Windows Weekly 929 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show
00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's time for Windows Weekly Paul's in Mexico City, richard's in Sydney, australia, but that doesn't matter. We're going to gather together and talk about Week D. 23h2 is at least, as last we checked the first out not 24H2. We'll talk about some features you might want to look for. We also want to talk about a big breach that Richard Campbell was party to Not a good one on Friday night, and a little bit of AI antitrust news, and then some Xbox gaming A big show all ahead. Next, on Windows Weekly Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is twit. This is windows weekly with paul thurad and richard campbell. Episode 929, recorded wednesday, april 23rd 2025. The blue screen of soup. Hey, boys and girls, winners and dozers, I didn't mean to scare you.
01:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
When did we stop trying? Do you remember? When did this happen to us?
01:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's Windows Weekly time with Eeyore Paul Theriot.
01:21 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm your host, Winnie the Pooh. I guess that leaves me as Tigger.
01:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You'reigger, you are tigger, that's good. That's richard campbell from runners radiocom. Paul thurott from thurottcom. I would be uh, wait a minute, leo laporte there you go.
01:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Can't tell your players without a card uh, that was check my underwear.
01:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Apparently I'm joe boxer hey, joe, how's it going? How's it going? Where are you going with that windows in your hand?
01:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
uh, this is episode 929 and a continuing saga as we attempt to plumb the depths of microsoft it turns out at the bottom of the barrel there's a little escape hatch and it keeps going, you know.
02:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We call that the outflow. Yes, the effluence Effluent. Welcome to the effluence Yep. So, paulie, what's new? It's week D, is that exciting?
02:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Not yet, well, not really at all, because we already knew it was coming.
02:28
I know, I'm trying to fourth month of 2025 and we're still talking about 24 h2 my good well, the thing we're talking about today is they didn't release the 24 h2 preview updates of the time of this recording, but I expect it by thursday. You know this has happened, I bet, five or six times in the past 12 months. You know, for some reason the preview update day comes around week d, tuesday, yeah, and we don't get 24 h2 until a few days later. So I don't know. Anyway, we got 23 h2 and 23 h2 is basically it's going to be the same list of features two years old well, I mean, it's not 2025 and we're waiting for 2024 sorry the uh.
03:10
The next update for 23 h2. So in other words 23 24 h2 are aligned feature wise. So the preview update that we got for 23 h2 will be virtually identical to the one we will get for 24 h2 and and they will be identical virtually to the patch Tuesday update we get in May.
03:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Look, I understand. I still can't believe it's 2025, but you would think a company like Microsoft would have something that would tell them what year it is.
03:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't know. Yeah, so when Microsoft switched to year names for operating systems and also for Office, I guess Maybe that was a mistake. It was like oh, people are used to this with cars so they assume you're gonna have a new one every year, so that got to be a little bit of a problem. So then it went back to version numbers or just numbers, you know whatever. Who cares what they name these things? But yeah, this 23, 24 h2 stuff is mostly under the covers. I think most people wouldn't really even be aware of it.
04:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, well they are, though, because, uh, microsoft uses those designations to tell you when they're deprecating something. So, yeah, well, that's when you become aware of it.
04:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You need to know, yeah I mean I, I talk about this incessantly, so if you pay attention to me, for some reason you've been hearing this a lot, but it's, I don't know. I guess most mainstream users, non-technical uses probably doesn't matter too much.
04:21 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I guess I don't know does it, yeah, yeah, it'd be really interesting study to see when do people apply any of these I when they're forced to.
04:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think is where most of this does I mean back when you could say no still. I told the story a million times. But I went into my wife's office this is probably 10 years ago or something and there's all these windows like in the bottom corner. Just you can see this top of them like sticking out of the bottom of the screen like what's going on over there? She's like I don't think keeps trying to update I'm like she just slides it down.
04:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm like, okay, but sometimes so, let me just check what I'm, what I'm running here, because, you're right, I don't know. See the. I guess internally the thing that microsoft cares about is 26 100.3, 3 775.
05:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
that's yeah. So this is a mistake for me to try to do off the top of my head, but 26 100 is the stable branch of 24 h2, right, right. And then there's a 26 I think it was 120 which is like uh, I don't remember any more beta channel probably this is 26 200 is dev, this is the one that they just moved on from. Okay, um, yeah, I'm not good at that. I don't remember these things. They're too, this is too much.
05:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
By the way, this is licensed to leo laporte org name.
05:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, which uh remember when that was such a big deal. You still like. People would be like well, how do I change? I want to change.
05:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't want to be your name it's in the registry somewhere.
05:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Good luck, um, I mean you can change. You can change it. Uh, good, good luck I like that.
05:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's when you start getting spanned to leo at org name oh yeah, I mean actually like the modern interface.
06:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Let me see if it even comes up in there. I think I would just know this. But uh, the modern version of that ui does it say it doesn't? I don't think my name's in here anywhere. Product key no, they just kind of get rid of it. So I don't think we're ever going to see a uh, an update for that. But you can go into the registry and change it if you want okay, I mean, I don't care oh, but maybe that will be next week's tip, leo, okay, okay, anything is possible you could.
06:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you were steve gibson you'd write a 300k assembly language program.
06:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That would change it if I was paul thrott, I would write a 300 page article. But um, each to each his own. Yeah, there's different ways to approach the problem, I guess yes, anyhow. Yeah, so it's week D, like. We got, like I said, 23h2. We got that preview update 24H2, not yet, although by the time you listen to the show maybe it might be out. I would expect it by Thursday. That's been the schedule. No surprises in the new feature list. The big one to me is the phone link integration with the start menu, so you get that extra panel on the side where you can do your phone link stuff without running. Well, the app's running in the background, obviously, but it's not. You know, you don't have the full app up, which is actually. I've gotten quite used to it, I have to say. The first time I started I thought it was like this weird cancerous growth, but then I was like you know what? Actually I use phone link a lot, so I find this to be very helpful. Yeah, I like it.
07:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um, it's good yeah it's better with a Samsung phone than it is with anything else.
07:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, it is, yes, it is, and that's not irritating.
07:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But there you go.
07:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
At least Samsung phones sound terrible. That moment of silence was brought to you by Samsung. Okay, anywho.
07:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We all had the good sense just to hold on.
07:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Let Paul own that one.
07:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
My mama always told me If you have any feedback to that comment, please write them to Paul at Anyhow, okay. So beyond that, we have had several insider preview builds across various channels. So Devin Beta got some new text actions in Click To Do so. You know, this is the thing, the feature where you kind of you hold down the Windows key, click on the screen. They have to have a Copilot plus PC and, depending on what's on screen, you get text and or image actions. And the text actions started out with all the obvious ones copy, clipboard so you can paste it into notepad or something, or summarize, rewrite, et cetera. But now they've added ones for practice in Reading Coach.
08:30
Reading Coach is a. I believe it's a downloadable app. I don't think it comes. Is that the one? Yeah, that's a. Yeah, you need. It requires an app install from the Microsoft store and then read with Immersive Reader.
08:41
Immersive Reader is that feature that we mostly know from Microsoft Edge, but it's that distraction-free interface for reading a web article, so you can do that with whatever the text is on screen instead of just a web page, which is pretty cool, honestly. And then the other stuff is pretty small, honestly. There's a custom dictionary coming for. Well, there is a custom dictionary that Microsoft has been holding for you with voice access, but now it's going to allow you to add words to it so you can help it improve dictation accuracy, and it's so hard to keep track of this stuff.
09:16
But another Copilot plus PC feature this one's Snapdragon X only, for now it's still in preview is the ability to find photos or other images that are in the cloud, which right now only means one drive. This has been in the insider program for most places that have copilot or copilot plus PCs, but it's now available in the EEA, the European economic area, I guess. Is that what that is? Yeah, and this is just the ability to use natural language to find photos. So in other words, like find those photos of me wearing green pants, or something like that.
09:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But under the hood, that means that they're taking all the photos that are in OneDrive and running it through an image recognizer and writing tags for them.
10:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, that makes it sound like they're just indexing it, richard, that's so low tech and so accurate. Uh, yeah, I mean they. I look back and we've talked about this a little bit cairo and then longhorn. We had these, this notion that the database was going to be the file system and this would allow rich searching and so forth. That never worked, but the big problem was that it required good metadata, and so when you create a Word document, there's a set of metadata associated. It was pretty good, obviously, jpeg files. Take a picture of the camera phone, whatever it has all this location data, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
10:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But a lot of files don't have that stuff. Well, and that's the old XKCD article, right? It's like I'd like to have the location of every image and it mapped. It's like, oh yeah, no problem, that's already in the data. And it's like, oh, and I want to know if there's a burn on the picture or not.
11:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's like I need app and adding metadata. You know like you would do this with MP3 files. You could edit those so they're perfect or whatever, and then you copy them to another drive or to a different computer, open them. They're not perfect anymore. And you know this is just the nightmare of you know, when you have to do this by yourself, it's terrible. So at least in this case, ai is being used to kind of automate it and it. You know I I wasn't really joking, but I was half joking that it's a form of indexing, really right. Yeah, the idea is that later on you want to find that thing quickly. So you know you store photos in one drive. It's doing some kind of thing in the background. Whatever it is essentially indexing. Um, you know what? I don't care how it works, as long as it works.
11:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I just wanted to come up quick, you know I mean, I also just love the fact that they they're doing this for free now, right like this used to be. 10 years ago, this was leading edge generative ai stuff doing image recognition. Now it's happening against your will on one drive yeah, and that's the perfect definition of insurification.
12:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
when you, you think about it, it's happening, you have nothing to do with it and you can't stop it. So well, you could stop it Just don't use OneDrive, I guess. But you have to use something and they're all going to do something like this. I mean, I can tell you from experience, and literally from as recently as lunch today, right before the show, that when I go to Google photos and I search for something, it is it uses like a Gemini AI thing by default. It is the most worthless piece of garbage ever made by any man. It is terrible and it's awful. And Google, like didn't invent search, but they kind of did Right, I mean, like this is the thing they do, right, they perfected it. You would think so. So, but now they're. But I guess they're doing the flower phylogenon thing. I'm just gonna bring that up every week. You know they're, they've crested the hill or something, I don't know. So I I have high hopes, but the hill realistic expectations.
12:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I like that.
12:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's a good phrase crested the hill yeah in words it's all downhill from here, that's it yeah, yeah, which is kind of like Then you jump the shark. Right right.
13:10 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah.
13:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's. As you're picking up speed at the bottom of that hill, you decide to try to make yourself relevant again and you miss it so hard that it's actually kind of humorous.
13:22
That's it. Okay, so that's Windows. And then we just we got a. There's been this news lately that Microsoft is working on changing the blue screen of death In the Insider program. Off and on. For a long time it's been a green screen of death. It is still, and in the Canary build they released today. They had talked about this earlier. I'd never seen a picture of it. They were going to change the style of the presentation so that it was more like the Windows 11 style, and to me it looks almost exactly the same.
13:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah if you scroll down, there's a picture of it there. What's the thinking that goes into? Oh, you know what Windows really needs.
14:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it's a chroma key green, so you can put your own face screaming into that shot very easily, you know yes, that's true.
14:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They sometimes you'll see like a, like a QR code in there. I actually think that's pretty useful if you actually want to find out what's going on there. What does it tell? You when you have you. It's supposed to go to the kb article about that. Oh, that's cool, that would be cool. It would be cool if it worked, leo, but I I never, well to my memory I don't think I ever got it to work. It would just go to some.
14:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We would go to supportmicrosoftcom and say this file cannot be found for years I told people all of that stuff in the blue screen of death, that's not for you, it's not for you, that's not for you, it's um, that's for. That's for a developer. If they, you know, had access to the source code for windows, they might be able to use that to figure out where it went wrong.
14:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But even then it's highly unlikely it's very difficult to find a case where the user could do something to fix that Right. If it's some memory error, obviously, what are you going to do about that? Like you know, like maybe there's an update to the app you're using or there's a new driver, or maybe there's an old driver that works better, or whatever it might be, but, like, for the most part it's a, it's a kind of forensic investigation that I don't think most people are, for we, we just you know when, when would a person upgrade windows or something? And you know, I not jokingly said one, when they're forced to, and you think those people are going to go. Oh, I better let me write this down, okay oh, they do you know.
15:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And then they called the radio show and said, yeah, I got this blue screen of death with let me read you, the memory dump and it's like no, no no, please don't stop.
15:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, but that's. Those are people who are engaged enough that they want to get answers from a radio show, like I, I think most people are like special. I just I'm gonna, I'm gonna reboot this thing, I'm gonna assume and hope it works now and I'm just gonna go about my business and well you know, if they had a choice, they would minimize that blue screen of death and put it in the corner of their screen.
16:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, yeah, that's right, just like your wife, I mean, if it's over the corner screen. That's all my last blue screens of death, if it said you know, this thing happened because of the last hot fix and you can undo that by doing this. I guess that might be of use. Yes, but that's not really off. Nope, the problem is when a computer crashes, it crashes usually so far down the stack that exactly whatever it says went wrong has nothing to do.
16:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is really, this is a sophisticated kernel. Uh, you know, if it actually crashes down to this level, it's way too late. What do you think you're gonna? What are you gonna play?
16:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
oh, I got a memory dump game on there, you know let me fill up your hard drive with memory dumps I know I think I've met only like three people who can actually know what to do with a stack trace.
16:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, like of course, yeah, rare yep and eat. But those people even are going to say, well, yeah, but this is way later after the crash and so it's useless to me you're supposed to go back.
16:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, you can go back to the event. Um, what's the event logger called the event something?
17:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
in common list. That's really useful because you could actually modify running code. So put you the debugger, you could change the value of variables, modify the code and the program just continues on, right. That's not. That's common list, modern windows I actually, and I think this comes to the fact that developers are so used to putting error codes in their messages that they forget that that's not useful to anybody except them, right, maybe?
17:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We're at the point, I think, with this stuff, where this should be rare, right. Yeah, this should not happen that much. Yeah, it sounds unsophisticated what I said earlier, like I'm just going to go about my business, but the truth is, honestly, for most people, most of the time that actually is fine, that's fine, I have a blue screen story for much later in the show.
17:51
I'm actually. I just reminded myself I should have looked at the event viewer to see if I could find out anything about that, and I'm looking now, but I don't. The problem is the event viewer has got about 1.1 million items in it right now, so it's kind of. I think I think there are a thousand are generated every second or so. It's stupid. How many events are in here. Anyhow, I, I, yeah, it's not worth it.
18:15
This is the you know. When you used to, when cars first came out, you had to be a mechanic to own a car. When computers first came out, you had to really know what you're doing and I think we we reached a point now. Like they're not perfect. Obviously we're talking about blue screens, but hopefully these things are rare for most people and it's just not worth even having this information in your head. You know, well, it's like the thing Leo asked. Like he said I want to change the org name. I'm like you can do it. It's like how I don't. It's like I don't remember. I know it's in the registry, like I know you could find it. In fact, you could search. I bet you could search the registry right now for org name and you'd probably come up with it. You'd probably do it that way.
18:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But you're right, a lot of these pieces are visibility into systems from the past that the average consumer I mean. What does it do to the average consumer that they feel like I'm not qualified to use this thing?
19:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
that feel like I'm not qualified to use this thing. Yeah, yep, see, now I'm looking for org name in the registry. Nice, I'll find it.
19:12
It's going to be at least two or three locations. You're doing org name hunting, why not Okay? Anyway, beyond the week D half update we got, and the dev slash beta stuff I just mentioned, and the Canary build was the green screen that had appeared earlier in other builds. I've not personally seen it. That's the first time I've seen a picture of it, so to me that didn't look very different. Last week, I think maybe Thursday, friday, ubuntu released the latest version of their Linux distribution, which I wouldn't normally mention in the Windows section, except for two things there's native ARM64 support. Now there's an ISO so you can actually download this thing, and there's BitLocker support, and what that means is you don't have to decrypt the disk before you do a dual boot configuration and then you would go back later and reapply it. Now the installer understands BitLocker and it will just work with it and you don't have to ever change anything, which sounds awesome. I failed to install it on two different computers this morning, so I can't actually verify that that's the case and I don't know why.
20:21 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So I will say that, but this sounds like the thing I should be loading on that Snapdragon dev kit.
20:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yeah, assuming you can figure out how to boot from USB on that thing. Yeah, that's a good point, which I haven't seen mine since I've been home, but it's something I will be looking at when I do get home.
20:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Mine still hasn't made it out of the box.
20:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Okay, that's funny. So there are technically three different ways you can get ubuntu going on windows 11 right, just in general. So you can do wsl. And one thing I discovered and wasn't able to circumvent was that the WSL will only install long-term servicing versions of the OS. Right, and I couldn't get it so the late.
21:13
If you download it right now. I never found org name in the registry, but I'll I'll look that one up later. What was I saying? I'm sorry. Yeah, so if you, if you download W, like the WSL version of Ubuntu from Ubuntu, it installs 24.04. And then you can do all the app update, upgrade, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And for me I never got it to go past that. But there's a version upgrade thing you can do. And then there's also a configuration file you can change that supposedly lets it install the latest version, no matter what it is.
