WW 953: The Casting of Frank Stallone - Is Xbox Still a Good Deal for Gamers?

Summary

Windows Weekly 953: The Casting of Frank Stallone

Is Xbox Still a Good Deal for Gamers?
Aired: October 8, 2025
Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into Microsoft’s latest Windows and Xbox news, with insider perspectives from Paul Thurrott (in Mexico City) and Richard Campbell (broadcasting from Orlando). Key topics include confusion around the Windows 11 25H2 update, significant Game Pass price hikes, new OneDrive client developments, the evolution of AI-powered browsers, and reflections on big tech’s influence. The hosts also share lively banter and practical tips, making this essential listening for anyone in the Microsoft ecosystem.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Where Is Windows 11 25H2?

• Availability Confusion: Microsoft announced 25H2, but no one seems to have received it via Windows Update. Even Paul, running multiple systems—including Insider builds—can’t get clarity.
• Paul Thurrott: “I feel like Windows is a little bit like Android... Except it's maybe even more random. But there's nothing that says 25H2 is available, but you can't get it. Here's why.” (04:48)
• Manual Installation: Users can force the update by downloading the ISO and running the installer—helpful for those ‘stuck’ on older builds.
• New Features and Blockers: Most notable new changes target power users (e.g., ability to name default user folders, Windows Hello support for external fingerprint readers). Restricting local account creation during setup is controversial but, as Paul notes, is mainly a concern for niche users.

Notable Quote

“Functionally, [25H2] is one better. Yeah, no, functionally, of course, yeah, they are identical.” — Paul Thurrott (08:27)

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2. The Ongoing Debate Over Microsoft Accounts vs. Local Accounts

• Microsoft Tightening Up: Microsoft is further restricting the ability to use local accounts during setup, driving users toward Microsoft accounts.
• Paul’s Argument: It’s more secure, with better recovery options and automatic disk encryption. Workarounds (by using command line prompts) still exist, but are being closed off.
• Community Backlash: Despite the outrage, the hosts affirm that the average user probably benefits from these changes.

Notable Quote

“Why would you want anything that's tied to one piece of hardware? It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life.” — Paul Thurrott (15:54)

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3. OneDrive Updates and the New Client

• New Features Coming: Microsoft teased a revamped OneDrive client for Windows 11, with an integrated gallery and Copilot-powered actions—coming in 2026.
• Confusion on Rollout: Despite leaks and event hype, most improvements are future-facing.
• Copilot Integration: Summaries for documents, meeting recordings, and photo analysis are in the works.
• UX Musings: Paul questions why some features (like the photo gallery) aren’t decoupled from File Explorer in favor of an app-centric approach.

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4. Browser Wars & Agentic Browsers

• Browser Updates:

  • Firefox: Rolling out proper profile support.
  • Brave: Surpasses 100 million users; Paul’s "go-to" browser.
  • Arc: Atlassian’s acquisition may secure its future.
  • Kagi: Hosts appreciate its minimal AI/no-nonsense approach to web search.

• Agentic/AI Browsers: Discussion on Opera’s Neon, Comet (from Perplexity), and how modern browsers are evolving toward “agentic” actions—summarizing, comparing, automating workflows with AI models.

Notable Quote

“Everything you want to do has to begin with a hypothesis. You have to present a project to your software before it'll do anything for you.” — Richard Campbell (69:19)

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5. AI, OpenAI, and the Bubble

• Massive AI Investments: OpenAI announces mega-deals with Nvidia and AMD, aiming to deploy as many as 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs by 2030.
• Skepticism on Valuations: The hosts discuss whether this AI surge will be more like a “railroad bubble” (where infrastructure remains) or a financial bubble (where little value endures).
• Societal Impact: Sam Altman and the current wave of AI investment may lead to societal benefits, even if companies rise and fall.

Notable Quotes

“The rails are still there, even if we're not using them.” — Richard Campbell (57:17)
“This is a logical play for OpenAI. You can't just be something incorporated in other people's apps. You have to make a play for... being the platform others incorporate into.” — Richard Campbell (63:19)

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6. Xbox Game Pass: Is It Still a Deal?

• Pricing Uproar: Game Pass Ultimate is jumping by 50% to $30/month in the US.
• Loss of Perks: The classic ‘day one’ perk is now only for Ultimate—lower tiers lose out. Some changes quietly remove previously generous stacking and rewards.
• Hardware Struggles: Xbox console prices have risen twice this year, possibly signaling Microsoft’s intent to focus away from hardware.
• A Gaming Value Calculation: At $360/year, most casual players might be better off buying a handful of individual games.
• Cloud Gaming & Price Hikes: Cloud streaming is being added to lower Game Pass tiers and rumors swirl about a free, ad-supported cloud tier in the future.

Notable Quotes

“The most desirable Game Pass subscription is now 50% more expensive... The problem is for a gamer, this thing like Game Pass to me used to be like a no-brainer. Now you have to do some hard math.” — Paul Thurrott (85:03)
“Part of this feels like the Xbox division has been told to pay their way. You're not AI—you need to pay your way. Do what you gotta do.” — Richard Campbell (89:24)

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Notable Moments & Banter

• Healthy Skepticism About Big Tech: The hosts argue that “big” tech companies wield too much power, especially when every brand—be it cookies or cloud services—funnels back to a handful of conglomerates (113:33).
• Digital Privacy and Anonymity: The loss of anonymous app publishing (especially with recent Google Play policy changes) sparks debate over the risks for whistleblowers and dissidents (106:05–106:58).
• The Philosophy of “Acting Locally”: Leo offers early morning reflections on how small actions can aggregate to meaningful societal change, quoting Margaret Mead ("Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.") (46:48).

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Useful Timestamps

• 25H2 Rollout Confusion & Tips: 04:06–10:11
• Local vs. Microsoft Accounts Debate: 14:42–18:17
• OneDrive New Client & AI Features: 33:11–36:17
• Browser Multiverse & AI Search: 38:14–44:41
• OpenAI’s Mega Partnerships & The AI Bubble: 53:15–61:14
• Xbox Game Pass Overhaul: 78:20–95:47
• Privacy, App Store Lockdown, and Anonymity: 104:05–110:07
• Whiskey Segment (Weller & Pappy Legends): 138:00–154:10

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Back of the Book

Paul’s Tip of the Week

• Upgrading to Windows 11 on Unsupported Hardware: Use the ISO, mount, and start from the command line with “/product server” to bypass hardware checks.
  [125:57]

App Pick

• Opera Neon:
  • Agentic AI-powered browser (paid, but robust), offers unique workflow features (“cards”) and improved cross-tab context for summarization, coding, and shopping.
  • Early assessment: Possibly the best of its kind, but evaluate quickly—as features are evolving fast. [131:36]

Richard’s Whiskey Corner

• Weller & Pappy—A Tangled Bourbon Legacy:
  • Traces the intricate history of Weller, Stitzel, Van Winkle, and Buffalo Trace.
  • Weller 12 Year is highlighted as a more accessible alternative to the coveted (and costly) Pappy Van Winkle. [138:00]

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Memorable Quotes

• "Five is a bigger number than four, Leo, and I don't know why this doesn't get enough press.” (Paul Thurrott, 08:27)
• “There is no room for your local. It's ridiculous. Why would you want anything that's tied to one piece of hardware? It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life.” (Paul Thurrott, 15:54)
• “If you're concerned about this and Windows is your thing, you're going to be retired before you have to worry about this.” (Paul Thurrott, 23:41)
• “Functionally, [25H2] is one better. Yeah, no, functionally, of course, yeah, they are identical.” (Paul Thurrott, 08:27)
• “The most desirable Game Pass subscription is now 50% more expensive... The problem is for a gamer, this thing like Game Pass to me used to be like a no-brainer. Now you have to do some hard math.” (Paul Thurrott, 85:03)
• “This is a logical play for OpenAI. You can't just be something incorporated in other people's apps. You have to make a play for... being the platform others incorporate into.” (Richard Campbell, 63:19)
• “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.” (Richard Campbell/Leo Laporte, 46:56)

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Episode Tone

Candid, irreverent, and insightful. A mixture of tech skepticism, humor, and deep practical advice. The hosts balance playful banter (e.g. donuts, broken goblets, and “big cookie” conspiracies) with sharp analysis of Microsoft’s direction and the shifting landscape of tech.

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Summary in a Nutshell

This episode of Windows Weekly covers the muddled rollout of Windows 11 25H2, why the future may be Microsoft account-only, the coming wave of OneDrive and AI enhancements, how Game Pass feels less like a “slam dunk,” and offers a thoughtful takedown of big tech’s slow march to consumer lock-in. The hosts don’t just deliver news—they help listeners think through why these changes matter, and how to navigate Microsoft's ever-evolving world.

Transcript

[Narrator/Announcer]

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[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Thurot, Richard Campbell are here. We're going to talk about 25H2. He got everybody excited last week. Turns out probably nobody has it. I will check just to see. We're also going to talk about the new OneDrive client which does some pretty cool things. And the hand wringing over Xbox game Pass ultimate and the 50% price hike. What does Paul think of that? All that and more coming up next on Windows Weekly. Podcasts you love from people you trust.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is Twit.

[Leo Laporte]

This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurat and Richard Campbell. Episode 953 recorded Wednesday, October 8, 2025. The casting of Frank Stallone. It's time for Windows Weekly. Hello, you winners and you dozers. This is the show we talked about. The latest from Microsoft with these two gentlemen to my left. Or are they to my right? No, they're to my left. Your right, my left. Stage up, stage down. I don't know. Paul Thurot from thurrot.com. he is in Mexico City today. Hello, Paul.

[Paul Thurrott]

Hello, Leo. Hello, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

As we say, hello, Paul. Also Richard Campbell. He is in. Where are you?

[Richard Campbell]

Orlando.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, in beautiful Florida. Oh, it looks like. Yeah, I can see the Floridian sky behind you. It's just gorgeous.

[Richard Campbell]

I set the camera up for the pan so you can see out the window for me.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, look at you go.

[Richard Campbell]

Look at my fancy views.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a beautiful day in Orlando. Are you near any theme parks?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, we're. We're where I'm at the Sapphire Falls, which is part of the Universal, so.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I love Universal.

[Richard Campbell]

I can take the boat to the citywalk. Pretty, pretty.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, city walks, fun. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

City walks, fun. Yeah. Voodoo donuts is right there.

[Leo Laporte]

And who's Voodoo Donuts? That's a dangerous thing to have.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, very dangerous. Very dangerous.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Love the voodoo trouble. Got to love the. You could take your Tim Hortons. You could take your Tim Bits and just put them where the.

[Paul Thurrott]

Before Tim Hortons. That's where breakfast goes to die.

[Richard Campbell]

Not going to take any dissing of Timbits.

[Leo Laporte]

I will say, as a Canadian, do you wish to defend.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't need to defend perfection. It's fine.

[Paul Thurrott]

Wow. Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

As soon as the Sora app went up, somebody made a South Park. You can't do it anymore. I think the south park folks complain of. Of. Was it Cartman? One of the south park guys working his mom forced him to move. He thought he was moving to Toronto, but it was in fact Ontario. And he ended up working at Tim Hortons and they paid him in Timbits.

[Richard Campbell]

That's all you need.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Richard, you're just. There we go. There you go. Yeah, your head just shrunk. I could do that too, but I do it manually. I just. Let's forget this fooling around. Enough Fall.

[Paul Thurrott]

Deral.

[Leo Laporte]

What's going on with 25H2, Mr. Paul Farat?

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, I think last week we talked about how Microsoft had announced that it was available. And in keeping with their inability to communicate clearly, I think what they meant was, it will be available soon. I heard from one person, literally one who said, I think I have it, you know, and he showed me a screenshot or whatever, and it's like, okay, but you might. You must have done something like, I don't. I don't believe this has actually gone out to anybody. It's kind of confusing.

[Richard Campbell]

But he did have it, is what you're saying. He wasn't.

[Paul Thurrott]

He did have it, yeah. I mean, there's so many ways to get it, though, you know?

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

So just.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm checking my machine because it did just do an update. So who knows if it decided the.

[Paul Thurrott]

Problem is, like, one thing that Windows should communicate in Windows Update is. Well, you know, it's like, I don't know how to explain this. Like, when you're on Android, for example, you check for updates. It says you're up to date. You just check for updates. You're up to date. Check for updates. You're up to date. Check for updates. Oh, you have an update. It's like you have to sit there like an idiot, like, you know, hitting the thing. So I feel like Windows is a little bit like that, except it's maybe even more random. But there's Nothing that says 25H2 is available, but you can't get it. Here's why. And it's whatever the blockers, because, you know, they have this information. So there's reasons why you might not be getting some kind of peripheral compatibility issue or whatever, which you know, shouldn't be that common because of the enablement package aspect of this release. But actually this has happened before, so in similar circumstances. So I don't know. I don't know. I'm not really sure what's going on.

[Richard Campbell]

But the important part is you haven't gotten it yet and that's distressing.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, it's actually very difficult for me to test that because I have sort of put 25H2 on most of my computers. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Because I'm writing all the insider builds or.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, or. Yeah, I mean the ISO is available, so you could download that and just upgrade straight off of that.

[Leo Laporte]

So let me, let me be understand this. Is this an insider thing or is this the real deal?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's the real thing. Look, it's available in the sense that if you went to, if you Google download Windows 10 and you downloaded the ISO or use the media creation tool to create USB based Windows, one of.

[Leo Laporte]

Our Discord guys is sick.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that works.

[Leo Laporte]

He was somehow stuck on 22H2 and so he downloaded the ISO and.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, and I have a tip very much related to this later in the show.

[Richard Campbell]

But.

[Paul Thurrott]

As far as getting it the normal way, for lack of a better term meaning, through Windows Update, it's going to be hard for me to test this. But I mean, I don't really. It's unclear, you know, what the schedule is or you know, how this will roll out or whatever.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, they, they kind of 24h2. So I'm gonna wait until it's there in my updates to go to.

[Paul Thurrott]

Do you have it there in front of you like the build number?

[Richard Campbell]

Which, which build number do I have? Because I, I mean, I know I have 24 H2, but I didn't look at the build number.

[Paul Thurrott]

But yeah, just do like a winver or whatever.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, he, he knows how to do win for.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm pretty sure wouldn't be my first time.

[Paul Thurrott]

All right, see, Richie, what you do is you press the start key and.

[Richard Campbell]

Then hit r. I got 6,584.

[Paul Thurrott]

65 84.

[Leo Laporte]

And I am checking for updates right now on myself just to see if I can get.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, So I have 67.72 in this one, but this one might be an insider. One I have.

[Leo Laporte]

You're so abnormal. You can't.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, you can.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, I know. This is why I'm asking. I don't. So I think I have. I think I have eight computers here. I think only one of them is on 24H2, which was maybe me being a little too compulsive about moving forward, but.

[Leo Laporte]

So I'm the opposite. I'm never going anywhere unless Microsoft takes me there.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, they're gonna take you there.

[Leo Laporte]

Take me to the cloud. Microsoft take. Take me.

[Paul Thurrott]

Eventually. Well, anyway, okay, so it. It's out, sort of. I don't know. This is like a game of WHS. Waldo. Like, where's 25H2? I'm sure it's out there somewhere, but.

[Leo Laporte]

There'S, as you pointed out last week, no real compelling reason to want it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, there is one huge reason. Five is a bigger number than for Leo, and I don't know why this doesn't get enough press. No, I mean, functionally, it's one better. Yeah, no, functionally, of course, yeah, they are identical.

[Leo Laporte]

That's hysterical. That's just hysterical.

[Paul Thurrott]

But. But five is bigger than four. I mean, I don't know why.

[Leo Laporte]

It's later. It's the newer.

[Paul Thurrott]

Explain that.

[Leo Laporte]

I Still am on 24H2, but I. Yeah, I'm doing the cumulative update Preview, but It still says 24H2. I'm not an inside.

[Paul Thurrott]

Are you doing it right now in front of us, like you. So what does it say? The. Or maybe it wouldn't say.

[Leo Laporte]

It says 2,6002-6100-6725-6725.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I think that's. I think that's what it is. Let me look again.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that is six, seven.

[Paul Thurrott]

What do you have? I'm sorry, 671-672525. All right, so this is lower than what I'm seeing, but that might be again, because this one's probably on the.

[Leo Laporte]

Insider, and this is running in emulation on Fusion. But I don't think that should make any difference, really, should it? No, that's parallels, I guess that's what should not matter. And you notice, by the way, I have a Microsoft account. I'm not one of those laggards who is, you know, trying to avoid giving Microsoft it's. It's due. Apparently, that's getting harder and harder.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, 6725, I bet, is the latest public preview build because I'm on a slightly newer build, but I'm in release preview. But Actually, why would that be newer? I don't know what's going on.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, Paul says he's got. He. He has 25H2 and it is 6725 for him.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, actually, 6772 is the latest Devin dev build.

[Leo Laporte]

Ah, you're on the narrative channel. Okay, that makes.

[Paul Thurrott]

But this one says release. But I still have. I don't know. Who cares?

[Leo Laporte]

So much fun, isn't it?

[Paul Thurrott]

It's just so fun. So stupid. Okay, in addition to this stupidity, not actually a lot. Oddly, after last week, which was a big, big deal for Windows, it's been kind of slow. But we did get three builds yesterday or Monday, I don't remember which. Canary build. Again, ridiculous. But Dev and Beta are being updated in sync, right? So some click to do improvements which include an Image select tool, which is kind of interesting because Click to do interacts with text and images that it can see on screen. And until this or now in stable, you can only interact with a whole image. So this will allow you to select part of an image and work with that. You can also select text that represents some sort of a measurement or a number or a unit or whatever, and it will convert it, if you want it to, as an action, to other units. Like, if you want to go metric to the Queen's English, or whatever the hell it's called, you do that. And actually, what is it?

[Leo Laporte]

I think the Queen's English is imperial.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I know. Well, that's sort of what I meant, but it's okay.

