This Week in Tech 962 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's time for twit this week in tech. We have a great panel for you. Daniel Rubino is here from Windows Central brand new but he's going to be great, I know at David Pierce you hear him on the verge cast. He's editor at large at the verge. And of course, father Robert Ballas there is in studio, brought some wonderful toys and gadgets from CES. This week in tech is next. This is twit this week in tech, episode 962, recorded Sunday, january 14th 2024.

00:42
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You need it. Canarytoolstwit. Use the offer code TWIT in the how'd you hear about us? Box. You must have them. If you've got a network, you need some canaries. Canarytoolstwit. We thank them so much for their support of this week in tech. It's time for TWIT this week in tech. This is the annual day after CES edition, which means crazy times. Let me introduce our panel for you. Daniel Rubino is here. Editor-in-chief at Windows Central. He was in Las Vegas this week. He also thinks he might have COVID. But don't, breathe on me and we'll be fine. Hi Daniel, you're feeling okay.

03:56
Hello, thanks for having me yeah, you're feeling all right. Yeah, just a little, just tired. Yeah, well, that's normal after CES. I'd sleep for five days. No short throat. No, uh, cause I see other things.

04:08 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Oh no, I've had a head cold. Yeah, I had a head cold going in to it and then it got a little bit better, but then the dry air made it worse and then I swear I got worse when it came on. So either I got two rhino viruses or one COVID. I don't know what I'm collecting.

04:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, if you get an ACE, you get 21. So that's that's good. Yeah, I think that's how it works. It's great to see you, daniel. As always, we've got somebody brand new with us and I'm thrilled. Long been a fan of David Pierce. He was at the Wall Street Journal. He was a protocol. He's at the uh at Verge. He's the editor at large there and the host of the Verge. One of the hosts of the Verge guest. Great to see you. Thank you for joining us, david.

04:45 - David Pierce (Guest)
My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Comparatively, I feel like I'm doing much better than everybody.

04:49
I just I did all my sickness in December, so I'm good. I was there Monday to Friday. I did a red eye home on Thursday, which is both a terrible idea and also a terrific pro tip this year because, uh, it turns out flying is not so great this year. Yeah, all the airplanes are bad and so, yeah, a lot of horror stories getting home from CES this year, but your door didn't go flying off. Miraculously, no, all the parts of the plane intact.

05:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not sitting in an exit row ever again. That's all I'm going to say. Uh well, it's great to have you welcome, and I'm going to get from both of you your CES experiences, also with this in studio at arm's length. Father Robert Palisade, the digital Jesuit, I don't yet have COVID.

05:29 - Padre (Guest)
But I am trying to collect all the variants because I've got a bingo card and I'm pretty good. I've only had it three times.

05:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you know really, if you haven't, but you're now, you live in Rome and the Vatican, uh, in Vatican city, uh, and there have been epidemics in Italy. It's bad, no, right now it's bad.

05:46 - Padre (Guest)
So I actually received an email this morning from one of my brother, jesuits, and he said you may want to just delay, don't come home Two weeks.

05:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Just wait a bit. Oh man, I'm sorry. Yeah Well, as, as tradition holds, you brought back a bunch of stuff, some toys you know from CES, just a few of the things that uh. I can ask you do you, when you go onto the show floor, do you wear your collar? I do not, Because I would think that would be how you would get all this stuff.

06:11 - Padre (Guest)
No, no, no. I'm always very honest. I it very early on in the sort of influencer generation I was colored by a bad experience I had with, like a group of teens coming up to a booth somewhere in the south hall and they literally just walked up to the booth manager with a camera and said hi, I'm on Instagram, what can you give me for free? I'm thinking, okay, no, I don't want that.

06:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I get the feeling that that's happening. Yeah, I don't think that's yeah, but we do have some cool stuff you can demo, Of course. Uh, including whatever this is, is this gathering like?

06:42 - Padre (Guest)
that's gathering, that's charging my little thingy right here. Is there enough light from the the studio?

06:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There actually is.

06:47 - Padre (Guest)
This is one of those super high efficiency panels, so yeah, we'll talk about that a little bit.

06:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um, let me, but I'm gonna, actually I'm gonna go from uh left to right here and start with you, daniel. What, what do you think, I always wonder. Is there a theme Is really not supposed to be a theme to the Consumer Electronic Show, but there often seem to be trend lines. Did you notice any uh this year, daniel?

07:13 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I mean from my perspective. Obviously we cover, you know, microsoft, windows and laptops, ai and PC was huge this year Like um, you know, I've been going to CS for like a decade at this point and the amount of new PCs and laptops and, of course, the focus on NPUs right, that's the new buzzword with neural processing units, and what people have to understand, of course is people have to understand, of course is what was announced at CES is just laying the groundwork for what's coming later this year, right? So a lot of the work NPUs are going to be able to feasibly do don't have jobs yet, but that software will be coming through Windows updates and different types of software. So we're on the cusp of this like real kind of revolution with what they're calling AI PCs. And so I think we saw AI, you know, went from a buzzword a couple of years ago at CES where people were just kind of loosely throwing it around, using it really interchangeably we're just kind of machine learning and some basic algorithms to like true kind of AI.

08:10
Now, some of it was kind of junky, you know, but a lot of it is, I think, you know, the beginning of kind of a new era On that displays I thought were huge. A lot of advancements in modern displays this year that we saw, you know, for years. Oled, especially in gaming devices OLED looks amazing, but the problem was it was it was hard to do in high resolution while having a high refresh rates, and now you can do both and still get everything all one. So you're going to be able to get these like really excellent looking panels, whether for gaming, for your laptop or whatever, without compromising anymore. So that's kind of the big thing. I saw these from my perspective, yeah.

08:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Alienware announced a 32 inch 4k QD OLED gaming monitor. I'm actually using that right now. Yeah, I have their old school 55 inch regular OLED monitor which I loved. It was very expensive at the time, but this is QD OLED, which means really bright, really nice. This is actually great for a PC, I think. Actually, let me. Let me ping the, by the way 1199.

09:10 - Padre (Guest)
Do you like the curve? I mean because I like multiple flat monitors, but I know some people really like a single large curved. What's your preference.

09:21 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
This is a very slight, slight, slight, slight, slight, slight curve. They just kind of curve the corners a little bit just to reduce glare, but it's not like the 800 and 1500 type curves, the ones that like wrap around you. So this is a very subtle one. Hp did offer, announced their Omen basically the same panel, that one is completely flat and that one also has a power delivery system in it. So it's a little bit different, but the same. Basically, what happened with Samsung made this panel right, and so you're going to see a lot of manufacturers start to use this in their devices. So I have a Samsung QD OLED TV at home which I really like.

09:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, you could see it's not hugely curved, although my Sam's my old Samsung Curve TV back from the day. It's great because it catches light all the way across. It's just like a you know one window all the way across.

10:05 - Padre (Guest)
It's continuous glare screen. That's quite good.

10:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So when they say it reduces clear, maybe a little skeptical of whether reduces it or not. This is 240 Hertz refresh, which is really nice. Actually, LG got in trouble for lying about refresh rates.

10:20 - Padre (Guest)
Was it? It's like? Well, it's 240.

10:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you alternate which, I is open 90 Hertz display that because of interpolation, kind of looked like 240. It didn't anyway. They got fine. They got a big fine for that.

10:34 - Padre (Guest)
Did you get your settlement yet Like $4? Did I know Class action was fantastic?

10:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's interesting to see PCs kind of make a resurgence. Microsoft stopped going to CES many years ago.

10:47 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
It was there last year, but it was a small presence. It was mostly there to support OEMs, but they did have a booth on the floor.

10:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, they didn't have a booth Last year.

10:54 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
This year they didn't have anything. Okay, yeah, they were absent.

10:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's fine. I find it kind of interesting that NPUs are getting so much attention, because historically PCs have not had neural processing, whereas on the Mac side, apple put neural processors in its phone and they've been doing so for years, and then, when the phone chip migrated to Apple Silicon to the desktop, they've had that for quite a while. But you're right, there aren't a lot of work flows that use neural processing on device. Right, that's going to change. Are we going to use local LLMs? Is that what's going to?

11:30 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
happen. That's the goal, because right now the problem with you know, anyone who uses any kind of generative type technology, whether it's a chatbot or image generator, and it's online, you know that the problem is you basically need to queue up, you know especially if you're using for free. It's slow and it is slow yeah.

11:48
You queue up your number 50 in line and then you got to wait for the server to do its work and then you download it all that kind of stuff. You're going to be able to do all that locally pretty soon. We're seeing a lot of these 7 billion large language models LLMs being custom made for different jobs. I saw one demonstrated by Dell for law and so it was basically for paralegals and it's trained in legalese basically, so it knows all the language documents, how to cite stuff, how all that works, and it's basically like chat, gpt, but it's local on your device, but it can do all the stuff a paralegal is basically doing. So you're going to see that's where this comes into big time into business. You're going to see these customized LLMs and chatbots, but they can run locally and that helps reduce. A lot of people ask, like Microsoft, how they're going to make money off of this and all this, but because a lot of it's reducing server load.

12:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, it's interesting because Microsoft this week was briefly like for a minute the most valuable corporation in the world, eclipsing Apple. But the reason has to be because of open AI, their investment in open AI and the fact that, even if it's not open AI, almost everybody's using Azure. So this has been very AI, has been good for their cloud. But if we move it all local, I mean it saves all local. Okay yeah, training Training still has to be done in the cloud, so they'll always have training work there. Yeah.

13:14 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
And you'll need to go to the cloud for you know up to date information. But it is a hybrid model that they're going for, which will take the server load off of Microsoft and their work. Well, yeah, it saves a lot of money.

13:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Open AI must be spending millions a day on chat, gpt bandwidth and so, yeah, not you know. And, by the way, I have to say I've become a big believer in these expert systems. I've created a couple of custom GPTs for myself, one for Emacs and one for ConLisp, partly because a lot of the documentation is is public domain and online and easy for me to you know, enter into its corpus, and it's been phenomenal. It's better than looking through books. So I really see the value for BI for expert systems. I mean, if you're an auto repair shop, there's a. There's a lot of uses for a local, especially for a local LLM expert system. A lawyer, I mean incredible.

14:05 - Padre (Guest)
Well, microsoft doesn't necessarily have to offer it as a product. Ai LLM's don't have to be a Microsoft product. They integrate it into their omni channel offerings and that's where Microsoft makes a ton of money. If they start putting this into omni channel, into Azure services, into their CRM products, that's going to be a differentiator and they already make so much money in that sector that it makes sense. They don't have to develop an entirely new market for them to sell this. They already have customers. They can just sell more to those customers.

14:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, well, somebody, and again somebody has to create the model I use. I've been using an open source GPT, local GPT called GPT for all. It's an LLM that you can run locally but you still have to download a model from somewhere and I've been practicing. It's not as good as chat GPT yet, but I've been trying to make those local, those expert systems locally, because that would be the ideal and if you have an. So who has NP use so far? Qualcomm promised, I know, at their event, that they would have. Qualcomm definitely does.

15:10 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Yeah, but that won't be the middle of the year, right? I mean, yeah, I'm hearing May, may, when you're going to start to see the first laptop. So these announced, so it's sooner than later, which is good.

15:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And that's Windows on ARM, though, right, you can't, it's not Intel. Yeah, okay, you've also got Q's you've got.

15:28 - Padre (Guest)
Motorola, yeah, Qualcomm.

15:30 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Yeah, Qualcomm is just like Apple where they've been doing NP use for a decade, so they have a ton of experience in this and they're going to have some of the most powerful on PC. So, yeah, that coming. Intel announced their Meteor Lake chips, also known as the core sevens, a core ultras. Those also all have NP use on them. Amd's new chips also have NP use. So the benefit here is you want to flood the system basically with this hardware to have it out there and all the new laptops, and then software makers can iterate on top of that and leverage that new hardware through, you know, APIs and everything. So that's kind of the goal.

16:03
That'll take some months, obviously, to to work its way up, but already things like Microsoft Studio effects, which you know, blur your background, does the eye gaze stuff will now be able to use your NPU instead of jumping on your CPU or GPU, which then says battery life. It says processing speed. You won't get as much jitteriness, you get a better performance. So it's really kind of a big deal. You know, I saw like image generator, like you just type in what you want and you hit enter and within like three seconds it just generates four images instantly. It's absolutely crazy how fast this stuff goes when it's local.

16:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you were buying it huge for productivity, if you were in the market for a new PC today, would you say, oh, I've got to have an NPU, even though I don't yet have any applications that use it.

16:43 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I made the joke on the podcast this. This comes down to how people use, you know, view AI and this generative chat systems and stuff, which is a lot of people's you know will tell me like, oh, I don't see the value in it, I don't use that. I don't use co-pilot at all. I use it personally all the time because I'm a very curious person.

16:59 - David Pierce (Guest)
I'm always doing research yeah.

17:01 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Yeah, I'm always asking questions. So I tell people like if you use your PC for like email, porn and watching videos, you probably don't need an NPU Not going to get a lot of value.

17:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Not for watching, but if you generate porn and NPU is going to be fantastic.

17:16 - Padre (Guest)
I don't think I want to train that expert system. No, I'm not okay with that.

17:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But I think it is it future proofing in a sense, to say let me make sure I get an NPU in here.

17:28 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Oh yeah, it's not a future proofing proofing because where AI goes we don't really know. These are kind of open systems where they're flexible. I totally agree with Sachin Nadela, CEO of Microsoft, where he says this is like the beginning days of the internet, where you know we were all around for that. You know it was cool getting onto the web. But if you went back then and like, oh, there'd be apps like Yelp and Tinder and then there'll be Google Maps and none of those services were people were thinking about at the time, they always came later as the technology evolved. And we're going to see the same thing with AI, where you know, and Microsoft's going to make a big push with it this year, with a Windows update coming later this year that's going to weave AI through the operating system.

18:06
Their search is going to be contextual, it's going to be a lot smarter and, from my understand, Co-Pilot. One of the reasons why they went with the branding Co-Pilot is to sort of step away from chat GPT a little bit, because Co-Pilot is actually not dependent on chat GPT. It uses it right now, but they can switch any LLM system into it that they want. In fact, from my understand, companies and OEMs and PC makers are going to be able to integrate their LLMs through Co-Pilot. I think the goal here is for the user. So you don't have five chat bots on your computer, you just have Co-Pilot, which will then connect into all those systems. It's an intermediate hub for AI?

18:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, interesting. I wonder if it's also a little bit like the beginnings of graphics processors for gaming, when, you know, gaming got moved off of the CPU onto the GPU and gaming really took off as a result, and nowadays, if you're a gamer, you would not buy a machine that didn't have dedicated graphics.

19:01 - Padre (Guest)
I think one of the differences would be, though if you bought a GPU and didn't really use it for gaming until a year later maybe two years later that GPU is already outdated. It's not really going to be able to do what you needed to do at that moment. If you buy a machine that has an NPU built into it and you don't use it for a year, it will still be useful in a year.

19:20
It will still work in a year. It may not be the fastest NPU on the market, but because we don't really have a defined use for it yet, it will still be a very useful piece of technology.

19:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're back in the days of what were those first graphics processor cards.

19:36 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Voodoo, oh the voodoo, the voodoo.

19:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're back in the days of the voodoo.

19:40 - Padre (Guest)
Wait, did you have the two for the table? I had the dual voodoo. Sure, of course you had the SLI.

19:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
SLI baby all the way. Oh my gosh, david, your chance here, your choice. You were also at CES. Any trends emerge for you.

19:57 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yeah, obviously AI was the story. The one thing I will say on NPUs and then I have many other standards I deeply want to talk about. So get excited about web standards and device standards for interoperability. It's all very exciting, but I think just the one thing on the NPU thing and I think this was part of the story of CES is that I think people hit these AI tools already more often than they think they do. When we talk about AI now we spend a lot of time talking about chatbots and I go to a thing and I interact with the AI and it's dopey.

20:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's silly things, right? This little red writing made in pirate speech. It's silly toys Totally, but that's not what this is all about, 100%.

20:38 - David Pierce (Guest)
And I'm honestly really bearish on these gigantic chatbots being the future of the internet and you just do everything in a text box with chatGPT, but the idea that if you use Photoshop or Lightroom, you're interacting with these kinds of AI tools all day every day now, and so I think there's all kinds of stuff that you can offload onto something like an NPU already that will make your computer faster, like make a list of things that you have to sit and wait for your computer to do, and more and more of those things are going to get offloaded onto this dedicated hardware over time, which I think is like that's the part of AI that I'm personal. Did you order a rabbit R1? I didn't, only because I have been promised one.

21:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
At some point in the relatively I read your article on January 9th, immediately went to the website because I'm an idiot that way and wouldn't let me buy one. And it turns out the next day they said yeah, we sold 10,000. We sold out the first run.

21:37 - David Pierce (Guest)
That day, another 10,000 the next day. Did you play with it? I did it was. It was a weird demo. We were in a hotel ballroom in Las Vegas and the Wi-Fi was awful and, predictably, a device like this is mostly useless when it's not on Wi-Fi. So Jesse the CEO of Rabbit, was able to do a handful of things like there's a. There's a thing where I think in the keynote that Rabbit gave, you can take a picture of Rick Astley and it will play never gonna give you up.

22:10
I heard him doing that demo across the room and it just starts Rick rolling him on the rabbit.

22:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But for the most part the idea is? It doesn't. It's an AI device. It doesn't have an apps built in. It goes to the cloud for everything. It has a little kind of dinky little camera. It's got a roller wheel. It's teenage Engineering design it, which of course, it looks like the play date or a variety or their synthesizers, but it's all of its smarts are online.

22:34 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yeah, exactly, and I this is not a super, a novel idea, I mean it. What Google assistant or Alexa or Siri or Bixby or any of these, like Over the years, have promised to be is essentially that right, just sort of one interface to get things done. Rabbit's big idea is that it has built new AI tech in a new way to make that stuff work better, and I think their idea is really interesting to focus on kind of actions and actually using AI to interact with apps, rather than right just text in and text out. But that that's a. That's a steep hill to climb and I think skepticism is fair, but the thing just looks nice.

23:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just it's 199 bucks. I thought, well, even if it's just something I'm gonna end up putting on the shelf, it's probably still Pretty cool.

