WW 990: Don't Be Nostalgic for Stupid - The Doom & Gloom Watch

Summary

Windows Weekly Ep. 990: "Don't Be Nostalgic for Stupid – The Doom & Gloom Watch"

Date: July 1, 2026
Hosts: Leo Laporte (TWiT), Paul Thurrott (Thurrott.com), Richard Campbell (RunAsRadio, .NET Rocks)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Windows Weekly, titled “Don’t Be Nostalgic for Stupid,” brings together Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell for a wide-ranging, lively discussion that weaves together Microsoft’s ongoing corporate transitions, quiet but significant product changes, the continuing global hardware/component crisis, evolving AI strategies, and even the bittersweet realities of nostalgia in tech. Tensions around layoffs, price hikes, and shifting product strategies are balanced by humorous asides and perspectives on adapting to tech’s ever-changing landscape.

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Key Topics & Takeaways

1. Doom & Gloom Watch: Microsoft Restructuring and Layoffs

• Timeline of Concern:
  • Start of Microsoft’s fiscal year brings anticipation of potential layoffs and reorganizations.
  • Significant numbers of retirements and voluntary departures ahead of rumored culls.
  • Microsoft allowing early retirements for veteran employees: “Apparently that's been very successful … at least 30% of them, 33%, something like that, which was their goal.” (Paul, 07:00)
• Impact and Speculation:
  • Restructuring seems to have struck a balance—fewer layoffs are expected due to successful voluntary exits.
  • Ongoing anxiety within the company, with employees preferring a “clean break” to endless uncertainty.

Notable Quote:

“It's kind of worse being there and not knowing what's going to happen than it would be just to get laid off … at least there's some certain thing.”
— Paul Thurrott (07:28)

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2. Windows 10 Extended Security Updates—The Silent Extension

• The Change:
  • Microsoft quietly extended the Windows 10 ESU (Extended Security Updates) end date from October 2026 to October 2027 (11:06).
  • No announcement, just a quiet website update.
• Implications:
  • Consumers continue to receive critical security updates—counter to previous paywall threats.
  • Raises bigger questions about the timing and strategy for a new major Windows version ("Windows 12").
• Conspiracy Theory Angle:
  • Is the ESU extension foreshadowing Windows 12 release timing? Or just pragmatism given slow adoption and hardware support woes?

Notable Quote:

“I wonder, of course, what this has to do with Windows 12, if that ever occurs. Does this say anything about the timing for some next major release of Windows ...?”
— Paul Thurrott (14:46)

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3. Insider Program Changes & Taskbar Tweaks

• Microsoft now groups several Insider build announcements in a single post, requiring more effort for enthusiasts to dig into detailed changes (16:09).
• Taskbar behavior setting finally accurately resizes the taskbar itself, not just the buttons.
• The new Windows Insider channel structure becomes default, simplifying the process for testers.

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4. Contagion of Hardware Price Hikes: The Component Crisis

• Global Problem, No Easy Solution:
  • RAM, SSD, and component prices continue to skyrocket, with nearly all major vendors (inc. Apple) affected. (25:19)
  • Micron, SK Hynix, Samsung control 90%+ of memory market, little incentive to build more fabs amidst high prices.
• Apple Joins the Fray:
  • Apple hikes prices on virtually all hardware except iPhone, Watch, and AirPods.
  • Even low-end devices like Apple TV see significant jumps.
• Microsoft/PC Makers Respond:
  • Surface Laptop/Pro gets quietly released with new 8GB configs at lower starting prices (32:15), but RAM is soldered or fully integrated—no upgrade path.
• Industry-wide UX Shift:
  • Most modern laptops eliminate user RAM upgrades—copied from Apple—removing consumers’ main leverage on futureproofing.

Notable Quotes:

“Why doesn't Apple just suck it up and save us from that cost increase as customers? Because Apple is a company, not a charity…”
— Paul Thurrott (31:32)

“If you don't like it, you could buy somebody else's product who isn't raising prices.”
— Richard Campbell (31:54)

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5. Surface & Copilot+ Devices: Expanding the Lower End

• 8GB RAM configs for new Surface devices signal attempt to reach historically lower price points (though Paul notes these spec levels are for light or secondary use only).
• RAM/SSD upgradeability remains non-existent.
• Pent-up demand for more RAM, barriers for local AI workloads on consumer hardware.

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6. Low-End Surface Devices Discontinued

• Microsoft ends production of Surface Go and Surface Laptop Go (38:18).
• Strategy: Consolidate focus on “Copilot+ PC” models, even at the expense of truly entry-level devices.

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7. Snapdragon, ARM & Windows Gaming

• High-end Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme: impressive RAM integration, but for normal use, real-world gains narrow compared to lower-tier Snapdragon chips.
• RAM speed may matter more than CPU spec for practical tasks.
• Gaming on ARM Windows is improving, but still lags behind x86—Snapdragon Control Panel can help tune performance (124:57).

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8. AI Watch: HP’s OpenAI Partnership and the Cost of Innovation

• HP partners with OpenAI to bolster device and support experiences—part of industry’s drive to differentiate with AI after hardware commoditization (50:52).
• Vague promises: “AI-based experience store, partner, chat and voice experiences.”
• HP’s situation contrasts with Dell and Lenovo, which have diversified into cloud/data center business.
• Broader theme: AI is a double-edged sword, both as productivity-saver and layoff “enabler.”

Notable Quotes:

“They're a pretty responsible group of engineers … hopefully responsible engineers pilot this project and give us real results.”
— Richard Campbell (56:55)

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9. AI Models, Sovereignty, and Orchestration: Waters Getting Murky

• Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet v5: New, more efficient cloud model, reflecting industry move to reduce the cost of AI operations (56:55).
• Outage/Restoration of critical security AI models (like Fable, Mythos) exposes global risk in relying on US models—geopolitical fallout ensues.
• Proliferation of open source and Chinese LLMs, local-AI movement accelerating.
• Emerging best practice: AI agents/harnesses that flexibly choose the ideal model (cloud or local) per task, based on up-to-date benchmarks and privacy preferences.

Notable Quotes:

“We're already in a period where Europe especially … has an understanding that we need to be independent of the United States because we cannot trust this country to do the right thing for us … This drove that home very nicely.”
— Paul Thurrott (61:33)

“At some point we get to what I think of as the ‘good enough’ scenario … and orchestrating between [cloud and local models] is the key.”
— Paul Thurrott (70:35)

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10. The Nostalgia Trap in Tech (Back of the Book)

• Dave Plummer (ex-Microsoft) makes a tiny Notepad clone; Paul criticizes “nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake.”
• Bemoans YouTuber clickbait, “fixing Windows bloat” with micro-apps, and over-romanticizing the 80s/90s tech landscape.
• Genuine insight: The joy of creation once felt at the BASIC prompt of a C64 is mirrored today by accessible “making” with AI.
• Reminder: Most nostalgia is actually about lost simplicity/youth, not actual technical superiority.

Notable Quote:

“Don’t be nostalgic for something that was … not what you think it was.”
— Paul Thurrott (124:19)

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Xbox Segment – “More Doom & Gloom”

• Microsoft expected to cut 2.5% of workforce—Xbox teams included (92:41).
• Larger question: Will game IP or departing studios be spun out, or left to rot as “assets”?
• Xbox price hikes ($100-200 up on each model in August), high-end SKUs discontinued (95:36).
• Digital vs. physical media: Increasingly moot, as even disc games require heavy day-one updates.
• Anecdote: Frustration over media company acquisition logic—companies hoard legacy IP but rarely let anyone use it, even when clearly not valuable to them.

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Whiskey Segment & Canada Day

• [135:21] Richard brings an in-depth historical tale about Alberta’s Turner Valley, oil booms, Rupert’s Land, and a uniquely crafted Alberta whisky for Canada Day.
• Light, amusing close to the show after a heavy “doom & gloom” run.

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Notable & Memorable Moments

• Beta Bits Cereal: “By 27, that sounds like a new cereal, maybe. Beta bits.” (15:33)
• Nostalgia vs. Progress: “The 1980s were not better … the reason it was better in the 80s for me was [I] didn’t have any responsibility.” (117:45)
• Component Crisis Humor: “If you want to kill yourself, Pennsylvania is a great place to be—or at least blow off a finger or two!” (156:50)

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Key Timestamps

• 05:19 – Layoffs and reorganizations: “My LinkedIn feed has been filled with retirements.”
• 11:06 – Windows 10 ESU quietly extended; details and conspiracy speculation.
• 25:19 – Industry-wide component crisis: RAM, SSD prices, implications.
• 32:15 – Surface and Copilot+ PC pricing moves.
• 38:18 – Discontinuation of Surface Go/Surface Laptop Go.
• 50:52 – HP + OpenAI; AI partnerships for PC makers.
• 56:55 – Claude Sonnet; AI orchestration concepts.
• 61:33 – Dependency on US AI models, global reaction to Fable/Mythos outage.
• 70:35 – Agents/harnesses/orchestration: local vs. cloud AI.
• 92:41 – Xbox segment: Layoffs, price hikes, game studio fate speculation.
• 117:45 – Back of the Book: “Don't be nostalgic for stupid” rant.
• 135:21 – Canada Day Whisky segment.

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The Tone & Flow

The hosts blend serious, technical discussion with wry humor and lived industry experience. Paul is fired up on user-centric device choices (and anti-nostalgia), Richard brings historical context and hands-on tips, while Leo steers conversation with guest anecdotes and good-natured teasing. The conversation’s throughline: Tech is always in flux—sometimes senselessly so—but fighting nostalgia and focusing on utility, agency, and adaptability remains the healthiest path.

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For Further Reference:

• Thurrott.com
• RunAsRadio.com
• TWiT Windows Weekly Site

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SUMMARY

If you missed this episode:
Expect candid perspectives on Microsoft’s shifting corporate landscape, a practical breakdown of Windows 10 support realities, a warts-and-all tour through the global hardware squeeze, a timely AI reality check (including model sovereignty and orchestration), and a provocative take on why nostalgia can sabotage more than just UI design. Add to that an in-depth look at whisky (for Canada Day!) and you get a wide-ranging, tech-savvy, and grounded conversation—essential for any Microsoft watcher or tech enthusiast facing 2026’s uncertainty with clear eyes.

Transcript

[Leo Laporte]

It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul and Richard are here. We have lots to talk about. Paul has some thoughts about rewriting Notepad. The title might give you some idea. We'll also talk about why Microsoft quietly extended the Life for Windows 10. And a little bit about expensive hardware. Yeah, it's the topic of the week this week on Windows Weekly. This episode is brought to you by Black Hat usa. If you listen to this show, you go deep on the technical detail. Well, so does Black Hat. For nearly three decades it's been where the security industry's most rigorous research gets presented and pressure tested. More than 100 hands on trainings taught by practitioners who've actually deployed in live environments, not lecturers reading from slides. And hundreds of peer reviewed briefings that go well past the overview into the real work across the four areas defining security right now. AI and autonomous threats, cyber conflict, systemic resilience and identity. This year, Black Hats briefings pass includes all keynotes and main stage access plus business hall entry. You also get breakfast, lunch, Arsenal live tool demos on demand session access and admission to the midnight in the war room screening. Black Hat takes place from August 1st to the 6th in Las Vegas. If you want the depth this show gets into in person with the people doing the work, this is the room. And we'll be there too. Prices rise on July 17th, so book before then. Use the code TWIT for $200 off your briefings [e-mail] us26 that's B L A C K H A T.com us26 podcasts you love from people you trust.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is TWIT.

[Leo Laporte]

This is Windows Weekly with Paul Thurat and Richard Campbell. Episode 990 recorded Wednesday, July 1, 2026. Don't be nostalgic for stupid. It's time for Windows Weekly, the show. We cover the latest news from Microsoft. And here we are, our softies of the hour, Paul Thurot and Richard Campbell. Paul is of course from throt.com, richard's from dotnet rocks and runasradio.com and together they form the dynamic duo of Microsoft journalism.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know how dynamic we are, but yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

One of you is Batman. One of you is Robin. I'll let you decide.

[Paul Thurrott]

The other one is Batgirl. You figure it out.

[Leo Laporte]

You figure it out. Hello, gentlemen.

[Richard Campbell]

Hey.

[Leo Laporte]

Richard's back home, which is nice.

[Richard Campbell]

Been home for a while. It's been a few weeks in a row.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, has it? Oh, I guess I wasn't paying attention. It's weird. Paul is. Well, home is where the heart is. And so he's at home in Makunji.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

It's where the property ownership is. But now he owns in both places.

[Leo Laporte]

So what do you do, actually? Do you own in Makunji now?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we do.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, you bought one, huh? Good for you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we were renting it originally, but.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Yeah, somebody's doing well with the subscriptions at the Rock. That's all I can say.

[Paul Thurrott]

Probably has more to do with Stephanie than me, but I. No, it's like I said, Stephanie last year, sometime I was. Or whenever this was, I was like, you know, we're spending a lot more time in Mexico than we are in Pennsylvania. We should buy a place in Pennsylvania.

[Leo Laporte]

The logic of homeless.

[Paul Thurrott]

Expecting her to explain why that was ridiculous. And she's like, I was thinking the same thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, my God.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay, I've inflicted you with something. That's terrible.

[Leo Laporte]

Careful. Well, that's good. Now you have homes in both places and you have children, so it'll all work out.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I have infinite money, obviously, as I keep telling my daughter who refuses not to be in school.

[Leo Laporte]

Meanwhile, my bitcoin wallet's locked and the value's plummeting.

[Richard Campbell]

Nice.

[Leo Laporte]

I watched it go up. Now I'm watching it go down.

[Richard Campbell]

That's how that works.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

That's not what we're here to talk about today. Today we have gathered together, dearly beloved, to discuss Microsoft.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

What's the latest? Paul? That was.

[Paul Thurrott]

That sounded an awful lot like a. Like a wake or a funeral.

[Leo Laporte]

It could be. Or a wedding. It's a wake or a wedding. One or the other.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, it's the husband. No, it's celebration. Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

Last week was so busy with Windows, I wouldn't be surprised if this week would just be quiet.

[Paul Thurrott]

It was quieter. But by the way, part of the reason is literally today, as we record, this is July 1st. Right. I can't say the date, but fiscal year. This is the beginning of the fiscal year. So we've been on kind of a death knell watch for a little while, meaning like three years. But a lot about Xbox, but just Microsoft in general and personal tech in general too, I guess, because obviously a lot of layoffs and then in the scheme of things with Xbox game closures, studio closures, you know, etc.

[Richard Campbell]

So my LinkedIn feed has been filled with retirements. Just.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I. I've been getting emailed from people and it's interesting. Someone. This is from some. I think it's like an internal Microsoft Email thread. But it was the basically the kind of takeaway I had a year ago build like so a year ago May when I was out there and it was all this terribleness going on and they had done a series of really poorly done layoffs, including a set right before build opened where it was so bad that there were people who were supposed to man booths at the show would gone, you know, and they never. Yeah, no one thought to figure out,

[Richard Campbell]

you know, they laid off everyone from a booth like we were there. It's like that booth never got built and it's because that group didn't exist.

[Paul Thurrott]

Exactly. So they've learned some lessons since then. So one of the things we've seen this year is that they offered certain employees who have been there a long time and have accrued a lot of whatever points they have, you know, Microsoft points or something, achievements, whatever they are, you know, they use their Microsoft Rewards points and they can take an early retirement and whatever. Apparently that's been very successful. Microsoft has not to my knowledge ever said what percentage of that group, but it was at least 30% of them, 33%, something like that, which was their goal. And that worked out. And so one of the rumors, we'll call it for now because we don't know, is that when Microsoft does announce layoffs, apparently next week now it will be a smaller number than anticipated because they got enough people to kind of voluntarily go and so we'll see, we'll see what happens there. But I do feel like last week a little bit every day this week so far. Absolutely kind of sense of dread the morning for me and I don't even work there. You know, I'm, I'm. I'm kind of braced for the bad. You know, Microsoft lowers the boom kind of news each morning and it hasn't happened yet, but.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, I certainly heard a lot of reorg conversation going on too, so. So folks are think things are being moved around. There seems to be. It's like the frost giants are hurling stones at each other. Like there's lightning bolts up at the upper echelons and right. And the, the folks further down are being pushed about as the.

[Paul Thurrott]

Everybody loves to be evaluated. Everyone loves to be found lacking because of some arbitrary new rule that, you know, you have to get rid of x percent of people or whatever the heck it is. Yeah, there was one person who had said, which is something I had sort of written maybe a year half ago, whatever that was. Like it's kind of worse being there and not knowing what's going to happen than it would be just to get laid off, you know, like, at least that there's some certain things.

[Richard Campbell]

I've certainly seen people doing retirement that way. It's like, I might get laid off, I might not. I'm going to control my destiny and get the hell out of here.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, right. Yeah. And I think gigwire published a story maybe today or yesterday that was kind of the. That too. Some older guys who were at Microsoft for a long time were like, look, I just. I was happy to be able to pull the trigger on my own schedule, you know, sort of my own schedule, at least of my own volition anyway.

[Richard Campbell]

So self determination has some power to it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. It's too bad that we even have to talk about this. But, you know, 220,000 employees, this is not the. This is not a thin, light machine.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, it's a fraction of the size of Amazon. But then they have warehouses.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. I mean, most of those employees are drivers and warehouse people, you know? Yeah. Anyhow, as far as actual news, since we don't have anything to say there yet, actually. Oh, I meant to look this up. So, remember some time ago I had mentioned that last fall was sometime. I said, you know, it's weird we haven't heard from Phil Spencer in a while, you know?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

And it's like. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I did not look this up. So maybe I'm wrong, but Pavan Davalori, who runs Windows, started a podcast, had one episode. Did he ever make another one? I don't actually know. I don't know that I don't. I meant to look this up this morning. I forgot. I'm not saying he's gone. I'm sure he's still around, but, like, in the sense that it's easy to start anything, the trick is keeping it going. He says. Looking at. Two gentlemen have been doing podcasts for over 20 years. You know that there's some skill or whatever you want to call it into doing the thing. Right. So we'll see.

