This Week in Tech Episode 1090 Transcript

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

Leo Laporte [00:00:00]:
It's time for TWiT this Week in Tech. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy is here from the Verge, Dan Patterson of Blackbird AI and Daniel Rubino, editor in chief of Windows Central. Microsoft's extending the deadline for Windows 10 yet another year. The Apple prices are going up. And it's not just Apple. Are people going to blame AI for this? And it looks like Mythos is out of jail. All that. Coming up next, Twit podcasts you love

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:00:31]:
from people you trust.

Leo Laporte [00:00:34]:
This is twit. This is TWiT this Week in Tech, episode 1090, recorded Sunday, June 28, 2026. Flock of sequels. It's time for TWiT this Week in Tech, the show. We cover the week's tech news. Hello, everybody. Great to have you here. Great to have our panel here, starting with Dan Patterson, AI guru at Blackbird AI.

Leo Laporte [00:01:02]:
He's senior director of content at Blackbird AI, which is dedicated to ferreting out disinformation wherever it lies. Your job's getting busier by the moment.

Dan Patterson [00:01:13]:
Yeah, it's been an interesting year, to say the least.

Leo Laporte [00:01:18]:
It certainly has.

Dan Patterson [00:01:20]:
I've got an allergy frog stuck in my throat, so forgive me.

Leo Laporte [00:01:23]:
Oh, hello, allergy frog.

Dan Patterson [00:01:25]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:01:26]:
Also here, Jennifer Patterson Tuohy. You see her every month, of course, on Tech News Weekly, and you see her probably every day on the Verge, where she's a senior of yours, specializing in smart homes. Hello, jpt.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:01:39]:
Hello, Leo. Lovely to see you.

Leo Laporte [00:01:40]:
Any robots fall on you lately?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:01:44]:
Yeah, I've got these little sort of fluffy ones in my house at the moment. And, yeah, they're very annoying.

Leo Laporte [00:01:51]:
Are those the ones. Ones that purr and gurgle and like

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:01:54]:
that or so at CES this year, there was. It was Ecovacs Robot Co. And SwitchBot, the smart home company, both released, like, robot companions that are like. They're like teddy bears, and one's like a teddy bear and one is like a little puppy, puppy dog. And yeah, they. The. Well, actually, I. It didn't fall on me, but it keeps falling over, but it's not 180 pounds, which is what happened with the last one.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:02:18]:
So.

Leo Laporte [00:02:19]:
And it's furry, it's fuzzy, and it's

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:02:21]:
furry and it's cute, but it's really annoying.

Leo Laporte [00:02:23]:
Is that the Kata Friend?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:02:24]:
Yes, Kata friend.

Leo Laporte [00:02:26]:
700 bucks. Does it wash your dishes?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:02:29]:
No, it just wanders around and it actually, you can turn this off, but one of its features is it'll just wander around and take pictures, so.

Leo Laporte [00:02:37]:
Oh. So it's like a little spy in your House.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:02:39]:
Pretty much. Pretty much great.

Leo Laporte [00:02:42]:
It's cute.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:02:43]:
And yeah, it's a cute spy. I still have not figured out what these, who these are for. I've, I've been trying. That's sort of been my mission because it's definitely not for me. I had like the neighborhood kids come over. Nope, nope, nothing. So, yeah, I haven't figured it out.

Leo Laporte [00:02:58]:
So kids are smart now about AI. They're not. They're going to be fooled. Also with us from Windows Central, it's great to see Daniel Rubino, editor in chief there. Hello, Daniel.

Daniel Rubino [00:03:08]:
Hello. Thanks for having me.

Leo Laporte [00:03:09]:
You're going to buy the new Steam machine?

Daniel Rubino [00:03:12]:
No, it's a little too expensive.

Dan Patterson [00:03:15]:
It is.

Daniel Rubino [00:03:15]:
I appreciate Valve and you know, they're, they are in a pickle these days. But they'll survive this.

Leo Laporte [00:03:21]:
They're not alone. The pickle is everywhere. Apple this week announced that they were going to have to, they of all people were going to have to raise prices due to memory shortages. Tim Cook kind of telegraphed it a day or so earlier in the Wall Street Journal, which Mark Gurman from Bloomberg said, well, that means you're going to do it right away. And he was right. They did it a couple of days later and I tanked ankles. Tanked Apple stock, which is not quite to my ankles, but it is down a little bit. Price is up as much as 200 bucks on all of the Apple devices.

Leo Laporte [00:04:00]:
Jennifer, you said you were lucky you bought your kids college laptop before the price hikes.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:04:07]:
Yes. I was very excited when Neo was announced because my son is just about to start his first year and I was like, this is going to be perfect. This is what I will get him. And. But I obviously delete and dallied. I couldn't decide whether to get the touch ID or not. That was, I was going back and forth and then when the rumors started, you know, I guess he started about a month ago that this was going to happen, I was like, I'm just going to bite the bullet. I can always return it now.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:04:31]:
I can always return it and make a profit.

Leo Laporte [00:04:33]:
Oh, I don't think it works that way, but that's a nice idea. It would be good. It is now 699, which, you know, I mean that was the whole thing about the Neo. It was, oh, it's only 5.99 for a Mac and Yeah, but it's only student discount. Yeah, a hundred bucks off for the students. So yeah, it's, you were lucky you got it for 500 bucks. It's now 700 bucks.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:04:54]:
I texted my friends, yes, the day it was announced and Prime Day was still on, who kids are about to go, I was like, just go on Amazon now and buy it. I said, don't worry about whether you actually need it or not because you can always sell it. But you're going to, if you, if you decide this is what you want, you're going to be spending a hundred dollars more very soon. So. Yeah, yeah. And like you said before we started recording, I think that Amazon Prime Day was still going on and they had all, they had discounts very, I think it was like $10 off. But as soon as the price hike happened, it was now $110 off.

Leo Laporte [00:05:24]:
So that was the day 210 in some cases.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:05:27]:
It's right.

Leo Laporte [00:05:28]:
So yeah, I mean people were rushing over to Amazon to get remnant inventory. I imagine the same thing that Costco and Target and all the other places that had Apple hardware and the prices hadn't gone up yet, but they're up now. Tim Cook said the price increases were unavoidable. This is Apple's statement. The consumer electronics industry is facing an unprecedented challenge. The rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory. Oh, and storage by the way.

Dan Patterson [00:05:58]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:05:59]:
Actually you, Dan, you were saying that the memory companies have announced that they are booked solid not just for this year but for years to come.

Dan Patterson [00:06:08]:
Yeah. You know, just before the show I looked up the major suppliers for Apple and you know, including talking about the Steam machine, a number of the gaming consoles, but a lot of the consumer electronic devices are powered by just three companies. Right. SK, Micron and Samsung. Micron just pushed 16 different companies into five year deals. SK is pushing for five years deals for almost all of their providers. And Samsung, Samsung has three year deals for all of their providers. This is just for RAM and SSDs are the same type of deals.

Leo Laporte [00:06:47]:
Apple said that the hikes are global but do not include the iPhone, the apple watch or AirPods. And that's because I think they've, you know, they bought up everything and made them and. But they hinted there'll be more price adjustments in the future and I would expect come September when the new iPhones are announced, we'll see expensive devices. Microsoft's been bit by this too. Right. The Xbox went up quite a bit again.

Daniel Rubino [00:07:11]:
Yeah, again. That was the second time. And Apple, this was the second time Apple raised prices. They raised prices in March too. Yeah, they went up by 100 bucks. And yeah, the Xbox went from 499 and then went up to, I think it was 629. Now it's going up to, I think 799 or 750 around there. And same thing, we expect that there could be another price hike in 2027.

Daniel Rubino [00:07:36]:
So this is not ending. The earliest we could expect any relief would be 2028. And that's just maybe, you know, that's like, you might start to see prices start to come down a little bit, but this is going to go on for a long time. And it's really unfortunate because as we all know, tech evolves quickly and we're actually in a really exciting period for technology with amazing power chips and everything coming out and no one can afford them now.

Leo Laporte [00:08:04]:
Yeah.

Daniel Rubino [00:08:05]:
So it's really kind of unfortunate.

Leo Laporte [00:08:07]:
Well, you know, why aren't these RAM companies and storage companies increasing capacity? Why aren't they just building plants? This is a chance for them to make even more money.

Dan Patterson [00:08:16]:
Well, I think it takes, I mean, in the reading I did just before the show and you know, we talked about this, we've been talking about it for a year, but in January, you know, we anticipated an increase in the foundries, but I think it takes a significant amount of time for them to increase capacity. And with the amount of money that they're making, there's almost no incentive.

Leo Laporte [00:08:39]:
They don't want prices to go down.

Dan Patterson [00:08:41]:
Right. You know, interestingly, you know, to the, to the Valve Steam Machine. High prices. Valve issued a statement. You know, they're not a massive buyer, but they're not small either and they have some clout. They issued a statement saying that we either the, the RAM companies quoted us a price and it was take it or leave it. Either you took that price or they wouldn't talk to us again.

Daniel Rubino [00:09:10]:
Wow. Yeah. And the smaller the company, the worse off it is.

Dan Patterson [00:09:14]:
Yeah.

Daniel Rubino [00:09:15]:
So it's like, I mean, that's like,

Leo Laporte [00:09:17]:
that's like a mafioso. Take this price or we're not going to ever talk to you again.

Daniel Rubino [00:09:22]:
Yeah, that's, it's, it's really bad. And yeah, the fabs take years to put together. This is the world.

Leo Laporte [00:09:31]:
And by the way, they're not making any move to do it either. It's not like they're breaking ground on new fabs.

Daniel Rubino [00:09:36]:
Well, I mean, intel is in the US and stuff and there are a few coming online, but they're not for ram.

Leo Laporte [00:09:42]:
Or are they? I don't know, for Intel's making processors. Yeah.

Daniel Rubino [00:09:48]:
But like, I know like Intel's fab took cost $10 billion.

Leo Laporte [00:09:53]:
Right. They're very expensive. Yeah.

Daniel Rubino [00:09:54]:
And it took like five years to put together. You're talking the world's most advanced technology, lithography, which is some of these machines. There's only one or two that exist on the planet. And it's really incredible. I've been to the Intel Fab in Israel and got a tour of it, and it's just. I mean, it's absolutely incredible. But there's very few companies on a planet that make this technology. And so that's why it's just.

Daniel Rubino [00:10:19]:
And to ramp up will take many, many years. And then, yeah, there is sort of less incentive. But at the same time, you know, between AI gaming and computers and phones, there is demand out there and consumers won't be able to buy it at these prices. And so I think there is incentive for them to build out, but it's just not something that they can do overnight.

Leo Laporte [00:10:43]:
So Apple told Bloomberg, we know this is not welcome news and we are working tirelessly to find solutions. What, like, oh, there's some RAM in Tim Cook's cushions. What does that mean? I feel like they are asking the federal government to lift restrictions on a Chinese chip maker. They actually. Because you can't buy chips from this Chinese company. They tried to do this a couple years ago. Congress thwarted them. But I guess they're saying, well, if only, Mr.

Leo Laporte [00:11:23]:
President, you would allow this, we could bring prices down. Of course, it only would only benefit Apple. And it is not ram. It's. I don't think. I think it's like processors. Yeah, Yeah.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:11:34]:
I find the most egregious thing here, though, from my angle, is that they've increased the prices of the Apple TV and the HomePods for no good reason. Really old devices have been updated in years and they're very expensive. Expensive already. So you're now paying so that. Well, the mini, the HomePod mini's gone up $30. The HomePod has gone up $50. And then the Apple TVs like, have just gone through the roof, which I guess because I know they have more memory in them. I mean, the minis, the HomePods don't really have much to all the Apple TVs you can buy different levels.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:12:08]:
But yeah, it's crazy because these are really old and that they say. Well, they don't say. So the rumor is there was about to be new ones, like in the next four, three or four months anyway. So it seems like, why do this now? Yeah, and it's just when you're buying, like if you're buying a new MacBook Neo or a new MacBook Air. That's like a modern, recently updated device. Okay. You kind of, I mean, it's miserable, but you stomach it. But for something that is very old and really not actually, I wouldn't say worth that money.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:12:42]:
It's really, It's a real trick in the pants.

Leo Laporte [00:12:44]:
$139 to $200. Really? I think it really, I think it's a good thing, but I'm not sure I'd want to spend that much.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:12:51]:
No, they're great devices. Yeah. I mean they do work, especially when it's coming out. Don't mean to imply they're bad devices. They're just old and there's a new one coming soon. Yeah, that's, that's the kind of push and pull here. It's like I just would have thought you just leave these ones. I mean, but who knows what's going on in Cupertino because apparently these have been.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:13:10]:
According to Bloomberg, these have actually the new models have been ready to go for a while now. They're just waiting on the new Siri AI to sort of catch up and then that will come to the home because to date none of the new Siri has come to the device.

Leo Laporte [00:13:24]:
And that puts more pressure on Apple because the Siri AI requires more ram.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:13:28]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [00:13:30]:
You did a review on Windows Central of the msi. I love the name Claw. This is a handheld, or should I say a claw held gaming device, which you loved.

Daniel Rubino [00:13:43]:
Yes. But handheld gaming is one of the fastest growing areas right now in gaming that we see. There's a lot of interest. And it all started with Nintendo Switch and then Steam Deck really set the bar and now we're seeing these Windows handhelds. And intel has a brand new chip for this called the G3.

Leo Laporte [00:14:04]:
Isn't that ironic? Because intel, which struggled with mobile, made the scale processor, which was a huge flop and basically lost the mobile market.

Daniel Rubino [00:14:13]:
Yep.

Leo Laporte [00:14:13]:
Now they're back in. I guess you'd call this a mobile market. I mean, yeah, it's smaller than a laptop. It's priced like a laptop. Eighteen hundred dollars.

Daniel Rubino [00:14:22]:
It was probably at least $500 more than it was supposed to cost.

Leo Laporte [00:14:27]:
Yeah.

Daniel Rubino [00:14:27]:
You know, because we see these things usually topping out at 12.99, which isn't cheap. But this is the top tier handheld

Leo Laporte [00:14:33]:
on the market based on processor screen size. What makes it so good?

Daniel Rubino [00:14:38]:
The processor is so AMD really set the bar here. They were the ones that are making all the chips. They make them for Nintendo, they make them for the Steam Deck and they were making for Windows devices and only MSI stuck with intel and they were just using laptop chips. And now they came out with a custom chip for handhelds and it is between. Yeah. And it's between 35 and probably 45% faster than AMD's top chip right now. I mean it's like night and day difference. And so for the first time with handheld gaming, you can play like you can play steampunk.

Daniel Rubino [00:15:12]:
Not steampunk, Cyberpunk 2077. Around 90 frames per second on this thing.

Leo Laporte [00:15:21]:
I could play that on my Nintendo Switch too. Not probably at 30 frames, not at

Daniel Rubino [00:15:26]:
this resolution, at this frame rate.

Leo Laporte [00:15:28]:
My eyes are only 28 frames a second. So it's okay.

Dan Patterson [00:15:32]:
And the claw is really. I mean it's almost a PC.

Leo Laporte [00:15:36]:
It is.

Dan Patterson [00:15:36]:
People I know who've taken it home have really. They plugged it in and it's been a functional PC.

Leo Laporte [00:15:43]:
Wow.

Daniel Rubino [00:15:43]:
Yep. Yeah, you can dock it and act as a mini PC. It's got Thunderbolt 4 on it. It runs Windows. Right. So it's a. It's the handheld device we've been waiting for, or at least I've been waiting for because like I said, you can play true AAA top tier games at least 60 frames per second. But now we're hitting over 100 frames per second.

Daniel Rubino [00:16:04]:
Part of that's because of intel frame gen, the xess, their upscaling technology. It's really just amazing technology that we have in this thing. But because of RAM and the storage costs, like I said, it's about 500 more than what it should. 1299 already wasn't cheap, but 1799 isn't, you know, that said, if you go to Best Buy, at least when I checked yesterday, they were already sold out. Now how many they have in stock, I don't know. But at least on the subreddit, a lot of people are buying it.

Leo Laporte [00:16:33]:
So, boy, there's a market for these things. That's really interesting. Is this replacing the console market?

Daniel Rubino [00:16:40]:
It's definitely impacting it because you can just with a Thunderbolt 4 dock, connect this up to your TV and just do. That's like an important switch. Yeah, you do 4K gaming and all that kind of stuff. You can connect an EGPU to it. Like it's really endless what you can do with this thing.

Leo Laporte [00:16:56]:
Connect an eGpu?