23:22 - David Pierce (Guest)
It'll look good on the shelf. Yeah, there are.

23:23 - Padre (Guest)
There are worse things, this is Benito, by the way, hi. Benito I didn't know that it was built by teenage engineering. That actually made my ears.

23:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, when I heard that I, that was when I went to click the button.

23:33 - Padre (Guest)
That's like okay, I kind of want that now. Yeah, because you know at least the hardware is going to be, interesting and well designed.

23:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's going to be beautiful. It's going to be beautiful. Yeah, I think the concept is really interesting. Obviously, this is the first generation of something that, down the road, is going to be Probably, uh, something we'll all have. Humane it's like the humane AI pin. By the way, humane laid off 4% of the staff. They haven't even shipped and they're already firing people, so that's not a good sign. Did you pre-order one of those? No, okay, but that's why I like this, because this was a $200 version of that $1,000 device, without a subscription, by the way. Yep, you have to have a sim card, but you don't have to have a subscription. So I thought this is what this really is to me. It's not necessarily something I want, and eventually I did get through. I still didn't buy it. Uh, it really is a reflection, though, of what AI, how it may kind of percolate into our lives as an edge computing device, kind of.

24:25 - Padre (Guest)
AI is. I mean, it's not going away. It's absolutely not going away.

24:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I thought for a long time was a parlor trick. I was really. I was not an a. I was very anti AI. I thought you guys are being suckered internet of things.

24:36 - Padre (Guest)
It's, it's only, but it's going to stop being what it was this year, which is oh, come to our booth because we've got AI. It's just going to.

24:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're going to expect well there was a lot of that, wasn't there?

24:46 - Padre (Guest)
It was way too much.

24:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There was a lot of like blockchain. We're gonna smear us a thin layer of AI and and what some of these companies were trying to do with their marketing speak and we use AI to do psychoacoustic choosing of your music. I'm like no no, that's called a program. We've had those for a while. So, david, I didn't mean to interrupt, but I it was your fault I almost bought one of these, so I just I'm okay with that actually and I think I mean the big open question about that thing.

25:14 - David Pierce (Guest)
For me and I'm I'm actually curious how you all feel about this, because I've been thinking about this a lot is the. The big debate it brought up Among a lot of people is do we want something other than a smartphone? Right, and I think what it essentially is is it does A subset of the things that my phone does without being on my phone, and the. The two ways you can look at this device are either oh, this is lovely, thank god, I'd much rather use this than be lost in my phone all day or why on earth do I need this? I have a smartphone. This is a waste of 200 dollars. This thing should just be an app and I I increasingly land towards. I would love to have something to play with that isn't my smartphone. That is useful, but I also Buy gadgets like a lunatic, so I'm I'm not to be trusted, but I'm curious what it makes you guys feel that's kind of my motto I'm not to be trusted, don't let me an instagram after midnight.

26:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm like a gremlin. So I do think. Well, for instance, metas glasses, the ray-band glasses you could easily embed something like this in those Uh, and that would be even better because I'm not now carrying something or pinning something to my lapel.

26:20 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yeah, and I think that's where meta is headed. I think that is that is the the roadmap of the next 18 months. For those things for sure, completely agree.

26:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And actually that raises the topic, which we'll save for later of Uh. Did meta escape from the vr hell that they were, that they had created for themselves, into ai, and what does that mean for Apple's vision pro, which will be orderable on friday? But we'll save that for a little later on, because I just don't want to Stay with ces for a little bit. What else did you see or what else did you note?

26:51 - David Pierce (Guest)
I think to me, the biggest trend I took away was that, uh, whether by accident or on purpose, this was a year a lot of Kind of ideas came together and started to be real, like you talked about meteor lake and what intel is up to, and kind of inside that, wi-fi 7 is starting to happen. You have the chi 2 magnetic charging standard starting to happen, so we're getting some really interesting accessories we have there's some new smart home stuff happening. Threads is getting, or thread Is getting a little better, so that matter is getting a little better. There's new casting standards. It's like we're in this place where, after two decades of everybody sort of designing their own things in their own directions, we're slowly moving back towards making gadgets work together, because they should have all the time, and there was just a glimpse of a bunch of that this year in a way that I thought was very exciting actually.

27:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I always pray for interoperability and I'm always. My hopes are always dashed, my prayers are always ignored, because companies don't make money on interoperability. They make money on proprietary silos right.

27:54 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, and I'm sometimes I'm that cynical, but also I understand why some companies will see okay, well, I don't want to use that connector or that protocol because I want to do this a little easier, or I want to make this a little simpler, or I want to make this A little bit more flexible than it is in the current standard. So what I was very happy to see on the show floor was in the trends that I mentioned in the, the ces rundown that I did In electrification, which by the way, was great.

28:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We showed it on as the tech guys. Fantastic. We put it up in the club and you have a youtube channel people can watch, but part one and part two is coming.

28:28 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, yeah really good job on that, really incredible to see some of the vendors who do things like electrification, who do things like house scale and rv scale and tiny home scale of Alternative power, actually start to use standards again. That actually made me very, very happy.

28:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, that's what customers want, right? Look the mess we've made of messaging, oh my god, of home automation. I mean even matter, couldn't get these people to agree on anything.

28:56 - Padre (Guest)
Well, I think if google releases one more messaging app, I think That'll fix it.

29:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's the old xkcd standards cartoon writ large. So um what else, david? Give me some more. Give me some more fodder.

29:10 - David Pierce (Guest)
Uh, I think the the tv space was unusual. Oh yeah, did you? Are you gonna?

29:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
buy a transparent tv. It looked cool. What's the market for that? I don't understand.

29:21 - David Pierce (Guest)
Uh, dentists office is my, is my, running theory. Uh, you're gonna go if you have that like one medical thing that you pay extra to go to a really fancy doctor's office. They're gonna have a transparent tv in like two years and it's gonna have a fish tank projected on it.

29:35 - Padre (Guest)
It's gonna be it's gonna be sick. Those building breakfast nooks are gonna be big.

29:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that goes right with a suction cup tv, right? Can you have a suction cup transparent tv? Why?

29:45 - Padre (Guest)
not. Come on, let's go.

29:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All right.

29:46 - Padre (Guest)
Let's do it. But then you can't do that really cool out Raising.

29:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I want to roll up suction cup transparent tv. Can I have that? That's just too much. Did lg, by the way, that they bring the roll up tv again.

30:03 - David Pierce (Guest)
They did. If they did, I didn't see it. They did not it was for the first time in you know, 60 years at ces, there was no laundry folding robot and there was no the laundry.

30:13 - Padre (Guest)
well, that's a whole category we just let go by the wayside, but but they did have a roll up for the transparent, so they have a contrast filter that can roll automatically, mechanically roll up behind the transparent screen to turn it into a more.

30:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Make it look more like a tv right.

30:28 - David Pierce (Guest)
At which point it's just a very expensive, not very good television, exactly just throwing stuff up against the wall At the moment. Yeah, yeah, but more broadly you have things. Like you know, micro led is starting to get really good. I'm excited about okay.

30:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So like we're in a good place. To me, micro A led was going to be a big thing, and there seemed to be some manufacturing issues. There were seams and things. So were there micro led tvs? These are. This is the one where you can get it to Infinite size, right, you? Just by snapping? Yeah, snapping them together.

30:59 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yeah, they're, they're getting, they're getting much bigger. I think I think it was tcl In their booth made a really big deal out of the fact that I think it was above 98 inch tvs are the fastest growing segment of tv right now, sure, which I assume means you know they used to sell 50 and now they sell 70, so it's like growing very fast. But uh, with that Gives you even more reason to invest in this stuff and bring it down. The cost curve and these micro leds are easier to make at these bigger sizes. Like they're saying, it's starting to look much better. The you can get all the dimming zones you could possibly want. It's all. It's all very exciting at these especially huge wall sized sizes.

31:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There was an unfolding 137 inch micro led. Samsung had a transparent micro led, of course, but I think I I thought that that was a technology that showed a lot of promise. It turns out qd o led, which came out last year, is kind of going to continue to be the dominant best Quality tv you still have yield problems.

32:01 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah so anytime you have your yield problems, it's not going to be completely mainstream, because you won't be able to hit that price point that you want and you won't have the supply that you need. So, yeah, it's. It's a very Interesting product. It's a beautiful product when you see it implemented. Did you see?

32:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
the, the samsung's transparent micro led. Would it look like I kind of, kind of a hologram, like did you want to say help me, you'll be one kind of the I really didn't, no, but uh.

32:23 - Padre (Guest)
but I mean, they were hyping it up that this is lifelike imagery and I'm thinking I think we already had lifelike imagery. I get this is more vibrant, this is brighter, it's, it's a dentist's office.

32:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now You're right. Yeah, this is for your oncologist.

32:37 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, what are you watching at your oncologist's office?

32:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, this is just so they can say I'm sorry you have cancer, but look at our tv, oh, okay, yeah, it's a beautiful tv.

32:49 - Padre (Guest)
Isn't this also a step towards making your like windshield a hug? That's where I would actually like to see transparent.

32:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have a heads up display in my new car and it's great I like having, but you don't want it in front of you, but that's projecting, right, it's projecting as I was like, imagine this the windshield itself was a tv. I don't know if I want that, I want to see what's going on while I'm driving. I mean, what's your car?

33:10 - David Pierce (Guest)
The bigger thing I think these companies are desperately trying to figure out is how to make your tv look less like a tv, uh, like the. The fact that samsung's frame has been so popular, I think, is really telling. And nil, I tell our editor-in-chief and and my boss, he just bought a new house and bought a samsung frame and just won't stop talking about it because it's like not a very good product, but what it is is how annoying is that, by the way?

33:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah. I know nil, I'm very well, nil, I has been a long time friend so I can make fun of him.

33:39 - Padre (Guest)
It's like. It's like that vegan friend who talks always about being a vegan. So the samsung frame is so. This is for people who are embarrassed to have a television.

33:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It turns it into art Until you want to watch. You know desperate housewives. Yeah, exactly right, or?

33:53 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, I think in general there is this push to make technology look less like technology and a little more like Furniture. Uh, we're kind of going back to the old days of the wooden panel tv. Lg had some stuff that was uh, much less Techy and much more kind of beautiful object. They had a projector like that. There was a speaker system like that. Uh, samsung had a frame speaker which, as far as I can tell, is literally just a framed piece of art with a speaker behind it and they're pretending that's a product like sure, whatever.

34:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But I think that's so, bougie. I'm sorry. Oh it's ridiculous. This is so bougie like. Oh, I don't have a tv. I have a close-up of the girl with the pearl earring On my wall and they've apparently blacked out the rest of the painting. Um, this is like. I think this is a. This is a very brief Interregnum. Soon it will just be you celebrate the technology. I want it everywhere.

34:48 - Padre (Guest)
I kind of want my tech to look. I want to look like tech.

34:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I, I'm not going to put my tv on an easel.

34:55 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Please, that's probably also for people without kids, I'd imagine.

34:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh god yeah just a five-year-old in this tv on an easel. That's, that's a risk of being a disaster. That's an you even I mean even your dog, david, would knock this over in five minutes. I mean, this is nothing. Yeah, this is a terrible idea.

35:13 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
LG had an interesting concept that they they're starting to sell I guess probably in korea, though, but it's this combination of they made tv's.

35:22
Uh, there's, and they're kind of smaller tv's, but they have a pc built into them too, and you kind of can't tell, and then it has a keyboard and a mouse, and it's meant for people, especially in south korea, where you know apartments, everything or party, you can offer everything, yeah, yeah, so you can have a really nice or k tv that is also a full-fledged Windows pc when you need it to be, and so it's a nice combo and it's a. What's amazing is now we can pull off these dual devices, right, and we'll now go ahead that, um, that laptop, that the top half is an, a full-fledged android tablet and then the bottom half was a windows pc, and then they can separate and they can operate independently of each other, and when you snap it on, it just becomes a display for the windows laptop, like the fact that they could put in All that technology to two devices and still have it just look like a normal laptop. I think it's absolutely amazing.

36:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Why would you want that?

36:18 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
So it's for people, I imagine. So windows. So what are you? I don't think necessarily incorrectly. He's not a great tablet experience. So, um, and some people just enjoy using android a little bit more, whether it's the apps, the familiarity or the fact that maybe makes a better tablet. Uh, for one, you probably get better battery life, right, because it's going to run an arm processor. I thought windows couldn't do that, but uh, it's going to perform really well, get good battery life. You know pen support and all that. Um, and then you click it back on and you got a full-fledged windows pc. What's cool is, when you separate the display, the bottom half still stays active, so you can plug the bottom half into an external display and now you'll have a full-fledged windows pc and your android tablet right next to each other.

36:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here's the here's the picture of this interesting hybrid uh.

37:03 - David Pierce (Guest)
Leo, I think the simpler answer to your question is is no one is going to want this, but I'm very excited to exist anyway.

37:08 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, it's pretty cool.

37:10 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I mean it's very cool, I still see a market for it.

37:14 - Padre (Guest)
I mean, this is, I think it's.

37:16 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
This is a business device. So yes, I was gonna say it is a think product, so it's more meant for enterprise and necessarily consumers. Okay, but when you think about, you know, compared to what microsoft was doing with surface book a couple years ago, it's not that dissimilar. I guess you're right, I could argue that this is a little bit more functional and pragmatic for some people. Yeah, actually I work really well.

37:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm thinking as an executive. You carry it around as a laptop. When you get to your desk, you plug it into this the monitor that is living there you detach the top and now it's it's.

37:46 - Padre (Guest)
Leo, the trend is the executive is going to want tech that looks like art. He wants his notebook to look like a, then you're running the easel, yeah.

37:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah um, yeah, you know what I? I? It's great that there's innovation happening and new ideas are happening and you don't know, if you're A company, if this is going to be the next big thing. Some of it is flexing, it's just so we can make it, we can do it. Um, and that's the problem I always have with ces, there's a lot of stuff that's not going to ever Be important or even maybe be for sale, and some of it really shouldn't be and some of it shouldn't be. It's more just to say, well, what do you think? What about this?

38:21 - Padre (Guest)
What about this? There was a booth in the venetian that was. They had this thing called an air shower and they had been pinging me. Oh, I guarantee you're gonna love this, so I go over there, I want an air shower. It's bit. You step on this thing and it blows air up, and they said that's supposed to make you feel good, I'm like. So wait a minute, hold on.

38:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We call it the mariland.

38:39 - Padre (Guest)
You're blowing my feet smelling in my face and you think that's gonna refresh me?

38:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's refreshing. So yeah, some products really should upside down air shower. No, no, wow.

38:51 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yes, ces is very much like a really high budget science fair yeah.

38:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. I love that. I like that.

38:59 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yeah, but you have to go in knowing Most of this is not real right. It's just sort of a neat thing somebody made that they just decided to show you.

39:10 - Padre (Guest)
And you know it's some of the most interesting tech that I've seen at ces over the last two decades have been products that I know aren't going to make it into the light of day. Gm had a concept this was 15 years ago with electric vehicles that would basically daisy chain. So the whole idea was in a futuristic city where you don't have regular cars, these automated vehicles could transport you and your friends, and if you have more friends you just get more pods. If you have cargo, you get more pods. We never thought that was going to be an actual product. But Then you go over to the north hall at ces ces here and you saw kia and kia actually made sort of a grown-up version of that and they're actually producing it.

39:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's interesting. Did you get a chance to sit in project ester? I did. This is razors, yeah gaming chair with haptics in the butt.

39:59 - Padre (Guest)
Uh, the the light broke on mine, so oh.

40:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, so the cushion, I guess it's not just your butt, it goes behind you too right now. 16 motors, yeah, it's got 16. Okay, okay, I'll take engines. And Are there games designed to, to stimulate your lombar region, or what?

40:21 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
The best way to. The best way to think about this is um, it's like haptics. It's like what surround sound did for audio is what this is. So it has 16 haptic Engines in it and they're so Precise they're not on and off like one zero, you know. Vibrate off, you know that kind of thing. They can do such minute of vibrations that there's a lot.

40:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Thank the iphone for that, actually that that kind of manufacturing probably came out of china because apple demanded it for their iPhone and they got better and better at yeah, I mean haptics.

40:53 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Yeah, you know it's their haptics. It's gonna be super important for all of all this technology going forward. But it's so sensitive that, like they showed a scene where it was raining outside on this video and you're watching and you can feel the little tap that's kind of just like was raindrops hitting. Okay, yeah, and as far as and as far as games they were saying, it's so sensitive that, yeah, like in a video game, if, um, say, you're playing first person shooter, someone's coming up from behind you on the right.

41:16
Okay, there and you could hear their footsteps, you'd be able to feel kind of their footsteps.

41:19
I don't know if you're firing a machine gun, yeah, or a gun or something like that, you'll get that haptic feedback as well. So it's very precise haptics. I take it to, like I said it's sort of like 7.1 audio or just gives you that precision. In fact, the deed did that. They showed an object floating in front of you and it was making a noise and it would float around, and as I floated around, not only did the noise follow you, but the haptics followed you too. Oh, that's so. It has a lot of potential.

41:42
But, um, I'm huge at the haptics. I hang out with sensile every year. Uh, they make the touch pads for uh windows laptops, uh, including a surface laptop studio, a couple for Lenovo, and this technology you know we need to go to like dual screen laptops or, um, you know, seeing the screen photo bowls where you have an on-screen keyboard. Haptics can be so important for making that experience actually feel like something useful. We all know for smartphones, you know Apple does it really well, google why would say, does it really well too? In the pixel series, the haptics is, like, really important and you'll see in autos too, like automobiles for Uh touch screens in those cars where you can have touch panels on the sides. You have that haptic feedback is going to be like, really crucial to, I think you know, making that experience.

42:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And I think for VR, if vr is going to take off, having uh more than just your eyesight be part of the sensorium is, uh, is a big deal, you know uh, especially if you don't have to wear haptic gloves or haptic vest or some other question. Nerd helmets, so you might as well?

42:42 - David Pierce (Guest)
do you ever see the videos of the people on those like omni directional treadmills and they, they have the headset and they're running around and they always have the Like ready player one.

42:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

42:51 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yeah, I'm like that's, that's the stuff. Give me that and I'll spend time in the VR headset when I was last.

42:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not fitting that in my basement one of the things that blew me away. I'm not a fan of vr, I'm very skeptical about it, but when we were in vegas for the formula one race, right, uh, mclaren had simulators that were small cars you get in, you got steering wheel, pedals and stuff, but you also had a vr helmet and the car was moving around and I imagine that was as close as you can get to really driving a race car without actually getting in one. It looked really really cool. I didn't I didn't do it because I had I think you had to buy some expensive thing to do but it looked pretty cool. There was a different.

43:29 - David Pierce (Guest)
That's how a lot of the pros train now is on. Yeah, that's right.

43:32 - Padre (Guest)
I think that's what these were actually probably trainers for Oscar and at the west hall towards the end, there was I can't remember the name of the vendor, I'd have to look it up but they had a haptic chair that was designed for racing simulation and at first I thought, oh, it's just, it just rumbles, but Like you could actually feel it when you were hitting the track limits, right, and I'm thinking, okay, not now, I get it. Like, like I said, I had thought of haptics like those rumble seats that they had five years ago and that they're basically just speakers under your butt. This is not that, and so if you can get some developers who are actually Programming to make good use of haptics, I think you're going to get some very interesting Experiences out of this.

44:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let me take a little time out when we come back. I do want to talk more about ces. You brought some stuff. We've got to show this. Uh, some fun stuff. Um, I also want to ask a little bit about vr and ar glasses, because with apples, about announcement about to happen, or actually the announcement happened. Orders are friday and shipping's a week from friday, but that about imminent. I think a lot of companies, including sony, said wait, wait a minute, we got that and and showed that. So I want to ask you about those those things as well. We've got a great panel.

44:40
David pierce is here. You've heard him on the verge cast. He's editor at large at the verge first time on the show. I appreciate it. Great to have you also with us. From Windows central, daniel rubino. He's editor in chief over there. It's always great to have you on, daniel, and, uh, it's. It's becoming an annual thing now. Every ces father, robert palisthenia, the digital jesuit, comes in with gadgets, gizmos and glowing keyboards just the stuff I could carry this year it ends up being a last time.

45:10
You shipped a bunch of stuff I knew yeah. I did no, it's not no, but there is a very good short video To parter that you made of your, and I thought it was an excellent survey of ces. What's your youtube channel?

45:22 - Padre (Guest)
Uh, it's youtubecom. Slash digital jesuit.

45:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I can't believe he has to think about that. You're supposed to be there with the ring the bell. Slam the button, do the buzzard. You know it's a passion project.

45:32 - Padre (Guest)
I just do it for fun. I'm not a full-time broadcaster anymore, so yeah, I like putting stuff up just for the good job.

45:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was really beautifully edited, really good. It was a great tour of ces with father robert. Our show today brought to you by look out Boy. These days, you know your data is always on the move, right, whether a device in the cloud, across networks, even down to the local coffee shop. And now your workforce loves this right. Very flexible, they can work wherever they want, but it is a challenge, as you know, for it security. That's why you need to know about lookout.

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47:18
But all right, show us some stuff, roberto Well okay, let's start super geeky.

47:23 - Padre (Guest)
This is super niche. That one right there, that's that doc.

47:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, that actually okay, I have one that looks just like this from my Omega.

47:30 - Padre (Guest)
Absolutely, that's a target that's a dual doc. So the idea is a dual 100 watt output, USB C and Thunderbolt.

47:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you put your laptop on there, you plug it into the wall, is powering maybe two different laptops, or a laptop and a desktop gives you triple display output.

47:45 - Padre (Guest)
So you can you can have up to three monitors connected externally.

47:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But the three display ports are two display ports and an HDMI right, as well as, and a course, Ethernet and Thunderbolt right.

47:56 - Padre (Guest)
Thunderbolt, but that's actually a KVM. So the nice thing about it is it's not a traditional KVM where you, if you flip the button, it flips all the monitors from one to the other. That actually knows the boundaries of the resolution of each computer. So you use them the same mouse and keyboard to move the mouse over and you enter into the desktop space of the other computer. You go back and forth. The cool thing about this is that means that it is operating system independent. It's something like you remember Mouse Without Borders from Microsoft. This does that. But I can use a Mac, I can use Windows, I can use Linux, it doesn't matter. It's OS agnostic. Again, I know that this is super niche, but if you're like a system administrator or just a guy who needs multiple machines on his desk, that thing is incredible. It's so much nicer than having two sets of keyboards and mice.

48:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I might get this, because I have that big 55 inch OLED with multiple computers and, if I just took this up, I have my nice you know keyboard, my keychron keyboard, I have my classic Microsoft and telemouse and I just plug those into this and then that's all I need. I have a monitor, keyboard or mouse and I have multiple systems.

49:04 - Padre (Guest)
When that was first pitched to me, I didn't get it. I'm like KVMs. Kvms are 20 years ago. Nobody even makes them anymore. No one makes them. But this actually, that absolutely made sense to me. All right, that's how much. It's again enterprise product. So you're looking at 455.

49:18
Yeah it's high. It's high up there. What else we got? Okay, so this is run hood. So this is their 1200. This is sort of a home away from home camping unit. So we've got the solar panels, we've got this 1200 watt power unit. Now the cool thing about charging up from the solar panel.

49:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It can charge up from solar panels. How much wattage does?

49:41 - Padre (Guest)
these generate In partial sunlight. This will do 100 watts, oh okay, so it's not a great amount, but the nice thing about this is it's super durable, it's super flexible and it will work in partial sunlight and I could probably fill up there's a battery, in that I presume.

49:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, absolutely, yeah, I could probably fill up the battery over 24 hour.

49:58 - Padre (Guest)
This is the cool thing these use these battery packs, so you can hot swap these things.

50:03
And they give you these little modules that you can clip on so I can pull one of the battery packs out and now I've got what is this like 400 watt hours of power for USB C USB, or I could actually just charge it from USB C PD. Now, this is the kind of systems that I love, because it means that once you've made the investment into the system, you can swap your modules in and out and grab what you need to power whatever you're doing. So you want a day at the beach? Maybe you don't need the whole system. You just pull one of these out, and this is more than enough to run your laptop, your phones your desktop.

50:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It looks like it also could be an emergency unit.

50:45 - Padre (Guest)
That's actually what I'm going for. This is going to be part of my my gaming system, I'll go out a lot at the Vatican.

50:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a design by Italians. It's not functional, but it looks good.

50:57 - Padre (Guest)
Actually, you know what. You know what I found out. I actually finally put a signal analyzer on our power. Oh, is it a little choppy they are. They've lowered down the voltage to like the bare minimum before it starts destroying things, Intentionally. Intentionally, because we had a gas shortage, so yeah, so you're not getting municipal power.

51:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Probably You've got the Vatican. No, no, no, the Vatican uses municipal power. It's Rome's power. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they did things. This is cool how much I mean roughly.

51:27 - Padre (Guest)
Okay. So if you got the whole kit, which would include the four battery packs, this thing, 2800 bucks? No, it's like 600, 1600 dollars. You're kidding. No, that's. And that's actually why I like them, because first, they're lower priced. I love the modular, modular design and their standards based. Yeah, there's a lot of companies that makes them really nice stuff and I'm not going to call them out because their design is great, but it's all proprietary.

51:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Could I get multiple panels like these, and so I could expand my capabilities. This uses the standard solar connector so the solar panels at your house you can actually plug that in.

52:00 - Padre (Guest)
Oh, I like that, yeah, okay, so run hood, run hood, and they're they're a Bay Area located company. I like them. Yeah, brand new. How about this? This is something that you might like for your travels. This was the Poly Voyager 360 UC.

52:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What is a Poly Voyager 360 UC when it's so?

52:18 - Padre (Guest)
earbuds earbuds, but they're really designed. They're inside. Now, the cool thing about this is you see that little screen at the top. Yeah, what is that all about? That actually gives you a touchscreen that can control, like a zoom call so connecting and disconnecting calls. Okay, you can switch between modes, and actually the reason why I like this set is it has a cable that lets you hook it up to a 3.5 millimeter audio jack.

52:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, that's kind of nice Right. So if you lose battery life or no, you still need battery you still need the batteries.

52:49 - Padre (Guest)
Oh, by the way, this thing runs forever and the case is actually a battery for the earbuds, as well, I also like it.

52:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's got a little USB adapter in the case which is fantastic, that's the wireless adapter, correct.

52:59 - Padre (Guest)
It's really been designed for UC people, so this again it's an enterprise product. I know it's niche. Here's something that you might like. That's cool, though. This is Anker's newest Qi charger.

53:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know I've been looking at there's a lot of companies make these after Apple decided not to make theirs. That are that will charge Apple Watch and Apple phone and the earbuds all at once. That's a station folds up, which is kind of cool back there you look at that.

53:24 - Padre (Guest)
It's very compact.

53:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They have to be good for travel.

53:26 - Padre (Guest)
It'd be good for travel, and they have another version of that that they're going to be releasing that actually has a battery pack built into it, and it's Anker, and Anker has great reputation. So is this out? This is out. This is outright name. Yeah, now do you like audio? I love audio. Everyone was pitching me speakers. The one speaker I decided to take was this this is from Rocksteady, it's called their Stadium. Now they they sell themselves as a Sonos killer.

53:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know if they're. Sonos is the Sonos killer.

53:59 - Padre (Guest)
Let's be frank. Let's be a little frank Now. The nice thing about this, though, is it it's Bluetooth 5.0. So it's super, super clear, as long as you've got a Bluetooth 5.0 system, and it's infinitely expandable. How many speakers are there? Just one. There's one over there. There's that one right there.

54:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Go ahead and turn that on so you could make this 5.0 system. If you bought enough speakers, you could make it.

54:20 - Padre (Guest)
You can, as long as it's within the Bluetooth range. The power button is in the back. Yes, you can add as many speakers as you'd like and once you start playing it, it actually we're going to rock out here.

54:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's a subwoofer somewhere. Am I sitting on it?

54:34 - Padre (Guest)
No, see, I haven't even turned that on, oh but they all look like a purse, a capacious, extraordinarily capacious purse.

54:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Hey, it sounds pretty good.

54:47 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, I'm getting some bass. That's nice. This one is actually a little, and so the idea of these is you can have multiple units.

54:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Can you do party mode, in other words Party mode, style party?

54:57 - Padre (Guest)
precisely, and they they don't interfere with one another as long as they're with. They're further than one foot away, so you could actually buy a set of these put them outside and you're good to go. They work. I think the longest time I got to play on this was about 20 hours. They rate it for 30. But if you play it loud you're probably going to get about 60.

55:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Google lost or rather Google won its case against Sonos. In fact, the judge was scathing about Sonos. Sonos was suing Google saying we own party mode, you can't do that. In fact, google had to start taking that, those features out of their own Google system and then they started putting them back because they won in court. So I imagine we'll see more and more party mode style. Right, you're nodding, david, you agree?

55:39 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yeah, I think this is the sort of thing that should just obviously be in every speaker system that exists, like the, logitech has those cool the the boom speakers. They do a pretty good job.

55:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I love the booms. I have some UE booms. Yeah, I have a few of those.

55:52 - David Pierce (Guest)
They're great yeah this should just, you should just be able to attach all of your speakers to each other everywhere in your house, no matter what, and without the echo, and that's what party mode does.

56:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you did it with regular Bluetooth speakers, it would be weird, because all the rooms would be slightly off, but with this, whatever technology they're able to use, it's.

56:08 - Padre (Guest)
I think it's bamboo tech. So bamboo tech, it does sort of that checking to make sure it's not, you're not having multiple delays, so that you get that echo going on frame accurate, exactly so it makes sure that all the speakers are in sync. Oh, the one thing and you know what I made? That again, this one is by Rocksteady.

56:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Rocksteady.

56:24 - Padre (Guest)
I know Rocksteady yeah and they call this the stadium. I want to give you this one, because I've heard that you lose your wallet.

56:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Who doesn't?

56:32 - Padre (Guest)
this this one, actually, I got from a company called Rolling Square, which was found in the, the Venetian the expo hall, and it's basically an Apple tag, but for your wallet it's credit card size. So I could put this in my wall, correct, and so for two years it works. Just like an Apple tag. You ever lose your wallet. Oh, not replaceable battery, though this one does not.

56:52
No, it's not a room for they found out that people are probably going to replace it after two years and to have a replaceable battery, as with yeah, and they just didn't want to do that.

57:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But this is what's interesting to me. It is compatible with the with lost. Find my it's air tag Correct Compatible. So it's not an air tag, but Apple did open that up.

57:12 - Padre (Guest)
Apple opened it up and this is Apple approved and and Apple tested.

57:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Nice yeah they're going to give this to me. That's yours down. I'm peeling off the thing.

57:20 - Padre (Guest)
They've got a new version for Google. It's going to work for Android. They're just waiting for Android to Google to release the final spec on the new chipset and then they'll have the same product on the Android side.

57:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So it's put your card on a hard surface and press the power button very hard until it beeps. The button is far, is is firm to prevent accidental pressing in your wallet. So I guess I'll have to pair this with find my it looks cool, too right, and it's got a QR code. What is the QR code? Is that like my name and address of somebody finds this?

57:53 - Padre (Guest)
thing, so you can, you can go ahead and register it. I actually use those on my luggage. That's those are. I have an air tag in my luggage, Actually the problem with using an air tag in luggage is people have now started spotting them. Oh, I actually had an incident already in Europe where someone took the air tag out, the apple tag out this.

58:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I wouldn't think they'd be that valuable.

58:17 - Padre (Guest)
Oh, that, the camera gear. I mean the camera gear that I carry around. Is that valuable? I want the camera, but they know the the air tag trick now, so I've had to swap to these and people can't see these.

58:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Sure they can. Well, they don't know what they are Right, and then they don't know if it's worth anything, not yet Exactly, so they just keep it in the bundle.

58:34 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I mean, I'm just curious because I'm not in the Apple ecosystem really, but yeah, I use tile is. Tile is pretty similar to this stuff, though right, Because they've been having the wallet ones for years and yeah tile works, tile works.

58:49 - Padre (Guest)
There's a couple of trackers out there. I have not yet found a tracking system that is as good as apples.

58:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know air tags have their pluses and minuses. Every time I leave the hotel room, it tells me you're leaving your bag behind and I turn that off. But I kind of want to know when I'm at the airport if I'm leaving my bag behind. So it's, you know there's pluses and minuses. It's nice. The problem with the air tags and the reason air tags work better than anybody else is it does have to be on an area where there are other iPhones.

59:19 - David Pierce (Guest)
That's how it's spot.

59:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And so because there are so many iPhones, it works well. The problem with tile and anything else this is what the tile CEO was pissed off about, in fact is that they don't have that same network of devices. Although the tile now, I think, is doing something that it's compatible, I seem to remember them doing something. They're compatible with other devices, so maybe the network is expanding a little bit for tile. Yeah, I don't. You think I lose my wallet a lot. Who told you that? Oh, so, a little birdie, I have a. My wallet is magnetically attached to my iPhone, so I don't have to ever worry about it falling off or up up.

59:55 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, where'd it? Go. You know that is not an uncommon experience. Yeah, this is I. I found three wallets on the ground at CES Three, three of them with credit cards. One had a driver's license, wow.

01:00:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
David, you have your wallet still check. You might want to check. Yeah, I know, seriously.

01:00:16 - David Pierce (Guest)
No, no, no. Is it Magsecure, or do you? I use a traditional wallet. I use a. I use a real wallet full of George Costanza. I have a Costanza.

01:00:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, over there I'll show you. Yeah, it's like that.

01:00:27 - David Pierce (Guest)
No, but I feel you on the alerts that come up and I have spent a lot of time trying to decide. Do I turn off the alerts that tell me my AirPods are gone, even though I'm holding my AirPods Right, or is it the one time that I need it and it saves me? Is it worth dismissing 10,000 bad notifications? I don't know how to do that math, but I spend a lot of time. Yeah.

01:00:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think about it all the time too, David. We should get to it Because it's very annoying. It's really annoying we have.

01:00:55 - Padre (Guest)
AGI to get that to work, yeah yeah, yeah, that's it.

01:00:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
AGI would say AGI would say I know you're next to your AirPods so I'm not going to pop it. Yeah, cause everything I have on Apple is on the Fie, my Network, so you know it's like they're very needy children. Don't leave me, I'm here, wait a minute.

01:01:13 - Padre (Guest)
You know, my favorite is because I use multiple phones and only one of them has service in the United States. So when I connect the non-service phone, to Wi-Fi all of the notifications come up, so suddenly I've got 300 notifications at the same time. It is annoying as all heck.

01:01:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I thought you were going to say something smart, like you, no, no, I.

01:01:34 - Padre (Guest)
I finally bit the bullet and I upgraded to.

01:01:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is a new pixel.

01:01:37 - Padre (Guest)
Nice, isn't it? I miss my 3.5 millimeter jack. I really do.

01:01:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You mean the courage jack.

01:01:44 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, the bold choice, jack. Now this is actually. This is a very nice phone. There were a couple of phones at CES. I'm seeing fewer and fewer of those.

01:01:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's hard to. It's hard to make something that has a an advantage. Yeah, right, yeah, and companies like Red and Razor tried and nobody bought them. It's like, okay, yeah, apple, you can, you can own this market, you know, and I guess it's Apple, samsung and then maybe Google, a distant third.

01:02:12 - Padre (Guest)
The one nicer thing is they didn't use the South Hall this year, so I didn't see they didn't use the South Hall. They did not, so that does not bode well.

01:02:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, but they've got that new West Hall, so they it's it's the last time I was there, which was right before COVID. They were. All three were in in right.

01:02:29 - Padre (Guest)
So they had the West Hall, the North Hall, the central hall, and then they had the, the Venetian but not the South Hall.

01:02:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Not the South Hall. That's used to be where the car stuff was.

01:02:39 - Padre (Guest)
The car stuff used to be in the North Hall. North Hall.

01:02:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, oh, the South Halls way, the other way, right, Right.

01:02:44 - David Pierce (Guest)
South Hall used to be where, like Intel and Qualcomm and all those companies were and that, yeah, it was. It was sad to walk by it and there were.

