WW 971: Texas English - Where Does Xbox Go Next?

Summary

Windows Weekly 971: Texas English – Where Does Xbox Go Next?

Date: February 18, 2026
Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the unique moment Microsoft finds itself in across Windows, AI, and especially Xbox, with deep dives into user interface tweaks, telemetry, privacy, AI advancements, and a forward-looking, candid discussion about the next act for Xbox. The hosts, true Microsoft insiders, share personal workflow choices, industry context, and tech history, while maintaining their usual humor and candor. The episode is a mix of hands-on tips, speculation about Microsoft’s console future, and a healthy skepticism about the current trajectory of Windows and Xbox.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Windows 11 User Interface: Return of Taskbar Flexibility

Topic: Rumors that Microsoft may bring back the ability to move the Windows taskbar

• [02:11] Paul Thurrott reports rumors (from Zach at Windows Central) that Microsoft is working on restoring Windows 11 features removed since Windows 10, such as moving the taskbar to different sides of the screen.
• Windows 11 had a complete rewrite of the taskbar and Start menu code, which led to lost functionality and a sense of regression for power users.
  • Quote: “...when Windows 11 debuted, if you right-clicked the taskbar, you only got one item in the context menu for taskbar settings—in Windows 10 you had about 117 items” — Paul ([04:21])
• User habits differ: Richard prefers putting the taskbar on the left for coding productivity, while Paul finds himself reverting to defaults after trying alternatives.
  • Quote: “The habit of putting the taskbar on the left for me came from coding. Just that all vertical space to me is important for lines of code.” — Richard ([06:30])
• Ongoing dissatisfaction about the lack of Start menu resizability and other seemingly obvious omissions:
  • Quote: “...you get the feeling sometimes with the UI stuff that the people who made this don’t actually use Windows” — Paul ([10:49])

2. Windows Insiders, Patch Updates, and PC Market Context

Topic: Beta and preview builds; industry reactions

• [14:00] Updates in the Windows Insider channels are iterative and lack major UI features—mostly low-level fixes.
  • Quote: “None of these are...superfluous UI changes...they’re all kind of low level, product improvements.” — Paul ([16:17])
• New features like Emoji 16, camera controls, network speed test (which just opens a website), and auto machine recovery, along with the inclusion of Sysmon.
• PC industry insight: Lenovo posts record revenue, now holding ~25% market share, indicating strong demand driven by PC refresh cycles and anticipation of Windows 11 migrations.

3. Telemetry, Privacy, and Customization in Windows

Topic: Philosophical and practical battles over privacy and Windows update behavior

• Paul discusses the evolution toward intrusive telemetry, upselling, and advertising IDs within Windows.
  • Recalls “privacy theater” screens, where opting out is difficult by design ([78:12]).
• Both Paul and Richard are looking for reliable ways to keep customized or “de-inshitified” (Paul’s term) installations consistent, instead of constantly chasing moving targets after updates or reinstalls.
  • Tools discussed: Win11Debloat and Tiny11Builder for deep configuration and debloating ([75:09]).

4. AI & Software Development: New Era, Same Old Questions

Topic: The real impact and hype cycles of AI, especially in development and content creation

• Google launches 30-second music generation in Gemini and continues with game asset generation experiments ([24:33]); similar advances noted in Anthropic’s tools.
• Paul and Richard agree that truly transformative use cases will emerge from the intersection of AI and user intent—not necessarily in app replacements but in more flexible, intent-driven workflows.
  • Conversation about “document-centric” computing and shifting away from rigid app paradigms.
  • Quote: “...the goal wasn’t to use a tool, the goal was to get something done.” — Richard ([32:09])
• Reflections on decades of “no code/low code” dreams, with current LLMs possibly being the breakthrough.

5. Voice Recognition, Linguistics, and AI Milestones

Topic: From Texas English to Scottish elevators—the journey of speech recognition

• Amusing discussion about how, for decades, speech engines were sensitive to accents (“Texas English”), and how far we've come even if some problems remain ([38:12]).
  • Quote: “It only understood Texas English.” — Paul ([39:10])

6. Xbox: Pivoting Toward the Future

Topic: What’s next for Xbox as hardware revenues plummet?

• [45:52ff] Core segment: Noting the conspicuous absence of Phil Spencer recently and speculating on big changes for Xbox.
  • Xbox hardware revenue has fallen double-digits for several years, fueling speculation about the future.
  • Phil Spencer’s previous openness is contrasted with recent silence—suggesting a major internal shift.
  • GDC (Game Developers Conference) will feature Microsoft discussing the “future of Xbox game development” ([48:02]).
• Paul’s thesis: Xbox’s future may be as a Windows PC, with full integration and a focus on backward compatibility, but with significant licensing hurdles.
  • Quote: “I feel like the next Xbox console will in fact be a Windows PC. And for that to happen...backward compatibility of Xbox console games has to occur on the PC.” — Paul ([48:54])
• Discussion about tiers of Xbox-PC hybrid hardware (“maybe there are three or something”) and technical/user-experience implications.
• The group also highlights the importance of seamless automatic game updates—an Xbox feature that’s woefully missing on Windows PCs ([61:23]).
• Brief on cloud gaming: hosts remain skeptical about its widespread viability, citing latency and experience issues ([69:36]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Taskbar nostalgia:
  “A lot of power users especially relied on [taskbar customizations]...they lost the ability to move the thing around.”—Paul ([04:10])

• On Microsoft’s privacy approach:
  “The reason [Microsoft doesn’t enable some security settings by default]? Wait for it. Is privacy reasons, which is like what?”—Paul ([85:09])

• Document vs. App debate in the AI era:
  “We’ve got to stop thinking about these apps. You’re doing something...and you want to share elements of it...as a project.” — Paul ([31:48])

• Xbox’s silence:
  “Phil Spencer...has disappeared. I have not heard from Phil Spencer possibly in months.”—Paul ([47:13])

• Xbox and the PC merge:
  “...for the three of you who care about this one, the GeForce Now, the Nvidia cloud game streaming service is available on newer Fire TV streaming sticks…” — Paul ([68:14])

• Pauls’ signature turn of phrase:
  “...deinshitifying Windows...” ([75:09])

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Segment Timestamps

• Taskbar and UI: [02:11]–[10:58]
• Windows Update/Patch/Beta: [14:00]–[17:01]
• PC Industry (Lenovo, Windows 11 rollout): [17:01]–[23:12]
• AI, Music Generation, and Developer Experience: [24:33]–[34:48]
• Voice Recognition/Language Anecdotes: [38:12]–[41:47]
• Xbox: Future and Hardware/Software Discussion: [45:52]–[61:00]
• Xbox/PC Integration and Cloud Gaming: [61:00]–[70:40]
• Tips: Windows 11 Debloating/Privacy: [75:09]–[91:19]
• Back of the Book: Whiskey Segment: [97:07]–[118:18]

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Back of the Book

Paul’s Windows Tips

Topic: Debloating Windows 11 & Managing Privacy

• Win11DeBloat PowerShell script now has a GUI! ([75:09])
• Use to remove bloatware, control telemetry, AI features, and stop forced reboots.
• Rich discussion on the broken privacy ecosystem in Windows with “privacy theater” and scattered toggles ([78:12], [85:09]).
• Recommends disabling Windows Spotlight on the desktop and using the Bing Wallpaper app for tasteful, minimal daily backgrounds ([92:52]).
  • Quote: “I’m recommending something with the word Bing in it...just mull over that one.” — Paul ([95:33])

Richard’s RunAs Radio Rec

Show: RunAs Radio #1024
Topic: Using LLMs for Red Team Hacking

• Guest: Erica Burgess on applying agents and LLMs for advanced vulnerability testing. Improved automation and security analysis ([97:07]).

Whiskey Pick: Lot 40 Canadian Rye

• Deep historical journey through 19th-century Canadian whiskey, Prohibition, and the science of distillation.
• “Apologetic” and approachable 100% rye—available for $47 in the US ([113:10]).
• “It’s super drinkable for a reasonable price...it happens to be 100% rye, and it has this microbiology bent to it...but ultimately it’s just...a good whiskey.” — Richard ([115:54])

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Closing Thoughts

• Candid advice to listeners on waiting for second-gen Panther Lake laptops due to reliability ([121:39]).
• The trio’s signature banter, tales of malfunctioning laptops, life with AI-as-admin, and tech nostalgia round out the episode.

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For More:

• Thurrott.com for Paul’s writing
• RunAsRadio.com for Richard’s podcast
• Show archives and club info at twit.tv/ww

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Summary Takeaway

This episode is a snapshot of Microsoft at a crossroads—Windows re-learning old UI lessons, Xbox potentially morphing into a PC-based platform, and AI pushing both workflow and developer boundaries. The hosts deliver a blend of tech critique, humor, and practical wisdom for both Windows tinkerers and anyone watching the evolution of consumer and enterprise computing.

Transcript

[A]

It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul and Richard Aheer. The Windows taskbar is on the move. Google's making music in 30 seconds. And Xbox is quietly setting up its next act. Windows Weekly is next. Podcasts you love from people you trust.

[B]

This is Twit.

[A]

This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurad and Richard Campbell. Episode 971 recorded Wednesday, February 18, 2026 Texas English it's time for Windows Weekly. Hello you winners. Hello you dozers. This is the show where we cover the latest from Microsoft. Not macro hard. Don't get confused. That's Paul.

[B]

1970S.

[C]

I know.

[A]

That's Paul Thurot. Thorat.com. hello, Mr. T. Hello, Leo. Hello, Paulie. And to his left is Your right is Mr. Richard Campbell. Mr. C. Hello, Mr. C. Hello, friend.

[C]

Ask me sometime, probably not on the show about the Azure Dancers and I'll give you a different version of the Microsoft name.

[A]

The Azure Dancers.

[C]

The Azure Dancers.

[A]

It's all done in the cloud.

[B]

This is like you put the ass in Azure moments or. What are we talking about? What's happening?

[C]

Oh, it made it weighed the world news at the time.

[A]

Yeah, I remember the funeral for Linux.

[B]

Well, the funeral for iPhone was a big one.

[A]

That's right. They had a procession across the campus.

[B]

Yeah. How's that going? Is iPhone? Oh, it's still around. I see. Okay.

[C]

Somehow getting by, I tell you.

[A]

Hey, is there any Windows news?

[B]

Only a little bit.

[A]

You had a big one. I didn't realize how big it was last week. Yeah, 26h1. It was like everybody was like, oh, it's serious.

[B]

I was nervous about that one because there was just so much to it. And then apparently I took last week off because I don't know what happened.

[A]

But all the last week.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I will say on the 26H1/whatever front, no new news. Right. Since then, nothing has happened, but I guess that's okay. Well, I don't know, maybe we could look at the patch Tuesday stuff that's coming up in that late. But I guess week D first. Whatever. Anyway, okay. But what we do have is a rumor from Zach, our buddy over at Windows Central, telling us that Microsoft is working to bring back some features that disappeared when Windows 11 debuted back in 2021. The key of those being the ability to move the taskbar to different sides of the screen.

[C]

Yay.

[B]

Yeah. People were confused. Why the taskbar?

[C]

Wait a minute.

[A]

That's the new thing is you can name that.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

What's the taskbar?

[B]

So if you're asking me, is that what you're leading with, Paul? The answer is yes.

[A]

That's the big story. The taskbar is. That taskbar is.

[B]

Yeah. At the bottom of the screen with the shortcuts.

[A]

Okay. Where the Start menu lives.

[B]

That's right. So it used to be you could.

[A]

Put it on any side of the screen.

[C]

Yes, you could.

[B]

Right. So a lot of change, Richard. I'll tell you where to put it, buddy. So in Windows 11, the big change visually and I guess functionally was that everything's centered. So the taskbar centered the Start menus in the center of the screen. By default you can move it back. And it lost a lot of the kind of right click context menu, the ability to add toolbar, all the kind of additional bulk or whatever you want to call it that used to be in the taskbar. So why is that?

[C]

Called them features, Paul.

[B]

They were features, yes. So the reason is the Start menu and the taskbar were completely rewritten for Windows 11. So it's not the same code. I don't know that this has happened yet, but one of the little mini potential controversies that we'll have in Windows someday, if it hasn't already happened, is the task, the old taskbar. And I think the old Start menu code is actually still in there. Right. And so these companies or individuals that write little utilities that, you know, bring back the old, you know, Windows 2000 Start menu or whatever it is, or like Start 11, that type of utility is actually using some of that stuff in the background or was, you know, and at some point that is going to disappear. But obviously when you have that kind of a functional regression, because there was a bunch of them, remember, you know, for example, when Windows 11 debuted, if you right clicked the taskbar, you only got one item in the context menu for taskbar settings in Windows 10 you had about 117 items with multiple little sub menus and stuff. And a lot of power users especially relied on that kind of thing. And of course they lost the ability to move the thing around. Lots of other stuff too, by the way, but those are kind of the high level things. So there's been a lot of complaints about that. But from a kind of a telemetry perspective, the story has always been actually not that many people use it. Anyway, they've addressed some of the concerns with the taskbar and with Start. Actually there's been, I'm going to call it two major revisions to the Start menu since Windows 11 debuted. They added a second item to that right click menu, right so there's progress there. That's very exciting.

[C]

We all got our task manager back, right?

[B]

That's right. Yep. It's big stuff. But you know, I sort of appreciate the notion that when you add things like this, additional features, there's a support penalty to this. For Microsoft, they have these ideas and I don't think we talked about this, but I think in the context of the PowerToys, they're just looking at it now. I don't think you can actually run this code, but when you go to Linux, a lot of times you'll have some kind of a taskbar like entity, usually at the bottom, but maybe on the side of the screen. But there's often like a menu bar type thing at the top as well. There's an exploration going on within Microsoft about whether that kind of UI might make sense for Windows as well. And of course the problem now is if we're going to start moving the taskbar around, that kind of thing becomes more difficult, of course, unless you just say, well, we're not going to the top. I kind of argued when I saw this that maybe that should be the taskbar, like there should be one thing. So I don't know. But so anyway, we will see. So that's the habit of putting the.