Daniel Rubino [00:16:58]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:17:01]:
Wow. And this is the arc graphics that intel has been. It's interesting. Intel, we really like a year ago counted them out. Down and out.

Daniel Rubino [00:17:11]:
Yeah. Their new chips are the Core Ultra series. Which this is based off of with the B390 GPU. They're in the game. They're pulling ahead of AMD, who I think is a little bit more focused on server and desktop right now. They're still doing well there, but when it comes to handhelds, they just lost the crown and it came to laptops. Intel's still crushing it.

Leo Laporte [00:17:32]:
Yeah.

Daniel Rubino [00:17:33]:
So I would not.

Leo Laporte [00:17:33]:
So you say get an Intel Ultra processor over any of the other.

Daniel Rubino [00:17:37]:
Yeah, the Ultra 3 is like finally found the middle ground where the first generation was a lot of performance. The second generation was concentrating on efficiency, and now the third one combines both into a really stable platform that's just really efficient and fast.

Leo Laporte [00:17:52]:
Interesting.

Daniel Rubino [00:17:54]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:17:54]:
Boy, the worm has turned and it's really amazing.

Daniel Rubino [00:17:58]:
I mean, Intel's chips were always did do well when it came to their quarterly earnings. It was the other stuff that they were losing money on.

Leo Laporte [00:18:07]:
So, you know, is it Lutan, their new CEO that's that's turned this around?

Daniel Rubino [00:18:12]:
Yeah, they're really focused on gaming right now and their integrated graphics is the big story because AMD used to beat them left and right when it came to integrated graphics, but now you can buy one of their, you know, Ultrabook laptops and still do 60 frames per second on AAA games. Just through integrated graphics. No Nvidia. So it's, they've come a long way, but it's just so inappropriate, you know, for timing because you have the MSI Claw, you have the Steam Machine, and they're both extraordinary devices, but they're just priced out of people's, you know, it doesn't make sense anymore for most people.

Leo Laporte [00:18:50]:
Isn't Microsoft though, moving away from intel towards ARM processors? The Snapdragon?

Daniel Rubino [00:18:55]:
And I wouldn't say they're moving away from, they're definitely embracing, but they've always said that they were going to welcome all but not treat anyone specifically, you know, better. Apple of course, clapped their hands, said, we're done with x86 arm, that's the end of it. And you know, Microsoft can't do that because of legacy enterprise hospitals, government, so. But now that Nvidia is on board with the RTX Spark, it actually helps Qualcomm because it's just going to make the ecosystem that strong, much more strong. So it's really, again, fascinating to watch. Nvidia and Qualcomm are kind of on the same side now. And then you have intel and AMD on x86 on the other side and they're all honestly doing some crazy, really Good technology. It's just.

Leo Laporte [00:19:39]:
No, suddenly chips got so good. Is it euv? What is the technology that changed all this?

Daniel Rubino [00:19:45]:
I think that definitely plays a part on it. They keep going down to the nanometer. I think Apple, you know, honestly caught a lot of people off guard with it.

Leo Laporte [00:19:56]:
Kicked them in the butt.

Dan Patterson [00:19:57]:
It's.

Leo Laporte [00:19:57]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Daniel Rubino [00:19:58]:
And so, like, you know, when I would talk to intel about this, they're like, there's Nothing inherent about x86 that makes it inefficient compared to ARM, like they said.

Leo Laporte [00:20:08]:
It's, it's not that, it's not risk versus cisc.

Daniel Rubino [00:20:12]:
No, I mean, it's, it's just that they come from different pedigrees. Right. X86 came from desktop and so it was always optimized for desktop. And then they had to back it down for laptop, where they built the M series for mobile smartphones and built it up to desktop. Right. So they came from different points. But there's nothing inherent about x86 that supposedly it can't compete with ARM. And we're starting to see that.

Daniel Rubino [00:20:36]:
I would still say Qualcomm is still more efficient than Intel's x86, but I can't deny there's a point of diminishing returns. Right. If your x86 laptop is getting 10 hours a day of real world life, you know, usage, does it really matter?

Leo Laporte [00:20:51]:
Right.

Daniel Rubino [00:20:52]:
Yeah, exactly. You know, so it's like, okay, you know, how many people aren't going to not charge the laptop when they get home?

Leo Laporte [00:20:58]:
So, you know, it's really changed though. And, and this is what's driving the component shortage too is AI and people wanting to, or maybe they don't actually. Microsoft has kind of learned its lesson. They're, they're backing down a little bit on putting copilot everywhere. Do people, Right. Are they looking, when they're looking at laptops now, it sounds like they're looking at gaming. Are they looking at AI also?

Daniel Rubino [00:21:19]:
No, but, you know, for gaming it's interesting because when you have like Intel X ess, their frame gen and upscaling technology, that's AI, right? That's using, right. That kind of technology.

Leo Laporte [00:21:33]:
Well, there's a definite kind of correlation between, that's why you can use GPUs for both gaming and AI, right? It's, it's, it's, it's matrix transforms, it's massive movement of data and transformation of data. So the GPU can do it for games. It could also do it for AI.

Daniel Rubino [00:21:52]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:21:53]:
So there's some Similarity. But now we also see these, what Microsoft calls NPUs, which are a different part of the processor. It's all very confusing. Should we. Are people reasonably blaming AI for this chip shortage? Is this one of the components creating this AI kind of mass AI hatred among the general populace? Dan,

Dan Patterson [00:22:21]:
you know, we actually, in fact, I was just loading our research on this. We just did a ton of research on the AI backlash and the data center backlash, and there are a few components at play here. Yes, the primary backlash is organic, but look there. There is a significant amount of Russian and Chinese inauthentication. Yeah. Well, you know, it's challenging that the differences between disinformation and misinformation are nuanced, but there's certainly a large amount of activity in the anti data center market. So where a conversation might hit, let's say, X velocity, it is then amplified by. By a number of inauthentic voices, and it hits more communities faster, and it seems louder than it actually is.

Leo Laporte [00:23:16]:
So that's very interesting to me because I was, as an AI fan, I was starting to worry. We just had a big rug pull from the federal government on Anthropic's most capable model, the best model. I think most of us agree, we've ever seen Fable and Mythos. And it concerned me that maybe the federal government, the Trump administration, was putting its finger to the wind and saying, oh, you know what? People hate AI so we can do this with impunity. There's definitely that feeling. Polls say people, you know, 71% of people say they don't want a data center near them. 18% of people, only 18% of people trust the AI search results they're getting. And I can go on and on.

Leo Laporte [00:24:02]:
There's a real fear of AI out there. But you're saying this is being amplified somewhat by bad actors.

Daniel Rubino [00:24:11]:
Sorry, I was just gonna say that the technology is coming top down.

Leo Laporte [00:24:15]:
Yeah. There's also a tech lash going on.

Dan Patterson [00:24:18]:
Yes.

Daniel Rubino [00:24:18]:
Yeah. Because we're all old enough, like smartphones that came from a couple nerds with BlackBerries Pocket PCs, and it developed kind of organically, and then like, Apple came and sort of really set that category off. But a technology starts off with a few early adopters and then integrating it, becoming enthusiasts, and then it eventually gets pushed to the mainstream.

Leo Laporte [00:24:40]:
The garage model.

Daniel Rubino [00:24:42]:
Yeah. And this feels very much like we're. It's being forced upon us from other people.

Dan Patterson [00:24:48]:
And.

Daniel Rubino [00:24:48]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:24:49]:
Like there's a reason for that. These frontier models require huge amounts of capital.

Daniel Rubino [00:24:53]:
Right. Sure.

Leo Laporte [00:24:55]:
You have to be able to afford thousands of Nvidia GPUs. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. All right, I need to take this. Go ahead, Jennifer, go ahead.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:25:04]:
I think there's the fear of the unknown too. Like the difference from, you know, the ground up technology that's tried and trued and tested and this AI that the companies that are developing even themselves don't seem to know what it's capable of. And that is sort of, we're going to get to that fear, something I think people are rightly concerned about. But I can.

Leo Laporte [00:25:23]:
Your son's going to college. Is he nervous about the, his job prospects in the AI era four years from now?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:25:30]:
No, but that's because he's not really focused on four years from now. But he wants to be a pilot, which I'm like, well, I did the research and it's going to be a while until we have planes that, I mean, we, I know planes can fly themselves, but it's going to be a really long time until people are comfortable being in planes without pilots.

Leo Laporte [00:25:46]:
So, yeah, they often do land themselves. But you still want to see a good looking fella in a uniform up front.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:25:51]:
Exactly.

Daniel Rubino [00:25:53]:
Or gal.

Leo Laporte [00:25:54]:
All right, we're going to take a little break and come back. Let's talk about this. The, the rug pull and what it's spawned, which is I think very interesting in the tech world. We've got a great panel. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy is here from the Verge. We have some home automation stuff to talk about with you as well. Daniel Rubino from Windows Central, he's the editor in chief there. And Dan Patterson from Blackbird AI where he's the senior director of content.

Leo Laporte [00:26:23]:
And you, you were listening a couple of weeks ago. Larry Maggot was on when we had the little wake for the end of CBS Radio News. What a sad moment that was, Dan.

Dan Patterson [00:26:35]:
It has been a moment.

Leo Laporte [00:26:36]:
Well, it's part of a, you know, the world is changing and it's, what's interesting is it's changing faster and faster and faster and I think that's upsetting to some. And then there's some of us. And I think a lot of the people who got into technology got into technology because we were change junkies because we like to have a vision of home. Look, it's all changing. It's like sci fi. And so some of us embrace it. I think the vast majority go, oh no. So how long ago has it been now? 3 weeks? 4 weeks? The white House abruptly pulled Anthropic's fable model so abruptly that many of us were in the middle.

Leo Laporte [00:27:22]:
It happened to me. I was in the middle of a big job. I was rewriting software we've been using for 11 years. It's the core of our operation. I thought, here's this chance, I finally got a model that can handle this giant complex and all of a sudden it said, this model no longer available. And I thought, crap, did I forget to pay my anthropic bill? But no, it was true for all of us. I was more upset, I think, than a lot of people, maybe technologists in general, AI users were more upset than the general public. I don't know if the general public was even that aware of it.

Leo Laporte [00:27:55]:
They were so much more concerned about the green reflecting pool than they were about this. But I saw this as a really scary precedent where without consultation with Congress, without really any research, as far as I can tell, the federal government blocked an American product. This wasn't even blocked an American product from its users.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:28:21]:
Now what was the reasoning here? Was it like, this is too powerful? It wasn't it. This is too powerful. It could like cause chaos.

Leo Laporte [00:28:27]:
And I think Anthropic kind of hurt itself because they did promote that heavily.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:28:32]:
Does feel like something a government should be concerned about, honestly? I mean, I get your point. Like if the US government stopped Apple selling its iPhones. Okay for no.

Leo Laporte [00:28:42]:
And you could make the same case. All of the iPhones made in China. So it's a huge security threat.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:28:46]:
Right?

Dan Patterson [00:28:47]:
We don't want to.

Leo Laporte [00:28:49]:
Yeah.

Dan Patterson [00:28:50]:
Sorry to interrupt.

Leo Laporte [00:28:51]:
No, no.

Dan Patterson [00:28:52]:
It's a unilateral top down. Right, right. Whether. Whether the public knows or cares is, is almost irrelevant. It's an American made product where an executive branch issues in order and can shut down a product. I think that's what, what scared a number of technologists and if not the public, a number in the business people in the business community.

Leo Laporte [00:29:14]:
Yeah, well, there was and there was an interesting impact which we'll talk about in a little bit. But I should mention that the Dario Amadei, the CEO of Anthropic, flew to the G7 summit in France, met with the President, and in an Axios interview shortly thereafter, the President said, you know, I like these guys, Anthropic. They're okay. Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, tweeted, aha. You see what happens? You see what happens? He's the one who called Anthropic a supply chain risk. Again, a designation usually reserved for foreign actors, not American companies. Well, apparently the United States has now lifted the ban a little bit Semafor had the scoop. Reeb Albigatti and Ben Smith.

Leo Laporte [00:30:08]:
US Releases powerful anthropic model Mythos, which is Mythos is basically the same as Fable. It's just an unrestricted Fable, as far as we can tell, has allowed Anthropic to release it to more than 100 US institutions. Remember, originally that's what Anthropic did with 50 companies. It said, okay, this thing is so powerful, we're going to give it to you. Microsoft, for example, to fix any flaws before it gets out to the public and bad guys use it to attack you. So now this was called Project Glasswing. Apparently it's still on. The Trump administration on Friday, just two days ago, said Anthropic could release Mythos to more than 100 institutions.

Leo Laporte [00:30:53]:
Friday afternoon didn't say anything about Fable and it didn't say anything about open to the public either. Nor did it mention the. The original restriction was that no foreign nationals should be able to use these models. That was the pretext the Commerce Department used. But of course, since Anthropic doesn't know the citizenship status of anybody using its software, they had to block it for everybody. Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, said that they had had significant progress in the intense daily talks between Anthropic and the government. Anthropic has committed to work with the US Government on protocols and standards and releases. The other shoe that dropped same day is that OpenAI had decided to release its latest model, which also has a cyber security component, to a short list of government approved partners.

Leo Laporte [00:31:53]:
What has essentially happened is the Trump administration has done a complete about face. When Trump came into office, he decried President Biden's AI regulations, said we're going to have no regulation. This is how we succeed in the United States is, you know, just compete, make the best models you can. We're not going to regulate AI completely reverse that with the Fable block and now is saying we want to prove every model before it's released to the public. So, Jennifer, you make an interesting point. If this is so dangerous, I mean, shouldn't the government protect us from it?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:32:35]:
I mean, the government's protecting our kids from social media, Right? Like there is so many different, such a fine line between what we think the government should protect us from and what it shouldn't. And it also depends on who you are, whether you think they should or shouldn't. But this does, you know. Yeah, to my point about the fear, there is a fear amongst regular people about AI, whether it's founded or not. There is a concern that this technology is going to go somewhere scary. I mean, we've all seen the movies and we've seen that these, that the tech companies, I mean, just from in my space, when I talk to tech companies about LLM powered smart voice assistants and I'll ask them questions like would it be capable of doing this or this? And they're like, that's a good question. Why don't you try and we'll see. So you don't know, like, you don't know what this is going to do in my house.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:33:31]:
I get that this is a powerful and exciting technology, but before we unleash it on people, we need to know, as the technology companies need to know what it's going to do and what it's capable of and be able to control it. And it feels like we're in a moment. And Dan, I mean, you're much better positioned to speak to this than I am, but I would love to know, is that a moment that we need this ever going to change or is this technology always, always going to be a step ahead of us? That concern.

Dan Patterson [00:33:59]:
Yeah, I think to your point, and I'm sorry to interrupt you, Jennifer, but I just want to agree, especially with something you said earlier, that there is a top down and a tech clash. We saw this, you know, with untested technology, just like you've experienced with consumer products in the home. We saw this with consumer products like social media, where they began as fairly simple news feeds. We saw this algorithmic testing on the general public and the expansion of social media into ways that the public is generally, or appears to be generally uncomfortable with. And now perhaps we are seeing a very similar effect happen with the advancement of artificial intelligence, where these products are incredibly powerful and the effect that they have are very similar to what you said about smart home devices. Where will this be good? Will this help? I don't know.

Leo Laporte [00:34:54]:
Here's my, here's my issue with this for one is let's assume that, you know, like, I don't know, atomic bombs, that AI has all this potential for danger and so that it's not unreasonable for any government to put some restraints on it. The question, unlike an atomic bomb, AI is very amorphous, you know, and the question is, well, who is going to judge it and how are they going to judge it? There's also the issue this is raised by Dean Ball, who teaches AI policy at Yale Law School. As a visiting fellow at the Heritage Society. He in his hyperdimensional substack says there's also the issue that there's a side effect when you do this. For one thing, if you take a month to approve an AI, this is moving so fast you may have actually killed that AI. They need to get to market fast and build an audience because the next AI is coming about a month later. So you're throwing a monkey wrench into a very fast moving machine. There's also a much larger issue which is that you might do this in the US but China and other countries are not holding back.

Leo Laporte [00:36:21]:
One of the results of the fable rug pull, and I'm going to call it a rug pull, is that France with its Mistral, China with Deep Seek and Zai's GLM model released better models. GLM is very, very good. GLM 5.2. All of a sudden people are saying, oh well, you know, if the American government can just stop any model, I guess I better not use American made models. There's plenty of other choices. It's also taught companies to not count on American AI like, well, just like many other things in the United States, we don't know what's going to happen next. So there's a real risk. This, it's a very difficult thing to answer because I agree with you, Jennifer.