[Richard Campbell]

Presumably he went down to, you know, building 25 and use the facilities that are already set up and good to go. But that doesn't necessarily mean you can make the time to do it. Plus, there's always the question of his PR team decided this was a good idea. He did one. And when he came out of this is, I'm never doing that again.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that could be. He doesn't seem.

[Richard Campbell]

He doesn't have all those experiences with folks.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

He's not super into the spotlight. You can kind of tell that. But that's what I like about him. You know, generally speaking, that group, not him necessarily, but the whole group, and then Xbox, same thing under Isha Sharma, have been very good about, you know, communicating what they're doing and providing little monthly recaps. Okay, here's all the stuff we fixed in windows this month, etc. It has, you know, it's been a nice little, you know, a couple of months, I guess we'll call it so far. So I think he should make more videos, but I guess we'll see.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it also depends on how glib you are and how much scripting you want to do there. You know, people pick up on the authenticity in that space. So maybe you're better at written, you know, but that's more your style.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So the format of the first one, which might be the only one, again I have to look, was with an interview with Markish Marcus Ash, who's a great guy, and I feel like just doing that sort of thing where you're. You're a. You're. You're letting people who are doing some work get out in front of people, which is nice.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. It's always good when some leadership puts somebody in front of somebody. Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep. I think that's. I think that's great. So I just. You could just do it like that. He doesn't have to be the one that communicates, hey, we did it. We won. You know, mission accomplished, whatever. But I. Yeah, just. If you just do it just for that reason, I think it'd be great, you know, so. Yeah, we'll see.

[Richard Campbell]

Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Actual news. And interestingly, this occurred without any announcement whatsoever on Microsoft's part. You would have thought that this would have been a big, big deal. But sometime in the past week or so, they silently updated the page they have on the Microsoft website For the Windows 10 Extended Security Updates page, page, whatever program, and they changed the date. Someone just went in and edited the year. So instead of ending in October of this year, it's now going to end on October 13, 20. Actually, now it's October 12, 2027. So this is my problem with them

[Richard Campbell]

doing this quietly is you wonder if it's a typo.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, as I said that, I was thinking almost the same thing, except that now I realize they actually had to change two parts of it because the original date was October 13, 2026. Now it's 10-12-20. So it seems purposeful. I did do one of those Wayback Machine things. To see when it changed. The most recent one I could see that still had the old date was in May, so it was sometime this past month. But yay. I mean, so that's great. And just so people don't understand what this means or don't remember or whatever, if you have a Windows 10 PC and you either did not update to Windows 11 for your own reasons, or it just does not qualify. Microsoft offered to consumers for the first time the ability to get extended support. I think they were originally planning to charge for it. They got some negative feedback on that and just decided to do it for free for a year. They've been doing this for businesses over several Windows versions now, probably for up to three years, where they escalate the cost year by year, which makes it probably expensive toward the end. But this is the first time they've ever offered this to consumers. And of course, when you hear this A, you're like the initial reaction, oh, that's great, that's a really good idea. And then you're like, well, hold on a second. What's going on here? What's happening? And if they're going to be shipping these updates to businesses anyway, why wouldn't you just let people keep getting the updates too? I mean, what's the difference? But I mean, those updates are there, right? And then of course, just the whole, are we really ready for this thing? I mean, as we were heading into that month and, you know, Richard, I know, was wondering, like, are they actually just going to extend this? You know. Yeah, and they didn't ever say that. And you know, the year, almost, not a year, but, you know, nine months, whatever it's been, has gone by. No one's really talked about it. And they've clearly have gotten. I don't know if they use certain metrics or however they decided to do this, but they just quietly made the little change.

[Richard Campbell]

Made the little change. I never said anything because I guess they don't want to necessarily encourage it either.

[Paul Thurrott]

But yeah, I mean, obviously they do want people on Windows 11, but it's

[Richard Campbell]

also about paying for tech support. Right? Like that Microsoft has to maintain people skilled in tech support for 10 for longer.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I mean, yes and no. I mean, you know, if you're an individual, I don't know how many people going directly to Microsoft for support yet typically is the responsibility of the PC maker. And I, by this point, they're off the hook anyway. You know, I suppose you could. They must offer paid incident, whatever. But I assume most of this is most people Just don't bother. I do find it interesting that you could right now enroll and it would be free and it would just work through the new time period. You don't have to have done it already. If for some reason you have a Windows 10 PC you haven't opened up in a while, you can throw that thing together and it could be supported through next October.

[Richard Campbell]

The numbers must work for them that enough have moved and the ones that haven't moved, it's enough difficulty that you're just like keep supporting them.

[Paul Thurrott]

Then I would like to insert a conspiracy theory into the middle of all these facts because what the heck. I wonder, of course, what this has to do with Windows 12, if that ever occurs. Does this say anything about the timing for some next major release of Windows, which way or may not be called Windows 12? Like, is this that thing that 26H1 becomes? Is it going to happen next year, late this year? You know, is it done to, you know, line this up so that by the time Windows 10 is truly not supported, at least for consumers, there's. There are still two, you know, major versions of Windows that are out there.

[Richard Campbell]

Maybe, yeah, you can make an argument for that, that by 20 they might have beta bits flowing around.

[Leo Laporte]

By 27, that sounds like a new cereal, maybe. Beta bits.

[Paul Thurrott]

Beta bits, yeah, it's the type you get in a bag. Like that's unmarked, but it looks like alphabets. And the shapes, they're not really letters, they're like mathematical symbols. Like, is that an umlaut? What is that?

[Richard Campbell]

It's the cereal you can make cartoon swears with.

[Paul Thurrott]

You're just playing with your cereal and then you start laughing to yourself like a crazy person. Anyway, whatever. So this is good news. I mean, there's, you know, there's no way around that.

[Leo Laporte]

It's good, it's good, it's all good.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's good, it's good, it's good. And then in the insider program, only one major development, I guess they announced as they've been doing. I kind of don't like this. I guess there are different ways to do this, but they announce a bunch of new builds all at once now in the same post. And then they don't really say much about what's in them in that post. So you have to go to all these sub post to kind of figure out what it is. I know there's a lot of overlap and I guess I sort of understand it, but it just makes the whole thing rather tedious. But the two main things that came out of this set of updates that date back to last. Where am I? Is it Friday? Yeah, Friday is one. They're making this change, which I actually kind of wondered about because I'd been updating the book. I did an episode of Hands on Windows about this. If you have the new Taskbar experience and you go into taskbar settings, they didn't change the name of the feature that has been in Windows 11 for a while, but never worked correctly. So if you scroll down to the bottom of tasks, is it the bottom? Actually, it's not the bottom. It's wherever it is in Taskbar behaviors, it is the bottom. There is an option called show smaller Taskbar Buttons, which is accurate until now because if you turn this on or if you just made it always on, the taskbar buttons would get smaller, but the taskbar stayed the bigger size. And it's like, guys,

[Richard Campbell]

what's the point?

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, but in this new version of the Taskbar, they didn't change the option name. But if you actually turn that to Always now or in the new version, if you have it, it actually does make the taskbar smaller. I just thought that was kind of weird because it's not just the taskbar. One of the changes that's in this set of Insider bills is they've changed the language of that. So in other words, instead of it being the old option, it actually has a new name where it's more. More accurately says, let me see if I can find this thing, because I don't have this build yet, or I don't have this feature enabled yet. But I think it just says. It doesn't matter what it says, it's just more accurate. Basically it says, oh, it's just taskbar size. It's like small, large, you know, or automatic or whatever. So good. That's good. But the other change is Microsoft this past, it was probably may announced and then started implementing a new Windows Insider channel system. Right. So instead of having Dev Beta Canary and Release Preview, they now have experimental and then 118 other sub channels as part of a, you know, a simpler inside a program. But the weirdness of this, and this is something that's really bit me a lot because again, you know, I'm doing these recordings for hands on Windows, I'm writing the book or whatever. I want to see these new features. So you bring up either a new computer or reset a computer. You have to. Until yesterday, basically, you had to go into Settings, say, yes, I want to be part of the Insider program. I want to be part of the dev channel, you have to reboot the computer, you have to install the latest dev build, then you opt into the new system and then you can go into experiment, whatever it is. It's like this multi step program, but they're actually changing that now so that now this is the default Windows Insider interface inside settings. So you will in fact see experimental and beta and not the old stuff. So that's good. So I mean, that's good. I'm glad. That actually came together pretty quick. So that's kind of nice.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, there we go.

[Paul Thurrott]

And then as far as the rest of those builds, God help you all. I have no idea. I don't think there's much. I literally looked through every one of them. I was like, nope, nope. Oh, oh, no, nope there either. Okay. Yeah, it's not a lot going on.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't know why I'm kind of surprised. Maybe we're not at the end of the Windows segment or anything, but I'm kind of surprised. You didn't mention the extension of Microsoft Support for Windows 10 for another year.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mentioned that at the top of the show.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, there it is. Quietly extends the. So quiet. I didn't hear it.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm sorry.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, we've trumpeted it, but Microsoft didn't want.

[Paul Thurrott]

They don't. Yeah, they don't.

[Richard Campbell]

They didn't say.

[Paul Thurrott]

They don't seem to be super interested in talking about it, which, you know, I guess does it.

[Leo Laporte]

They don't want people to do it, you think or this. That they.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't think they want to call attention to it. It's. I like when they kind of just quietly do the right thing, you know, there was a long period of time, and I mean like eight years something or maybe longer, where you could bring in your old Windows 7, Vista, whatever product key and it would activate 8 and then 10 and it worked like forever. And I think it might have even worked on 11.

[Richard Campbell]

They often announce deadlines on that and I don't know if they ever turned it off. I wonder if we could find eight key if we could still upgrade it.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, they actually, they did eventually turn it off, but it took them many years and the original promise was one year, you know, and it was nice.

[Richard Campbell]

There was no reason to turn it off like it did. Nothing bad for them other than retire old versions of Windows, which is really not a bad thing.

[Leo Laporte]

That's a good thing.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I think we can pause briefly in this fabulous program to mention our fine sponsor for this segment of Windows Weekly Zscaler. We'll have more Windows Weekly in just a bit, but I do want to tell you about the world's largest cloud security platform. We talk about AI on all of our shows a lot. So much so that we're getting email now saying, can you not? But it's the flavor du jour. And honestly, if you're in business, you're absolutely. You better be thinking about what you can do with AI, because I know your competitors are. The potential rewards of AI are just too great to ignore. But I would say there are also risks, and you don't want to ignore those either. The loss of sensitive data, sometimes even accidentally. And of course, there's attacks against enterprise managed AI. And then there's the issue of AI. We talked about this yesterday on Security now. Really giving the bad guys new tools, new opportunities, helping them to rapidly create phishing lures that are indistinguishable from the real thing. They can use it to write malicious code to automate data extraction. But I kind of want to focus on this whole thing about accidental loss of proprietary data through the use of generative AI tools. Last year, companies told us there were 1.3 million instances of Social Security numbers leaked to AI applications. Not intentionally. Nobody types in their social. But it's very easy when you're giving documents to a chatbot saying, help me with this, to accidentally leak all sorts of proprietary information. That's why you need Zscaler. Zscaler is the most trusted AI security platform. In fact, 40% now of the global 2000 companies, 40%. 4. 0 use Zscaler. Zscaler is handling now half a trillion transactions a day. They're securing half a trillion with a T transactions a day. They have nine global customers and Net Promoter loves them. Zscaler has a Net Promoter score of more than 75. That's one and a half times higher than the average SaaS. But so do Zscaler's customers. In fact, I've got one for you, Ziva. He's the director of security and Infrastructure at Zuora. This is what he says about using Zscaler to prevent AI attacks. Watch with Zscaler. Being in line in a security protection

[Paul Thurrott]

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

[Leo Laporte]

proactively prevent that activity from happening.

[Paul Thurrott]

AI is tremendous in terms of its opportunities, but it also brings in challenges.

[Leo Laporte]

We're confident that Zscaler is going to help us ensure that we're not slowed

[Paul Thurrott]

down by security challenges, but continue to take advantage of all the advancements.

[Leo Laporte]

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[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, we should have started week for Apple fans. I know it's a bad week for everybody really. I guess everybody. Yeah, yeah. I, you know, we have an AI segment and maybe we need like a component crisis segment. Like if you guys, we were all alive during the hostage crisis with Iran. America's like day 627, you know. Yeah, exactly.

[Richard Campbell]

They are handed though.

[Leo Laporte]

It is the AI, you know, crisis.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

In some ways kind of go hand in hand.

[Richard Campbell]

I have had listeners asking me about, are you going to do a show about the hardware crisis? I'm like, what am I going to say?

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, yes. All we're going to do is just complain every week about how much more expensive everything is, you know, and it's

[Leo Laporte]

not going to go down ever, do you think? I mean this is the debate, right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I don't know. That's the worry. I do feel like if they go down they'll plateau higher than they were before, if that makes sense. You know. But I, but again, we don't know when it's going to end. We don't know. We don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, you do have the problem that what are we at three companies that make 90 plus percent of all the memory.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. Micron, SK, Hynix and Samsung.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. So that, that's pretty collusive at some point.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, there is a lawsuit actually in California against themselves for price fixing. But they're not building new fabs. I guess Micron supposedly around in New York State.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, yeah, so Micron. I guess some of those companies could. But here's the thing. Why there's really no incentive for them to do that. When you think about it, they're charging incredibly high prices. These things cost billions and billions of dollars to make. They take years and years to make.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

And by the time you get this

[Leo Laporte]

thing, New York State fab for Micron.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. So if you get. Once you get this thing done, there's a pretty good chance you can't charge the prices you were charging when you started building the thing, which is a big problem. You might have this. All this capacity that never goes used. There you go. That's a huge problem. And there's only so much demand for. Well, you know, we haven't reached the, you know, the end of it. But they're making. Selling everything they make, I think, right at the price they have. So if it somehow made sense, you could inst. Spin a thing up and keep charging that price, they would do it. It's not going to solve our problem because they're not going to sell that stuff to PC makers or device makers. They're going to sell it to AI companies.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, and even it's four years away, right. Like, whatever's going to happen is going to have happened.

[Leo Laporte]

That's what all the companies are saying. It's like 2030 before there's even a chance of this big signal.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, this is a big. This is not a. Why doesn't Apple just make iPhones in the United States? It's like you use the word just in there. And I got to say, that really starts the conversation. Ye. This just betrays a lack of understanding of how these things work. So there's no, you know, there's no solving it. And you know, past maybe two weeks ago, whenever it was, we were talking, you know, about this, as we will for a lot this year. We'll talk about it in for Xbox later. But you know, companies that are better positioned to kind of withstand this, so to speak, are now starting to fall as well, and Apple being the biggest one. So I did wake up one morning, I actually noticed this as it was happening. I don't know why I did this, but I went to the Apple Store and said, we're down right now. We'll be back in a little while. And I was like, oh, that's not good. They don't have anything coming out now. This is not a new product. And I would say except for iPhones, they basically raised the price on all of their major hardware products. So some of these are gigantic increases depending on what, you know, an Apple. I don't remember the exact prices and like, things like Apple TV, but like Apple TV 4K, whatever the latest one is, went from, you know, 200 to 350 or something. Like, it's like some of these jumps are pretty big.

[Leo Laporte]

I think the thing about that is I doubt they're making new Apple TVs. I doubt that this is passing along the costs of making new Apple TVs.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, right.

[Leo Laporte]

Product.

[Paul Thurrott]

I got that by the way. It was 150 to 250. Not whatever I said, but. But yeah, these things all went up pretty.

[Richard Campbell]

That's a hard cost go up.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's a set price. That's a big increase. I had bought an iPad Pro back in I guess May, and that and every other iPad Pro is $200 more per configuration than it was at the time. And boy, did I save a lot of money.

[Richard Campbell]

They didn't raise the price on the iPhone because they figured they're concerned about the icry. So they offset the cost by raising the price on the other products more.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, and they will raise the price on the new ones when those come

[Leo Laporte]

out cost that much more. Of course, iPhone, apple watch and AirPods. But now remember, the AirPods don't have RAM or hard drives. The ipod, the iPad has RAM and SSDs, as does the iPhone. But yeah, I figured they're gonna do. Let's see. No, it was the Watch. The Watch has RAM but no storage. Anyway, the Watch phone and AirPods did not go up. That's the only product.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay, but I bet they all go up in September, right? I think this is reasonable to expect. So here we are. This is the world. I mean, we have these smaller companies in the PC space like Microsoft, not a big PC maker. We have big players. Hp, Lenovo, et cetera, Apple. And yeah, we've reached the point of there's no one immune at this point. And that's bad for everybody. And we've already talked about how bad the Surface price increases were this year. They just announced those new products and you're just going to see this everywhere. I talk about this Asus laptop. This is a couple hundred bucks more expensive than it was between the time they shipped it to me and the time I wrote about it. The price of that went up. The world is crazy. So there's that. So Apple, I think Apple is the canary in this particular Chrome Miner, maybe whatever the opposite of a canary is because they were last. But yeah, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, the guy who called in sick because he wanted to watch tv. I don't know. Whatever they are, you know, there you go. So there's no escaping. This is the bad news. And then Microsoft stuff.

[Richard Campbell]

Best deals for manufacturing now also have

[Paul Thurrott]

to raise price prices.

[Richard Campbell]

Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. Yeah. What a world. Big tech is not just terrible to everyone else, they're terrible to themselves. Apple doesn't have the ability to go to whatever supplier and say no, you got to give us some of this and say no, we don't. We have someone paying a lot more than you over here. Sorry. It's incredible. So that's the world. These things are businesses. Why doesn't Apple just suck it up and save us from that cost increase as customers? Because Apple is a company, not a charity and despite their marketing, they're really in this to make money. So sorry, that's the world.