01:02:51 - Padre (Guest)
There was just no, that was weird, that was so did it feel as crowded as usual?

01:02:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Did it feel like there were as many people there?

01:02:58 - Padre (Guest)
I deliberately avoid crowds, so the first day I cover Venetian and then the second day I go to LVCC, and it's normally the opposite. Yeah, but I I'm pretty sure attendance was down this year.

01:03:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm waiting for the. Does anybody know Daniel? David, Do you know if attendance was down? I don't know, Daniel.

01:03:15 - David Pierce (Guest)
I don't know what your experience was, but it felt busy to me Like it was it was definitely not the busiest CES I've ever been to, but it was. It was crowded, like if you measure it by how long you have to wait for a taxi to get anywhere like it was. We were fully back to CES.

01:03:30 - Padre (Guest)
So it was. It was back, baby, you can't get anywhere. It was down this year, but down for CES means it was only 130,000 instead of 180.

01:03:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, so that's a.

01:03:41 - Padre (Guest)
that's still a lot of people and it was more focused. I felt like the show this year was more focused. I didn't see as many vendors with stuff like 15 different types of iPhone cases. You know vendors actually were trying to show stuff off. The. The innovation pavilions in the Venetian actually had some interesting technologies and interesting displays and interesting new uses of existing technologies, so that's the sort of stuff that I really enjoy. The West Hall was crazy with autonomous vehicles, with electrified everything. Hyundai had this amazing booth and display where they were showing sort of the, the self building robotic infrastructure of the future.

01:04:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I saw a little clip on your piece of that. Do they anticipate that for use on earth, or is that for extra planetary exploration?

01:04:30 - Padre (Guest)
I mean, of course they're pitching it for earth, these are machines that build them autonomously, Right?

01:04:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I mean, you're talking about the way it seems like that's. That's the scenario. That's the nightmare scenario that we don't really want the machines, build the other machines.

01:04:44 - Padre (Guest)
That's the they. They didn't do that part, so okay, but that would be step five. So step one is generation of power. Step two is generating mining of resources. Step three is the transport. Step four is infrastructure. Step five would be back to one, which is I build the machines that get the power. And then there's step six paper clips. And well, step six is humans or slaves.

01:05:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, Bye, bye. Yeah, this is AI. Doesn't scare me until you give it agency in the real world. And then I'm getting a little nervous, like but they had a.

01:05:18 - Padre (Guest)
I had a nice sit down with one of the, the Hyundai execs, and they have a very interesting philosophy of using AI and telepresence and they said look, so many companies are saying either it's fully automatic, autonomous, or it's fully remotely controlled, or it's of human at the controls. So they want to do a sort of a hybrid approach. They want to be able to have human pilots when you need human intervention.

01:05:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what self driving cars do now. That's what Cruz and did and Waymo does. In fact, the story is that there's more human driving than they would care to admit. Volkswagen said they're putting chat GPT in their cars.

01:05:58 - Padre (Guest)
Because I want my car to argue with me. Oh, you're going that way. Okay, I guess you want to get there slower.

01:06:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Andrew Hawkins, running in the verge, says get ready for some very spurious navigation directions. If you want, glad us to tell you where to go. I guess did they also Volkswagen, I think showed it telling stories too, like you can ask it to tell you, I don't.

01:06:22 - David Pierce (Guest)
This is the thing about this that is so wild to me, because I think you think about AI in the car and the thing you think about is right, like I should be able to talk to my car about car things, and that that makes total sense to me. I actually I'm all in on that idea that when the check engine light comes on, what is this mean?

01:06:37
Yeah, what's going on and it can tell me like that's, that's valuable. I'm into that. I'm even into it for navigation. But this idea that I'm going to get in my car and drive to work just having a chat with chat GPT is so low bananas to me and I think that's what people want. I think there are people doing that and the idea is that that is going to be your companion on the way to and from work now, and I hate that.

01:07:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So much we're your companions on the way to work, for example, what I want is.

01:07:08 - Padre (Guest)
I want the AI in my car to fight with the AI on my phone because they really don't like each other.

01:07:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I wouldn't mind listening in on that one.

01:07:15 - Padre (Guest)
It's not right. It's a writer, though. Yeah, that's what this is. It's not writer.

01:07:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's not right, I'm sorry. I'm sorry kid. I think honestly, this is in not just in cars, but in general what we want. We want expert systems. We don't want a little plastic pallet can be your friend, right? In general, that's what we want and I think the mistake a lot of companies made is focusing on the latter instead of really focusing on the expert systems. Maybe it's not as sexy, but you're exactly right, david. I want my car to talk about car stuff, not tell me a little red riding hood. I want it to.

01:07:51 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Yeah that totally makes sense. I was going to say, because isn't Tesla? They want to put, of course, groc into the Tesla. Oh, God dad jokes are fine and it's just like, yeah, I'm like why? Like I'm like we were David here, like, yeah, I want this my car, but I want to do car things.

01:08:05 - Padre (Guest)
So here's a question Do you help me out in my life? Do you want an expert system in your car that has been trained on Twitter traffic? No, no, no, right, right.

01:08:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Exactly that's the problem. If it's trained on Volkswagen's manuals, if it's trained by Volkswagen's experts, then I'm interested. Then it's something this is going to be in some Volkswagen vehicles starting second quarter of this year. It's soon. They're they're pretty serious about that. This. They're not the only ones. Mercedes, I guess, showed a bunch of AI in its. In fact, they've been doing ads already AI voice assistants in their M bucks, more human like interactions. I'm not sure that's what I want, but that's what they're going to do.

01:08:50 - Padre (Guest)
Mercedes actually I think.

01:08:52 - David Pierce (Guest)
I'm sorry, go ahead. I think Mercedes is doing this well. Generally. Its voice assistant stuff has been way ahead of most of the others for a while now and I think they've done a nice job of keeping it mostly contained to car stuff. But I also think, leo, you might underestimate the number of people who desperately do want their AI to be their best friend. I mean, you look at companies like replica and what meta is building with these characters like. I think it is both weird and sort of existential, terrifying. But this idea that people want to have a real relationship with AI is real and I don't know what to do with that, but it is. It is real.

01:09:30 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Is it real? Humans are the most lonely people ever. It's like it's her.

01:09:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's the movie her. I want a girl, I want a plastic girlfriend. Sounds like Scarlett Johansson, but is that what the companies think? Or is that really what people are saying?

01:09:44 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I think with the atomization of society. I think that's what's gone down to they're lonely. I would love to tell you that it's.

01:09:51 - Padre (Guest)
PR, but no, I mean, my real business is dealing with people and helping people with interpersonal issues, and I know people who would love to have an AI assistant. You want?

01:10:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
an AI in the confessional right, Because then there's nobody really listening. Well, where does the church stand on AI confessionals? You?

01:10:10 - Padre (Guest)
have to understand. I just saw that People always ask me like, oh, but you've never talked about what's happened in the confessional. I don't remember what happens in the confession. Do you have any idea how many confessions?

01:10:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I hear he's playing words with friends guys. He's not.

01:10:24 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I was going to say I just watched a THX 1138 church Lucas is fell in there, they had the digital, they had the digital priest, the God that you make your confession to, and it doesn't really listen, it just says things Right, it's just punditudes. Yeah, we've got the whole. I told you my favorite one right.

01:10:42 - Padre (Guest)
My confessional, generic response is look, I understand that you feel alone. You feel like you've been abandoned. I know that you feel like you're the worst person in the world and I just want you to know you're right.

01:10:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You don't say that, can you imagine, how awful you would feel if the priest said that that would be scarring. You know you're a complete jerk. I try. I really do. I feel like I'm a pretty understanding guy, but I look, leo, god loves you.

01:11:12 - Padre (Guest)
I mean well, not you, but someone like you.

01:11:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Stop it. We know you don't do that. We know you don't do that. All right, I'm going to take a little break Having some fun with Father Robert Balancer. He's an actual priest, he doesn't just play one on TV. I'm working out of the Vatican, of all things, digital Jesuitcom. They call him the digital Jesuit. I just call him Father Robert. He's our good friend. It's so nice to see you when you get back into town and don't rush back Just the fact that right now, my home city is, uh, is partially locked down because there are not enough hotel not done.

01:11:48 - Padre (Guest)
There are not enough hospital beds for all the patients.

01:11:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I hate it makes me so sad. Yeah, it's happening again. Rome is one of my favorite places in the world. I'm so sad to hear that Also here. Daniel, daniel, daniel Rubino. I was going to say Daniel Pierce and David Rubino, but I'm got it all confused. Daniel Rubino editor in chief Windows Central. So good to see you, daniel. How are you feeling? Are the symptoms Okay? You feeling all right? Yeah, I know it's getting a little stuffy but you know otherwise I'm all right yeah.

01:12:13
Yeah, it's a miracle. My mom is 91. She's in a assisted living facility. She's got some memory issues. We were very nervous because, you know, people started to get it in the assisted living facility and I found out earlier this week. She got it, she's fine. They gave her packs. She had a sore throat. They gave her back. I said how are you feeling? She said I'm all tired. I feel fine, 91 years old.

01:12:40 - Padre (Guest)
It's a miracle you as everyone has had it before right.

01:12:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
She has never had it before. She's got all her shots, but she's never had it.

01:12:47 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, she'll be fine. It's amazing. Did any of you ever lose your sense of taste or smell when you had it? Not, I Smell, smell.

01:12:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I lost my smell. Lisa lost, I think, more than that.

01:12:59 - Padre (Guest)
I didn't lose anything. I lost her marbles briefly, until I took Paxlovid. Paxlovid made everything taste like I was throwing an aluminum foil.

01:13:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, yeah but that's Paxlovid. Yeah Well, so you're saying I shouldn't, shouldn't what? Take it.

01:13:12 - Padre (Guest)
Paxlovid yeah, oh no, take it, you're not recommending us to just be weird.

01:13:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm just saying everything tastes like aluminum.

01:13:19 - Padre (Guest)
Right, I mean when I had COVID the three times I enjoyed food. You know what's funny.

01:13:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That when you lick aluminum tastes like turkey. It's delicious.

01:13:26 - Padre (Guest)
Like remember when you used to test nine volt batteries by putting them on your tummy.

01:13:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, don't do that. Awesome this, david Pierce, first time with us. How are you feeling so far? Editor at large the Verge.

01:13:39 - David Pierce (Guest)
I'm doing great. It's great to be here. Do you want an update on the Packers game is my main question for you.

01:13:46 - Padre (Guest)
Okay, look, you can't see this, but there are like six screens off camera, so look, we're in San Francisco Bay Area.

01:13:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm a Niners fan and and you know, I got the socks to prove it. But our son, 21 year old, I think it was a rebellious thing. I think so Because Mom was so rabidly a Niners fan. He decided to be a Packers fan and you should see the Packers shrine. In our house there is a room devoted to the Packers. It's incredible and I'm sure he is going crazy right about now. You've all been very supportive. Well, you know we went to let. We took him for his 21st birthday. We went to Green Bay, had a great meet up there. Hello to all our friends in Green Bay, went to a game. Lambo field was really great. He's actually thinking of moving there. He likes him so much. I lived in Milwaukee for a year.

01:14:40 - Padre (Guest)
Ask him to talk to me first.

01:14:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, no, we don't want to discourage it, it's. If he wants to work there, we want to encourage it. Anyway, I don't need an update, david, because, as Robert marked me out, there are a few screens with the game just checking on and it's again. I don't care. But but for Michael, I'm very, I'm very interested. He's happy right now so well, we won't say too much.

01:15:02 - Padre (Guest)
But yeah, I think he's, we don't want to spoil the game for anyone who might be watching this, so he turned 21.

01:15:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Somebody, I don't know who, and I'm mad at whoever did gave him a bottle of rum, of spiced crack and rum. He comes down to dinner and gets a little bottle of rum, pours, makes himself a rum and coke every day. I'm thinking this kid, this is not a good way. So this is not a good habit.

01:15:25 - Padre (Guest)
So someone just gave him a bottle of rum and he decides he needs to eat that drink.

01:15:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He's gonna have rum and coke every night. It's like he's then he's not. This is not a film where you have cocktails at night, but he's case is cocked. He's practically go. Oh, the sun's over the yard. I'm time to break out the crack and a coke.

01:15:41 - Padre (Guest)
Do you like grappa?

01:15:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh God, no, that's stuff. Okay, that'll bring just checking to air off your chin.

01:15:47 - Padre (Guest)
Well, the other one is what was? It was a hate, yeah that's licorice.

01:15:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, grappa is the one where they put three coffee beans in it. They can make it smoother.

01:15:58 - Padre (Guest)
I can bring you a smooth, smooth. So they. There's a type of grappa that's only sold in the store, oh really, and I can bring you a ball of that. It's actually very smooth. Well, next time I'm gonna.

01:16:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm going to rum soon because you said I could stay with you. Yes, you can. I'm gonna move the Vatican. I'm gonna use his studio. This is this is the future. Yep, we're in twit now. Live from the Vatican. That's hysterical.

01:16:21
Our show today, brought to you by Miro. Oh man, if you play with Miro. Yet, this is so awesome. It is one incredible visual place that can bring all of your innovative work together, and the best part is, your team could be anywhere in the world in any time zone and you can all be working on the same thing. We're talking six whole capability bundles. You could use it for product development workflows. You could do it for content visualization, all powered by Miro AI, which means you're instantly generating new ideas or taking the information in your Miro boards and summarizing it, making it very easy to understand what's going on. Miro connects seamlessly to the platforms you're already using to. So, if you're using Jira or Confluence, if you're using Google Drive, if you're using Asana, you we use it with Zapier you centralize your work in a way that makes sense for your team. They don't need to leave Miro to update projects or statuses in any of these tools. It's all in one place now, thanks to Miro Miro users report, saving up to 80 hours a year by streamlining conversations, by cutting down on meetings who doesn't want to do that? And by seeing all the most up to date information in one place.

01:17:34
Miro just added a new board video recording feature. This is so cool. So one of the issues is you're in one time zone, father Roberts, and another he's sleeping when I'm awake. I'm awake when he's sleeping, but we're working on the same project together. How do I give him my comments? Well, of course, you can just write them in, but now you can use their talk track recording feature. Say hey Robert, look, this is what I think. This thing, I like this, but I don't like this. You can leave it on the board, eliminating another meeting, figuring out how you can meet. Your thoughts are there. They're there permanently. They're part of the record. They're part of the single source of truth. It is incredible. Try it out for yourself. Give, get your first three boards for free. This is a great way to try it. Start working better. Mirocom slash podcast. M I R. Ocom slash podcast. I think we've. I know you couldn't possibly cover CES, but I think we have. Yeah.

01:18:29
Anything else you think is important that we missed out on?

01:18:36 - Padre (Guest)
There's drone soccer that I think you should play Drone soccer. I think you would actually enjoy that.

01:18:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, I remember CES years ago. Drones were the big thing, right?

01:18:44 - Padre (Guest)
Drones are huge.

01:18:44 - David Pierce (Guest)
Are there still drones. There are some that kind of.

01:18:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Samsung brings that drone helicopter every year, right? Well, yeah, is that?

01:18:50 - Padre (Guest)
Samsung. Who brings that there's? I can't remember the name of the company. Sanion yeah they've got a, basically a manned quadcopter.

01:18:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah.

01:18:58 - Padre (Guest)
I'm not right in that. No, they bring it every year. They do. They slightly improve it every year. So like this one is now 15% less likely to decapitate you, but I mean, that doesn't say a whole lot.

01:19:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All right. Yeah, it's, by the way, ces. One of the one of the tracks was your new BFF is a robot. So this confirms exactly what you were talking about. Robot companions could be the future treatment for tackling depression, loneliness and companionship.

01:19:32 - David Pierce (Guest)
Tanya O'Yama was the leader of that one yeah. It turns out you just made me realize this there's a trend every year at CES where there's one whole category that everybody is like is this cool, do people want this? And the people resoundingly go no, no, like. One year it was drones, one year it was 3D printing. Hopefully this year it's best friend, robots. That is like the best possible.

01:19:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Certainly we can only hope, you know. On the other hand, if Scarlett Johansson could be in my ear and she could be, we could frolic. I might do that. I don't. I, you know, I feel like that's, that's gonna be the plague of like 30 years out. You know, right now we have a plague of people just walking around staring at their screen the whole time. The next thing is people will be, you know, kind of spaced out, listening to their AI buddy in their ear. Oh yeah, I think that's the future for sure.

01:20:26 - Padre (Guest)
No, it's 100%. It's gonna be people who talk exclusively to AI, only because they only tell them good things. You know, like, an AI is gonna talk bad things to you, right, ai is gonna talk down to you.

01:20:35 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
It's only gonna be nice to you.

01:20:36 - Padre (Guest)
It's only gonna be nice to you.

01:20:37 - David Pierce (Guest)
It's only gonna do stuff for you. Remember how.

01:20:39 - Padre (Guest)
AI Pope will do nothing but say bad things about you. That will be a differentiation.

01:20:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You are just determined to get in trouble. Are you trying to get fired? Is that what you're doing?

01:20:48 - Padre (Guest)
Well, if I get fired, I go back to the United States, yeah man no, do not fire him, you need him Wait. Daniel David, did you see the massage robot? See it, I married it, so it feels illegal. It's basically an industrial robotic arm set. Is that one of those big arms? But they put like flesh analogs on the floor. Oh gross, I don't like that it looked so creepy, but like they did it to my arm and it actually it does feel better than just having like a little nubbin on it, but still.

01:21:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So this was last year, but I bet it's the same one. This was last year.

01:21:28 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, so they basically done that, but they've added, like, flesh aspects to the arms.

01:21:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is what was missing from the giant robotic arms was rubber fake hands. I know so when I feel warm rubberized fleshy stuff touching my back rather than this.

01:21:46 - Padre (Guest)
I think it's a real person.

01:21:48 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Either somebody's roller skating on my back With this thing.

01:21:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
These things are too powerful. You know these are. It's like having a gorilla massage.

01:21:55 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, it's a suicide machine.

01:21:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a suicide machine.

01:21:58 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
You can totally see like some movie made where someone dies like that is because someone hacked the machine, and then the mystery is like all right who had hacked this to the machine.