[Leo Laporte]

So I wish I could go metric. I've always.

[Paul Thurrott]

There are three major changes in these builds, and that will impact windows in the 25H2 time frame. So sometime in the next few months, probably by the end of the year, I would imagine these things will most likely roll out in stable. And these do change things. Two of them are for the better, and one of them is honestly for the better, too. But everyone's gonna complain about it because, of course, that's what we do. So the first one is I'll do the good ones first. I mean, they're all good, but I'll do the things I think we'll all agree. Good. They're gonna support Windows. Hello. ESS on external fingerprint readers.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

For the first time. And this is kind of setting the stage, I think, for, you know, desktop class, copilot plus PCs, that.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, suddenly I want a fingerprint reader for my desktop machines because it'll be a way to get it.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I hear it on my Mac and I think that's the way to go.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. But I'm curious how they're going to handle this because there's the spoofing problem where between the peripheral and the computer, you could put something in the middle and do a manual attack. So I. There must be a security feature. They do not explain this, so it's hard to say how they're doing it. But I'm sure there'll be an announcement there.

[Leo Laporte]

You could register the reader or something.

[Paul Thurrott]

There's got ways to do. That's probably. Yeah, yeah. Put a card skimmer on there. I'm sure there's a way.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, that's what they do with keyboards. Right. You just put a little USB dongle.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, a little dongle thing in the middle there to capture all the keystrokes. And then two of them are related to the ubi, the out of box experience. This is the thing you open a computer up for the first time when you bought it. The white screen comes up, the blue logo and you step through the wizard. Right. And one of these is. This is. These are both going to impact power users, but you can, in the process of performing setup, hit shift F10 to bring up a command line window and then you can type in a. It's actually a script now that's built into it and it's called Set default user folder. And you can name the folder that will be used for your user account, which is actually the type of thing I think businesses are going to use a lot just for scripting will be a lot easier. I notice on my own computers I don't care about it too much. Like I'm sure on this computer. Let me just see what it says. I'm sure it says Paul. Right. So my. I use them. Well, I use them. No, but I. I don't select that. I mean, my Microsoft account is Paul at whatever. So when it creates. I'm just going to look. Yeah, it creates Paul.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

But actually this is an example of this computer. So on this computer I also signed in ahead of time with. I think it was Paul.com, which is actually a Google account now, but has a Microsoft account associated with it. And when I signed in and it was all the default settings, like, I never used that account, I was like, wait, what's going on here? And then I realized, oh, I signed in with the wrong account. So I had to go and sign in with my normal account. And now there's a T H U R R folder. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

That's nice.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, whatever. So this is the one computer. None of my scripts work, but I just use it for this stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

I have some lapo folders as well. I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. Yeah, lap.

[Paul Thurrott]

So now you can, if you want to bring up the command line, type this script, you know, type the name of the script and then you can supply your own folder name. Right. That's nice, that's good.

[Leo Laporte]

And that sticks.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that's good.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice.

[Paul Thurrott]

The bad one, so to speak, with an asterisk is Microsoft has been threatening for a long time to prevent people from signing in with a local account during setup.

[Leo Laporte]

And so seeing a lot of upset about this on Reddit.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, of course it doesn't impact anybody. So we're freaking out about it. So it doesn't. Literally, it's ridiculous. Almost literally.

[Leo Laporte]

So it feels like they're squeezing the vice, right? There's still a little bit.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. But there is a laundry list of reasons why you want to do this and they're all security related. There are other reasons you might want to do that that are conveniences tied to authentication pass through to Microsoft services that you probably use using Windows. Right. So if you want OneDrive to work automatically, the store, the Xbox app, whatever that passes everything through, it just works.

[Leo Laporte]

You shouldn't use the local account, you shouldn't worry about it, especially now we can.

[Paul Thurrott]

But I also. But I recognize that the people listening to show people reading my site, they have higher than usual proport of people who are like freaked out about this and I get it, but they feel.

[Leo Laporte]

Like it's Star wars and the garbage compactors is closing in on them and pretty soon there'll be no room for their local Persona. Persona.

[Paul Thurrott]

There is no room for your local. It's ridiculous. Why would you want anything that's tied to one piece of hardware? It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. But anyway, people want to do it. So yeah, I think that's an important point through the release of 25H2. Sorry, what?

[Leo Laporte]

I'm just saying I think it's an important point you've made before that you shouldn't care so much about having the local account. Go for the Microsoft account.

[Paul Thurrott]

You should use a Microsoft account like full stop. But whatever. But I understand the problem and I mean that myself too. I do the same thing. Like we know better, right? But you make a mistake and then you've only screwed yourself. So there are many, many reasons to use a Microsoft account. Like I said, that are mostly security related. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that you can recover that account automatically. Right. And it's, it's. I mean, yes, there's a, there's a matrix of reasons why Microsoft is doing this and some of them are selfish on its part. Like, I get that. But you also have to admit that you can turn every one of those things off if you don't want it. So relax.

[Leo Laporte]

But here's, there's still a way. Is there still a way to log.

[Paul Thurrott]

In with a yes, it'll make. Yes, sir. So today, right now, if you install 25H2 or older, you could do a bypass during that same Moobe experience doing the same thing. Shift F10, it's like NRO, you know, whatever, reboot. And then it will allow you to sign in with a local account instead of a Microsoft account or work or school, slash, enter, id, slash, Active directory account. Right. And you could do that and then you get a really basic thing you get. You have to do, you know, all these ups, your disk doesn't get encrypted, etc. You can. This account could have no password. This account could have no pin. This account is not, you know, could not be protected in any way. If that's what you want. But good for you. I mean, if that's what you want, great. But I don't do it. This is not a recommendation I can make for anybody.

[Leo Laporte]

And you're saying you can turn off the things that people don't. You know, the spy, whatever it is that people turn off everything.

[Paul Thurrott]

If you, whatever you don't like in Windows 11, you can turn it off.

[Richard Campbell]

It.

[Paul Thurrott]

Some of it's not easy. But you know, this is the thing I. In the. When you optimize for something like if you're going to, if you're going to impact anybody in a negative way, it should be the people that know what they're doing. Right. Like we're doing this for normal people, which is 99 something percent of everybody. So. And this is the right one, they.

[Leo Laporte]

Should do it with the account. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Now the changes, those workarounds, most of them aren't going to work. There's actually one, I think that still does work and I'm going to, this is something I'm working on to figure that one out because I do need to document it for people, etc. However, assuming Microsoft does shut off this capability during setup, you would sign in with a Microsoft account, which means that that account would have whatever protections are associated with it. But also that the disk on the PC would be automatically encrypted, which is what you want. Then you could create a local account, make it an admin, sign into that account, and delete your Microsoft account. So you can still do it if that's what you want. It's going to take a couple of minutes longer. Honestly, it's not that much longer because when you do this setup thing, you have to reboot and I don't know, whatever. But people, again, people freak out every time a little sliver of something goes away. But they've been talking about this for years. And then there were the warning signs. Right. Remember, originally you could do this in home and Pro, and then they took it out of Home, and then they took it out of Pro, and then you had workarounds, and then they were talking about, we're going to get rid of these things. They did get rid of it briefly in the Insider program, but then they put it back. 25H2 came out with the workaround still working, but now at some, you know, Future version of 25 and 24H2 will include this.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I wonder if someone's not going to lean to the EU on this and require Microsoft to continue to have a local account.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And hopefully what we see there is.

[Richard Campbell]

They'Ll get to a point where it's like, hey, you can have Windows Tinfoil Hat Edition.

[Paul Thurrott]

Nice. Yeah, it's a Windows Unsafe Edition. So I ride the motorcycle without your helmet? You know best. You're fine. Don't worry about it. The whole world doesn't exist. No one's going to hit you. You're safe.

[Leo Laporte]

Just to rewind a little bit. This is 24H2. That's built 6725. So.

[Paul Thurrott]

So this is the, I believe, the latest stable build. Obviously, if you had 25H2, it would say 26200.6725.

[Leo Laporte]

So it'd still be 6725, but it'd be 2.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's why I get it. Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then there are some insider builds that are slightly newer. Like I'm on seven. Six.

[Leo Laporte]

So this will push out at some point from Microsoft. It's not. Yeah, I'm not.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, you'll get it. No, you're fine. I don't think, like I said, I don't think anyone's actually gotten it through Windows Update. I could be completely wrong, but I don't. I don't think anyone has.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

So, yeah, so I'm traveling with Only.

[Richard Campbell]

One laptop, you know, like a maniac.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know.

[Richard Campbell]

So I'm gonna wait till the, the real distribution comes out. I'm not an insider of this machine.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I did that when I went to Hawaii and it always makes me feel a little weird.

[Richard Campbell]

You're a little naked, which is so.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, it should be nice, like you're not carrying a bunch of stuff. You're like a normal person.

[Leo Laporte]

Sort of.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay. Yeah, but this is so this, these changes are dev and beta, meaning they're coming down the path for everyone else. I would, I think probably by the end of the year. But the Windows hello ESS stuff is awesome. I wasn't sure that was ever going to happen, so that's neat. The ability to, you know, name your folder. That's great. And this is done the right way, I have to say. You know, again, this is something normal people like, you know, mainstream people are never going to think about or care about. And thus it's not in the ui. There's no reason to make another step where you could fill something out. The, the UBI if you get the. Is got to be 20 plus steps already. It's a massive series of things to get through. So adding another step to that I think would have been a mistake. So for the few people that want this or businesses which will descript this anyway, that's great. I mean, to me that's great.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, so no problem. Do you think at some point though, Microsoft will eliminate the opportunity?

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't see how in Windows as we know it today, which is this NT based operating system that you. I don't see how you do it. So think about how the Mac works today. When you sign into the Mac for the first time or whatever, you are creating a local account. This is the only system that exists. And you can add your Apple ID to it.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

As well as your Google and Microsoft account.

[Paul Thurrott]

No. Right. But when you add your Apple id, you're getting that pass through for the all the Apple services you use. Right? And that's what most people probably do. But the thing to understand there is you're actually signing in with a local account that only exists on that computer. And that is how Windows worked in Windows Vista or Seven. It was seven seven, because you would sign in with a local account and you could go into the Control panel and add your. I don't know if it was Passport or if we switched to what we call it now, but what is now a Microsoft account, you could add it to that local account and get Fairly, you know, semi seamless access to whatever services Microsoft had at that time including OneDrive. And to me like that's. I just. This thing is a. Is kind of a traditional legacy desktop operating system. It's a disk operating system if you will. Like you need some form of. I'm going to call it an account, some authentication unit or whatever that interacts with local resources, et cetera. Even if they kind of fudged it and made it seem like this was the only way, there's always going to be that thing. I think under the covers I would require a new architecture. I think, I mean even I know Android works this way.

[Leo Laporte]

It might be complicated but there'll always be some way to do local only not have a Microsoft, Microsoft account.

[Paul Thurrott]

The way I wrote this yesterday was if you're concerned about this and Windows is your thing, you're going to be retired before you have to worry about this.

[Richard Campbell]

Don't worry about it.

[Paul Thurrott]

I just don't.

[Richard Campbell]

There's no way or you'll be switching to Linux. You know, if you care that much about having sole control 100% all bets.

[Paul Thurrott]

Are off at that point. If they look everything Microsoft does that's like this is the final straw for somebody.

[Leo Laporte]

People just like to get outraged and irritated. This is the nature.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So it works nowadays.

[Paul Thurrott]

Here's what you don't do in your Microsoft. Just so people understand this. Like just think one feature, just the, the encryption of the disk. Right. You might argue, well what if I sign in with a local account? They Microsoft made this point that you are missing several critical stages of this UBI thing. If you sign up with a local account, I'm not sure you consider critical. I think most of them are ads for Microsoft services. So I don't think it's that critical.

[Leo Laporte]

But, but, but I, I want to use OneDrive. I want it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah. You want, I mean you want 365. You want PC games.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You do want that.

[Paul Thurrott]

So look at your back. I'm gonna look at it again to see what that is. I don't think it's anything but. But what you are missing is that automatic disk encryption.

[Leo Laporte]

I think disk encryption is huge.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. So I just gotta put a plug.

[Leo Laporte]

In for this because I think about it every time I set up a new system. If you're gonna. I have two systems now that I'm retiring.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

And if I didn't put this full disk encryption on those systems I would have to find some way to wipe those drives before I give them away. But if you put full disk encryption, there's nothing but gobbledygook on there. You don't have to worry about that anymore. We used to spend so much time on the screensavers how to get your drive so that it doesn't have your data on it. Now all you have to do is use the default on every single operating system. It started with phone operating systems encrypt, and you're done.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. So the way Windows works, it's a little different between Home and Pro. If you have Pro. Well, let me. Let's forget that for a second. I'm sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

Used to have to have pro to have BitLocker, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Is that not. Yeah. And now they enable a full disk encryption regardless of which version you have. What you don't get is a front end to manage it in any way. And you don't get BitLocker to go. So you can't encrypt portable drive like a USB drive. So I suppose the solution from sort of a power user's perspective is like, okay, you're going to let me sign in with a local account. So what you need to do is add a stage to setup that prompts me to back up the recovery key for that encrypted disk, because otherwise you won't be able to get back into it if something goes wrong. And then you, I guess, are going to have an email to you or you save it to some other disk that is not the disk you're encrypting because you can't. Obviously you don't put the key in the cage. But the point, but part of the point of this bypass was it allows for an offline install. There's no way. The number of things Microsoft have to build to make this make sense to these people is impossible. And it impacts like 1% or less of the population. You just don't. You don't do that. So.

[Leo Laporte]

And they should be using Linux anyway. I mean, those people really shouldn't.

[Paul Thurrott]

All right, I'm not going to go there. But just assuming that you need Windows, whatever. Yeah. I made this argument months ago when I reevaluated this because one of my questions about using a local account is would this get rid of some of the insertification windows with regards to forced backup and whatever the other behaviors are. And it's not an ideal solution, honestly. And look, if you're listening to this and you're disagreeing with me the whole time, I get it. If you're smart enough to do this, and you know what, you're doing great. But make sure you take the steps to encrypt the disk, which, by the way, requires you to sign up with a Microsoft account. So do it. Just do it.

[Leo Laporte]

And the. And the bottom line, besides the fact that you should do this is there will always be a way to disable the garbage smashers on the detention level. You don't have to.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, that's right.

[Leo Laporte]

There's always going to be that, you know, one.

[Paul Thurrott]

All of them. Three po. All of them. Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Look, I pretty sure it was R2's job.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, well, I know, but they were communicating with.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's pause. Let's pause because I want to do an ad. And we will continue on. You're watching Windows Weekly. Paul Thurat in Mexico City. Richard Campbell down our way in a beautiful Orlando. It's great to have both of you. Great to have all of you watching.

[Paul Thurrott]

Is he closer to me or you right now? I bet he's closer to me.

[Richard Campbell]

That's.

[Leo Laporte]

I have no idea. You're in. You're kind of in. Mexico City's right in the middle of.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right in the middle.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. And I'm kind of right in the middle.

[Paul Thurrott]

2,000 miles from Philadelphia. So. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know. It's a triangle, you know?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

We're. Somehow we have figured this out. But go ahead, do your. Do your math. And while you're doing that, I'm gonna put you back to sleep, because our show today is brought to you by the best mattress ever, Helix Sleep. And I could say that with confidence because that's what I sleep on. What was my sleep score? I think it was 88, something like that. It was really good. I felt so good. We like our Helix mattress so much. You know, we've been having work done on the house, and right now the windows on the bedroom have been ripped out and replaced with plywood, and everything's covered with plastic sheeting. So we're not sleeping in our bedroom. We love our Helix mattress so much, we dragged it to another so we could still sleep on it while the construction's going on. Helix Sleep makes the best mattresses as you prepare for the cold season, at least in the northern hemisphere. Actually, if you're in the southern hemisphere, you're preparing for the summer, the hot, hot summer.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

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[Richard Campbell]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Scientific sleep study, Helix measured the sleep performance of participants after switching from their old mattress to a Helix Mattress. They found 82% of participants saw an increase in their deep sleep cycle. Let me just, I just, I'm now I'm really curious what my deep sleep was last night because I just feel really, really good. Yeah, I had more than an hour of deep sleep. That's my brain, you know. That's your brain clearing out all the garbagio. More deep sleep means better everything. My REM sleep, an hour 42. Man, I had a great sleep last night. Thank you. Helix participants on average achieve 25 more minutes of deep sleep per night. I think I'm even. I think I more than doubled it, to be honest. Participants on average achieved 39 more minutes of overall sleep per night. I just, this is, this is important. Not just so you don't feel tired. This is important so your health is better. Time and time again, Helix remains the most awarded mattress brand. Wired magazine says the Helix Sleep is the best mattress of 2025. That should be enough by itself, but there's more. Good Housekeeping gave it their Bedding Awards 2025 for premium plus size support. The GQ Sleep Awards for 2025. Best Hybrid Mattress w Wire Cutter for 2025. Featured for plus size support. And Oprah's daily Sleep Awards. Oprah loved the Helix sleep. She said it had the best hotel like feel. It's like you're at a luxury hotel every night of your Life. Go to helixsleep.com Windows right now 27% off site wide during the primetime sale. Now this is exclusively for listeners of Windows Weekly. So you gotta go to helixsleep.com windows 27% off site wide. This offer ends October 14th. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you very important. And if you're listening after the sale, that's fine. Still, check them out. Always great deals. Helixsleep.com Windows, you're gonna love your Helix Sleep mattress. You are.

[Richard Campbell]

Promise.

[Leo Laporte]

I do. All right, enough talk about sleep. Let's get back to Windows Weekly, you dozers.

[Paul Thurrott]

I like the smell like the boat thing.

[Leo Laporte]

You don't want a mattress that smells like.

[Paul Thurrott]

You want to smell like Arizona.