[C]

Taskbar on the left for me came from coding. Just that all vertical space to me is important for lines of code.

[B]

Yeah, this would be true for a lot like just productivity. Right. Like when you have like 16 by 9 displays, the extra spaces on the sides, you know. Yeah. So that actually makes sense to me.

[C]

But the stuff on the side these days on this machine at least, I have a widescreen machine screen on the left and I have a portrait screen on the right. So the taskbars for Windows 11 is actually on the right hand screen. So you can tie up space in the big screen.

[B]

Yeah. The one thing I miss here now because I'm using this is essentially my wife's setup, which we've decided we will share. So when we have calls or things like this, we can come in here or whatever. And so there's a main screen, which is what I'm looking at. There's this laptop screen because that's how I'm connected. But there's also like a portable display that's actually 16 by 10. And the way I had that oriented was portrait mode because I love that. It's great for like the show notes and things like that. It's great. Yeah, it's great.

[A]

It makes sense. I keep my tabs on my browser on the left.

[B]

Yeah, See, that's the thing. So now she prefers it the other way.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So literally today I was like. So I said, do you think, what do you think about putting this important. She's like, no, I like it that way. I'm like, yeah, okay. So it's okay.

[A]

You can have your own login, you know, Paul.

[B]

No, I, I, well, no, it's a physical screen.

[C]

Like, I actually turn the screen.

[A]

Nice.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we got, we got pretty good login controls, but we can't do that.

[B]

Yeah, no, I have my own computer. I don't need a login. But I, I just. Yeah, it's whatever, it's fine. Anyway, so there's the taskbar. And I. Look, to me, the thing Leo just said, the. The ability to have vertical tabs in a browser for some reason has only worked for me when I was using arc. Like, I really liked it there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

When I tried an Edge or Chrome or whatever else, it's like I did something about it. And of course, most of my screens are not quite. They're not 16 by 9 anymore, for the most part. Right. Most of them are 16 by 10, which is not quite square, but I kind of wish they were square, honestly. I don't know why I can't adapt to that. But, yeah, I will. If they bring this back in me, I'll try it again. I've tried it so many times. I've tried the taskbar in different. I always just go back. I don't know.

[C]

Well, the thing with you, you bounced through so many machines that reconfiguring them all is not a trivial.

[A]

That's true.

[B]

Yeah. There's a whole micro version of that, too. Like, for example, lately I've been working on that Panther Lake laptop, right. Which is 14 inches, a little smaller, but whatever, it's fine. And I had. Because I'm using Affinity, the new version of Affinity, it doesn't support some of the same keyboard shortcuts. So I created a new shortcut for export, which I basically image crop resize, and I export it so I can use it on my site. Well, it's not running. I'm not going to look, but it's some crazy four keyboard shortcuts. I don't have that many fingers. So I created a shortcut for it where it's just Control E, but it's not on that laptop. So I'm sitting there hitting Ctrl E. Control E, Control E, Control E. I'm like, why isn't it working? I Guess I just have to redo it on every single computer. It's like, I hate that so much.

[C]

Back to your install scripts. Can you get to this level of granularity? Get your shortcut keys?

[B]

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, yeah, maybe that app becomes more semantic and I can do that.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

I don't know.

[C]

I've never.

[B]

I don't know. The other one, though, is Microsoft, like I said, is at least two major revisions to the Start menu. The computer I'm using actually does have the latest version. The latest version brings what used to be all apps out to the front and it puts it in the category view, which I find to be incredibly inefficient by default. But you can change it to a normal list view or a grid. They call it a grid view. Grid view is list view. But all of the apps that start with the same letter are horizontal instead of vertical, if that makes sense.

[C]

Yeah, that list view is painful.

[B]

Yeah, it's not great. It's not a good use of space, but apparently they're going to work on that as well. And the one thing I would say, and I think this might be part of it, I don't understand how the Start menu isn't resizable yet. Right. I mean, think about this. Like, why wouldn't they just support that? I mean, I know again, it's because they rewrote it from scratch, but you get the feeling sometimes with the UI stuff that the people who made this don't actually use Windows, you know?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

It's like they don't understand the normal use cases because I'm not. I don't want a full screen Start thing like we had in Windows 8. Exactly. But I would actually make that wider. Why not? You know, or just, you know, take up more space, whatever, you know, just resize it the way you want it. I mean, it seems like a pretty decent.

[C]

I mean, I'm very much a Windows key name of app person.

[B]

Right. Okay, so since. Since you said that I would. Microsoft's not going to do this. But there are a lot of apps like Start11 that replace the Start menu. It's very complicated. There are also apps from Microsoft, like, what's it called? The.

[C]

Whatever.

[B]

The new. The PowerToys run. But the new version of that, it's got a different name. I'm sorry, I forgot that I'm zoning on the name. But whatever that is. Where you can. It has its own keyboard shortcut by default, but then you can assign a keyboard shortcut what's it say again? Quick Launcher, Quick Launch. No. Command Palette. Sorry.

[C]

Command Palette.

[B]

So let's see if it comes up. No, I think every computer is different. That's my problem. But anyhow, you do that.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

It would be neat to me because I use Windows, the Start menu the same way. Right. So I would like to just hit the Start button and have Command Palette come up because all I'm doing is typing. Because I'm looking for something specific. I'm not browsing the Start menu. I don't look at stuff. I don't care. I don't think so. Yeah, so that to me would be an even better improvement, but there's no. There's no news along those lines. I don't know. So we'll see. Maybe someday we'll have a completely configurable something something. Or maybe we'll just be running Linux so we can just laugh and pretend this never happened. I don't know.

[C]

I just did an interview with Michael Leehouse about the life and death of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, which is finally over.

[B]

Yes, yes, yes, per se.

[C]

And we had all this conversation about configuration and I always think of you because I just. You hammer on this so hard. You have unusual requirements, Mr. Thurat, you are the only.

[B]

Yeah, well, one of my requirements is repeatability. Right. I don't want to. I can't do something once and be like, all right, here's how you do it. That's not how things work. And by the way, today that's especially not how things work.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Because there's so many different things on every computer. This is something I experience all the time. I could have. I have had multiple computers lined up side by side. Start menu one, Start menu two, Start menu one one. You know, like. And then every. Pick any feature. It's going to be different on every computer. Yeah.

[C]

Why is that search box pill shaped and this one is square and.

[B]

Yeah, right. That was one of the early. Actually one of the early.

[C]

I watched you rage about that. It was fascinating.

[B]

Yeah, I'm a canary in the coal mine with anger management problems, basically. So. Yeah. Okay. And then last night we got a beta build through the Insider program, but not a dev build. Remember the beta and dev streams or whatever we're going to call these things. Channels are both on different build. What do we call. What's. I need a term for this. What do you call this? They're on different build. Number, like number series or something. Sequences, I guess.

[C]

I don't know.

[A]

Siamese sequences.

[B]

It's Like DNA sequences. But my theory is that and, well, now that we know 26H1 is not turning into 26H2, I guess I would say now that dev is probably going to be 26H2 at some point, not 26H1. Right. So Canary is 26H1. That's nothing happening there. Anyway, we got a beta but not a dev build. And then we got two. Sorry, we got one release preview build that affects two versions of Windows because that's what they're still doing there. So The Release Preview 1 is a preview, if you will, of what we're going to see week D next week sometime. And then that is itself a preview of what will be patched Tuesday for February, sorry for March. This is stuff we've already talked about because we've seen it in other parts of the Insider program. So it's emoji 16.0, which I know this audience is super excited about. Auto enablement and new functionality for quick machine recovery. This is the thing that as originally envisioned, as soon as I read this description, I was like, what if it runs into a boot problem? It will try to find the fix and if it can't, it will reboot and try to find the fix, and if it can't, it will reboot and try to find the fix and if it can't, it will reboot and it's like, wait, that can't be how this thing works. And now that is not how this thing works. So now it will just boot. Normally they're describing this as a network speed test built into the taskbar. That's a bit of an overreach through. It's so bizarre. But there are options off of WI Fi and I want to say cellular data settings where you can trigger a network speed test. And I think it's also in the Settings app, but it just runs a web browser window and goes to netspeedtest.com or whatever that, you know, the site everyone uses. Right. So it's not actually built into the os, but okay, whatever. If you have a compatible camera, you'll see pan and tilt controls in the Settings app when you look at the camera. Some minor improvements to widgets and other things. So actually not a big, big deal. And this is the, maybe the one thing that ties into what we were talking about last week, which is that whether this is, I don't know, on purpose or not, none of these are superfluous UI changes or, you know, fancy high level, you know, they're all kind of low level, you know, product Improvements like.

[C]

Okay, guys working down the list of small things they can fix.

[B]

Yeah. Which I, you know, I support 100, I should say this one's getting Sysmon too. The Sysmon goes into this. So that.

[C]

So Sysmon said that a few weeks ago, right?

[B]

Yeah. It's just going to be in Windows as of next month, so that's fantastic. And some other things. The beta channel build is disappointing. There is one functional change and that is that if you have a Microsoft 365 consumer subscription, they will try to upsell you to a more expensive Microsoft 365 consumer subscription inside of account settings. In the settings.

[C]

I was worried about that.

[B]

Yeah, I feel like I haven't been upsold enough in Windows 11. So that's kind of a refreshing change. This is ridiculous. And then this is only summary related because it's PC industry stuff and we do earnings as they come. I assume by next week we'll have HP's earnings as well. But did we talk about Lenovo? Maybe we did talk about Lenovo. I can't remember. Maybe not. Anyway, Lenovo had a blockbuster quarter actually record recently.

[C]

I think it's pretty reliable.

[B]

Their take on this is interesting though. Right? So 22.2 billion in revenues, which is a record for them. A gain of 18% year over year. Right. It's a holiday quarter. I'm going to say 2/3 to 3/4 of their revenues come from PC or from devices. PC, they sell tablets and phones. But I think we can agree it's mostly PCs. The PC and devices part of that did grow 17% which kind of bears that out a little bit. They have outpaced the rest of the PC industry from a growth perspective, meaning year over year growth, not whatever else. For 10 consecutive quarters they have set another record for market share in the PC industry of 24.9%. So the first time any PC maker has ever gotten anywhere close to 25%, interestingly, except for maybe IBM in 1983 or whatever. But they said a lot of this growth is because there were fears among their customer base that RAM prices were going to keep escalating. Right. So customers were buying these things a little earlier maybe than usual. So it's possible this year we're going to see things kind of, you know, flatten out, which is what we might.

[C]

Sooner or later they're going to have some tough quarters because it just came apart.

[B]

It's just going to flatten, you know. But we've heard this from other quarters as well, so.

[A]

Sure.

[C]

But what I, I mean obviously their server business is going huge.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Desktop business is doing well. Keep predicting the end of the PC.

[B]

I know, I know, yeah, well, we'll see. There's always new competition in the space. Linux is doing better than ever, but still very low. Single digit iPad is turned into a computer if you want it to be. Android is working on that same thing. They're going to switch, they're going to switch the Chromebook over to an Android base and then whether they call that something different, we'll see. But that will be kind of an Android based computer obviously. So we'll see. But Windows, I have my theories about inertia and whatnot, but Windows has retained its kind of position for the most part. Right. I mean you would think, you know, for example that the Mac would have grown market share dramatically over the past 10 years, but it hasn't. It's been kind of stuck in the 8, 9 always my question when I.

[C]

Look at these numbers is how much of this is consumer and how much of this is business?

[B]

Yeah, and this is tough because you don't see a lot of breakout of that kind of thing from like IDC or Gartner or whatever. But you know, I keep saying this but historically at Microsoft, historically, I mean over a 20 plus year time span it was about 2/3 business is one third consumer. I bet it's more business now than it was.

[C]

I would think so.

[B]

I think so too, but it's hard to say. Lenovo, a lot of their growth, you know, a lot of their business is commercial.

[C]

Right, well and you're also, I, I'm not going to predict this but I would expect there is a win 11 wave that you are as a business buying new machines because you're moving to win 11 so you don't pay the ESU.

[B]

Yeah, yep. Yeah, I, I, I feel like maybe Microsoft Telegraph that well enough that it's being spread out maybe more than it would have otherwise.

[C]

No, I think, I think everybody doesn't believe them because they keep moving the goal posts on a regular basis until they actually do it before you pull.

[B]

The trigger on that.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, so they told us April. Then they said October. Like yeah, maybe it wasn't a maybe. Apparently not. So yeah, all right, fine, we'll, we'll do it.

[B]

I mean the world hasn't ended because of this. You know, remember like, you know, Consumer Reports was like, you gotta, you know, gotta push this back. The thing I say to people who complain about this is windows 10 will by the time it's Said and done will have been supported longer than any version of Windows ever made, without a doubt. Ever.

[C]

Well, we still don't know that sort of XP scenarios.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Like the Navy depends on it or is ATMs depend on it? Like.

[B]

Yeah, well, right. The. Yeah, the British hospital network depends on it. Right. Which was one that happened during the Windows 10.

[C]

Well, and there was that Win10 IoT edition. So I wonder how many rare, like, specialized devices are out there. That's like, I'm sorry, you're really supporting this code base. Yeah. Here's the bucket of money. Keep going.

[B]

Right. So, I mean, I, I'm just. When I think of this, I'm mostly thinking about people running a computer, you know, or businesses with people in it running a, you know, that have a computer. So I don't know, we still see Windows 7 in subways or something. And we're going to see Windows 10 for years to come. There's no doubt about it. I mean, this thing was on at one point, probably 1.4 billion or more computers now. It's. Whatever it is, 700.

[C]

It'll be when they don't want to do ESU anymore. Two, maybe three years from now. That's when you're going to get the stories of these large entities that are like, oh, no, we won't be moving. Just tell us what the check is. Well, do it.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Right. Well, that must be nice.

[C]

That was the. The Navy basically said that I think there were like $600 million they were paying Microsoft to keep X for ships.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Good.