01:22:07 - Padre (Guest)
Oh my gosh, this is a CSI episode. Who hacked the?

01:22:09 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
machine. Yeah, I do say.

01:22:10 - Padre (Guest)
CSI 2035. Let me see if I can find this year's Do you really want to be massaged by a robot that could put its arm through your chest? I, oh, here's the one.

01:22:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here's what you were talking about. Yeah, there it is, little feet pads on it Do you not like? Yeah, no, oh, that's creepy.

01:22:37 - David Pierce (Guest)
So creepy oh.

01:22:39 - Padre (Guest)
That's so creepy and that's when you touch the app Lower. You did so, did.

01:22:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You didn't do it, Robert, no no, let it do my arm and I'm not. I-y-u is the name of the company, or maybe it's I-U. Oh, it's got a little flesh. I like it that it's a flesh colored, right, but it's only a flesh covered sock, it makes all the difference, leo.

01:23:01 - Padre (Guest)
Now it feels like a real human.

01:23:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is from the independent, thank you. Oh, of course it's a Frenchman who came up with this. We don't want to bother you, so we are going to have a smoke and you will lie down.

01:23:16 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
The machine smoked at the end.

01:23:23 - Padre (Guest)
Oh, no, no, no, no. I'm going to get myself in trouble. I have to stop talking about this.

01:23:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah yeah, they're well speaking of which I think there wasn't a lot this year. They kind of got the sex toys out. They did. There were a lot of vibrators or things.

01:23:36 - Padre (Guest)
I think they got priced out, but most of them were too expensive. Right, there were a lot of them last year at the Venetian Expo. I think the only one that I saw at the show this year was Handy.

01:23:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't want to know Exactly.

01:23:51 - Padre (Guest)
Stop right here the name, that's it.

01:23:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Stop right there, enough OK.

01:23:58 - Padre (Guest)
You want to review it? I mean I've got the contact no.

01:24:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Did you really? You got their cards.

01:24:03 - David Pierce (Guest)
I did.

01:24:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, is it the Norwegian company?

01:24:07 - Padre (Guest)
No, it's an.

01:24:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
American company. Ok, reset. Ok. Did you see Really, let's go more creepy that there's a podcast, I guess, called Doodzy, that's run by AI? Oh yeah, yeah. And they have made, they have taken George Carlin, who has been dead for some years, and they turned him into a full special title. I'm glad I'm dead and you will wish he was dead. I'll play a little, just a little bit. This is not George Carlin, this is a voice that sounds a little bit like George Carlin. A little crying, a little f***ing or a little dying.

01:24:53 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I love all the parts you chose. The US government said aliens are real. They said it in the New York Times.

01:24:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
for f*** sake, I mean at least it's got the profanity I know. So that part they nailed. George Carlin's daughter said this is horrible. We didn't need her to say that. I mean, if I were George, if I were a comedian, I would not be afraid of this. Or should I be? Maybe this is. I mean, it's close enough. It's like this I have a.

01:25:22 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I was going to say my opinion. I listen to a lot of it. I was a huge Carlin fan Me too. It's pretty fricking good.

01:25:29 - David Pierce (Guest)
It's actually good.

01:25:31 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
It's better than his last special. No, oh don't say that. His last stuff wasn't very good. His last stuff got really dark and just wasn't that funny.

01:25:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You could tell and I don't know how much human involvement there is, they're not clear about that but you could tell that it was his style for sure, right? Yeah, yeah, he had a title of it. That would be the yeah, that's what he would say. Yeah, george Carlin's daughter, kelly. My statement regarding the AI generated George Carlin special. My dad spent a lifetime perfecting his craft from his very human life, brain and imagination. No machine will ever replace his genius. I don't think we disagree with that, right? She does say it's a good point. How about we give some actual living human comedians a listen to? If you want to listen to the genuine George Carlin, he has 14 specials. Don't apparently don't watch the last one, daniel says, but there are 13 good ones.

01:26:30 - Padre (Guest)
So there was a company called Halo that they make custom expert systems that basically clone you, so you teach it how to talk like you, what your posts look like on social, what your images look like, and then you let it loose and it posts for you. We have AI Leo. I find that very creepy but at the same time, at the same time, it generates more interaction, so it is a valid system. It's like it's not going to go away, but I look at systems like this and it makes you realize, hey, you know that sag strike, this was actually a very valid point, extremely valid point.

01:27:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, to that point, kelly Carlin and his daughter said that they did not ask for permission, but I don't think they need permission.

01:27:15 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Not, unless they're using it it makes very clear at the beginning of it that this is an impersonation of George Carlin.

01:27:20 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yeah, that's legal, it's no different than someone who listen.

01:27:22 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Yeah, it's no different than someone who listen to all of his content and just doing an impersonation of him, just an hour long one.

01:27:29 - David Pierce (Guest)
The question of whether the law agrees with that statement or not, I think is very much still to be seen. Sure, but no, I think that's right, and I think we spent so much of this last year trying to decide A whether the tech is going to get good enough to make this stuff a real threat to people's livelihoods in these worlds, and also trying to figure out how we feel about it, because one of the things, like the George Collins Starter's name is Kelly. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. Part of what her statement says is essentially it's gross that this is happening. It's not even an evaluation of whether or not it's any good, and I actually think to me it's not very good, but it was significantly better than I expected it to be. So I'm in this sort of weird liminal place there, but it does kind of call in a question is this a thing we want to exist in? The world Feels like actually the bigger question here than is AI. George Carlin, funny. Well, what if?

01:28:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it were as funny as if George Carlin.

01:28:32 - Padre (Guest)
Let's go devils advocate Someone who's a George Carlin fan, who loved his material, who understands that he is dead but would still like to have something that reminds them of George Carlin. And this is fresh. This is fresh material.

01:28:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Or maybe let's take another. Maybe Beatles, maybe if there was a whole album of new Beatles songs? If you're the Beatles or you have the rights to Beatles music, maybe that's not thrilling, but if you're a Beatles fan, how do you feel about that? Admittedly, we're not there yet, because no one's lying to you.

01:29:04 - Padre (Guest)
No one's trying to fool you. They're up front saying this is not Carlin, this is not the Beatles, this is not whoever this is pretending to be. But it knows enough about them, about their performance, about their content, about their art, that it can extrapolate to what they might talk about today.

01:29:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is kind of a version of what we've been talking about lately. We're all creators here, and creators in general aren't thrilled about AI training on their content. New York Times has recently sued open AI. I think ultimately the New York Times will get a licensing agreement with open AI. They've done a licensing agreement, for instance, with CNN most recently. They want content and if they have to license it, ok.

01:29:50
But as a content creator maybe it's because I'm at the tail end of my career I don't want to be a protectionist on my content. I'm much more interested in how good AI could be, and Sam Allman made this point in the New York Times suit. In their response to the New York Times suit at open AI, they said if open AI can only train on non-copyright material, it ain't going to be very good. It ain't going to be very good. I mean, maybe the solution is to make it license it. I guess, although there's probably not enough money in the world to license all the stuff you'd want it to train on, I think there's a strong case to be made from the point of view of a societal good not maybe of the individual creators, but of the societal good that AI be allowed to ingest as much as it possibly can.

01:30:35 - Padre (Guest)
Then they should be free for all. No, we all contributed to it, I mean that's what's going to happen in China.

01:30:40 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
probably we all contributed to it, right?

01:30:42 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yeah, all right. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a I forget who it was, but somebody a while ago tweeted something to the effect of all open AI did was steal the internet and rent it back to us, and that's a pretty compelling argument in what actually happened, and I think the idea that open AI can't afford to do what it wants to do, thus shouldn't have to pay for it, just doesn't really hold water. But there's also something like it doesn't feel like a middle ground exists, and yet we have to find one, right, because I think we talk about this all the time at the Verge. We make a lot of money from people who want to know which smartphone they should buy.

01:31:21
That is a real part of our business. It is a service we provide to our audience, and if you just go to chat GPT and say, what phone does the Verge think I should buy, and it answers your question based on the research that we've done, you've just looped us out of a thing that we did all the work for and that's a problem, and so I think we're actually I think in reality going to have to answer this question rather than once, like a million different ways for each different part of this, like Benedict Evans always likes to say, that you don't regulate cars. You regulate parts of cars and you regulate seat belts, and you regulate steering wheels and you regulate tires. You don't regulate cars and I think we're going to end up in that place with AI2. And it's just going to get so messy and it feels like AI is moving so fast that it's going to be way ahead of that for the foreseeable future and it's going to get weirder before it gets better, I think.

01:32:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, interesting. I asked chat GPT. It says I'm unable to retrieve the latest smartphone recommendations from the Verge due to access restrictions on the relevant websites.

01:32:20 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yeah, fox Media is one of the companies that disallowed open AI scrapers. I believe I can't speak for the company, but I think that was a company-wide decision.

01:32:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Did they do with a? Google has proposed a robottxt. Robotstxt like blocking a mechanism. Did they do it that way? Or did they go to the open AI and said under no circumstances should you breeze.

01:32:40 - David Pierce (Guest)
So open AI has that for GPT bot. You can just turn it off in your robottxt. Anybody with content could do that.

01:32:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They could just in their robotstxt say no AI scanning.

01:32:50 - Padre (Guest)
So the regulation has to be that any AI vendor has to attribute where they trained their expert system. That's really the only way to do it, because right now it's really a hot spot. It's anonymous. They buy bulk content and they feed it to their expert system and that's how they get their produced content.

01:33:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're going to think I'm crazy, but I think that's antisocial. I think that AI should be allowed to train on anything they want, because we don't yet know how valuable AIs are going to be. And if you want AIs to be your little local plastic buddy, or you want an AI to cure cancer, you better not put too much restrictions on what the AI can learn, any more than you restrict what a human can learn. You could come to me and say hey, leo, what phone did the Verge recommend? And I could tell you why is an AI different from that? Now, benito, you have an interesting point Should open AI be allowed to charge for that information?

01:33:48 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yeah, if you said for $5, I'll tell you what the Verge recommends.

01:33:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, that might be a little weird and I think if you said it on the website, it's offering to do it. What if?

01:33:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
they did it for free. Would that be OK? You're not speaking for the Verge at this point, David.

01:34:00 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yeah, I don't know. Truthfully, I get sort of twisted in circles trying to think about all of this, because I think you think about what you're talking about, which is that we sort of owe it to each other to give these tools as much access and runway as possible.

01:34:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's why you put stuff on the internet in the first place For free, is because you wanted to share your knowledge. That's why we make these shows. We don't charge you for these shows. We have advertisers. We actually hope you will join our club because the advertisers are not covering the bill these days, but we don't force you to pay for it. The kind of the culture of the internet right now is to give this stuff away, and I think that's why the internet has become so valuable.

01:34:41 - David Pierce (Guest)
I also think it's why a whole multiple generations of internet creators are feeling like they've been completely screwed by these systems and algorithms that don't care about them and don't care about their work, just exist to bleed them dry of content. And I think if we're going to, the pendulum has swung kind of too far in every direction and I think this next phase is about trying to figure out what the bill works like.

01:35:03 - Padre (Guest)
It has swung to a place where it's going to be unsustainable for us to continue to provide this content for free. If there is no way for us to support ourselves while we're making this content, be it a podcast or a website or a magazine, then those expert systems will have nothing to train themselves.

01:35:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But you already have that problem. That's why people went after Google for snippets they felt like. And, by the way, every single time, a news publisher has gone after Google and said well, stop publishing our search results. When Google exceeds to this as they did in Canada, as they did in Australia, as they did in Spain it's a disaster for the news operations. Google brings more value to the news operations than they take away.

01:35:43 - Padre (Guest)
They do, because people will see those snippets and they'll go back to the website and we both get that. But what if someone were to take all of the this Week in Tech episodes ever created? Condense them just to the knowledge point. Remove all the ads and make it possible for people to follow your opinions and your advice about ever seeing an ad.

01:36:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So what they would get if people did that is a very different experience than what they would get if they listened to the shows and I am confident in the value we add in the shows that the information is not See. This is what's really important. We've talked about this extensively on the show so I apologize if you've watched our other shows. We add on Wednesday, kathy Gellison talking about the right to read, which is a longstanding first amendment backed right to read what you want. You're protected in that the right to read and what these anti-AI laws are essentially do could protect, not laws but court cases could potentially do if decisions go. In my opinion, the wrong way is inhibit your right to read by inhibiting the AI's right to read, and I think that that is a very slippery slope.

01:36:51
Mike Maznick has made this case. He says the New York Times will very much regret this case against open AI because they're doing the same thing and in fact, what I think is important to understand to answer your question directly, the information we give out on the show isn't ours in the begin with. The information you get on our shows comes from Vox Media, comes from Windows Central, comes from all of the sources that you and I and everybody on these shows gather. We chew it up. What we give a value is our presentation, not the information. So if an AI comes along and creates a presentation of that information from the AI and people want to use it, more power to them, but that is not competing with the service we provide.

01:37:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And, by the way, if an AI could do as well as we do, great, I'll retire, go ahead.

01:37:45 - David Pierce (Guest)
Well, I mean back to your, is this easier to say at the later stages of your career? Like that thing you just said is definitely easier to say at the later stages of your career. But I also think I mean you cast that out for us.

01:37:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So that. But when you say that, then that really underlines this is a protectionist move To protect you in your existing career. But I don't think from a societal point of view that is necessarily the right choice. It's good for you know, a journalist in the height of their glory, because it protects them, but is that what we want as a society? And I think a journey, I think anybody who's doing something today should really consider what is the value I add? And I better add some real value that AI cannot.

01:38:31 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Can't do. Yeah, I have an exact conversation yesterday with my best friend about that. Is it the same point? I will say you know there are some solutions that can be done here. Microsoft has proposed, you know, financial kickbacks when because at least with Microsoft's co-pilot, when it does the citations, it actually gives you a citation like a college paper and you can link back to those and they're pretty obvious. There's no reason why those hyperlinks and those sites couldn't get a financial kickback from those results. So Google can do this. There are ways to do it. You know, I think Google is a little bit more egregious here with the way they cite things. You know, this idea that you just get a wall of text and there's like no citations is pretty disturbing. So I think there can be some creative solutions to this that can be done.

01:39:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I always cite. By the way, when we do stories, I really and you probably noticed this I attempt to say, oh yeah, this is David Pierce writing in the verge, that kind of thing, because I think the citation is important, but on the other hand, I don't think it restores the value to you that I have taken right. I mean, how many people follow that citation back to the original source? Oh no, I know what smartphone to buy. Thank you very much. Goodbye, Sure.

01:39:36 - David Pierce (Guest)
No, I think that's totally fair and I think the other part of that is like, if you allow for that argument, right, that the societal good outweighs what it does to my career, and I actually think that there's plausible stuff inside of that argument. This is why Sam Altman spends a lot of time talking about universal basic income right, because it just rewrites society he understands that he's undermining our economic business.

01:40:00
Whichever road we pick, it's way longer than you've given it credit for until now, which is why I think it's so interesting and messy, and there's just not enough money in the world to pay everybody for everything the right way all the time.

01:40:15 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
And how we solve for that is, I think, the question of the next decade Actually there probably is enough money, but there are a lot of people hoarding a lot of money, yeah fair. There might be a point. 5% really owns a lot, a lot, a lot of wealth that we don't have. So I think distribution of wealth here could be a come up, but we don't want to go into socialism because it's got to be a bit.

01:40:38 - Padre (Guest)
Just remember in the United States, right now, the top 1% of all wealth owners own more than the next 69%, so there is a lot of hoarding. Now back to the AIS system, though there's also a question of what it's training on. Now I understand, leo I get your point that we actually take other people's content and then we represent it. That's always been our thing. That's all Twitter does. That's all Twitter does. However, that's one step is to take content and to reanalyze it, but essentially, what we are are storytellers. We have a narrative form that we use, that we think people enjoy. Now, what if an expert system is not looking at the content but looking at your narrative style?

01:41:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's learning your narrative style, no, and I stipulate that it could in fact do exactly what we're doing right now. Not yet, but someday, Maybe 10 years, maybe five years, In which case I should probably look for another line of work.

01:41:35 - Padre (Guest)
But is that a societal good if future expert systems will no longer have that base of content on which to train?

01:41:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, no, in fact, I don't think there's any societal good in an AI duplicating Twitter. That's a complete waste of time and no AI should pursue that. However, in fact, you could argue it's probably a waste of time for me too. But, however, I think the problem is that we know that AIs also have the potential to cure cancer, to come up with vaccines, to do protein folding, to do things that could transform society. And, of course, this is where Sam Altman and the effective altruists go with their notion that there won't be a capitalist system anymore. That's why you need UBI, because the AI will make value creation kind of automatic and instantaneous. Ok, maybe that's the end of the road. I'm not willing to go that far, but I do think it's a mistake to hinder just as we didn't hinder the internet in the early days because we weren't sure where it was going. Maybe we should have To artificially To artificially.

01:42:42
At this point, I don't think we know enough to make rules about what AI should and shouldn't do. I don't really have a big problem if people say, well, look, you can. If CNN says, ok, fine, open AI, take all our content and give us a license fee for that, I don't have a problem with that. If they can come up with a mutually agreed beneficial deal, which apparently they have, fine, but I think we'd really want to. If everybody says what Vox said, don't read me. The AI is just the same moment. There aren't going to be very useful and we may be missing out on something that's really incredible as a result. Ok, is that possible? Maybe.

01:43:22 - David Pierce (Guest)
Did you? The SAG-AFTRA thing, I think is interesting in this context too, because one of the things that the actors in particular wanted was basically consent and compensation for use of their AI stuff. Because it is now in theory possible and in reality it's going to be very possible very soon to just take the likeness of someone who has been in six movies, replicate it digitally and then never hire that actor again, and I think just instinctively that feels wrong to me, and so the idea that I should lose control of my digital likeness because I have appeared on a screen before feels wrong. And how we legislate that and what the consent decrees look like and how we should be compensated all that remains to be seen. But I think if we land in this free for all place, there's just some humanity that we lose. If everything I do just becomes by default training data for AI, it just feels bad. I don't know. I just don't want to live in that world.

01:44:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, Sam Waltman and Larry Page would argue that you are a speciesist.