[Leo Laporte]

Arizona has good.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's a probably a good point. So there was a leak last week of a new OneDrive client for Windows 11. Microsoft held a. She did this annually, a OneDrive event, virtual event where they talked about all the new stuff coming to OneDrive. This was only a small part of it, actually. I'm running the client as it exists today on this computer. Oddly, there's no difference in day to day work. But one of the things that came out in the leak was a new OneDrive desktop app which has the photo gallery stuff built into it and it works with your local photos as well as your cloud based photos, etc. Etc. I don't see that. So I was curious to see what this would entail. So I watched this event today. This is the thing I was talking about. I'm like, I don't understand what just happened because they talked about a bunch of stuff, a lot of which is Copilot based. But the thing I was expecting to hear didn't come until the very end. And so yes, there is a new client for OneDrive coming to Windows 11, but it's not coming till next year. So I okay, they talked a lot about using Copilot with OneDrive on the web. Agents are coming, but again, that's the future as well. New versions of the mobile app are coming also in the future. So it was like, okay, I don't know, I guess I'd like to see some separation of some OneDrive features out of Windows proper and into the app only. For example, the integrated gallery view that's in File Explorer right now doesn't make any sense to me. I don't know why that's there. That should just be in the app. I don't get. It's in the photos app. Sort of the moment stuff, you know, like OneDrive will pop up a notification, say, hey, you've got some memories from today. You want to see that? You're like, no, I'm on a computer. What are you Talking about, no, I don't want to see that. So they're going to. Maybe this is part of. Maybe that will happen. It's kind of hard to say.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what? I like the. So Google Drive, every time I log into Google Drive now says, hey, come on, you want to use Gemini to summarize stuff? And that's like, come on. No, I just want to use. But on the mobile. Is this out now? I don't know. On OneDrive you can have a audio summary of files. So you're driving in the car, you could say, hey, I got to read this document before I get to work.

[Paul Thurrott]

Google does that in Chrome on mobile as well, where you can. It will read an article to you that's actually very useful. There are circumstances where if you buy a Kindle book, you can buy the. I don't think it does it with. I think you have to get the audio book right as well. But if you put that into the Kindle app, it can read it obviously will keep them synced up. So I could be reading on the bed and be like, I got to go shave, but I want to kind of finish with or complete this or go on.

[Leo Laporte]

And it starts right where you go.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's nice. Yeah. So I like that kind of thing. But yeah, the incessant demand that we summarize everything, you know, it's like, It's. It's a TikTok video. What do you. What's the summary? A girl danced in the field, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

No, but your docs, whether it's Google Drive or OneDrive, those things, you know, they're probably business documents. It's probably important stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's interesting. Use Copilot.

[Paul Thurrott]

From day one with Copilot, the thing I've been looking forward to the most is that integration. My file system and specifically my archives of all the documents going back 30 years and having it be able to answer questions about things in the past, like, show me the things I've written about this topic. Right. Because I search for this stuff now. Semantic search has actually made that better, but I didn't always find it. I often found myself having to go to OneDrive on the web to search. And there it always worked great for some reason. But not on my computer. I can't explain that. I can't explain almost anything these days, but that's whatever. So, yeah, there's a bunch of stuff coming. And of course, with OneDrive, there's always the confusion of which of the stuff is happening to businesses and which is for consumers and which is both. And they're never particularly clear about that, but yeah. Anyway, you're going to be able to summarize meeting recordings, summarize whiteboard images, compare two versions of documents, obviously audio overview, like you said. So this stuff is all, it's all. I feel like you just see the same things over and over again. Like in the same way that every time anyone talks about agency, they always say you can do things on your behalf. You're like, oh, that's fascinating. Has anyone ever done that? No. Nobody. Okay. I mean, I know some people have, but it's, it's, you know, it's evolving. So. Okay, that's happening. And then I just threw this in here because I don't already have app picks and stuff, but I have a couple of other app related things that are just browsers and it, I guess it impacts you because you use Window. Right. So Mozilla has supported in Firefox sort of profiles, you know, different ways to do things. You can, you know, have containers, we have different Google accounts where, you know, you can show two different calendars side by side, etc.

[Richard Campbell]

I think they're the last one to do this. Like every browser has one.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. This is not a new feature. I know, but they are, they're rolling out proper profile support now and so it should be by the middle of the month. I think everyone will have it. I think the, the current or maybe previous version had some, some people got it, some didn't, I don't really sure, but it is. That is finally happening. And then this wasn't. This is like they don't have a new version with anything interesting in it. But Brave announced that they now have over 100 million active users, which is fantastic. So that's across desktop and I'm one of them.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you, are you brave guy?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Color Paul. I blame Paul for everything, but Grave.

[Paul Thurrott]

Is Brave is great.

[Leo Laporte]

What do you use these days, Paul? Just so I go back and forth.

[Paul Thurrott]

Brave is my primary browser. I'm going to talk about a different browser later in the show. But yeah, Brave is my go to.

[Leo Laporte]

You know what I thought, I'm still at. I went back to Ark, believe it or not.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, I believe it.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, because browser company members said we're deprecating it, we're going to do dia. And then last month they said, oh, Atlassian's purchased us and there's been a rumor floating around that Atlassian may actually keep archive going. Nice.

[Paul Thurrott]

They've kind of said that. I mean they never said, they never promised specifically, like, we're going to add features and whatever, but they.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't need new features, just security updates. I don't need new features. It's fine.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I feel like that was going to sort of happen anyway, but. But yeah, some clarity on that is good. And you know what, the first part I just read, I can't remember what someone was saying the same thing. They're like, look, I hate myself for this, but I love this browser and I have to keep using it and.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly.

[Richard Campbell]

If it works for you and it puts you in a pretty rarefied atmosphere.

[Paul Thurrott]

Exactly.

[Richard Campbell]

You really loathe to give it up too. So I. I thought the only reason they were shutting it down is because they only had so much money to spend as a startup and they wanted to work.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. They have to focus. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

And Atlassian has, you know, a lot of products. They could probably keep this going. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Piles of money.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So anyway, I. I mean, Atlassian doesn't have a browser per se. Maybe they don't want to have just an agentic browser. I think there's still a world where people don't want AI.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, if the focus is work and productivity. Right. I mean, that's where arc, that's the strength. I mean, ARC is amazing for that stuff, so.

[Leo Laporte]

Love it.

[Paul Thurrott]

So.

[Leo Laporte]

I know. I thought maybe.

[Richard Campbell]

I just wonder if they kept that team together. Like, clearly ARK was a vision of a group of creators.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Like, I don't do that. I don't know if those ones were blown up the moment they started moving into the AI product. Like, I just. If that team's still together, then ARC was. Had a really interesting vision of browsing.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Just a different way of thinking about it.

[Leo Laporte]

Shouldn't. Shouldn't be different. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, by the way, I also switched fully over to Kagi, and I'll blame Leo for that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Kagi has its own browser, but it's not very good.

[Richard Campbell]

I haven't used it. I just paid for the year and I set it up for everything.

[Leo Laporte]

So what do you think?

[Richard Campbell]

You know what? It doesn't make me angry and it doesn't prompt me with AI stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Right. They do have an assistant, if you. And actually the assistant is very perplexity. Like it's an orchestration.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm kind of really interested in looking for facts, you know, when I'm writing this Whiskey Bits and what's wrong with you? Turning off AI is a good way to get more.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm looking for creativity. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I like the here's the one reason I do like whether it's cocky assistant perplexity is it saves me going to a lot of different sites. Like they, they'll aggregate a bunch of sites with a bunch of information. I always do end up going to the sites themselves, but it's, it's kind of like a summary of what's out there. And if, if they're doing it directly from the sites, I don't get a lot of hallucinations. I, but maybe that's, maybe I just don't know it.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know. I, I, I like it. I find that's the few, I think.

[Paul Thurrott]

That'S the future of certain, you know what it is. So anything like this, but this specifically web search, what usually happens is you try something, you're like, no, that's not right. No, that's not right. And then you go back to Google and it's right. And you're like, okay, so this is, you're like, I can't use that thing. So this is my Bing experience 100%. Like every time I put up a new computer, I'm using Edge for a while. I just try to use it. I'm like, I'm going to be cool about this. And then again and again and again. And I've showed these things, specific examples to my wife because I love boring the hell out of her. But where you just go to Google and get exactly what you want. When you're in Bing, it's like, where is this thing? It's like 10 down, whatever.

[Richard Campbell]

I have to admit, once in a while with Kagi as a default, I still type in Google and do a Google.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, right. I will say, you know, brave search for some reason doesn't do that as much to me as Bing does. And I, and when you, when you type a search query, whatever into the address bar, you can choose Google. You know, if you can, if you don't, if you want to go to Google specifically, I mean you could obviously just go to Google and search, but you can actually just do that. So it's interesting.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm just like in changing the defaults, owning my, the path of use, you know, like this. Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a short step from that to using a local account when you send. It's just, I'm, I gotta warn you, sorry.

[Richard Campbell]

I use a lot of Microsoft.

[Paul Thurrott]

I was shopping for free, so.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. And actually I want to support Firefox too. And that's the only thing I don't like about using Arc is it is Chromium. The Chromium.

[Richard Campbell]

Chromium is the default of the web.

[Paul Thurrott]

Now there's a Firefox based Arc Zen.

[Leo Laporte]

Browser, which is what I. That's what I kind of have been using. It's a little sluggish compared to.

[Paul Thurrott]

Which is the Brahma with Firefox. Yeah. You know. Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

Man, it's hard to.

[Paul Thurrott]

This. Is this the problem with. Well, the problem. One of the problems with this stuff, technology, is that the onus is always on us. You know, ultimately it's like you're going to be funneled on a path that's best for some company, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, whatever. And you know, some of us don't care and some of us care a lot, you know, and. But I think eventually as these things get worse and worse, it's going to impact more and more people and people are going to be, you know, looking for options, you know, like, what is this? Like, you know, when did Google search stop working? Or what. Why does, why am I getting. Why are the first five things on Amazon always ads? You know? Yeah, eventually even mainstream users notice this stuff, you know, but we're the canaries.

[Leo Laporte]

I was thinking about this at 4 in the morning.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

As one does while you were getting such a good sleep. Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, yeah, you came right out of sleep.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, if something happens at 4am every, almost every night where my brain just, it's like it's suddenly it's thinking about stuff. And so I used to fight it, but I would lie there staring at the ceiling. So now I go, okay, I must be a little bit biphasic in my sleep. So I think a little bit. Sometimes I try tricks like counting down from 99. But usually.

[Paul Thurrott]

But this might be a moment of great clarity. Right. The same way it is. You come out of a dream and you actually remember it really well, but then you forget it two seconds later.

[Leo Laporte]

So I give myself about an hour of awake and I go back to sleep and I sleep in a little longer as a result.

[Paul Thurrott]

Do you take any notes or anything? Like, do you.

[Richard Campbell]

You don't write it down?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I could if I wanted to. In this case I didn't because I.

[Paul Thurrott]

Remember it because you might have some insight.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you know, I did have some insight. So here's my insight, because one of the things I wake up and worry about is that the world's going to hell in a handbasket. And then what I tell myself is, well, that there's nothing you can do about it. Right. What are you going to do? You get to vote every two years. That's about it. Then I thought about it and I thought, well, you can do little things, and those little things aggregate to big things.

[Paul Thurrott]

So.

[Leo Laporte]

Part of it is, well, just act locally because you do have control of what's local, or you can move to Mexico. But if you do little things at.

[Paul Thurrott]

Every step of the way, that's outrageous, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

Who would do that? But if you do little things every step of the way, in aggregate, not maybe just by myself, it doesn't make a difference. But neither does my single vote. But in aggregate, those little things, if a lot of us do them, can make a big difference, whether it's recycling or not. Participating in businesses who have predatory surveillance capitalism like Google and Amazon, things like that. And I think if.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, and I know, by the way, Cory Doctorow's book came out yesterday.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes, yes. And maybe this is from Corey.

[Paul Thurrott]

Cause, you know, read it and be educated, please.

[Richard Campbell]

But you're walking towards the Margaret Mead quote, right? Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens could change the world.

[Leo Laporte]

Indeed.

[Richard Campbell]

It's the only thing that ever has.

[Leo Laporte]

It's the only thing that ever has. So while I feel helpless lying in bed at 4:00am, you know, oh God, everything's going to hell. Then I, you know, and I say, well, I don't have to think about, you know, all those global issues, but I can act locally. And I think that that's very.

[Paul Thurrott]

You can do the best thing for yourself. I mean that, you know, ultimately that's. I don't know. I, I referenced this cabin in the woods a lot and I began. This is something I would have said here. I've said it to my wife, too. It's like, I'm not, you know, I'll say something like, about this stuff and I'll say, look, I'm not going to move to a cabin in the woods. But I don't know, maybe it's weird how you start moving down that path, right? I mean, how many times can I get poked in the face by these companies?

[Leo Laporte]

You know, I want to move in with Paul. And then the cabin in the woods.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then the cabin. Listen, we're one black away from this being a cabin in the woods.

[Leo Laporte]

But it's a metaphorical cabin.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah. It's isolated in its own way. I don't know. You know.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, even just choosing Kagi Search or, you know, choosing to use Firefox instead of a chromium derivative is like not.

[Paul Thurrott]

Doing it in a stupid way. And what I mean, by that is like, don't bite your nose to spite your face. You know, there are big tech services that still make sense in some ways, and, you know, you can't avoid all of it. I mean, it's silly to think that you can, but. But, you know. Yeah. Be smart where you spend your money. Be smart where you put your data. Be smart. You know, just in general, I mean, and.

[Leo Laporte]

And just kind of consider what you're doing. That's all.

[Richard Campbell]

Thoughtful is good.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's an idea. I mean, doesn't work for everybody.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm dismissed with the idea that we're going to be in Acapulco together because those shows are always fun.

[Leo Laporte]

Are you doing that again?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I think we are.

[Leo Laporte]

When is that going to be?

[Richard Campbell]

January.

[Paul Thurrott]

January. Mid. January.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I wouldn't mind coming down. I got to stay with you. I know. You don't have enough.

[Richard Campbell]

I got an extra bedroom. We can figure it out.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I love.

[Paul Thurrott]

Place he had in Puerto Vallarta. Is bigger than my house. It's. I don't have a house anymore, but my.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, let me know. I could talk Lisa into that, I bet.

[Richard Campbell]

There you go. But this is. This is Acapulco this time, which I prefer not PvP January, because you guys.

[Paul Thurrott]

Have been there before. And it was the hurricane that.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. We had to go. They. They'd been recovering for a couple of years. They got hit really hard.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Acapulco was the place everybody used to go in the 50s, it feels like.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. I was gonna say 60s vibe. Like a. Kind of a. Like a lot of Hollywood would go down there.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

At that time.

[Richard Campbell]

No. And the cliff divers are still there. But that, you know, that was literally. Johnny Weissmuller did all that back in the 30s. That made.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Acapulco. What it was.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

And then it. Did it fall on hard times for a little bit.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, there was a big gun fight, a running battle.

[Leo Laporte]

Deadliest city in the world.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. There was a running battle between the drug lords and the army that went through Acapulco. And oddly enough, all the cruise ships left, and they did not come back.

[Leo Laporte]

And that's a good thing.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, in Acapulco struggled because of it. Right. But that's why they all moved to pv, which is. IPV is full of cruise shippers now.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

I think that was the one time I was in Acapulco. Was on a cruise ship, come to think of it. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Acapulco is way more fun now. We get a driver. You go out off the property most of the time. I've got a good working relationship with an archaeological site there and had some fun with those guys, so that's cool. That's, that's a hobby of mine, Leo, is to always find a good archaeology site and support them because we gotta.

[Paul Thurrott]

Come to Oaxaca, man. Yeah, there's some good stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, man.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Let's take a break while we dream and think about places we might be someday and talk a little bit about 1Password. If you don't mind. You're watching Windows Weekly with Paul Thurat and Richard Campbell. We'll get back to the Windows news in just a bit, but our sponsor, 1Password wants to talk a little bit about it and security, enterprise security. I mean, I know you know One Password is a password company, but their new extended access management is a must for enterprise. Over half of IT pros say that the biggest challenge, the biggest challenge for them is securing SaaS apps. Which makes sense if you think about it, that with the growing problems of SaaS sprawl and shadow it, it's not hard to see why. Well, 1Password has a solution. It's called Trelica T R E L I c a by 1 password it can discover and secure access to all your apps, managed or not. Trelica by 1Password inventories every app and use at your company, every single one and then pre populated app profiles and they have them for everything. Assess the SaaS risks, they give you a chance to manage access, to optimize, spend and enforce security best practices. And this is across every app your employees use, including Shadow it. It's also great because you can securely onboard and offboard employees and it's great for compliance, helps you meet compliance goals. Trellis because it's got a record of everything. Trelica by 1Password provides a complete solution for SaaS access governance. And this is just one of the ways that extended Access management from 1Password helps teams strengthen compliance and security. 1Password's award winning password manager is trusted by millions of users, over 150,000 businesses from IBM to Slack and more. Of course they're now securing more than just passwords though with 1Password Extended Access Management. Of course 1Password has always been Tip Top and Security ISO 27001 certified. They have regular third party audits. The industry's largest bug bounty. That's super important by the way. Steve and I talk about that all the time on security now. 1Password exceeds the standards set by various authorities and is a leader in security. So take the first step to better security for your team by securing credentials and protecting every application, even unmanaged. Shadow it. Learn [e-mail] Windows Weekly that's 1Password.com Windows Weekly all lowercase. We thank him so much for supporting Paul and Richard and Windows Weekly. On we go with the show.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, some big, big, big, big AI news this week. So.

[Richard Campbell]

Had a day, didn't they?

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Curious where all this money's coming from.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, they have, they're worth half a trillion dollars now.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, they'd like you to believe that.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, are they, I mean, you know, well, is there, is that like a amount of money in a bank somewhere? Because I don't, I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

It's not.