[Richard Campbell]

If you don't like it, you could buy somebody else's product

[Leo Laporte]

who isn't raising prices.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's the question. Yeah, exactly. Nobody. You're stuck. So that's that. I don't remember the timing anymore, but sometime in the past month or so, Microsoft announced the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 based Surface Laptop and Surface Pros.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

And there are multiple models of each. One of the things they had said at the announcement was that they were going to start they would sell in the Future configurations with 8 gigs of RAM. Until they did that, all these things started at 16. These are Copilot plus PCs in the same way that Microsoft quite.

[Richard Campbell]

Is 16 the base for Copilot plus PC?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it is, yeah. So Microsoft quietly extended Windows 10 ESU by a year and they also quietly released those 8 gig configurations without telling anybody. So if you go to configure one of these, you will in fact be able to buy an 8 gig version of the. It's probably the smaller of each, like the 12 inch Surface Pro because there was a 13 inch and then the 13 inch Surface laptop whereas there's also a 13.5 and a 15 inch model there. They start at $850 and $950 respectively. They announced those things before or they didn't announce them. I'm sorry. They added those things to their website to buy before Apple announced that they were raising prices. So at that time it was like, well, the MacBook Neo also 8 gigs of RAM started at $600. It was like. But now those are a little more expensive. I think the base price is probably, I assume it's $699 or whatever. It's a little closer. The Microsoft ones are still more expensive. They have to be. But the hope here is that the work that Microsoft and Apple respectively are doing to their platforms this year to make these systems more efficient and more resource friendly will make that experience better. I wouldn't touch an 8 gig PC with your hands.

[Richard Campbell]

It seems like an unwise Solution to the problem. Better to buy an extended warranty on your existing machine and stretch it out another year or two.

[Paul Thurrott]

We talked about this last week, I think, but this is compounded by the fact that all of these computers, basically the RAM is either soldered or integrated into the SoC and there is no way to upgrade this later. And that's a huge problem because you can make a compelling case for saving money today and getting less storage and RAM than you might want with the understanding that in the future there'll be a sale someday or whatever it is, prices actually come down. Whatever, you'll be able to upgrade that and it's okay. It's not ideal, but it's not a thing for the vast majority of PCs. I think I've only for all the p. I don't know how many I've reviewed so far this year, but usually it's like 20 to 25 in a year. I've only seen one computer with upgradable RAM myself, which, you know, is anecdotal, but there just aren't that many of them.

[Leo Laporte]

No.

[Richard Campbell]

The drive for the Ultrabook for maximum thinness and so forth drove us to soldered on components.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Yeah. Now the industry was so that we were so busy copying Apple we sort of never thought about, like, how we might better differentiate. Yeah. What the outcome might be, etc.

[Richard Campbell]

So the market also accepted it too, and said, oh, I can't change the ram, whatever. I never change.

[Leo Laporte]

Change the ram.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's so troubling. And this too is a thing. There will be exceptions to this, of course. There are some laptop models. It's possible the laptop I'm using right now might be the one. I can't remember which one. This is a ThinkPad P1, which I think has that new. I think they're called CODIMs or there's a new name for it. But they're kind of a smaller, thinner, lighter DIMM kind of card. So. So there are some. But this is very uncommon in the portable space for sure. Surface Pro8 gig surface laptop. Not super interesting to me, but you can at least configure those devices with more RAM and more storage at purchase time. You'll pay a lot for it. I mean, the $850 12 inch Surface Pro goes from 849 to 1049. So it's a $200 price increase just to get 16 gigs of RAM, which honestly, for Surface, I have to say it's pretty good. Like, that's actually not too bad, but it's still, it's still real money. I mean it's kind of tough, you know. Same thing on the surface laptop. It's 949 to 1149. So you know, you have these options. You could spend over three grand on a Surface and you could spend I think over 10 grand on the MacBook Pro right now if you wanted to. But. But God, you know, the sad thing

[Leo Laporte]

is I'm not gonna spend that kind of money. But I would love a Mac studio that had enough RAM that I could run local models. Cause it's very good for local models. They don't even sell them. Yeah, so that will top memory is now 96 gigs. They can't get.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm not the Apple rumor guy, but I do read up on this stuff and I don't remember date, I don't remember anything like anything exact. But I know that is coming and that might be a 2028 thing, but eventually, you know, maybe it's like an M7 by that point, whatever the schedule is. But the plan is to have that kind of thing in the future, but it's not going to happen this year. I mean you're not going to see that anytime soon.

[Leo Laporte]

Which must be griping Apple a little because they have this hardware that's really well suited to it. They just can't get the ram.

[Paul Thurrott]

You have to wonder if there's anything that can be done with Apple silicon to make this work better with less ram, which is the big thing. This the Gemini Nano model. I don't know. I don't know. Okay, so there's that. And then of course you know when you hear this you're like, well, Microsoft has sold these Surface Go. Surface Laptop Go. These low end computers. Now as these were coming out just a few years back, several years back, whatever it might be, they were using the equivalent, whatever the names are, you know, in modern days of what we used to call Pentium or Celeron. Intel has a Wildcat chip set coming out that is the modern version that stuff. So it should be pretty good. I mean ARM announced Qualcomm rather announced the Snapdragon C etc. But apparently Microsoft has discontinued those laptops. So they hadn't been refreshed in a long time. But Zach Boden over at Windows Central says that they've ended production. There are no versions in the pipeline.

[Richard Campbell]

They weren't Copilot PC compliant.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, and also Surface specifically, they're consolidating brands, right. They want to have fewer computers. And this is a lot like the Insider program. So it's primarily Surface Laptop and Surface Pro, but there are three different versions of Laptop and two different versions of Pro, and there are multiple versions of both because they come with intel and Qualcomm versions. So it's actually, it's still kind of complicated. So I think Microsoft's official answer, if they have addressed this would be to say we don't need those anymore because what we have now is the 8 gig configurations of Service Laptop and Pro. An 8 gig configuration of either of those products with a Qualcomm Snapdragon C I would be vaguely curious about. But maybe they're not ready. That's not what they're offering. So the $850, $950 price is a Snapdragon X2. Actually, it might be an X1 Plus. Let me just, let me look. Yeah, excuse me, I'm sorry. It's actually last year's Plus. It's not even the X2 Plus. It's the X Plus from last year, which sounds terrible. It's not. In fact, we'll talk about that in one moment. My experience last year buying what at the time was a $600 Snapdragon X, like the very basest version of that chip on a 15 inch HP laptop was wonderful. That computer's still fantastic today. This year you kind of step up to an X2 plus. And I just reviewed, I think it's an IdeaPad Slim 5X, which is at 850 bucks. Fantastic. So those low end chips are actually very good. I would be more willing to accept a low end Snapdragon than an intel chip any day. I mean, there's no doubt about that. I don't know if a Snapdragon C will be cheaper or maybe they went with the last year chip because that actually is cheaper. I don't know. I mean, it's Microsoft, who can say? But maybe they got a good deal on them, they went to a yard sale, there were a bunch of them in a basket. I don't know what they do, but that's what they're doing. So that's a thing. But we'll see if this evolves. I don't know. And then I'm just mentioning this because, well, I just reviewed it. I don't usually call out individual reviews, but I have now had one experience with that highest end Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chip. And this is the one where they integrate the ram into the SoC. It's not just, you know, soldered on. It's like, you know, dramatically faster access to ram, which I believe is probably a bigger deal than the chip itself, honestly, and for the reason I just sort of stated, which is that my experience over these past three years now with various levels of x OGX, you know, x, x plus x extreme, and then x 2 plus extreme and x 2 plus x 2 elite, and now x 2 elite extreme, is that unless you're doing something insane, which I have never been able to figure out what that could be on an ARM computer. They just all kind of work really well, you know, if somehow this thing magically played Triple A games and it just worked. I guess you could make that case. There's no version of a test that makes sense to me where I could demonstrate that running some local AI task, whatever it might be, doubling the resolution of an image in photos, or pick your little whatever it is where I can say, yep, this thing is like 25, 50% whatever number faster. I don't see that. I don't know what to say about this. So this thing is wonderful. It's a little expensive. It's probably more future proof. And a lot of it has to do with, I think, with the speed of the ram, honestly, and the amounts, because these things come, well, started with 48 gigs of RAM, which is a curious amount, I think we can all agree. But now they have a 24 gigabyte figuration as well, to kind of address the price increases. So I. Someday there will be a thing. Look, people can run benchmarks. I get all that stuff. You can. I. I don't care about that stuff. I just use the thing. And I got to tell you, build quality notwithstanding, you go from a X2 to an X2 Elite Extreme and you're doing the same thing, whatever it is, Visual studio, compiling, running an app. I don't use Photoshop, but affinity, doing whatever with graphics, editing, video, whatever it is, it works great on both. And I don't know what to tell you. It's just not that different. I think the RAM matters more, which is, again, a problem right now, because RAM is stupid expensive.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm looking at specking a machine out. It doesn't even tell me how much RAM I get in it.

[Paul Thurrott]

And the. Oh, the Asus.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's. It's 24 or 48.

[Richard Campbell]

It's that 24, 48. And. Yeah. And if you get the X2, I think it comes with 48, like, you don't really have a choice.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So maybe we should now have a serious conversation about how much RAM you really need.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, this what bothers me.

[Richard Campbell]

RAM is more.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, well, we've always said that, but now you can't get more.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, no. So I still believe that. Look, for anyone listening to this show, and it's 16 or 32 or more. I mean, no doubt about it. The thing is, when Apple announces something like a MacBook Neo and everyone's like, oh my God, I can't believe it's only 500 bucks or whatever the price was, this is like. I don't mean to demean it in this way, but this is what Chromebooks are for. A Chromebook is not typically used all day long. Every day. Although some people do. As a computer, it's a secondary device. It's like you're mostly on your phone, but sometimes you need the big screen and the keyboard and all that kind of stuff. And that to me is what the MacBook Neo is. That to me is what any 8 gigabyte machine is today. That's not all day long. Every day. You sending a kid off to school for 4 years start with an 8 gig laptop is a punishment. That is not right.

[Leo Laporte]

But that's the Neo a lot of people I know.

[Paul Thurrott]

And that's why I don't recommend that.

[Leo Laporte]

Because for high school maybe you think,

[Paul Thurrott]

no, not for any amount of time. Because it's just a future proof issue. If there was one way to configure it with 16, you know, if that was just an option, which it will be right next year or whatever, 12. But okay, that's fine. That's a step up, you know, whatever it might be. I mean, there's always like these. Not always. There's often these weird amounts like when I bought my Surface laptop and again this year, you know, it's like 16. It's not 1632, 64. It's like 1624. You're like what, you know, 32, 48, 64. Right? So I go, okay, yeah. So you get these half steps, right? And that's fine. Anything is better than eight. You know, nine would be better than eight, but whatever, Anything is better than that. And if your goal is to actually use this thing all day, use the computer, not just have the computer and use it sometime, but use it's 8 gig is not enough. This is what I liked about Copilot Plus PC. It established an acceptable baseline. 16 gigs of RAM, 256 gigs of storage, which that actually is kind of low. And then Apple did the same thing later that year when they came up with the new generation of Macs. Later that year 16 became the baseline and that's the right number, you know. Except now. Excuse me. I'm sorry, my throat is

[Leo Laporte]

dry.

[Paul Thurrott]

Here, you need some more.

[Leo Laporte]

You need some ram. He's low on RAM there.

[Richard Campbell]

He's throat.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep, two. Needed two nanometer water.

[Richard Campbell]

So.

[Paul Thurrott]

But I mean, it depends on what you. Obviously there are. Look, some people do need more. This is the fact, right? Some people do they know who they are. Maybe they're gamers, maybe they're engineers, scientists, programmers, whatever. Most people though over buy and they do it because of a just in case kind of a situation, right? It's like. You never know.

[Leo Laporte]

You said the words future proofing.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but there. But to me, this. That's the happy medium. I mean, because we, you know, expect. Leaving out the fact that you cannot upgrade. Sorry, I don't know what's going on here. It's, you know, that's something you do have to think about. So. I don't know, four years in high school, eight to 12, would that make the difference? Yeah, maybe. Sorry, I gotta. I gotta figure this out.

[Leo Laporte]

Take a break and we'll come back with more in just a minute.

[Paul Thurrott]

Sorry, Paul.

[Leo Laporte]

Coughing.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know. I don't know what's going on there.

[Leo Laporte]

Sorry.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's relentless.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm gonna do an ad. That's what I'm gonna do. That's why the ads are here, to actually separate the. You know, give you guys a break. In other words, they used to say that the newspaper news stories were just there to separate the ads. And I think that's still true to some extent. Our show today. Not true. No. You matter, Paul. You matter to me. Our show today, brought to you by Cohesity. This is a new sponsor and I'm really excited about them. I'm sure in your back of your mind you're thinking, well, I know that it's inevitable at some point we're going to suffer a cyber attack, but I don't want to think about it right now. But if you're a business leader, if you're a security leader, it's probably best not to put that off. But to think about what happens if you get attacked after a major cyber attack. I would suggest that recovering everything right now isn't always the fastest path back to business. Cohesity would say the immediate priority is restoring a trusted operating core. So the minimum systems data, the minimum processes that you need to keep the critical, the mission critical operations running, do that first. That's why Cohesity Championship, what they call the mvc, the minimum Viable company. I love this idea. It's a framework for defining, protecting and recovering what matters most first. If you scramble to get it all back up and running, it could be a long time. Look at Jaguar Land Rover. More than a month. More than a month. That's why it's so important to focus on the minimum viable company. MVC helps organizations identify. And you do this before, by the way, you do this now before you get attacked. Identify the essential applications, the data, the people, the processes that you're going to need to serve customers, to maintain communications. You don't want to just drop off the face of the earth to protect revenue and to meet your critical obligations. This is a new way of thinking, I think, about resilience. The MVC provides a clear recovery target, enabling teams to focus resources where they're going to have the greatest business impact. By restoring this trusted operating core first, organizations can reduce downtime, accelerate recovery, maintain continuity while the broader restoration efforts continue. You're not going to, you're not, you're not saying we're not going to fix it. You're just saying let's get the minimum viable company up first. Because cyber resilience isn't just about getting systems back online. It's about keeping the business operating when disruption strikes. Have you considered this? Have you thought about this? I'll tell you what, you can learn more when you go to cohesity.com resilience cohesity resilience everywhere. I really like this. I think this is really an important thing to kind of to consider. What's the, what's the most important core of things you can get going and you see help you do that. Cohesity.com Resilience We've got Paul's minimal viable voice back.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know. I think the. So by the way, we're having a crazy heat wave thing here on the East coast. It's gonna be 100 degrees tomorrow. It's 96 right now.

[Leo Laporte]

Yikes.

[Paul Thurrott]

But so you know, the AC is cranking, but I also, I usually keep a couple of windows cracked, like in the bedroom, for example. I actually close those. I wonder if it's not just like ac, like it just dries you out.

[Leo Laporte]

Might well be. Yeah, sure, could be. I don't know.

[Paul Thurrott]

Anyway, anything, anything that keeps, tell me.

[Leo Laporte]

I will, I will make up an ad if you need it. You just tell me when you need a break. Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think anything that makes me speak less is fine. So it's all good anyway. Yeah. So look, just to kind of wrap up the whole Component crisis thing, we're screwed. Okay, so we do have some AI stuff this week. We might as well benefit from the reason for our component crisis.

[Richard Campbell]

Remember that memory you can't buy? It's trying to understand the sentence you just wrote.

[Paul Thurrott]

So the first story is kind of bizarre in a way. So HP, the world's second biggest maker of PCs, is partnering with OpenAI. And the reason you're having problems selling PCs is going to somehow be the thing that helps you sell more PCs. So here's the thing. So this is a tough one. I love hp. They make great products. I'm not really dumping on them or anything like that, but hp, like Lenovo, does the same thing. They depending on the type of PC you buy, there's going to be like this stuff bundled on there. Some of it's going to be from third party, some of it's going to be from hp, some of it's going to be useful and some of it is not. And if it's a consumer PC, there's going to be more of that is not stuff. Right. Crapware as we call it. One of the things both these companies are doing, which this kind of thing has always bothered me and it bothers me more, I think with AI, is they have AI chatbots of their own that use whatever on the back end. It doesn't matter, who cares. Nobody wants another chatbot. And I will never understand this. I just don't quite get this. But their partnership with OpenAI isn't just about making that chatbot better. In fact, we're not entirely sure exactly what it is what they're doing because they can't really be specific yet. This is something that's going to kind of evolve over time. But they are looking to provide AI based experience. Of course, this is their words, store, partner, chat and voice experiences. So this is something where customers and partners can get answers more quickly, complete whatever workflows, et cetera, et cetera, and then internally to kind of help with customer service and whatever else. And they've been evaluating the OpenAI frontier model since I think February, if I remember correctly. Super complimentary about it, which is a little whatever, but we'll see. They did also hint, yes, PC sales are down.