01:44:35
Yeah, they have a lot more money than I do, so you believe that humans should be protected against the next big evolutionary step, and I'm sure the Neanderthals and the apes might have agreed with you, but maybe AI is the next evolutionary step. Is that really crazy to talk like that? By the way, the SAG AFRA deal was interesting. They made a subsequent voice licensing deal. You might have seen this for games with replica studios, and some of the voice actors who make video game voices, who do video, are furious. They said how dare they lice it? We didn't ask us. So what they've established, I think, is scale, where there's a minimum that you must pay if you take the actor's voices and use it to train AI and create new voices.

01:45:28
Some of the actors are pissed. They said how dare you? Veronica Taylor, who is the voice of Ash in Pokemon, said how has this agreement passed without notice or vote? Roger Clark, the voice of Arthur Morgan you know him and love him from Red Dead Redemption 2, said encouraging or allowing AI replacement is a slippy slope downward. I am Look, I'm sympathetic. I understand how creators might feel ripped off by AI training on them or replicating them. I understand how George Carlin's daughter might be pretty pissed off.

01:46:05 - Padre (Guest)
Be pretty easy to do. All the voices from the Simpsons I could do the voices from the Simpsons.

01:46:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I can't do a poll anymore Now they can just fix. Rick and Morty yeah.

01:46:16 - Padre (Guest)
OK, wait, the new voice actors for Rick and Morty are really good.

01:46:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yes, Apparently none of us know. I barely watched. There's one that to be, I think.

01:46:29 - Padre (Guest)
I mean seriously. I've watched the season several times and there were only a few times where I realized, yeah, that's a different person, but they got the voices.

01:46:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The cartoon voices are pretty easy to duplicate because they are by their nature caricatures.

01:46:44 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Le Crenson's Tempest Season 3 was just not the same as John K. But John K has his own issues. I'm a big cartoon nerd. Actually I do like the voice work, like Bugs Bunny was never the same after Bell Blank.

01:46:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's true, actually, that's true, and it's a subtle difference. I actually know the guy who does Elmer Fudd, the new Elmer Fudd. There you go. I think it was Elmer Fudd. We did a triangulation with him back in the day Because I mean, look, mel Blank's gone. You want to keep doing new movies. You got to get somebody to take over. He actually has a great story that when he was a kid he wanted to do cartoon voices. He called Mel Blank. He said you could look him up. He was in the phone book. So he looked up in the phone book as a 12 year old and he said is Mel Blank there? And his wife said, yeah, hold on. And he got him and he talked to him and Mel Blank said good luck to you, kid. And now he's doing Bugs Bunny. I think he's doing Bugs Bunny. I'll have to find this, but it was a fascinating interview. But you're right, it's not quite as good. I didn't tell him that. I did not tell him that.

01:47:52 - Padre (Guest)
Well, it's just different. I mean, someone who had never heard Mel Blank before would think it's fine, would think it's great, like, for example, the voice of Batman from the new animated series. It's not my Batman, it doesn't sound the same. Well, batman's had many voices, but Conroy is the Batman actor.

01:48:13 - David Pierce (Guest)
He's gone now.

01:48:14 - Padre (Guest)
But there are people who never really heard Conroy. They heard Batman bold and the beautiful. The more recent animated series that's their Batman, so it's going to change from generation to generation.

01:48:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Bob Bergen is his name and it was triangulation 122. Here let me just play a little bit of this. I think we own the rights to this. I hope we do.

01:48:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's just so many things in town I want to buy.

01:48:40 - Bob Bergen (Interviewee)
What the hell this money is for. We all do right. A lot of cartoon voices have that. It's a very common thing. We know why. Why they're easy to mimic, it's easy to do.

01:48:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Just as you were saying. So if you're going to do it, make a most of your cast.

01:48:56 - Bob Bergen (Interviewee)
You know what. Here's what you do. You start right there because that's what you've learned to imitate Right, and then you look at the specs.

01:49:03 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yes, the character of this thing. It says Southern, so he is a Southern character.

01:49:09 - Padre (Guest)
There you go.

01:49:10 - Bob Bergen (Interviewee)
There you go, my pal. Then you see on the independent.

01:49:13 - Padre (Guest)
He's got to be careful. Ai is training on this.

01:49:15 - Bob Bergen (Interviewee)
Because it's adult swim. So, you can smoke Right and you just squeeze the back of your throat a little bit. So he's got a little brown food smoke. Now you've got man.

01:49:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Brother. He's got it now. So this guy is great and he is the voice of Bugs Bunny, as I remember. But also there's some great stories. That was Triangulation 10 years ago, episode 7. What was it? 133. Is that what I said? Yeah, no. 122. Porky Pig he's the voice of Porky Pig and Tweety Tweety Bird. That's good stuff. All right, let's take a break on that high note. Let's go ahead on a high note. Great panel, by the way, so nice to have, especially for post-CES. Father Robert Ballas here with all his gizmos and gadgets. David Pierce of the Verge cast so great to have you on, not for the first time, but not for the last, I hope. Love having you on. And, of course, the wonderful Daniel Rubino from Windows Central, our show today, brought to you by Colide.

01:50:16
What do you call an endpoint security product that works perfectly but makes your users miserable? Yeah, it's a failure. You know why? Because you're just going to find a way around it. The old approach to endpoint security lockdown employee devices, rollout changes through forced restarts and boy, that does not work either. People hate that. It's miserable because they got a mountain of support tickets, employees, they just start using their personal devices to get the work done. Oh, that's not good, because you know when those personal devices show up at the office or on the network they're going to be a nightmare. And then the executives oh, they opt out the first time. It makes them late for a meeting. They say, man, I'm not using this. You can't have a successful security implementation unless you work with end users. And end users like it. They can live with it.

01:51:06
And that's where Colide comes in. Their user-first device trust solution notifies users. This is so cool. As soon as it detects an issue on their device, it then walks them through the solution. It teaches them how to solve it without calling IT. Oh, look, you know. You sure you did this inadvertently, but you've stored all your SSH private keys in your download folder. Maybe we should move those somewhere else and secure them. User says, oh, ok, now they're part of the team, right.

01:51:37
Furthermore, untrusted devices are blocked from authenticating. The users don't stay blocked, but their devices do until they fix it. That's Colide in a nutshell. Colide is designed for companies with Okta, so Okta does the authentication, but Colide makes sure the device is secure. It works on Mac OS, windows, linux, mobile devices Perfect for BYOD If you have Okta and you're looking for a device trust solution that respects your team and it has to, or the team won't use it go to colidecom slash twit. Watch that demo, see how it works. I think you'll be impressed. Kolidecom slash Twitter. We thank them so much for their support for this week in tech. You know, before we go on with the news I do there's one thing I do want to do is plug our club. Oh, yeah.

01:52:28
This is something we created a couple of years ago. I don't know if you were around when we. I don't think so. No, I had, I had left the the year before, but but I think you've been very supportive with it. I think you recognize, we have all recognized that while for years for 15, 17 years we've been ad supported, that ad support for podcasting was dwindling. Frankly, it's going to YouTube influencers, it's going to Google, it's going to Spotify, it's going places where they, frankly, know a lot more about you and they can tell advertisers you know. Oh yeah, we can give you a 24 to 54 year old men who live in Bergen County who, having comes over a hundred thousand, we know all of that. We don't and that's hurt us with advertisers. We don't want to know. We like your privacy, we want to encourage your privacy and, frankly, we're not going to change on that, we're not giving in on that. So we've got to find other ways to monetize and I think that's where the the I'm so excited about what club Twitter has been able to do.

01:53:23
Our original goal was if we have 750,000, maybe a little bit more unique listeners in a month, if we could get 5% of that, we can get 35,000. Members. We wouldn't worry about advertising. So we created club Twitter and we made it affordable seven bucks a month, that's all you get ad free versions of all the shows, because we don't need you to hear the ads, although I cut, this is a constant complaint on club to it. I want the ads. You could still listen to the ads. We're not going to stop you If you want the versions of the ads. In fact, we've made this a little easier. We've actually put in the show notes now for the club Twitter versions, all the advertisers, so at least you know who's sponsoring this show. Okay, you get the twit plus content that we don't put out anywhere else. Ios today is now inside the club home theater. Geeks hands on Macintosh, hands on windows, the untitled Linux show. We do a lot of great club only content.

01:54:14
Friday, lisa and I turned on the camera. She was making her world famous Raghu Bolognese, her Emilio Romagna classic Italian Sunday gravy on a Friday, and we and we we streamed. It was about an hour. I think the people who watched it loved it. We had a great time. We want to do more of that stuff, so the club lets us do that. We have a great discord too.

01:54:36
That's the other benefit of the club is there is a club within the club. It's a place where you can go and hang with other nerds, talk about the things you care about, whether it's comic books or or alcoholic beverages, whatever. Whatever gets you excited, that's where you can go. You get that. You get the ad free versions of shows, you get special shows, but most of all, you get the warm and fuzzy feeling that you're making a big difference keeping us on the air. And we we think we have a job to do. I'm not. I'm whether I'm ready to retire or not. I want to keep this is started again exciting. To be honest, ai has made this very interesting and I think we have an important mission to help you understand it, help you use it, help you get what's real and what's hype, and I want to keep doing that. So if you would like to help out, we would really appreciate it.

01:55:27
Twittertv slash club. I know I've gone on too long. I apologize. Oh, you know. Another benefit of club you won't hear me begging you to join club Because you'll be a member. All right, we cut that part out too.

01:55:38 - Padre (Guest)
You know, one of the things that I was thinking about doing is doing bringing back something like know how, on Padre's, would you please? On the discord on, would you, would you absolutely?

01:55:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
you can do that anytime you want, I'll give you the keys. I'll give you the keys to the car you can drive off. Oh, we would love that. You, father Robert, we would love that. I think one of the things I don't know we're looking at, I think podcasting as it stands, as as we did it in 2005 is is no longer really quite it.

01:56:07 - Padre (Guest)
It's different, it's very different from even five years ago.

01:56:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And I and what I always knew, was that the big thing that we offered and that was it was all about was the community, was the people, not just the people in front of the camera, but the people behind the camera, like the community of twit listeners and viewers. And so what? What really the discord lets us do is have that community be active. And now I'm starting to think, well, we don't have to have a show, it's, we're all in this community so we can stream stuff, we can do stuff, we can be in the community. I'm excited about that. I think that's. You know. Who inspired me is Alex Lindsey with his office hours. What he's doing there it's not really a podcast, it's a kind of a ongoing 24 seven community.

01:56:47 - Padre (Guest)
You know, in 2011, when I did twit, just randomly, you invited me to twit and I rushed up to go to do it because I was done in Berlin game. We had a conversation afterwards over over a meal and you said and I'll never forget this the ideal show for us is something like a car talk on NPR Click and clack, the clacket brothers. Great show yeah.

01:57:11
And you said it's. The tab starts right, the information is good, so you have to know your stuff. You have to know your stuff, but people are looking for a relationship. They're looking for an interesting presentation and looking for something that brings them into the story, and that's what twit was and that I use that all of my years at twit.

01:57:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh well, let's, let's let's do some more stuff. I think the video on the discord isn't great yet I'm hoping discord will improve that. Yeah, they just fired a bunch of people. What is it? By the way, that's a story this week. I thought everybody was making record profits. Google just laid off a whole bunch of people. Twitch just laid off 35% of their team. Amazon just laid off people in the MGM and Amazon Prime division. I thought we were done with the layoffs.

01:58:03 - Padre (Guest)
There were a lot of deferred layoffs because companies didn't want to heap on what was already a really bad year.

01:58:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So you said well, hang on, We'll fire them in six months.

01:58:13 - Padre (Guest)
Well, they were wondering if maybe some of the divisions would turn around. There were some redundancies that they didn't eliminate right away. There, honestly, there were some products and services that failed and they were hoping would turn around and just didn't. So this is not a surprise, and it's not like the people who were let go are now destitute. They do have skills that other companies are going to want. But, yeah, those companies were a little overstaffed in some very specific areas.

01:58:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Because Microsoft has pretty much held the line. They had layoffs ended last year.

01:58:47 - Padre (Guest)
Yes, they had three rounds? I think three. Yeah, Blase off.

01:58:52 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Yeah, and the video game market? Same thing. A lot of gaming studios have been laying off people.

01:58:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, Unity just laid off a huge number. I mean, look, when you say Google laid off a few hundred people, it sounds like, well, it got out of how many hundreds of thousands of employees? That's not huge. And every single person, that's a heartbreaker. For I know we've had to lay off people ourselves.

01:59:15 - David Pierce (Guest)
And these are companies that, historically, have just absolutely grown like crazy. Is that the problem? And so I think, yeah, I think a huge part of this is that these companies vastly overhired during the pandemic and they have said as much and are still pushing past this. I mean, if you rewind to mid 2020, it was like nothing is ever going to be the same again. It's about to be the biggest company in the history of the universe, right? This was the stuff, right, and there was this big belief that nobody was ever going to go back to the office and we were going to sort of rewrite the rules of what it meant to be a person online. And then everybody realized that actually kind of sucks for a whole bunch of reasons, and most people went back to the office and started hanging out with their friends in real life, because that's more fun than doing it on the internet, and a lot of things just sort of crested back to normal and I think you saw these companies go backwards in a big way, really, at the beginning of 2020.

02:00:09
When it became obvious that those trends were not going to stay and I think we're still seeing that stuff linger, and especially now, as these companies are all in on AI. Ai is really expensive to run. It's really expensive to hire against. It requires new skills and new teams. You're seeing these companies say anything we're doing that isn't AI and doesn't print money. For us is no longer worth investing our time and energy and money Because everybody is so all in on AI and I think many of them will be wrong and they'll end up laying off a lot of these people again. But this seems to be this next turn that we're in right now.

02:00:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, so that's. The question is, how much do you read into this in terms? For instance, the co-founders of Fitbit are leaving Google. A bunch of Fitbit people are leaving Google. Does that mean that the Fitbit category is a failure or that Google's just consolidating? They built in a lot of the features into the Pixel Watch.

02:01:03 - David Pierce (Guest)
That one, I can actually say pretty confidently, is the second thing. Google bought Fitbit to speed up its work on the Pixel Watch. Fitbit was always a really good brand and not that good a company, and Google. After Apple figured out that the Apple Watch's main thing was health and fitness, google went, oh crap, if we're going to compete in this space, we have to do health and fitness, and decided that, rather than build that capacity from scratch, buying Fitbit was a quick shortcut to get there, and so I think this was always coming. I'm a little surprised Google didn't manage this particular transition better over the last 18 months or so, but I was not at all surprised.

02:01:46
No, well, also nothing Google does organizationally, ever yeah.

02:01:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Louise Metzakis Go ahead AR stuff.

02:01:55 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I was going to say they're like AR stuff where they pull back on AR, who hasn't pulled back on AR?

02:02:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Everybody's pulled back.

02:02:02 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
They bought North years ago, right, and it was like the one company I wanted Right.

02:02:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I wanted those. They had a good product. I was about to buy them.

02:02:09 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Yeah, I was like all right, well, Google bought them, so maybe they'll come out with a product Right. And now it's like what? They just nuked it all and like we're never going to get anything.

02:02:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like that we reviewed them. Anthony loved them. Anthony Nielsen loved his North glasses. I think I'm not putting words in your mouth, anthony, but I seem to remember that, yeah, they're gone. Louise Metzakis, writing for SEMIFOR, said Google also laid off hundreds working on Google voice. No, that's an AI thing. So is that, like Fitbit, a consolidation of these teams into some other under some other umbrella, david? Or is that?

02:02:44 - David Pierce (Guest)
That one, I think, is pretty clearly Google saying we've been down the wrong road with Google assistant for a decade. Hard is the future. Yeah, ai, llms of the future, this Gemini model is the future and we need to pivot all of the stuff we're doing underneath assistant to be an AI project, more than all the other stuff that they've been doing with with assistant.

02:03:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Not Google voice. I don't want to scare people who use Google voice numbers the Google voice assistant.

02:03:15 - David Pierce (Guest)
I mean Google voice is perpetually on the edge of death anyway.

02:03:18 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I was going to say we're all waiting for that.

02:03:20 - David Pierce (Guest)
I'll be sad when that happens, but not surprised.

02:03:22 - Padre (Guest)
I'm waiting for the Dermis start hangouts and move us back over to hangouts, back to voice. Actually, they're pivoting to a brand new messaging app, an AI messaging app People don't actually making that up Okay.

02:03:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Actually Google voice is kept alive by the fact that Google Fi uses that as their number porting system and as their messaging system. So I think voice might survive, because unless Google Fi dies, oh well, don't speak that into existence.

02:03:51 - Padre (Guest)
You just put that into the universe. On the I. Thing.

02:03:55 - David Pierce (Guest)
I wrote a story about Google keep not that long ago the note taking app and it had gotten a couple of new features and there were a bunch of people who are like, oh, what a great app, I love Google keep. And then, overwhelmingly, our commenters said don't write about Google, keep Google, let it exist and they'll kill it. Don't do it.

02:04:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But they don't know, won't hurt them.

02:04:13 - David Pierce (Guest)
Exactly, there's just like one Googler preventing keep from being killed.

02:04:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I've put it off long enough. Since we started talking about AR, there were a bunch of AR. Sony had AR glasses there, but a bunch of kind of was it near had some AR glasses and CES, but really all of that was, I think, them saying no, no, no, no. We're going to do it too. Us too, because Apple has announced now that Friday, the 19th, you can preorder your $3,500 vision pro helmet nerd helmet as a joint Eastern calls it for delivery February 2nd. You're learning a little bit more about it, including Mark German today and his newsletter power on newsletter saying. Oh, and, by the way, the Apple store people who've gone to Cupertino for training are reporting back now that when you buy your nerd helmet this is how it's going to work. You're going to scan your face before you go into the store. You make an appointment. It's because you got. This is like going to the doctor's office you make an appointment, you scan your face, you send it to them, you go in. If you're wearing eyeglasses, they have a machine that will give you your prescription, which is good, because I was worried about it. I have to get my prescription and then, if they've got the right Zeiss lenses, the pop those in. They'll take the scan to the side what your headband should look like, so it all fits nice. And then they'll you give them lots of money and they will I forgot, almost left that step out, and then they will sit you down and say, okay, now we're going to give you a 25 minute tour of the device.