[Leo Laporte]

But they've raised like 60 billion.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, no, clearly the entire tech industry is rallying around this company in ways that almost don't make sense. But, but I would say literally don't make sense. But they did the. I think it was a 10 gigawatt deal with Nvidia a week or two ago that has some value of $100 billion.

[Leo Laporte]

Although that seems like one of those round tripping things where. Yes it does.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then they signed. Well, they already had sort of a partnership with amd, but now a much bigger, much more strategic partnership between the two companies over which some period of time, five or six years, OpenAI will deploy 6 gigawatts, or I should say up to 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs through 2030. This is worth tens of billions of dollars to AMD. There's a lot of this kind of stock or financial language is a little strange to me. But OpenAI has the right to buy portions of AI stock at some really good price.

[Leo Laporte]

Of AMD stock, of AMD.

[Paul Thurrott]

Stock as they hit each milestone, if they actually hit all, I think it's five or six milestones, they will own 10% of AMD. And of course if you're Nvidia, you're like, wait, what now? So if you've been following this part of the industry, you may know that Nvidia makes more money than God. The latest earnings report, I think July or August was 41 billion in revenues just for their data set of business, which of course is their primary business. AMD has made a big push very explicitly, this is their focus. Lisa Su has been very clear about this. But that same quarter they made $3.2 billion in revenues from that type of business. They are less than 10% right now. This could help a lot AMD stock, I didn't follow it the whole day, but when I looked, was up 38% when they announced this. Yikes. So I guess this is a call of support of some kind, at least for AMD's data center.

[Richard Campbell]

GPU's last show, we were talking about seeing the edges of the AI bubble. And if you're Sam, you're worried because that bubble bursts, you spend a lot more money than you make and you've got to get yourself in a position where you can get to positive cash flow and. Or be insulated.

[Paul Thurrott]

Was this. I don't remember if this came up. Windows Weekly last week, but someone recently told me that there was a place you could go and look at what the US economy looked at without all this AI stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah, somebody was telling me it's.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like a banana republic, basically.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it was you. Last week you told me there was an EFT that had an EFT with a seven out.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay. Yeah. It's like, yikes.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you see Jeff Bezos though, at that Italian yeah. Conference. I thought that was an interesting insight. And we've said this before.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So I'll just briefly summarize. But he said there's a difference between a financial bubble and an industrial bubble. You know, we've had financial bubbles. The 2008 crash was a financial bubble and it ended up, you know, doing nobody any good and crashed the economy. But we've also had industrial bubbles. The, the railway bubble of the 1880s or 90s. The, the, the dot com bubble of, of 2000. Where he says, yes, companies, some companies go out of business in these industrial bubbles, but you get a societal benefit.

[Richard Campbell]

Because to be clear. Yeah. It's not like the majority of companies involved in that business go, yeah, most.

[Leo Laporte]

Railroads went bankrupt in the 1890s.

[Paul Thurrott]

Most.

[Richard Campbell]

But the rails are still there.

[Leo Laporte]

But the rails still that many times.

[Paul Thurrott]

Because of the nature of iron, they're still there today even if we're not using them.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well.

[Leo Laporte]

And the dark fibers. Right. That we planted in the late end of the last century.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is why I have an errand chair. There was some startup that went out of business in 2002 and I got it at a fire sale price.

[Leo Laporte]

OpenAI may or may not succeed, may not survive. But I have to think.

[Paul Thurrott]

About.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I think this.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And that's the thing I do worry.

[Paul Thurrott]

About the problem is the valuation because for them to be bought, they would have to completely crater.

[Richard Campbell]

But that's what, you know, in this game, this bubble, like the dot com bubble OpenAI the technological trigger is Netscape.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And so what happened?

[Paul Thurrott]

But they're going great, Richard. So that kind of disproves your point.

[Leo Laporte]

But I don't worry about OpenAI because I'm not an investor in OpenAI. I think, though, that we're going to have all these network operations centers. I'm hoping that there'll be pressure to create energy at a better, lower cost. Renewables are taken off partly because of this and that we will end up getting some real benefits that will survive OpenAI and survive the AI bubble.

[Paul Thurrott]

And maybe it's like saying there's an asteroid coming to Earth and we think the dinosaurs are all going to die.

[Richard Campbell]

But hopefully new waterfront.

[Paul Thurrott]

Hopefully new waterfronts.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, no, but. Yes. Okay. It's going to be a little rocky, but I think. And that's the other thing I really can't get away from this, is that there's clear benefit to the AI we've got already.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes, that's right. That's right. But even, you know, one of the, you know, I joke about this thing all the time. The bubble comes up from the Internet bubble, the dot com bubble, which is that, you know. Yeah, there was a company in New York that would deliver a candy bar to your workplace for no cost, you know, no charge, you know, but the stuff that survived is incredibly valuable because this is the problem. This is why there's a bubble. There's so much stupid. But people on the stupid aren't realizing or maybe they're ignoring this good stuff too.

[Leo Laporte]

It'll get burned off. You know, pets.com went bust in 1999, but today you can buy kitty litter online and I think it should be called pets.com.

[Paul Thurrott]

What is going on?

[Richard Campbell]

Such a good domain.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, it's great.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I. Yeah. And. And the truth is that people will lose money. Maybe there'll be some, you know, retail investors who will lose money, but it must be institutional and more, more than that, VCs that are going to lose money.

[Paul Thurrott]

Hey, I. The one thing that's very clear to me is that if you are investing in a company like Open AI now, you, you must understand the risk here. Right? This is not. I would hope so. I mean, but I don't think there's ever been a clearer risk.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, all my money is in the s and P500. And I wish maybe that I could get that e eft and take the AI out.

[Paul Thurrott]

Except.

[Richard Campbell]

Good.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you probably. On the other hand, there's still. Look at. It's still going up like crazy.

[Richard Campbell]

Sure. It is, it will be going up the entire time until it isn't.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And by the way, when it goes down, it's not going to be a subtle change. It's going to be a nosedive of epic and probably historic proportions.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, I'm staying in. I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm pushing all my chips in.

[Paul Thurrott]

You have a new mattress, Leo. Why are you just using that?

[Leo Laporte]

You know, I'm not living off, I'm not living off the IRA yet.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So I'm, and, but of course, I don't have an infinite amount of time to recover either.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Apparently took a decade to recover after.

[Richard Campbell]

2000.Com boom for sure. Arguably this will go faster, but, you know, nobody really knows.

[Leo Laporte]

We don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

It's also, you know, the other interesting part of this that I see this in the computing workforce is kids of a certain age that were around during the dot com busts feared computing after that they would, you know, there's a certain age gap where that you just don't find people interested in computing.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, if I were a college graduate today, trying to find a job and.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I'd be, these people are probably mostly gone now, but my grandmother was one those people that survived like the depression.

[Leo Laporte]

And she never get over it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Never got over, never. She was thrifty to a fault for her entire 90 whatever years or whatever she was at the time. But no.

[Richard Campbell]

And we could talk about the effects of the pandemic on your behavior going forward.

[Leo Laporte]

Still is.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

We're still all working at home. This is, we are still a remote company.

[Paul Thurrott]

The final impact of the pandemic is going to be all the mental health issues that came out of this. We're going to be dealing with that forever.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a whole generation, unfortunately.

[Paul Thurrott]

My daughter graduated in 2020. She didn't have a graduation, she didn't have a prom. You know, it just, she didn't have this kind of normal transition thing that we all typically go through. And I'm not, I'm not saying that's why she's a mess or whatever, but, I mean, but you know, that impacted her. You know, I mean, I'm not, and that's not even a death. I mean, obviously with the pandemic, people lost loved ones too. I mean, a lot of bad stuff came out of that.

[Richard Campbell]

Now it's gonna be, there's gonna be some fallout of this bubble bursting. There's no two ways.

[Paul Thurrott]

You think? Yeah. All right, so we'll See, we'll see what happens. I feel like AMD is going to have more and more deals with more and more companies. I feel like Microsoft and them kind of sideline more and more and, you know, we'll. We'll see. I don't know. They also, because you can't have a week pass without any news from OpenAI, announced app integration support in ChatGPT. Now I saw a headline. I'm not trying to make fun of any individual. I don't remember who wrote this, but they said, or they wrote, ChatGPT is an operating system now. I was like, yeah, I don't think you understand anything. It's a platform now. I mean, it's probably been a platform for quite a while, but it is a platform. Right. And so, you know, Teams has apps too, by the way, like, relax, it's not an operating system, but it's as complicated as an operating system.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes, but this is a logical play for OpenAI. You can't just be something incorporated in other people's apps. You have to make a play for. I'm the. That you incorporate apps into.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep, yep. And this is the logical progression to me of this stuff in the sense that we keep talking about this agentic web, agentic whatever AI, where apps are going to become programmatic in ways that a lot of apps really aren't today. Some are, obviously, and then they can integrate with these AIs and you can do things or have it do things for you. Right. That's the point of these agents, whatever it might be. Yes. I mean, we're living. This is the type of stuff that used to happen on some in the background when we weren't aware of it, some new version of maybe Windows or Office or something would come out and they'd be like, yeah, we integrate with this thing. Now you're like, whoa, what's going on? This was the type of stuff that was OS level for sure, or it still is, but I mean, for the last 30 years or whatever, it'd be.

[Richard Campbell]

Nice if we could do this exploration of this new technology without distorting the world economy. But apparently.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right, no, this is happening in real time. You know, this is apropos nothing, but I saw a headline that said Germany passes a law that will allow them to shoot down drones. Like, nice. Like they're going to start with drones in Poland. But don't worry about it, it's fine. Anyway, so, yes, I don't know what to say about this, but there's an app store of sorts now for chatgpt and that's going to grow. This thing has 800 million weekly active users. I feel like 2 seconds ago it was 3 or 400 million. When you just think this stuff couldn't get any bigger.

[Richard Campbell]

It was 100 million in January of 23.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, it was crazy.

[Richard Campbell]

That was the kickoff of this. They hit 100 million in two months.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. Microsoft announced their stuff like Two weeks later, a week later, whatever. It was.

[Richard Campbell]

Sydney.

[Paul Thurrott]

And. Yep. I mean, Microsoft must be going gangbusters too.

[Richard Campbell]

Anyway, so OpenAI are making a lot of money, but they can't talk about the maus the way that.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, no, they can't. No one else can either because every time anyone does a roundup of that copilot's not really. They're not there.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, and I would also argue this is not a public company and we don't know how they actually measure those numbers. So who knows?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. They use AI. Richard, what do you mean?

[Richard Campbell]

Well, an AI is all about facts. I get that. That it's precise. Very precise.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't think I put this in here. I wrote this kind of a screed about smart home because Google and Amazon now have had big events talking about the future of smart home. And of course the thing that's going to put the stuff over the top for everybody is AI. Of course it is, because you can talk naturally to your stuff or whatever, but this is still very much a world of technical people who can figure stuff out, make it work. And then normal people. Like, my wife was like, look, I just want to walk up to the light switch and turn on a light. And I'm like, don't, don't touch that switch. That's tied to a thing. And I've got a routine and you got to screw it up. You know, like, this stuff is still kind of a disaster. And, you know, there's like the world scope problems with AI that people are worried about, like some missiles going to launch somewhere and, you know, head towards some country that no one intended to attack. But on a personal level, it's going to be more like all of a sudden in the middle of the night, oh, your lights turn on, your doors unlock, you know, whatever. And it's like, sorry, I thought you said whatever. It's like, no, I didn't say that. Or this is. We're going to be. I don't. We're going to be dealing with this stuff for such a long time. I don't know. At least life's interesting. I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Paul Thurrott]

All right, trying to see the positive side here, but yeah, okay. Perplexity released the Comet browser a couple of months ago. You had to pay to get into it. Eventually they made it. I think you could have a Perplexity Pro, which is 20 bucks a month, right. Subscription, get access to it. But now it's available to everyone free of charge. Obviously it has usage limits. This is a Chromium based browser, does all the standard Chrome stuff that you would expect. And there's a pattern here that you see across all of these agenic browsers really where you know, the default new tab is the Chatbot kind of a thing. There's a sidebar that you can access. You can do a side by side thing and summarize this document, summarize this video. They have agentic capabilities, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't know, you know, Google is so far the only company I'm aware of that does this kind of thing where they really clearly spelled out what you get across all the tiers. I don't know what the limits are in this free version of Comet, but as of today I would say this is either the best or one of the two best agency browsers, if that makes sense. And this is going to change every 10 seconds. But as of right now, it is actually, it's probably better than you might think it is. It's pretty good. I need to look at it again though, because I'm going to talk about an app pick at the end of the show that is related to this, that is, is pretty good competition for this thing. But now you, now you can charge it or try it kind of risk free at least. So that's good.

[Richard Campbell]

But you do need the Perplexity Max account, right?

[Leo Laporte]

No, not anymore.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, no, no, not anymore. So in the beginning it was perplexity max was 200 bucks a month. And then they open it up to Pro, which is $20 a month now it's for everybody. So they've, you know, for a while.

[Leo Laporte]

But honestly I don't think I'm smart enough to use an agent browser.

[Paul Thurrott]

So this is the, this is actually, I'm actually really glad you said that because, because even with some guidance where the company will say try this thing and I'm like, yeah, I can't figure this out. Like I, I do run into this same problem and I think it's just, I think a lot of it is we're early on with kind of agenic capabilities, right.

[Richard Campbell]

So there are, I wonder if we have to change our. If we're on a path to changing our language that now everything you want to do has to begin with like a hypothesis.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

You have to present a project to your software before it'll do anything for you.

[Paul Thurrott]

So, so the central back. I guess I go back to that original Bing AI really copilot announcement where I was like so I'm sorry, what's happening? We've had GUIs for 30, 40 years, whatever, and now you want me to type again. For me, I don't mind that but I think for a lot of. I was like this is going to be a problem for people. This has not been a problem for people. We just said several hundred million active users on ChatGPT. You're typing into it probably. Although a lot of people now are talking to it too. Right. You do that conversational thing. I do think getting so all of these, not all of them. A lot of these things have helpful starters for this kind of thing and they use different language around this. But what we're really talking about are either scripts or I don't know, pre made prompts to kind of get you started. Like suggestions. Right. Summary is easy, everyone kind of gets that. But when you want to go to an AI and say I would like you to find this. Here's a picture of something, I want you to find it it at Amazon and I guess when we trust it you could say I would now like you also to buy it for me and not buy it for me. I mean I'll pay for it but you know it's gonna, it has that access to your Amazon account and this is a, that's where I get. That's a tough bridge to cross right there, you know. Yeah, that's a, that's a trust moment.

[Richard Campbell]

If it got you to the page where you can now click buy now.

[Leo Laporte]

Right up to that point.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but there to be sure you could say that like when you're. If you're looking at a. A page and you say summarize this thing in the language of AI, this is the context is this thing. Right. And then you're starting to see in browsers like these AI browsers this notion of I'm going to open three or four browser tabs and I don't remember it now I'm forgetting which browser it is. But which, but there's this kind of an language like at mentions we have all over the place now where you can say and then name of tab app, name of tab app, name of tab, compare These three products tell me which is the better value. Which is. And you have this conversation, like, I'm comparing these things. Maybe I want to buy one of them. Which is the best one to buy. Is there a place that has a better price on this thing or whatever it might be? I do think people will find this stuff useful, but you have to get over the, I guess the learning hump. Right. I mean, it's, It's. It's not. This is not the way we interact with things. We're not used to this. Right. It's. It's a little strange.

[Richard Campbell]

The argument is that the way we interact with search engines was pretty strange when we started. Like, it took a while. You realize, like, you have this executive function, you're basically decomposing your idea into a set of search statements.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And you have to decompose it differently.

[Paul Thurrott]

Literally the opposite way. So the thing that Google search, or just web search trained us was be concise. And the thing that AI is trying to teach us is, no, you need to be verbose. You need to be as wordy as you can be. Be very specific.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm really close to the point now where most of the times I ask the tool for a prompt for the thing I want to do.

[Paul Thurrott]

Nice.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. So first I write a prompt for the prompt.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Then pass that prompt along.

[Paul Thurrott]

The other comparison I make all the time is the Zork and other Infocong games or the King's Quest games from Sierra, whatever. Where there was a parser and it was just a table lookup kind of a thing. Very simplistic. And if you didn't have the language exactly right, you weren't going to get the thing. And there's some element of that. And it feels like it's not really. It's not the same thing. I want to be super clear about that. But I do feel like sometimes you could be so close to the right prompt but not quite get there. Even though one of the key advances here is the natural language stuff. Right. You should be able to talk around something and have the green thing that I saw last week or something. Like, if it has an understanding of your activities and whatever, it should be able to find that thing. We want it to get to the. It's like a wife or partner or a friend who kind of. You're on the same wavelength and they're like almost finishing your sentences. Or you're like, what's the. You don't even give them any clue what you're talking about. You're like, what's the thing? And they say exactly what it was you were thinking about. You're like, yeah, yeah, that thing. I think this is where we want AI to be, right? And honestly, I think it kind of will be, but. But it has to evolve. And there are so many of these things now. And the features, the functionality level, whatever, the quality up and down. And today, this one's the best. Tomorrow, this one's the best. This one's the best. For this specific thing, I'm fascinated that every One of these AIs, one of the primary functions is people writing software code. It's clearly because it's good at this. The percentage of people that actually need that capability is small, but we're really good at it. So it's always one of the options. Always.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, I have a commercial I would like to do here and then we will do the Xbox segment.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, this is a big week for Xbox. Yes. Wide and deep.

[Richard Campbell]

A good one, but it is a big one.

[Paul Thurrott]

No one said.

