This Week in Tech (TWiT) – Episode 1058: “Furry Little Potatoes”

Date: November 17, 2025
Host: Leo Laporte
Guests: Victoria Song (The Verge), Christina Warren (GitHub)

Overview

In this high-energy episode, Leo is joined by Victoria Song (fresh from Rome and The Verge’s senior reviewer) and returning fan-favorite Christina Warren (now at GitHub) for a wide-ranging discussion on the latest in tech, spanning AI-powered smart glasses, privacy challenges of wearable tech, quirky product launches, streaming wars, Apple succession rumors, and more. The panel blends expert analysis, personal anecdotes, and plenty of playful banter, making this a must-listen for anyone wanting deep yet entertaining insights into this week in tech.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Smart Glasses, AR, and Everyday “Surveillance”

• Victoria’s Italy Trip with Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses

  • Victoria recaps her Rome trip, field testing Meta’s new Ray-Ban display glasses—with an actual HUD and translation features.
    • “Crossing the street in Italy is a never ending game of Frogger. ...The times where the glasses would run out of battery, I would be like, oh, no.” (Victoria, 05:37)
    • Real-time captions and translations shine in 1-on-1 settings; are unreliable for ambient speech (“if there's a lot of Italians yelling in the vicinity …it doesn't know who to translate”). (Victoria, 12:08–13:31)
    • Walking directions proved most practical for tourists; less so in daily life in New York/Hackensack.
  • Issues with battery, device size, and fashion come up.
    • “They’re quite large on my face. My spouse was just like, ...no, absolutely not.” (Victoria, 08:41)

• Privacy, Social Cues, and Microdystopias

  • Extended debate on the ethics of wearing always-on recording devices in public.
    • “[Public] don’t know that it's white. …Most people in public don't know what I'm doing at that point in time. So I personally feel quite ethically [conflicted].” (Victoria, 19:48)
    • Discussion of the subtlety of indicator lights (why companies deliberately use less conspicuous white).
    • Concerns about the “glasshole” effect, remembering the Google Glass backlash.
      • “I’d like to see Meta just lead the conversation more. …That can’t be your policy, like there has to be some conversation…” (Victoria, 24:56)
  • Social mores lagging behind tech advances: “Imagine …you're on a first date and—yeah, huh, huh, are you swiping on Tinder right now?” (Leo, 17:35)

2. Apple Legal & Health Tech

• Apple vs. Masimo Patent Case ([30:08]):
  • Jury finds Apple owes $634M for infringing on pulse oximetry patents in the Apple Watch.
  • Panel agrees the sensor is “not that important” for most users—spot checks not as valuable as advertised (Victoria, 33:34–34:07).
  • Privacy and anxiety issues from wearable health monitoring:
    • “Do you think it's a risk that it could turn us all into hypochondriacs?” (Leo, 37:43)
    • “That's already a problem. That's happening.” (Christina & Victoria, 37:46)

3. “Surveillance” Tech & Society

• Cultural Adjustments and Etiquette
  • Parallels with AirTags: mostly used appropriately, but a small minority exploit for bad uses.
  • Friend’s anecdote: even wearable tech-savvy folks can fail to spot smart glasses for hours—a wake-up call about how discreet these devices are becoming (Victoria, 25:10).
  • Neural bands and subtle controls (e.g., gesture typing) enhance these hidden capabilities—raising new “super-spy” ethical dilemmas.

4. Other Top News

• Google fined €665M in Germany ([38:57]) for anti-competitive practices (favoring Google Shopping).
  • Speculation about effectiveness and motivation of EU regulation (is it pro-consumer or just protecting EU companies?).
• Disney & YouTube TV Carriage Dispute Resolved
  • Monday Night Football returns; the panel riffs on the ethics of “stealing” subscriptions during blackouts.
  • “Honestly, it's truly—I think we should do more subscription stealing, to be quite honest.” (Victoria, 47:16)

5. AI, Creativity, and Content

• Disney’s Earnings Call Hints at AI-Generated Content

  • Outcry from creatives over Iger’s remarks; panel jokes about “Sora” Disney clips and risks of meme-fueled chaos (Victoria & Christina, 49:01–50:26).
  • Jailbreaking AI for fun and questionable image generation—panel shares personal “cursed” prompt experiments and how quickly model safeguards are breaking/failing.

• Role of AI in News, Browsing, and Wikipedia-like Products

  • Discussion of Grok, Grokipedia, LLM-written encyclopedia articles, and impending knowledge pollution.
  • Tensions between AI speed/scale and the traditional, human-curated model.

6. Apple Succession Rumors ([72:05])

• Discussing Financial Times report on Tim Cook’s anticipated departure, names John Ternus as a probable successor.
• Christina & Victoria agree Apple is facing a “product crisis”—too many SKUs and unclear product segmentation, especially for iPads and iPhones (77:00–79:18).
• Detailed, light-hearted chat about iPhone colorways and cases follows.