[C]

It happens.

[A]

Well, fortunately, they have lots of money.

[B]

Lots.

[C]

You lovely taxpayers do such a good job.

[B]

Yeah, We.

[A]

We love giving them our money.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

What would we do with it after all?

[B]

Exactly. Retire. That's crazy. Why would you want to do that?

[A]

Well, I like working. I'm going to keep working forever. You're watching. Speaking of which, you're watching Windows Weekly with Paul Thurat and Richard Campbell. So glad you're here. We heard you.

[B]

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[A]

Now let's continue with Windows Weekly. What else is up, guys?

[B]

Oh boy, it's been a light week. Did I mention that? So not much on the AI front. I mean, there's always things happening, but I'm trying not to get too far afield. Google is adding 30 second music and audio generation through Gemini, which is interesting. Of course they are. A couple of weeks ago Google had introduced, I think it was called Project Genie. This is the thing that did the video game asset generation stuff. People were losing their minds. I think a lot of video game company stock prices fell through the floor because it's like, oh, the end is near. And then today I saw a headline that said, yeah, this is not going to be a problem for the industry. It's like, yeah, yeah, no, of course not, you know, but we kind of overreact everything right away. That's our way of doing things now. But you know, we live in an era of wonder, I guess. So, you know, every day there's like a new thing and here we go. Holly.

[A]

What's crazy about this new Chinese video generation tool? They're both excited and worried at the same time, right?

[B]

Yeah, look, I, I feel like I just keep repeating myself with this stuff, but video game making or video game creation, whatever is an obvious place to me for using AI. I mean, I, I don't mean to replace developers or designers or whatever, but in the same sense that a developer designer out doing whatever they're doing out in the world would, you know, use AI to improve whatever it is they're doing. I mean, of course we're going to do this in games. We talk about these open world games that it can just generate more and more content, whether it's like some wild west scenario or A space scenario, whatever it is. And I don't, I feel like this is additive. And Richard, I assume I've been trying to avoid some of the AI stuff on. Net Rocks. Not because I'm not interested, but I just kind of want to experience some of it before I know too much about it.

[C]

And we're very focused on the dev scenario.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I, I don't know, I, I feel like from an app development perspective, AI is going to open up what we think of as app development to a wider audience for these little one off apps we talk about. Right?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

But for professional developers, either in companies or individuals or small companies, whatever it might be, I don't know, like I, in the old days, I think, or you know, meaning like two seconds ago you might open Visual Studio or whatever environment or whatever editor you're using and start coding and you compile and run and compile and run and play and blah blah, blah, whatever. And it's possible, I mean probable even, that maybe a lot of these new projects will start as some kind of a prompt and it generates something and then you go from there. And that's vibe coding I guess we're going to call it. But as I said when that first came around, I mean for a professional developer, you're not done, you know, for the most part. It's not like I didn't make a little to do list for myself, like anyone could do that, I guess. But you know, making a complex professional app, that's just the first step. I mean you have to, it's not going to compile, run and then we ship it. You know, there's so much architecture work to do and whatever else. So I wonder, I mean it's possible that the, I don't know, day to day process changes a bit like it did we got ides in the late 80s, probably with turbo, Pascal, quick, see, et cetera, and then Windows and we get these bigger environments, your visual studio now, etc. So the way we approach these things maybe has changed a little bit over the years, but I feel like that's what it's going to do again. But we're still going to need people that know what they're doing. At the end of the day, every.

[C]

Piece of software starts with a conversation about what you want it to do. The fact that we now make that part of the process of making the software, you know, doesn't isn't that far afield. It's just that more and more that can be done that way and even before the LLM stormed on the scene a couple of years ago, the no code, low code movement was doing the same thing in a lot of.

[B]

Oh, my God. For 20 years. I mean, I, you know, Richard and I probably have more memory or knowledge of this than a lot of people because, know, we're just in the thick of it. But, you know, Visual Studio, Lighthouse and Power Automate. And over. I mean, this goes on and on and on. Light. When I say lighthouse, light switch. Yes. Yeah. I mean, this has been the dream, you know, and so I guess in many ways AI maybe is going to realize that dream, but I, I think, I don't know. It's a big topic, but I'm more interested to see how this impacts apps, frankly. Like.

[C]

Yeah, and it's a great conversation about, you know what, when you buy SAP, what are you buying?

[B]

Right?

[C]

What is it? Because it's your data. The data structures are not that big of a deal. Like, ultimately you're paying for a workflow, and some people are foolish enough to spend a lot of money trying to adjust that workflow. In SAP over years, we've learned you probably shouldn't do that. You should adapt your company to the workflow that SAP plays. But when that workflow is now described as a set of prompts, it's pretty hard to justify the price tag for that kind of product.

[B]

Yeah, right. And I think enough of that is what leads to. I just said this to Brad this morning. You know, again, if you're in the Microsoft space, if you're our age and you remember all this stuff, you know, back in Windows 95, Microsoft introduced this concept of a document centric interface that went nowhere, absolutely nowhere. But it's a good idea. The idea is that like, and we did this today on our phones, but back then on a computer, you'd say, okay, I need to write a letter or whatever. So, okay, what's the tool? Okay, it's Word. So I got to find Word, I got to launch Word, and then I got to write something in Word and save that as a document. And the Microsoft idea at the time, which I think is a good one, still was okay. But actually you're just making a document. Don't worry about the tool. Just start a new document. All along, Windows Phone did this. We're putting you at the correct. Yeah, you kind of de emphasize apps. It's like, I want to edit a photo or something, I want to share a picture or whatever it is. You know, today we all do this. It's weird how much we Manage technology. You pick up a phone, you have arranged the icons on your screen, you have done it so that you have muscle memory. And you're like, okay, I get to post something online. That means I click this icon. And then we still think in terms of apps. And I think that this AI process flow stuff is going to maybe change that and eliminate some apps. That. And again, just because I have to repeat myself, it's this easy. But I do the chart for the PC article every January or once a year. I have to make a PowerPoint presentation. Maybe I don't need to relearn this app once a year, every year, or find some expert or spend the time to watch videos. But how do I use this app? It's like I just need a chart. I just need whatever the thing is, this was the point in many ways behind Loop. We talk about this sometimes where Microsoft was going down that path again because they maybe over engineered it. But the idea was we got to stop thinking about these apps. You're doing something with a team or by yourself and you want to share elements of it or whatever it is as a project. However you want to think of this.

[A]

Stuff.

[B]

Today you could use Notion or something or whatever tool you prefer. And you don't really think in terms of, well, okay, I got to go out to the database app because I need a, you know, whatever it is. And I have to go over here because I need a chart and I have to go over here because I need an infographic. And who are these people that know how to use all those tools? It's crazy, right? So, yeah.

[C]

And does that mean anything anymore? When the goal wasn't to use a tool, the goal was to get something done.

[B]

Right?

[C]

Right. I mean, even saying the phrase edit a photo is kind of vague. It's like, I'd like to remove that person from a photo or I'd like to make this photo look better.

[B]

Why do I have to master Photoshop to cut around a person to get rid of the background and then change the background or whatever it is I'm doing, like, you know, the sheer amount of work involved to get anything.

[C]

And we do it so reflexively now where we forget the initial goal and just get tools.

[B]

I. This is every one of my days. This is the, the simplified version of this is you're standing in front of an open refrigerator and you're like, why am I here?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, and. But you do that with like a developers, I think I. When I try to be a developer, which is hilarious, I find Myself doing this every, every time. Like, I. Okay, today I'm going to add this feature to this app. Okay. And then it's 3 o' clock in the afternoon. I'm like, what was I doing? And because you spent all your time learning like a new C Sharp language feature and looking at different frameworks and blah, blah, blah, and you're like, down the rabbit hole. Google announced yesterday that I O this year will be May 19th and 20th. There has been overlap between IO and build for many years, and some years literally the same exact time frame. Microsoft has not announced a timeframe for build, have they? For this year, they have not announced.

[C]

About a time frame.

[B]

This makes me wonder because we're getting kind of close. I mean, I guess if they could, they could, they could probably do it before the end of the month would be fine. But it did make me think when I saw this announcement. You know, I know they're not going to Seattle.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

But if they were to go to, say, San Francisco, which seems logical. What if they can't be there in May? Right. What if Build has to be in, you know, whatever, July?

[C]

Well, the question what do they do for a venue? So, I mean, my usual technique is, when I'm trying to figure these things out without knowing any secrets is just go look and the bookings.

[B]

Yeah. You could probably find out right now. It probably is. Right.

[C]

Like it is, but it's not out. It doesn't. I don't think it's allocated to Microsoft, so.

[B]

Right. That's what I mean. Right. So we'll see. We'll see what happens there. I.

[C]

You're right. I mean, they. It's remarkably late. It's February, you know, I. Yeah, I.

[B]

Yeah, I guess I didn't get that correct for some reason. Anyway, okay, so normally it is in.

[C]

Around May and it's often been on top of Google, so one would presume it's in that neighborhood, but usually is. There's nothing.

[B]

There's nothing. Yeah, not yet. Okay, so maybe we'll learn something soon tied to the IO stuff. Google announced the first beta of Android 17 and I follow this stuff. I follow the Apple stuff too. We'll talk about that one second. But there's something going on. We complain here because we cover Windows. Windows is constantly updated. This is the Windows as a service thing. We have a different term for it now. But the idea is that this thing is continually being revved with new features, which I find annoying, personally, but whatever, I'm old. But Android is also undergoing big changes in their development schedule. They used to also be in that kind of annual cadence. Now they have basically what I would call a quarterly thing. They've shifted the schedule for each major version to accommodate Samsung, frankly. And it's likely that this thing will be done by the middle of the year. But the way they're describing it is like they've already accelerated the schedule starting with 16, but now this one's going to be even faster, it looks like. And then this will be the one that will begin that shift to Android as a computer platform as well. Right. And so one of the things that, that's changing with this release, which I don't actually have in the story, is that you can no longer as a developer, opt out of the bigger screen modes. Right, right. And so today if you publish an app to Google Play Store, you could have a phone shaped app and if you run it on a pixel fold or a Samsung fold or whatever or a big screen device, it's going to run as a phone app. Right. And it's like, no stretch out. This thing's going to, it's going to fit the screen now. So they're going to actually enforce that and good for them. And then Apple just shipped the first beta of iOS and then everything else 26.4. These are the versions that we're supposed to have. Finally, two years later, the conversational Siri thing that Apple talked up at WWDC 2024. But there were rumors, I don't know, a week or two ago that actually it might be 26.5, it might be 27, they'll get it right eventually. It's cute.

[C]

But the whole Siri team, everybody's. It's all been reorganized. Right. Like it sounds. It's so rare to see a battle inside of Apple and when you saw it with the AI stuff in the Siri team.

[B]

Yeah, it's like watching someone keeping, like stepping on a rake and then doing it again and again and you're like, please stop. It was funny the first two times. Now it's like sad. Like just. I don't. So I don't know what's happening there, but. But yeah, if you ever want to feel bad about the quality of Windows 11 or anything else in our space, just try Siri on an iPhone. It's hilarious. It's really bad.

[C]

It used to be great.

[B]

Well, it was the first one, you.

[A]

Know, because we didn't know any better maybe.

[B]

Well, I mean, obviously Apple saw that. That's what was the company that made it. Do you remember the Small company that made Siri originally.

[C]

I think it's Sarai, right?

[A]

That's right, yeah.

[B]

I mean, Apple bought them. Obviously they saw the potential of this and they were like, oh, this is amazing. And, you know, then it seemed like they sat on it.

[C]

It's one of the generative AI proof models from the very beginning. Same time that in, you know, Ceskovar and those guys are doing imagenet and doing. And solving recognition. SRI is doing voice.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And except they left out the Australians. So Siri initially was terrible for Australians.

[A]

Was it really?

[B]

Yeah, I was. I just watched a Commodore video with these guys before. No, well, that, that's where it started. And it went down some, you know, so it was like an engine, like these engineers from Commodore slash Amiga speaking at some event a couple of years ago. But they were saying that, like they had speech recognition. It was. I. This is. I swear to God this is true. It was a Speak and Play technology product and they, they were going to put it in some computer. I don't remember. But they showed it to the executive staff and they couldn't get it to work. It didn't work at all. It didn't even do any. It didn't do anything. And they couldn't figure out why. And so they were dejected. It was, you know, they weren't going to put it in the product. So they all went back to the lab and they were. And then this one guy goes, wait, I think I know what it is. And he spoke in a Texan accent to it and it worked fine. And it was because the guy who made it was from Texas and he had this really exaggerated accent and he only understood Texas English.

[A]

There was a hysterical video back in the day of a Scots person trying.

[B]

To use like Cortana or something and doesn't understand anything.

[A]

It was really annoying. But, you know, it's funny. Remember in the early days of speech synthesis, like Castle Wolfenstein, you know?

[C]

Yeah, right.

[A]

And that was about 40 years ago.

[B]

It's like noise. It's like the. Remember the intelligent. They had the, the crowd noise.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All you have is just the white noise. Yeah.

[C]

Italy, white noise.

[A]

But that was 40 years ago. And we've, you know, now, of course, it sounds like it's indistinguishable from human.

[B]

Oh, my God. Yeah. To the point where a guy from NPR is suing.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

At Google, I think, for copying his voice. Right.

[A]

Yeah. Which they didn't. But anyway, we'll talk about that in a bit on intelligent machines. But the article in the Washington Post actually refer to me saying. Others say it sounds like former tech podcaster Leo laporte.

[C]

Nice.

[A]

But I'm not sewing and I am not a former tech podcaster.

[B]

What does it like to be. How does it feel to be all washed up, Leo? You know, when it's every day, former.

[A]

Newspaper like the Washington Post, I don't mind. And I think you're a lot more former than I am, to be honest.

[B]

Right, yeah, exactly. That's funny.

[A]

But I'm just. My point was we're accelerating a lot faster pace, so that.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That Scottish elevator that you couldn't talk to was only a few years ago.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Now, you know, I have on all my machines. I'm sure you do, too. A button I can push so I can talk to Claude, code or whatever, or dictate. I don't need to type anymore. And increasingly I.