[Leo Laporte]

There's a lot of talk about the new game Pass, I'll tell you that.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Holy moly.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, is there? I hadn't noticed. I'll look it up during the break. Let me know.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you check on that. But since we're talking about using AI, I thought maybe it'd be a good time to talk about Zapier, which I've been using forever. Zapier is. Has been, for me, a way of connecting the apps I use, the sites that I use together to do things to automate my life. In fact, I've been using a Zapier. They call them Zaps, a Zapier workflow, I guess, you know, for a generic title. For years now, in preparation for the shows, I use a bookmark manager. I was using Pinboard and now use Raindrop. Doesn't matter. Zapier has 8,000 different integrations, more than that. So pretty much anything you use, it'll work with. And I was having. I still have it. Whenever I bookmark something into Raindrop, saying, this would be good for a show, Zapier automatically posted on a Mastodon account on Twitt Social, so people can follow that. It automatically puts it as a line carefully formatted in a Google spreadsheet, which the producers can then use their own Zaps to import into our rundown. It really is a fantastic tool, but Zapier just got like a thousand times better. We cover, as you know, a lot of trends on this show, but as you just heard, the big one these days is AI and you also heard me say, sometimes I feel stupid. Talking about a trend does not make you more efficient at work. For that you need the right tools. And this is where Zapier makes me feel smart. Zapier is how you break the AI hype cycle and put AI to work across your company. Zapier will let you deliver, actually deliver on your AI strategy, not just talk about it. And you don't have to. You no longer say, say, I don't know where to start, I don't know what to do. Zapier's AI orchestration platform will, will let you bring the power of AI to any of your workflows, so you can do more of what matters. For instance, I can now use Zapier to summarize a story and put a short summary of it into the spreadsheet. Right? Fantastic. You can connect any of the big AI models, Chat GPT, of course, even Claude, to the tools your team already uses to any of those thousands of integrations. So you can add AI at exactly where you need it, at the point you need it, whether that's an AI powered workflow itself or an autonomous agent. A lot of people are using it now for customer chatbots. Or, you know, you could take your CRM, integrate it with your customer into, you know, chat, integrate it with chat GPT. I mean, there's all sorts of things you can do. It's incredible. Whatever you can dream of, you can orchestrate it it with Zapier. Zapier really is for everybody. You don't have to be a tech expert. You will not look at it and say, ida, I'm not smart enough to use this. It's one of those things where I go, thank you, you're making this easy for me. And I guess I'm not alone because teams have already automated over 300 million AI tasks using Zapier. 300 million join the millions of businesses transforming how they work with Zapier and AI. Get started for free by visiting zapier.comwindows that's Z-A P I E R.comWindows Zapier it really is the AI solution you've been looking for. Zapier.comwindows thank you Zapier for supporting Windows Weekly. And now it's been awaited. It's been dreamed of. People have been talking about it all week long. It's time hinted at for the Xbox and gaming segment. Mr.

[Paul Thurrott]

I get nothing but good news. Just kidding. Yeah, this has been, it's been a weird year, you know, for Xbox.

[Leo Laporte]

And.

[Paul Thurrott]

I can't I can't say that I can explain it. I, I've defended a lot of what Microsoft has done to date. And then last week we got this, these changes to Game Pass. Right. So the one that everyone focuses on is Game Pass ultimate because they literally are raising the price by 50% which is just insane. I believe I went back and looked at this. I think when they originally had three different game pass options. So the original Game Pass, which was just for console, they introduced PC Game Pass. These were 9.99. And then they did ultimate, which includes both together. And then Cloud gaming, which was Bennett, which was in beta till two seconds ago. 14.99.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Or maybe 16.99 somewhere in there. $29.99. You know, right. Before getting into the ultimate end of it. I just want to point out, I, I feel like if you can overlook the reality of them getting rid of the classic Game Pass that had the day one perk, which was the big seller and they replaced that never really.

[Richard Campbell]

Delivered on because it couldn't be. We knew it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Not with Activision Blizzard, like with when it was just, you know, Xbox Studios and, and maybe if you're only making.

[Richard Campbell]

B games then maybe. But it's.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, you have the occasional hit like it's Halo or Yeah, here's a war.

[Richard Campbell]

Like, okay, it's a big budget thing. If you're spending, if you spent 200 million making this game, you're not giving it away a pass.

[Paul Thurrott]

And it's more than that. I mean, yeah, five, seven year old Call of Duty games for four to 600 million. I mean just, you know, because they make billions. Right? But, but still this is a.

[Richard Campbell]

They only make billions because they charge 80 bucks for the game.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. So before. Which is one of the, which is part of the math here. Right. We don't on the outside of Microsoft, outside of Xbox have all the math to be able to understand exactly what's happening. But one of the things we knew coming into this was, you know, just to use one game as an example, every October, November, Microsoft or Activision at the time would release a new version of Call of Duty and this thing would make a billion dollars in two seconds. And if you give this thing to people who are paying $9.99 or $19.99 or whatever it is a month for Game Pass. How many Game Pass subscriptions you have to have for that to make sense? There aren't that many video game players. It's hard to do the math. No one really knows for sure. But it Was very clear before this transaction even went through. This was going to be a problem. And so the first solution.

[Richard Campbell]

Do you think they were hoping they'd get that many people signing up that it was going to work? Like, I don't even know that.

[Paul Thurrott]

They thought maybe that's the thing. I can't say because we don't know how many people would have to for it actually to make sense. Maybe, I don't know. But when they got rid of what used to be Xbox Game Pass, the initial one, and then replaced it with something that didn't have the Day one perk, that was the first indication. Now the only one of these subscriptions that has it is ultimate and that's that price just went up by 50% to 30 bucks a month. That's the cost. Somewhere in there there's a rough understanding that this thing can't make money unless they do it this way. It has to be this expensive. But again, if you can just ignore the Day One thing and if you look at the two other subscriptions we have in Game Pass and also PC, which still exists, which I wasn't clear on when they first announced this stuff, honestly, these are pretty good values. They have like solid libraries. They've made subtler changes that raise the price in kind of vague ways. For example, you used to be able to, I think we talked about this. You could accumulate these rewards by playing games and use that credit to pay for at least partially your subscription every month, which lowered the cost for you. You can't do that anymore. That kind of thing is absolutely in certification. That's one of the things I wanted to just lay out first thing. But the Xbox hardware thing is tough. They've doubled. Not doubled. They've raised the price of the Xbox consoles at least in the US twice this year. Horrible. At some point you have to think they don't want to sell these things anymore. This has always been a money losing business for Microsoft. This generation somehow has emerged as kind of the worst, which is terrible because these are the best consoles.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. The question is raising their prices enough. They actually have a margin on them because they used to have virtually no margin. So they're just covering off the increase.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean. Yeah, it was. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Or are they actually trying to make money on them? Like I don't, I don't know the answer.

[Paul Thurrott]

But this is combination of things. So you see that like the most desirable Game Pass subscription is now 50% more expensive. The consoles have raised in price twice. Game prices are not all games, but AAA games. There are exceptions, of course, but 5999 was the, the rule of the land for I think 10 years. Plus it went to 69.99 for somewhere up to maybe five years if you count this year. And now 79.99. Right. So there was this long period of time where it was one price, a short period of time where it was another price and now it's gone up again. The rate of increase is dramatic and it is tied to what you said, Rich. I think they've never said this, but I think it is tied to what you were talking about. The last Call of Duty for which we have data was Black Ops Cold War which did not perform as well as earlier. Black ops games cost $700 million to make. Right? I know. And they make one of these every year. I doubt the new ones are less expensive.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, and they don't get them done in a year either. So that means they've got three or four of them in the pipeline at a given time. And even given the burn rate is astonishing.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. There are now two times in the modern era where they had to basically fudge a new release. We're about to have one of those now where when we went from it was the new Modern Warfare 2 to the new Modern Warfare 3, they were back to back. Originally what became Modern Warfare 3 was going to. Well, it was always called. It was going to be like an add on for the previous game deal and they decided just to sell it as a full on title. So this past week Black Ops 7, which is a follow on to Black Ops 6, the current game they had, they had. I think they extended it. There's a public beta if you want to go give it a shot. It is exactly the same as Black Ops 6 except you can kind of run in walls a little bit, you know, but in the levels are terrible, but other than that it's the same game. And it's like they're gonna charge $69.99 for this piece of junk, right?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

And they're like, but we can have more maps. You know, it's like yeah, I guess. I don't know. It's. It's. It's tough. So the problem is for a gamer this thing like game pass to me used to be like a no brainer. It was such a great value.

[Leo Laporte]

You.

[Paul Thurrott]

But you have to do some hard math. I. There is for me personally. Now I granted I'm maybe not typical, but I'd be better off spending 69.99 on call of Duty. And just maybe everyone's not buying, like a new Doom game when that comes out or something.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, you're lucky if you. $360. Like, I know you can buy five games a year for that. And you don't buy five.

[Paul Thurrott]

And I am not buying five games a year. No, not even close. And that's. That is a problem. And it almost makes me wonder if the point of this wasn't really to get people to bump down to one of the lower tiers where they do make money. Because I don't think Game Pass ultimate makes sense for them. And I think this is them saying, please don't do this, please don't do this.

[Richard Campbell]

But if you want to give us this much money, then okay, I mean, we'll do it.

[Paul Thurrott]

But you're going to pay the actual cost of this thing to us. And it's exorbitant and.

[Richard Campbell]

And it crashed the site. That's how badly people want to pay that much. Don't.

[Paul Thurrott]

The other little subtle thing they did to raise prices is remember back in the day when Xbox live debuted in 2002, there was a silver, which was free, and a gold that was. I think it was $50 a year to begin, and it was only annual. That was the only way you could do it. And part of the thing you were paying for there was the ability to play online multiplayer games of matchmaking. Right, Right. Which is something they pulled out of Halo and made available to the entire ecosystem. The thought there being that you could do this for free, so to speak, on PC. But no one was hosting infrastructure for it. Microsoft was like, we're going to have a centralized infrastructure for this. We're hosting it. It's costing us money. You have to pay for that. Consoles are different. Okay. But now we have these three different subscriptions. They've all gone up. They added in time the ability to pay per month. They added the ability to buy what is essentially like a gift card or whatever. You could get 1, 3, 6, I think 12, certainly month Xbox Live Gold at one point. And then the Game Pass stuff as well. That's gone. Right. So if you want to pay for this, you're paying per month. There is no way to save money in the short term. You can save money by buying up the existing stuff that's out there, little gift cards or whatever, and applying them to your account and you can push that out. It might be two or three years. I'm not really sure you can stack them and do that. And that's. That's cute. I mean, it's nice for now, but that's going away.

[Richard Campbell]

So you have to wonder if it doesn't provide incentive for people like they do with their Netflix account. It's like, hey, we're traveling for the next month. Let's cancel those accounts.

[Paul Thurrott]

Exactly. That. That is the one. Well, not the one. One of the benefits is you can do that. Yeah, absolutely.

[Richard Campbell]

And look, I just wonder if that's actually going to impact Microsoft's bottle line enough to actually save. You're going to see, well money here.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I'll just keep using Call of Duty as the example. Call of Duty, obviously, if you were to look at a year, we don't see this data, but there's probably this chart here. The sales November, it spikes crazy through the roof. You'll probably see a similar pattern in Game Pass. Right. Where it will follow the release of these big games. And it won't just be Call of Duty. It'll be whatever the next Halo, the next Gears, the next. Whatever other franchises we have of. So. But again, the problem to me is when you add up all this stuff together, this thing that used to be just an unassailable great value is now a little harder. But again, I want to be super clear that the lower end, two, three tiers do have certain benefits. And they did bring cloud gaming, which is the. The cloud streaming service, to all of the tiers. Right. That was not the case before. But that also makes ultimate less desirable. Right? Right. There might be people. I hope not. But maybe there were people who are paying for it specifically for that feature. If that's true, you can get this now for $15 a month instead of $29.99 a month or whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

So this is.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is a tough one. I can't. I feel like that's been happening.

[Richard Campbell]

Part of this feels like the Xbox division has been told to pay their way.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. 100%. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

You know.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

You're not AI. You need to pay your way. Do what you got to do.

[Paul Thurrott]

The only question, though, I have is the person name you. Right. Or that part of the company that would be saying this to them evaluated the Activision Blizzard. They did the math. They knew what would have to happen for this to make sense. They okayed it. They pushed this thing past the point. I think most companies would have just given up on this acquisition.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

So, you know, I mean, they. They played a role in this.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, you know, the other side of the. This acquisition part is that their stock price more than went up to cover the Cost of the acquisition like that $70 billion is irrelevant. Right. Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

You're talking about like as an ongoing business.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Well, but now when you talk. But now really it's is it profitable or not? You know, just because it was valued at something and. Right. How is it going to be valuable in the new model?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

So they definitely are, you know, putting the spurs down on you need to be a profitable entity.

[Paul Thurrott]

So Sarah Bond was not the head of Xbox but. Right. I, I don't know her exact title. She said the past week or two that Game Pass is profitable. It's pretty clear that Xbox as a business would be profitable if they didn't have to worry about hardware. Like this is the, the problem. Right, right. This is a little out of order but I'll just throw this in now because we just mentioned this but there was a. This is our world is so terrible. Some random person in a gaming forum claimed that Microsoft their plans for next gen hardware console hardware was up in the air which got reported on and blah, blah, blah, whatever. So they felt the need to make a statement about that and said that's not the case at all. We're working with AMD still. We're doing this multi generational thing. But the quote itself is interesting because this is Sarah Bondigan I believe says literally actively investing in future first party consoles and devices, meaning an Xbox ally device made by Microsoft, not made by Asus or other companies. And there will be other companies.

[Richard Campbell]

It's weird because console is a device. So these.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

It's a strange substance. When they say device what do they mean? They mean handheld.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think they mean handheld gaming. Yeah, gaming handhelds. And that these things will be designed, engineered and built by Xbox. Right. And so Microsoft would have or the Xbox. Org would have if they could have I think released one of those gaming handles this year. That was the intent and I believe that that was scuttled by either abhor.

[Richard Campbell]

We've got the Asus device.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we have the Asus devices. Yeah. So anyway, so okay, we're keeping to that story. And there was so much blowback to the Game Pass stuff that Microsoft has decided to delay the price increase in certain markets, especially in Europe. So Austria, Germany, Ireland, Poland and then I think it's like Korea, India and some other countries rather are not going to see this price increase for at least, I think it's six months or whatever. We'll see what happens. Interesting. Yeah, don't worry if you're living in the United States, your price is going up.

[Richard Campbell]

Maybe that's just. Maybe that's just to keep the cancellation site from going down.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, exactly. Just give it enough time to recover.

[Richard Campbell]

Spreading out the cancellation.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we're going to build some Azure.

[Richard Campbell]

When I first saw that story, I was thinking, oh, the EU's got rules about if you've got an auto renew, you can't jack the price up that much.

[Paul Thurrott]

You're just going to complicate all kinds of things like that.

[Richard Campbell]

No, and the answer is just don't auto renew with that kind of price raise. Just say, hey, you have to turn your renewal back on and pay the new price. But. But you've got to engage the customer one way or another. But maybe the cancellation thing is actually the answer here. They just need to spread out the cancellations.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I mean, look, people are different. There probably are lots of people who sample lots of games, play lots of games, whatever. God love them. The problem with video games is that a lot of them are really big, right? Unless you're playing a classic game. I think that Heretic plus hexing game is like a gigabyte. It's hilarious. Downslow, it's an MP3, it's no problem. But if you Call of Duty, God help you. That thing is humongous. You know, depending on how much of it you install, it's like 160 gigs. That's crazy. And. And then you get updates. So the update that brought the multiplayer beta for Black Ops 7 was, I think 60 or 80. It was humongous. It took forever. And that's a tough. That's a problem. I mean, it's, you know, if you can stream, great, and I guess everyone is streaming, so at least you can get in. And even if the performance is garbage, you get an idea. Okay, I may or may not want to get this game. At least you have that. I mean, it's kind of nice.

[Richard Campbell]

I know. My answer to that is just to watch a YouTube, let's play. Like, there's a lot of games where if I can't stand an hour of let's play of it, I probably wouldn't be happy playing this game.

[Paul Thurrott]

We in. This is probably true in the United States too, but in Mexico, a lot of people will go and eat lunch or whatever, and they put their little phone down and they watch videos and they just play the video out into the room so we all get to enjoy it. And sometimes if it's busy, three or five people will be doing this. It's. It's weird, but I know it's not great. But yesterday or the two days ago, maybe there was an older, an old woman, actual old woman who had. She propped a little phone up on the. Whatever thing on the. She's eating and I, I could see what was on her screen and she was watching a gameplay video. It was like a Nintendo type game. She was watching. She watched this thing. She watched it the whole time she was there. That's what she watched. It wasn't like a soap opera, like a telenovela or something. It wasn't a, a new show. It was, it wasn't TikTok videos. It was someone playing a video game. I. I don't know. I can't explain.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

There's some people who find like Mario Level 5 soothing. Like, who knows.

[Paul Thurrott]

It was that kind of. I don't know what it was the first. Well, it was shooting straight, you know, not like a side thing, it was a 3D thing but it was like a racing game or some kind of, I don't know, Nintendo looking thing.

[Richard Campbell]

Did she know it was a game?

[Paul Thurrott]

I. Yeah. So my. When we were kids, we had an Intellivision. My grandmother was over one day and we're playing in television. She sits in the chair and we're watching. She's watching us play. I guess I don't know what she was thinking. Eventually she says, I don't like this show. Could you change the channel? So my brother and I just put another cartridge in and started playing that instead. I don't think she had any idea what was happening.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh boy.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we were terrible. Okay, so there are these Xbox Ally gaming handhelds that right now are just Asus. Microsoft we know, is making one. But Lenovo I guess back at IFA announced Legion 2. Right. Their version of this type of device. So I actually have one. I'm going to review it. It's a big boy. It's very big.