02:05:44
I was on the fence about whether I should get one. I feel like I should get one because we talk about it. I'm very skeptical. I think it's a piece of waste of time for Apple to do this. They missed the boat. They you know meta already tried and failed and meta has moved on. Apple spent so much money and so many years. They had to do it. But it's going to be a big flop. But I think, if I say that I better try it, I better buy it. And then I found out I have to sit for a 25 hour demo. I said no, that's it, I'm not going to go 25 hour wait what it's going to feel like 25 hours.

02:06:14
It's going to feel like that. I think I asked a good question today and asked the tech guys well, can you just leave? Can you say, Okay, that's fine, I don't need the tour?

02:06:23 - Padre (Guest)
But then you? But then you can't take your goggles.

02:06:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you want your nerd helmet stays in the store. It's. I mean, this feels like a propaganda, like something like they're tying you to the chair. It feels like clockwork orange they're tying to the chair and you're going to watch the video so that you become one of us.

02:06:39 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I tell you why because it's not obvious what you can do with this thing. But that's terrible. They want to sit you down for 25 minutes to show you what you can do with it. So when you get home and you put it on, you're like now what you know. So I think they're trying to avoid that.

02:06:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But isn't that? Isn't that the kiss of death for any consumer electronics project product Is, if you have to be shown how to use it for half an hour, unless it's Apple? I think this is we have to remember.

02:07:01 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
So this is definitely, I'll go ahead. I'm sorry. I was just going to say. I think this is just one of those products that were. You know they want devs to get it, great experiences and hopefully they find the path of something cool before they bring it down really to the consumer level.

02:07:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So, even though they are offering this to the public and they will be able to, they say, make half a million this year and certainly a lot of Apple fans will buy it they're really the main market for this. From their point of view as developers, this is a developer device. Didn't Microsoft do that with HoloLens?

02:07:34 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Yes. Exactly, and how did that work out? Well, the military may get some of that, but I'm not playing Minecraft. Google did that with Google Glass. I really liked HoloLens. I honestly did. Yeah, HoloLens is great.

02:07:50 - Padre (Guest)
But okay, apple is trying to address something that has plagued the other headset manufacturers, and that is that when someone gets a new device, especially a new expensive device, and they use it for 15 minutes and they think it's great, and then they put it back in the box and they never use it again, and that generates the perception of a failure.

02:08:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
By the way, exactly what I did with the original Oculus Rift, the replacement of the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, the Oculus Metapro every one I've ever bought it's like oh, this is so cool, this is so cool. Thanks very much. Bye-bye, yeah, and.

02:08:22 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I just know that's what I would do. That's the weird thing about all this stuff. Yeah yeah, this technology is both amazing and will blow your mind and also useless and then blow your chunks.

02:08:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It could be both it blows your mind and then it blows your chunks. That's the slogan, by the way.

02:08:37 - Padre (Guest)
And it empties your bank account. Oh yeah, oh yeah.

02:08:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
After you've spent 30. No, I don't know, Should. I Do, I have a responsibility. Look, apple's never going to lend me one. I feel like you should. I mean I feel like you should.

02:08:50 - What's on TWIT (Other)
Don't tell them that I have a responsibility. You can always return it Well can you?

02:08:53 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I don't know if you don't want it it's.

02:08:54 - David Pierce (Guest)
Can you return it? Oh, I'm sure, if you're able to buy one of these. I suspect the secondary black market for a vision.

02:09:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh.

02:09:03 - David Pierce (Guest)
You're going to be something special at the beginning and I won't require a 25-minute tour.

02:09:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I could probably get most of my money back if I bought it.

02:09:11 - Padre (Guest)
Unless Apple is pulling a Tesla and they'll sue you if you try to sell your goggles.

02:09:16 - David Pierce (Guest)
That was wild, that would be spectacular.

02:09:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They did that with a Cybertruck right. They said you cannot resell it for a year. Then they took it out and then they put it back. I don't know. I feel like I've got the devil on one shoulder. Daniel Rubino, I think you have to be the angel, robert, no, no, I'm the ref.

02:09:34 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
You're the ref, I think, because you want to be at this moment to witness what could be one of the biggest failures of Apple. I think that we know, we agree that it could go another way, but I'm on that boat, that I think this is just. Maybe the technology in five years is something we'll want. I'll say did you guys see what Xreel is doing? They make AR glasses too, but they're around the $300 to $500 mark. It's way cheaper, way more practical. They basically you can plug it to your iPhone, android, you can put it into your gaming device. It's just a virtual display, but they have some add-ons and they announced a pro version that does have sensors and cameras on it. Now, for more professional type environments, I find this a little bit more pragmatic and practical. Even the pro version has the ability to dim the glasses from like see-through to darker, to pitch black. So they're using that, that electric technology.

02:10:23
Yeah, electric chromatic yeah, electric chromatic, yeah, and so there you can get all that now for way cheaper, and it's not as wow-ish as Vision Pro, but I feel like it's a more specific tool for a lot of people. But I think Vision Pro is going to have until they can bring that price down and find usage for it. I don't know.

02:10:46 - Padre (Guest)
And I feel the same way. But I will say if Apple learns and finds a way to make this a success and learns to make it work where everyone else has failed, I mean that would be amazing.

02:10:59 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Sure, and that's what the stock investors want that to happen, right, I mean Apple's being punished right now by investors because iPhone sales haven't been as good as they expected. China's becoming a problem for them in terms of a market, and over 50% of Apple's revenue comes from the iPhone, so they need another product to win, and so people were hoping Vision Pro could be that product. But a lot of people right now are like, oh, that doesn't look like it's going to be the next Apple Watch. Even that is, like you know, not as high profit margins.

02:11:30 - Padre (Guest)
And they don't have the magic that they used to have, do they not? They don't think so. I mean, if they had released this eight years ago, everyone would be flocking to it and they would find a way to make it a success, maybe if they released it with a handy for them.

02:11:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, I'm so sorry. It's Vision. Pro. It's something about having a priest in the studio that really brings out the worst in me somehow. Oh my goodness.

02:11:57 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Ironically, I guess you know, porn could be the saving grace of Vision Pro. It won't be, though.

02:12:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the funny thing, that's what killed Betamax right Is they wouldn't allow porn on it. Vhs did. Betamax went away. Apple would never look at. Apple won't let you buy adult stuff on their App Store.

02:12:11 - Padre (Guest)
Actually that's a CES story. Remember when they thought that porn was going to win the high definition format for not D, not Blu-ray, but DVD HD? Hd DVD right. Like well, hd DVD has porn, so therefore it's going to win. And guess what? It didn't.

02:12:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, they announced they pulled the plug and oops, yeah, that was the end of the line on that one. I think Apple would never allow porn on this thing, so maybe that's that's the problem. I mean, you can honestly not that I have, but well, you could on your Oculus device or your HTC device, I guess, if you have a browser.

02:12:46 - Padre (Guest)
I mean yeah, because that's what I want. Why am I asking this?

02:12:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
question. I know this is not my interest, david, you're going to have to be the tiebreaker. Did I get this thing?

02:12:57 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yes, I'm easy, easy choice you have to get one. These are just rules, I don't make them, I am. I am just. I am just here to relay them to you.

02:13:06 - Padre (Guest)
Well, you help me eBay it when I decide I well, there's space in the shelf right over there that it can go. There's space on the air. It's where it can go.

02:13:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
On the antiquated, obsolete and never used technology, right next to the giant floppy disc with the Death Star plans. Actually, it'll be a good place for it. I don't know.

02:13:21 - David Pierce (Guest)
I actually think you will enjoy the vision pro as a thing, because it is. It asks a really funny question, which is what if we made the headset good Right?

02:13:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Would that turn it around? Would that make a difference Right?

02:13:34 - David Pierce (Guest)
Like because because the difference so far has been none of the headsets are very good, they're uncomfortable, they kind of look like crap, they don't have that much to do and Apple's thing is like I've seen one demo for 30 minutes but like it was good, they did the thing.

02:13:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Did you? You got the demos when at WWDC you were one of the people who got a demo. So people who have used it do say this. I mean, Jason Stelz said the same thing.

02:13:55 - David Pierce (Guest)
It's very good, is it? Is it anything? Do I want to use it for a long time? What am I supposed to do in there? I have absolutely no idea, but that's why I think this thing is so interesting because it's not going to be. Wouldn't it be cooler if this headset were good? It's going to be. Do I want a headset as good as it?

02:14:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
could possibly be because Apple has invested hundreds of billions and and there's the price is no object. This is a you know, absolutely the case that this is a techno lust object of of you know no holds barred. Let's put every, even the weird scary eyes, let's put every possible technology into this thing, totally yeah.

02:14:34 - David Pierce (Guest)
And not hold that. And Mena has said over the last couple of years, like you know, of course we could build a better headset with higher resolution and more battery life and all that stuff, but it would be super expensive and nobody would buy it and Apple's just like well, we're Apple, we're really really good at making people buy expensive stuff Like watch this.

02:14:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah. So, david, you're going to get a loner. Probably you don't have to worry about that.

02:14:54 - David Pierce (Guest)
I sure hope so. I don't think I'm on the reviews list personally at any point in the near future, but I suspect at some point there will be one I can steal from the office.

02:15:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So, given that I'm going to be spending what is my own money on this thing, would you spend your own money on it? That's the question.

02:15:10 - David Pierce (Guest)
No, thanks a lot, but you have to Cause, you have to Thanks a lot buddy Really appreciate it.

02:15:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh no, you know what you made the good point, I could probably resell it.

02:15:22 - Padre (Guest)
There's going to be a, you know, a secondary market.

02:15:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
How much would you pay? Would you pay 3400?, 3300? I kind of an auction.

02:15:31 - Padre (Guest)
I should I should go yeah, but isn't there a lot of personalization, like the lenses and the head? Yeah.

02:15:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, I have to take the lenses, or 150 bucks, and I would have to get glasses. Lenses, because I wear glasses, I think the soft little headband there's not an infinite number of choices. You could probably it. Probably if your head size is roughly the same it's mine it would work. I don't know.

02:15:52 - Padre (Guest)
But I remember with like the vibe, you need to like make sure the things were no, it's got to fit.

02:15:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I mean that's why Apple has a fitting for you to buy it, which makes the secondary market harder. Is it?

02:16:03 - Padre (Guest)
I don't know. Doesn't that just change the band and the interface for the.

02:16:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They change the band and they, yeah, and then they customize it if you wear glasses. But I'm sure you can get aftermarket Zeiss lenses because, yeah, you should be able to go back to the store and just say, hey, I bought this in the, I bought this in the, I bought this used. No, you didn't, you only think you bought it used. We don't sell these, we only license them. It'll be interesting. I don't. I still haven't decided. I'll be at my mom's.

02:16:31 - Padre (Guest)
Don't do it, leo, do it, don't do it, don't do it, Do it, do it, do it.

02:16:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it. A buddy of mine knows he's not the beginning of what he's not. He isn't so didn't possibly be the beginning of a revolution. Nobody wants to put a computer on their face Now when they come out and I will be the first in line to buy them. Something like the Metaglass this is, in fact, now almost bought, the Metaglass because they're so close Something like that with the heads up display and good sound and the AI built in, will I buy that? I'd be the first in line to buy. That, even if it cost more, I'd be the first in line to buy it Well, and I think everyone agrees, that's where we're headed.

02:17:15 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yeah, exactly doing this thing that Apple likes to do, this is the new thing. Maybe Newton might even be charitable, to be honest, but I think Apple is doing the thing where, like with the googly eyes on the front and all the different stuff in the headset, they're trying to pretend this is the way it's supposed to look, and it's not. And even the people at Apple would tell you that the way it's supposed to look is like a pair of Ray-Ban's sunglasses, like that's where we're headed, that's what we want. And the question is can Metta build the right hardware and then figure out how to get the software and it faster than Apple can build the right software and then solve the hardware? And those two things are just like racing towards each other from opposite directions and ski goggles are not the answer. I'm so, so, so confident that ski goggles are not the answer.

02:17:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Hey, if they were as light as and as comfortable as ski goggles, even I'd be happy. But this is not. This is heavier than that. This is, this is.

02:18:09 - David Pierce (Guest)
Oh, and I should say ski goggles attached to a cable, attached to a battery in your body, and a four pound you know Google ads.

02:18:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I love tech demonstrators.

02:18:19 - Padre (Guest)
And when I've been able to play with some of the more advanced high resolution goggles, I like what I see for about five minutes. But it's back to the Metta proposition, which is would you spend your entire day working in a pair of goggles? No, no, no one wants to do that, nobody. No one's even thinking about that. So I don't understand what the end game is, other than we design this. We invested in it. Therefore, we have to release it.

02:18:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
My wife said, I could buy it, but only if I return it. That's not gonna happen either Leo, I think she said buy it but you have to return it.

02:18:55 - Padre (Guest)
Leo, do you remember when we had the brick house and once every six months you would put a box on the table?

02:19:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I still do that. The Leo's Karasi Filled with all Leo stuff. This is gonna end up in that box. It's gonna. It's the Leo's. Somebody said in the discord there'll be a line around the block during Leo's Karasi. So let's take a little break, our last break of a great show with a wonderful panel. Father Robert Ballasair, the digital Jesuit from the Verge, and the Verge cast the editor at large, david Pierce. That's a good title editor at large. That means you could do anything you want, kind of.

02:19:27 - David Pierce (Guest)
It's sufficiently impressive and also meaningless, which is just the exact sweet spot I was going for.

02:19:32 - Padre (Guest)
It kind of sounds like there's a warrant for his arrest or something it's at his large.

02:19:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now at large, there's a all points bulletin' out for David Pierce.

02:19:41 - David Pierce (Guest)
They don't allow me in the office anymore.

02:19:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do you go in?

02:19:45 - David Pierce (Guest)
No, we, I'm in Washington DC, we have an office in DC, but no one I work with is really here. So I go in every once in a while just for the human contact.

02:19:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Who are you? That's about it. Yeah, exactly, that's a nice gig. That's nice, were you at when you were at the journal? Were you also in DC for the journal? I was in San Francisco, san Francisco, san Francisco. How did we not run into each other? I lived in DC for four years. I don't know.

02:20:11
Yeah, Well, I'm glad to have you on and I hope you'll come back. We love having you on and, of course, somebody who does come back in. We're so glad to have Daniel Rubino, editor-in-chief of Windows Central. I recommended now maybe I made a horrible error, Daniel, you maybe should correct me on this. We had a caller who was gonna upgrade his on Windows 7. He went and upgraded Windows 10. And I think I'm right when I say that Microsoft finally turned that free upgrade off. They had it for years and a couple of months ago they finally turned that surfer off. It was in somebody's closet and they found it. So you have to pay. But instead of paying $139, I said you can go to places like Kingwin and they will sell you for $27 of a license. It's legit, right? Am I wrong on that? Is that like a pirated?

02:20:57 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
kind of thing Usually. Yeah, yeah, no, it's not pirated. Usually that stuff is pretty legit. You do have to be careful here and there and make sure you're reading reviews.

02:21:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is one Tom's hardware recommended. They're a Polish game company, Kingwin, like Penguin, with a KING at front. 2572 for Windows 11 Pro that's a lot less. It's an OEM key, so what does that? Even that means somebody. It was for a builder, right, but he didn't use it. Yeah, right, exactly. And it would be no good if he had used it, because they you know Microsoft crosses it off the list if somebody activates it.

02:21:31 - Padre (Guest)
It's actually illegal for them to sell it, but it wouldn't be illegal for you to use it. Ha Because they're not.

02:21:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I remember a new egg. You could get one of these, but you'd have to buy a piece of hardware, Correct, Because then you'd be a builder. Oh well, that's legit.

02:21:46 - Padre (Guest)
You're not supposed to be able to buy an OEM copy of the operating system unless you're buying hardware. That OS is supposed to go on top.

02:21:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I did this for my MacBook because I didn't want to. I just wanted a cheap license for Windows on ARM and it worked, and it was 25 bucks or something.

02:22:03 - Padre (Guest)
Back in the day you used to be able to buy a mouse pad, and that would technically count.

02:22:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, anything, I'm a builder. I see I got a mouse pad.

02:22:10 - Padre (Guest)
Oh, we have copy.

02:22:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, we should do it, it counts All right. Well, I'm not saying you said it was okay, daniel, don't worry, I'm not putting you on the spot, I'm just If it's really, really wrong and you should tell me now so we can edit that out of the show. But I did it and did nothing wrong. It worked, it worked, it worked, still working. This week in tech is brought to you by Bitwarden. Oh, you know.

02:22:33
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That's Bitwarden. Get started with a trial free of Bitwarden's team or enterprise plan, or get started for free across all devices as an individual user at bitwardencom slash twit Bitwarden. It's the best bitwardencom slash twit Fun week this week. Did AI Leo try to do the promo again this week? No, okay, he keeps trying to do the promo. He's trying to put me out of work. We do have a little video showing you what you missed. Watch.

02:24:25 - Padre (Guest)
CES is a wonderful hodge podge of tech that is Father Robert Tech that could be and tech that will probably never see the light of day outside of the shuffle.

02:24:33
I like how he does, it helps to absorb the show. If you focus on the themes, I really trend rather than the singular products. Previously, on twit, twit events, a trend is electrified vehicles. Gear has an interesting concept in its PVV, which stands for platform beyond vehicles. It's a mini van size frame that is modular, letting you build the vehicle out the way that you need it. Tech news weekly A really weird trend going on in TikTok as there is a nine month world cruise under way and TikTok has basically made a reality show about it.

02:25:10 - David Pierce (Guest)
You have these retired people becoming influencers. Nine months is a long time. We're all expecting that a bunch of drama is going to happen this weekend space when the budget says wow, nine months on a boat with influencers, oh geez.

02:25:24 - Padre (Guest)
By the end. It would just be me Then, when we get on the one and only 300.

02:25:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Get on, I'm doing it, I'm doing it. I'm doing it.

02:25:35 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Suggest to him that they turned this moon landing program of a joy.