[B]

And this is right. A million years ago, I was in the Dunkin Donuts in denim, as one would be. And when I say the Dunkin Donuts, I mean one of these seven that are in denim, but whatever. And this guy saw me, he was sitting at a table, and he's like, oh. He goes, do you write? You know, he somehow knew who I was, whatever. And we were talking, and he used to work at IBM, and I don't know if I misunderstood him, but I thought he said that the Dragon, naturally speaking stuff might have come out of IBM and then it went out separate or something, or maybe IBM had licensed it or whatever. But he was talking about all that, and he was telling me at the time, he was like, yeah, we were positive this was going to be the future of computing. And I was like, yeah, I used it once because I was like, this is how I'm write stories. I know I am. And I tried it one time and I was like, no. Like, no way. Right. Because I do this now with like a text message. I'll be like, you know, blah, blah, blah, comma, blah, blah, blah. And then because it's Apple, it will actually write the word comma, comma, it will write the word smiley face. And I'm like, okay.

[A]

It's taken me a long time to learn. I don't have to say period, comma, new paragraph to whisper.

[B]

Well, sometimes I want it formatted the way I want it, you know, whatever it might be. But. But smiley face. Has anyone ever wanted that written out? Like, what man wants that? I remember in.

[A]

It was 2008, 2009, on a cruise with David Pogue. He was using Dragon.

[B]

Yes, he was actually the one person who used it extensively. Yeah.

[A]

But he said I couldn't use it to write the book, but I can use it to do the index now. You could use it, not only write the book, you wouldn't even have to talk. It would write the book for.

[B]

For you. I know.

[A]

My God, we're in interesting times.

[B]

Yeah, we really are.

[A]

You were actually talking about agentic AI. You know, one of the big breakthroughs with Claude Code now is they're having it write Excel stuff. And it's really good.

[C]

Excel plugins. Really good.

[A]

It's really good.

[B]

So this is. Richard was and I were talking about this semi, or not semi, privately or offline or whatever you want to call it, like on WhatsApp, you know, for Microsoft, it's, it's kind of a huge embarrassment that those guys ship like agents for Office apps that are just there and working, you know, in weeks. Yeah.

[A]

We live in interest, as I said.

[C]

Certainly one of the things I've been paying attention to is what, what groups are actually using their tools and getting the acceleration they kept promising everybody would have.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And this is the trick.

[C]

Anthropic and Google seem to be the ones who are actually getting the benefit from their own tools.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, Google benefits from the massive number of consumer services they have that billions of people use, which is these natural places to put this stuff. And then Anthropic, I can't explain other than to say that in the world of big tech, I guess you'd call them kind of like a middle tech kind of company. They're being very nimble and so they're kind of running between the feet of the dinosaurs or whatever you want to call it, and they're solving problems. This is that thing that Microsoft, we talked about this. This is the infrastructure problem. Microsoft's like, okay, we see this problem. All right, let's build a platform. And Anthropic's like, no, let's build a thing that solves that problem and then we'll solve the next problem. And then, you know, and in this fast moving AI era, that's pretty much what you have to do. They're doing a good job.

[A]

You are doing a good job. No, you're doing a Good job.

[B]

That's Mr. Paul. That's how I talk to AI. I'm very complimentary.

[A]

I do. You know, it's so weird. The other day I said gong hei fat choy just to see what it would do, because yesterday was Chinese New Year and it responded in Chinese and It said, happy Lunar New Year, Skip. It calls me Skip.

[B]

I love that you're that familiar. But go on.

[A]

I throw in stuff every once in a while to see if how it will respond.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's instant. It's not like it looked up or what is going. It just kind of knew.

[B]

You can almost picture that. Like HAL or the Cylon thing. It's like it's looking at you, trying to understand like what's he doing? What's he doing?

[A]

But there's. But it's. But there's no latency, right? So it's. I can see how people fall for this. I know it's a machine. I know it's computer code.

[B]

You do, but even sometimes you find yourself just.

[A]

It's. I could see how people would fall for it because he was very human.

[B]

My wife and I will be in the car driving to Boston or something, right? So every time we interstate, it's like, welcome to New Jersey. And I swear to God, the two of us simultaneously. Thank you. Like we, like, you know, like, like who are we talking to? Like, you know, welcome. But we do it like every time.

[A]

It's funny actually.

[B]

I.

[A]

When I see the signs, I read the signs out loud.

[C]

So I'm bad.

[A]

It's bizarre. I tell my kids, welcome to New Jersey.

[B]

Yeah, excited. Thank you.

[A]

Windows Weekly on the air. Glad you're here. Every Wednesday. Hope you will come by. Every Wednesday we do it around 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1900 UTC. And we stream it on YouTube, Twitch, X.com, facebook, LinkedIn and Kik. Plus of course for our club members in the club Twit Discord. I don't, I don't see how this is possible. It's not even lunchtime and we're already to the Xbox segment.

[B]

Paul, I can't wag the dog, you know, but. So there are two kind of big topics I do think are worth addressing that aren't necessarily news stories, but are just out there. One is, if you think about Xbox over the past two, three years, a lot of negativity, of course, and a lot of change. A lot of uncertainty about the future, massive hardware losses every quarter, that I don't understand how this could persist over this many years. But meaning like double digigit decline in revenues and hardware every single quarter for several years in a row now is bizarre to me. Like I. At some point doesn't it just hit zero? Like I, you know, maybe I don't understand.

[C]

Maybe it's a negative number.

[B]

There's more returns than purchases exactly, exactly.

[C]

Where are we?

[B]

That's how I look at, like I'm going to start an only fans account and I will pay it money because who would want that? But the thing that has been a constant throughout the troubled times has been the reassuring voice of Phil Spencer. Right. Phil Spencer, if anything, especially from Microsoft's perspective, has been too outspoken. Right. He's too willing to address rumors. He's too willing to talk about things we talk about internally at Microsoft. He's too willing to say, yeah, we think about doing like a mobile handset all the time. We think about this, we want to do this, blah, blah, blah, whatever. So he's been kind of a nice counter, you know, of sorts to a lot of the bad news. Have you noticed he has disappeared? Yeah. Lately I have not heard of. I have not heard from Phil Spencer possibly in months. It might be since before the holidays or, you know, the end of the holidays. Like he used to be a regular. Like he would just pop up like.

[C]

A little things to say, little mole.

[B]

You know, a little, what do you call it? Whack, A mole kind of thing. But I haven't heard from this guy. I'm kind of numb. That's not good news. Well, I mean, obviously if Microsoft is doing something with Xbox, you have to be careful there. You can't reveal that early. And maybe that's why I'm trying to take the glass half full version of this story.

[C]

But I'm digging around here, man. Like, you're right. Last stories are in October.

[B]

It's been a while, like, and it took me a while to sort of realize it. Right. I just sort of thought of this the other. I'm like, you know, I can't remember the last time I heard this guy. It's a little alarming. So there's that There is. Microsoft reached out the other day. They're going to have or they're going to be at the gdc, this is the game developer conferences in San Francisco in mid March, early March, March 39 to 13. They're going as they do, they're going to talk about the future of Xbox game development. And that's interesting because I feel like we've talked about this a lot, but I feel like the next Xbox console will in fact be a Windows PC. Right. And for that to happen, and I don't mean based on a Windows PC, I mean literally Windows. Right, right.

[C]

And it will be clearly what they've been doing.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, but there's a lot of moving pieces that go into this and the big question mark is, to me, the central value proposition of Xbox as a platform has been, well, there's a few things, but one of the key tiers, or however you want to say that are tent poles or whatever is this kind of backward compatibility piece that they went back as far as they could. OG Xbox360, Xbox One brought everything forward that they could. Right. And there are licensing issues around some of that stuff where they can't. There were some where they worked with the original developers and they helped make some changes to make that stuff work. There were some examples where Microsoft just did that for them and the developers were like, yep, we don't care, just do it. It's fine. We're at the point now where I think every game that could be brought forward from the past has been right. And so now we have these digital libraries of games that span multiple generations of consoles. And even though there were a couple of different architectures in there, we get that backward compatibility thing. It's nice, It's a nice little piece. But if they're going to move this to the PC, that means that backward compatibility of Xbox console games has to occur on the PC. And that's really interesting to me because the two potential outcomes there, assuming if everyone just kind of agrees for this conversation that the next Xbox console, real Xbox consoles, will be PC based, then either that's just going to happen or there might be a licensing issue. Right. Because the license, the thing that developers or publishers agreed to back in the day was that this was for consoles. And now you're saying, well, hold on a second. So now this could work on billions of computers. We never agreed to that. And they might want to renegotiate terms or something. Something, whatever it might be. So I guess in the back of.

[C]

My brain owns a whole bunch of those companies now, so.

[B]

That's true. They do only. Yeah, 40% of them, actually.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

No, it's fair enough.

[C]

And to be clear, with the exception of the 360 Xbox games were built on PCs and deployed into the Xbox.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. But to me, that's why I brought up licensing. I think it's really a licensing issue. I think it's tied to the same licensing issue. They ran into a backward compatible, that if it was up to Microsoft, they might have just brought the entire collection if they could have forward. And that I do know, because they talked about it, that in some cases developers like, yeah, no, we're not interested in that, thank you. We don't want that. We want to sell the new stuff, whatever. You can see that. You could picture Activision Blizzard before they were part of Microsoft saying, we have a new Call of Duty to sell. We don't want to make it easy to run Call of Duty Ghost or whatever or the original Modern Warfare on a new console. We want you to buy the new game. Okay. You know, you can, you can kind of at least understand it. Anyway, we'll see. Right. And so gdc, this is about a month from now. Yeah, a little under a month. We'll see, I guess is all I can say.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And so I think that's part of it.

[C]

I did go check the GDC roster and like Phil Spencer is not listed anywhere. So he's not registered as a speaker.

[B]

Yeah, I'd be. If he doesn't show up there, then my heart kind of drops a little bit because that's our. Last summer I had written something called what exactly is Xbox now? Right. And I looked at it from the perspective of the hardware, which we're still talking about evolving, the potential that maybe that what they wanted to do, because this was in those leaked documents we got a couple years ago, moved to the ARM platform, for example, which has not happened. And then software and then services. So software is pretty straightforward. Microsoft owns a bunch of those publishers, like Richard just said, and then the services play is essentially game pass now at this point. Right. But before any of this stuff happened, before any of the gdc, I wrote a follow up that was just called like what's Next for Xbox? And it's kind of what we were just talking about. In other words, if you look at what it means to bring this platform forward, if it really is going to be the PC, which I believe it is, which makes sense. I know this bugs people, but honestly it does make sense if you think about a gaming PC or just a PC now, because even mainstream laptops can play games. But if you think about the PC as this kind of infinitely expandable thing, because it is the idea or one of the reasons why someone might play games on a PC is that they could have whatever system they have today and then they could upgrade the graphics card and get better performance and better graphics and better resolution, etc. It's a thing you can keep building on if you want to. I don't think that that fact precludes some mainstream part of the market that just wants to buy a thing that is already just works. Right. That was the point of the console. And so if that thing is a PC, but it's a, you know, they'd have to have, again, we'll see what they come out with. But there would have to be some baseline. Like if you think about Xbox today, when they came out with series X and S, they were like, all right, look, here's the two tiers. They're very close, but they're a storage processor, I think GPU core, whatever difference is between the two, you need to build for this. I don't know what, the world's falling apart out there. You need to build for the S, but you can't ignore the X. Although by the way, Microsoft did that a couple times themselves. Yeah, but the idea there is that at least over time you come up with some game and maybe you're hurting, you're hitting 30 frames and you know, we'll call it 1080p or whatever on the S, but then when we get the X, you're hitting 60 frames and maybe it does, you know, 1440p or whatever. The, whatever.

[C]

Yes, was 1440. The X was 4K. Yeah, it was the claim.

[B]

So if you, if, when I look at things like Panther Lake or the integrated graphics that AMD has and we'll see what happens on the Qualcomm or whatever ARM front with Nvidia especially. But you can almost see like this notion of these tiers now. And so it may be part of the deal when Xbox becomes the PC. If, assuming this is true, is they're like, look, you have to build to this level at least, but you also need to support the people who are going to build PCs that have crazy graphics cards and they're going to, you know, do 120 frames a second at 4K, whatever.

[C]

Do you, you know.

[B]

Well, I mean, I don't. That's a, that's just a question. But I feel like for the, for.

[C]

The export, 4K60 seems to be reasonable.

[B]

Sorry, I just, I didn't mean that as a literal benchmark. I'm sorry, I was just trying to exaggerate to make the point. But if there are going to be Xbox consoles that are essentially PCs, whether they're made by Microsoft or a third party party, I feel like there's going to be these baselines for maybe different tiers and maybe there are three or something. And it's like, you know, at the very least you have to be able to hit whatever this, you know, whatever. And then the mid tiers, whatever, and then the higher end, the higher end system.

[C]

We see this in normal PC games too, where you can dial up the resolution modes and you know you're going to run this in ultra detail or.

[B]

Not, but it's got to see. It has to be a little more automatic is the point. Right. Like one thing that you see on gaming PCs and one thing you see from, you know, Nvidia graphics, AMD does this as well, is this kind of auto optimization functionality. It's like, okay, so you have this Nvidia 56, whatever. The thing is, it's got this much RAM and it evaluates each of the games you have installed on the PC and it automatically makes that thing play well on your PC. You don't actually have to tweak it. You could. A lot of PC gamers are probably kind of used to that. But for someone coming at it from like an Xbox perspective, that kind of needs to work. So I feel like that's part of it.

[C]

But I appreciate your thinking. It should be three, well, four levels. This machine can't do it. And then a base level of, okay, this will work. And then it looks nice. And then we're heating space.