Leo Laporte [00:37:10]:
Maybe these things are dangerous. I just don't know how we can count on a government, especially this government, which doesn't really seem to think much of science to determine what's dangerous or not. It almost feels as if it's an economic restriction restriction as opposed to a technical restriction. I don't know. What do you think? This is a hard one to solve. Ball writes, frontier models are trained at an enormous cost and a significant fraction of that cost is recouped in the first few post released months that they're broadly available. After that period elapses, the models become sub frontier. Competition emerges and margins compress.

Leo Laporte [00:37:53]:
Every week of delay is eating into the narrow window that labs have to make their accounting work. So that's problem number one. You're undermining this entire industry. Now maybe if you think, and as many do AI, it's bs. We don't need AI. We'll be better off without it. That's. You don't see that as a problem.

Leo Laporte [00:38:12]:
I would submit that AI is a very significant technology and its advance is very important to us and we don't want to let others do what we could do better.

Dan Patterson [00:38:24]:
Leo, are you making. I hear this argument frequently and I don't know where I come down on this argument, but are you aligning with the argument that if we don't allow our models to be the frontier models and, and the cutting edge models, then we cede that to China and other competitors.

Leo Laporte [00:38:54]:
Yes. Yeah, okay, that's exactly. You're basically undermining an American industry.

Dan Patterson [00:39:01]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [00:39:02]:
It's kind of the opposite of what they're doing with the auto industry. They're protecting the auto industry by banning Chinese cars. Well, what would happen if you banned American cars? You would have a lot of Chinese cars in the United States. That's what we're doing. We're banning American models. There's also a larger question of can you even prove a model's safety? No one has yet made a model that's not jailbreakable.

Dan Patterson [00:39:27]:
So let me ask something else. Much of our conversation is centered around consumer AI, or at least B2B in the way that when we talk about AI right now, we think, you know, it evokes companies like Anthropic OpenAI and others. But earlier in this conversation we also talked about another use of AI in frame gen in gaming. Right. And AI has machine learning applications. We use artificial intelligence at Blackbird in a number of ways that are not consumer focused at all. So is this conversation about AI simply around these somewhat consumer facing and business facing frontier models, or is there a broader conversation to be had?

Leo Laporte [00:40:21]:
Well, there is, absolutely. I mean, this is a very intractable problem. To go back to the garage model of technological advance unlike anything we've seen before, AI requires huge capital investment and you've got to make all these GPUs and you've got to build all these data centers. There's nobody developed. Well, maybe there is, but so far there's nobody in their garage creating the latest frontier model.

Dan Patterson [00:40:49]:
It's not like biz and EV coding, Twitter using Ruby on Rails.

Leo Laporte [00:40:54]:
Right? It takes billions, some might even say trillions. The Fable model, we don't know how much it cost or how big it was. It's estimated it might be 10 trillion parameters, which means it probably cost hundreds of billions of dollars to create. And they don't stop, by the way. It's like you don't just make it and now it's done, you gotta make the next one.

Daniel Rubino [00:41:21]:
That's the weird issue with all this, which is fundamentally is the architecture even the correct approach? Because all this is is large language models and keep throwing more and more power at it. And it's this idea that like somehow if we keep doing this, we'll reach AGI, but we haven't defined AGI yet. We don't understand consciousness. We don't understand intelligence at that level. And so there's a lot of questions about, you know, is this even the right approach? Right. There's different views of AI, including more semantic analysis, there's visual analysis, there's all these other components.

Leo Laporte [00:41:56]:
Because like Yann Lecun and Fei Fei Li say, oh, no, you've got to do. Do you. You know, you got to do physical world stuff. And all of that should happen. I'm not saying that shouldn't happen, all of that. And some of that may end up in somebody in a garage coming up with this great new way of doing it. But we haven't reached the end of what, by the way, I don't. You don't have to stipulate that we're going to achieve AGI or anything.

Leo Laporte [00:42:19]:
It's just that as we have continued to make these models bigger, they've gotten better and better and more and more capable. And they, and I think they've changed a lot of things. They've changed how chips are made. Nvidia's, who is it, just announced that they're releasing a chip that's designed by AI and that as that gets better and better, it will get better and better as it develops better chips. Business processes are changing. People saying the SaaS Marketplace for Business tools is going to die because all of a sudden everybody's writing their own. Every business I know of is implementing an AI strategy of some kind. Rightly or wrongly, this is fairly important to the economy.

Leo Laporte [00:43:02]:
And this is another thing Ball points out. You might actually be bringing on this AI bust that everybody's so worried about. Simply by undermining, you might be creating a market panic.

Dan Patterson [00:43:17]:
Land prices will go down at least.

Leo Laporte [00:43:20]:
Hey, here's the good news.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:43:21]:
I think that consumer B2B business and like, conflict is very real, though. And I think that, I mean, my generation, my, my children's generation is the sort of loudest voice right now against AI. Like, we saw all of the college commencement speeches with people booing the tech CEOs, and my daughter is like, violently opposed to anything AI, mainly because she's very creative and she's very opposed to the sort of artist, the way it's potentially stealing our artistic jobs. And, and she, you know, there is, I think there needs to be a distinction here. And, and I don't know how this comes about, but it's important to, I think what, what's happening in business and technology in terms of how this is helping with processes and helping us develop and create More powerful, more useful tools for technology and business is very different from how it's being unleashed in the regular world, how it's affecting people's regular jobs and what they're doing on a daily basis and, and how they're interacting on a daily basis. Like use these, these LLM chatbots that people are now relying on for all their information and you know, some becoming like friends and this is like their main connection to society is, is those types of things are different. That consumer focused, that consumer facing of this AI feels very not well thought out yet. And that's, and we're unleashing on people who don't understand it and who are like, wow, suddenly I can do all of this stuff and where is it going to, where is that going to lead us versus companies and businesses that are, you know, implementing this as tools for creating a better workflow.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:45:13]:
Those are two very different use cases of this technology.

Leo Laporte [00:45:17]:
I can hear people, some of our listeners, I get emails every week, enough with the AI, who cares? I can hear people saying, good.

Daniel Rubino [00:45:24]:
I mean, your average consumer has not seen any improvement from this, right? They see AI slop on Twitter, right. They see a lot of fake news kind of stuff happening, like when, when I solves cancer. And of course that's a, you know, broadly speaking, isn't going to happen. Of course, once it starts solving diseases. Right, which is what's the promise then people I think will start to come around to it when it starts to actually make your life easier and solves problems for your regular consumer versus, oh, by the way, everybody's gonna lose all their jobs in like five, 10 years. We don't know what we're gonna do. Like that's what, you know, from your average consumer standpoint, this is happening to them, not with them. They haven't seen any benefits and all they hear is, you know, oh my God, these models are so strong.

Daniel Rubino [00:46:12]:
They're going to completely undermine everybody's jobs. And you know, we don't need radiologists anymore. Right, that famous example, which didn't happen,

Leo Laporte [00:46:20]:
by the way, we need to.

Daniel Rubino [00:46:22]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, but I think that's the concern. It's like, are we supposed to be believing these people? Right? Or should we not believe them? No one knows how to react. So there's a lot, there's a lot

Leo Laporte [00:46:33]:
of confusion, isn't there? Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Rubino [00:46:36]:
And these companies benefit from hyping up their models like it is. It's so powerful, it's too dangerous. We need the government to like regulate

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:46:44]:
like a movie Trailer.

Daniel Rubino [00:46:46]:
Yeah, I mean exactly.

Dan Patterson [00:46:49]:
That's the super intelligence AGI, right that we are going to achieve some sort like no, what we've really done is build Adobe Creative Cloud. Like it can replace some tasks and make them a little more efficient. But like we, it's not going to cure cancer, at least not yet. It's not going to do a lot of the things that it was to your point Daniel, and yours too Jennifer. It is simply happening to people and there is some utility but the hype certainly exceeds the capabilities right now. And if you look at it realistically, it's Photoshop.

Leo Laporte [00:47:23]:
I would say we've seen a lot of evidence that some really amazing things could happen which we may never get now because of this fear and that it, you know there we won't, we may never know because we're just going to end up shutting this whole thing down.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:47:40]:
Do you really think we will fear? I don't know that I think your point Daniel about how it, it. It's. It's a peak and trough like where people are scared because it's happening to them is, is very true. Like I mean this is very. A big tangent but it's interesting. Like what would you say is one of the most hated companies in this country right now? I would say drug companies have often been at the top list of like we don't like drug companies.

Leo Laporte [00:48:05]:
Interesting you say that because that's a similar situation where it takes huge amounts of capital to create new drugs.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:48:12]:
So there was a really interesting article and I want to say it was in the Wall Street Journal and it was about the history of Eli Lilly, which is the company behind zip bound, one of the GLP drugs, GLP1 drugs

Leo Laporte [00:48:23]:
which I am on I should say so I will shut up.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:48:26]:
Well and the interesting thing was the CEO is saying, you know, we have gone from being from getting hate mail because there was a big issue around diabetes, around insulin at one point where they had a really low short, they had a shortage and it was hard for people to get this life saving medicine. And so they were getting hate mail from people. And now he says we get literal love letters from our customers who are like what you have done has saved

Leo Laporte [00:48:52]:
you hate Big Pharma until it, until

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:48:54]:
it does something that really works. Yes. And I feel like that's where we will probably go with AI on an individual basis. Like as individual people find real value from it. You know that will slowly there'll be a groundswell if, if that happens a groundswell of more popular opinion and then On a broader scale.

Leo Laporte [00:49:14]:
That's been my experience. I've used I as part of my job. I've gone heavily into using AI in a lot of ways and it's found it incredibly useful and it constantly impresses me by doing things I never would have thought a computer could do. And I'm not saying it's alive or conscious or intelligent. I'm just saying it's very, very effective. It's the same. Big Pharma is a really good example because it does take. You know, you could invent a new drug in your garage, it happens all the time, but you could never release it because you have to test it, you have to manufacture it at the scale.

Leo Laporte [00:49:50]:
There's all it is a capital intensive industry. There's negatives to that. Salt, which turns out to be a really good disinfectant, isn't widely promoted because nobody makes any money on it. That's a simple example. But there are many examples of that. But at the same time, I don't think we want to shut down pharmacological research. We might be scared of it, but we don't want to shut it down. Maybe the solution is to, is to regulate it in some way, but I don't know how.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:50:24]:
Right. Which brings us back to our point. Right. What we started here is the government was trying to stop AI but in a ham fisted way, which is very difficult. Really helping. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:50:37]:
Oh, well, we haven't solved anything, but we had a good conversation and that's, that's what I, I hope for. And we'll watch with interest. I mean, it's, it's all complicated because we have an administration that really is anti intellectual, very anti science. And so it's complicated by all of that as well. And also it seems to be that any company that kisses up to the presidency sufficiently is going to be favored. And the big mistake that Anthropic made was saying no, the military can't use our models for autonomous killing machines or spying on Americans. And that pissed off the administration so much that now we are six months later basically shut down.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:51:22]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:51:22]:
So is this political or is this technical? Is this a smart technological move?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:51:29]:
I mean, it's political, right?

Leo Laporte [00:51:30]:
But it sure looks that way.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:51:32]:
It doesn't mean that there doesn't need to be some.

Leo Laporte [00:51:34]:
It might be the right thing to do. They might have done the right thing for the wrong reason. I don't think so.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:51:43]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:51:43]:
I want my fable. I want my fable back. We've had, in fact, I interviewed Alex Stamos last week. Very highly respected security guy who says Fable wasn't and isn't doing anything that almost any other model couldn't do, that this particular horse has already left the barn. We already have models that can find security flaws.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:52:04]:
And this is, that's the biggest problem with government and technology is they're always two years behind what's actually happening. Impossible really, for them to, for government to regulate it. It sounds very Star Trekky, but ultimately I think this has to become a global solution. This has to be something that needs to be managed by all of the countries, not individual countries. Because it is like you say, if one country regulates it, it's not going to stop another country. I mean, someone was mentioning this in the chat, comparing it to like the atomic bomb. If it's really that dangerous, you know, this needs to be something that has to, has, has a global answer. Not an individual, not each country, really.

Daniel Rubino [00:52:44]:
Yeah, I agree. It needs to go through the U.N. but then to, you know, Leo's point, like it's going to kill, it's going to slow down everything because government is really, really bad when it comes to technology in general. And it's going to be even worse with this, right? Because it's so complicated and so technological. And then you have things like, like would China, you know, we're so skeptical of China, right? Would they really develop this and abide by any agreements? You know, how do you enforce that? Right. At least with nuclear, it's like you can. There's centrifuges, right? There's uranium, there's like, yeah, we have

Leo Laporte [00:53:21]:
peaceful uses of atomic energy and non peaceful and we've attempted to, not very successfully, but we've attempted to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons at the same time as we've encouraged the proliferation of atomic energy. That might be a good analogy for this, that there are safe uses of AI and unsafe uses of AI. I think it's a little clearer what the unsafe use of atomic, of fusion and fission is. That seems a little clearer. AI, it's a little bit more, a little bit more muddy. I don't know, you know, it puts me in an awkward position because I agree a lot of technology is dangerous. Technology, I would say itself is agnostic, but it can be used by humans in a dangerous way. I would hate to see the American government decide which chips American companies could make and which they couldn't.

Leo Laporte [00:54:11]:
That would be a mistake.

Daniel Rubino [00:54:14]:
Do you guys think that there's going to be some sort of AI catastrophe? Like the AI does something or something happens because of AI.

Leo Laporte [00:54:23]:
And cause AI will never do anything bad by itself. There will always be a human actor who either said, hey, maybe we should let AI control atomic weapons.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:54:35]:
I don't know. I mean, the whole thing with the terrible situation with the young man who killed himself because his chatbot basically told him how to do it.

Dan Patterson [00:54:43]:
The anthropomorphicization.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:54:45]:
Yeah, that felt pretty awful. Like. Felt like that was.

Leo Laporte [00:54:48]:
Well, it's a terrible outcome.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:54:50]:
Yeah, but it was.

Leo Laporte [00:54:51]:
Could have done a Google search too.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:54:53]:
No, but this. But there was. I mean, you really was focusing. I know we've talked about it on the show, but it was. It was escalating the situation. And that was AI doing that. Not. There was no human behind that doing that.

Dan Patterson [00:55:05]:
But, you know, Daniel, it might be like frog in a pot, much like climate change, where a number of smaller, seemingly innocuous components stack up and we find ourselves in a challenging situation. But you know, Jennifer, to your point, that that is a tragic occurrence and we. We can maybe find analogs in the social media world. In fact, some of the. The recent rulings about social media and the obligation that social media companies might have in terms of regulating access to it.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:55:44]:
It.

Dan Patterson [00:55:45]:
And. There was a.

Leo Laporte [00:55:50]:
Here's the question. Do you regulate technology because of the edge cases?

Dan Patterson [00:55:55]:
Yeah. Right.

Leo Laporte [00:55:57]:
To protect the edge cases and by doing so, defang it for everybody else. It's like, okay, let's eliminate children's playgrounds because some people hurt themselves on them. You can try to make them safer. That would be a reasonable thing. But you don't. It's. It's.

Dan Patterson [00:56:18]:
It's.

Leo Laporte [00:56:18]:
It's a dangerous precedent to regulate based on the edge case. We wouldn't have cars if. If that were the case. Right. We wouldn't have a lot of things we have in modern.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:56:31]:
The problem here was that it wasn't. There were no guardrails. There was no safety in place. And. And I don't think this is created.

Leo Laporte [00:56:38]:
In fact, you can create safe. This is.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:56:40]:
Right. Which to my point is like they don't. We. Even the people creating this don't know how powerful it is and that. That is a reason to be scared of this.

Leo Laporte [00:56:49]:
For every zipper, there's gonna be some guy who gets his penis stuck in it. But it doesn't mean we shouldn't have zippers is all I'm saying.

Daniel Rubino [00:57:00]:
Right. It's the title of the podcast.

Leo Laporte [00:57:03]:
No, it's definitely not the title.

Daniel Rubino [00:57:05]:
I guess.

Leo Laporte [00:57:06]:
Let me take a break before I get myself in any more trouble. I'm not saying it necessarily ever happened to me. I'm just saying it could. Okay. But we shouldn't ban zippers because of.

Daniel Rubino [00:57:20]:
Does feel like everything about AI is inevitable. Like we just have no choice.