[Richard Campbell]

They're probably going to do some layoffs, but if you call them AI layoffs, then your stock price goes up.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I didn't read this, but I think it was Ford that had laid off a bunch of people months ago, blamed AI and they like, yep, just kidding, we need this guy's back I think we're going to see some of

[Richard Campbell]

that wrong doing in the wrong order. Like you get the automation working, show that people are actually redundant because they're not doing anything more. And then you lay them off. This, lay them off and then we'll figure out the AI thing.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, this is not, that's, that's bad leadership. That's just bad decision making. That's stupid.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean the upside is you get a quarter showing, look, AI worked our rev. Our incomes are up because we laid a bunch of people off and it reduce their costs.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Richard Campbell]

Then the next quarter when nothing works and your customers are all pissed, you have to get them back.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean obviously HP is not talking about layoffs right now, but you know, we'll see where that goes. But the, the difference between HP and the other two big companies in the big, in the top three of the PC market, Dell and Lenovo, is that Dell and Lenovo both still have their server and now what we would call cloud data center business, hp, remember split off. So there's HP as we're calling it, which is computers and printers and then there's hpe, HP Enterprise, which does that other half, data centers.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, it's not, it's like 75%.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay. But they're, you know, they're, they're, they're other thing. So today what we're seeing on, you know, in the, in the industry, except for with hp, is that Dell and Lenovo are growing very quickly monthly or quarter over quarter because they have this growing data center business or two businesses. Right. And HP does not have that. HP like Lenovo also sell and no, not like Dell actually mostly like Lenovo also sells other devices and there's the obvious devices, keyboards, mice, et cetera, cameras, but, but also just different things. They, you know, they sell all kinds of peripherals and sort of smart devices. HP or Lenovo rather has a big business, you know, Android tablets and smart devices of all kinds and they do all that kind of stuff. So HP kind of hints that they're working on what they call a suite of agency AI devices that seamlessly integrate into existing workflows, increasing employee efficiency. And so these things apparently are going to require what they call again in their words, always on inference and hardware optimized for running agenic AI workloads 24. 7. HP I feel like has kind of gotten away from this little. Lenovo is much bigger in this space right now, but for many years was doing lots of experimental PCs, but also other devices that you kind of use around PCs where maybe you have this scanner that, you know, you would use in a professional environment to, you know, for scanning, obviously, or whatever, line printing and whatever different things. But it seems like maybe given the downturn in PCs that might persist for some years, they're trying to expand where they can. Right. Which is not into servers or the data center like Dell and Lenovo can do, but rather in this new direction. So maybe there's something here that I'm not privy to because honestly, it's pretty vague, but it is kind of curious. It's like we've embraced the company that's putting us out of business. Okay, good luck with that.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, I mean, you want to do a project to optimize your firm that's not doing well for various reasons. Hopefully you do it in appropriate way where when it has success, then you make changes to optimize. But you might as well go with the so called expert.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

How many years has OpenAI got experience helping enterprises automate with their tools? 2.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. And is it really experience or is it. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Look, maybe, maybe this is going to be the greatest thing in the world. I just, I find it curious.

[Richard Campbell]

I mean, they're a pretty, you know, the origins of that company are a responsible group of engineers and hopefully responsible engineers pilot this project and give us real results.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I mean the people I know there and the people I meet there who kind of are behind the scenes and work on the hardware. Fantastic. I mean they, they really do make great computers, but they're also constrained by the world as it is, like everyone else. So, yeah, you know, we'll see what that looks like. Like, but it's kind of interesting. I had to look this one up because I have to say I wasn't sure. Anthropic announced a new version of what they call the cloud sonnet model, version 5. And at first I was like, wait a minute, I'm like, is this something I could run locally? Is this like an slm? You know, and it's not, it's a cloud model. You know, all the big players have their biggest, you know, what they now call frontier models, but they also have these more efficient models that are faster, less expensive, et cetera. And then of course they have the SLMs. In some cases they'll have open source versions like Google makes Gamma and so forth. It is a cloud model, basically. What this thing is something we're starting to see a lot where these companies realize that their own cost overruns, which involve just requiring massive amounts of infrastructure to get anything done are a huge problem and are a big blocker to profitability. And they're trying to make now more efficient models across the board. So they still offer those. The big heavy models, like in their case, Opus 4.8 is the latest version, but then they have this thing which, when you look at the scores where they compare them and compare to the predecessor, this thing is very, very close in almost all categories to the big, heavy, expensive model, but it's dramatically less expensive and faster. Yeah. And I think this is going to be part of that. I always call it orchestration, because I'm not sure how else to describe this, but you're going to have this collection of models. Some of them are going to be very focused on whatever particular task or workflow, whatever it is. Some of them are going to be more general and humongous. But figuring out which one to use and which time is important. They're starting to do smart defaults for people so they don't overspend, because they're starting to charge individuals for this stuff now, too, which is important. And, you know, you can override that if you like. I want the expensive one. I know what I'm doing. You have to go do that manually, but you can do it. So this is just interesting, as always,

[Richard Campbell]

question whether people really know one way or the other. Right. I often ask them, like, why was that one better than that one? Like, what's your metric? What are you actually testing for?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, well, right. And a lot of people would say, I just want the best one. It's the reason I bought a $3,000 computer. You know, I just. You know, I just. I want all the gates when it's

[Richard Campbell]

running in the cloud anyway. You could have run it on a pack of gum with wings.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, right.

[Richard Campbell]

Did we talk about Mythos being available again?

[Paul Thurrott]

No, we did not. So, yeah, I didn't follow the exact trajectory of this, but it probably had been mostly unavailable, call it for the better part of a month, I think it was. Or just two weeks. Or two weeks.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. It was shut down. Feels like back on the 27th.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it felt like an eternity.

[Leo Laporte]

The world changed while it was gone, and suddenly China's on top. Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, Right. Exactly. This crazy. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm looking right now to see I still don't have Fable back, but it's

[Richard Campbell]

supposedly Fable was supposed to be today.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. We talked about the reason this is bad, and it's. To me, it's really about the companies Especially. But governments too, right, that are using this to look for vulnerabilities in their most critical software and then fix that stuff. And this we can go back and forth and we always will. But pros and cons of AI in this case, and there's a lot of argument to be made, but this is the clearest, best, most defensible use of AI Maybe that there is. It's great.

[Richard Campbell]

I hope someday we hear what went on for these two weeks. Yeah, I thought it would be the weekend, right. They shut it down on the Friday. By Monday it'd be back. I'm kind of stunned. It was two weeks. Weeks. Did nobody clue in you were impairing all the white hats trying to make the system safer?

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, I don't know why. I mean, this is a government thing and we don't exactly have a functioning government. So it's, you know.

[Richard Campbell]

No, it's a problem to the citizenship test because somebody called it a huge

[Leo Laporte]

own goal this week. Because what happened is a lot of people said, oh, how crikey. And by the way, not just people in the U.S. but people around the world. If the government can just block an AI model exactly randomly for no apparent reason and without explaining, we better not be dependent on American AI models.

[Paul Thurrott]

We were already in a. We're already in a period where Europe especially. But the world has an understanding that we need to be independent of the United States because we cannot trust this country to do the right thing for us. Why, of course you can't. And this is. This drove that home very nicely. I mean, this is, you know, this is why it's not just access to the best AI chips, it's national security.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, I just look at myself. So the first thing I did is I said, well, what else can I. Because I was in the middle of a fable build.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know this is going to end with the word deepsync, isn't it?

[Leo Laporte]

You're like, well, deep seat's actually really good veep. I've been using it. Then there's GLM from Z AI, which is about a tenth of the cost and is very good. And then there's Quinn. There's a number of. But these are all Chinese models. There are some I can run locally and that's real interesting.

[Paul Thurrott]

Look, this is like anything else. We all have opinions about China in this case and whatever. Let me tell you, the first time you get into a Chinese electric vehicle like I do in Mexico, and you're like, I'm sorry, did the future happen? And no one Told me it's astonishing, like how good these things are and how inexpensive they are.

[Leo Laporte]

To extend that analogy, this is if the American President decided, you know, let's ban American cars.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right, Right.

[Leo Laporte]

And all of a sudden everybody discovered how good the Chinese EVs were. And then three weeks later he says, yeah, nevermind, let's not ban them. But it's too late now.

[Paul Thurrott]

Everybody knows.

[Leo Laporte]

Everybody now knows.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

So. And by the way, Anthropic Solace already said, when Fable comes back, Fable and Mythos apparently will be available to the public today, but when they come back with massive restrictions. They even said in some cases, when you're coding with Fable, it will drop back to Opus 4.8. So prepare. You know, the clock has started. In within minutes, you're going to hear people going, they nerfed it. It's no good anymore.

[Richard Campbell]

It's crippled.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. They can't. Well, it could never live up to what our imaginations thought it was anyway.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, that's funny. That's my back of the book topic. It's like we're, we're already, we're, we're nostalgic now for something that happened three weeks ago. You know, remember the good old days when AI was open to everybody and we just go, you know? Yeah, it's crazy.

[Leo Laporte]

I actually been. It's, it was an eye opener and I've been very happy with running a local model for a lot of my work. I still use Claude for hardcore coding, but I don't have to use it for everything. And I think.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

It's just risky. It's bad for anthropic, and anthropic sort of brought this on themselves by scaring everybody.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, you don't want to scare President Trump because he has a lot of power and you scare him, he's

[Richard Campbell]

gonna, he might react rather reactionary.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I haven't noticed that, but. I'm just kidding. It's like stepping on a cat's tail, you know, where did that come from? You know?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. So anyway, it's, it's. Yeah, we'll talk about it a lot coming up on intelligent machines.

[Paul Thurrott]

But it's a. I think between now and the time you do, it will probably change. Right. In other words, those models will probably arrive and then we'll see. And you're. You may already start getting stories from people like, yeah, they screwed this thing up, you know. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see what happens.

[Leo Laporte]

But it's amazing. What a world.

[Paul Thurrott]

It is crazy. I logically Any, anyone who knows even a little bit about this stuff, all of us certainly. And people listening, whatever, you know, can look at the world the way it is and understand that as AI improves, local AI improves, you know, that the gap between the two is probably going to shrink. That at some point we get to that. What I think of as like the good enough scenario, whatever I talk about, ideally you have a system that's orchestrating the movement between those two plateaus or whatever. So that if you need it, you know, it's like the CPU boost thing they've just added to Windows. Like for one second you gotta, you get the full power that goes right back down so you don't screw up your battery life. In this case, you know, we're gonna do that with AI. But a lot of the early third parties, maybe fourth part, I don't know how you talk about this, but you have Browser makers is a typical example. Companies you've never heard of that are making these little AI things. When you use something like I'm not calling these companies out, I don't really use this stuff. But Brave whatever might put AI in their product or Firefox is doing this stuff. Your initial reaction to this, if you actually use it is like, eh, it's like, okay, it's doing the thing, but it's not very good. It's like a child's drawing compared to our Leonardo da Vinci thing or whatever. But those things. But now two weeks have gone by and they've gotten a lot better. So sometime last year Proton, for example, released Lumo 2.0. This is not a local AI thing, this is actually cloud based AI, but it's proton, so it's privacy first, et cetera, et cetera. And that's a good example of a thing where I tried it out and I was like, yeah, okay, it's doing the chatbot thing. It's okay. There's a free tier for this. Like there are for a lot of AIs and then there are these paid tiers you get through whatever Proton subscriptions, et cetera. But they just released a major new version of this one and it has all the keywords, memory projects, what they're calling customers. Lumos. This is three years ago we would have called this a. Oh my God. I almost, I'm going to forget the term. Remember Microsoft? Yeah. Custom GPTs. Remember we called, very briefly, we called them this.

[Richard Campbell]

Remember?

[Paul Thurrott]

I remember those, these words. Yeah. Microsoft gave it to, well, sold it to individuals through what was Copilot Pro briefly. And then they Took it away. And then they took Copilot Pro away too. But it's multimodal. It does all this stuff. So let's say this is a good example. You're going to pay for it, most likely some amount. It's less expensive than big AI or whatever. But this is an example of something where it is in a good place and it does meet many needs. I can't say most. I don't really know what all needs are. And this is how this stuff is progressing. And so this is tied. This, by the way, European that they're tied into that EU sovereignty directive that they're working on there. They're a big player in this space. So in this little tech space. Right. So that's. That's interesting to me. I'm. This is again, as. In the sense that all AI is always getting better. I feel like the local AI is. Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

The Microsoft thing became Scout. Right. They shut it all down, reorganized it.

[Leo Laporte]

The Microsoft thing, that's their agent and

[Richard Campbell]

now, yeah, Google,

[Paul Thurrott]

this is their personal AI agent. The.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Uses an individual that, like Leo just said, Spark for Google.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I use Hermes because I decided I didn't want any company. So the, the. This is going to become more of an issue too is privacy. The companies now are snarfing up everything you send to it. Everything in the prompt, all the copy,

[Paul Thurrott]

everything they're sending stuff you send to someone else. They're just grabbing the bits as they fly by. I mean, they're just rapacious.

[Leo Laporte]

People are more concerned about this. And so that's why, by the way, Microsoft and Google are creating their versions of OpenCloth. They don't want you to use something local. They want you to do everything on the cloud. Right. That's better for them. So I'm using open source one that it sits on my hard drive, all the memories on the hard drive. And what I really want to do is also use a local model because then nothing goes out of my network.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, right.

[Leo Laporte]

Unfortunately, local models are quite not up to the.

[Paul Thurrott]

But I think they're gonna get there. I mean, but again, they are gonna get there.

[Leo Laporte]

I'm using one now that I'm very, very happy with. And it's all 90% of what I do.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm not good at this kind of stuff. But the Sonnet 5 I mentioned earlier is a. It's like a 1 million context window, if that makes sense. I'm not really the language of one. Okay, whatever. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Nothing's a million anymore. Millions.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay. I look at this and I think

[Leo Laporte]

to myself, oh, context window. You're right, it's 1 million, the context.

[Paul Thurrott]

So, yeah, I'm just not good with these terms. But this is the type of thing that not three months ago, but six, nine months ago, was just the just expensive models in the cloud, etc, six months from now will be local. No doubt about it. If it isn't already. I mean, so these lines are blurring. There's local, there's cloud, but there's also like the big companies and then the little. The mistrals, the protons, whoever else, Chinese companies, however you want to define these things. But there's such a mix of this stuff and there probably will be for the foreseeable future. I don't keep hammering on this, but I really feel like orchestrating between them is the key, you know, because that's

[Leo Laporte]

why the agent's important. Exactly.

[Paul Thurrott]

They just change so much that you want that thing to harness being yet another awesome AI word that was invented two seconds ago, which drives me crazy.

[Leo Laporte]

Think of like a horse. You got it, but you got the bridle. The harness. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

And you're under the horse's butt and he's taking a dump. No, I get, I get the relationship. I just don't, you know, But I mean, it's just. But it's. It like the. Here's what I think of it.

[Leo Laporte]

I got a good way to think of it. Think of it as a robot with hands and eyes and feet. And then there's a brain. What you want is your own robot. That's the harness or the rig or whatever, and the brain you can put different models in. I don't want to say, always use Codex, always use Sonnet. So I have a local model right now. This is the model I've been using. Somebody Larry, I think, in our discord, said, try Ornith. It's amazing. It does everything. But what I've told Ornith is when you need to do code, don't do any coding. You're not smart enough. Use Claude. And it does. And, and that's the. That's why the harness, the robot, when

[Paul Thurrott]

you said that to it, did it

[Leo Laporte]

go, oh, you know, it's so funny because I. You do anthropomorphize and think, I don't want to hurt its feelings.

[Paul Thurrott]

Or he's like, you know what, Leo, you're right, I'm terrible.

[Leo Laporte]

No, it doesn't care. It doesn't. It says, yeah, sure, not a problem. I've never once had it say, you're hurting My feelings.

[Richard Campbell]

It does and have feelings.

[Leo Laporte]

It's software, so you have to get over that a little bit. But telling it to, you know, if you need to do something with vision, use Gemini. If you need to do something with coding, use Claude.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but with the caveat that, that, that determination is going to change. Maybe not day to day, but as we go forward, every once in a while, whatever the time frame, all of a sudden this thing is better for that thing, whatever it is.

[Leo Laporte]

So what I've been doing every week on Sunday night, I said, go out, look at all the models, see what people are saying, see what the benchmarks say, and redo your delegation chart. They have a list of things. If it's this, this, this is redo it. It changes every week depending on what's the best that week.

[Paul Thurrott]

Leo, you are describing. I want to be careful here. A mid-1990s Mac and it has some terrible amount of RAM back. I don't know what they had back then. You got Photoshop on that Mac.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Paul Thurrott]

And you have to go into the settings for Photoshop and you tell it. This is how much RAM you can use.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly.

[Paul Thurrott]

That is a terrible system.

[Leo Laporte]

Remember those days?

[Paul Thurrott]

I do, I just. Of course I do. And you know, I, I like I said ideally, like, like instead of you like a. Having to say it and then it.

[Leo Laporte]

No, I don't. It does it automatically. Okay. Every Sunday night. Yeah, yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

All right.

[Paul Thurrott]

But, but, but at some point I

[Leo Laporte]

had to tell it once. Yeah, do this every Sunday night.

[Paul Thurrott]

It should just do this automatically and on the fly.

[Leo Laporte]

It does now.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

I don't want it to do too much on. Of its own volition. I like the idea that I'm saying this would be a good thing to

[Paul Thurrott]

do, but you might not. But I mean, most people do, right?

[Leo Laporte]

I mean. Well, this is the. Yeah, you're right.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is the. Most people do want that, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

And then you give up by doing that, you're going to let the frontier models do you know, these big companies control it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, that's what I'm trying to get away from. No, of course, but I mean, ideally what you're really doing is saying, look, these are the things you have accessible to you, whatever they are. This is the free thing, the local thing, the open source thing, whatever it is. In extreme situations, you might have a paid subscription or whatever it is, who cares? Big tech, little tech, it doesn't matter. And only use that damn thing. Maybe you have to be told or even asked, or maybe you have to be part of the loop, whatever your rules are, you establish that that's what you're doing really, when you think about it. But this should work for everybody, ideally. This is so. It will.

[Leo Laporte]

Down from the. I mean, you know, I'm on. I'm. This is what I do. It's what you do. It's what we all do.

[Paul Thurrott]

We.