02:25:39 - What's on TWIT (Other)
Actually we can set up. Microsoft announced a new key for Windows keyboards for co-pilot. Co-pilot will one day maybe replace start. You know that this will be our app orchestrated. This is where we will literally start lowercase s, you know, getting stuff done and yeah, that's, that's fine. And in the five to 30 years it takes for that to happen, you know, maybe we can talk about this key, but maybe at that point that becomes the windows key. I mean, what's the difference? Twitter, subscribe, download, tell a friend while you're at it.

02:26:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Tell a friend while you're at it. Thank you to the great Jim Cutler, our Vio guy. He does such a good job of those.

02:26:14 - Padre (Guest)
He has been doing Vio for you for since the beginning, right, yeah, yeah, he's really. He actually did it for tech TV. He is your Kevin Conroy.

02:26:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, he is. He's amazing. He does a booth announcing for, I think, espn, a lot of radio stations, tv stations across the country.

02:26:29 - Padre (Guest)
Did I, did I ever tell you? The very first time I ever met you it was at the old just tell this story. No, no, it was at the old tech TV studios. You and Patrick Norton were making a cantana and of a Pringles can, Pringles can. I was in the audience Back in the days that was fun, all right.

02:26:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is where we're, down to the seeds and the stems of the news stories. If the the shake that's filtered, you're really good with that, with the kids.

02:27:00 - Padre (Guest)
I'm young with the kids.

02:27:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Microsoft is testing a new AI infused battery. Daniel, the hell, are they talking about?

02:27:12 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I don't have too much thoughts on this, but yeah, I mean, listen, batteries are it's big, Some is so important.

02:27:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They built a clock. Look, see, look, mm. Yeah, this was the demo for such an Adele. I think they made a clock to show such a that they could do this.

02:27:28 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
That's pretty. This is where we need a lot of research and investments and, you know, innovation, because batteries are so critical now, whether it's, you know, evs or all the products we use. The and lithium ion is just you know, between the mining of it and like the issues that go on. Uh, you know we need alternatives using AI, which is just you know. I mean sure, here they're just about machine learning, looking at patterns of usage and, bet you know best, optimizing, uh, the flow. I think is probably the right solution for this. But there there should be some major breakthroughs, because we haven't really had any in batteries. The biggest breakthrough batteries have had is fast charging, which is great, but that also can degrade the battery. So, you know that's another issue too, right?

02:28:11 - David Pierce (Guest)
This is kind of thing, by the way, is like exactly along the lines of the, the like societal good AI stuff you're talking about? Yeah, because it's. This is essentially just a mountainous research project done by a super computer. Uh, and there was that thing a few weeks ago where Google discovered like hundreds of new materials with its AI research. And this is the kind of thing that, like humans, legitimately cannot do. You could spend your life reading scientific research papers and never come up with the kind of breakthrough it takes when you've read hundreds of thousands of these which these computers can do.

02:28:48
And they they find simple things like what if we replace lithium with sodium? And this is the kind of thing like I feel like every six months, somebody is like we've reinvented the battery, this is going to change, right, and it's always like a ninth grader at a science fair who might have invented something. And this is sort of the corporate equivalent of that. Uh, and even the Microsoft folks told Harry McCracken, who wrote the story you were just showing um, that they were doing this basically as a proof of concept for an Azure tool. Like they didn't fix batteries, they did an Azure thing and might have fixed batteries on the side. Which is like, if that's not the best case you're ever going to make for AI, I don't know what is.

02:29:23 - Padre (Guest)
This is just. It's trial and error at scale.

02:29:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean they were able to do it and they don't even have to physically do it. So there, I don't know if this is true. I think it's not. But the fairy tale I was told in school is that Thomas Edison, when he's trying to make a working light bulb, went through 1600 different materials, 40,000 pages of in his notebook, trying and failing, trying and failing, until he figured out that it was a carbonized cotton, made a filament that would last a few hundred hours, long enough that it was financially viable. That's the kind of thing in AI could do in a few seconds.

02:29:55 - Padre (Guest)
A few seconds. Polymers, that was an accidental discovery. Yeah, it was just someone who was mixing chemicals one night and left it overnight and it turned into a solid plastic. Now you know, microsoft was able to go through, was it? 32.6 million different combinations to finally get a better battery chemistry. So it's, it's nothing that we haven't done before, it's just trial and error, but with the power of a supercomputer at scale being able to do millions of protein folding. Another example yeah, exactly.

02:30:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, remember when we had folding at home and everybody was dedicating their computers. And the idea is that I I'm not sure I understand it, but you're, you're, you're trying different combinations of proteins to create new, new materials. I don't know what you're up to, but there's, there's a good reason for it. It's anyway. I had my computer running folding.

02:30:42 - Padre (Guest)
I did SETI, seti.

02:30:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I figure we're never going to find aliens, but maybe I can find a protein. The computer, they apparently these AIs are doing it. Look at these. They don't need folding at home anymore because the AIs do it so efficiently, so effectively, and they've already found new protein folds. That's to me. That's exactly what I was talking about. We don't want to become so protective that we harm our future.

02:31:09 - Padre (Guest)
in effect, but is it a large language model doing that stuff? I don't think it is. Is it? I don't know. I personally don't know. It is an effort system, but it's not an LLM. See it's not an LLM, it's not the thing that we're trying to replace Hollywood writers with.

02:31:21 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yeah, this is step one of the AI question. I think right is we have to stop calling everything AI. Right Is like we just need a bigger vocabulary for how we talk about this stuff, because right now, everything from like the thing in my computer that sets my alarm to these things working with new materials to reinvent batteries and solve protein folding we're going to call all of that AI and that's ridiculous. We just need better terms for this and then we can start figuring out how to deal with each of those individually.

02:31:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I think it's a complicated subject and we're trying to understand it, and maybe using gross tools and gross terms that don't actually apply to the real issues at hand, that's one of the things we want to learn.

02:32:04 - David Pierce (Guest)
I think that's probably normal for everything. We did that with computers, we did it with the internet. That's just like when we get new things, we get one name and then we get a bunch of names and then we start to figure it out.

02:32:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I think that's also why you don't want somebody to come in who thinks they understand it and say, no, these are the rules, and the EU is already doing that, I think, with a fairly light touch.

02:32:23 - Padre (Guest)
We were really good at it for a while of making sure that we weren't calling it AI, because we understood this is not true AI. We called it deep learning. We called it big data. It's the same thing. What we have now is this progression from that the ability to take massive data sets and turn it into some actionable data. But AI is such a catchy term and when the mainstream picked up on it, that was it. There's no turning back from it. Everything has to be AI now.

02:32:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think we're also seeing, though stuff now that gives me some pause. It makes me think, you know, maybe AGI is not a pipe dream, that maybe what it is humans do that we give so much credit to isn't really that different from a deterministic machine, and maybe it's possible for AI to have consciousness, I mean isn't that Robert Sapolsky's new book?

02:33:15 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Is it when he undermines free? Yeah, his whole thesis is that there's no such thing as free will. That it's determinism, which sadly I agree with. I don't want to be. I don't want it to be the answer, but when you look at the scientific explanations about free will, it's really hard to rectify.

02:33:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He wrote a wonderful book, behave, which I loved. His newest is the Illusion of Free Will. Oh, I'm going to have to read that one, even if it's totally deterministic or completely quantum.

02:33:45 - Padre (Guest)
Either way, you don't have control right Either way. What if humanity is actually just a really complicated Chinese box.

02:33:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, now we happen to have a Catholic priest here. I mean, I think one thing I should point out is that you're a Jesuit, which is, of all of the Catholic orders, the most rationalistic and the most scientifically bent, and most we like to think so, yeah.

02:34:14 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I went to Sienna College. That was.

02:34:15 - Padre (Guest)
Jesuits.

02:34:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There you go. We got a lot of questions. Sure, I mean, obviously if you're, if you're Catholic or religious person, you believe in the soul? Correct, and the soul is something beyond the physical body, Correct? Or the processes in our brains or even our enteric nervous system.

02:34:34 - Padre (Guest)
It's more than the sum of all your experiences, your intelligence, your matter, etc.

02:34:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is the soul can? Is the soul something that makes a difference in the quality of our reasoning or consciousness?

02:34:45 - Padre (Guest)
Only if you've accepted the end user license agreement. You have to click that button?

02:34:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is it a shrink wrap? I mean, that's the really. The fundamental question is can an AI, which is clearly soulless, if even whether you believe in the soul or not doesn't have a soul? Is there a difference between the mechanistic systems that the human brain goes through and something that a computer could go through if we got really good at it? Is there a difference between that and the human, and is the soul the determining difference? We would love to tell you that, except we really don't understand the human brain.

02:35:19 - Padre (Guest)
We don't understand how the human thought process works. We think we do. We can approximate it, but until we can actually define why it is that we think certain things when we think them, then I can't make that a valid comparison. I can take you through the lines of code of even the most advanced LLM, the most advanced expert system. I can explain why it made a certain decision because it had this data set and this data set and it correlated these two data points. I cannot do that for the human brain yet.

02:35:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I completely understand. It's very easy for Sipolsky or anybody to say no, it's clearly deterministic and anything you believe about free will is imaginary. But it's just as easy to say no, no, there's a soul. It's a leap of faith in both ways, because we don't know, we don't.

02:36:08 - Padre (Guest)
And anyone who does is either making a guess maybe an educated guess or they're just trying to tell you something. Trying to tell you something.

02:36:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, yeah, a lot of people say that.

02:36:20 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Sipolsky does. Yeah, he does go through scientific literature. His point is not that there's even one experiment that disproves free will. There's just a bunch of things that we know from psychology and neurology. There's a famous experiment where they did with event-related potentials EEGs, electrical selfograms and measures of brainwaves and when people would make a decision they would act on the action and what they showed was that their brains were acting on something and then the brain was making a decision like a split second after. So it wasn't really you making the decision, but it's the illusion that you're giving yourself to make a decision. It's really interesting because it has to do just with the way neurons work. When you have a thought and you go to make a decision, there's no single neuron that starts that. It's build up of all the neurons based on your past, history and experiences that then lead to a decision.

02:37:14 - Padre (Guest)
The best experiments that I've seen have been using fMRIs to show which parts of the brain are actually active during any thought process.

02:37:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That says MRI, that's a functional MRI that's actually operating while you're thinking, exactly so they can observe the physical process.

02:37:28 - Padre (Guest)
Right, it's actually very incredible to watch, to see the different parts of the brain light up. This is where the electrical activity is happening and, like you said, we kind of understand how it's happening. You've got the interaction of neurons that trigger from any particular thought, which also leads to creative thinking, because sometimes there'll be a correlation that you would not have imagined would have occurred. But we still cannot explain why those neurons act when they do. Nor can we explain why certain memories and certain pieces of data are stored within the neurons that a thought pattern will go through. Now, is it absolutely necessary to know precisely how the human brain works in order to say it's deterministic or if it's completely farewell, not necessarily, but to say one way or another is conclusive. I think right now that would be very premature.

02:38:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, on that note, I want to thank you all for being here. David, I want to thank you and thank Frida and Finney for staying pretty quiet during the entire episode.

02:38:35 - David Pierce (Guest)
Yeah, it went better than I expected.

02:38:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And it's got exactly as existential as I expected, so I'll take it. One's a Chihuahua and I don't know what the other one is.

02:38:47 - David Pierce (Guest)
She's a beagle mix of some kind. I recognize the beagle ears.

02:38:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Those ears. Oh, I just want to bite beagle ears.

02:38:54 - David Pierce (Guest)
I don't want to bite through them, but they're so soft and luscious.

02:38:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I love them, that's so sweet.

02:38:59 - Padre (Guest)
I saw the kitty on the other screen.

02:39:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And then there's a kitty with Daniel, right, yeah.

02:39:05 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Oh, I got a farm. I got all rescues. That's three cats and two dogs.

02:39:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I love that I've got eight cats.

02:39:12 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
We just did a DNA on the dogs.

02:39:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Father Robert has the Vatacats. I have the Vatacats. He has strays. There's a rule in Rome. It's kind of interesting. They're legally productive.

02:39:21 - Padre (Guest)
They're protected Stray cats. That goes back to the time of the plague, because they were keeping the mice population down.

02:39:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But do they make an effort to feed them and care for them Enough? People do, people do Not. The government, not the government. But you are feeding eight beautiful cats, eight beautiful cats.

02:39:35 - Padre (Guest)
Well, six permanent ones and then another two are sort of sometimes residents.

02:39:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I love and is the best place to see that on X.

02:39:44 - Padre (Guest)
It's still on. Yeah, I still call it Twitter. Twitter, it's Twitter, it's Twitter.

02:39:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'll never call it X, I'm sorry. I like it when they call it X, because then there's no confusion with Twitter, at least we've gotten past that X, formerly known as Twitter.

02:39:58 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Most people have dropped the formerly known as Twitter.

02:40:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's formerly known as yeah I still just call it Twitter. Yeah, everybody calls it Twitter. All right, all right, all right. Well, you are Padre SJ on the Twitter, on the X and the Vatacats live there.

02:40:13 - Padre (Guest)
And Padre SJ on Twitter. That's social.

02:40:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And on our mastodon which, by the way, I should plug more often. We run our own mastodon server. It really is a great place to hang. You do have to apply and I have to let you in. You have to demonstrate the Elisthenor shows, but all you do is say, oh yeah, leo sent me or something like that, and I'll know that that's. But that's one of the ways we keep it really, really good Does it AI Leo post on your video, you know what?

02:40:38
Don't give him any ideas. He does not have an account yet, but we would love to have you as a listener. Twitsocial there's also our forums, the discourse forums that we run at twitcommunity Two ways you can kind of interact with the shows that we really love having you there. But of course, the best way to join the club and we'll see in the discord, you know you don't. You know there's plenty of ways to do it. Robert, heading back to Rome, or how long are you going to be in?

02:41:06 - Padre (Guest)
town. I will be in town for another 10 days and then I head back for the next probably six months or so.

02:41:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, I'll be there in a moment. Right, I'll save you a room. Hold me some gelato.

02:41:19 - Padre (Guest)
I'll bring you to the best gelato place in Rome, I hear.

02:41:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I heard and I want to go. It's meant one of many reasons I'll take you to the best pizza place in Rome. How about that? How about that? Yeah, how about that? Thank you, robert, for bringing all this fun stuff in. It's always great to see our dear friend, father Robert David, thank you for being here. You, you, you fit right in. I hope you'll come back. Editor-in-large at the Verge. Is it the Verge cast Anything you want to plug?

02:41:44 - David Pierce (Guest)
Read the Verge. It's a good website. Listen to Verge cast available. We're all fine, podcasts are sold. And tell Neelai to shut up about the frame TV. Oh Neelai.

02:41:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm going to hear from him. I can tell you know, he used to be a regular on the show. Then he got too big. Maybe it's because he got a frame, I don't know.

02:42:02 - David Pierce (Guest)
Anyway, frame changes everything.

02:42:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He's been saying that. Thank you so much, david. Really appreciate you being here. Welcome. And, of course, our friend Daniel Rubino, editor-in-chief of Windows Central Great place to go to get the latest news about Microsoft. Anything you'd like to give a plug to, yeah, I love that.

02:42:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I think you got nothing.

02:42:25 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I think you got nothing. I think you got nothing. I think you got nothing. Follow me on Twitter. I occasionally post there, though not as much as I used to, just because I'm more anti-social than ever. But yeah, no, windows Central, we're doing a lot. It's a busy year for us, you know Qualcomm, amd, intel, ai it's just going to be a massive year for us and we're really excited and then I'm glad that you're doing some incredible work.

02:42:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's kind of fun it was. For a while it was feeling like technology. For a few years was feeling like, eh, nothing new is happening, it's not what it used to be, it's just another iPhone.

02:42:56 - Padre (Guest)
There were two straight CESs where it was nothing but iPhone cases, yeah, and now all of a sudden and thanks to AI.

02:43:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think there's some real excitement about what technology could bring us and what it could. Space exploration, too, you know, the emergence of EV, climate change and how we're dealing with it.

02:43:13 - Padre (Guest)
There's a lot of stories in technology that are important and interesting, but a big one, big one coming up, I think, is 3D TVs. They're really. It's going to change everything.

02:43:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have a pair of glasses I'd be glad to give you At no charge if you just take them off. They're a little dusty, but other than that, thank you Daniel. Thank you David, thank you Father Robert. Thanks to all of you for joining us. We do Twitter Sunday afternoons 2 to 5 pm Pacific, that's 5 to 8 pm Eastern. Now I tell you that because we do stream it live now on YouTube. If you're a club member, of course you can watch in the Discord. We stream there all the time. But when the shows come on the public shows that we do come on we turn on the stream at youtubecom Slash Twitter. If you subscribe to that channel, you get a notification. Otherwise, you know you know it shows on. Just come on over and watch it and if you are watching, you can chat with us in our Discord. Love having all of you there. If you're not a yet club member, twittv slash club twit.

02:44:11
I do want to mention that we are still getting survey results in and we'd love to hear from you. I want to make sure listeners to every show report in. So twittv slash survey 24. It's our annual survey of our listeners. It helps us understand who you are, what you want. It also helps us sell advertising and it makes a big difference in our bottom line. So, if nothing else, take the survey, twittv slash survey 24.

02:44:37
After the fact, you can get this show on demand. There's a lot of ways to do it. The website, of course, has audio and video. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to this weekend tech. You can go there. That's a good place.

02:44:48
If you said, oh, I want to share something Father Robert showed or a clip of something we talked about, youtube makes it very easy to clip it and share it. That's a great way to kind of help spread the word about twit. That's very helpful to us. We appreciate it and we also appreciate it. If you subscribe. That way, you get it automatically. You don't even have to think about it. You'll get every show the minute it's available in your favorite podcast client, whether it's on Apple or Google or pocket cast or overcast, whatever you like. All of those feeds are available at the website twittv, if you can't find it elsewhere. Thank you everybody for joining us. Thanks to our studio manager, john Jammerby, slenina Benito Gonzalez, who chimes in from time to time as a producer of the show. He's also our technical director, who's editing it today, is it Kevin?

02:45:31
oh Kevin King, our editor, and, of course, our executive producer and CEO, lisa LaPorte. Thank you all of you for joining us and we'll see you next time. Another twit is in the can. Bye.