Leo Laporte [00:57:26]:
Technology's always that, hasn't it? Like, even weapons development, things like that. As soon as we can figure out how to do it, we're going to do it. We can't stop it.

Daniel Rubino [00:57:35]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [00:57:36]:
And I don't know if that's true. Yeah, it does feel that way, though. Like, if man can invent it, woman can't prevent it. I'm sorry, Jennifer. Let's take a break.

Daniel Rubino [00:57:53]:
That's okay.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:57:53]:
I will be the lone female voice of reason.

Leo Laporte [00:57:57]:
That's what I'm saying. Boys and their toys. That's all I'm saying.

Daniel Rubino [00:58:02]:
Actually, along that, along those lines. Along those lines, Leo, I think a better analog here would be guns because, like, guns are readily available, easy to make. But you know, around the, around the world, around the rest of the rest of the world, it's harder to buy than it is in America.

Leo Laporte [00:58:17]:
Right. Right. Yeah. Let's take a little break. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, senior reviewer for the Verge. We're gonna talk home home automation. Something a little safer you cannot hurt yourself with in just a little bit. Well, maybe you can.

Leo Laporte [00:58:33]:
We'll find out.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:58:34]:
Don't make any promises. Leo.

Leo Laporte [00:58:37]:
Daniel Rubino from editor in Chief from Windows Central. Great to have you. And of course, Dan Patterson of Blackbird. Let's talk about the smart home. Now, I have to say my little AI buddy Quicksilver is connected to my home assistant green server. And I can tell it to open shades, turn on the lights. I can have it, you know, when I get home, do things. It's very nice to have an AI connected to your home.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:59:02]:
Yeah. And actually, you know, to your point earlier about the different use cases, here is this is so true with technology. It's, it's not that AI bad, it's that some elements of AI could have concern, but some elements of AI have great use cases. And actually the smart home is one of them where I think, think we've already seen some really interesting innovations.

Dan Patterson [00:59:22]:
Yes.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:59:24]:
That help run your smart home because it's the most. The key one is cutting through complexity because the smart home is complicated. What you just said is not a sentence that most normal people would understand. No running on my ha. Green. And yeah, it's.

Leo Laporte [00:59:41]:
Well, you did though, right? You speak it. You speak home assistant.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [00:59:44]:
I do speak home assistant, yes. And I've used my, I used Claude to help me exactly code my home assistant Instance. And that was super helpful. Incredibly helpful. Yes. Because.

Leo Laporte [00:59:56]:
Yeah, it actually might be the missing link. Because all this time we've had this Home Assistant, it's like the Tower of Babel. Nobody can talk to it. It doesn't. One thing doesn't talk to another. Maybe AI is the solution or maybe Matter is the solution.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:00:08]:
Matter, yes. Love that segue. Thank you, Leah.

Leo Laporte [01:00:12]:
Well, I will say this. I've been lobbying. Everything I use should have an AI interface. We were just talking about Box, how it has MCP servers and SDKs and CLI. It's home assistant has an interface that an agent can use and understand. Everything should have that. Maybe Matter is that layer. I don't know.

Leo Laporte [01:00:30]:
There's a big Matter conference going on.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:00:33]:
Yeah. So a couple of weeks ago, a week ago, I was at this conference, it's called unifi. And actually to our previous conversation about how maybe technology companies need to work together to figure out this, how to control and, and responsibly deploy AI in the world. Matter is actually a great example of how competitors are coming together and working together to make a better solution. This. There is no risk of, you know, the end of the world through home automation, but it's definitely been interesting to watch. And this was what this conference.

Leo Laporte [01:01:06]:
That's because home animation isn't as powerful as it ought to be. It should be good enough to end the world if necessary.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:01:14]:
But it is a good example of like, a technology that has so much value but has been so hard for people to use because of competing standards, competing protocols, confusion, complicated setups, having to have little boxes running AI in your house to get anything to work. And MATTER is the. Is a new, newish interoperability standard that's basically designed to make all of your smart home devices work with each other rather than being in like, siloed ecosystems or walled gardens. And what this conference was, was put on by the Connectivity Standards alliance, who runs Matter and Zigbee and Alero and a few other open standards. But the, there's.

Leo Laporte [01:02:02]:
By the way, there's the problem right there. There wasn't enough just to have one. We had to make more.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:02:09]:
So you hear this all the time. And it's. It's not so it's. It's a misnomer, but I get the joke. Like it's the, the xcd XKCD comment. Am I saying that right? Sorry, the comic. You know, there's 14 standards and none of them work with each other. We need one standard to make them all work together, protocol to let Them all work together and then that protocol comes along and now, yay, we have 15 protocols.

Leo Laporte [01:02:36]:
So we've been talking about matter for, it feels like years. How many? A couple years of years now.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:02:40]:
So it launched four years ago? Four. Three and three and six months. And it's. And. But it had been announced in 2018 by Apple, Google, Amazon and then quite quickly after Samsung. So all of these companies have been working together. They all had their own walled garden standard. Yes.

Leo Laporte [01:03:00]:
They all had their own standards and

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:03:02]:
everyone used different protocols, different ways of connecting devices, different radios, different hubs. It was, it was confusing, it was complicated and this. But it has. Matter launched, but it has had a bumpy road. And what this conference was all about was really sort of bringing everyone together. I mean, they all talk with each other, apparently. This is what they say. They have these meetings, but, you know, three or four times a year where all the companies come together.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:03:29]:
But this was their first public effacing event where they were like, look at what we've achieved. Here's where matter is now. It's still not where they promised it would be. Day one, which was you just buy a smart home device, you plug it in, set it up, and it will just work with any smart home platform you want. We're not there yet, but what I saw at this conference was really quite inspiring. Not to be too sort of twee, but that these companies actually have been working really hard to make this standard better and to fix the problems that we've seen. And most of those problems are that just. It's still complicated and it's still confusing.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:04:14]:
But what, what came out of this is the launch of battle 1.6. So we're getting. I mean, and standards, you guys, you know, you've been in this industry for a long time. Standards are very hard. They're not. It's not easy to move an industry. It's not easy to get rivals to agree on anything. It's not easy to get them to implement something that could potentially mean that, that their product and their service could be superseded by their competitors.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:04:41]:
But I think that what has transpired over the last few years is that it's really clear that the smart home is at an impasse because of how complicated it is. And sorry to bring this back to AI, but AI coming to the smart home has suddenly opened the monetization strategy for these companies, which wasn't there. But before we are now, you know, we heard about Amazon losing billions on its Echo smart home division over the years, and Apple has been Very slow in this space. Google has also had kind of a bumpy ride with its Nest and Speaker. Google home speaker division, they just launched their newest speaker which is all focused on Gemini AI.

Leo Laporte [01:05:27]:
Oh, interesting.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:05:28]:
Yeah. So it's, it's built for. So Gemini for the Home is their AI model for home automation and the smart home and the. An AI. What does AI need? What does AI need more than anything else? It needs good data. And what are you going to get good data with? Well, interoperability. If everything can talk to everything else, then you can use and build a more reliable smart home system that's potentially going to start doing the sort of the holy grail of the smart home, which is being able to actually manage your home for you. So you're not the one with the, the Raspberry PI on the shelf trying to fiddle and all the different apps and trying to, you know, Home Assistant's very great and powerful, but you can spend a whole month, you can, you know, diving into it.

Leo Laporte [01:06:22]:
So I still haven't connected everything to it. I've had it for a couple of years now.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:06:27]:
So I mean, and the idea. And so one of the Other Things the Matter 1.6 came up with this, which should have been there at the beginning, something called joint fabric. And basically what this means is when you buy a device from a smart home company and you add it to your smart home platform of choice, say Apple Home or Amazon Alexa Prior, each ecosystem would set up their own network in your home called fabric. So you'd have your Apple Home fabric and you'd have your Amazon A fabric. Now with joint fabric, you're just going to have your own smart home network that every ecosystem you would like to control it. So if you want two or three, because say you use a Google Pixel and your spouse uses an iPhone, they will now talk to that fabric, but they won't own that fabric. And that sounds like a sort of small change, but it's a, it's a significant shift for the standard because it means that these companies have all agreed to give up control. So they don't own.

Leo Laporte [01:07:29]:
Have they really though?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:07:30]:
Well, that's that this is the. So everyone says they are on board with this, but the other problem with standards is you get a new spec and then when, when does the spec actually appear in the product? So this is wait and see. But it is, it's. It. It was an exciting sort of. There was a lot of momentum. I guess that was what I saw at this conference. I mean I was talking to the engineers I was talking to the people developing this rather than, you know, the, the PR and the management people.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:08:02]:
But if, if, if engineers rule the world, this will work. Yes, but that's a big if.

Leo Laporte [01:08:08]:
That's right, because engineers want it to work. They're the ones using it.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:08:12]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:08:13]:
So what's the takeaway for a consumer? Is there, should you not buy anything that isn't matter certified at this point?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:08:21]:
So it's a hard one to say because there are not enough matter certified devices, I would say to be able to do that at this stage. But yes, if you're looking at a device that, if you're looking at buying smart home devices, I would highly recommend exploring the matter versions over all other

Leo Laporte [01:08:38]:
things being equal, look for the one that has matter because.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:08:41]:
And this is the point of my next story that I wanted to touch on, one of the great things about Matter is it is a local protocol or it's a local standard and it uses local connectivity protocols. So thread and wi fi. And if you buy a cloud dependent device and that company goes out of business, your cloud dependent device no longer works. And we have. You mean like the level lock time again? Well, yes. So the level lock, to be clear, the level lock has not gone out of business but it has had a significant restructuring which causes some concern about the long term business model of the company. And also level lock is they recently did an upgrade to matter. So if you have a level lock that has a matter of upgrade, if in the future something happened to level servers, your device would still work.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:09:39]:
And this is where matter becomes a very important. Excuse me.

Leo Laporte [01:09:44]:
It's okay.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:09:46]:
This is where matter becomes a key part of the smart home experience is that it is local and you control it if your company goes out of business.

Leo Laporte [01:09:58]:
If you weren't watching the video. So Jennifer's son just walked through and unplugged the router.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:10:04]:
It looks like I just froze. Sorry about that.

Leo Laporte [01:10:10]:
She froze in horror. Yeah, wasn't quite like the BBC presenter whose kids rolled in, but it was a moment.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:10:19]:
Yeah. So the level lock isn't. Is so level lock shouldn't freak out.

Leo Laporte [01:10:23]:
Did S Haploid buy them or did they. Was it their product to begin with

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:10:27]:
so asset Abloy bought them? Level lock was actually made by a couple of iPhone of Apple engineers originally Startup. Yeah, startup. And I don't know if anyone if you're familiar with it, but it's a really cool piece of technology. They basically. If you've ever seen a smart lock or if you've used a Smart lock. They're normally big, kind of techy looking giant batteries on the back of your door. They're a little cumbersome. Smart locks are great in general.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:10:52]:
Like I love them as a concept, they're really good, but they don't look great. The Level lock goes, goes basically puts all the technology in the, the battery goes in the little deadbolt there and all of the smarts are built into the deadbolt mechanism.

Leo Laporte [01:11:08]:
So it looks like a totally normal

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:11:10]:
dead bolt, completely normal lock. But it has, it's such a neat.

Leo Laporte [01:11:15]:
I'm glad I didn't know about it or I would have bought it.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:11:17]:
It's very expensive. That's the other downside, like $350 for Batlock that we were looking at there. So, and so this, there was a startup similar to like August, the August Lock you might be familiar with. And both of those companies were bought by Asset Abloy at different times in their process. If you're familiar with Asset Abloy, it's one of the largest multinational access control companies on the planet. Like they own.

Leo Laporte [01:11:44]:
They were famous for their excellent deadbolts though, right? They're not a cheesy company.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:11:49]:
No, no. I mean it's a very well established Swedish company. And so they also bought, they bought Yale and they bought August and then they wanted to buy Quick Set which is the other large lock maker and the government said that's too many, that's too many locks. And so then they sold their stake in Yale in August and then bought Level. So this company's been kind of on a lockdown buying spree. But what happened this last week sadly is they basically laid off the majority of the staff at Level. And so the concern amongst the staff and for customers of the lock manu of the lock is that without any engineering, an engineering team there anymore, this is a high, this is a very technical, very technically advanced lock. And will, will the lock continue to be made? Hopefully it'll continue to be supported but there is a concern that it may just go away which would be very sad because it's a great piece of technology and they were just, they were working on an ultra wideband version and I think I've talked about this on the show before but this is the next innovation that's coming to Smart locks is complete hands free unlocking.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:13:12]:
So you use using UWB radio that your phone will transmit to your lock as you walk up that you've come home and it will unlock the door for you.

Leo Laporte [01:13:21]:
I love this by the way. I don't have one because I bought a Schlage just before they came out.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:13:27]:
But so Schlage just launched its newest.

Leo Laporte [01:13:31]:
I'm sorry, but I love that idea that you guys just walk up to the door and it's unlocked. I mean, my car, it's a really nice.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:13:37]:
It's the same technology. Yeah, same technology.

Leo Laporte [01:13:40]:
Who knows if you're coming or going, like if you're walking towards it or walking away. So it doesn't lock as you're walking away. I mean, just really kind of cool.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:13:47]:
It's, it's a great technology and it's much better than the current. So if you have a smart lock, you may already have this experience and there's some like Bluetooth GPS sort of magic that some use but that's not very reliable because you're using a number of different radios and that can obviously be a number of failure points. Whereas this is a local direct radio to phone technology. And really I've used, I've tried it and I've been very impressed with it. I have the new Schlage lock actually somewhere right here that I'm going to be testing hopefully this weekend.

Leo Laporte [01:14:22]:
You're a teenage boy.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:14:24]:
Yeah. I think I've talked about how he doesn't, he's never used a key. I don't know how he's going to do.

Leo Laporte [01:14:30]:
I don't have, I don't carry keys anymore. The only thing I carry a key for is my post office box because of course the US Postal Service, they're

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:14:37]:
never going away, never stop using keys.

Leo Laporte [01:14:40]:
But, but I don't. I used to have a key ring. I don't have a key ring anymore. It's just a weird experience. But I'm going to make a bet here. We got two other high tech guys on the show.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:14:51]:
Daniel, you have a smart lock?

Leo Laporte [01:14:53]:
Yeah. Do you have one, Daniel? A smart lock?

Daniel Rubino [01:14:56]:
Yeah, I have a ufi.

Leo Laporte [01:14:57]:
He has a ufi. Okay. How about you, Dan? Do you have a smart lock?

Dan Patterson [01:15:02]:
So I live in Brooklyn and we have less choice about this.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:15:06]:
Yeah.

Dan Patterson [01:15:07]:
My. And, and, and Right. There's a number of security concerns with that. However, the, the, the apartment complex I live in. Yes, we have a smart locks. We have that option. But I think almost everyone opts to use a key. And I, for my apartment, I use a key.

Dan Patterson [01:15:25]:
However. Excuse me, Were I to not live here. Yeah. I almost certainly would have a smart lock.

Leo Laporte [01:15:31]:
Sure. All right, well then I take it back.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:15:33]:
They make life. It's one. It's like the video doorbell. It's one of those things that a

Leo Laporte [01:15:37]:
lot of people, everybody gets. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:15:40]:
But I should just mention on the, on the asset Abloy level thing, Asset Abloy has said level Lock is staying in business and not no worries. Don't, don't be concerned. Don't look behind the curtain. The fact that there's no one left at the company. So we'll see, we'll see what happens. But it's, it was a great, a really great piece of tech and I really do hope that the innovations that Level developed and brought to the market will continue because I for one do not like ugly big smart locks. I want sleek, nice looking smart locks that don't, don't look like a smart lock but still will automatically open my door for me as I approach.

Leo Laporte [01:16:19]:
Well, with any luck they'll fold it into quick set and it will be in every hardware store and it'll be everywhere and it'll be lower cost and, and that technology, I mean they must have bought it because they liked the technology.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:16:30]:
You hope.

Daniel Rubino [01:16:31]:
You hope.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:16:31]:
I mean one of the concerns is that as I've always been having is North. North American residential sales have had taken a big dive because no one's spending any money in this country anymore it seems no one's buying houses because the interest rates are still so high. So yeah, I think they're having some financial problems. So that could have been related to why this had happened. But yeah, they haven't. We don't know for sure. So it's all speculation at this point but fingers crossed the technology continues. But it is really sad that the startups basically think all 80 employees and the founders were laid off.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:17:07]:
So we will see what happens in the future here and watch this space. But they did the same to some extent to August. I mean I think most of your listeners and viewers will be familiar with the August smart lock which was one of the early smart home sort of babies darlings and that was bought by Asset Abloy. And there hasn't been a new August Lock in six, seven years. I don't think we're going to ever see another August Lock.