[B]

Right. Like you, you're not getting the Xbox logo unless. Right. You have to meet some requirement. That's essentially what the, you know, what we have today. But yeah, I mean, I. But the reality is Microsoft would be better off letting third parties do this like they're doing with the little handhelds, even though they wanted to do their own. Right. And Microsoft dabble in hardware and then.

[C]

They keep running away from it afterwards. Right.

[B]

They don't seem to be very good at it, frankly. But. But there. Maybe the. The more fair or fairer thing to say is that there are companies that are very good at this and maybe like, why.

[C]

And it's not in your best interest to compete with them anyway. A, you'll fail, or at best you'll.

[B]

Fail now you've made the worst.

[C]

You'll damage the market and cause it to fail anyway.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

There's no good outcomes here.

[B]

This is, yeah, good news will float all boats kind of a situation. But I feel like Xbox as a platform is actually in really good shape if you ignore hardware, which is a terrible thing to say because I know for a lot of people that's all they think of when they think of Xbox is that console. Right. But I really feel like this is more software and services and the services part of it is in Microsoft's wheelhouse, to be sure. I'm not saying I like it, but, you know, whatever. Subscription services and then. And we can debate whether or not Game Pass even makes Sense as a business as it plateaued, we could have.

[C]

This whole conversation about the living room compute experience full stop.

[B]

Right? Yep.

[C]

How to me how many Xboxes spend their time running Netflix, like that's actually what they're used for.

[B]

So more than I want to even think about because I hear this from people a lot and I, you know, again, in my own simplistic ape brain, like I always say something like that's like taking a battleship through the Wendy's drive thru. It's like you can, but like that doesn't, that's not the most efficient way to do that. Especially when you get like a little stick thing that you know, goes onto a HDMI port in the back of computer and doesn't generate heat or destroy your electric bill or whatever. But okay, I mean that's Microsoft in a way being good at marketing because they sold it that way, right? I mean that was the point. It was going to be a multimedia machine. I always think back to when the original Media center launched. And the first box at the launch, the only box actually was an HP and it was like a giant. It's not a mini tower, it was a tower. It was a humongous thing. And of course back then it was all cables and wires and connectors and you had an IR blaster and a giant remote and all this stuff and then you get it all set up and everything's going great. And of course we didn't have. What was it called Cable card. Did not exist quite yet, at least certainly not in the Media center space. And then a dialogue would pop up in the middle of the screen and it didn't matter what you did with the remote, you were never clicking it and you had to go grab a mouse. And so all of us had a mouse keyboard thing on our living room stand or whatever because that was going to be necessary at some point and it wasn't a good fit unfortunately anyway, aside from the hardware. Right. I do feel like, you know, because I've been, I've actually purchased a bunch of games on PC across different stores. Right. I bought stuff, I have a bunch of stuff on all these stores. But you know, Steam, Epic Games, Xbox as well, meaning Xbox Windows. And you know, I, it's getting there. I mean you can, you can do that full screen experience today. It's not perfect, right? Of course it's not. And people will still say, well yeah, but Linux runs better on the same hardware, which of course it does. But Windows gives you that complete compatibility and generally speaking, probably better performance and higher resolution graphics, etc. Because most of the games running on Linux are Windows games that are being emulated essentially. And it's like, you know, that's not necessarily efficient. So I don't, I think it's, I think the. This is something I. We were going to do this two, three, four weeks ago, whatever it was. And we went long and there was an interview coming up at the top of there. So there's no way I could talk about it at the time. But I feel like, you know, Xbox has to change to survive. You should, if you're a fan, that's.

[C]

What you should want.

[B]

Right. And they clearly are not getting it right with hardware. I. The Xbox series X and S when they came out, I thought were very competitive and are fine and they work well. The other big piece I should mention too, the thing that Xbox does right. That just is not a thing on the PC. It makes me crazy is the automatic update overnight thing.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

They really got to figure this out for the thing that will be called a console, whether it's running Windows or whatever. I need to be able to. Anyone does anyone who's a gamer. If you want to play a game, you want to play a game. And let me tell you what you don't want is to start that game and be like, nope, you have an 18 gig download, 180 gig download depending on the game. Call of Duty is a horrible example of that. You could configure it otherwise. But on the Xbox today, the consoles, you can configure it to always be on and always downloading updates and, and I'm not saying it never happens, but pretty much never will. You have to wait to start a game.

[C]

Yeah, that's an interesting part of what the Xbox team can do is to get into a mechanism where games quietly self update.

[B]

Yeah, In a vague way, I guess. Windows as a service is a nightmare. I hate it so much. And there's been all kinds of problems including as recently as January, but they did actually get it really good for a PC. Right, right. If you've ever updated a mobile platform like Android or iOS or you've ever updated a Mac, I don't have a choice.

[C]

My Android phone just stops working properly until I allow the update.

[B]

Yeah, but those things, the way those update feel very antiquated to me. I mean this is one area where I feel like Microsoft slash, Windows is actually kind of ahead. But when you compare it to the experience on an Xbox console, I can't speak for PlayStation and Nintendo. I'm not Actually, sure how that works. But the Xbox is dramatically better. And that should be. That should be coming into Windows. We need this. We need it. Not just for games, by the way.

[C]

Yeah. Xbox Update got good enough. You've forgotten that Xbox Updates.

[B]

Right, right. And I'll tell you, because I switched. You know, you go to the PC, you really notice it. Like, you really notice it. And you know, we can complain and we will, and we'll keep doing it. About the Windows updates every month, but these game updates. Oh, my God, I. You know, we use Notion for the notes for the show, and I love Notion, but. And I'm impressed that Notion has not required me to pay for it to do anything anymore. Like, I've just keep expecting that to happen. So. I sort of appreciate that. But, man, I cannot run. I can't start this app without it telling me there's an update. And I'm. I want to be super clear, but what I just said, I'm not exaggerating to make a point. Basically, every time I launch this app, I have to install an update. Stop. Dear God, stop. Like, it's maddening. So I don't know. Anyway, okay, I'm. I cannot wait. I. I don't normally look forward to GDC per se, but I'm actually kind of looking for it because I. There are answers here that I need. You know, I think we all need.

[C]

Are you going? You're not going?

[B]

No, I'm not going. But I mean, I'll pay attention to this. Yeah.

[C]

There'll be the big screen stuff.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I. Yeah, my expectation is it's going to be a PC, but we'll, you know, we'll see. It is the past the middle of the month and so now we have a new set of Xbox game pass games to me. Well, actually, the biggest one is probably Avowed. I'm going to talk about that game in a second. Avowed. It came out last year, I think. Right. But there's an anniversary update for that.

[A]

It looks like Skyrim. Is it fun? Is it a good game?

[B]

I've never tried it, so. People keep telling me I need to play it. Now that. We'll talk about that one second.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

The Witcher 3 is in there. Avatar. Frontiers of Pandora and Avatar Game, I guess, because Avatar already looks like a video game. That makes sense. Kingdom Come, Deliverance two. Not the best name. I would like my character's name to be Piggy. Yeah, exactly.

[A]

Nice, man.

[B]

That's. We're going with Deliverance. Huh?

[C]

Okay.

[B]

That. The main Character's name is Hitler. Kind of a weird choice. Yeah. So avowed, I want to say. It came out last year. Right. I can't remember when, but. This is Obsidian Entertainment. So this is part of Microsoft. It is a fantasy RPG. It launched today on PlayStation 5 the first time. Yay. But there's also a major update. Right. So anniversary update. This is for all platforms. So Xbox PC and PlayStation 5. There's a new game mode, new races, there's a photo mode, weapons, characters, blah, blah, blah, whatever.

[A]

So it's blood, more violence and intense language apparently as well.

[B]

Yeah, it's got everything a growing boy needs. Yeah, it looks great.

[A]

I've never played Mission 33 feel to it.

[B]

Yeah. I mean it's probably the unreal.

[C]

It's all swords and sorcery and then the guys have guns, but they're glowy guns.

[A]

They're glowy. So it's okay.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

It looks fun.

[B]

It looks good. Yeah, it looks like a good game. Oh, we have a. Actually, before I move on, there's a breaking story. No, just in the Xbox space. Microsoft is bringing post game recaps in the Xbox PC app on Windows to Insider. So it's not out publicly yet, but after you finish a play session, you'll get like a little recap video of moments from your epic defeat at the hands of someone who was teabagging you in Call of Duty. In my case. Okay, I guess.

[A]

Three year old. Yesterday I said, what game you playing these days? He said, Call of Duty. Really? Said, oh yeah, you play online? He said, no, I play zombies. I don't.

[B]

The people.

[A]

There's too many people online, like who are 12 and play all day.

[B]

Yeah, it's. It's a toxic environment, I think is what I would say. So I mute everybody. I don't engage in any shadows.

[A]

It's still fun to play, I would think. Play more against humans than AI.

[B]

100% to me. Yes, that. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. What's the phrase? What was that when the book or whatever the movie about the guy was hunting humans. The something game. The greatest.

[A]

Dangerous Game.

[B]

Dangerous Game, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, bots are fine. Zombies is supposed to be a big deal. Like I played it so, you know, many times over the years. Yeah, I like multiplayer. Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Old fashioned, I guess. I don't know what else we got. I didn't even know this was a feature, but apparently Xbox as a platform lets you create as a gamer, social clubs. I guess this is the kind of a Discord type feature they're going to get rid of that. It's only on the console. That might explain why they're getting rid of it.

[C]

But.

[A]

But I just had.

[C]

Never.

[B]

I guess it never really took off. I don't know.

[C]

Well, since Discord, where would you go? Right?

[B]

Yeah, well, yeah, right. So Microsoft. I forget all the names now, but you know, they had mixer at one point and then eventually was like, all right, look, people who stream games are going to. They're basically on YouTube. They're on Discord. What's the other big one? Twitch. Right. So we don't really need this stuff anymore and just keep it on Discord. And then for the three of you who care about this one, the GeForce now, the Nvidia cloud game streaming service is available on newer Fire TV streaming sticks. It's limited to 1080p at 60 frames, which limited. I mean that's pretty much what most people doing anyway. So that's pretty good. It's also available on Android TV, some smart TVs, I think Samsung and probably LG. It's kind of, you know, it's kind of everywhere.

[C]

I don't know.

[B]

I gotta look at this. Maybe this year I'll take a. You wanna find these. All these different services again. How's Stadia is still a thing, right? Stadia's doing good, probably. I don't remember.

[C]

Actually.

[A]

I think they killed that, didn't they? But they. But Amazon, it's so confused. I don't know.

[B]

Well, Luna is the closest you can get to it.

[A]

Amazon has the Luna. I have GeForce now, but I.

[B]

Do you use it for anything. Like, what do you.

[A]

I want to play on native. I think that whole streaming gaming. You were right. Remember? That was the whole excuse for slowing down the Microsoft Blizzard acquisition. Like, oh no, we gotta.

[B]

All the games. I'm like, who? Nobody, Nobody wants this. Just give it away. Who cares?

[A]

It's not good.

[B]

You can all have it. Nobody's gonna use this. It's terrible. I mean it's probably fine for casual games, I guess, but the games I play, there's no way.

[A]

No, I even tried the casual games because we were doing a club Twit event with a game and I was gonna play with the guys. I didn't. I only had. I didn't have it on PC. So I was trying to play the GeForce now on a Mac and it was too slow. It was too late. It just was not usable.

[B]

Stadia, whatever the, like doom 2016 or 17, whatever that year that was, I played that single player was okay. Whatever. The. At the time, new Far Cry game again, single player was okay, but I. You can't. There's no way I. We have a hard enough time doing multiplayer normally. I don't see that ever working correctly.

[C]

Yeah, least of all one player out of a group, you know, crippled.

[B]

Oh, I know, my God, can you imagine? Yeah, exactly.

[C]

So is everybody else is trying to play with you.

[B]

Your character's just driving around on a giant tricycle. Yeah, I don't know. Just not gonna work. He's not contributing.

[A]

We got the Back of the book coming up already. My God, you guys, I'm gonna have plenty of time for gas station sushi.

[B]

I never saw anything like this. This is unprecedented.

[A]

Well, back of the book coming up. We've got a whiskey pick. Before we go too much farther though, I would like to do a little plug for the club. Our club is so important to us. Maybe you noticed, maybe you didn't. Maybe you enjoyed the fact that this show was an ad free show. A little taste for those of you in the club. Because if, if you're in the club, of course you don't get any ads. Maybe there are some ads in this inserted later, which makes them even more fun. And the problem is when we don't have ads on a show, the show is operating at deficit. And I never have wanted ever to decide what we do, what shows we do based on what advertisers will buy. But if, I mean, the idea would be to have you support it. If you like this show, if you like, you know, Mac Break Weekly only had one ad yesterday. If you like Security now, if you like Twit, if you like this Week in Space and Untitled Linux show, all the shows we do. The best way you can help us is by joining the club. Lisa told me last night, she said, you know, if we got, if we got, you know, 4 or 5% of our audience to join, we wouldn't even need ads. We could just stop doing ads entirely. That's a great stretch goal, isn't it? Right now it's about one and a half percent of our eyes. One person, one and a half people in every 100, listen, pay for the show. The rest of you hear the ads. Wouldn't you like to be that special group of people that don't hear this for instance, and all the other ads? It can happen. Just go to Twitter, tv, Club Twitch. You get ad free versions of all the shows, you get access to the club Twit, Discord, which is a parti. Just a lot of fun. By the way, you know, you've probably been hearing about Discord asking for age verification. We're not marked as an adult channel, so you don't have to do age verification to join us in the club. You get special events that we do in the club. There's lots of great stuff. Things like Micah's crafting corner, which is tonight. Very chill place to hang out and do your craft. He's doing, I think he's doing paint by adult, paint by numbers, which you can join him in, but you could bring anything you like to do. I sometimes come in with coding, cooking, cruel needlepoint, whatever it is you're into. The nice thing is it's just a chance to hang with Micah and other club members and just kind of do your thing for a while. The photo show with Chris Marquard is Friday. We've brought back Johnny Jett, our travel guru. He's going to join us every. I think it's third Wednesday of the month. I can't remember. It's on the schedule's in the club. Just look in the Discord. Stacy's Book Club. All sorts of great stuff. Lots of shows that we only do in the club. All of that because of your generosity. And that's the key. The club now represents about a third of our operating costs. Without the club, we'd have to cut back by that much. Twit TV Club. Twit. It's 10 bucks a month, 120 bucks a year. There's a two week free trial. There are plans for families, multiple memberships in a family or multiple memberships in a business. Find out more. And Larry Openclaw could be your hobby. Certainly is mine. Twit tv. Yeah, that's actually maybe my favorite show that we do in the club is the AI User Group, which we do on the first Friday of every month. It's so much fun. You are not a person, Newman. Half a person. You're a full person. So it's 15 people on every thousand, is that right? No. Yeah. We would like to make it a little higher. Join the club. All right, enough said. Nuff said. Now it's time to go to the back of the book. Paul Thurat, we'll kick things off with his tips of the week.