[Leo Laporte]

We live on the edge, the cutting

[Paul Thurrott]

edge, which never bites me in the butt ever. I don't know about your situation, but

[Leo Laporte]

I've never do it for you guys. That's what we do it for.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think it's. Mental illness is why we do it. But it's. But a little, you know, but if, if my mental illness can help others, that that's okay.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. I. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. This is a weird world. I think Leo just mentioned using Gemini for image creation, which is in fact excellent. I don't always do this, but I often will throw the same prompt through Gemini and then it's Microsoft Designer, but it's Copilot, obviously, and not always, but most times I would say I prefer the Gemini version. But. But whatever. That doesn't matter. They have whatever version of Nano Banana they're on now. They have personalized intelligence, which is a way that you can opt in and connect Gemini to all of your whatever. It's Google apps like Gmail, Google Calendar, photos, et cetera. And what they've done is made. And this is us only unfortunately for right now, but a couple months ago they made. These terms are so weird. It's because they're not used consistently, but it's essentially personalized intelligence in Gemini. And if you use it with image creation, it means you can go to your own Google Photos. And then it was only for Google AI plus Pro or Ultra subscriptions. Now it's free. Obviously, there are limits, but anyone you decide, you have to sign in, but you don't pay for it. And if you're in the US and you're over 13 or 18, depending what you're trying to do, it will use personal intelligence to connect nano Banana to Google Photos and then use that as sort of an inspiration, if you will. And also a. I'm going to call it a grounding in the sense that it knows like, what it can look at your photos and be like, all right, this guy takes a lot of photos of cocktails for some reason, takes a lot of photos of food on a plate in a restaurant for some reason, not a lot of pictures of his family. But whatever. Maybe he write like certain colors or whatever it is, but they get an idea like where you travel, like what you're doing, etc. So when you say very general things to it, like make a picture of my favorite things, you know, with me in the middle, it will pull that from Google Photos. It's kind of an interesting capability if you're a narcissist or. No, but I mean, like, maybe you're. You want things to have a certain style or whatever. If you have a certain style. I do not. But it's kind of an interesting idea and at least it's free. I assume within two seconds it will eventually be international as well. But interesting stuff. And this is the gut check moment. You're going to connect Gemini to your Gmail. You're going to connect it to your calendar, you're going to connect it to. It already knows what you're watching on YouTube, I guess, or Google does. But that's a. That's a scary little moment. You ever see someone grab the remote of your TV and turn on your YouTube and you're like, oh, crap, here we go. Like, there are going to be questions,

[Richard Campbell]

you know, I never leave my YouTube logged in for.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, right.

[Richard Campbell]

I want to use YouTube on the phone. I cast it on TV. You cast it from the phone.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, you're smart. But yeah, mine is just. It's ridiculous, you know, I. I don't know how my wife puts up with me. Anyway, the point is. But you can open this up to Gemini and have it. Have a little peek at your soul. And you can do that or not do that, I guess. But it is interesting that this is a thing. So anyway, there's. That notion continues to amaze me in some ways because I keep waiting for them just to be like, look, you've been using this damn thing for several years now. We've never charged you a cent. Come on, man. They still have not done that. They do have notion AI, of course, they're getting heavily into the agency stuff, but over the past year to two years, they made a couple of small acquisitions and then launched Google Mail. I'm sorry, Google Mail, Notion Mail and Notion Calendar. These things to me have never kind of fulfilled what I perceive to be the promise of them. Because really what they both are are front ends to Google services. They're just like a kind of a way to. It's honestly a way to get into that ecosystem so that you can then migrate over to their ecosystem is kind of a. Oh, I see that. So notion as the all in one does everything app. You can have those views inside of that app, you can have the standalone apps, et cetera, et cetera, but they never push that either beyond Google. So if you wanted to use an Outlook Calendar with Notion Calendar or whatever, or Outlook with Notion Mail, you cannot. It's always just been Google. And then they announced this past week that they are in fact winding down Notion Mail in September.

[Leo Laporte]

Could you explain this? Because I read this and I don't really understand, understand.

[Paul Thurrott]

So I can explain it in the sense that I didn't understand why they announced it. Because the way they announced it, it was just like, so you're, you've created a front end for another service. I don't like why, you know, and I think the reason is what I said. I think it's really about, you know, there's this Notion as a sort of a little tech company. Google is very much a big tech company. Very popular. Gmail's very popular. Rather than reinvent the horse, it's like, look, all these people are using this thing, many are using it for free. Just get them in here. And then what we're going to charge them for really is not Notion Mail, right. Or Go Notion Calendar because there's no value there per se, but rather for Notion AI. And that AI will do things against the data that's in Gmail and Google Calendar that you might want to use in the projects or notes or whatever it is you're doing in Notion. Right. And that, okay, there's some sense to that, I guess. I. But again, I don't understand how it never expanded beyond just Google. That never made sense to me. If you're going to have a third party email client, it should support email, not Gmail. It's weird, but they're getting rid of it. Their excuse for this I actually do not buy. Let me see if I can find this quote. What they said was we Notion launched this with the belief that, you know, the inbox was blah, blah, blah, whatever. But what they say is that now that their own agents have gotten more capable, we're seeing more users. They don't say how many hand off email workflows to the agents. And so over half of Notion Mail users are managing email without ever opening their inbox.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Paul Thurrott]

I suspect that most people who use Notion Mail never open their inbox either. They just don't use it. So I don't.

[Leo Laporte]

That's the real problem.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't really understand it, but.

[Leo Laporte]

So what was it? It was an interface to Gmail. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

So if you know how Notion looks like, Notion has this kind of minimalist look to it. So Notion Mail and Calendar have that look and feel, but for email and Calendar, respectively, they're standalone apps, like on the web, on mobile, I guess on desktop as well. But I think Mail was Mac only, but I'm not really sure. But they're also integrated into Notion itself, the main app. Right. So you get. There are the views and ways to access that stuff. To me, what this, this was all unnecessary. I sort of appreciate they were trying to make a Google workspace alternative that would be cheaper or, you know, not Google, whatever.

[Leo Laporte]

That.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's a useful thing to try. But really what they're using Gmail for here in Calendar is a data source, Right. And in the context of whatever you're doing with AI and Notion, if the primary data source maybe is your Notion Notes or whatever projects, whatever you're doing there, you're going to then have a selection of probably thousands of other potential data sources which will be. Or not be, but could be whatever email you use, whatever Calendar you use, whatever data, who cares? And Slack chats and whatever it is. Who cares?

[Richard Campbell]

They should have gone into more plugins. Plugins, not they.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. This maybe should have always been just a plugin, right? Yeah, I guess. I guess keeping people in Notion was the idea. Like Notion. They were expanding the notion of what Notion is meaning. You know, we. Sorry. You know, we're gonna have these three main apps maybe. And that made sense for about two seconds. But I Look, the Notion app, the core app that, the core thing that Notion is, is obviously super successful. They done great. Sure.

[Richard Campbell]

And the thing. And the thing we're managing this show from.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yes. And I listen, I've tried so hard to get rid of this thing that is so successful and works so well, and it just never work. It just never makes sense. And I will keep trying, you know, not because I hate Notion. I just. This is what I do. But Notion has withstood every assault, every challenge. It's. It's always been great. These other things, though, I just never really saw the point. And you know, I go back and look sometimes and I'm like, I just don't get. Does make sense to use Gmail, like I said, as a data source within Notion, especially if you're using Notion AI or the agents they're doing now. So that makes sense. Justifying. It's like, well, you know, people were managing their email with agents, like, really, like, okay. I mean, I. I Don't know what your email is like. I would love to have an agent, man, I'm looking at mine now. It's terrible. I'm going to look away from that. It's like I wish, I wish maybe there is a way. I don't know who can say but I doubt that people were, you know, just interacting with Notion agents instead of their email.

[Richard Campbell]

I wonder if the mail stuff was just costing them money and not making

[Paul Thurrott]

them anything and I don't think it ever. Yeah, it just didn't make sense so.

[Richard Campbell]

But in the end, referencing AI makes it look like you're competent.

[Paul Thurrott]

Exactly. And by the way, for whatever it's

[Leo Laporte]

worth, I. AI gets the blame for everything.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, the credit and the blame. Right. Depending on the situation. It's like hysterical. I, I Notion area might be great. I actually don't know. I'm not, I'm not dumping on it. I their need to have a business model and, and make money is. I have no problem with it.

[Richard Campbell]

You would be sad if the product went to work.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I mean there are definitely alternatives, but yeah, this still to me is still the one I like.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, I have some thoughts. Do you want to hear my thoughts or.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I do.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay. Because I noticed Claude OpenAI. I'm sorry, Anthropic has announced this Claude Slack thing. They call it Claude tags. Same idea. And I think it's the same goal with Notion, which is if they can provide and who knows what AI model they're using, they probably don't have their own. They're just interfacing to somebody's frontier model. Right. But if they can provide a way to do it inside where you put your data.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Whether it's Slack or Notion, then they get access to your data and that's gold for them. And that's that same conversation about privacy that we had earlier. I'm not sure I want to give

[Paul Thurrott]

them that, that sort of Microsoft focused approach to this which I think Richard will appreciate is that as is the case many times, Microsoft was actually kind of onto this pretty early. If you think about what loupe was is, you know, one of the ideas there is that you can, you can move to this new thing and use this as an app if you want, but you can also use these components anywhere, including where you are now, and then take it even further back. I mean the idea behind one of the ideas behind Microsoft Teams, the other one being let's kill Slack, was that we have this ecosystem of whatever and we know that people today in our ecosystem are Using, they live in mail, they live in Outlook. This is the center of their world. But there are these younger employees who look at this thing like it's Grandpa's Oldsmobile and they're not interested in this. And so instead of forcing everyone just to move to this new model, we're going to let people do both. And so you could have people working on whatever projects, collaborating. And the old email guys could do this through Outlook, the newer young kids, the hipsters, whatever, could do it through teams in chat and do all that kind of stuff. And this is, Microsoft's actually pretty good at this. I mean, they kind of saw this. You know, they don't, they don't always nail the implementation, maybe, or however you want to say that, but. And it's not that the loop or team, whatever model, Outlook model has anything to do with AI, but to kind of apply it to the AI era at some point. And then probably two seconds from today, if you spend your whole day in Slack, you'll be doing the stuff from Slack and maybe you're accessing the Notion data source, but you're doing it from Slack. You could do it in the reverse direction. You live your day in Notion and you're, you have Slack and you have email and whatever data points, because this is your ui. I mean, everyone who makes anything related to productivity right now is trying to figure out a way they can be the center of your world. And they're all going to, in this new AI era and they're going to try to get you to connect to the things you use elsewhere so that you can stay in this thing. And I think that for Notion, what they've done on some level is smart, but, but the goal is still the same. It's like we want you to keep, we want to keep you in Notion, you know, and the more interoperable you make it, the more possible that is, if that makes sense. Because I'm not sure it makes sense to me, but I think that's what I think. I think that's what I meant to say something, something to that.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, in the PC world we, we had a phase where everybody was building their own machines.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And except for you, Richard, most people realize that it's fine and better, maybe even cheaper to buy a built machine.

[Richard Campbell]

It's cheaper and it has better warranty change.

[Leo Laporte]

We're in our own AI here.

[Paul Thurrott]

And that's actually, that's an excellent comparison. I, the first PC I owned was when I built, and the reason I built it was because I didn't have any money. And that was cheaper. You know, I could use an Intel 386 SX chip. And it was cheap. Cheap.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, you got to choose everything you got.

[Paul Thurrott]

I had to choose everything. That's the way it was. You know, like I. You go. I mean, I didn't have a good place to buy all this stuff, but I bought a bunch of crap and whatever. I put it together. A computer. And it works somehow I. And that made sense until it didn't, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

For most people. And you're right. That's exactly what's happening with AI building

[Richard Campbell]

those machines last year, which I'm glad I did. But it cost more. Like they've learned, anybody who still wants to buy components will pay a premium. And they. And they. That's even before the markups hit.

[Paul Thurrott]

I think the last major PC I ever built was for, with and for my son. And I believe he still has it, although it's really probably horribly out of there. It's a gigantic. It looks like a next cube. It's humongous. But that was another big. Well, this one was. This one was. Yeah. But this thing.

[Richard Campbell]

Fractal north cases. They're big.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, they're beautiful, too.

[Richard Campbell]

They got wood faces and stuff.

[Paul Thurrott]

I still.

[Richard Campbell]

You pay for them.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know how it came up the first time. I'm really confused by that. He later brought it back from college and we took the whole thing apart, cleaned it because it was just full of dust, put it back together, came up again, and I was like, wow, that's a two for two. I don't know. I don't know how that happened, but it seemed like it worked. It worked fine. I mean, it was good, but. Yeah, you don't do stuff like that. I don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

And I finally moved a rolling rack that was the remains of my old house, brought here with my old rack Mount workstations over to a friend who's still doing that stuff, who was grateful to have it because they're hard to come by now. And it's one less thing in this house, which I'm happy to be rid of.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, and I got to tell you, every time I looked at these fractal north cases, like, they're very pretty, you know, it makes a difference. Stuff that's nice to look at.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Did you ever get on the. Are you going to ever. Are you getting a Steam machine? Speaking of.

[Richard Campbell]

Probably not. I don't play games religiously enough. And I'm part of the PC Master race.

[Paul Thurrott]

Anyway, like, I mean it is a PC. It's, you know.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, I already have one. I have a very nice one. It's got a 5090 in it. Right. Like I'm good.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Are you suggesting that that's better than integrated graphics site?

[Richard Campbell]

Now, do I have a dear friend who's an ex Valve employee who lives in wine country and insists that I come and spend a week or so with them every year no matter what, typically when the wine season is on and will certainly have more than one of these because he's that kind of guy, right? Yeah. He's also got the PS5 and the PS5 Pro if you want to compare. So I will get a chance to play on a Steam machine probably this fall.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, I am curious about it.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. Well, if you want to go wine tasting, brother, we'll go up there to. To Colonial.

[Paul Thurrott]

I'm not a big fan of wine or gaming.

[Richard Campbell]

But you didn't.

[Paul Thurrott]

Sorry. What are we going to do?

[Richard Campbell]

So we'll block that out in the fall and we'll go stay up there and we'll play all the video game machines and we'll tell the stories of working at Valve and Blizzard and all those fun places. And he's not a big fan of wine, but I keep stocking his wine shelf. So we'll. We'll go hit a few wineries that I like and buy a few bottles and we'll go from there.

[Paul Thurrott]

A few bottles. Yeah, I'm sure it'll be a few. But yes, that'll be good.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah,

[Richard Campbell]

that would be fun. It's always enjoyable. They're talking about down here in a couple of weeks for. Because everybody's. We have a whole bunch of friends including my wife and I whose birthdays are all in July. So we're hosting the big July out of Control party which will. Oh, nice on the property. So yeah, I'm good. I figure we're about 50 plus with the locals included. So trying to decide if I want to. A couple of briskets, a whole bunch of ribs, a whole bunch of salmon. It'll be a good party.

[Paul Thurrott]

Interestante.

[Richard Campbell]

All right.

[Leo Laporte]

I think this would be a good time to just remind everybody you're listening to Windows Weekly with Paul Thurat from thurat.com. of course his books are at leanpub.com, but if you become a premium [e-mail] you'd get them all. Anyway, it's part of the deal. Including Windows Everywhere Field guide to Windows 11 and DN Shitify Windows. Richard Campbell [e-mail] that's where.net rocks. And run his radio, his two podcasts live. And we are so glad you're here for Windows Weekly and now on with the show. Is it Xbox time?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And it's, you know, it's a bundle of good news. So we talked about the incoming Microsoft layoffs, et cetera. We don't know how that's going to impact Xbox. We know that Xbox is going to be part of it. You know, the rumors kind of continue, etc.

[Richard Campbell]

And by the way, like considering that normal turnover for a company that size is like 12, 13% or 30,000 people a year. Yeah, this is silly.

[Paul Thurrott]

Like, yeah, so this is literally playing

[Richard Campbell]

press games to talk about a layoff of 5,500 people.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. So if the rumor is correct, 2.5% of the workforce, which is 5,500 people, it could be less than actually, which is lower than expected. You know, the. I don't remember, I don't remember any numbers but I mean I feel like last year there were multiple layoffs and a lot of them were high single digit percentage, you know, so these are, this is smaller. It doesn't mean it's the end of it. Right. This is the problem.

[Richard Campbell]

They seem to now had a routine policy.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but, yeah, but you know, for Xbox specifically it's, it's not just like we're losing people from teams. It's, you know, this is a vast collection now of game publishers, game studios, you know, designers, programmers, you know, game makers of all kinds. Right. Game titles, game franchises. And a lot of these things are up for grab. And this is the problem. So we're kind of, we're waiting to see what happens where we have this hope that at least in some cases that Microsoft can do the right thing, so to speak, by letting those employees, those teams, those studios even leave and go on and continue the thing they were doing. Maybe this is the type of, this is the weird financial part of it. Obviously these things are assets of whatever kind and these things being games and franchises and so forth. But if you're just going to cancel and stop doing the thing, is it harmful to let the people who are working on a thing just take it and run? Does that make any sense on a spreadsheet somewhere? I don't know. And maybe it's a case by case thing. We'll see what happens. There will be acquisitions, you know, other companies might hire some of these people. Obviously we'll see. But it's all right now, it's all kind of up in the air. So in keeping with the Apple price hikes, it's almost like Microsoft saw the news was like, all right, let's raise Xbox prices again. They are raising Xbox prices again. So they're discontinuing the high end 2 terabyte Xbox Series X model which they released I think just last year. Currently priced $800. It's going away and then all these consoles are going up by 100 to I think it's 200 maybe or maybe 100, 250, depending on the model. So we have Xbox series s in 512 and 1 terabyte configurations and then Xbox Series X in a digital and non digital, meaning there's an optical drive configuration, 1 TB and the prices, you know today are $349 to $599 and will be 449 to 749 starting on August 1st in one month. Yay.

[Leo Laporte]

I just don't know.

[Richard Campbell]

I guess the reason you buy an optical drive is because you actually want to own the game or you have

[Paul Thurrott]

whatever collection of games already maybe, right? I mean, yeah. I was just talking to Brad about this. This is a tough one because anytime you say you make any general statement or digital is better for games. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, what about I have this library and I have, they have resale value. I can bring them to GameStop, whatever, sell them whatever. I can hand them to, give them the kids, whatever. Yeah, fair enough. You can't do that with digital for sure. But we've passed the point where you can even buy a game on a disc and then just start playing it. There's always like a day one and there's updates.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, it's just, it's a nightmare.