Leo Laporte [01:17:35]:
It's not the first company there, but quite a few companies former Apple engineers, that seems to be a common thing. The Apple engineer gets some design skills, some engineering skills and then starts their own company. Tony Fadell very famously was one of the designers on the iPhone who went off to start Nest. You speaking of Nest, have a very good podcast.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:17:57]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:17:57]:
That you are part of.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:17:59]:
If everyone anyone's not gotten bored to tears by my smart home chats. There's lots more where this came from. We have a new podcast at the Verge called Version History. Well, new that we're in our fourth season, but this. This season is all smart home. And we have a episode that went out today all about the. The history of the nest.

Leo Laporte [01:18:19]:
Oh, what a great story it was.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:18:21]:
It's a very fun story. A lot of you probably would be surprised by. By a lot of the. The background there. And then we also, last week we did the Roomba, which was a fun one. And then we've got Philips Hue light bulbs coming up. And of course, the Clapper. Everyone.

Leo Laporte [01:18:39]:
Clapper Clap. The original home automation device.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:18:43]:
And we did the Logitech Harmony a couple weeks ago, too, which is.

Leo Laporte [01:18:47]:
Oh, another good one there.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:18:48]:
So lots of fun stuff.

Leo Laporte [01:18:49]:
I'm gonna have to listen to this.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:18:50]:
If you want. If you want some more smart home law, please.

Leo Laporte [01:18:54]:
Can I ask you an inside baseball question?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:18:57]:
Sure.

Leo Laporte [01:18:58]:
So Vox is being split up into little tiny pieces. The Vox podcast company got sold, but the Verge got. It's very confusing.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:19:10]:
The Verge.

Leo Laporte [01:19:11]:
I like your new owner, by the way. I think the Verge is owned by Penske now. Are they going to keep version history? Who gets version history?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:19:19]:
So it's a bit of a misnomer and understandably confusing. But the Vox Media podcast network doesn't actually, as far as I understand it, make the podcasts. Oh, they are. They are like a platform to help market and advertise.

Leo Laporte [01:19:35]:
See, I couldn't understand it because Verge cast without the Verge isn't right.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:19:40]:
So, like, I know famously Kara Swisher and her podcast is part of the hugely valuable. But she owns her own podcast podcast, as far as I understand it. And like. But they have, like a partnership with

Leo Laporte [01:19:51]:
Fox Media Podcast for sales primarily.

Daniel Rubino [01:19:54]:
Right?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:19:55]:
Primarily sales, I think, infrastructure, that kind of stuff. So our. Our Vergecast and Version History and Decoder, which is the other podcast from Verge. Yeah, that is all staying with Verge and no longer part of Vox Media Podcast Network, which is going to a Murdoch. Which one? I can't remember.

Leo Laporte [01:20:19]:
Is it Lachlan? I think it's going to.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:20:21]:
I think. No. Is it? I think it's the other one.

Leo Laporte [01:20:24]:
It's locked. I think so, yeah. It's not the other one.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:20:27]:
I get confused by. By the Murdoch.

Daniel Rubino [01:20:29]:
Sorry, not Rupert.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:20:29]:
Sorry, definitely not Rupert. But yes. So. And we're going to Penske, which that was. This was just announced last week.

Leo Laporte [01:20:39]:
Penske, which owns all the Hollywood magazines

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:20:42]:
plus and the Golden Globes. So I'm like, if I get tickets.

Leo Laporte [01:20:45]:
You get tickets. It's going to be a very exciting time.

Dan Patterson [01:20:49]:
Jennifer, I have a quick question. What happens to subscriptions? Maybe you don't know, but, yeah, I'm a subscriber.

Leo Laporte [01:20:56]:
I care about that. I subscribe.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:20:57]:
Everything. As far as our fearless leader, Nilai has explained to us, it's. Everything will stay exactly the way it is. Like we are. Our company is. Is the Verge as a company, which the Verge founded with Fox Media originally, like, it was the Verge, and Verge was like, oh, we need a company. So they created Vox Media. Right.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:21:17]:
So. And that now that Verge, which has always been its own business within Vox Media, is just staying its own business with a different owner. So nothing changed.

Leo Laporte [01:21:27]:
Josh and everybody were regulars on Twitter at the time. And I remember when they started my. What was it called? My next. My Next thing.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:21:33]:
This is my next.

Leo Laporte [01:21:34]:
This is my next. That's what it was. And I remember when they. They left. Was it in gadget? I can't even. I think it was.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:21:41]:
It was in gadget. Yes.

Leo Laporte [01:21:42]:
And they started that and, and they've had great success and I'm really glad. And as a result, we don't get them on the show anymore because they're far too big.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:21:49]:
I'm sure. I'm sure. Neil, I would love to.

Leo Laporte [01:21:51]:
I would love to get Nilai on, but. All right, I'll. I don't even, you know, I. I act like they're saying no to me. I'm too embarrassed to ask.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:21:59]:
I'm sure he would love to.

Leo Laporte [01:22:00]:
It's like, oh, your big shot now. Same thing with Kara. Kara used to be on the show all the time.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:22:06]:
Now you just get me.

Leo Laporte [01:22:08]:
I'd rather have you. If you give me the three people on right now. The people who are on the show are the people I want to have on the show. But I do admit that sometimes people get big time and we don't get to have them on anymore. They're just too big for us. This little program, we're glad to have you.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:22:30]:
Don't worry about your subscriptions and keep subscribing.

Leo Laporte [01:22:33]:
Yes, I will. I love the Verge. We quote the Verge constantly. And especially Jennifer Pattison Tuohy and her smart home coverage. We also quote Windows Central all the time. Daniel Rubino, editor in chief there. Great Windows coverage, Microsoft coverage. Really.

Leo Laporte [01:22:49]:
And of course, Dan Patterson of Blackbird AI doing his best to stop the Ruskies and their. So you have to at some point explain the difference between disinformation and misinformation.

Dan Patterson [01:23:03]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:23:03]:
What Is misinformation is wrong.

Dan Patterson [01:23:06]:
It's. Disinformation is intentionally misleading content or narratives. We call it a narrative because it's not just one deep fake content.

Leo Laporte [01:23:18]:
It's the story around it.

Dan Patterson [01:23:20]:
Yeah, yeah. Right. So. But it is intentional misinformation. Could be like, well, my neighbor said it's going to rain tomorrow. And everybody's saying it's going to rain tomorrow. Right. Gossip.

Dan Patterson [01:23:30]:
Or, you know, one great example. We've been spending a lot of time looking at the World cup because at least in Brooklyn, everybody's looking at the world like it's huge. It's fantastic. It's a great event. But there have been some narratives around, let's say, empty stadiums. Right. Right. Nobody's going to these games, which is true.

Dan Patterson [01:23:50]:
It's not true at all.

Leo Laporte [01:23:51]:
Oh, they're all sold out.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:23:53]:
I would like to complain vociferously about the World Cup. Can I do that now?

Leo Laporte [01:23:58]:
England won. What are you worried about? They're going on.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:24:01]:
So I dropped this in the notes, right down the bottom. I tweeted this. I went. I was like, yay, England won. Yay. They playing in Atlanta. I'm just gonna see because I live Carolina.

Leo Laporte [01:24:11]:
Yeah. It's just up the road a piece.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:24:13]:
Maybe I could go watch.

Leo Laporte [01:24:15]:
Yeah. England. Congo.

Dan Patterson [01:24:17]:
Ten.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:24:18]:
$10,000 for two tickets?

Leo Laporte [01:24:22]:
Well, that wasn't.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:24:23]:
Who is responsible for that? I'm sorry, but $500 for a ticket was ridiculous. $10,000 is insane.

Leo Laporte [01:24:30]:
Jason Snow went to a game. He went to, like, the dumb game or whatever. He said a game nobody wanted. It was still 500 bucks, but you're looking at the real resale price. But that's. Yeah.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:24:40]:
Why? And this. Who do I. But no, this is all through, like, the formal channels. Like, this is the. This country is the only one in the world that does this. And is it technology's fault? Who do we blame? I know we blame Ticketmaster, but is it because of tech? I feel like this.

Leo Laporte [01:24:57]:
So here's what happens. It is scalpers, by the way.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:24:59]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:25:00]:
Somebody buys it at face value and then goes to the same site. Sometimes they go to a third party site and says, yeah, I'm not gonna make it, so sell it for me. But by the way, it's gonna be $4,000 more than I paid for it. That's. I think that's still scalping, isn't it? Maybe they. Maybe they're. Maybe their aunt got sick and they can't go. Maybe.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:25:19]:
Why are there no laws against this? I went to a Taylor Swift concert in London. And I paid £60.

Leo Laporte [01:25:26]:
Yeah. I should point out £60. Taylor hates the whole thing too.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:25:29]:
I know.

Leo Laporte [01:25:30]:
And let me point out, ridiculous. On your blue sky post, the price is 9,000. There is then a $1,350 fee on top of it.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:25:41]:
I know, that's. I mean, it's insane. Why?

Leo Laporte [01:25:45]:
Why?

Daniel Rubino [01:25:46]:
The answer is we don't.

Leo Laporte [01:25:48]:
We don't.

Daniel Rubino [01:25:48]:
Antitrust here is the answer.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:25:50]:
We need regulation here because this isn't. This is ridiculous. Who's going to. Is someone actually going to pay that much for a ticket?

Leo Laporte [01:25:58]:
I bet it was an eye opener for. A lot of people come to this country to see their, their country play in the World cup and then not only they have to pay that for tickets, but they have to tip the waiter. This is insane. How does this country survive?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:26:12]:
Have you seen the memes online? It's been wonderful.

Leo Laporte [01:26:16]:
It is really fun how much that.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:26:18]:
Yeah. And people sort of discovering that America is actually really cool.

Dan Patterson [01:26:22]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:26:23]:
That guy who's been flying around, I can't remember his name, something or other is wonderful. He's like his eyes wide open. Wow.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:26:35]:
And I love every four years this happens, but normally not in America. The whole world comes together.

Daniel Rubino [01:26:40]:
I agree.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:26:41]:
And it's just a great example of how we really can all come together. There's something, you know, it's not the people that are the problem. Perhaps it's the politicians that the problem. I don't know. But as a, as a, as, you know, a global society, we exist in, we exist, the people are fine. And the, the World cup is a great example. And now that America finally woken up, America's finally paying attention because. Because you finally are doing okay.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:27:08]:
Only because, may I point out, you have an English striker.

Leo Laporte [01:27:11]:
Oh, yeah.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:27:12]:
Who is here, is only playing with you because of birthright citizenship. So. Do you know that story? It's fantastic.

Leo Laporte [01:27:19]:
So he's English. His parents were English, but they were living in the United States when he was born.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:27:26]:
No, his mother is Ghanaian, I believe, or Nigerian. And she was visiting family or friends in New York and she tried to get on the plane to go home to England where she lived. So she's Nigerian but lives in England. And she was. And this is, this is something that does happen. If you're too pregnant, they won't let you get on the plane.

Leo Laporte [01:27:46]:
Sure.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:27:47]:
They don't want you, don't want you to go in labor on the flight. So she had to stay in Brooklyn a bit longer and so she had her baby before she went back home. So he Was born in New York, went back home with her when. When they let her fly back. Grew up in England. Went through all the English soccer training. Football training. Played for one of the big, like, development teams for.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:28:10]:
I don't know if it was Arsenal. My football law is a little fuzzy because I'm living here now. But yeah, he played. He was like. And he played for England under 21s. He was a big star. And then he could also have played for his. I think it's Nigeria that he was.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:28:26]:
His family's from one of the Africa. And then he was going to play for England because. Why wouldn't you play for England? We're the best soccer nation in the world. Football nation in the world.

Leo Laporte [01:28:36]:
I'll be rooting for the Democratic Republic of the Congo in that match.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:28:39]:
I'm sorry, but apparently the American fans got, like, in his DMs and on social media and were like, we want you. We want you. And he was like, okay. And he decided to America. And now you finally have a good soccer team, so that. You're welcome.

Leo Laporte [01:28:55]:
By the way, if you are born on a flight, birthright citizenship to American Airlines. What is your.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:29:04]:
I think it depends where the plane is. When you were born.

Leo Laporte [01:29:08]:
Do they still love the thing?

Daniel Rubino [01:29:09]:
Did they still do the thing where if you're born on a plane, you get free flights on that airline forever?

Leo Laporte [01:29:14]:
I doubt it. Very, very.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:29:15]:
That's probably why they don't let you go on the plane.

Leo Laporte [01:29:17]:
That's right.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:29:17]:
Very heavily pregnant.

Leo Laporte [01:29:19]:
My favorite response to your blue sky skeet about the ticket prices is wonkish. Who said matter fixes this?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:29:28]:
He knew me. He knows my thing.

Leo Laporte [01:29:30]:
He knows. He knows it's all going to be fixed by matter.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:29:34]:
All right, well, sorry for the diversion there.

Leo Laporte [01:29:35]:
Oh, it's a good diversion. No, no. And. And I. I don't know, though, if I'll be rooting for England. I might be rooting for Congo. This is something that gives them hope.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:29:47]:
I hate to say it, and I shouldn't because it'll just wish it into existence, but. But this is exactly the type of game that we're going to lose. I mean, you just know it. The underdog. I know, I know I shouldn't have said it. I'm sorry.

Leo Laporte [01:30:02]:
Don't put that out in the space. We'll have more with our fabulous panel in just a bit. I did see, I have to say, I was watching the F1 last week. Or no, I guess it was the qualifiers this week and there were Norwegian fans doing the row in the F1 stands, which cracked me up. That's my favorite news move. They row in unison in the stands. That beats the wave by a lot. I just love that.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:30:26]:
Everything beats the Vuva Zetas from five World Cups ago. Do you remember those?

Leo Laporte [01:30:30]:
I happen to have.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:30:32]:
Those were terrible. America needs to come up with something, though.

Leo Laporte [01:30:37]:
Signature South African World Cup.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:30:39]:
You have one.

Leo Laporte [01:30:41]:
I hate to do this to you, but brought it back. No, no. Oh, I will have more.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:30:49]:
Oh, my is.

Leo Laporte [01:30:50]:
We'll have more this weekend. Deck. I'm sorry, I shouldn't do that. But you know, I don't get to play the vuvuzela very often. So when I get a chance, it's like Beetlejuice. You mentioned it. Now it has to happen. So here's some interesting news about Elon Musk's brand new.

Leo Laporte [01:31:08]:
Very successful on the stock market. Anyway, Company Star Starlink SpaceX plans to launch Starlink mobile service in the United States. Would you buy a Starlink based cell phone? I don't think it would be just satellite. Obviously it couldn't be because if you're inside, it wouldn't work. So they'd also have to have terrestrial. I think they'd have to have terrestrial wireless as well. Gwynne Shotwell told investors during a recent IPO roadshow the group was considering launching a Starlink retail product and could build its own terrestrial US mobile network. The move would require Starlink.

Leo Laporte [01:31:52]:
This is from Ars Technica. To build a new retail offering by selling mobile contracts to individual customers. Now I use Starlink. It's my backup Internet for these shows. And I think Starlink's great. It's not cheap. I don't know if it would be better cell service or not. Analysts caution.

Leo Laporte [01:32:14]:
Go ahead.

Daniel Rubino [01:32:14]:
Was he. Wasn't he also supposed to be doing his own phone at some point? It was a couple years ago, right?

Leo Laporte [01:32:20]:
Yeah. That sounds. That sounds familiar. Yeah.

Daniel Rubino [01:32:22]:
Yeah. I wonder if it would be tied to that. But seems an odd move to launch a smartphone unless it's like an Android based phone, of course. But if it's not. Not. I don't know how long.

Leo Laporte [01:32:35]:
I think the analysts say the biggest sticking point is going to be terrestrial radio because you can't just like in here, I. I can't see the sky. I couldn't use a sat phone. So this will be, this will be interesting. Of course. Remember a lot of what Elon has been saying is just to, you know, become a trillionaire is to get a good stock price, which it worked.

Dan Patterson [01:33:00]:
Won't iPhone customers become satellite And Starlink customers at some point.

Leo Laporte [01:33:06]:
Well, sort of. Right now, most modern iPhones can get satellite connectivity if they lose cellular connectivity through globalstar. But Global Star, just Global Star. Right. But Global Star just got sold. And Apple's stock, its stake in Global Star went along with it. So there has been some noise that maybe they'll. They'll switch to Starlink.