7. AI on Devices and Local LLMs

• Christina and Leo exchange notes on Framework desktops running local models (Quinn, Gemma, OpenAI’s OSS120b).
• Apple’s potential (but underutilized) advantage with its own silicon for on-device AI.

8. Hardware Shifts: AMD’s Rise ([105:37]); Intel’s Fall

• Lisa Su credited for AMD’s strategy and success.
• Intel’s missed opportunities and squandered brand value.

9. Health Wearables & Privacy

• Conversation about Oura Ring’s new ceramic design, Withings’ new gadgets (B2B and B2C urine analyzers), and rising trend toward invasive, always-on health monitoring.
• Cautionary notes re: privacy: “If you're worried about your health data, don't use wearables.” (Victoria, 185:20)

10. Tech Culture, Merch, and Collectibles

• Christina flaunts her famous defunct tech merch collection (Theranos fleece, MoviePass T-shirts, Fyre Festival swag).
• Extended playful riffing on the bizarre Apple iPhone sock “poc” (80:10–83:50), and whether it’s a collectible or just... a sock.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

The Practical/Pointed:

• “[Wearing] them in my daily life, I feel like a little gross, like a little super spy having capabilities that people don't know that I have.” (Victoria, 16:18)
• “The translation stuff, if you're one-on-one...could be really useful. But if you're a tourist, one, everyone's gonna talk to you in English anyway.” (Victoria, 12:08)
• “If you think that the data your Apple Watch collects is secure and then you share it to Strava...I don't know what Strava is going to do with that data.” (Victoria, 185:00)

The Playful:

• “...the direction in Italy is a never-ending game of Frogger.” (Victoria, 05:37)
• “Wait a minute. Are they called gibbitz?” “That's what they call them.” (Leo & Christina, 02:53)
• “Girl, why? It's a sock!” (Victoria, 79:48)
• “Are you swiping on Tinder right now?” (Leo, 17:35)
• “You know, it’s playing Goat Simulator. There we are.” (Leo, 129:08)
• “They're like house slippers for your phone.” (Victoria about Apple’s iPhone sock, 82:05)

The Cautionary:

• “If you're worried about your health data, don't use wearables… Even if you trust Apple, even if you think this company is good, if you do a third-party integration, you are agreeing to that third party's thing.” (Victoria, 184:33)
• “We gotta stop treating health like a commodity.” (Victoria, 194:24)

The Reflective:

• “I think soon we all will with AI. AI is gonna be embedded everywhere. We're gonna all know everything about everybody we meet. It's gonna be creepy.” (Leo, 18:06)
• “Sometimes that might mean less MRIs or, you know, like less like blood tests...but, you know, it should be up to the doctor's determination—not what some statistical analysis is saying.” (Christina, 195:40)

Timestamps for Notable Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------------------- |:----------:| | Smart Glasses in Rome (Translation/UX) | 04:24–13:31| | Everyday Surveillance & Privacy Dilemmas | 16:18–26:37| | Apple vs Masimo & the Apple Watch Oximeter | 30:08–38:56| | Creepiness of Always-on Wearables | 17:35–20:37| | Disney/YouTube TV Truce, Streaming Carriage Fights | 46:09–48:10| | Jailbreaking AI Content & Sora/Creative Prompts | 49:01–54:07| | Apple Succession, iPhone Colors, Product Confusion | 72:05–81:03| | Rise of Local AI Models, Apple’s Silicon Opportunity | 114:23–115:41| | Intel’s Collapse & AMD’s Rise | 105:37–112:56| | Health Wearables: Oura, Withings, Privacy Quandaries | 150:55–187:21| | Tech Merch & Apple iPhone Sock Banter | 80:10–85:55| | Speed Round (Lucas Museum, SeatGuru, Dead Penny, etc.) | 165:00–177:09| | Medical Bureaucracy & the MRI Rant | 191:01–194:43|

Tone & Style

• Conversational, candid, and unfiltered.
  The hosts keep things lively, self-deprecating, and frequently tangent into personal war stories or pop culture riffs—but always circle back to the big tech trends with insight.

• Playful skepticism and informed critique.
  Real-life stories, expert critiques, and “I tested this in the wild” context ground hot-takes in reality.

For Those Who Didn’t Listen

This week’s TWiT is a whirlwind tour of the most relevant conversations in tech—balancing the delight (and pitfalls) of wearable innovation, software eating the world, AI’s arrival in daily life, and the perpetual struggle to square technological leaps with human etiquette and regulatory reality. Download this episode for a blend of sharp analysis, great stories, and the sort of laughs only real insiders bring.

Ads, intro music, and outros have been omitted for brevity and focus on discussion content.