[Richard Campbell]

The bottom, you make a great point. Just because you own the medium doesn't mean you're going to be able to play the game. As soon as you plug it in, you're going to need patches and if they took the game down for whatever reason, you're not getting the patches.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, this isn't in the notes, but Rockstar, which makes gta, revealed that there will in fact be retail packaging for the GTA 6. But it's going to be a box with a piece of paper in it. A piece of paper with a code where you can go get downloaded digital. So this is like we're giving this. So people are putting this out there so grandmothers can buy it for their grandkids and they can give them something at Christmas and that's smart. Yeah, it's. It's a little weird, but. Okay, fair enough. Okay, so there's this and. And whatever. And then I didn't. I don't think we had any fresh rumors last week. Now we're talking about the possibility that Undead Labs in Arkane, Lyon, as in Lyon, France, might be among the ones getting pushed out the door trying to figure out who makes what here. Playground. No, Undead Labs is. Was acquired with Playground games. Playground Games makes the Forza horizon games lately. 4, 5, 6. I think Undead Labs latest game is stated decay 2. Stated decay 3 was one of the games they announced in that recent game showcase. Right. As was that genuine game which might also get under the X. So that's kind of weird. And then Arcane is the. Those guys made. Or at least Arcane Leon is Dishonored, which is a pretty good series back in the day. Deathloop, which I never played. And Blade, which is the Marvel. Com, you know, graphic novel series or comic series. You know, the Wesley Snipe movies were, you know, Blade the Vampire with the Sword. And so we'll see. They're going to try to get rid of those guys. Probably is. And then also Double Fine, which makes Psychonauts two Kiln and Keeper, I think is the other one might be another one. So.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, they're local. They're here, I think.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, again, I feel like a lot of these guys will have a future, you know, it's just. Oh, no, they'll be fine, you know, like. Well, I don't know. Fine. I hope they're fine.

[Richard Campbell]

But, you know, because they'll set. They'll either set up a new studio and make something completely original or they'll get grabbed up somewhere. Talented game developers.

[Paul Thurrott]

I would like their. That outcome is great, but I would like it to be even better if possible. I would. I'd love to see in some cases if the game IP they were working on could go with them, you know.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

It seems very unlikely.

[Paul Thurrott]

I know, I know. But if you're not going to literally ever do anything with it.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. You know, I bet you couldn't even get Microsoft to respond to the inquiry.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

Because there's nobody there who's going to be able to answer that question.

[Paul Thurrott]

The only. So the only little asterisk here is this is obviously a horrible PR moment. Right. Whenever this happens, this will be bad. If they could soften the blow by just how magnamanious they are, how wonderful we are as a company. We're so great. We think we're Apple all of a sudden. We're just going to do the right thing for the world and we're going to let this stuff go free. Not free, but go set it free, whatever. However you want to say it, it's not going to be every case. It probably won't be any cases. But I still think there's an opportunity there. I wish they would take advantage of it.

[Richard Campbell]

The question here is when you buy a company, especially a game company, what are you buying? Are you buying the titles or you buy in the people?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, both. Right. I mean, and maybe, but. And maybe the thing you thought was the reason ends up not being the primary benefit.

[Richard Campbell]

Always. The question is, now that I've laid off the team, could I actually restart the game?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, well, this is the, the opposite of this was the, you know, came out of a question somebody asked me which is why, why wouldn't Microsoft, you know, Sony's failing with Bungie, why not just bring them back in house? And it's like, guys, it's been like 10 years longer. I think there's a whole company inside of Microsoft that used to be called 343 Industries, that's now called Halo Studios. That is probably hundreds of people have been working on this thing. They have transitioned to a new gaming engine that is not the old Halo engine. And now you're saying we're going to bring back those people from yesteryear and try to integrate them into this. There's no way, you know. Yeah, there's no way.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, therein lies again, so you may hang. And so I would argue it's not even the games you've bought or the people. It is the title and maybe the art. But even then you're going to rebuild everything. If you started these are.

[Paul Thurrott]

You're. Yeah, you're buying.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, you're.

[Paul Thurrott]

It's. These are assets essentially like you're.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, yeah, but and here's the bigger question is at what point do your shareholders get angry with you? Right. You paid x many billions for that company.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, what did you buy? Like what did you turn that into?

[Paul Thurrott]

Microsoft spent 7 point whatever billion dollars in Nokia and ended up having to write it down, I think was the term at the time. That's a lot of money.

[Richard Campbell]

Question is, when is it a write down?

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. But Microsoft spent $69 billion in Activision. Now that's not in any danger of being written down. I don't mean it like that, but the stakes are a little higher here

[Richard Campbell]

and they Have World of Warcraft cash flows. They have a whole bunch of cash flows that are making money off of that right now. Not $69 billion worth, mind you. Like that's.

[Paul Thurrott]

No, but it makes the AI economics look a little more, even more ridiculous or it looks better compared to that, at least. I mean there's, there's, there's, there is value there. I, I just, you know, you, you risk completely screwing up your relationship with the community.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, I think that one's flune.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, okay, maybe it is.

[Richard Campbell]

Right?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Okay, fair enough.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. The real question here, I'm not even, not even debating whether they're going to serve the community well. Right. Or they're going to serve the product well or serve their product. I'm not going to talk about that. At what point do the shareholders actually get angry? At what point do you actually have to call it a write down? What do you have to get rid of? And this is what I'm saying, they're never going to let the IP go because that's the COVID for not being a write down.

[Paul Thurrott]

Okay, so I 100% you were, I agree with you. I, Microsoft just like, like Apple's not going to not raise prices because that's the right thing to do. You know, they're a company, not a, a charity.

[Richard Campbell]

Not a charity.

[Paul Thurrott]

Microsoft, however, is in kind of a weird place right now where they might do the right thing for the wrong reason. You know, in other words, just like for example, we don't know exactly know why Microsoft is trying to fix Windows 11 right now, but we have theories. One of those theories is that they actually need this thing to work correctly themselves because they're doing this whole agentic AI thing and this actually has to work. And it's a selfish reason, but they're trying to, you know, they're pretending to actually pay attention for change. And you know what? We still benefit from it on the other side, right? As users of the thing. So as gamers, as Xbox fans, as whatever it is, we're fans of individual games or studios or whatever. If there's some version of this where they end up doing the right thing and it's only for some pure moment, you know, that maybe saves their market cap a little bit on one on that day or whatever it might be, I will take it just to have the victory that is, you know, that accompanies it. You know, we'll see if that is what happens.

[Richard Campbell]

But yeah, now I can imagine because I've worked with folks like this before, a good team Being dumped by one of these large corporations, reforming. And then they've got to decide, are we going to write something new or are we going to try and take IP from this big entity? And there's a game you play there. You do what Miguel and Nat did with attachment, right? How did they get mono and so forth? It's like, make us a deal to license this to us so we can do something with it. Which you're going to do nothing with so you don't surrender the ip. It's just a license. Or we're going to build the alternative without you.

[Paul Thurrott]

I made my own little world. When I was leaving Penton, I went to my boss and told her I was leaving. And I said, I would like you to give me the Super Cipher window. Just give it to me. And they're like, why would we do that? And I said, because I'm driving. Like, I think it was at the time, 40 something percent of the traffic you're getting to at WindowsIT product was coming through my site. So I will just continue doing that and that will be the agreement. Like, you know, I don't pay you any money, but I'll just drive the traffic. And she was like, oh, that actually makes a ton of sense. She's like, I'll, you know, throw it up the chain or whatever. And it went up through three levels and everyone thought it was a great idea. Then I got to vp, whatever his name, it does matter. I'm not going to name the guy, but talk to him on the phone and he was like, yeah, no, we're not doing that. That's a, that's an asset. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I understand. He's like, no, he's like, this is worth like a million dollars. I was like, all right, goodbye. And, and then they stopped using the brand and the URL. And, you know, like two, like months later, you could have just, I don't know, just. People make bad decisions, you know, I, I, I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

I.

[Richard Campbell]

No, no, I mean, he made the right decision for him because he had to say to the board why he did it. And it's the same problem. Better to let the asset rot than make it valuable somewhere else.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, that stinks.

[Richard Campbell]

But, and that's, I swear to God, that's the same situation with these products. Plus, I also know gamers well enough to go, they'd rather write something new.

[Paul Thurrott]

Anyway, I was thinking that, as you were saying, and I feel like for a lot of these people, and it was case by case, but you'll have some team of, you know, game makers working on whatever titles. And now you're laid off and your game is not happening and it's going into limbo and there's nothing. And you're like, look, we love working together. We're going to keep doing this. And it's like, you know that thing. We've been talking about it, you know,

[Richard Campbell]

over dinner, you always had a game in their pocket.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. I do think there's going to be a lot of that.

[Richard Campbell]

And there's no game better than the one you haven't written yet, because every game you have written sucks.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yep.

[Richard Campbell]

Right. Like, that's always the perfect game.

[Paul Thurrott]

So.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, that's the reality is when those folks get together, they're gonna. They're gonna take on one of the things they always wanted to make.

[Leo Laporte]

We did the same thing. We briefly had this thought that it'd be fun to have the old screensavers shows.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

25 years, of course.

[Paul Thurrott]

I mean.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. On our network. And it'd be fun to show the old show from, like, 2000 and say, here's what's changed in the last 26 years.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

And so we went to NBC because they own, you know, Comcast bought it and they own the rights, and they said no. Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

Because they're like a. We were never doing anything with this. We just discovered you want to, like, get something. Oh, it must be worth something.

[Leo Laporte]

We said we'd do a register.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes.

[Paul Thurrott]

Screw you. Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

You know, they have the tapes. Well, at least they did, stored in some storage locker in LA somewhere. They're paying a monthly fee for it.

[Paul Thurrott]

I don't know if you follow news, Leo, but maybe not. Well, I don't know who.

[Leo Laporte]

Who owns it now. It's all very confusing. Comcast is trying to spin off NBC, but that's when I thought maybe we could call them again once they spin it off, maybe they'll be more interested. I don't know.

[Paul Thurrott]

Look, we just want to hold a bucket as you dump the trash. Can we just have the. You know. Yeah, yeah. And they said no, right?

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

They didn't even, like, high ball. They didn't even say, yeah, you can have it, but it's going to be $35 million or something.

[Leo Laporte]

They didn't.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, they.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, they could have said. They could have said, well, we want this, and we would have at least negotiated, but it's so short. Too much trouble. They said we don't. So who knows? Those tapes are probably all long gone now, you know, A lot of them have been pirated and put up on YouTube. You can see a lot of old episodes on YouTube. But it would be nice to have the original masters.

[Paul Thurrott]

Of course. Of course.

[Leo Laporte]

Put them back up with commentary or not, whatever.

[Paul Thurrott]

And obviously you're the ideal outlet for that. But I mean, it's.

[Leo Laporte]

Well, this is what happens when you don't own your own content, Right?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, right, Right.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's right.

[Leo Laporte]

It's one of the reasons I started Twit way back in 2005, because I had that bad experience with tech TV and I said, you know, I could probably do the same thing. And it's like, I feel like I'm like Taylor Swift. I wanted to own my masters.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's interesting.

[Leo Laporte]

This is.

[Paul Thurrott]

So this is what you're saying is that that twit as an organization is tech tv. Leo's.

[Leo Laporte]

Leo's version. Exactly.

[Paul Thurrott]

Is that what you decided? Exactly.

[Leo Laporte]

You nailed it. It really is.

[Paul Thurrott]

Just trying to make sure I understand.

[Leo Laporte]

It really is. We didn't get the masters, so we thought we'd start over.

[Richard Campbell]

There you go.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's funny.

[Leo Laporte]

Unfortunately, I don't remember the melody, so.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. I guess that's technically what Thorat.com is as well, but.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah, it is, right? It is.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

And you know what? You. You. You did just fine. You did.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know what, though? You did too, by the way. I. I feel like both of us probably would have just done the thing forever if they had just left us the frick alone and.

[Leo Laporte]

Exactly. You know, in a way, it was. Kicked me out the door.

[Paul Thurrott]

Right. Because I would never have had the incentive. I never would have done it. I never would have done it. I was happy to be there, you know, and they made it so awful and terrible and whatever. They made it impossible for me to stay, but I would have just stayed.

[Leo Laporte]

Travis, Kelsey and I are engaged in the marriage.

[Paul Thurrott]

You're going to move the wedding location of the Giant stadium.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

That is so funny because we spent a long time yesterday on MacBreek Weekly talking about that, and people were very irate. Like, I don't tune into this show to find out what's happening with Taylor Swift.

[Richard Campbell]

Right.

[Leo Laporte]

But.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, that's. But they do tune into this show to find out what's happening.

[Leo Laporte]

That's why they listen to Windows Weekly. Exactly. That's what I said. Tune in tomorrow. We'll cover it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Actually, I would like to just before we get to the back of the book, because that's what's coming up next. But I would like to Take this opportunity to give us a little plug for TechTV, Leo's version, aka twit. Now, yes, we have ads. We've actually done. It's funny, we've actually done business wise a lot better than TechTV did that lost Paul Allen, who owned it at the end, hundreds of millions of dollars. We've never lost money because we couldn't. I didn't have Paul Allen's fortune to spend. So we've always been profitable. But here's the thing. But in order to do that, we've had to scale back. We had a big studio, we got to a smaller studio. Now we're in my attic. We had lots more shows. We've cut back to just the basics and I don't, I just. Because we're bootstrapped. But thank goodness the club came along. Lisa had this idea back in Covid as advertising started to dwindle. She said, you know, why don't we have the audience support us to the extent they are willing to and can and it's made a huge difference. And I want to thank everybody who's a member of the club and invite you, dear listener, who if you're not a member and I think if you're hearing this, you're probably not to join. What do you get? Well, first of all, it's 10 bucks a month, $120 a year. There is a two week free trial. There are also corporate and family plans so you can have multiple members at a discount. But what you get for your 10 bucks is ad free versions of all the shows. You don't even get this plug. You get access to the club Twit Discord, which is a really fun hangout with some really smart, interesting people. You also get special programming that we do in the club. Things like our. Well, coming up a week from Friday, our AI user group, which is always fascinating. We got some really smart AI users in there. We do the photo show with Chris Marquardt. Coastal is the word of the month. We're doing pictures illustrating Coastal. It's a great way to, you know, get your pictures kind of coaching from, from Mr. Marquard. He also talks about photo news. We have a coding show off by one with Jeff Atwood and one of these days we will cover coding in that show. Anyway, there's a lot of great stuff. Micah's crafting corner. We have Micah's media corner. Our next movie is the Matrix. That should be interesting. Stacy's book club. We try to make it fun but the main point of the Club really is. I think it's important to do. To be completely independent. I don't want to be owned by NBC. I don't want to be owned by anybody. I don't want to be beholden to any of the companies we cover. I want to give you. And we do honest coverage without fear or favor because we represent the users. Paul does. Richard does. I do. Your support makes that possible. Twit. TV Club. Twit. If you want to join the club, we would sure love to have you. Twit. TV Club. Club. Twit. Enough said. Don't want to belabor the point. I should actually, though, I love these little. I should go to the discord real quickly because we get these great illustrations from Joe Esposito. He does these, by the way, not with AI. He does these.

[Richard Campbell]

He does it the old fashioned way.

[Leo Laporte]

He does it the old fashioned way, the Photoshop way. And I don't really know what's going on here.

[Paul Thurrott]

Is this like an 80s thing? It's like Indiana Jones.

[Leo Laporte]

What's the little Michael Jackson looks like?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, but the tiny Mary Lou Retton

[Leo Laporte]

and then Mary Lou Retton. There you go.

[Richard Campbell]

Rings.

[Leo Laporte]

That's.

[Richard Campbell]

That's. That's men. Okay.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, like in the 80s, you know. I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

I love. What do they call that font? That? The font. The checkbook font at the bottom. I love that too.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's like the bite magazine font almost.

[Leo Laporte]

Anyway, thank you. Joe Ozone, Art Foundry. He is. He takes old computer ads and turns them into.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, it's awesome.

[Leo Laporte]

All right now, back of the book Time. Mr. Paul Thurat Things off for us.

[Paul Thurrott]

Probably actually have all those outfits.

[Leo Laporte]

So I do actually. Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

So Dave Plummer, former Microsoft engineer. He's just here for the likes and the subs. Whatever. I. Look, look, I subscribe to his channel. I actually love the guy. That has apparently not been pointed back in my direction. It's fine.

[Leo Laporte]

He doesn't even know who you are. Come on.

[Paul Thurrott]

That's what I mean. It's. Which is. Like I said, it's fine. It's. But. And look, I watch every video he makes. I just, you know, it's my thing, you know, I disagree with it.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

And part of the problem is I don't. He almost never does anything that helps anybody. What I mean is if you're tech enthusiast, you're a developer especially, you're technical, whatever it is, you're older because you remember all this stuff from the 90s. Same reason you would read a Raymond Chen post on what used to be MSDN. Because he's just talking about APIs and programming things from 20 years, 30, 40 years. It's crazy. It has nothing to do with anything. If you enjoy that kind of thing, you're gonna love Dave Plummer. Like, I. It's very. And I really find it interesting, but there's also, you know, it's like he makes YouTube videos. So there's like a clickbait kind of element to some of this stuff where I'm like, what? So he just came up with videos like, tired of bloated Windows. I fixed Notepad. And I'm like, again? Like, you fixed it again? Like, what does that mean? So I watched this stupid thing and he looks. He already. He did this last year sometime. He did some vibe coded version of Notepad, which is pretty good, by the way. But he's been working and some other people have been working on, like, assembly language, like, OG notepad style. Like, oh, well, not OG, but like 1990s style notepad, whatever. And then it turns into one of those programming challenges where it's like, how small can we make this thing? You know? Well, it turns out they can make it in 2.5k, which is like, you know, which because of cluster sizing on disk, is actually 4K, you know, there's nothing you can do. Right. I mean, it's like stupid big. And, you know, and by the way, that's fun. That has nothing to do with fixing the bloat. Your perception of bloating in Windows.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Whether that's real or not.