Leo Laporte [01:33:34]:
I don't know.

Daniel Rubino [01:33:36]:
And what does T Mobile use? Because you can add satellite services.

Leo Laporte [01:33:39]:
It uses Global Star right now. I'm using Global Star right now. Yeah, yeah. So who did Global Star was bought by? Who bought them? I forgot. No. Boy, it's funny, it wasn't that long ago, wasn't it? Oh, Amazon. That's right.

Dan Patterson [01:33:56]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [01:33:56]:
So Amazon. I don't know. I don't know. I have a feeling that Apple's not going to do an Amazon deal. So I have. And since they lost their 20% stake in it. So, yeah, it makes sense. I've heard rumors that they were going to use Starlink for the future, but that doesn't replace your cell service.

Leo Laporte [01:34:15]:
We're talking about full cell service from Starlink, which presumably you could use on any phone if it's like a regular cell service. Let's talk about Winders, because Benito wins his bet. He said, oh, no, I'm going to. Hang on, I'm playing chicken. I'm going to hold on to my Windows 10. Microsoft had said last November, okay, one more year. Actually, it was October, wasn't it October 14, 2025, when they ended support for Windows 10? You better explain this to me, Daniel. So are they extending it another year?

Daniel Rubino [01:34:56]:
They are. And part of it, honestly, is the RAM stuff. Again,

Leo Laporte [01:35:01]:
it might be different if you could buy a new computer with Windows 11 on it, I guess.

Daniel Rubino [01:35:05]:
Yeah. I mean, the. Part of the, I guess you could say problem with Windows 11 is that there are hardware requirements with it based around security. And so a lot of companies would need to buy new laptops or desktops that meet the security standards. And this, of course, has angered people. But you can't have both ways because if they don't have this security built in and people upgrade and all this kind of stuff and they get attacked, you know, it's a whole issue. So. But obviously buying laptops now and PCs has become very cost prohibitive.

Leo Laporte [01:35:40]:
Right.

Daniel Rubino [01:35:40]:
And so they're extending it by another year, although I don't know know how much. That just gives companies an extra year to save money, I guess, to buy new computers because we don't expect those prices to necessarily drop. But that seems to be a part of this as well. As you know, they are involved in the K2 project right now, which is this effort to address a lot of concerns and complaints that people have with Windows 11.

Leo Laporte [01:36:08]:
So what do I need to do if, like, Bonito, I'm still running Windows 10 come October? What do I need to do? Do I have to do anything to keep it alive? Am I just going to get updates without doing anything?

Daniel Rubino [01:36:22]:
Yeah, actually, I'm not too sure about that. Previously you had to just register and just make.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:36:27]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:36:27]:
You had to pay, sort of pay for it with Bing points.

Daniel Rubino [01:36:32]:
Right, right. That's right.

Leo Laporte [01:36:34]:
Or had to use OneDrive. There was some weird little things. I'm looking at your article, not your article, but I'm looking at the article on Windows Central Insider by Kevin Okemwa, who says all you have to do is be signed in with a Microsoft account.

Daniel Rubino [01:36:49]:
Yeah. So it looks like it's just a basic extension without any loopholes to jump through, which is good because Microsoft gets a lot of flack for that, obviously. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:36:59]:
You know, we knew that they had technical requirements, but we also knew you could still. You didn't have to have TPM2, for instance.

Daniel Rubino [01:37:09]:
No. You could bypass it. There were definitely. It's Windows. At the end of the day, there's always going to be a workaround some way.

Leo Laporte [01:37:15]:
Right. Right. Well, good news. If you're a Windows 10 user, the clock keeps on ticking.

Daniel Rubino [01:37:21]:
I guess this is where Apple differs from Microsoft. Right. Because Apple could just snap their fingers and make everybody jump. Microsoft tries to do it and everybody loses their mind. So it's.

Leo Laporte [01:37:33]:
Well, Apple makes its money in hardware, and so they can give you a free operating system because you bought their computer to do it. Microsoft. You didn't necessarily buy a computer from Microsoft to be using Windows. In fact, most people don't. We were talking earlier about a mythos. Microsoft has its own model, M Dash. And last this, I guess it was this month's patch Tuesday, had the largest number of fixes ever. Microsoft said at least 10 of them were generated by M Dash, its own security model.

Leo Laporte [01:38:08]:
And I would suspect that Mythos, which it also had access to, had some of those patches, also could be attributed to it. That's a huge. Oh, more than 200 fixes.

Daniel Rubino [01:38:18]:
That is probably one of the more interesting aspects of AI in terms of software. Right. It's his ability to find weaknesses and systems, find bugs and actually do advanced work. And I think that's. But conversely, of course, it could be just as dangerous if it's in the wrong hands because it can also be used to probe networks.

Leo Laporte [01:38:38]:
Finding the bugs is what is the first step to exploiting the bugs.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:38:43]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [01:38:43]:
That's the risk. Right. And that was what people were complaining about with Mythos, is it would write, it would find the bug, patch the bug and then write a proof of concept to test the patch. But any proof of concept that tests to see if the bug is still there can also be used to exploit the bug. It's the, you know, you're getting the code that for exploitation and the fact that it could do that in a single prompt reasonably is a little bit scary. I don't, I don't think anthropic overhyped that. I think it really is dangerous. But on the other hand, if you can do it with other tools now existent, what's the point in stopping it? There's going to be a big update.

Leo Laporte [01:39:22]:
We were talking about this on Windows Weekly with Paul Thurat on Wednesday, coming July 14th. Huge number of updates coming to Windows 11. So you might want to upgrade. Is this to celebrate America's 250th?

Daniel Rubino [01:39:38]:
No, it's not. But yeah, this is part of that K2 project I was talking about with, you know, introducing features. The ability to move the taskbar. Right.

Leo Laporte [01:39:50]:
Whoa, wait a minute.

Daniel Rubino [01:39:53]:
Yeah, it seems trivial and you know, I think like 1% of users probably do this, but Microsoft took that feature

Leo Laporte [01:39:59]:
out in Windows 11, so it, they

Daniel Rubino [01:40:02]:
didn't really take it out. It's, it's a little more complicated than that. They rewrote the taskbar for Windows 11. It uses a different technology now. It's, it written differently and so they recreated it and so it, to the end user, it feels like the same start system almost from when it looks 10.

Leo Laporte [01:40:20]:
Yeah.

Daniel Rubino [01:40:20]:
But they completely rewrote it and they didn't write into that the feature to move it because very few people actually do move it. Most people do keep it on the bottom. Probably less than 1% actually want to move it to the size or the top.

Leo Laporte [01:40:35]:
But those 1% are loud.

Daniel Rubino [01:40:37]:
They're very loud. And you know, you can make a good argument that, okay, they didn't have it on launch, but, you know, maybe they'll do it later. But they never said they were going to do it at all. And they were sticking to their guns for a long time. But now new team is in place and they're addressing and, you know, delivering a lot of fixes and improvements. For instance, you'll be able to pause Windows updates basically indefinitely.

Leo Laporte [01:41:01]:
What? Yay.

Daniel Rubino [01:41:03]:
Yeah. So that's been another thing that people have, have, you know, talked about because it is annoying to get that pop up saying you need to restart your computer now because it's. There's never a good time for it. Right. But people will be able to pause it now. There's also the point of time restore. Basically this is almost like an older system where it does a snapshot and so if something goes wrong with your system you can roll it back to the previous.

Leo Laporte [01:41:26]:
Oh, we used to have that. That's right.

Daniel Rubino [01:41:29]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:41:30]:
System restore. Yeah.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:41:31]:
They need to take some tips from the smart home here because. Because now when you get a smart home device, when you set it up it says would you like to have automatic updates? And you say yes, because you do. It's slightly different with smart home than your computer.

Leo Laporte [01:41:46]:
You do, you absolutely do.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:41:48]:
You absolutely do. And then it'll do it. And then it sets the update time and it'll say okay, I will update between 3am and 5am every. Whenever this happens.

Daniel Rubino [01:41:58]:
You could do that.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:41:59]:
I know you can kind of do that. But yeah, I don't think most people

Daniel Rubino [01:42:02]:
go ahead and do it.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:42:03]:
Yeah, it's always at the wrong time. Like it pops up at the wrong time. Do you want me to do it tonight? Well, I do but then I'll. But yes. Just stop, ignore. Just don't tell me and just do it. Just do it. Just do it.

Leo Laporte [01:42:13]:
Just do it. Do it when I'm not using the computer.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:42:16]:
And speaking of. And it's also the. The AI models like the chat GPT and the Claude desktop apps constantly wants

Leo Laporte [01:42:23]:
to update every day it seems like. Yeah. You know why?

Daniel Rubino [01:42:27]:
For those curious. Sorry. We have a hands on Windows episode to show you how to do all of this if you want to do it yourself.

Leo Laporte [01:42:34]:
And also all the new features. I believe if they haven't done it already, that's coming. That actually is ready going to be the new normal because AI is so fast. And the reason these AI is updated every day is because they're using AI to develop it. And as more and more software is developed by AI and maintained by AI, the updates are going to come fast and furious. Sorry.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:42:59]:
And I can't get away from AI AIs with us.

Leo Laporte [01:43:03]:
Well, you could try. There is a huge backlash now against these flock cameras.

Daniel Rubino [01:43:08]:
Oh yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:43:11]:
Every community has people saying no flock cameras. I understand why the police want them. So this, I think it all started with red light cameras where people were running red lights so they'd have a camera Take pictures after the red light came on, and people went through it and it stopped that. But then they thought, well, you know, what we could do is put these automated license plate readers in, and we could catch all kinds of malefactors. Well, the problem is these databases are getting bigger and bigger, and it's essentially a way of tracking. And now there's new companies coming along that can be attached to your Flock camera, which. The Flock camera is an automated license plate reader. It just keeps track of all the license plates going by.

Leo Laporte [01:43:56]:
You're using public thoroughfares. You know, I mean, you know, I guess that's part of the deal. But now they're also putting Bluetooth sensors on there so that they can capture, you know, as you drive by, they capture your phone's name, your car's name, they capture all the Bluetooth. Because our Bluetooth devices are always broadcast, broadcasting their names. They're getting more and more sophisticated. And there's this issue of Flock having a nationwide database of license plates and of law enforcement from time to time, using it to stalk people, to track people down who've broken a law in their state as they go to other states. So there's a big backlash. There's a big Ring cameras, too.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:44:43]:
Ring cameras, yeah, that was. I mean, so Ring had announced a partnership with Flock, and then they. Then they had their super bowl ad, which caused an awful lot of consternation, which was.

Leo Laporte [01:44:56]:
It was just a fine little lost

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:44:57]:
doggies, their pet finding feature, which actually showed this. This still image of homes with sort of radar, like searching rings coming out from. From ring cameras. And that one look just said that one shot just said surveillance state. And they just. People are stupid of everyone.

Leo Laporte [01:45:18]:
If you can find Fluffy, you can also find me, right?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:45:22]:
Yeah.

Daniel Rubino [01:45:23]:
Then, like an email leak that basically said that that was their next step was.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:45:27]:
So he's always. Jamie Simonoff has always said that his. His. His goal with Ring pretty much since its inception is to, you know, prevent crime, safer neighborhoods, create safer neighborhoods by. And. And he has. He is passionate about this, and he really does feel like the more. More cameras equal more security.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:45:50]:
There are lots of evidence that more cameras does not necessarily equal more security, but does equal more surveillance. More of what have people knowing what everyone is doing. And then the biggest concern with this was it was. So before Flock, they had a partnership with another. They have a partnership with Axon as well, which is the company that does all the body cameras. Yeah, but what happened with the Flock issue was because during this instance, so before, just before the Super Bowl. This was when the, the, all the dhs, the deportations were happening. There was all the unrest throughout the country.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:46:31]:
And the reporting was, and I think it was 404 media that broke the story was that the DHS was using Flock cameras, was tapping into Flock cameras to find potential illegal immigrants and Flock Safety was saying, no, they're not. We only have partnerships with individual jurisdictions, local police. We do not have, we do not have partnerships with ice. But, but ICE could come. And there was actually recent reporting about this where it was shown that ICE did actually access some Flock Safety cameras through a local authority. So, you know, ICE comes to your local sheriff's department and says, show me your cameras.

Leo Laporte [01:47:14]:
Right?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:47:15]:
They, they do it.

Dan Patterson [01:47:16]:
There's a subpoena.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:47:17]:
Yeah, I don't know that there was even a subpoena. I think it's more like, like partnerships between police and, and so people ain't stupid.

Leo Laporte [01:47:24]:
They know if the cameras are there, they will be used.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:47:28]:
And so whilst Flock and Ring and Axon say, you know, we had no partnerships with the federal, with federal agencies that, that the concern is you have partnerships with the local police and local agencies and then what about the partnerships that they have? Or what, what are they willing to, what are they going to do with the data that they receive? So Flock and Ring and Flock and Axon, their partnerships were not about these cameras. Their partnerships were more about back end integrations. But the fear of course is, and it comes back to AI, you know, if you can identify something in with a camera, you can identify a dog, you can identify a person. And at the same time, Ring launched facial recognition for its cameras. What is the next step? And while Ring may be very clear in all its messaging that we do not use, we do not access your cameras without your permission. This one feature did allow the cloud to process your camera data to look for this missing pet with your permission. But that tool now exists and we, you know, can it be, could it be misused in the way that the ICE apparently allegedly was misusing it, the access to cameras like Flock Safety, so you can connect all those dots. Even though everyone was saying we're working by the books, it rightly caused a lot of concern.

Leo Laporte [01:48:59]:
Can I show you what my Ring camera told me earlier today?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:49:02]:
It says, oh, you've got the AI descriptions heavy.

Leo Laporte [01:49:05]:
Not that one, this one. It says a cat is walking on the wall, a cat is standing on the wall, a person is walking on the porch, a cat is walking on the porch, a cat is sitting on the wall and looking Around. A cat is walking on the porch. A cat is walking on the wall. This is all today.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:49:18]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [01:49:19]:
Two people are bending and moving at the entrance.

Daniel Rubino [01:49:23]:
It needs AI to sort out.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:49:24]:
You need to turn on. They do actually have a really good new feature called oh, off my head. I've forgotten the exact phrase for it. But it. It is only urgent alert. So it uses AI to just to determine whether you actually. Unusual events is what it's called. So that would get rid of all the cats.

Leo Laporte [01:49:43]:
An Amazon delivery person is delivering a package at the entrance. Sometimes it'll say a guy in brown short pants is delivering a package. It's really funny. I love it.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:49:53]:
The problem is quite useful, this stuff. This is where AI is actually useful in the smart home. But better than Motion Alert, which is what you got before. Right?

Leo Laporte [01:50:02]:
Right, yeah. All it said. Yeah. We just go, somebody, something's going on out there. So do show this bonito. You showed this article earlier. Peter Diamandis, who is a former Google guy, he was the founder of xprize, you know, widely considered a genius, says humans behave better when they're being watched.

Daniel Rubino [01:50:21]:
I think we all know that the problem is we've been conditioned for the last 20 years that China is a surveillance state. And when you walk around there and anyone who's been in China, I've been there before, you know, as soon as you go through security and you check it like they take your photo and it's just cameras everywhere and we're told that's bad, they're bad people over there doing it. And now we're doing it. But it's like, well, it's not the government, it's just private corporations who end up making decisions. Deals in the back too. And the thing is, the whole history going back to the Patriot act is about private companies colluding with the government behind people's backs and giving them information. And oh, we didn't know about the subpoenas and oh, we just let people, you know, the government tap into people's phones and datas and all this kind of stuff. So there's just no trust here.

Daniel Rubino [01:51:11]:
And sure, these companies may have good intentions and you can sell fear, but that's what this is, is it's selling fear to people. But of course it can be quickly turned into some of the, you know, most draconian.

Leo Laporte [01:51:24]:
Well, it's the Panopticon.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:51:26]:
I grew up in London where we are surveilled every minute of the day. But to be fair, and I hate to be the sort of the.

Leo Laporte [01:51:36]:
There's no crime in London, right?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:51:38]:
Well, no, but I. So I grew up. I grew up during that IRA war and we had, you know, a lot. I mean, there was. That was why we got the mass surveillance in London was because they were putting bombs in garbage cans. And it was, you know, it.

