and here's like my people and community part. Find your crew, protect your people. Diversity is essential. Create spaces for misfits. Work, philosophy, have fun. Overall, shipping is everything. Everything.

[A]

I just want your worldview.

[B]

Oh, it gets, it gets. It gets darker. But I think the thing that was really helpful is I once applied for this fellowship, and then they said no. They said no. And I was upset about that because I really wanted to do it. And then I talked to a friend who was close, and he said they couldn't figure out what you believed. And I found about myself that I am much too cool, quick to be a chameleon in a lot of situations. And as a. Probably as a way, a safety or whatever, like, you know, sure. And, and, and. And I was. And I. That was kind of sat there and I was like, I need someone to ask me all these questions with. With unlimited patience so that I can write down what I believe. And so I try it myself in a notebook. And I could just never do it. I just give up. And so finally, the AI who doesn't give a care, doesn't really care about anything, is just. Just like, Harper, what do you think about? Blah, blah, blah.

[A]

Tell me again. I want to hear more.

[B]

Yeah, this is great. You're so smart. Yeah.

[A]

So. So this is a skill. So really all it is is a prompt, right, that you wrote?

[B]

Well, I think so, but I would say, actually, no, there's two things that. That are wrong about what I. What you said there. First one is, I didn't write it.

[A]

Claude did.

[B]

Claude wrote it, but it also was created. There's this really fun thing, obviously, superpowers. I'm sure you're using superpowers with your cloud code. But there's a thing that if you do something with Claude code, and this works with others as well, you do something with Claude code, and it was complicated or was interesting or whatever at the end or at a good stopping point, if you just say, let's create a skill, it'll wrap up a generalized view of that and create a skill. And so what I did is I went through and did this really protracted work of trying to create my worldview in this. And then I said, oh, this might be interesting. I bet others would like this. And so I said, claude, make this worldview thing a skill. Copy all the patterns that we did, the ones that were successful, remove the ones that weren't successful, and make this a skill. And it was just like, okay, great. And then it's there. And so if you look at the source, you know, it has the skill, it has some references. I don't even know what this stuff is. I've never seen this stuff. I, in my time, in my life.

[A]

I'm installing the superpowers right now because I didn't have superpowers.

[B]

Your mind is going to be blown because Superpowers is incredible. Jesse, who made this, really struck something here. And.

[A]

But essentially these skills are really just text prompts that tell Claude, do this, act this way, do this kind of thing basically. Right?

[B]

I think so I guess we can go.

[A]

It's on GitHub. We could actually look. Look at.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I mean, it is code on this.

[B]

That's true. It is, it is that. But I mean, it's. It is. It's interesting because it's like they are just prompts. But Jesse was able to, to weave it together in a way that it is, it works in a way that other just prompts didn't work. And so I wouldn't want to diminish it by just saying.

[A]

But yeah, I'm just for people who are going, well, what is it?

[B]

Oh, Superpowers is just a collection of like scripts that let the, the cloud code act in a certain way. So it has a really good brainstorm.

[A]

Are they shell scripts?

[B]

No, no, some of them are. There's some, there's some shell scripts, some MCP servers, there's a whole bunch of stuff. But it is, it is incredible. It's very complicated. But. But it also does a thing and pushes Claude to do a thing to find focus on sub agent development. So you can say, it'll be like, I want to build a tool. And it'll say, oh, great. And then like, it'll be like, okay, I'm going to do the work now. And you're just like, do it with sub agents. And it's like, great. And it just like spins up subclouds that then do all the work.

[A]

So it's a it now. It's a plugin. If I hit slash, well, you can just say there's write, plan, execute, plan, brainstorm. So if you do anything, you start with Brainstorm.

[B]

Well, actually I do it much, much less dogmatically. I just pop in and I'll like, let's start a new directory. And I'll just be like, hey, Claude, I was thinking of making an iOS app. That's how I do it. That does.

[A]

Increasingly, I feel like all of this extra stuff, Claude's just kind of wrapping it into itself and eventually, really that's all you'll ever have to do is say, hey, Claude, let's try this. Let's do this and interact with Claude. And you could even say to Claude, hey, Claude, I want to develop my own list of my personal values. Could you help me do that? And then we just do it.