[Richard Campbell]

Wow. That's all. That's the same as a Steam box. That's sort of the form factor.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. So I think this is an 8 point something inch screen as opposed to 7 point something on like the Ally devices, for example. Honestly, it has 144Hz dynamic refresh screen. The. It's beautiful and it looks great. My problem is I'm like 58 years old. My eyesight's not great. In Call of Duty, a sniper in a distant window is approximately one pixel big. Like he's like, you can, you know, you might see a little flash. You're like, what was that gone? And then of course you have the thing where the controllers are on the either side of the device. You can pop them off. You can't actually put them together, but that would be stupid. Anyway, guys, you can use an Xbox controller. But I think the point of this is it's a really thick tablet essentially. Right. It will be updated with this Windows experience sometime in 2026. So we'll get the ally. Xbox Ally thing. I do not have definitive information about battery life, but it's pretty much under two hours. Like this is not something.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it's crazy with how thick and heavy those things are.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh and lots of. If I could. I don't know if I could even.

[Richard Campbell]

An iPad's under a grand.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know.

[Richard Campbell]

It's got easily as much computing power. It's got a bigger screen.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, I know. And call it just to keep it.

[Leo Laporte]

In color written for it. I mean if they would.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, some are and some are easily ported. Like if there's like the recent Resident Evil games look awesome on the iPad. You know, Call of Duty Mobile honestly looks great. It's not the same game. It's not exact, you know, but. But it's. It's pretty good. But I mean I. I don't. I doubt you could. I'm gonna. I'm gonna try this. I don't think you could hear this.

[Richard Campbell]

But I hear a hurricane.

[Leo Laporte]

Sounds like the wind. Yes.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So I did all it. Yeah, all I did was turn it on now.

[Leo Laporte]

That's horrible.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know. It's crazy. I have not. My understanding is there. I should probably just look at it now. I think you can go in and change this. I mean it's probably on. Yeah, it's on. Best performance. Supposedly. I put it on balance. We'll see what happens. But yeah, it's. If you play games on a laptop or any PC really. Right. It doesn't matter if it's dedicated graphics or what if you're playing a. Like a high end recent game, whatever. You're gonna get some fan noise. Like that's just a fact of life. I play on these laptops with integrated graphics that the fan goes to town. But when you get out of the game, the fan goes away like a. Cool. It's cooling down. It's fine. This thing is just sitting here and it's like the whole time and it's still doing it. I mean it's on balance it's not doing anything. It's just window. It's just a desktop and it's like. Okay, so it's weird because to me this in very contrary ways proves that this is possible. And if you think about what Microsoft has said, this experience is on these ally devices that background processes aren't running stuff isn't starting a startup. The Windows UI is not loading, you're not doing file management, whatever. More of the power of the computer goes to the game. It's very clear to me that that's going to work. But also I look at this thing and I'm like, well, but this shows, also shows the problem with it. And of course it's Windows, right? So I don't have that experience where the Windows is not getting in the way. So I'm getting UAC prompts, I'm getting dialog box. I'll be playing a game and a dialogue pops up to the front. You're like, seriously, it's a touch screen so you can get rid of it really quick. But this is that media center experience, you know, back in 202005 or whatever it was, where, you know, you're sitting there with the remote, everything's going great. And then Windows XP would pop up a dialogue and you could ruin it as much as you wanted with that remote. You had to go find a mouse. Like you just. You're not fixing that. And so we'll have to wait and see if that new experience solves some problems. I'm kind of hoping it does. I'm still, Seriously, it's still hissing away. I just like changed the power measurement. It's not changing. So. So I don't know. Oh, maybe it's not, I don't know. But 1080p plus, you know, like 1920 by 1200 OLED. The screens OLED gorgeous. Like I said, 144Hz Vasa True Black HDR, et cetera, et cetera. It's, you know, it's nice, but it's chunky. It's a big boy. It's a big boy. So I don't know, maybe we'll get it there. But it's interesting. We usually get two X. Well, Game Pass drops each month. One at the beginning, one in the middle. Sometimes we get three. We just. Today, it's the 8th of October as we record this show. Today they announced the first slate of Xbox game pass games across cloud Console PC for I guess for the first half of this month. I didn't look at the exact dates, but it looks like, yeah, most of them go through the 15th, so. So it's a good number of games, as is so often the case. I'm like scanning list. I'm so far Removed from, I guess mainstream gaming. I don't recognize almost any of these things, but there are a lot of them at least. I saw the casting of Frank Stone and thought it said the casting of Frank Stallone. And I'm like, I have to get this game. That is amazing. And that was so disappointing to me. That's not what that is.

[Leo Laporte]

That would be a good game. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

The Baldur's Game Gates game are great. Gates are great. They're a D D game. They're great.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Yeah. Right. So yeah, Baldur's Gate and two Baldur's.

[Leo Laporte]

Gate turn based stuff so much.

[Richard Campbell]

I like to think you still go.

[Leo Laporte]

To the Paul's a real time guy. Oh, look at your goblet. Did you win that in a game?

[Paul Thurrott]

You know why this exists? So this is.

[Leo Laporte]

He's got the holy Grail in all this time and we didn't know it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Who knew? This place is a concrete jail. And if you. We have broken glasses. Just moving them on something like glasses break here so easily it's almost comical. So over Christmas I was like, I'm gonna buy unbreakable glasses. We're gonna bring them here because I can't do this. I mean we've broken so many glasses of like it's like you touch it, it's like disappear. So this thing will not break. That's why we have. It's. It's kind of a brass.

[Richard Campbell]

Your metal cup.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Yep. It's like getting a padded room, you know. That was the other alternative. I guess you could bounce it off the floor and it would come back.

[Leo Laporte]

Put up some padding.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know. That's. What are you going to do? Okay. And then there are rumors that Microsoft is going to add. This is something we've sort of expected for a long time. A standalone tier for just Xbox cloud gaming. This is the streaming service, right? Cloud. Streaming. Streaming. Except the rumors that this will now be free and ad supported. Yeah, okay, I could see that. And we don't really know anything about it. They haven't announced it for sure. But when you think about 360 bucks a year for ultimate, a couple ads, I think I could do that. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. But that's just a rumor. And then this is just gaming related. But Epic defeated Google in court basically.

[Leo Laporte]

Big, big time in the Supreme Court.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, that's the latest thing. So Google of course has appealed at every step of the way, has lost at every step of the way. No one is interested in this Appeal.

[Richard Campbell]

Wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

So they said, well, we're going to have to go to the Supreme Court.

[Richard Campbell]

Including the Supreme Court.

[Paul Thurrott]

No thanks. See you later. So now they have it until October 22nd to meet the first of its legal agreements which includes such things as allowing l developers to do their own thing with app, you know, in app payment systems and, and whatever they want to do.

[Richard Campbell]

They got two weeks.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean technically they've had about six months. I mean this has been a known thing for a while. I don't know what they thought was going to happen, but it hasn't happened.

[Leo Laporte]

So yeah, I think that's why Android is now making developers be registered and.

[Paul Thurrott]

All that might be a response. This is in that world that is as controversial as this.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, it is Steve Jobs, you know, half an hour on it. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, interesting. Okay, so I, I, I don't know enough about it yet. I, the, the stuff that Google has said about it makes some sense to me. I, I do feel like they're like mobile, you know, Apple has this completely locked down platform. Google has a lockdown platform but with an out. Right. You could do the sideload thing.

[Leo Laporte]

It seems like it's the pro folks at F Droid were miffed because.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but I don't know what to make of that. I mean of course there, but.

[Leo Laporte]

It'S for security. But you could also say it's to lock people into the Google.

[Paul Thurrott]

I guess. So should Android be a little more locked down? Maybe that's the point of mobile platforms, I don't know. Google is not imposing a 30% fee on anybody for this. I mean I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

Here's the counterargument and I'm not sure whether I believe it or not, but as you know, Apple and Google both Apple, at the request of the Department of Justice, Google just on their own killed all of the apps that track ice. The goal being of course to if you're undocumented, to avoid areas where ice is active. And ice block was the well known one that was on iOS but there were a number on Android as well. And Google just unilaterally without a request from the Justice Department.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, because Google does everything Apple does.

[Leo Laporte]

That's they said they wanted to protect vulnerable communities and so they, which apparently ICE is and so they pulled it down. Now however you feel about that, and I think there's arguments on both sides.

[Paul Thurrott]

I can't think of one on the other side but go on.

[Leo Laporte]

The solution would be that, well you don't have to store, you could side load it Right. Or, you know, and maybe if you were somebody like Joshua Aaron, the guy who did Ice Block, and you didn't want the Department of Justice to come after you, which they apparently have done to him. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is not.

[Leo Laporte]

You might want to be anonymous when you did that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You can't be anymore. You have to be. There's no anonymous apps.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. I mean, they're not the person that made the app. Well, I mean, there's ways to do this in ways that. That might protect you as the. The owner of the app, I guess the department.

[Leo Laporte]

Pat Bondi, the attorney general, said, we're going to look into this guy, Joshua.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, boy.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay, great.

[Leo Laporte]

We're going to look into him.

[Paul Thurrott]

How do you feel about him?

[Leo Laporte]

It would be terrifying. I mean, yo.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

There's going to be a black bag over his head. He's going to be in the back of a van tomorrow.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, I know.

[Richard Campbell]

So Uganda.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So I. I feel like there is an argument. Has there always been. The argument for anonymity is always. Well, what about whistleblowers or dissidents or people who are acting in a way that their government may not?

[Paul Thurrott]

Like.

[Leo Laporte]

Like, shouldn't they have some way of doing this? There's no more anonymity on the end.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, the real problem here is that we have these two gatekeepers that get to decide for everybody what you can do on your device. And this is the thing that has to be fixed. And this is what. There are cases.

[Richard Campbell]

One of them just got told by the courts. No.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. But then one of them just bowed down to the presidential administration yet again because, you know, we're all sucked in up to this guy for some reason. And where do they get in return, you know, more we're going to look the other way on the AI stuff.

[Leo Laporte]

As somebody said, you give the bully your lunch money, it doesn't make the bully.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Guess what? Now they want more money.

[Leo Laporte]

They want more.

[Paul Thurrott]

Turns out this person's greedy. Yeah. So whatever. Our industry is a fricking joke, and it just makes me sad. But I don't have enough information about this Google thing. The timing of it is tough. Right. We're in the middle of this age of renewed antitrust interest in big tech. Finally, things are starting to happen. There's some wins and some losses, obviously, but broadly speaking, it's going pretty good. There's a fundamental difference between the Google Play Store and just Android, I guess, and Apple and the App store and iOS. And I guess Google is. They're not getting Rid of it, but they're locking it down is not exactly how I view it.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a good argument that it's more secure because everybody has to be notarized and it doesn't cost them anything. And there's no anonymous apps.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, that's the thing. Look, if the case is we want to prevent malware masquerading as a legitimate app. Okay. I mean, that helps, right? I mean, we can still have the openness of Android, not have the complete closeness of iOS. This is a key differentiator. But you know, I still. This is exactly like the local account thing to me right now. Again, I don't know enough about it, but it feels like something that impacts almost nobody. There's a lot of outrage over it. What are the percentage of people that own Android devices anywhere in the world that are sideloading apps right now? Like what? It's got to be tiny.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, Google's made it less and less. Less desirable.

[Paul Thurrott]

Of course. Yeah. Yes. But I mean, but even if they didn't, is there a big market for this stuff? I mean, maybe not. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I just don't. I don't want to weigh in on this exactly because I really just don't know. I'm not really sure. I.

[Leo Laporte]

It's a tough one, to be honest. Yep, I know.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. There's no clearance so far anyway. Yeah, we'll see how it works. I mean, I think we're going to find that there'll be some developers like. Yeah, I just did. This was no problem at all. Who can cares? Google is being forced, you know, this is the story. I mean, they were being forced to open up Google Play and the Android system to third party app stores. Third party in pay in app payments. There may be less of a need for this kind of a thing under this system too. So I don't know. There'll be other app stores and I guess they'll be legit now. Well, I guess they were always kind of legit, but I mean, they'll be more seamless.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know how Google complies with this. I think this is going to be real messy.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep, yep. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, and their argument is, well, it's also going to be less secure.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, I mean, I. This isn't in the notes, but they also had those two weeks of remedy hearings for the Google, you know, usv, Google with the advertising case. The judge begged Google just to settle this case, Please. You don't want me ruling on this to settle. And one of Google's. Well, not yet. I mean, they could. But one of Google's arguments is, you know, unwinding this would be really complex. Let's just not do it, you know, which is kind of the argument here. Like, it's like this is really complex. Yeah, you built something complex. We get it.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it did work with Alsip, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

I know. Well, yeah, when laziness intersects, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

He said, well, common sense year, AI has taken over. So go. Never mind, never mind, never mind. I think that this actually, the ad case is really the strongest case against Google because they are. They're every bit of the buyer, the seller, even though.

[Paul Thurrott]

And there's that collusion with the other. The only other company that has any presence in this market whatsoever. Meta. They divided up the market. They did.

[Leo Laporte]

Like Spain, Portugal.

[Paul Thurrott]

Are you kidding me?

[Leo Laporte]

Yep.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like, just the worst. These companies will stink. This is the worst.

[Leo Laporte]

Again, Paul, just remember, every individual can do little things.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know. I used to, you know, when Microsoft was the worst company on Earth. Right. And more and more information was coming about all the stuff they were doing and all the companies that put out a business and all the terribleness. Right. Even in those darkest moments, I was like, you know, you think they're bad, but imagine if Apple ruled the world the way Microsoft. They would be so much worse.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

And now that we can see what that world is like, it's like, oh, my God, are you kidding me?

[Leo Laporte]

I said that 20 years ago.

[Paul Thurrott]

Congratulations, you know. Yeah. You got what you wanted.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm more and more. Maybe it's just me, maybe it's because I'm a hippie at heart. I just think big. There are certain things big only big companies can do. AI may be one of them because it's so expensive, but in general.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but AI OpenAI is not big really. Right. This is. They require big resources. But as far as that group and that little. That's actually a small company. Like, it's not surprising. The only thing not surprising about OpenAI is that that innovation did come out of. Not Microsoft, Google, Apple. It came out of five guys.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a good point.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right? That's a good point. I think that you're not getting.

[Leo Laporte]

That was, by the way, why they were founded is so that Google wouldn't.

[Paul Thurrott]

Know you're not getting innovation from the companies who have dominant products that they're now protecting.

[Leo Laporte]

And unfortunately, that's where I don't like. Big is where they have tendrils in everything. That you do. Amazon, Google.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. The silly version of this is you get like a company, Keebler makes cookies and they dominate cookies. Right. So you're like, how do we expand? I don't. Now we have cookie cereal. Now we have fruit roll ups that taste like Oreo cookies or whatever. We make like. Like you get into stupid stuff because they buy it.

[Leo Laporte]

Now we own every bit of the.

[Paul Thurrott]

Now there's one cookie company that makes, you know, like all the water companies are owned by Coke. You know, it's. This is the problem with capitalism is there growth? Growth is forever. And to achieve that, you have to break the rules and dominate and go into new markets and you repress companies that might be innovative and fast moving would do good things for people.

[Leo Laporte]

Keebler is now owned by Ferrero Rocher.

[Paul Thurrott]

God damn it. I didn't even want to look that one up. I was like, don't tell me. I was like.

[Leo Laporte]

Along with famous Amos mothers, Murray's Girl Scout cookies, and Fred fruit snacks, Ferrero makes Nutella Tic Tacs and of course, Ferrero Rocher Chocolate.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's just like, you don't think, like. I don't think about. This is not my world. Right. But you're driving down the street and you see a. I'm going to make that. I don't remember. It was like a KFC and a Pizza Hut combined. And you say, what is this unholy alliance?

[Leo Laporte]

How could that be? They're all by Pepsi.

[Paul Thurrott]

Because they're owned by one company. Yeah. Yep. And it's. God, it's. The world is insane. But all I can do is complain about my. Well, I can complain about anything, I guess, but I mean, I, I feel it the most. Obviously with these companies, the, the tech stuff is just.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. I mean, so, okay, so, you know, Chips Deluxe and Dunkin Delights and El Fudge and Grasshopper Mint and Fudge cookies are all owned by one company. Who cares? Because it's.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, someone might care. I don't know. But maybe there's a big cookie thing that's going on that I'm not aware of. I don't know. But yeah, I'm sure it's a problem.

[Leo Laporte]

Big cookie. That's what. That's what Corey does.

[Paul Thurrott]

A famous brand of cookie from Massachusetts. It's one of those, like. It's a grandma's something. You can look this up.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, yeah, they're good, these things.

[Paul Thurrott]

You could take it out of the wrapping and it would never not be soft. This thing is made with forever chemicals.

[Leo Laporte]

I Always wonder, how do they keep them soft?

[Paul Thurrott]

There's no grandmother. This thing is made in it. No, we used to.

[Leo Laporte]

Grandmother's a robot.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's. Yeah, it is. It's a warehouse. This is like a, a. This is as far from a farm or like a woman churning butter or whatever you try, whatever you think it is, it is not that.

[Leo Laporte]

Mrs. Butterworth makes these in her AI factory. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

There's no. Mrs. Butterworth is a character for an AI chatbot. Like, it's an amazing world. Unbelievable.

[Leo Laporte]

Corey wrote a story about Big Potato. Apparently, like most, almost all the French fries come from one company. Of course, of course it's Big Potato.

[Paul Thurrott]

The problem I have with all this stuff is if you think about. I always say the. It's one of the problems I have is companies like Walmart that have huge buying power. Or McDonald's. Right. Or in our world, you know, the big tech companies, they could change the world for the better easily. They could require their suppliers not to use factory farms and to do whatever. They, they could solve this problem. Problem. But they're. They're not because they're. We get $0.01 more per profit on every hamburger, whatever it is we sell. And you're never, you're never going to get that from these big companies ever, ever, ever, ever, because that's all they care about.

[Leo Laporte]

Cal Main Foods owns every brand of eggs. Farmhouse eggs, sunup. Sunny meadow egg.