[B]

Yeah, so I think last week I talked about this book, this short book that I'm working on, this DNSRTify Windows 11. I've gotten three more chapters. These are kind of the core chapters for the book. So it's the clean install, if you want to go that Route, which is the, you know, the tiny 11 builder that we've talked about, which is fantastic. That hasn't really changed too too much. Super clean base install you can get rid of. Well, it does get rid of, I should say Edge and OneDrive and you can bring those things back if you want, but you know, if you don't want them, that's nice. If you have, if you don't want to go that route and want to use to clean an existing install. Everyone has they kind of pet peeve utilities they like. And I can't write or say anything about this without someone saying, what about winhance? What about the Chris Titus thing? What about blah, blah, blah, whatever. Okay, so. Well, what about the thing I'm talking about? So the thing I use is called Win11 DeBloat. It is a PowerShell script like Tiny 11 Builder, but now there's a graphical interface. When you run the script, it actually runs a ui, which is very pretty. It works really well. There's three main screens. The first one is just the list of apps which you can filter to just the apps that are installed. I don't know why that's not the default view. And you can get rid of anything including Edge and OneDrive if that's what you want. Although OneDrive you could just remove normally. But the system tweak screen is where the important stuff happens. That's where you can get rid of all of the telemetry in Windows 11. You can get rid of all the, the AI features. You can make Windows update not reboot your computer easily every time it does something because it's going to do something all the time, blah, blah, blah, whatever. So this is an awesome tool. It, it achieves all the goals. Like I, I don't remember. It was probably early 2025 I'd come up with a Windows 11 in certification checklist. And both these tools, whether you start fresh with tiny 11 builder or just clean an existing install with wind to bloat, win 11 to bloat, both achieve all of it. The one minor exception being you can't actually stop Windows from updating. Right? There's no way to stop it from updating, but you can delay it somewhat. And by the way, in January that would have paid off big time. It's not something I do, but there's all kinds of stuff you can do there. So there's the objectively terrible stuff that I would call insurtification and then there's this, the stuff that's like pet peeves or annoyances or whatever you want. It covers both ends of that spectrum. The one thing I did want to take a little bit of time with though is privacy. I had forgotten. In fact, I think my general coping mechanism is to block things out. Like I forgot about this. In Windows 8, Microsoft began using like an automated form of telemetry. But they also started assigning advertising ID to computers, which they had never done before. And that's a way to uniquely identify essentially a user. Although it's anonymous.

[C]

Right.

[B]

The reason they do that is because. And the reason they do both these things is you can develop a profile of this individual without saying this is who he is and where he lives. But you're actually kind of getting that information. And then they can use it themselves. Microsoft either by directing you to msn, whatever Microsoft sites, by forcing you to use Edge like they do in Windows 11. Right. Or they can sell it to third parties and other advertisers can track you and target you with ads, which is, by the way, what happens on mobile as well. But the escalation really happened in Windows 10. And the thing I had forgotten was the privacy. This is when I invented the term privacy theater, which was that in the original version of Windows 10, there was a screen called Get Going Fast. And it was like, you're going to give up everything. You're going to let Microsoft personalize your experiences. You're going to give up your app, your location to everything. There's going to be an advertising id. We're going to see what you're doing online in the browser and use that to help protect you against malicious web content. But really to help build that profile itself, et cetera, your browsing data is being sent to Microsoft. This got a lot of backlash and there were multiple antitrust regulators looked at it. This screen is insidious. Like I said, I forgot the text is small, it's hard to read. But there's a giant button in the corner that says Use Express Settings. And it just opens up everything to Microsoft. If you do that, there's a tiny text based link on the other side of the screen that says Customize Settings. And that thing is one hue of blue, lighter than the blue that is the background. You almost can't see it. It's crazy. So Microsoft announced in early 2017, this is a Terry Meyerson thing and it's amazing to read this now that they were going to make three major changes. They actually had three levels of data collection originally, which again, I forgot, they moved it to two. So there's basic data Collection, which is required. And then there's the optional level where you open it up to more data collection. For some reason, I don't know why anyone would do that. That screen I described, it went away. They got rid of get going fast. And now they have a privacy settings screen. This is where I talked about privacy theater, where they give you a list of at the time 5 and today up to 6 privacy, like high level privacy settings you can turn, you can just toggle off, right? So you could say from the screen, I don't want location services on which by the way doesn't actually turn off location services, but speech recognition diagnostics, which is their friendly term for telemetry, you can't turn it off, but when you turn it, it goes from full to limited essentially or required, I guess, tailored experiences. This is how we're going to use everything we know about you to target you with ads and people like oh yeah, I want that. I don't know why people do stuff like that. And then something called relevant ads, which is just crazy. It's all like ads. It's crazy. Then they also launched a web based privacy dashboard up in the Microsoft account website. This blows my mind. This continues in Windows 11. So if you set up Windows 11 today, you have the same exact screen. It's prettier, but it's the same screen. It does absolutely nothing. It's pointless. But you can check a couple of boxes and feel good about yourself. Most people will never go and look at settings. And good thing because if you do go look at settings, what you're going to discover is that these privacy settings are in 117 different locations. Right. And so one of the things I've done over the years is kind of collect the things that are the most important ones. Some of the things that are just an on off switch in that settings screen are in fact very granular controls and settings. So for example, if you, yes, you can toggle on and off location services, but you can also determine which apps get location services if location services are on. Every app gets, what do you call it? Like vague or like general location, not exact location. But you can also go in and say, well, I want the camera app to have this. I don't know why you would do that. But you know the weather app, you could imagine of the news app you want, maybe you want the local thing because you're getting the weather right. So you can see where you want that on, that's fine. But it is, it blows my mind how terrible this is. Like it's just everywhere. The suggestions, the recommendations, the personalized offers, they're all over the Settings app. Like they're everywhere. And there's some of it's in personalization, some of it's in privacy and security. It's ridiculous. If you do use that win debloat tool, win 11 debloat, and I know other tools probably do this too. They have six or seven high level choices which pretty much solves all the problems, right? So you can actually disable telemetry the way that. And I have to give credit to the author of this app, there's a link next to each one of these things where you can click and it gives you a. It tells you. Well it actually goes to the website and then the website tells you what the registry key is for all this stuff, right? So for example, there is a registry key that determines whether your computer does BASIC or full telemetry sending to Microsoft, but there's a registry key that doesn't have a UI that is never send that information to Microsoft. And that's how that works to actually turn that off. There are other ways, right? You could use like a DNS thing or whatever. But it's interesting to me that in Windows there is in fact a control for this, but they just don't give you a UI to do anything with it, right? You can disable all the tips and tricks and suggested nonsense everywhere. In the Windows itself. In the Settings app on the lock screen, disable Windows Spotlight, which we'll talk about in one second, actually disable all the nonsense in Edge, get rid of the Copilot ads and the Settings app. It's like goes on and on and on. It is kind of amazing how much of Windows is an upsell today, which I feel like when Terry stood on that stage in January 2015 and talked about Windows as a service and how we're going to keep everyone up to date and we really hope to get everyone on the same Windows version or whatever wasn't part of the marketing of this, but very clearly he at the time and Windows generally since then has been under this need from on high to generate more income per user per month, right? Other than that one time thing where you bought the computer or paid for Windows somehow if you did that, I don't know, people don't really do that. But anyway, you really have to work at it and I think that stinks. But if you just use win11 to bloat, you can pretty much blow away most of it in one whack. And I do Strongly recommend doing that. I'm working on the security chapter now. There's going to be a copilot AI chapter. There's going to be kind of, I'm not going to call it this, but kind of a just general apps something annoyance. Get rid of just things that.

[C]

I think the security side could be a whole buck, dude.

[B]

It's like there's the privacy thing. Could be a whole buck. But so, so here's what I will say at a high level. Privacy in Windows is horrible. Like it's almost non existent. You can get it to a point where it's acceptable. Security in Windows is actually very good. I will say there's an irony to this that when you bring up a new computer for the first time, you might see if you go into the Windows security app because you'll have like a yellow or even a red bang. There might be one or two features that are not enabled that will make your computer more secure. And the reason Microsoft doesn't enable them by default. Wait for it. Is privacy reasons, which is like what? But look wherever you are in the privacy spectrum, right? Because there are people who feel very extreme about it and then there are people just don't care at all about it. Even if you care about it quite a bit. Giving a bit of anonymous information to Microsoft about you and well, pretty much your computer really to help protect it. That seems like a fair trade off to me personally. But that's kind of where I'm at there.

[C]

And there was a time once in a while where when you were having a crash or something, if it sent that data to Microsoft would actually go, oh, I need to replace. Replace this such and such driver or do this thing. And it would make a difference. But you do have to allow that.

[B]

Haven't done this by the way. But in.

[C]

I haven't seen it for ages.

[B]

No, I was going to say that there's a. In Windows 11 if like. Let me just bring it up and tell you I'm trying to. I'm zoning on the exact name if you go to prior. How am I going to find this? God damn it. It's in here somewhere. There is a tool you can enable that that will show you. Yeah, it must be. Of course, now that I said that I know exactly where it is. There's something called the Diagnostic Data Viewer. You actually have to download it from the store. You have to enable it first. It takes up a gigabyte of hard drive space. It generates an XML file that literally is human readable because it's xml. But it's also literally useless for a human being because there's so much of it. And if you've ever seen an XML document and know it's like this trip, it's just like this. And if you leave the thing running. I left it running for 10 minutes while I was writing something. I looked back, it said, you have 540 new events. I mean, you can't keep up with it. Right? This would be a good example of something. If you were going to Vibe code a little app for yourself, you'd be like, you know what? I'm going to turn this thing on and I'm going to tell AI. Tell me, what am I sending to Microsoft Exactly. Like, what's the biggest offender? What is sending? It's going to be edge, by the way, if you use edge. But I'll just ruin that little surprise if you turn on Microsoft Edge. That thing never stops churning out data. Like it's just constantly sending stuff to Microsoft. It's insanity. It's something for the technical people reading, listening to the show or watching the show. This might be something to look at. It's kind of interesting. Not because you want to read the edge of yourself.

[C]

It's a very fun tool to think about, collecting your digital effluent, so to speak.

[B]

Exactly. Yes, exactly. Right. It's like collecting it in a bag, sending it to a label. And they're like, yeah, well, you might have cancer. It's like, no, this is Windows 11. But this would be a good example of where AI I think would actually be helpful. We should be turning AI on the, the help reporting stuff. Like the, you know, the event viewer. Right. Like you, you. You can't sit there and watch the event viewer like it's a TV show. The thing is like, you know, it keeps. This is like that. And it would be interesting, I think, for a Vibe coded analysis tool, you know, for these things. I'd like. That's something I actually might think about doing. It's kind of interesting. But yeah, you could. Jesus. I don't know. I just. I just want there to be like an off. I just want off. I just don't. Nothing. None of it, none of it. But that does not exist.

[C]

It's. It's like, yeah, the problem is your office is giant script. Just all of these steps. There's a whole. You're just running all over the place, pressing all these off buttons, that and that and that. Like, I come in at this from a network point of view thinking, I kind of want to Snap a filter onto this machine and say, like, are there IPs I can just sync? So, you know, just as if we were an ad blocker.

[B]

That's one of the approaches to blocking telemetry in Windows 11. People have looked to see what are the addresses that it's connecting to. And you know, that are something.Microsoft.com usually, and then just block those. And that has that effect. The problem is I feel like that could change at any second. So one of the concerns with Windows 11, any kind of cleaner, debloater, deinshidifier, whatever you want to describe these tools, is you just installed what we used to call a monthly cumulative update, which is now called a security update, because Microsoft, seriously. Or an annual feature update, whatever it is, is that some of the stuff that you adjusted might go back to the Microsoft defaults. Right. And that's the type of thing, like I think about, like, I want to have something that monitors this system. I have what I would think of as the last known good configuration.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

I want to make sure it's always.

[C]

Server side called Desired state configurator.

[B]

Yeah, there you go. That's. That's a better term. Yeah.

[C]

And it literally monitors for changes like that and, and often, in many cases can set them back. So. But it's.

[B]

Yeah, that's what, that's what I want. Yeah. You get a little notification says, hey, by the way, Windows 11 just changed your. Whatever. It's a dot, dot, dot. You like.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we talked about it. We. Back when we had to build web farms, like 15 servers to run a website kind of thing.

[B]

Yeah. And they all configured.

[C]

The SC was the tool because it was stunning to find this one machine. The settings have changed on it for some reason, right?

[B]

Yes. And look, we use Windows, we run into this all the time, whether it's this show or some other podcast or whatever. Invariably I haven't touched anything, I haven't changed anything. And I sign in and it's like, oh, my camera's on the wrong camera, you're on the wrong microphone, you're on the. Well, how. It's the same thing. How is it not just working all the time? I can't explain that. I don't know. Anyway, there's a lot to this. So. So this is, you know, it's a book, but it's not a pamphlet. It's smaller than like, you know, the Windows 11 field guide is 11, 1200 pages, whatever.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

This is going to be more like 100, 250.

[C]

So it's going to be more concise, but we'll see. Depending on how thoroughly you go down the security privacy path, that gets a couple hundred error.