[Richard Campbell]

Bigger than that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. Every MP3 file is 100 times bigger than that. Yeah, but. But what does this solve? You know, like. Like, okay, are you going to now go to every single application in Windows and remake them as tiny, whatever, Kilobyte assembly language executables. No. And also, if you try to run this thing on your computer, you're going to get a smart screen warning, because guess what? It's not. And I don't quite understand, what are we talking about here? What is the point of this? One of the things I see a lot out in the world right now, and one of the things I have to really try to repress in myself is just like this nostalgia thing. Right. That, you know, I joke, but I'm not really joking. I talk about, like, how hipsters. Hipsters, as I define it, are people who are nostalgic for a past they did not experience. It's like when you have young kids, like, I'm gonna listen to vinyl. I'm gonna have an ipod now. I'm gonna, you know, have a, you know, an instant camera instead of using smartphones and online stuff and whatever. And it's like, yeah, are you. I mean. But okay, but look, I live through all this stuff like, like you guys, I was part of the original generation of people had home video game consoles, home computers, as we called them at the time. I grew up with this stuff. I've seen the world evolve. It's mostly better. It's not always better. We talk a lot about that. But nostalgia, I mean, look, I have my points in time where things were better, but I mean, I feel like it doesn't have to be technology, but most of the time, whereas nostalgia for something, it's not because that time was better. The 1950s were not better than today. The 1980s were not. Well, the 1980s were better. But the thing is, it's mostly because of the age you were at the time. The reason it was better in the 80s for me is because I didn't have any responsibility. I didn't have kids or a wife or a car or a house and a mortgage and whatever it is, you know what I mean? I just lived day to day. Who cared? The whole world was wide open for me. Yeah. And that's a beautiful thing. Yep. That's what, that's what you're really nostalgic for. You can't recapture it. Exactly. This was a couple of months ago, probably, but I had written that article about, you know, what we've kind of what we're missing in this modern world. And I was comparing, you know, you have a Commodore 64, you turn it on as a basic prompt. Well, it says ready, but it's a basic thing. And you can type, you can make your own programs. You're like, oh my God, what am I going to make with this thing? And how we don't really have that today. Like, like technology is so easy, it's just there. It's not easy, but it's just there. It's everywhere. And then I finally realized, two, three weeks, whatever into this, that AI is the thing that can give us that for all the problems of AI, the ability to make things with AI is rather astonishing and is kind of the modern equivalent of that thing. And that's kind of the point. AI is nuanced. It's causing all kinds of problems. We just talked about a bunch of them. But it also has these things that

[Leo Laporte]

are good, you know, by the way, just came back. Fable is now, oh, there you go. And they're going to give us less than a week to play with it.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, get going, man.

[Leo Laporte]

I hope that's enough time to rewrite the entire Twitch sales system. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. But, yeah, right now you can use up to 50% of the. Your plan's usage limit on Fable 5.

[Richard Campbell]

Wow.

[Leo Laporte]

I have a subscription, so, yeah, I will switch to Fable. Very exciting. Anyway, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but that's just breaking.

[Paul Thurrott]

I actually kind of figured it would happen between. Now, of course, whenever we talked about it in the next show, I figured that was the time frame, so.

[Leo Laporte]

Of course.

[Paul Thurrott]

Anyway, look, I think the thing that bugs me about this is just the way it's promoted. Like, you've solved some kind of a bloating problem. It's like, I'm. Like, I do months and months of work to try to fix these things for people. There are entire categories of things I don't even care about personally, but I just go down these kind of rabbit holes because I want. Whether you're watching the show or my other podcast or read my site or my books or whatever it is, it's like, I'm trying to help. I'm not just trying to eject content out in the world. And it just bugs me. Like, if you're not gonna. If you're not helping, like, you just shut up and get out of the way. Like, what are you doing? Like, you just. It's worse than doing nothing, you know? Like, you're in to me, when you're making noise, you're distracting. You're just in the way. It's like, are we gonna give fuel to more people to complain about? I can't stand Windows anymore. All it does is sell me stuff all day long and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, I. I don't think anyone uses Windows more than I do. And I. That is not my experience. What are you talking about? I do. I see things. I mean, there are things, but I mean, like. But I also. I look at that and it's like, all right, how do we fix this problem? And that's what I try to do, you know? I mean, I'm not perfect. I'm actually pretty terrible in many ways. But, like, I just see something like this and it bugs me because I like this guy. I'm into this kind of content. I don't think it's anything any normal person would ever care about. But it's like, you create this tiny notepad thing, and you're like, okay, the thing he complained about a year ago, that led to him vibe coding a new version of Notepad and then made this new. This yet newer version was. There was a copilot icon in Notepad which you could remove yourself easily and is now no longer there. So it's like, what are we complaining about? I don't understand this. There's nothing in Notepad that is modern that you cannot get rid of with the exception of. Of one thing, which is the tabs. Right? That's it.

[Richard Campbell]

Yep.

[Paul Thurrott]

And you can configure it in such a way that you never use the tabs. So they're there, but you don't have to use them. What do we. Is. We're still complaining about Notepad. This is ridiculous to me. Don't be nostalgic. You know, stupid.

[Richard Campbell]

You better. You better be grateful that Mary Jo Foley isn't here.

[Paul Thurrott]

Was that oh because of Notepad, right?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, that's true.

[Paul Thurrott]

I wouldn't have been.

[Richard Campbell]

I wouldn't have been brave say such a thing.

[Paul Thurrott]

I wouldn't have said that in her. In front of her. No, I. The bone. I would always. Well, the bone I would give anybody, including Mary Jo, is that in, you know, the modern version of Note, by the way, Notepad as a. I'm sorry, let me find. Let me find the window so I can get the exact number. I talked about how small his version of Notepad is. Right. It's pretty full featured. Right. 2.5k on 2.5k. It's really 4k on disk because of the cluster thing. The modern version of Notepad, by the way, is 332K. I mean, yes, it is exponentially bigger than his thing, but it's also 332K. Yeah, it's. This is not. It's not Photoshop, guys.

[Richard Campbell]

Like, it's still got an icon bigger than that.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yes. And there's also this thing that most people don't know about in Windows, which is that Notepad is, in fact, I should say the classic version of Notepad is still in Windows 11. It's in the sys32 file, you know, system32 folder in Windows. Right. It's a. I'm forgetting the term now. It's a. Let's see if I can figure out the term of this thing. It's an execution alias. So the actual Notepad is the old version. If you turn off in Settings, you go to App. Advanced App settings. I think it's app execution aliases. You can turn it off in Notepad and it runs the old one like it's still there. So I don't. What are we fixing? You could do all this stuff. Like what is this? Like, what do you. This is not a bloated, you know, it's not terrible. Do you actually use notepad? I use notepad every day. I love it.

[Richard Campbell]

Sure.

[Paul Thurrott]

Jesus. It's crazy to me. Don't be nostalgic for something that was. Is not what you think it was.

[Richard Campbell]

Like.

[Paul Thurrott]

We, I think as people, we just kind of remember the good thing, you know. So we have this like, oh my God, everything was better, you know? Yeah, everyone used to smoke on planes in the 80s too, by the way. That was not better.

[Leo Laporte]

Those were the days, huh?

[Paul Thurrott]

That was not better. One of my favorite. This was a business trip. So that, I mean that recently, so to speak, I booked a ticket for the non smoking part of a plane and it was the row in front of where smoking started.

[Leo Laporte]

Isn't that ironic? Yeah. Like what?

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, okay.

[Leo Laporte]

There is no non smoking on a plane where they allow smoke.

[Paul Thurrott]

Guess what? I'm not nostalgic for that. That's ridiculous. Okay. I recently I've been updating the book, you know, on and on and on, and one of the ones I get stuck on things. This is my problem. I. I always find these, like I have to. Okay, wait, what about. You know, and then you, like a week goes by, you're like, what have I done? Nothing. Except I've spent a of time, lot of time doing it. And one of those things was it's like a consolidated Xbox chapter which is like Xbox, PC plus, whatever the gaming stuff is. Right. So there's, you know, there's the Xbox mode, which is new. There's the game bar, which is not new, and the Xbox app. Right, of course. And then you could do with controllers, et cetera. But I wanted to address in some small way like Windows 11 unarm gaming. And this fell into the review I just talked about of that laptop as well, where this thing has the most powerful processor. Like, how can I make games run? Or probably really just run better? Because I don't know that I can do anything to run games that won't run, whatever. So I actually tried call these games and I tried different Call of Duty games. I went back to Vanguard and none of them. They don't even. You can spend all day installing this thing and then you run it. It's like, yeah, no, it's just not even going to run. Like it crashes immediately. It's unbelievable. Like the Modern Doom series, like the doom 2016 doom eternal whatever the second one was called. They run, they're fine. The newest one, Doom Dark Ages does not run. It's same thing, stalls, takes a while, crashes immediately, does not run. You know. But in going through this little escapade or whatever you want to call it, this is not new information per se. But. But if you are going to try to make anything work on Snapdragon for games there's actually three things you need to do. There are settings in this in system. I'm sorry there are settings in the settings app in system Display. Right. Go into graphics and you can actually determine or configure how. Auto. Super. Auto. What's it called? Super. I guess it's auto super resolution. Auto SR works with individual apps but in this case games, which is smart, you know, you want to make sure that's set up correctly. There are sometimes settings in games you can use in combination with that. Like you can go into a game and say I'm going to run this at a lower resolution but I'm going to use AutoSR and it's going to, you know, visually make it look like it's running at a higher resolution and that can help. But the best thing to do, and this isn't curiously is not pre installed in all recent Snapdragon PCs is you get something called the Snapdragon control panel and it works a lot like an Nvidia app would work where you can use it to download drivers and then it will auto configure for individual games and it does that. And actually this is super smart to have because a especially on Snapdragon but maybe not unique to Snapdragon. You absolutely have to have the latest graphics drivers especially and that's the way to do that. And then you can go in and individually configure how games work to a degree that that you can't just in the system and actually that got some games over the top like I was playing. I think it's called Tomb Raider Definitive Edition and the default settings using Windows and just having the game optimize itself. I was getting 15 frames a second but then when I optimized it's not even playable. It was terrible. And then it's great for screenshots, it's not good for playing. But then I went through the Snapdragon control panel and just had it kind of auto config. Well, it didn't auto configure. I actually went in and made some changes and then I went into the game and I lowered the resolution but that ended up Bumping it back up. And by the time I was done, I'm getting over 100 frames per second. When I went down to more than you need, way more. But by the way, it was in the 270, 280 range when I went down. No, I mean when it started, I was like, wait, what? So I'm like, no, I'm bumping up the visual quality. So anyway, if you're going to go down this path, God help you, you're going to waste a lot of time. But you need these three things. Like you need to look at these three places. It's not just what's in the os. You have to get this Snapdragon control panel, which is a Qualcomm application. It's key to making this work.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, I'm glad we got that now that we can try and optimize like that. These are all luxuries in Windows you can do a bunch of this, but you just don't really need to. Stuff just works.

[Paul Thurrott]

This is so. This is everything I do. But you know, it's so time consuming and then ultimately usually so disappointing, you know, because some of these games are humongous and then you. It just doesn't work, you know.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, but you also hit me with the reality now, just now, which is like they've been making video drivers for Snapdragon X's for two years, right? So they're only so good. Like, we forget the luxury of a mature driver set.

[Paul Thurrott]

If you. Any modern game, if you go in, there are custom settings for all kinds of things like vertical sync and frame filling and all things that are custom tailored to Nvidia AMD and Intel chipsets. Right. And usually dedicated graphics. But increasingly you'll see this for integrated graphics too. There is nothing for Snapdragon. Right? So emulation is bad enough. Like, you know, Notepad doesn't run natively on arm. It does actually, but if it didn't, it would be fine. No one would care. It's a small app, a gigantic game that is big, graphics moving very quickly, hopefully very hard to do just to emulate all of that. It's a nightmare. And for the person doing it, it is a nightmare as well. Because sometimes it's impossible to know what makes the most difference or whatever. And there's a lot of hit or miss. But that assumes you can even get into the game. You know, that's. It's the one area where this thing kind of falls short. If gaming doesn't matter to you on a PC, you know, you only have to have one PC. It's not a problem. But if gaming very much matters to you, this is not the way to go, unfortunately, it just isn't, you know.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, no, fair enough.

[Paul Thurrott]

Unless you don't appreciate your time.

[Richard Campbell]

But, but there's lots of people arguing that they're not going to buy our machines because of gaming. And so you gave basically saying, he's like, look, you can make it work.

[Paul Thurrott]

The people that you run some esoteric app or something that somehow it does not work on arm, which is like almost impossible to find these days by nature. That person who will never stop complaining about this will inevitably have multiple computers and it does not matter. It's like. Or you have like, I have this printer for like a brother printer from 1992 and it will not print from Windows on ARM and I. Thus I cannot have it. It's like, do you have other computers? How much do you print? What are you talking about? Why does your iPhone print to it? Like, what are you talking like, why? Like, what's the why? What's the difference? I don't know, but it's a blocker for some people, you know.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, without a doubt.

[Leo Laporte]

Run as radio. Well, it's coming up.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, I am on a string of security conversations, for better or worse, mostly related to the impact of LLMs on security. Both sides of the equation here. Yeah, Hot Topic, last week's show with Tanya Janko. We were talking about helping developers to be more secure because they are the targets now of the black hats. But this week's show is with Mackenzie Jackson, who focuses more on supply chain attacks specifically and various mechanisms that are going on there that are creating this problem. And so we were talking about some of the exploits that already happened and tools and so on. And just this risk of it's one thing to secure the CICD pipeline, it's another thing where supply chain attacks typically happen because your internal apps take on new versions of code, typically open source code that have got exploits in them, and then you become part of the propagation chain or you're using an application, a third party application that depends on those sorts of things and your place gets affected because it got deployed that way. And as we talk through the challenges of evaluating all this in various testing tools and so forth, McKinsey said this great thing that just hit me so hard, like, wow, what a solution. Which is the white hats are working hard to fix these exploits, but usually it's always post facto. And so if you just wait 48 hours after a new version of a Library comes out. If it's been exploited, that will be found and fixed within those 48 hours. So it's like, just don't install the new bits, and a whole lot of problems go away. And this is such an interesting policy from an administrative point of view to go to your dev team and say, hey, can we do this? Can we just make it a routine that when you go to do a build, you don't grab any bits newer than 48 hours old? It's a new request and something I hadn't considered before. And just the reality that over and over again, where we see these extra exploits, they get detected. They get detected within hours. Right. Some. Some were just a few hours. And even then, enough people had downloaded that there was a whole lot of problems, but the folks who hadn't yet were fine. So if you could just wait, you. You might fix a whole bunch of problems.

[Leo Laporte]

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, not all ages, Leo.

[Leo Laporte]

Okay, children over 21. Yes, it is time.

[Richard Campbell]

Not in this country. 19's just fine.

[Leo Laporte]

What is the drinking age of Canada? 18.

[Richard Campbell]

It depends on the province. Oh, we don't have an overbearing federal government saying, we'll give you highway funds unless you.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, look who's coming out of his shell on Canada Day.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes. Happy Canada Day. Canada has multiple reasons to celebrate not merely Canada Day, but the World cup as well.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, yeah. Still in it. We're all shocked and stunned and thrilled

[Leo Laporte]

going on to the round of 16. That's exciting.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, very exciting. Furthest we've ever been by far, and. Yeah. 159 years young for. For confederation.

[Leo Laporte]

Nice.

[Richard Campbell]

And, I mean, I've been home for a while, so we've been doing. This is the second Canadian whiskey. The previous one was. I was in Denmark, so we're talking Danish. Very good whiskey, by the way. But last week, we did an East Coast. We did Glen Brett. And so I got to tell the story of Cape Breton and just how mad all of that was. So it seemed fair that I would go to the west, essentially.

[Leo Laporte]

And I found.

[Richard Campbell]

I've been meaning to talk about the Eau Claire distillery for a while, because I'm making my way through these things. And then I found this ridiculous bottle.

[Leo Laporte]

It's got a moose on it. It must be Canadian.

[Richard Campbell]

Yes, it's a reverse moose. The guy who sold it to me said, I hope this isn't AI. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure this has been around long. And this is things from 2020. AI could do this in 2020, so don't worry about that. But look close at the bottom of the bottle. See the mountain?

[Paul Thurrott]

Is that a mountain? Oh, my God. That's amazing.

[Richard Campbell]

See the mountain in the bottom of the bottle.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, I love it. I would buy it just for the mountain and the bottom of the bottle.

[Richard Campbell]

And the labels askew and torn on the edge. Like, they've got this whole aesthetic going on on this crazy bottle.

[Leo Laporte]

So cool.

[Richard Campbell]

And so this Rupert's exceptional Canadian whiskey. And by the way, the mascot's name is Rupert Rupert. And for that, we have to do a little bit of history. And that's what you sign up for when you do this, right? Because this whiskey is made in o. Is made in. At a distillery called Eau Claire, which sounds French Canadian, except it's in Alberta.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh.

[Richard Campbell]

But before confederation, Alberta was not called Alberta. It was called Rupert's Land.

[Paul Thurrott]

Nice.