[B]

Yeah. And so with superpowers, what I'll say is, I'll say, like, I'll say, hey, I want to build a golang app that will help me visualize STLs so I can see them on a 3D whatever. And then it'll be like, great. And then. And I'll say, can you use superpowers to do this? And I'll just kind of trigger it that way. And then it'll just go through a whole program.

[A]

You don't even have to tell it to. It just does.

[B]

And that's how the skills are. So the skills typically register with the LLM, some kind of keywords that the LLM should listen to to invoke those skills. And so many of these will work that way. And sometimes it works very funny. It'll execute something that you didn't quite mean to execute.

[A]

So, yeah, I said, let's brainstorm, and said, okay, what do you want to work on? We could work on your worldview synthesis. We could work on your speedy reader. We could. Or something else entirely.

[B]

Yep. Yeah, it's good. It's good. I quite enjoy it. I think it's worthwhile checking out if you're a Claude code person. Definitely check it out.

[A]

That is again, the address is skills2389AI. Is that right?

[B]

Yeah. Skills2389AI.

[A]

Thank you. Harper Reed. His blog is at Harper Blog. It's always great to see you. Thank you.

[B]

I'm happy to be here.

[A]

You can resume wearing your chain mail now.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Finally.

[A]

You took it off just for us kids.

[B]

Well, you know, the thing is, it's scary out here. Here in Chicago, they gotta wear that.

[A]

You gotta wear that. I know.

[B]

You might get stabbed in the neck.

[A]

Not anymore.

[B]

No, not anymore.

[A]

Let them try. Let them try. At worst, you'll get a little sponsor.

[B]

Your new sponsor is gonna be one of those chainmail guys on it.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Brought to you by chainmail dot com.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Don't leave home without it. Abrar Al Hedi. You're the best, too. Thank you for putting up with a couple of nerds.

[C]

I love this.

[B]

Let's.

[C]

And popcorn. I need my 5 gallon Lowe's.

[A]

I know. 400 ounces. How much popcorn is that?

[B]

So much popcorn.

[A]

So much popcorn.

[C]

But yeah, it's very entertaining to watch you to just nerd out. It's great.

[A]

Oh, we are such nerds. But you know what? You might be a nerd, too.

[C]

I am. We all were here.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think you're riding around in your little car without any steering wheel.

[C]

That's right.

[A]

Definitely a nerd.

[C]

100%.

[A]

How nerdy is that? I, I, you know what? I am going to, I will buy if it's under 100,000. I don't, I can't afford, I mean, it's good. It's probably going to be pretty expensive.

[C]

But I would like to think it'll be under 100,000 and I hope it is so that you can buy it.

[A]

I would, I could lease it anyway. Yeah, I'll lease it.

[C]

Absolutely.

[A]

Yeah, I'll let the company lease it. That way if I get in an accident, call the company, let the company handle it.

[B]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[A]

You're very patient. Thank you so much. I love seeing you. I love having you on. Of course, a briar is every month on on Tech News Weekly with Micah Sargent.

[C]

That's right.

[A]

And just. You'll find her great [e-mail] where she just wrote about autonomous vehicles at CES. And now you're going to have some time off to enjoy.

[C]

I'm going to Orlando to hit up theme parks, which I think is the best way.

[A]

Oh, you, you know what, we're going to Orlando in March, so give us a little heads up if there's anything exciting. We're going to go to Epcot and then I love Universal.

[C]

Me too.

[A]

What else is there in Orlando? Is that.

[C]

That's basically it. I'm going to go to Epic Universe for the first time. I'm really excited. The new Universal park. And yeah, we'll do, we'll do a mix of Universal and Disney and just enjoy. I'll get to see my sister and the kiddos.

[A]

Oh, that's nice. You have family out there.

[C]

Yeah, they'll be flying out there, so.

[A]

Oh, they're joining you. Even better.

[C]

Even better. Yes. I'm looking forward to it.

[A]

So my favorite thing at Universal was the Harry Potter ride where you ride. Wow.

[C]

I'm a huge Potter head, so.

[A]

Yeah. And it's. You put on a VR helmet and you're on a flying broom and you ride through Hogwarts. I love that. But this is going to be even more stuff like that.