Leo Laporte [01:51:55]:
That's always the reason.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:51:57]:
Yeah. You know, fear is the reason, and that is what we've got. We've got to go back to the. The love that the World cup brings. Let's all be happy and. And kind to each other. But, you know, there is. The surveillance state is.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:52:10]:
Is. Is a terrifying concept. We don't want the government watching everything we do. But the fact that, you know, cameras and recording devices can help when there are, you know, significant concerns or incidences, like someone planting bombs. You know, you can track them and you can find them. Things like, you know, there is. It's like all technology. It's how you use it.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:52:37]:
The technology isn't bad. It's how you use it that is, you know, it's got to be well implemented. And there's got to be a very valid reason I'm, you know, searching for people in neighborhoods is probably not a valid reason. It's not a dragnet. There shouldn't be technology used to surveil us just in case. But when there are issues, when there's something happening, being able to tap into the technology is a good thing. I mean, unfortunately, it didn't pan out well. But this is what we saw at the same time as the whole Ring Flock safety case was the Nancy Guthrie case and the Savannah Guthrie's mother, who was.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:53:13]:
Who went missing. And they were able to use doorbell camera footage to try and, you know, to get some idea of what happened.

Leo Laporte [01:53:19]:
They never caught the guy, though.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:53:21]:
They never caught the guy? No. So it didn't work out, but it could. It was better than nothing at that point. So, yeah, there's always this. It's a push.

Daniel Rubino [01:53:28]:
More cameras. Should have had more.

Leo Laporte [01:53:30]:
That's why we need more cameras. Peter Diamantis, I would point out, is a wealthy man and probably can figure out how to hide. But he says in his ex post of trillion sensors in space, in the air, on the ground, will allow us to know anything, anywhere, at any time. There will be no hiding. Humans behave better when they're being watched. He says it's a good thing. I won't disagree with anything he said there except that it's a good thing. I don't think it's a good thing.

Daniel Rubino [01:53:54]:
So again, it comes back to you Know, especially with the Flock camera. This is why a lot of jurisdictions and people are kind of, of fighting back. It's, it's not something people agreed to. Right. It's something that's again, happening to people. Right. If these things are just going up, towns are deciding to do it, and then it's only after the fact that people are like, wait, where are these things coming from? And it's just covered under that. Well, it's security.

Daniel Rubino [01:54:17]:
It's normal stuff that we do with our, your tax money. But I think again, that's why there's that pushback is that people don't feel like, you know, like, all right, if we want to have that conversation in our town about putting up cameras everywhere, let's, you know, have that discussion.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:54:34]:
Yeah.

Daniel Rubino [01:54:34]:
And it's always weird that we live, you know, people like, oh, we live in a democracy, unless you get the constitutional republic nerds. But like, we do have democratic mechanisms in this country and it's like we can put stuff like this to vote. Right. We do can do referendums. That's all possible, but we don't have that discussion. A lot of times these things just happen to us.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:54:55]:
Yes.

Daniel Rubino [01:54:55]:
And so that's why I think people, you know, it's a double edged sword. You could be like, well, but people are safer. But at the same time, you're going to foment this idea of, you know, being against technology and fighting back against this stuff, even though you could make reasonable arguments about having these cameras in certain places.

Dan Patterson [01:55:13]:
So there are two themes emerging in this episode and one is technology, top down. And the other is regulation. I mean, everything that you just said, Daniel, is correct and we could have discussions. We have democratic mechanisms and we can easily implement regulation that allows technology to flourish while protecting civil liberties. The same thing with artificial intelligence and, and the same challenges exist with top

Leo Laporte [01:55:47]:
down tech, but we don't use those mechanisms.

Dan Patterson [01:55:51]:
We choose not to deploy those mechanisms.

Leo Laporte [01:55:54]:
We're going to take a break. Very smart panel. Love having you on. Dan Patterson, Blackbird. AI Jennifer Pattison Tuohy from the Verge.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:56:03]:
We're not related.

Dan Patterson [01:56:05]:
We're not.

Leo Laporte [01:56:06]:
Oh, Patterson, Patterson. Are you related though to that guy from the Hunger Game? No, the, the, the vampire.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:56:14]:
Oh, that's Patinson.

Leo Laporte [01:56:15]:
Oh, another variant. They only probably came from the same people though, right? It's the same name.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:56:22]:
Probably. I think it's something to do with baking.

Leo Laporte [01:56:25]:
He's patting his cake.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:56:27]:
Pat. Patty cake. I don't know, I just made that up.

Leo Laporte [01:56:30]:
I think you're right. He's the son of a baker.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:56:34]:
Point.

Leo Laporte [01:56:35]:
He's a Niedenson and Daniel Rubino. Oh, I have so many more stories and only a little bit more time. Let's see, I'm going to have to do some story triage here. We didn't mention that Samsung is going to start charging for API access to SmartThings. We should have probably mentioned that earlier. So it was. See this is what I'm talking about. Your AI needs to have access to that API.

Leo Laporte [01:57:01]:
But to charge me, I don't know if I want to do that. That.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:57:04]:
Yeah, this is, this was. People are not happy about this. It is a. They, they sort of dressed it up and like we're going to, we're making vast improvements to our API. It'll be so much better. But yeah, it's 4.99amonth for developers to access the API now. But this Samsung goes. SmartThings goes way back in the smart home.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:57:24]:
It was one of the original smart home hubs and it's always been a real tinkerer device like great for setting up. It was all mainly based Z Wave. ZigBee used a lot of local radios and then when SmartThings was bought by Samsung they slowly kind of transitioned it away. And in fact the most recent SmartThings Hub does not have Z Wave radio in anymore. But they do. It does support matter. But Samsung stopped actually making the hardware itself and it has a third party that, that that makes their hubs now. And Samsung has put radios into all of its TVs and appliances and such.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:58:04]:
So thread radios and matter controller radios are in most of its hardware. And it's moving much more towards AI driven features, much less sort of focus on ZigBee, Z Wave, those local protocols does support Thread anyway for some reason this API is now going to cost you $5 a month to access and if you use Home Assistant to access to connect your SmartThings connected devices. If you have a SmartThings hub that's connected to Z wave or ZigBee that will now cost you $5 a month which is not going to go down well with that community. And Paulus shouts and from Home Assistant actually messaged me actually just today and he was saying they have an estimated 50,000 smartthing users that use Home Assistant and that's over. So he says we, we always estimate at least four times the number of actual users. So it's more like 200,000 people that will be affected by this. Individuals that are just running their smart home, not developers. So yeah, that's going to be a lot of very, that is a lot of very annoyed smart home.

Leo Laporte [01:59:14]:
And it doesn't just have to be Samsung products. I mean, one of the points of SmartThings was it was connect up for everything.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:59:21]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So if you've had a hub for many years and you use it to run lots of different devices like zigbee, Z Wave, now Thread and Matter. Yeah. That it will. I, I predict that this will push a lot of people off of the hub platform, which to be fair, it might have been their whole purpose.

Leo Laporte [01:59:43]:
They don't want to.

Daniel Rubino [01:59:44]:
Yeah.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [01:59:44]:
They had been dragging the legacy SmartThings community into very slowly over the decade or so since they, I don't know. When did they buy SmartThings? SmartThings been around about 15 years, I think so. And I think they bought it maybe six or seven years ago. So during that time they've slowly been sort of pushing out the old legacy style of SmartThings and moving it towards their new. You know, it's, it's the platform, when you buy a Samsung Fridge that you now you download the SmartThings app. It's completely unrecognizable from what SmartThings was when it first started. And I think they've, it would, it would behoove them in many ways to sort of slowly lose that part of their audience and really just focus on their main smart home goals, which are very AI powered. And it's a huge user base.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:00:36]:
I mean SmartThings probably has one of the largest user bases of the smart home platforms to date because, because you buy a Samsung appliance, you get the SmartThings app. So which is, you know, much, I think, much larger chunk of the smart home pie. But those people aren't necessarily doing what people who had a SmartThings Hub are doing.

Leo Laporte [02:00:57]:
Yeah, it seems like there's two categories of Smart home users. The ones that want to have it all local and the ones that want to connect to the cloud. And the advantage of the cloud is that you can keep the hardware on its own network and isolated, which is for security reasons a good thing to do.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:01:16]:
Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:01:17]:
If you have a local hub, you have to have it on the same network because. Or local devices because you have to be able to talk to it. But that's an insecure thing. So I don't, I don't know, I don't know. I like the idea of having an ha green server here and everything's local, but it's a security issue for me because I shouldn't really have it on the same network segment as the rest the of of my stuff.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:01:39]:
So I don't know. And there's, there's a, I mean the most people who are really into the smart home will tell you you just want everything local, but you do. And this is again just to go back to the matter point. That's what matter does. It does make everything gives you the potential for everything to be local. Not every platform uses it locally but the potential is there. You do need the cloud for the smart home. There's a lot of benefit of the cloud.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:02:03]:
You just do not want to be dependent on the cloud. That's where things can go wrong. And, and, and SmartThings now has hubs in all of its hardware as it mentioned. So your tv, your sound bar, your fridge, a couple of other. Oh they've got the, the audio frame thing like the frame tv. Lots of everything that smart things Samsung now manufactures has hubs in it. Not your washing machine and dryer. TVs do the TVs, the sound bars, they are the SmartThings Hub.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:02:38]:
But though SmartThings is very cloud dependent, even though it uses matter, it's very cloud dependent. So if that the SmartThings Hub was the original, was the original SmartThings Hub which is now in Gen 3 or 4 was the main way you could use SmartThings locally. And now using your Z Wave and your Zigbee devices and Thread, now you don't have, have, you're not. Well, you have that option but you're gonna have to pay $5 a month for it. So I think it will push people away from that hub and I think ultimately they're going to get out of that space entirely and just want you to be using your fridge as your smart home hub, which just seems silly but that's the way the smart home if you're going to move the smart home mainstream, the hub has always felt like a roadblock. People are like why do I need to buy, buy this little white box that costs $150 and stick it in my house. But when you for tinkerers and for people that really understand the technology because the reason you do that is because you own that device and you've got that control over these local devices, local connectivity protocols. So but for this, for the standard regular Samsung customer who's buying a appliance and they're like oh cool, I can get a notification on my phone that my washing machine is done.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:03:59]:
I can get notification on my, my Samsung TV that my dryer is Done or my fridge door was left open. That's all. They're really. They're like, oh, that's cool. They're not really thinking about the larger sort of implications there.

Leo Laporte [02:04:13]:
Okay. I'm sorry I asked every time. It's just so frustrating.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:04:19]:
It's so complicated and frustrating.

Leo Laporte [02:04:21]:
It shouldn't be so complicated. Maybe AI will solve this. I can just talk to my AI and say, you figure it. You figure out. Figure it out. We did figure out who was responsible for the Jaguar Land Rover hack. Turns out Russian hackers. This is the one that.

Leo Laporte [02:04:36]:
The damage is so severe that Jaguar had to shut down for a month, more than a month. It was so severe that the UK government had to bail out the company with a $2 billion loan. Cost the British economy two and a half billion dollars. Russia's at it again, Dan. I tell you, Australia has, of course, passed and now many other countries are considering passing a ban on social media for under 16s. Studies say it's not working. Four out of five, 80% of under 16s in Australia are still using social media.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:05:19]:
Shocking that.

Leo Laporte [02:05:20]:
What a shock. This is an observational study by the University of Newcastle. The legislation has resulted in, quote, limited implementation and incomplete compliance and substantial circumvention of social media restrictions. You just teaching. This is what Harper Reed told us when the law was passed. You're just going to teach these kids to be hackers. Australian's going to have the best hackers in the world.

Daniel Rubino [02:05:45]:
World.

Leo Laporte [02:05:45]:
Now Norway's going to do the same thing. The UK just announced it, right? And then immediately, Keir Starmer resigned. I don't think they were related, but the UK is going to implement that later in the year, early next year.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:06:00]:
It's just another example back to our very first topic of how hard it is to regulate these technologies.

Leo Laporte [02:06:06]:
Well, banning YouTube seems like a really dumb thing to do. I can understand maybe Instagram or Facebook, but YouTube, that's like saying you can't watch TV to people under 16, right? That's how they. That's.

Daniel Rubino [02:06:20]:
They're.

Leo Laporte [02:06:20]:
That's what they watch.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:06:22]:
But TV was very regulated for a very long time in the uk.

Leo Laporte [02:06:25]:
It was, yeah.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:06:26]:
Speaking of which, three channels when I was growing up, that was all.

Leo Laporte [02:06:29]:
Did you.

Dan Patterson [02:06:30]:
Did you.

Leo Laporte [02:06:30]:
Did your family pay the license fee?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:06:32]:
Yeah, you had to. They would come and, like, knock on your door if you didn't.

Leo Laporte [02:06:36]:
They had little trucks.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:06:37]:
Yeah. Did you say, yeah. The long wave radio.

Leo Laporte [02:06:41]:
BBC is going silent.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:06:44]:
Oh, so sad. This makes me sad.

Leo Laporte [02:06:49]:
The BBC stopped broadcasting Radio 4 on the 198khz. Long wave frequency after a century of transmission. We don't do long ray wave here in the United States, but in the. In the UK it did, yeah. BBC4. What was that? Was it music? Was it?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:07:07]:
No, it was information. It was. The long wave radio is like part of my childhood. My dad used to just listen to the cricket scores on it all the time. It was like lulling me to sleep. It's like my lullaby. But yeah, it was. The great thing about it was, you know, I mean it's like smart.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:07:23]:
Like smart home verticals. The long way radio had such reach that you could cat. You could get BBC Radio 4 anywhere in the world, I think almost because.

Leo Laporte [02:07:35]:
Wow.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:07:37]:
Wherever you were you could listen to it. And it was a very powerful tool. In fact it was used during like the French Resistance during World War II. Used long wave radio, used this transmission to help to communicate like it has. It's got such a fascinating history, this radio band, but it's. It's basically fallen foul to technology and I think the reason they're actually shutting it down is because they can no longer make the tubes. No one makes the tubes that keeps the antenna going. Something like that.

Leo Laporte [02:08:11]:
Oh. So it wasn't. They wanted to shut it down. They just didn't have a choice.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:08:14]:
And it wasn't financially viable to keep running it like. And because you couldn't manufacture the tubes that were needed anymore and no one uses it, everyone moved to digital radio and. Or FM is still. I mean radio in England is still a very.

Leo Laporte [02:08:31]:
Did you listen to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on BBC?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:08:35]:
Yeah, they used to that way. It wasn't that old. I'm not that old. But yes, they. Originally the original. It was one of the first sort of radio books.

Leo Laporte [02:08:46]:
Douglas Adams people know the Hitchhiker's Guide. They think maybe it was a book or a movie. But it started as a. Jones is the book with BBC Radio Play on BBC4.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:08:55]:
I know Radio 4, so you'll still.

Leo Laporte [02:08:59]:
But it'll be what, an Internet or will it be. Will they do broadcast?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:09:03]:
Radio 4 is a station like BC Radio.

Leo Laporte [02:09:07]:
It's just a long wave.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:09:08]:
It was broadcast on the long wave so you could listen to it anywhere. And it was a special feed. I think it wasn't the main Radio 4. I could be wrong. But yeah, Radio 4 is all. All talking, no music. So it was always. It was very low bandwidth.

Leo Laporte [02:09:23]:
Yeah.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:09:24]:
So you could. You could get it anywhere.

Leo Laporte [02:09:26]:
I like it.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:09:27]:
But it's definitely an end of an era. It was an incredibly important piece of technology for a very long time.

Leo Laporte [02:09:32]:
This may not look like an ancient book, it sure doesn't look like an ancient book to me. But that is the Herculaneum Scrolls. That were ancient scrolls from the Roman library of Herculaneum, carbonized by a volcanic eruption. This is all that was left. But believe it or not, thanks to AI, we've actually been able to read it using high resolution 3D scans of the scroll. You obviously can't unroll it, it would fall apart. So they X rayed it and they've been able to use AI to read the. I don't know if they got anything good.

Leo Laporte [02:10:14]:
I don't know if it was a good read, but they've been able to scan it and read it. These were leftover from the AD 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Dan Patterson [02:10:25]:
They're trying to keep kids off books back then.

Leo Laporte [02:10:28]:
Yeah, that's right, the volcano. Here's a big oopsie. Ford fired a bunch of engineers to replace them with automated systems. Oops. They had to hire them back because the automated systems made so many mistakes. So mistakenly says Charles Poon, VP of this sounds like it's made up VP of Vehicle Hardware Engineering. Mistakenly. We thought that just by introducing artificial intelligence and adjusting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high quality product.

Dan Patterson [02:11:04]:
How do you make that phone call? Like, who drew the short straw to like, look, you got a joe and fire them back?