[B]

I literally, like you said, I could do an entire book on security. You're right, I could do one on privacy too. And that surprised me a little bit because again, my primary coping mechanism is blocking things out. So I'd kind of forgotten how bad this was.

[C]

You start digging into it and you're.

[B]

Like, oh, this is. I don't like this. I don't like this. It's like, you know, it's like the. If you guys have not seen the SNL skit about UberEats wrapped and it's like, they explain, like, what it is. He's like, oh, no, I know what it is. I just don't want it. You're like, exactly, like, no, I know exactly what it is. I know. Please, dear God, no, please don't do that. This is just a random. This is kind of a weird pick coming from me because, God, it has the word Bing in it. But bear with me for one moment because one of the things I was kind of surprised to see in win 11 to bloat is you can actually turn off Windows Spotlight in the desktop. So if you're not familiar with what that means is if you go into personalization background, right? We've always had the ability to do a solid color, right? Dating back to forever. We have a picture and we have a slideshow. And a slideshow is where you tell it X number of photos, whatever. But there's recent years, I don't remember when this debuted, but sometime in the Windows 11 time frame, I guess.

[C]

And it's also Spotlight.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, right? I know there's like one on the lock screen, but this is like specifically on the desktop. You could say Windows Spotlight when the Spotlight is essentially those kind of Bing image of the day things, which, by the way, whatever one thinks of Bing, those are beautiful photos.

[A]

I use those on all my machines. Yeah, I just don't use the Bing extension. I have a little shell script that gets the big photo of the day. So my Linux boxes the version, the.

[B]

Reason I like the images, the thing I don't like, the images are beautiful. The thing I don't like is essentially what it is, is an icon on the desktop. You can move it, but you can't remove it. And it's how you find out more about that image on the lock screen. There are multiple things you can click on and most of them are ads, Right? Look, I don't know about you, but I don't spend a lot of time staring at my lock screen. So I walk up, it sees me, I'm in. I don't really think about it too much. I don't care about that, but I don't. Maybe it's just because I have, like, ADHD or something, but, like, I keep my desktop clean for the most part. Unless I'm working on something, I do not want this stupid, superfluous icon. I like the images, right? So I noticed that win 11 DeBloat had a way to remove that feature. And if you do that, you just don't get the option. So you go into personalization background, and you get picture, solid color and slideshow, but not Windows Spotlight. And it's like, okay, but I kind of like the idea of a different image. And I do like the Bing image of the day. I just randomly Googled Bing Wallpaper because I know that's the thing. And there is a Bing Wallpaper app, right? You can download it from the web. You can download it from the Microsoft Store. It's the same app, and it does exactly what Windows Spotlight does, right? And if you don't like the image you're looking at, you can bring up a ui because there is a. There's a tray icon and not instead of an icon. Actually, no, there is something on the desktop by default as well. But the thing that the Bing thing does that makes it okay to me is you go into. Let me just go into Settings and tell you what you can do. You just remove all of the widgets from the desktop. So it has something in the top, right, that helps you learn more about the image. There's a recommendation news thing, which, seriously, you can get rid of Visual Search. Do not want to. I know what it is. I do not want it. You can click on the desktop and have it actually go to Bing. Absolutely not. But you can actually turn all that stuff off. So now you just get. I mean, there's a tray icon that's hidden, right? Because it's in there. But. But all you. You just get the picture. And I'm like, okay. Like, so, like that. There you go. I'm recommending something with the word Bing in it.

[C]

So that's crazy.

[B]

Yeah, just mull over that one.

[A]

There's also a web. Oh, this. That you can.

[B]

Yeah, no, I'm sure there's a picture.

[A]

Which is what I do. I don't even interact with it in any way. I just download it every day. I have a little cron Job that challenges it every morning. And I put that as my wallpaper.

[B]

Yeah, I don't. I'm probably not going to recommend a cron job, but it's. It's stealing it.

[A]

I'm stealing it.

[B]

No, it's fine. That's fine. There's no reason.

[A]

I mean, they put it on the web, so why not?

[C]

Yeah, of course they're for the take and they are.

[B]

They're beautiful images, you know, a lot of them.

[A]

I love them. Last yesterday was a beautiful Chinese image for New Year. I can't remember what it is today.

[C]

But I like a dark space image. So I, I have curated my own set.

[A]

Plus there's also the astronomy photo of the day, but unfortunately astronomy photo of the day often has non astronomical things, so.

[C]

Also very bright things that I. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, no, I agree with you. I want galaxies. I want the Horsehead Nebula. I don't want. Yeah, you know, nothing too bright stuff. You're. Yeah, if you want. So do you have a. It's not automated. You actually go out and look.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. Just curated my own life.

[A]

Savage.

[C]

Well, plus, you know, when you put a 1440 screen in portrait mode, like your selection of pictures is challenging.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's like a phone. You're almost looking for like a phone wallpaper, basically.

[A]

That's interesting.

[B]

Or have one that goes across multiple displays.

[A]

You know, we have completed Paul's section of the back of the book, so that means. Well, let me think. That could be one thing.

[B]

I'm not going to ignore you, Richie, but I am going to go get a drink.

[A]

Go get a drink while Richard gets us the runners.

[C]

Radio Episode of the week episode 1024. What a great number. You know, nice solid binary number. And this is a show I did with one Erica Burgess, first time on the show, specifically talking about her work using LLMs to do red team hacking. And she's all in. So she's using a host of agents working through various practices for testing vulnerabilities and things. And red teaming is literally, hey, here's the mission. We need you to get this data from this system and you find a way in the process of ultimately identifying those vulnerabilities to check from it. So phenomenal conversation. Brilliant woman. Definitely thinking the contemporary approach of using LLMs where it's a series of agents almost in adversarial modes, where they're challenging, pressing against each other to test various aspects of a system. So certainly could be used for evil. But in this case, and you know, very much a red team Effort. She has collected bug bounties off the back of using tools like that to work through these things.

[A]

Did she talk about what models she uses for this?

[C]

Yeah, there's a conversation about a variety of. None of them were particularly special. Right. It was literally the suites of tools. And, you know, her point was, I've run these tools myself. It takes days sometimes, and now I'm firing agents off to run them simultaneously.

[A]

It's amazing.

[C]

Yeah, it's just much, much faster of what, you know, would have been a full day's worth of work for me. Now the tool's docked out in a few hours.

[A]

So, yeah, I mean, anthropic released Opus 4.6. They gave it Python and a couple of debugging tools and it found 500 flaws software. I mean, I think that's going to be really great, you know, that's going.

[C]

To be really great. It just speaks to the arms race that's taking place.

[A]

Yeah, well, that's right, because the bad guys are writing them as fast as we're finding them.

[C]

Yeah. And so, you know, it's a dual back and forth and we'll see how it goes. But it's good to have someone like Eric on the good guy side.

[B]

Yay.

[C]

Demonstrating just the power of these tools to help to secure software even faster.

[A]

We are getting ready. You don't have a PowerPoint. Oh, I'm sorry, I squished.

[C]

No PowerPoint. I know.

[A]

Sorry for squishing you. Let me unsquish you. And you folks are watching. You find folks who are watching Windows Weekly. And this is the part of Windows Weekly coming up that everybody looks forward to. It's time for Richard Campbell's Whiskey segment.

[C]

Yeah. So we. I mean, the last two episodes we've had PowerPoints because I did go on tours of distilleries and so I wanted to share some of those pictures, talk to you about my experiences going through it. But today I'm head home for a while and I'm really enjoying being home. There's still some work going on in the house. You know, everything takes longer than planned. I remember when we talked about done by Christmas and here we are middle of February and Tell me about it a few weeks away. So I have been reading a lot about Canadian whiskey. Again, I thought I knew, but I'm learning new things and grabbed a bottle of the lot 40. This is a JP Weiser 100% rye whiskey, which is cool. You know, 100% ryes are unusual, or at least they used to be until modern microbiology came along, it was, that's not a thing you would normally do to use 100% rye. Although if you recall when I was in Pennsylvania and got buried in the history of Pennsylvania whiskey, the old style triple stills, they used these wooden chamber stills allowed for distraction of alcohol more reliably from rye. They just didn't survive prohibition. And so today when we're strictly column pot stills and rectifiers, it's much harder to distill with rye and making malt is difficult and it tends to foam and so forth. And so ryes have not been very popular. But when you go back to the early times, it's much more common. Now Lot 40 is a brand of JP Weiser and the JP stands for John Philip, who was born in 1825 in Oneida County, New York. So actually an American of immigrant parents, of course, that were farmers and he was educated in New York, but he was focused on farming. So his interest in distilling comes a little later. He's married in 1856, he'll have six children. In 1857 he starts running the Charles Payne Distillery and farm in Prescott, Ontario. So how does he end up in Canada all of a sudden? Now Prescott is actually up this the St. Lawrence river just south of Ottawa. It's only 150 miles from Anita county too. Like this is all the sort of Canadian American border zone there. And in fact he was in the farming business and so his interest in the distillery was purely for the waste product that comes out of stills which they use as cattle feed. Right. The leftovers that come from that. Although he'll get drawn into the whole distilling business. And I should point out, I'm saying Ontario. And although the word Ontario is hundreds of years old, this is 1857, this is before Canada is Canada. Confederation is not until 1867. So at this time it's the province of Canada, which is, was the unification of what was once known as Upper and lower Canada in 1841. But they were kind of squabbling with each other, so they petitioned the British to largely unify them into a province, Canada. And instead of calling it Upper and Lower, they called them Canada west and Canada East. So nominally, when, when Weiser came to the Pain distillery, he was coming to Canada West. Now the, the farm in question was owned by Weiser's family. It was actually Charles and Amos Egert, although it had been acquired by another distillery down in the US side that Weiser was already working for. And so the commonly known story is that he went to work for family and bought them out. The relationship was more complicated. It was already through an acquisition. But by 1862, Weiser is the sole owner of the distillery and is now much more interested in the distilling part. The farm pipeline is still running, and Prescott's right on the major train lines. So it's easy to get to Montreal, it's easy to get to Ontario, to Toronto, it's easy to get to Ottawa. And there's a train line that does connect up to the northern, the New England train lines down in the north. So that, you know, allows them to produce whiskey at scale as well as also the distribution. Now, I'm probably going to. We're going to do several of these. So I'll do various parts of the Canadian whiskey history as we go along. That those 1800s era, the 1850s, the kind of the end of what they call the pioneer era of Canadian whiskey making, where they read all local product, just, you know, it's the traditional farms producing excess that gets turned into whiskey that's a saleable product and so on. The transformation of the Canadian whiskey industry, the first time comes during the US Civil War. So around the time that Weiser now is sole control of the Prescott distillery, the US Civil War is on. And that means most US Distilleries are shut down for the duration. The volunteers, production problems, supply problems, all, everything is pushed on the war. And so Canadian distilleries pick up the slack. The Americans are buying a lot of Canadian whiskey, including the union. And so it makes a huge explosion in whiskey production in the 1860s. And Weiser is certainly a beneficiary of that as well. And they are making what they're calling at that time Canadian whiskey, which is largely rye. Although the mash bills are not as restricted. The real restrictions on what is called whiskey is post Civil War. It's 1875 when the Canadian Food and Drug act. So now we've had Confederation, which is 1867. It's now eight years on. And so the Canadian Food and Drugs act sets up the first rules around whiskey. And we've talked about this before, but they named it Canadian whiskey. Canadian rye whiskey or rye whiskey. It has to be mashed, distilled and aged in Canada. It has to be at least 40% alcohol, very standard stuff. Wooden vessels no larger than 700 liters. All the time they would been using gallons and a minimum of three years. They don't have to char barrels like the Americans. You can use raw wood, but most people don't Even then, whiskey is largely made. The corn is very popular in the area, although corn doesn't grow well on the north side of the St. Lawrence. So, you know, one of the reasons the Americans grew so much corn is it grew better down there where rye can take those tougher soils, those shield soils and so forth. So rye does pretty well up there. Weiser's famous for. In 1893, he gets a huge booth at the Chicago's World's Fair and starts selling whiskey in bottles. Most whiskey at that time is sold in casks. It's not the first bottles of Canadian whiskey that are out there. The Herm Walker was already selling bottles as well. But it was the first time that Weiser geared up for bottle production. And one of the reasons was for the Chicago's World's Fair. And so many folks who went to the World's Fair first came home with a bottle of Canadian whiskey through that World's Fair. After that, previous to that, it was largely casks. JP had a number of sons. The son that liked the whiskey business most, a guy named Harlow. And he got involved in his 20s. In 1895, he died of a heart attack at 36, which is unfortunate and apparently very much derailed Weiser's efforts in the business. A few Years later, in 1911, Weiser himself will pass away. Two other sons will take on the business for a while. Unfortunately, in 1912, a fire destroys the Prescott Distillery and it won't be rebuilt, at least not by the Weiser family. One of the competitors down the road in Belleville, Ontario, Carby Distillery, did pick up the slack for them. So many barrel the barrels, many of the barrel houses survived. The distillery was destroyed, and so they had the barrels, but they had to produce that. They had to actually make the additions and bottling and stuff. So they did that through the Corby Distillery. And the Corby Distillery also produced some of their whiskey for them. So the Weiser line extend extension stayed on for a while till about 1920, when the Corby Distillery bought the Weiser family out entirely. They bought the brand, they bought the remaining barrels. They started doing their own production, which is great timing because Prohibition's around the corner. And again, Prohibition, while terrible for the US was amazing for Canada. So Canadian whiskey explodes during Prohibition, grows immensely, and the Corby Distillery gets to a size that by 1935, the big player in Canada, that's Hiram Walker, acquires Corby, which means also acquires the Weiser line. Although at that point the Weiser's not been involved for a good 15, 20 years. They also own Bally's and a few others. And we've gone through this story before with, with Hiram Walker. This is a distillery out of Walkerville near Detroit, and that's acquired by ali Domic in 1989, which is now owned by Pernod Ricard, which means that none of the wiser stuff exists at all. It's purely a brand. The distillery is the same one we've talked about before, which has both column pod and rectifier fishing stills. They buy their grain mostly from Ontario. They have huge storage facilities and a big bottling plant. And so this particular product, Lot 40, is made in that distillery with its own distinctive recipe. So the name Lot 40 actually comes from a guy named Michael Booth, who had an ancestor named Joshua Booth who made whiskey going back to the 1700s in Upper Canada. Same rough era. And of course, this was largely rye. The name Lot 40 actually is the name of the lot that his ancestor got as an immigrant to start growing, and also where he built his grist mill and distillery. Now, back then, the old school rye. And I'll spend more time on this as it comes around. You would mulch your rye, which is very time consuming, but you wouldn't malt very much of it. That was enough enzyme to do the rest. So normal old school rye distiller rye production was 90% unmalted, 10% malted, and that was enough to provide the enzymes to actually make enough sugars to make the rye worthwhile. Today we don't do that. We don't bother to malt rye at all because we've now bioengineered enzymes to break down the carbohydrates in rye to make the sugars to do the production. And so in a case of this thing like lot 40, it's 100% rye because they use a customized enzyme for that lot. Forties approach is again 100% unmalted rye. And then they age in new American oak barrels, but they are charred. So they're buying the barrels out of Missouri, produced down there and charged what they call the number 2 char, which is very much a bourbon measure. But they have never had a bourbon in them. Their actual production, even though right on the bottle it says copper pot distilled. That is true, but the first installation is in a column, still very normal. It's what bourbon also does, typically gets them in the young 60% range. And then there's a 12,000 liter copper pot still that does the finishing distillation which will raise it into the high 60s. And then they cut it to 43, although first they'll put it into barrels. There's no age statement on this bottle. The minimum, of course, the law is three years. According to the documentation, it's probably between six and seven years. Not old enough to be worth putting a statement, an age statement on it. So they don't do that. Now. The funny thing about law 40 Rye is that it was actually first made in the 90s in 1998, and it selled, it didn't sell. So they gave, they stopped making it. Mostly because rye was not all that popular. People didn't know really what it was. It had been lost, you know, through the prohibition eras and so forth. And people were mostly just drinking bourbon and. But then it became popular and it became popular, guys, a guy named Dave Pickerel. And Pickerel used to be the master distiller at Maker's Mark, but he and Maker's Mark famously, as a bourbon maker, does not use rye in their mash bill. They use red winter wheat as their flavor grain. So mostly corn, little bit of barley for the amylase and then the red winter wheat. That's what makes Maker's Mark Maker's Mark. But he loved rye whiskey and he wanted to make his own. So he established his own line in 2008. And the, and the branding he used is WhistlePig, which you've probably heard of. And WhistlePig famously started making rye production and they geared up. Dave was able to gear up quickly because he bought already aged rye from Canada. So this is when Alberta distillers and all these large facilities, including the Harem Walker facility, were already making rye, which they used in blends. And Daet Pickle recognized the quality of that in actually his early editions of whistlepig, while he was still aging his own, were actually using Canadian rye. And as that became popular and all of the major brands started making their own ryes, the Hiram Walker group responded to that, brought back this lot 40 and re released it in 2012. So 43%. Let's have a little taste. Very Canadian. That is to say, not a lot of punch, not a lot of burn on the nose, some apologetic flavor, sort of spicy. It's a fun, you know, the heat comes on, it's like, ah, I'm drinking whiskey.