[C]

Yes. So, yeah, Epic Universe is the one that just opened up last year in like May. So another Harry Potter themed world. And Then other stuff too, like how to Train youn Dragon and oh, this will be fun monsters and lots of.

[A]

Do you think they're. They're, they're kind of out doing Disney these days? Oh, there's Hollywood.

[C]

I kind of do feel that way. I think, I think they have a lot more innovation. Disney only will make a ride. Like the fact that they just came out with a Tron ride like two years ago when you're like really, like really? Tron, really that long to do that?

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

So Universal is more on top of things and they'll, they'll get things done.

[A]

Oh, they have a Mario Kart World.

[C]

Oh boy. Super Mario World is.

[A]

Oh boy.

[C]

This is very. They have this in, in LA and it's fantastic. So I'm really excited to see the one in Orlando.

[A]

Oh, this looks great.

[C]

It's really. I mean.

[A]

Oh, maybe instead of Epcot will go.

[C]

Here or do both. Because I love Epcot, so I'm hoping to do both. You gotta fit it in somehow.

[A]

Oh, man. We're going out for a security conference, but I think we might have to find some time to.

[C]

Oh, you got to do it to play while you're out there. I've heard the lines are abhorrent, so.

[A]

You know what? I don't know who goes to amusement parks? It costs so much money.

[C]

It's really expensive and it gets worse every year. Like I feel like you used to be able to do it for like a little over 100 now. It's like 200 today.

[A]

Yeah. Disney is not something a middle class family can go to anymore.

[C]

No, it's ridiculous.

[A]

You have to be wealthy.

[C]

Yeah, it's. It's absolutely obnoxious, but it's addicting, which is the problem. And they know it. They know the money, they know you'll spend it.

[A]

So I mean, where else you get to fly a dragon?

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

You can fly a dragon.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Yes, you can.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

Yes you can.

[C]

Maybe we should get Epic to spawn, sponsor the show. Also you're going to get you a free robo car and a free.

[A]

I want the neuro turo loro duro. And I'm going to drive to Epic in my neuro duro. And then boom, boom. Booyah, baby.

[C]

That's right.

[A]

Thank you, Abrar. Thank you, Harper. Thanks to all of you for joining us. We do twit Sunday afternoons, 1400 Pacific Time, 1700 East Coast Time, 2200 UTC. I mentioned those times not cause you, you have to be here at any particular time, but you can watch us do it live. We stream it live into the club Twit Discord, but also on YouTube, Twitch, X.com, facebook, LinkedIn and Kick. So you can watch live after the fact. We let you download it from our website, TWIT tv. There's audio or video. I think the audio is great if you're driving but the video is nice because you could see the stuff. We often show videos and stuff. We try to make it accessible to all and some sundry there. The video is also on YouTube. There's a dedicated channel for this week in tech. Great way to share clips with the Turo folks. If you want to say Leo, you really should have this car because he's going to be buried in it. Let's see what. No, don't tell him that. That probably wouldn't. That that's not going to help. And then you can also subscribe in your favorite podcast player. That way you get it automatically as soon as it's done. A special thanks to our club members, our family, I like to think of them, people who make this show possible. And there's one other thing you can do for us, club member or not. We are, we do it once a year. We're doing our survey, our listener survey at TWiT TV survey 26 takes about 10 minutes. It's the only way we can know about you. We don't have, we don't track you, we don't do anything that would give us any more information than your IP address which we don't even follow up on. So it. But we'd like to know more so we can make sure our shows are fitting your interests. It also helps us sell advertising because we could say, you know, 33% of our audience is interested in self driving vehicles or whatever it is. So go to the, go to the website, Twitter TV Survey 26 and if you would take the survey. We don't, you know, we, we do get your email address but we don't correlate it with anything. We're not, we're looking for the, the, you know, aggregate information so it's privacy first because we know you care and thank you in advance. Thanks for being here and we will see you next time. Thank you, Harper. Thank you, o'. Brie. Thank you everybody. Another twit is in the can.

[C]

He's amazing.

[A]

Doing the twit. Doing the twit. All right.

[B]

Doing the twin, maybe.

[A]

Doing the twin all right.