[Paul Thurrott]

Lance, I can assure you the eggs that we just bought, which by the way, you can buy and an arbitrary amount.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Did not come from big egg Blue. And yes, there were feathers in this thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Feathers still on them. Love it.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's the thing in, in, in the United States, when you get chicken, it's this perfectly formed thing. It's a blob of whatever. And when they, they use a machete here to cut up chickens, you're going to get parts of bone, you're going to get some gristle. There's skin in there with little feather sticks in it and stuff. It's a. It's an animal. You know, a human being cut up an animal and handed it to you. It's not, not. It's not the same.

[Leo Laporte]

I bet some big Potato in Mexico. No.

[Paul Thurrott]

Maybe. I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

97.

[Richard Campbell]

Pretty good.

[Leo Laporte]

All the frozen potatoes are owned by Big Potato 4 companies.

[Paul Thurrott]

So this thing, this computer's off and it's still, it's just hissing. It's just over here still trying to cool down. I can't get it to stop. It keeps turning back on. So I just turned it off and it's off like now. Blessed silence for two seconds. But it's gonna. It's just gonna come back on. I know it is. Morning, Zoe. Got donuts.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage?

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, I dig the mattress and I.

[Leo Laporte]

Want to be in a T mobile.

[Paul Thurrott]

Commercial like you teach me.

[Leo Laporte]

So.

[Paul Thurrott]

Dana.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Oh no, I'm not really prepared.

[Leo Laporte]

I couldn't possibly at t mobile get.

[Narrator/Announcer]

The new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system.

[Paul Thurrott]

Wow, impressive. Let me try. T mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network. Nice.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Jeffrey, you heard them.

[Paul Thurrott]

T mobile is the best place to get the new iPhone 17 Pro on.

[Leo Laporte]

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[Paul Thurrott]

So what are we having for launch?

[Narrator/Announcer]

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[Paul Thurrott]

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[Leo Laporte]

Plus tax and 35 device connection charge credit sending balance due if you pay off earlier. Cancel Finance agreement. IPhone 17 Pro 256 gigs 1099.99 and.

[Paul Thurrott]

New line minimum 100 plus a month.

[Leo Laporte]

Plan with auto pay plus taxes and fees required. Best mobile network in the US based on analysis by Oklahoma Speed Test Intelligence Data 1H 2025 Visit t mobile.com did.

[Narrator/Announcer]

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[Leo Laporte]

You know what I like and I'm proud to be a part of is the independent media enterprises that are called podcasts.

[Paul Thurrott]

Are you suggesting you're not big podcastly?

[Leo Laporte]

I am not. There is no. Well, there's. There is big podcasts, there's Amazon and there's Spotify.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh no, there definitely Isn't part of that.

[Leo Laporte]

Right, because we're an RSS feed, which means you can't. We don't know how old you are. By the way, I was talking about this with Steve. If they start to require age verification for all content, we're out of luck. I can't. I don't know how old you are. And I have no way of figuring that out. Spotify does, Amazon does. It would kill independent podcasts.

[Paul Thurrott]

Does this matter if you're not producing what we would call adult content or whatever?

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it doesn't in Mississippi. It doesn't in many states of the United States now. They don't. It's not about. About adult. It's about social. It's about the kids might consume it anyway. The point being, I think it's really important, and I want to put in a pitch for all of you who listen to this show and all of our shows to support independent. Not owned by a big company, not regulated by government, regulators, media. And that is, you know, what we do without fear or favor. If Paul wants to say something bad about a company or about, you know, Pam Bondi, wait, I can do that. You can do that.

[Paul Thurrott]

I got a couple things I want to get to.

[Leo Laporte]

You can do that. And I think that's really important. I think we need that in a free society. And I want to say I'm proud to be doing that. But now here's the problem. You know, we need your help to do that, and that's why we created Club Twitter. We did it during the pandemic when advertising had just fallen off the cliff, thank goodness. You know, we have a pretty good, good list of advertisers, and we're going to keep doing that if we can. But even so, 25% of our operating expenses, even after we shut down the studio, we canceled shows, we laid off people. We didn't want to lay anybody off, but we had to, even then. Still, 25% of our operating costs come from you, our Club Twitt members, and that is going to only go up. But I like that. I don't want to be beholden to anybody but you. And that's the beauty of this. So if you want to support what we do, if you like this show or any of the shows we do, if you like, you know, the Club Twit, which is a great place to hang out. Our discord is fantastic with smart people talking about interesting things and, and, and, you know. Well, let me. You know what? AI Leo could probably say it best. Shall I. Shall I let AI Leo take over. Let's. Let's hear what he has to say. It dices, it slices, it gives you ad free tech podcast.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yikes.

[Leo Laporte]

Twitch tv. That's terrifying. It's terrifying. Boogie on down in the club. Come on. This is all in the discord. We have fun in the discord. I have to say we also do a lot of. Oh, we're talking about baking. Richard's talking about his Dutch oven. That's nice.

[Richard Campbell]

No, I was talking, I was talking about how we do artisanal podcast. But you need a Dutch oven for that.

[Leo Laporte]

You do need a Dutch oven for a digital podcast. We have a lot of special, special programming. We do Micah's crafting corners coming up in a week. So is Chris Marquardt's phototime a week from Friday. The book club, or rather a week from Thursday. Book club's a week from Friday. We're doing a really great sci fi book called A Memory Called Empire. We talk about the book and then we vote on the next book. So there's so much great stuff going on in the club and I'm so proud of it. And of course you get ad free versions of all the shows, which I think is great too, because if, if you're paying for it, we don't need to advertise. I think all of this adds up to something really important. Yes, it's 10 bucks a month. If, if times are tight, I promise always we'll still have free content. In fact, we've decided to take all of the in club shows and put them out in public again ad supported. And you know, if you don't like the ads, you can get them without the ads. But we think it's so important that people who don't have 10 bucks a month can still get the content. So we, I that we're kind of committed to that. But if you do, if you can afford it and we have discounts for families, we have discounts for corporate memberships. We even have a two week free trial support what is becoming more and more important. Independent podcasting. Join the club Twit TV Club. Twit. And I thank all the club members who are very vital to our operation.

[Richard Campbell]

I had fun with my project on the, on the.

[Leo Laporte]

That was great. When you built your, you know, I was going to build the, the Framework DEC desktop, but then I realized you spent what, four hours, three and a half?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And you added thermal. You did the thermal. This thing was basically, you know, like putting a Lego thing together. There wasn't Really a show around it. But I think we will in our AI user group talk more about. We talked last time about local AIs and so forth and you're. You gave me an inspiration. I just set up wire guide on. Actually wireguard was already set up on my. You realize it.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So I'm now downloading the profiles on all my machines.

[Richard Campbell]

So I got to do some LED lighting things. So maybe if there's enough project in there, we'll make it.

[Leo Laporte]

That would be fun.

[Richard Campbell]

Fun. Yeah. Whip out a. A dig to go and wire it up with some.

[Leo Laporte]

You. You make it. All of our hosts really make the club so much better. And of course the club members. We thank you. We do have that. By the way. Kevin's just put a link in the discord to the three and a half hours.

[Richard Campbell]

@ some point somebody called me the Bod Ross of PC.

[Leo Laporte]

Was it gentle? Was it quiet? Was it.

[Richard Campbell]

I say, I know I stay pretty steady on these sorts of things.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

The corollary to that is I did get a chance to build a machine with a young man neighbor who I got my spare parts, but I didn't think that was appropriate for streaming.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, my version of this would be lots of blood and crying.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, there will be blood occasionally.

[Richard Campbell]

There's always blood. There was blood in this one. I definitely stabbed myself at least once.

[Leo Laporte]

And that beautiful case.

[Richard Campbell]

The. The north. The fractal north case is gorgeous.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Such a pretty machine.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So thank you for helping us, you know, do stuff.

[Richard Campbell]

Really was a lot of fun, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

And the name of the show, by the way, if you're searching for it, the Gods of Vengeance and Irony.

[Richard Campbell]

Nice.

[Leo Laporte]

All right, on we go, back at the book of time. Mr. Paul Thurat, your tip of the week, my friend.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, so I've been updating the Windows 11 field guide for 25H2 and the feature that Microsoft is now taking away is one of those things. I just retested and it worked fine, but now it's going to go away and I got to figure this out. So the problem is I don't have an ISO for these latest builds. It's going to be hard to test in all the different scenarios, but it's something I'm going to look at. One thing I can say, I'm pretty sure that will just keep working because this is more related to the hardware requirements. Remember, one of the big controversies with Windows 11 was that it required certain levels of CPU, TPM 2.0, et cetera. There's lots and Lots of workarounds that you can use a tool like Rufus, et cetera to build a install media that bypasses that. But one of the many, many scenarios for installing or upgrading to Windows 11, whatever version in this case 25H2 is you're on some version of Windows like 10 or 11. It's supported probably, but maybe isn't to some degree, or maybe it's supported for two more seconds on 10, but it doesn't meet the Windows 11 hardware requirements. You don't actually have to do any of that stuff. You could just download the ISO, double click it to mount it in the file system, run setup exe, and then you'll find out if it works or not. If it says, sorry, you're not meeting this for hardware compatibility reasons, just open a command line window and run setup from the command line instead of from the double clicking and adding product space server. And as it comes up it will say you're upgrading to server, you're not, so you have to get by that. But it works perfectly well. That works fine. So if somehow you have a computer that works fine, does not meet the Windows 11 requirements, requirements, hardware requirements, you can still upgrade it, right? And that's to me, that's the easiest way. It's the simplest thing in the world. You don't have to make any do anything, just download the file, run it, you're fine, it will work. So that's good. Maybe not perfect, but it's good. And then I've kind of alluded to this a few times, but Opera has released Neon. This is their agentic web browser. Opera has maybe too many web browsers, but there's an Opera browser, there's Opera Air, which is their kind of lightweight, mindful version of the browser, which I actually love. GX, the gaming laptop, the gaming browser, mobile browsers, etc. But Neon, the one little asterisk in here is they're doing it paid only. And the full boat plan is like 20 bucks a month like everything else in the world. But people like me who are in the media, I can get access for a few months for free. So I'm going to try it and see what it's like. You can also do an early bird special where you pay for nine months of access, access for just $60. So you can save some money that way if you know you're going to like it. But I just started looking at this today and I've written a series of articles about various kind of AI powered browsers. Like I've done Edge in copilot mode, the new Google stuff, although now they've updated that again. Dia, Comet, something called Norton Neo for some reason, which is ridiculous. So far the best of the lot to me has been Comet, right? And in this world it's like it's going to change. But so far that seems to work really well. This might be better. This might actually be better. This is pretty powerful. And I still haven't, like Leo said something earlier very much resonated with me with regards to this, which is kind of makes me feel stupid in some ways because there's a lot of power lurking in this thing that I just haven't been able to kind of unwind yet. But they have various AI agenc features that are very interesting, like tasks, which is a thing you can do as a workspace across multiple tabs for context. I mentioned earlier in the show this notion of either scripts or pre built prompts to help get you started. They call that cards. Cards are capabilities you can install into the AI. So if you wanted to integrate with Amazon, there's an Amazon card if you want to integrate with, I don't know, whatever it is, might be. There's various things like code review Helper is one of them, et cetera. There's a lot of them, right? And then so far most of them have been made by Opera, but it's a community, you can contribute, et cetera, et cetera. The one thing I did do with this, which is rather incredible is that thing you hear about with this kind of vibe coding thing, which was make a retro shooting game. And it sat there, it took seven or eight minutes and you could see what it was doing. It was searching for ip, kind of friendly or free to use for anybody assets online for graphics and sound. And it wrote the code, pumped the thing out. I could download it as a zip, but it made a little website that ran this thing. It's Space Invaders, except really fast. It's actually more like. Well, it's like Space Invaders. The rows of aliens come down, they shoot, you move left, right, you shoot, et cetera, et cetera. We don't all need to make this video game, I get that. But some of these capabilities are crazy. Crazy. Like this is crazy. So you'd have to pay for it. Like I said, I'm thinking in time there'll probably be a free tier 2, right? Or at least a free period where you could evaluate it for yourself. But there's a wait list if you want to try it out. It does all the normal AI things summarize summarize the video, summarize the article. That's multitab. Context, et cetera, et cetera, does all the stuff, but there's some. Yeah, we're getting into a weird area here.

[Leo Laporte]

And it's.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, things are changing. It's interesting. It's worth looking at.

[Leo Laporte]

It is.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think this might be the best one so far.

[Leo Laporte]

Really?

[Richard Campbell]

That's really cool.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'll have to go back next week, we'll talk, but right now it seems like it's the best one. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Comet.

[Paul Thurrott]

No. Opera. Neon. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Better than.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean, they're both. I think they're both. They're. They're close. It's hard to say. And the problem is these things improve. Improve so fast. It's, you know, tomorrow might be different, but so far, I have to say, other than, like, the main browsers, like Chrome, Edge, especially these two, are both, well, far advanced.

[Leo Laporte]

Did you give it your credit cards?

[Paul Thurrott]

Obviously, Leo, I have to test it. No, I did not do that. So, yeah, one of the things you could do is literally say, here's a photo. And this was something I did, in fact, here, this thing here, that light I showed you earlier, this light, late was. We were in Washington, D.C. in August in a bar, and I tried sitting there to use AI to figure out what this thing was, if I could buy it. It didn't work at the time, but I had a photo of it. And so late when I got home, I did it again and it worked. We own five of them now. We have three here and two in Pennsylvania. Wow. So you can feed a photo, like. And I tried it again with this thing. You feed it the photo and you say, I would like to. To find us on Amazon. It's like, boop, here it is. And if you do, give it your credit card number. I've not taken this step. I'm not sure if I ever will, but find this thing on Amazon and buy two of them. It'll be like, here you go. This does it.

[Richard Campbell]

Nice.

[Paul Thurrott]

You can do it. You can do it right now. Did I do it? No, I'm not doing that right now, but.

[Leo Laporte]

But as long as it doesn't, look at that. And then go buy the Johnny I. $5,000.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Which, by the way, looks a lot like this thing. It looks just like it and is $5,000 or whatever. Yeah, I saw that and I was like, you can.

[Leo Laporte]

That would be my fear.

[Paul Thurrott]

This one is $29.99. It's a little more affordable. Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I Hate to pay for yet another AI I have.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I know subscriptions. Yep. But I feel like some of them.

[Richard Campbell]

Off too, you know, like, yeah, I.

[Paul Thurrott]

I, I think we'll like.

[Leo Laporte]

I turned off Perplexity and then I went, oh, but I need.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's funny, this is a temporary condition. At some point we're going to settle into a pattern where we know which one we want and it might be instead of eight, there'll be three.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, it's whatever our jobs are to really do sort of these so that we can then advise, you know, people as, as to what the best ones are.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Leo Laporte]

But I don't think there is a clear winner at this point. They all have. Interesting.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right?

[Leo Laporte]

And it just changes all worth the 20. I paid the top tier 25 bucks a month because I get the COGI Assistant, which is an orchestrator, just like Perplexity, plus the search, plus the browser, which their browser is not great yet. But I'm hoping, you know, they're really putting a lot of energy into it. I hope that'll ride.

[Paul Thurrott]

There was a company that was made by former intel or Google guys that you were paying for. This is years, a couple of years ago now that I think went out of business. What was that company? A search engine engine.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yeah. Neva.

[Paul Thurrott]

Or Neva. Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And they went out of business saying, we can't compete. Google's so dominant, we can't compete. If they had survived a little longer, maybe they could have.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know.

[Leo Laporte]

But what turns out to be the most useful thing is this orchestration where you take, you get your choice of models or you take a mixture of expert models and, and instead of say, of saying, I'm pay for ChatGPT and I'm gonna pay for Anthropic and I'm gonna. Which I do, by the way. And I'm gonna pay for, for Z. AI and I'm gonna. And instead of that, you have one thing that you pay for that you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Know, that orchestrates the models being used. This is absolutely the future of this you want.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, Yep.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then you'll have companies that act as a middleman between you and that company so that they're not pumping them with your data.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly. You get some privacy, it's anonymous or.

[Paul Thurrott]

Whatever, which is super important. And I think that's why those things will always have a place.

[Leo Laporte]

So Cocky now has. This is the Assistant and it now has categories. So you could say I want to search the entire web, but Kagi also does this thing with small websites and it's really interesting. And then look at all the models they have four, five. Now the reasoning one from Claude. Oath four is still there. Oath three QN. Kimmy. They like Kimmy. All the GPTs.

[Paul Thurrott]

All the GPTs.

[Leo Laporte]

All the GPTs. Mistral, Alibaba's QEN, Google.

[Paul Thurrott]

I was trying to describe what the wireless networks that Pixel supports and I said they support all the G's.

[Leo Laporte]

All the G's. Yeah. And this is an interesting one, this news research. We're going to try to get this guy to interview intelligent machines. Yeah. Hermes. I don't know if it's probably not. It's probably Hermes.

[Paul Thurrott]

I hope it is Hermes. Yep. It's like gold tinted.

[Leo Laporte]

People are raving about this new one from Zaiglm. They have a coating version that just came out that's very good and it's cheap. Anyway, so this is the way I kind of try out a bunch of different models and perplexity. Let me do something similar too. Anyway, thank you Paul Thurat for your back of the book. Now we turn to the man in Orlando for the run as Radio Lisbon next week.

[Richard Campbell]

This week's run as radio I talked to Amy Norris while I was at KCDC in Kansas City and I called the show Managing for Failure which is really what we're talking about was the culture in companies that allow for failures to be talked about and actually get to root cause analysis. You know otherwise folks just end up covering up any mistakes that are made and so they get made again or they get made worse.

[Leo Laporte]

I like that. That's really good.

[Richard Campbell]

So yeah, we saw a big conversation about communicating clearly creating neutral ground, you know, how to do positive negative feedback, that kind of thing. And the fact that it just takes time to make a culture that, that knows how to communicate well with those hard failure happens.

[Leo Laporte]

So you've gotta, gotta have a plan.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Gotta be a plan for it. Naming. Don't waste a phenomenal conversation. Just really bright.