[B]

Did you just say apologetic?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay, that's good.

[C]

So, and this, admittedly it's a Canadian product, but it is easily available in the U.S. bevmos got it for $47.

[A]

Oh, that's not bad.

[C]

Not wildly pricey, you know, and really most, when you look at 100% rise made by American distillers, like I think the whistlepig 10 is 80 bucks. So. By the way, that exceedingly rare, that riser 24 that you've got on the screen right there, I'm looking for a bottle of that. I'd love to do. Beautiful.

[A]

What a beautiful bottle. Yeah. That's not what we're talking about.

[B]

We're talking about.

[C]

We're Talking about a lot 40 is a line of wisers. It's way more approachable. And the thing at $47, make an old Fashioned out of it, you know, you're not going to hurt anybody. That's fine. You can throw it on ice, you can drink it neat. It drinks very, very well. So you know, you've got lots of choices there. Yeah, I think your ad filter is killing you there.

[A]

It sure is. 42 year old Canadian whiskey.

[C]

Wow. That's pretty scarce.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How much is that though?

[C]

Not that fancy bottle. That'll be a 500 bottle.

[A]

It's sold out. Don't worry. You can't get it at any price.

[B]

I got you.

[C]

I'm sure there's a couple collector's edition somewhere.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And yeah, this is the stuff that you can get off the shelf. It's nothing. You don't have to go.

[A]

This is good. This one's bold, brash and unapologetic. So if you want apologetic, get the, get the. Whatever. What that was you were recommending. And what, what is the one you like?

[C]

I'm drinking. I'm telling the story of lot 40s.

[A]

Lot 40s.

[C]

That's why lot 40.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

And it's just they, you know, it's funny that they anticipated, you know, that rise would be popular. Just they were a number of years early. It took time for folks to get on board. And then when they realized they liked it. Everybody's making one now. And lot 40, no exception.

[A]

I don't know if I've had a rye whiskey. How would you characterize?

[C]

Well, most people think of rye in the context of, of Middle East Americans, in the context of bourbon. Because it's this, it's the flavor grain, it's the reason the bourbon is spicy. Right, right. And that's a little unfair. Just because rye comes in different. It comes in different ways depending on how you treat it. And so that spiciness is not real sharp. It's not alcoholic. Right. It's a flavor. It's like Cinnamon.

[A]

I like that.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And so not like rye bread, though. No, no, not so dark.

[B]

Nutty.

[C]

And remember, a lot of this flavor is coming from the wood anyway, so in a lot of ways, this is an American oak.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Right. And we know that the. The American oak, especially when charred, has a lot of those vanillas and caramels. Yeah, that's what you're. You're getting there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, nice.

[C]

Yeah, it's a. It's super drinkable for a reasonable price. And the fact that it's 100% rye is kind of irrelevant. Right. Whatever. It's nice tasting whiskey. It happens to be 100% rye, and it has this microbiology bent to it and so forth, but ultimately it's just. It's a good. It's a good whiskey.

[A]

Maybe it knows I'm an American and.

[C]

That'S why it's not something like that. You're right. It might be only the stuff you can buy, because Link I gave you should have taken you directly to this model. But it might have.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

It keeps asking me, you're how old again?

[B]

How old could you be?

[A]

How old? How old are you? Let me try one more time.

[B]

Maybe if I like the alcohol sites that have, like, a date already plugged in. It's like 1971. You're like, yep.

[A]

Or just the ones that say you're old enough. Right?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

You're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm old.

[B]

You can trust me.

[A]

Yes. It says, page not found. I don't think that's. I think that might be an American American.

[C]

Anyway, it's weird how much I've talked about rye in the past few months. It seems just because of the European encounters I've had with Starka and then spending time in Pennsylvania and getting drawn into the whole Pennsylvanian rye story. And of course, rye's very popular in Canada and always has been, and so. So. And they didn't have the disruption that the Americans had.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

So, you know, a lot. There's a lot more lineage. That being said, only Walker, that. Only that distillery is from that pioneer age. Like all of those other facilities, they're gone. So, you know, today the contemporary production of whiskey in Canada is. Is very contemporary. It's a different machine.

[A]

You're drinking history, my friend.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Drinking kombucha, but. Yeah. No, but he's drinking history.

[C]

And so part of me is, you know, enamored of the historical pieces, but also just recognizing most of them have gone. There were fires and there were consolidations, and ultimately the contemporary distilleries. In the US are in Canada are much like what happened in Ireland with the consolidation on the new Middleton distillery, where we have many brands but we only have one set of stills. And so our system is designed to switch between recipes quickly. It's not dedicated to any one product anymore, where traditional Scottish whiskies are very much a one product kind of thing.

[A]

Look at how the fire's over in your pool.

[B]

I think the ship's coming into port. I don't know what the heck that was.

[A]

Richard, as always, a real pleasure. I enjoy the whiskey segments if you want to see them all. There are literally more than 100 now at something weird from my closet, which.

[B]

Is so good, which is one of.

[C]

The best domain names I've ever bought in my life.

[A]

You're getting the mileage out of it. Yes, you are.

[C]

And I, and I just talked to Kev before we started today, and he got, he got a new one up. Oh, yeah, he finally. He got the, the. The Anita Black label up, which we talked about ages ago. I think it was one of the last of that whiskey tasting session I did in the fall with my buddies in Stavanger.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

Nice. Yes.

[A]

The Kyoto Whiskey Kuro Obi Black Belt blended.

[C]

That's the new edition just added onto the list just less than a day ago.

[A]

Of course. Richard's also a podcaster by trade, public speaker and podcaster. And you can catch his podcast as runnersradio.com. that's.

[B]

He has that side gig, that little side hustle called.

[A]

Yeah, Podcasting.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And dotnet rocks. That he does with Carl. And of course, he is a public speaker. An accomplished public speaker.

[C]

So where.

[A]

If people wanted to hire you, I.

[C]

Know you reach out to me directly. Although a number of bureaus reach out to me every so often.

[B]

I bet they do.

[C]

I'm not that hard to find.

[A]

Find him. If you can't find him, you can't have him.

[B]

Exactly.

[C]

You know, to earn your way. The spring keynote sessions are going to be interesting. This, this talk on the post. AI Hype. It's been very popular, folks. Plus they people love my undersea network talk too.

[A]

That's a good one.

[C]

Yeah. I'm looking forward to your proper Cape.

[A]

Canaveral talk when we go out to Zero Trust World in a couple.

[C]

Oh, yes. We're going to spend a day and he couldn't get the VIP tour, so I'm going to give you my own.

[A]

I can't wait.

[C]

Yeah, we're gonna do, you know, Cold War stuff and then we'll spend some time on Apollo. We'll spend some time on Shuttle.

[A]

Lisa's looking forward to it too. And Anthony's coming with us. So, Anthony, I hope you'll have a great time.

[C]

I famously took a group of Google guys around there once where I said, pointed anything. Let's see if I can do 20 minutes on it. I think I did 20 minutes on a frangible bolt and they're like, okay, we get it. Please stop.

[A]

Yeah, I think the Artemis II might still be sitting on the pad.

[C]

I think it might almost certainly will be. Hygiene leaks are difficult. So, yeah, we'll be there.

[A]

Paul Thurat'[e-mail] that's where his. You should join as a premium member. That's where the bulk of his writing goes. Although he is writing this new book on deinshitifying Windows that will [e-mail] along with a field guide to Windows 11 and Windows Everywhere. His other books. You know, guys, I was hovering my finger. I have a lunar lake, as you know, ThinkPad X1 carbon, which I dearly love.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

But everybody's raving about the new Panther Lake. And it's. Apparently the battery's amazing and the GPU's really great and Dell's got its XPS 14. And I'm just. I have my finger hovering over the. Talk me out of it. Is Panther Lake that much better than Lunar Lake?

[B]

It is for graphics.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I still have questions about reliability.

[A]

Oh, really?

[B]

I would. I'd wait and see. What else? Get. Get some time behind it. See more. What's the reliability issue?

[A]

Crashing or.

[B]

It's every. Jesus. I. I see. This is the problem. It's one computer. I can't tell if it's the computer.

[A]

Oh, it's that your. Which one do you have?

[B]

I have a. It's an HP book X or.

[A]

That looks really nice, too.

[B]

Yeah, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful laptop. But, you know, you open the. You open the lid and, like, we'll see what we get today. I don't know.

[A]

You know, see that? I don't have any problem with the X1. Although it's funny. It was hesitating. It had been going great, and then it was hesitating last week and I said to Claude, my good personal friend, Claude, code. I said, I don't understand. The laptop used to turn right on when I opened the lid. And it said, well, let me check. They said, well, you've got fuse running. And that's a notorious problem because the fuse service will hang up. And then. Oh, by the way, you should probably also check Bluetooth because it's not letting it sleep. Every 10 seconds, it's waking up to see if there's Bluetooth. I said, we'll fix that. Will you? And it fixed it.

[B]

Yeah. Nice.

[A]

I. This is. We live in a different world now where I have a, you know, assist admin in my laptop. It's incredible. Anyway. All right, so I'll wait. I'll wait. Thank you.

[B]

I would wait.

[A]

You saved me a few thousand bucks.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Let's just see how this is trying.

[C]

To figure out if the problems I'm having with my intel workstation, which is an Arrow Lake.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Is the CPU issue. Wow. Whether or not.

[A]

The OEM is so important. And I guess Lenovo does a pretty darn good job with their.

[B]

Yep. And they explicitly support Linux, which is nice for you.

[A]

Delta is just too.

[B]

Yeah. And Del does.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay, fair enough.

[A]

But no, but I think I'll stick with it. I'm very happy.

[B]

I mean, ThinkPads are awesome. I wouldn't. I wouldn't replace it.

[A]

It's light as a feather.

[B]

Whereas this Delta, it feels like an engineering sample. Like there's nothing in here. You know, it's just a plastic shell. Awesome.

[A]

Awesome. All right. See, I get. I get special personal consultations with these cats every.

[B]

Well, I mean, yeah, you don't jump out of a perfectly working airplane. What are you doing?

[A]

I think you too can get the expertise of Paul and Richard. Every Wednesday, we do Windows Weekly.

[B]

You.

[A]

As I mentioned, we stream it live, but you can also get it on our website at Twit TV, WW. It's a. There's a YouTube channel for the video where you can clip and share pieces of the show, but the best way to get it is subscribe in your favorite podcast client. We have audio or video waiting for you in whatever podcast client you prefer. So subscribe and leave us a nice review while you're at it. We'd appreciate that. We'll be back here next Wednesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1900 UTC. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Richard. Have a great week.

[C]

Bye.

[B]

Bye. Bye. Bye.