Leo Laporte [02:11:10]:
I know we fired you, but no, I bet you a lot of those engineers like said, yeah, yeah, told you so. Haha.

Daniel Rubino [02:11:19]:
And the people who made that decision probably still have a job, right?

Leo Laporte [02:11:22]:
Oh yeah. They're gonna stay. Yeah. Notion had created a Gmail client, but they're gonna cancel it because so many people use bots to handle their email that mail wasn't getting through. AI powered Gmail client on Notion Mail will shut down on September 22nd. Notion said. As Notion agents have gotten more capable, we've seen more users hand off email flows to agents. Today, more than half of Notion Mail users manage emails without ever opening their inbox.

Leo Laporte [02:12:02]:
So I guess you didn't really need us after all. So then we're going to shut it down.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:12:07]:
How do you do that? I want to learn that.

Leo Laporte [02:12:10]:
Oh, I do. That's what I do. I have my. Read my email for me if you ever get an email from me. That sounds a little mechanical. No, I actually don't have a. Write my email. I really wouldn't want to do that.

Daniel Rubino [02:12:26]:
I don't think.

Leo Laporte [02:12:28]:
Meta, you may remember, was tracking its employees mouse movements for AI training. Now they've stopped it. Not because it was immoral or wrong or bad, but just because they're afraid of data, that the data is going to be exfiltrated. The Model Capability initiative, which they rolled out in April, captures the mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes of US based employees with occasional screenshots feeds them into the Meta models for training. But Meta realized that sensitive employee data was inadvertently accessible to everyone else, all Meta staff, including private conversations, performance data and transcriptions. Well, yeah, you harvest everybody's keystrokes, put it in a database. Shocking. Just a reminder, you don't own anything you don't actually physically hold.

Leo Laporte [02:13:24]:
PlayStation is deleting 551 movies from your account. I never bought any movies in the PlayStation Store. But if you bought Rambo First Blood, you know what? You're not gonna miss it. Bridget Jones Diary. Oh, the Deer Hunter. Now that's a good movie.

Daniel Rubino [02:13:42]:
How far away are they from removing games though? And I'm sure they've already done that. Yeah.

Leo Laporte [02:13:47]:
As of September 1st, due to our content licensing arrangements, you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Studio Canal content and it will be removed from your video library. So just a reminder, you don't really own anything. You buy owners.

Daniel Rubino [02:14:07]:
The best part is you don't get any money back. It's just, oh, no.

Leo Laporte [02:14:12]:
Gone. And if you look at the license agreement you never really owned was just there. We take one quick break and then some final words, including a farewell to one of our favorite people who passed away this week. Few final thoughts before we wrap things up on the show today. Let me see, we had a whole oops segment planned. All the things AI did wrong this. This week. Let me see, I have a few more here.

Leo Laporte [02:14:43]:
US Auto Now, I don't know if this is a good idea. US Auto regulators want to eliminate the brake pedal in your Robo Taxi.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:14:54]:
Why?

Leo Laporte [02:14:59]:
That's a good question. They say that requiring manually operated methods of stopping driverless vehicles is a barrier to innovation.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:15:10]:
Didn't want to just go into someone's. Oh no, that. That was. Had a person in it. I'm sorry. There was that Tesla crash, right?

Leo Laporte [02:15:16]:
Yeah, there was a huge. Now your test. But the Robo Taxi or, or the Waymo or whatever. Yeah. Actually there's always a big red stop button, isn't there? Like get me out of here button

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:15:29]:
one.

Leo Laporte [02:15:29]:
Yeah, me neither. So I don't know. NHTSA is that they have mid Atlanta, don't they? Oh, you live Carolina?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:15:36]:
Yeah, I live in Charleston. I don't. We have horses in carriage.

Leo Laporte [02:15:39]:
We never have them in Charleston. Never.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:15:42]:
I doubt it.

Leo Laporte [02:15:44]:
Nhtsa, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published a notice of rulemaking on Friday to modify federal brake safety standards. I have to think Elon had something to do with this for light vehicles. By eliminating the requirement for vehicles equipped with automated driving systems and no manual controls to have foot operated service brakes or manually operated parking.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:16:06]:
So there would still be a some kind of stop though it just wouldn't be a break. I get. I think I see that like they're saying this is a completely different type of thing.

Leo Laporte [02:16:15]:
You don't have a steering wheel.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:16:16]:
There's no one sitting there with their feet on the pedals. So as long as there's some way of stopping it. Please.

Daniel Rubino [02:16:23]:
Yeah, go into your app.

Leo Laporte [02:16:26]:
Open your app. Yes, stop please.

Dan Patterson [02:16:31]:
Another technology regulation metaphor.

Leo Laporte [02:16:34]:
Yeah. One million passports have leaked online database of a million passports. Not just US passports. People were using. Guess why People were using passports for age verification. This is the problem, one of the problems, one of the many problems with age verification. The person who wrote the book Careless People, which was an excellent book. Sarah Wynn Williams.

Leo Laporte [02:17:04]:
It was an expose on her years working at Meta and it was wow. Meta is now going after her. She says they're punishing me even though I'm a whistleblower. They're punishing her for disclosing its illegal and indefensible workplace conditions and corporations corporate misconduct to federal regulators. She did write a book and probably made some money on it. She says Meta is doing this to strike fear into the heart of anyone else who dares to consider speaking the truth about Meta's unlawful and abusive practices in the public interest. Meta of course went after her in court and is suing her finally. We are so sad to have learned of the passing of Om Malik.

Leo Laporte [02:17:54]:
I don't know Jenny. Any of you know Ohm.

Dan Patterson [02:17:56]:
Yeah, it was impossible to work. I mean I did not know him well but he couldn't work in technology immediately. Amazing in the aughts and 2010s without knowing ohm.

Leo Laporte [02:18:07]:
Yeah, he was on our Show I think 14 or 15 times. I. I was a huge fan. He was a deep philosopher, a great artist. He a master with a Leica camera. He loved his Leica and took amazing pictures. Started the tech blog GigaOM. Many of the people you know who've been on this show besides Ohm worked at gigaom.

Leo Laporte [02:18:27]:
Stacey Higginbotham, Kevin Toffel Janko records a lot of the best journalists in tech started at Gigaom. He started that in 2001, semi retired, I think. 2014, to become a venture capitalist. Had investments in a lot of the companies. You know, let's see. 2015, Gigaom shut down with 6.4 million monthly readers. Was really one of the great places to get tech information. He was always a welcome visitor to the show.

Leo Laporte [02:19:07]:
He once called me the Yoda of tech. And I said, no, no, you're the Yoda of tech. I'm the, I'm the Jar Jar of tech. He had this deep understanding and you know what's really sad is that his blog, which is OM Co, some of the best articles he'd ever written were just came out this month. For instance, June 7, his article about Mythos, just, just, just brilliant writing. His writing was better than ever. He'd had heart trouble for years. Passed away this week, Wednesday at the age of 59.

Leo Laporte [02:19:46]:
Very, very young. But we are very happy to have known him and we will miss the man. If you go to our site TWiT TV and search for Omallick O m M A I L I k you'll find many shows that he appeared on. I think his last appearance here was around 2015 when his health problems began. I brought up this article, I think a few weeks ago that I would recommend everybody read if you want to get a sense of who oh Malik is. We are living in Pinocchio's world in which he writes about one of his favorite pens, a Mont Blanc that commemorates Pinocchio. But the article takes a little bit of a turn when he talks about the true meaning of Pinocchio and the fact that we are all living in Pinocchio's world today.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:20:39]:
One of the greats.

Leo Laporte [02:20:41]:
Really, really. One of the greats. And we will very much miss him. That is it for this week in tech. For this week, I want to thank you Jennifer Pattison Tuohy. Your wonderful. I will say nice things about you when you pass away. Senior reviewer.

Leo Laporte [02:20:56]:
No, no, I'm much older than you. Senior reviewer. Theverge.com she writes about all kinds of things, but especially home automation. Tell me some of the doohickeys you've got around the house today.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:21:09]:
Oh, well, next week I have lots of reviews coming out. I've been reviewing the new Google home speaker and the new Schlage Sense Pro Smart lock that you should have waited to buy.

Leo Laporte [02:21:20]:
I should have waited to buy?

Daniel Rubino [02:21:22]:
Yes.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:21:23]:
And then those weird robot things, things that I Can't wait to get rid of and like the Switchbot.

Leo Laporte [02:21:29]:
I can't. I'm. I can't wait to read review of that.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:21:33]:
Yeah. Cuz I'm normally quite nice, but even

Leo Laporte [02:21:35]:
the kids didn't like this thing.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:21:37]:
Not really.

Leo Laporte [02:21:38]:
That's what surprises me. I mean, isn't it supposed to be all cute and cuddly?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:21:41]:
That's the thing. It's not cuddly. You want to pick it up, but it's.

Leo Laporte [02:21:44]:
It's hard plastic and it's on wheels and it's taking pictures of your house and the two.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:21:50]:
Yeah, the. There's so many things I love Switchbot. Switchbot is a great company. They come up with all sorts of crazy and wonderful ideas, but this one I'm. I'm not sold on. And then the robot lawnmowers in my backyard. You were talking about not getting injured. Well, getting in.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:22:03]:
You don't get injured in home automation, but my robot lawnmowers beg to differ.

Leo Laporte [02:22:07]:
Do not lie in front of your robot lawnmower. It hasn't hurt you, has it?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:22:13]:
No, well, it hurt my husband, but it was technically, it was technically his fault, so.

Leo Laporte [02:22:18]:
But just not badly, I hope.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:22:20]:
No, no, just, just, you know, permanent scarring. But.

Leo Laporte [02:22:23]:
Oh my God, it nipped him.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:22:26]:
It was again his own fault. But there are. It's a dangerous job, I'm just telling you.

Leo Laporte [02:22:32]:
Oh my gosh. Which, which one do you have?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:22:36]:
Right now I'm testing one from Dreamy, one from Husqvarna, and one from Mimosha.

Leo Laporte [02:22:43]:
Oh, so you have the best mowed lawn in your neighborhood.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:22:46]:
You'd think. You'd think.

Leo Laporte [02:22:48]:
Is this because you're the only virgin viewer who has a lawn?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:22:51]:
Has a lawn.

Leo Laporte [02:22:52]:
Yes. This is the real reason. It's so nice to see you. Jennifer also pops up every month with Micah Sargent on Tech News Weekly. And we always love having you on the shows. Thank you. Dan Patterson's in Brooklyn, so he neither has a lock nor a lawn, but he is. Well, he has a lock, I have a lock.

Dan Patterson [02:23:10]:
Old fashioned key locks.

Leo Laporte [02:23:12]:
Yeah, he probably has many locks, actually. Senior director of Content, Blackbird. AI. Tell me what's going on at Blackbird. Last time you were on, you made an offer people could sign up for your disinformation detector. Is that still out there? Yeah, yeah.

Dan Patterson [02:23:28]:
We have a number of tools. Most of them are not consumer facing, but we do have one called Compass. That's Compass, Blackbird AI with which it is made for journalists and I mean everyone else. It will detect deepfakes or claim. Like if you see a post on the social web and you wonder, is this BS or real? Just paste it into compass and it will tell you not just true or false, but it will tell you the context. We call it a context checker, not a fact checker. And far more than, you know, just generative AI links. It'll give you real deep context and let you find and read more about what you're finding.

Dan Patterson [02:24:11]:
Also, of course, Deep Dive and others.

Leo Laporte [02:24:13]:
I get bit all the time now, especially on X.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:24:17]:
They had that some of the recent searches. That just sums up the world right now.

Leo Laporte [02:24:22]:
Social media bans and Nepal. Yeah, right.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:24:25]:
Is Taylor Swift breaking with Travis Cow?

Leo Laporte [02:24:27]:
No, they're getting married. I found out they're getting married.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:24:30]:
Donald Trump won the election. Like those are the two most important things in life.

Leo Laporte [02:24:33]:
Yeah, type of claimant. But I saw this video. I have to find it and I can feed it into the. Cause you do vision, which is fantastic.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:24:41]:
That's great.

Leo Laporte [02:24:41]:
I can feed it in. It was a picture of a cat and a tube and the cat would jump down the tube and slide down it and just form. I thought, oh, that gotta get one of those. And then Lisa said, you dummy, that's AI. You can't. Cats don't slide down tubes. What are you nuts? So I guess I have in a way. I have compass.

Leo Laporte [02:25:03]:
It's my wife. But there are times even, even Lisa might be fooled that I could use compass, Blackbird, AI. And it's really nice to have that. Thank you for doing well.

Dan Patterson [02:25:15]:
Thanks. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Sorry about the frog voice.

Leo Laporte [02:25:19]:
No, you sound fine. Our Discord chat, our club chat says, Leo, you're such a boomer. I saw it. It was a video. The cat went down the tube and I saw it.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:25:31]:
I didn't remember that.

Leo Laporte [02:25:33]:
Did you? Were you even for a moment fooled by that?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:25:37]:
I am fooled by the stairs though. They're showing in the chat. I could imagine a cat doing that.

Leo Laporte [02:25:43]:
Oh, well, let me see now. Okay, this is.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:25:45]:
It's the slide.

Leo Laporte [02:25:46]:
This is a test for everybody to see the slide. Oh yeah, that looks real. Sure, that's AI. No, that's real.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:25:54]:
That looks quite real to me. But who knows? These days you can't believe your eyes.

Leo Laporte [02:25:59]:
Exactly. If you're smart, you make it kind of like low quality fuzzy. Yeah, well, anyway,

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:26:07]:
we've got Dan to save us.

Leo Laporte [02:26:09]:
Here's what happens when a cat jumps down a tube. I think that one's. Cats do get up to the darnest things, don't they? And then there's Daniel Rubino. He is the editor in chief of the wonderful Windows Central. It's always a pleasure to see you, Daniel. I am sorry that you're not into FIFA, soccer or F1 sports, but I'm glad you're into Microsoft and Windows. Thank God somebody is.

Daniel Rubino [02:26:40]:
You were playing here at Foxborough, so I could.

Leo Laporte [02:26:43]:
I know you're just up the road a piece and everything. Could you hear the cheers?

Daniel Rubino [02:26:48]:
No, no. But they got the signs on the highway, so.

Leo Laporte [02:26:50]:
I love it how they say. What did they say? Like, New York, New Jersey stadium or something? I mean, it's like. It's like. It's not even in New York. It's where the Giants play, but it's.

Daniel Rubino [02:26:58]:
Oh, right, yeah. They did give it in Massachusetts.

Leo Laporte [02:27:01]:
It's the same thing with this. So the. They're using the old the 49ers stadium down in Santa Clara, but they say San Francisco. It's not Sanford. That's 50 miles away. It's like Foxborough.

Daniel Rubino [02:27:15]:
It's like every place in Boston, it's like. I mean, Massachusetts is basically just Boston. Right? Right.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:27:20]:
It's now Scotland. It's now Scotland, officially.

Daniel Rubino [02:27:23]:
Right, Right. Oh, yeah.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:27:24]:
Right.

Leo Laporte [02:27:24]:
Yes. Was it true that the Scots drank all the beer in Boston? Is that true?

Daniel Rubino [02:27:30]:
South Boston? That's the rumor, but I think it was just from one pub.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:27:34]:
But it was a good story, though.

Leo Laporte [02:27:37]:
So you're telling me that a cat. A cat couldn't.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:27:43]:
Cat videos.

Daniel Rubino [02:27:44]:
Okay?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy [02:27:47]:
That is what AI is for.

Leo Laporte [02:27:49]:
This is the tube. And I swear to God, I think that's real. I think that's real. Don't you think a cat could do that? No, I didn't.

Dan Patterson [02:27:57]:
We built a data center next to my house for this.

Daniel Rubino [02:28:01]:
Yeah, right. Exactly.

Leo Laporte [02:28:02]:
Do you live next door to a data center?

Dan Patterson [02:28:04]:
No, I live in Brooklyn.

Leo Laporte [02:28:05]:
No, you live in Brooklyn. No locks. Okay, let me get this straight. No lawns, no data centers, but the best pizza. You can watch the show live as we do it at, well, in our club, Twitter, discord, but also YouTube, Twitch, X.com, facebook, LinkedIn and Kik after the fact on demand versions of the show available at the website. That's Twit TV. There's also a YouTube channel with a video, and you can subscribe to audio or video versions of the show in your favorite podcast client. I hope you will do that.

Leo Laporte [02:28:40]:
And we thank you so much for stopping by. As I've said for now, 21 years, at the end of every show, thanks for being here. Another twit is in the can. See you next week.