[Leo Laporte]

Really great.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Show1005RunasRadio.

[Richard Campbell]

The time is flying by. So many episodes.

[Leo Laporte]

And now speaking of time flying by. It's time and we have a little more time for you this week.

[Richard Campbell]

I really love that because I went overboard with this, with this particular conversation.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh good. We're going to talk Bo Bo bourbon. Now this is a name, a well known name.

[Richard Campbell]

One of the, the names. The, the names. Yeah. And it's one of the reasons I did it. The, the Sapphire Falls here has a lovely whiskey collection at the bar. It's a re. Nominally a rum bar, but they do have some good whiskey. So I did, we did take a taste of the Weller 12 and it reminded me we never talked about. We've sort of discussed Weller adjacent to a bunch of other bourbons because they are all intertwined. But William LaRue Weller or W.L. weller is one of the definitive names in American bourbon. So the Weller family immigrates from Germany in the 1740s to Maryland actually. And so they end up, they are farmers and Millers and they get. End up in the Revolutionary War. That war ends of course in 1783 with the treaty of Paris. And a few years later, as the, as the, as Kentucky's becoming a state, they actually move. So Kentucky becomes a State in 1792 and David Weller and family moved to Kentucky in 1794. They buy a big parcel of land in Bardstown, which is one of the famous whiskey areas. And by 1800 they are distilling whiskey. They're making corn based bourbon. Now they're not the first, you know, famously another whiskey I've ever talked about. Evan Williams is the first to distill in 1783 in Louisville. So David Weller passed away in 1807 and his son Samuel Weller takes over the family business. He marries Phoebe LaRue, which is where the LaRue name comes from. This is her. Phoebe's father actually founded LaRue county in Kentucky. So this is important families of Kentucky together. So and William is born in 1825, but he doesn't immediately jump into the family business. Instead he starts working in the whiskey trade in Louisville in the 1840s. And this is at a time when everything's bought by barrel and there's sort of quality issues and all the things that go on with that. He, he gets out of the business temporarily when he joins the Louisville Brigade and fights the Mexican War in 1847. And I think that really affected him. There's a lot of stories about more soldiers died in the Mexican War of food poisoning from bad canning and food and food quality than died in combat. And so when he returns in 1849, he and his brother Charles form William Leroux Weller and brother in Louisville to do wholesaling and bottling of whiskey by buying from other distillers. They don't manufacture their own whiskey at all. Their biggest suppliers are the Stiesel brothers in Louisville, which have Stitzel brothers in, in. In Louisville have a big distillery. They're one of the oldest and also the old Joel Distillery In Anderson county, their catchphrase was honest whiskey is an honest price. And. And there's a story that at that time, they encourage some of these distilleries to make wheated bourbon instead of rye bourbon. Right. You know, bourbon is always at least 51% corn. It typically had 5 to 10% barley because that provides the amylase. So you don't make methanol that caused people to go blind. And then there'd be a flavor green in between the two that was normally rye. But apocryphally that Weller encouraged making. Using wheat instead of rye, making a less spicy sort of smoother bourbon. The evidence is very thin and there's pushback on it today, but most people just don't care, really, because today, you know, they are making weeded bourbons. No choice about it. So WL marries Sarah Pence in 1850. They'll have seven children over the next year. Sixteen years. A couple years later, his parents die. A typhoid epidemic, in fact. He takes in his younger brother John, as if he was a son. And then they. And then during the Civil War, some of his sons fight in the war. They try to stay neutral. Charles and William, they sell whiskey to both sides, which makes them lots of money. But ultimately, in the process of collecting a bunch of that money in Tennessee, his brother Charles is killed in a robbery recovery. And that's so that by 1876, the war has now been over for 10 years. It's now W.L. weller & Son. By 1887, it's registered as W. William L. Weller and Sons, because he did have four sons. And they are making. They're still not doing any of their own distilling. They are manufact. They're producing different kinds of whiskey. Some very famous names, many of which they acquired, like Mammoth Cave and cabins Dill and LaRue. Small and old W. Weller. They're also big. They're not only big on that branding, they'll start making etched shot glasses in the late 1800s. Are very collectible. If you can find any of them.

[Paul Thurrott]

They're.

[Richard Campbell]

They're rare. But it was a unique trait to the Weller distribution service. Importantly for the history part of this. In 1893, WL hires a guy named Julian Van Winkle as a salesman who will. Yes. Later.

[Leo Laporte]

Pappy. Pappy. They hired Pappy.

[Richard Campbell]

They hired Pappy as a salesman in 1896, six William retires, leaving the business to his sons. He moves to Ocala, Florida, and He dies in 1899. You know, which is a pretty common consequence for Florida, really. In 1903, the Weller sons end up selling the entire business to Van Winkle and his co. Another salesman named Alex Farnsley. But they do make a deal to keep the Weller name as part. They continue to manufacture the Weller Distiller distillery. Van Winkle is smart enough to recognize that they really need to lock in a relationship with the distiller. So he works with the Stitzel family, a guy named Jacob Stitzel, to acquire a majority stake in the Stitzel plant. Although the Sissel stay in involved. So that by 1920, Van Winkle is the president of W.L. weller and the secretary treasurer of Stitzel. And Jacob Stitzel is the president of the distillery and secretary treasurer of W.L.

[Paul Thurrott]

Weller.

[Richard Campbell]

So they're very, very pretty tightly to try it for two separate entities. Of course, 1920 is the beginning of Prohibition and Stitzel has managed to get one of the medicinal whiskey licenses. So they're able to continue producing. And the brand known as Mammoth Cave was available in pharmacies if you had a prescription. There was only six distilleries during Prohibition that were allowed to produce. And this is one of them. That of course ends in 1933. And as soon as it ends, Stitzel and Weller actually merge as a single entity and then go about building a new distillery. So in 1935, the Stitzel Weller Distillery is built. This is when they are now fully producing their own whiskies and they only make weeded bourbons. The number one brand in that at that time was called Old Fitzgerald. These are famous names that people hear quite often. In fact, the distillery was generally referred to as the Old Fitzgerald Distillery. Alex Farnsley passed away in 1941. Arthur Stissel's gone in 1947. Pappy himself passed away in 1965, although the operations passed to his son, Julian Van winkle. Now, by 1972, the whiskey business is very tough. And so a larger conglomerate of food companies and beverages companies called Norton Simon buys the Waller. They do rename this distillery to Old Fitzgerald. And Julian Van Winkle makes a deal to keep the Van Winkle name for himself. Because they are making old Rip Van Winkle back then, they'd actually been making since 1919. And so he's able to. He has rights of first refusal for any barrels of the old batch from before it was sold in 1972. And he keeps making Old Rip Van Winkle that way. His son joins the company in 1977, Julian Van Winkle, who's still alive today. And as the old Fitzgerald Distillery falls on hard times in 1981, he moves the remaining barrels from the original Distilleries distillery to different storage locations, initially to the old Hoffman Distillery in Lawrenceburg, although that won't last for very long. In 1984, the Distillers Company buys the old Fitzgerald Distillery from Norton Simon. Norton Simon exits the industry and in 1986, Guinness buys distillers Corporation, which was also struggling. And this is the same entity that in 97 will become Diageo. But before that happens, Distillers Corporation actually closes down the old Fitzgerald Distillery, which means. But they don't want to end the brand. Now at this point point, there's been no Wellers involved in the business for years, right. Once Pappy took it over, the Wellers ended the business, but there was still a Weller whiskey being made. And so even though that old Fitzgerald Distillery is closed, the they move production for the Weller for Weller whiskey over to Burnham Distillery, which is owned by Heaven's Hill. And Van Winkle also moves his production there as well. Well, and 99, it's bought by Heaven's Hill and they dispersed the brands again. So Heaven's Hill starts making Rebel Yell Cabinsdale and Old Fitzgerald, although that later on Rebel Yellow move on to Luxco and but the WL brand is sold to a distillery called the Ancient Age Distillery. And that's, that's going to be a breaking point here. And in 2014, the old Fitzgerald Distillery will be reopened by Diageo who will change the name back to Stitzel Weller. Now what the heck is the Ancient Age Distillery, you ask? Well, this is in a region that at that time, the first distillery built in that area they built on that location was in 1858, was called the Swigert Distillery and it was rented in an area called Leestown, which today is known as Frankfurt. That distillery got built and as soon as it was built, the company was out of money. So it got sold a couple of Times. And by 1869 it is owned by Colonel Colonel Edmund Hayes Taylor Jr. Aka E H Taylor, another very famous whiskey brand. And he renames the distillery the Old Fire copper distillery or OFC and Taylor owns it for about 8, 9 years till he goes broke. And then George T. Stagg buys the OFC Another name. Stunned at the list of names here. Following this thing, I'm going to move.

[Leo Laporte]

You over to the right because the names are on the Page. Yes, it's all Buffalo Trace owned now.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, well, this is what the name ultimately becomes. And it's Stag that hires a guy named Albert Bayton Blank. Blanton.

[Leo Laporte]

Blanton.

[Richard Campbell]

In 1897.

[Paul Thurrott]

Holy cow.

[Richard Campbell]

Joined as a teenager, but by 1921 is the President of the company. And when Stagg passes away in 1894, in 1904, they renamed the distillery the George T. Stagg Distillery. And then of course, during the, during the Prohibition, this is also one of the six distilleries that was on the medicinal whiskey list. So they stayed in operation, although during the, the. That time the distillery was acquired by a group called Shenley, which actually owned the Joseph S. Finch Distillery in Shenley, Pennsylvania. That's where the name comes from. And they actually make a whiskey called Ancient Aid and so later renamed the distillery to Ancient Age. Although in that time span around 1949, they hire another guy named Elmer T. Lee, yet another famous distillery name. So it operates as the Ancient age Distillery from 1969 until 1999. And in that time another group called the Sazerac Company acquires it. And in 1999, that's when they rename it Buffalo Trim Trace.

[Leo Laporte]

Amazing.

[Richard Campbell]

And then they. So they already own the, the Wellers, but they when in 2002 went to Julian Van Winkle III and convinced him to move to Buffalo Trace as well. And that this, I've toured this distillery. It is this Azerac facility. Buffalo Trace Distillery is absolutely enormous. It's a massive thing. It makes a ton of different brands. And you've just heard all the names, right? Yeah, yeah. Buffalo Trace, W.L. weller, Eagle Rare, E.H. taylor, Elmer T. Lee, Blanton's Papper, Happy, all come from the same set of stills. For a long time they ran on just one enormous 40 foot tall column still from the 1930s, although in 2022 they built a second one. And they produce 60,000 gallons a day. They have dozens of warehouses, they store over a million barrels.

[Leo Laporte]

So is there any difference between these brands? Yes, there must be.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm glad you asked that. Yes, it's a very important brand. We've actually talked about this before and we've talked about some of these other whiskeys. But because the Buffalo Trace facility operates essentially on three mash bills, they name them creatively, 1, 2 and 3. The first one is a predominantly corn with less than 10% rye, and that's Buffalo Trace eh Taylor and Eagle Rare. The number two has 12 to 15% rye and that's Elmer Tealy and Blanton's. And the number three mash bill is 12 to 15% percent wheat. And that's W.H. weller and Pappy Van Winkle. And Pappy is notorious for being extraordinarily expensive. It's because in their original productions back in the. In the 20s, 30s, 40s and even in the 1980s, because there was no distillery per se, they were literally by using old barrels and assembling them. And they were very rare and very pricey. But now they're produced at scale, but they're still extraordinarily expensive. But the mash bill difference between Pappy Van Winkle and W.H. welller are tiny. Tiny. Interesting. So really we talk about. If you want to try Pappy, just get some Weller.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh my God.

[Richard Campbell]

It's readily. Now the particular whiskey that I drank at the time that I drank the other night, and the one that I highly recommend is the Weller 12, which is a little harder to come by and it's not inexpensive for an American bourbon. It's 75 from a regular retail like BevMo. It's a lot, lot to spend for an American bourbon. But let me tell you which, you know, it's a heck of a lot cheaper than the Pappy at 12 if you can find. Oh yeah, she probably can't find. And it's beautiful. Like just a phenomenal. You don't need any ice. You don't need a thing.

[Leo Laporte]

This is.

[Richard Campbell]

This is the closest thing you get to that sort of Dalmar s, like space side, super smooth. Except it's most still mostly corn. But it is that red winter wheat that they use that gives it its nature of just being a smooth drinking whiskey. But yeah, this is quite a rabbit hole to follow down. Like the name Weller involves a person that got out of the whiskey business in 1900, but that name continues on just through a lot of different hands that have maintained this idea that wheat should be in bourbon.

[Leo Laporte]

Interesting.

[Richard Campbell]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

What a story. This is great. I love this.

[Richard Campbell]

It's a fun ride to pull together a lot of sources. I had to a lot of different documents to link all these things together.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

And believe me, I simplified this. It's more complicated than that.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, but I've learned something because, you know, I mean, you. I never owned a bottle of Pappy, but you know, on a special occasion I would buy a drink.

[Paul Thurrott]

Even people who think they have, haven't. Yeah, this is part of the problem.

[Leo Laporte]

But I'm gonna get some Weller because it's good. You should always have a.

[Richard Campbell]

A good bourbon available because I, I totally agree. And by the way, way like that whole list coming out of Frankfurt. The Elmer Te, the Blanton, any one of those are lovely bourbons.

[Leo Laporte]

I like talking about horses on the, on the Bl. Yes.

[Richard Campbell]

And it's, and it's really a challenge to collect them all. But we, and I, we, we did when we chatted about Blanton back in the day, we talked about all this.

[Leo Laporte]

I know I have, I have a.

[Paul Thurrott]

Friend who collected them all. But someone just told me, they said, you know, you can go online and.

[Richard Campbell]

Actually you can just buy the top.

[Paul Thurrott]

You can just buy them, you know.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Anyway, great ride. And, and in between me writing this up and actually broadcasting it, a friend dropped off.

[Leo Laporte]

Look at a little baby.

[Richard Campbell]

It's a cute cider mill.

[Leo Laporte]

So is that going to be next week? Maybe.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

I just sort of singled you next week's whiskey which is out of again my friends from Missouri feeding me. Wow.

[Paul Thurrott]

So.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, I've learned something.

[Richard Campbell]

We talk about that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Buffalo Trail.

[Richard Campbell]

I took you on the Weller ride.

[Paul Thurrott]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

So of all of these names, if you're really. It sounds like the Weller is the one that you probably should get. Not the Blanton.

[Richard Campbell]

The Weller's the sneaky one. Blanton's great. But it's still, it's still a rye whiskey, you know, fundamentally. And like I said, all of the Eagles rare is lovely too. We've talked about it before. None of these are bad whiskeys. Right.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

But I consider about regular Buffalo Trace is more of a well whiskey. This is the thing you make a right. You know, you make an old Fashioned from and so forth. Right. But if you want to sip in.

[Leo Laporte]

Bourbon sounds like I should have a bottle of Weller.

[Richard Campbell]

Just Weller is a great choice. Elmer also a great choice. Plantains for sure.

[Leo Laporte]

And the Weller 12 not the foolproof for the special reserve.

[Richard Campbell]

All of those are nice. I think the well trial strikes a real important line.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm not a big drinker so I like but I do have friends who when they come over I like to pour.

[Richard Campbell]

You want to serve something special? I think you're doing a good job with a well or 12.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Good.

[Leo Laporte]

Thank you, Richard. Richard Campbell. Runasradio.com that's where you'll find all of the 1,005 copies of Run as Radio. He also does a great show with Carl Carl Franklin called.netrocks and those are there too. And next week you said where you're going to be in Lisbon. Lisbon. Oh, jealous. I love Lisbon. Except I, I. Last time we were there, a couple of years ago, we rode that.

[Paul Thurrott]

That little cable we did too. The one that crashed. I know.

[Leo Laporte]

And holy cow, I love Lisbon.

[Paul Thurrott]

But that's where my iPhone got stolen by a gypsy.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, you know, you haven't really been to Europe unless you had.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know. Unless you're right. Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

So it's kind of part of the trip. Yeah, that's Paul Thurat. He got a new phone and. And he's.

[Paul Thurrott]

It was an iPhone 3GS, so it was a little while ago.

[Leo Laporte]

The gypsy. He probably doesn't have it anymore. Paul [e-mail] and you should become a premium member. Lots of great content there, but the premium stuff's even better. And of course it supports Paul and his efforts and his team. What's the matter?

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

It got really bright. Oh, geez.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like a Friday the 13th movie.

[Leo Laporte]

It burns.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

It's funny when you use dark mode all the time and suddenly something is like a.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's like a beacon in the night, you know?

[Leo Laporte]

What the hell's happening? Happening. Paul also writes and has some great books available just for [e-mail] including Windows Everywhere, kind of a history of Windows through its development frameworks. And a must have the field guide to Windows 11, which includes Windows 10 built in. In like a candy. Like a. Like a candy core. Center of it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes.

[Leo Laporte]

Every week we get together, the three of us, to do Windows Weekly. I'm just really a spectator. They get. They do all the hard work. 11am Pacific of a Wednesday. That's 2pm Eastern, 1800 UTC. You can watch us do it live in the Club Twit, Discord, but also Everywhere else, right? YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, X&Kick. So plenty of places to watch if you're in the chats there. I see the chat chats. Good to have all of you in there. After the fact. On demand versions of the show available at Twitter TV WW. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to Windows Weekly. And of course, the best thing to do is subscribe in your favorite podcast player. That way you'll get it automatically the minute it's available. And if you do that and your podcast player, whatever it is, Pocket Cast, Overcast, itunes, whatever you use, leave us a nice review. Give us all the stars.

[Paul Thurrott]

We you.

[Leo Laporte]

Because these guys deserve it. Thank you for being here, you winners and you dozers. We will see you all next week right here on Windows Weekly.

[Paul Thurrott]

Bye. Bye.