[Richard Campbell]

And you may wonder why in the world anything was called Rupert's Land. Because it was actually named for a fellow named Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who was the cousin of King Charles II of England, and he was the first governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, which is granted control of the British territories in 1670. Until very recently, Hudson's Bay Company was the longest continuous operating corporation in the world. But it eventually became just a department store, and department stores can't survive. And HBC is finally gone. But this was the place that traded two blankets for a beaver pelt for 300 years. And the land declarations. Now you got to imagine you're King Charles ii. You've got control. You know about this land, but nobody's really explored it yet. You're not terribly concerned about the native population that's already there, but you want to license it, essentially. So you have to set parameters on a land you don't have maps for. So how do you do this? And so the deal, what Rupert's Land actually was, the way it was defined, was it was all of the land whose watersheds drained into Hudson's Bay. So if you went to Hudson's Bay, which is that huge bay in the middle of the Canadian land mass there sort of off to the east a bit, and you go up any of those rivers, all of those rivers represent Rupert's Land. And there was another territory that they defined as well, called the Northwest Territory. The Northwest Territory was the land that didn't drain into Hudson's Bay because it drained into the Arctic Ocean. So it was north and west of Rupert's Land. Now, these territories were defined literally in the 1600s, long before there were colonists. So when you fast forward to Confederation, which was 1867, where Upper Canada and Lower Canada became the Dominion of Canada, normally we would now call those Ontario and Quebec, although when Confederation comes in 1867, and we talked about this last week, you also get New Brunswick and in Nova Scotia. Newfoundland doesn't come along. Newfoundland, Labrador, stay out until 1949. As part of the formation of the Dominion of Canada, both Rupert's Land and the Northwest Territory are transferred to the Dominion of Canada. This is in 1870. And so initially they just call it all the Northwest Territories because it's north and west of Ontario. But they also, shortly after that, make an area called Manitoba, which is the next today is now the next province over from Ontario. But then it was not that back then. It was the Red river settlement. And the Red river is the river that flows through what we now know as Winnipeg. And at the time, in 1870, it was the largest population of Europeans, nominally Europeans, about 10 to 12,000 people west of Ontario. Now, these were not strictly Europeans. These were many of the original generations of original settlers from the 1600s. These were the Metis. And the Metis were the European trappers who paired up with native women and essentially created their own tribe, their own group of folks. The Metis are a very powerful force in Canada to this day. And they were not happy with the deal that formed the Dominion Canada and turned Rupert's Land into parts of the Dominion of Canada simply because they weren't consulted. And so a bit of a rebellion was taking place there. They basically organized their own provisional government and started communicating directly with the British Crown, which really got Dominion Canada wound up. And so they negotiated quickly and carved out a little chunk of land 200km to by 175km, largely around what we now call Winnipeg and called it Manitoba just to keep those guys calm. The following year, in 1871, British Columbia joins and British Columbia comes by to Canada a totally different way. Because of the Rockies being so steep, BC was actually populated by folks coming from the Pacific. So this is Captain Cook and Captain Vancouver and that whole dynamic. So it's a totally different process compared to what was actually going on coming from the east. So everything east of the Rockies is Rupert's Land in Northwest Territories. This was all part of that original fur territories that now were being carved up. And so in 1882, the federal government starts dividing the Northwest Territory now into different regions. And the District of Alberta was defined as what we now would call Southern Alberta. There was the district of Athabasca, which is northern Alberta, and then the district of. Of Saskatchewan and Assaboone, which ultimately all becomes Saskatchewan. There's also the district of Keewatin, but that comes and goes in a relatively narrow period. It's a negotiating tool for trade and eventually will become the rest of Manitoba. Actually, Alberta and Saskatchewan don't fully emerge until 1905. Not that long ago, really. And that brings us to the Turner Valley. Turner Valley in Alberta is about an hour today is about an hour's drive southwest of Calgary on the 22 highway. But in 1886, so while Alberta was still the district of Alberta star part of the Northwest Territories, the Turner family settled there to do ranching and farming. And this is right along the Sheep river, which also has a very interesting geological form that captures hydrocarbons. And this is actually where western Canadian oil industry begins. Now, oil in general had largely been discovered in the North American continent in southern Ontario and Pennsylvania in the 1880s. And literally it was these similar kind of geological folds that literally that drove oil and gas right to the surface and was long before any sophisticated technologies around any of that. And early surveys of the proto Canadian government that did go through Rupert's Land had said that the eastern part of the Rockies possibly had hydrocarbon formations where literally it was seeping up to the surface. And so into this environment comes a guy named William Stewart Herron and also another guy named Archibald Wayne Dingman. And it's funny how in the early 1900s everybody concludes their middle names and things, but both these two had worked in those Pennsylvania oil fields in the late 1880s and 1890s. And when they had found out that these formations were known in western Canada, what was now at that point still Rupert's Land, they immigrated. And so Heron is considered the founder of the oil industry in western Canada. And he very specifically came there looking for oil, hadn't had some experience there. And he bought a farm near. Bought a farm off of a farmer that was near the river where he saw these seepages and creates the Calgary Petroleum Products Company. In 1913, he partners up with Dingman and they believe they found the same formations they saw in Pennsylvania that made oil and what they call wet gas very easy to access to. They're wrong. And they will spend 17 months drilling to finally strike what's called wet gas. This is not crude oil per se. This is natural gas with heavy components in it. The most interesting, which is called a product then called condensate, essentially natural gasoline stuff. You could Just directly burn. And the natural gas, the actual gaseous part, they can't use. This is before the pumping systems and containment systems and so forth. They want the liquid, they can't really deal with the gas. But the gas, if it builds up, it becomes explosive and very dangerous. And so attached to all of these early drilling rigs is a flare, which really what it is is they're burning the natural gas off. And as described in the papers in the early 1910s, there was so much light at night, you could read a newspaper. They're not really doing any refining, they're not doing any piping. They're just using the condensates because they're valuable burnable fuels. Right. Snap and benzene and those sorts of things. So by the 1920s, the Turner Valley is this frontier, beautiful Doomtown. People are flocking, they're grabbing any land they can. Everybody's drilling things are very, you know, pretty out of control. And In October of 1920, a fire and explosion destroys the entire petroleum facilities that that Heron had built. And unable to afford the rebuild, he sells it off to Imperial Oil for a bargain. Or Imperial Oil sets up a new entity called Royal Light Oil Company and one of their first things is to actually build a natural gas pipeline all the way to Calgary. So they stop flaring the gas and start piping it into this quote unquote city. I mean, it's night, it's the 1920s, so the plagues are still pretty small there. In 1936, Turner Valley Royalties hits the proper crude oil zone and starts pumping real proper oil and starting to do refining. And in fact, that whole area becomes the majority of oil production of Canada right through World War II. And this will eventually end by the end of the World War II. The Leduc discovery, which is up much further north, just south of Edmonton, is a far bigger oil field. And that becomes the focus. So the Turner Valley falls into decline. And that brings us up to more current times. So this was a little farming area that became this boom town for about 25 years, 20, 30 years for oil. And then largely it subsided. And there's still wells and things in the area, but they're much lower producing. And you know, just those times have passed. Now the Eau Claire Distilleries in Turner Valley. And here's how that came about. Guy named David Ferran who had worked in brewing, he was a VP for Big Rock Brewery, which is a large craft brewery facility in Alberta. He's also into of farming, specifically antique style farming with horses, horsepower farming. He keeps Big draft horses and so forth. And he was at that time was in the business of growing barley, largely for beer, but doing it with horse equipment rather than the old fashioned thing. And famously him with a group of his friends, they talked about we should start distilling our grains. At the time they were growing kind of barley that worked very well in Alberta called Metclaf barley. But they had just announced a new strain made in Canada called AACC Synergy, which was better for making, for doing distillation. It was easy, it had low beta glucan, so it was much easier to mash high concentration of sugar. Today it's the number one malting barley in western Canada. But it was just beginning in 2013, 2014. Now there was no craft distilling in Alberta at all. At that time there was Alberta Distillers, one of the largest manufacturers of spirits on the planet. Today they do 20 plus million liters annually. They're one of the big 8 million distillers in Canada. There's also Black Velvet out of Left Bridge which is also massive. They really make, they only do their own branded products, but they do more than 10 million liters a year. And we, I mentioned a few shows. I was back in 974. We talked about Centennial Rye, which is Highwood out of Alberta, which is not the same school scale. Maybe a million liters a year, but still a big, what we call a medium producer. But the laws are not set up for bit small producers in the 2000 and tens. Right. They're built for these bigger producers. They have these expensive markups, essentially excise taxes for any distilled alcohol. And so you pay these big markups. And one of Farran's first initiatives was to create craft distilling law to get craft distilling law set up similar to what BC has California had pioneered and made its way up to the west coast, Oregon and Washington and so forth, they don't get exactly the same thing. What they actually get is a discount on the markup or on the excise tax, but not if you sell in stores. You sell in stores, you pay the full markup. But if you sell directly or at farmers markets and you produce less than 240,000 liters of ethanol, so this depends on the ABV. You get a discount, a substantial one can be less than half. And so that means if you're producing a hundred thousand liters a year and it's only at 40%, you're producing 40,000 liters of ethanol and you're allowed to go up to 240,000 liters of ethanol. So your actual production limits are about 600,000 liters a year. So they take over this old theater in Turner Valley. It was built in 1929 during the oil boom times and this building was barely used. Back in the boom times it was very busy. But at that time it was just sort of a community hall type thing once in a while for events and so forth. It was owned by the town and so Farrar buys it outright from the town to make it into distillery. And it's literally on Main street right beside the 22 highway. He also hires a master distiller out of Scotland, a lady named Caitlin Quinn, One of the very few female master distillers in the world and probably the only one in Canada. She was educated at the Herrot Watt University and she's into that angle on barley because they go after specialty local barley with this AAC synergy barley at least her whole approach is like let's go for those flavors. Less focus on the barrel. Their equipment is small stainless steel mash tons and, and, and stainless steel washbacks instead of wood. But they do the very long fermentation typical of craft distilleries up to 96 hours. And copper pot stills in the Scottish style, so onion style stills. But they are actually made in Canada. They do age in ex bourbon and sherry casks. So the first distillations happen in 2015 and then they got a layup for a few years. So they also start making a gin and a vodka to be able to pay the bills. They do the two year old release in 2017. Just a little bit gets scooped up right away because it's just innovative. This edition that Rupert's Exceptional Canadian whiskey went into barrels in 2015 and was bottled in 2020. So this should be at least five years old. And aging happens pretty rapidly, especially in southern Alberta. That's a, that's a terrain that's got very hot dry summers, so sort of like Kentucky and very cold winters. And so there's huge, these huge temperature swings, but always with low humidity means that they battle the loss of water problem, that often their alcohol levels go up but that the draw into the wood is very, very strong. And so you're going to get a rapidly maturing whiskey for its time living in those conditions. And they only lay up about 2,000 barrels right on the facility site there. So. So doesn't go very far. This is only 40% so the nose on it's pretty gentle, not a ton of color in there, but it's not, you know, it's a young whiskey and they, they say sherry cask, but I don't think there's a lot of sherry color from this. Oh, all right. Yeah, that's a, that's a. That's a plain old Canadian whiskey, man. That's, that's straight barley, like, you get that. You've got none of the rye notes or anything like that. It's got a nice heat to it.

[Paul Thurrott]

It.

[Richard Campbell]

But it's, it's just a straightforward. Nothing too exciting. No, no big burn, this. Just a bit of warm. Very gentle on the mouth. Yeah. I call this Canadian whiskey all day long. It doesn't do any of those big rich, creamy notes. It's more of a. Just a straight sipping. And at $40 Canadian a bottle and sorry, not exported, they don't make enough of it. You would not hesitate to put this in a mix or drink it neat, throw an ice cube into it. This is a proper drink for Canada day. Between the moose and the mountain, you kind of can't go wrong. So that's western craft style whiskey and

[Leo Laporte]

it sounds pretty darn delicious.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah, they made a distinctive bottle. It's got a little taper to it. You know, they've had a little fire.

[Leo Laporte]

I like the mountain in the bottom. Yeah, the mountain.

[Richard Campbell]

Super. The mountain's a very clever idea.

[Leo Laporte]

Just look at that.

[Richard Campbell]

Just a little bit of a mold in it. And it's got stamped in here, Turner Valley soil and toil soil. So they are doing that, you know, grain to drain to bottle thing. They're doing a proper craft style and again, relatively small production here, so you gotta, you gotta seek this stuff out. But super Canadian and I thought for Canada day, a little bit of the west coast story and super Canadian, ladies

[Leo Laporte]

and gentlemen, that's what we call it. Super Canada. Well, that's Windows Weekly for this particular July 1st. Thank you so much, Paul Thurat and Richard Campbell. Richard [e-mail] that's where you'll find not only run his radio, but also the podcast he does with carlfranklin.net rocks. And that's where the geek outs are as well. You have that new geek out on the data centers, right?

[Richard Campbell]

Data centers of space.

[Leo Laporte]

Space. Lately there's been a lot of talk about what a bad idea data centers is.

[Richard Campbell]

Space. I mean, I might have been really.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh, my God.

[Leo Laporte]

I mean, well, I was willing to give it a.

[Paul Thurrott]

You know, sometimes your knee jerk reaction is right.

[Richard Campbell]

You know, you know that I'm getting Since I did that talk and it's on YouTube and getting a lot of traction. So is the AI hype talk. A whole lot of people ask me if I. I do a talk on how to build data centers that don't suck. Oh, just the regular ones.

[Leo Laporte]

Love that idea.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Don't suck what, though? Don't suck electricity. Don't suck water. Don't suck what Give you electricity.

[Richard Campbell]

I would say just don't make people angry. How about that? Because we built data centers for a long time without making people angry.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. But there weren't so many of them, you know.

[Richard Campbell]

Well, and I also think companies are behaving badly right now. Yes. Because it is.

[Leo Laporte]

They.

[Richard Campbell]

They are. They are doing that Gold Rush thing.

[Leo Laporte]

Yes.

[Richard Campbell]

They are just trying to exploit everywhere they can.

[Leo Laporte]

So come anyway.

[Richard Campbell]

I pass it by a couple of organizers and they're like, sign us up. So I'm like, oh, God, I gotta write another one.

[Leo Laporte]

I'll do it now. That's good. That's good. That's. Richard also does those Whiskey segments. And if you like them, there are a whole bunch of them.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Online at TWiT TV. Whiskey.

[Richard Campbell]

And somebody's been working hard. I presume it's Kevin, because there's been a bunch of new ones added.

[Leo Laporte]

Kevin's cranking them. He's actually on vacation. He's so exhausted from all of that.

[Richard Campbell]

But we're up to. We're up to Ned.

[Paul Thurrott]

We got.

[Richard Campbell]

I went and re. I watched the Ned.

[Leo Laporte]

Oh, Ned was fun. I enjoyed so much fun.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

That was your Australian story.

[Richard Campbell]

It was one of the Australian ones, yeah.

[Paul Thurrott]

Wow.

[Richard Campbell]

But, yeah, so we're only about maybe 10 weeks behind that.

[Leo Laporte]

We're catching up. I don't think we'll ever fully catch up, but we're getting there. That's all right. There's plenty to listen to. How many episodes are there? There's hundreds now, right?

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. 140, something like that. Incredible.

[Leo Laporte]

Incredible.

[Richard Campbell]

Not running out of whiskey, let me tell you.

[Leo Laporte]

No siree. No siree.

[Richard Campbell]

But I'm gonna do July 4th in Snohomish, so I suspect I'll be coming back with something American.

[Leo Laporte]

Do they do. Oh, yeah. You're gonna go for the fireworks, that's why.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh, yeah. Well, this is. This is sort of the rural. Rural area north of, you know, King county there, where it's the kind of place where people make their own fireworks. So it sounds like an artillery barrage most of the time. So I. I gotta go. Just have so much fun.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. They blow it. Blowed up Good. They blowed up real good. I bet you have fireworks in Makunji.

[Paul Thurrott]

Oh my God. There's pop up fireworks stores everywhere here. If you want to kill yourself, Pennsylvania is a great place to be or

[Leo Laporte]

at least blow off a finger or two.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't. Was it Pennsylvania?

[Paul Thurrott]

It might.

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know. It's Pennsylvania or Tennessee where we on one of the road trips we stopped at a place that had. Was a gas. It was gasoline.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah. And fireworks.

[Richard Campbell]

Ammunition and fireworks.

[Paul Thurrott]

Yeah.

[Richard Campbell]

I'm like this is a perfect combination. Yeah. And while we're sitting there, a guy in an H1 with the pintel mount for the. For the 50 cal on it didn't have the gun, but he had the pintle pulled in to get gas too. Like might be in America.

[Leo Laporte]

MrThorantis.com that's where you'll find all of the goodies. The articles join the premium section and you not only get more articles, but you also get the books. Field Guide to Windows 11, Windows Everywhere. Deinshidify Windows. You can get them yourself, of course, if you Want to. @leanpub.com now we do this show every Wednesday, 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, 1800 UTC. You can watch us do it live if you're in the club. Of course you've get behind the velvet rope access in the club Trip discord. But the unwashed masses can also watch live on YouTube, Twitch, X, Facebook, LinkedIn and Kick. And they're really unwashed at X. If you really want to want to hang out with the unwashed masses, X is the place to be after the fact. On demand versions of the show are available, audio and video at the website, Twitter, TV, www. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to Windows weekly. And of course the best thing to do is subscribe in your favorite podcast client. You get it automatically that way the minute we are done, which we are. Have a great fourth of July. Have a great first of July, Richard. And a fourth of July, you get double fun. Do they do fireworks in Canada or just.

[Richard Campbell]

Oh yeah, yeah. But in a much more controlled way.

[Paul Thurrott]

Well, everything's a little saner in Canada.

[Leo Laporte]

Yeah. We used to have here in Petaluma what they called safe and sane fireworks, which means they were boring, but they still thought that was too dangerous. Mostly because of the fire danger. So we don't even have those anymore. We just.

[Richard Campbell]

We just have to watch California. The whole place is a tinderbox.

[Leo Laporte]

Like it is really. It's it actually, actually it's probably wise not to have people lighting things, especially things that get out of control so easily.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah.

[Leo Laporte]

Thanks for joining us, everybody. Have a wonderful weekend. Enjoy the World cup, and we will

[Richard Campbell]

see you next Wednesday in Morocco. Next.

[Leo Laporte]

When is that?

[Richard Campbell]

I don't know.

[Leo Laporte]

US Plays today. We're. We're.

[Richard Campbell]

Yeah. You guys are still doing your 32? We did our 32 first day.

[Leo Laporte]

We're hoping we can survive. But Bosnia. Herzog Tough game, man. Tough game. Yeah, I know how to play. I know there'll be some celebrations tonight if we do. Wow. Thank you, everybody. See you next time.

[Paul Thurrott]

Ugly does weekly Byebye.