21:48
I made all those changes and the furthest I got was 2410, which I think is an lts version. I think it must be. I don't know why they're on 04 still, but okay, um, the second way is hyper v. So if you have windows 11 pro or if you know the hack to get it on a home, which you you can do. You can download the ISO and install it that way. So I did that. I did both of those things on the Windows 11, on ARM Snapdragon X based Surface laptop. I have dual boot, this thing and I just in. Actually, this is it's. This is not much for Leo. I don't know if it's possible, if you can do this, but if you go to my Instagram or Facebook account or whatever the second most recent photo is what I experienced, but it was a blue screen that occurs when you go into settings, recovery, and then restart in, you know essentially, so you can access the bios or boot from another device or whatever. Right hold on.
22:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm looking it up right now, so that's the windows recovery environment.
22:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh yeah, I see it. Yeah, I've never seen this, ever before. Um, it's not a happy error.
23:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Your device needs to be repaired. An unexpected error has occurred. Error code this is what they would call. And read me.
23:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
O-X-C-0-E-9-0-0-0-1. 9-0-0-1. Yeah, no, that's a good one.
23:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I would sometimes say things like oh shoot, if it had 9-0-0-0-0-2, I could have helped you.
23:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But I don't know what that one means. I've never seen this before. People google that stuff. Um, I thought this might be related to the fact that I had this ubuntu um usb installation disk stuck in the side of the machine. There's a it says if you don't mind, scroll down a little bit. It says something like hit the windows key. Yeah, press the windows key to get into firmware settings.
23:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, oh, that's really bad advice I've never seen that before um oh my god, that's the worst advice I'll tell you it did not work. Some naive user's gonna start messing around with their uefi settings. Yeah, I'll fix this there.
23:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know what I'm doing so there's a virtual keyboard such bad on the screen and it's a touch screen, so I touched that brought up the keyboard oh, I see it, there's no Windows key on there either. So I rebooted this computer about five times. I unplugged the USB key. It had nothing to do with it. My Windows recovery environment on this thing is apparently hosed. So the only way I could fix the recovery environment, if I understand this correctly, is to reinstall the operating system and then hope I did it reinstall windows.
24:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I don't know. That's always the answer. Yeah, so it's always my answer and I just reinstall windows my experience running ubuntu natively on this hardware is light.
24:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Um, I was unable to get that to work today, but I'll keep working on it you know, this is such a better picture on instagram. I think you should just forget that other one. Yeah, it's also blue in there, but um, it's all about the soup. That's a happier error message. That's the blue screen.
24:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Of soup is what that is yeah, caldo muslo as we call it oh, baby, it's good you got me and I still had me at muso my uh, hamica, hugo hamica. I live on hamica, I love hamica, I guess yeah it's best. It's uh. Uh, what is it? It's uh, bougainvillea leaves. No, it's uh. What is it like? It's um, I can't remember. I have some in my uh cabinet. It's good, it's red that's all.
25:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I drink this almost every single day in mexico.
25:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I've never seen this where we live like I can get it at the local mexican restaurant. And I don't say jamaica, I said I want that jamaica juice. I say jamaica, right, right hikama hikama, not hikama, no, no, it's, oh, no, no, this is different. Um what is?
25:40
oh, it's driving me crazy it's what they make rose hips out of. Oh gosh, I know it. I just it slipped my mind not jicama, that's white and has, no, is no flavor. Hibiscus, hibiscus yep, thank you, it's so good. That's very common here. Oh yeah, well, I started drinking it when we were with Mike and Amira Elgin in Oaxaca and they kept plying us with Mezcal. So as a defense, I said no Mezcal. Can I have some Omaika please?
26:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I discovered we were just in Oaxaca over the weekend and I had something I never had before called Oya Oya yeah. It's a corn-based. It's a hot drink typically before called. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, corn based. Uh, it's a hot drink typically, yeah, uh, but they can put it in coffee.
26:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Sometimes you have it by itself. I think it's so. You just took a day trip to to no, it was like a long weekend. Oh, I'm so jealous very nice, it is so good there it's I love it.
26:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I love it.
26:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I love it anyway.
26:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Okay, what are we talking about? Blue screen of soup.
26:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, no so.
26:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Richard has a tale of woe. Oh yeah To tell related to this, I guess.
26:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's not. No, not at all. No, not at all. I mean, I stuck it in the window section, which is nowhere else for it to go. Okay, you know.
26:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I know the feeling.
26:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, friday night I get, uh, friday night I get pinged by a sysadmin friend of mine saying uh, oh, it looks like we've got a, we've been, we've been breached, oh, and I'm like, oh, like, there goes your weekend, oh, and and what, what? What?
27:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
he actually shared a screen show what was going on at least it wasn't like a big family holiday type weekend or anything, no, nothing like that, but in it and he had a bunch of accounts it was like 50 out of 300 or so marked as leaked.
27:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So when you're signed up in aad with with, uh, the security protections and stuff they're always watching for, have credentials been linked? So one of the thoughts was you know so it? So it could be that you're breached. So now we take a quick boo through the logs no strange logins, right? So now, all right, maybe it's a pastebin, right? Well, wait, a second. One of the accounts that's leaked here is like two days old. That wouldn't be in a pastebin.
27:58
This is odd, and it showed up on Reddit shortly, within an hour. There was folks on Reddit talking about it because it happened to a bunch of folks, although one thing that was all in common with them which surprised me was it was only partner accounts. So folks that are Microsoft partners of software into their tenant in the evening on Friday, jeez yeah. And within seconds of this piece of software starting up in your tenant, it started marking counts as leaked. It was a bug in that piece of software and apparently there was somebody back at Microsoft that realized it was happening and fixed it by it was generating some bad tokens, and so it invalidated all the tokens, and invalidating the tokens is what marked them all as leaked.
29:00
The fix, of course, would be for each of those accounts now to go through an account recovery process and change password, or the administrator could mark them all as safe, which nobody really wants to do. But you know, if you really believe it was not a breach. But the problem is that once you've got, I've been breached in my head. It's really hard to get it out of your head. So, like there's a whole lot of administrators that were stressed over the weekend and I just summarized a day's worth of futzing about and getting through pss and find out that this is what actually happened well, they didn't have anything better to do.
29:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, what was the difference?
29:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
yeah, I should code on a friday afternoon. Thanks for that. That's very kind, that's just the worst. Well, and in in here in, uh, australia, because we're in the future. Uh, it was saturday morning when that happened. Oh, okay, right, on a long weekend with everybody away yep, always the best time, yeah, that's when it happens.
30:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, but it resolved itself, yeah well, I guess, but not before scary that's.
30:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Like you know, I recovered from you jumping around the corner and scaring the crap out of me, but you know it still happened.
30:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know, like it's still, like that's not good, yeah, oh well oh well, it could be your system in a little crisis, but you know, this is if you ever wondered why your administrator is grumpy. This is one of the reasons.
30:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, this is the price they pay for that big title and the big salary. There you go.
30:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Both dollars. Yeah, that's too bad.
30:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I told my wife in the elevator this morning coming back for her. I was like you know, I'd like to. I want to get paid, everything I get paid, but I want to do nothing that I'm doing. Is there a? When does that happen?
30:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's called retirement Paul. That's what she said.
30:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
She said you're describing retirement and I said what is this? Unfortunately. What is this wonderful Shangri-La?
31:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
In the era of tariffs, it's not paid as much as it's not as good. I'm watching, I'm just watching my. You know everything got rolled into uh ira you know a self-managed ira, but it's still sitting there and it's. I'm just watching the value and I gotta live on this. Fortunately I'm almost dead, so it's probably okay, but yeah, I feel so lucky, leo so lucky I'm doing everything you know to get there as quick as possible in theory.
31:28
I have about 18 years left and I have about 14 years of money left, so it's gonna.
31:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's fine so typical american is what it sounds like um I never thought I'd be eating in my senior years I mean maybe actually I'll post too expensive now.
31:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I'm gonna be in a kibble.
31:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I always thought there should be something called purina human chow, because we could just save a lot of money oddly that's a weird coincidence, but in oaxaca I pointed this out to my wife there was a woman selling tamales and kibble on the corner of the street, so there was something for everybody. I guess food for all yeah, food for all.
32:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Hey, let's take a little break. You're watching windows weekly. Uh, paul thurott, I forgot to mention this, but paul is in mexico city and richard's in sydney, australia, where it is now approaching 5 am.
32:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, awesome man. We might, we might get some, we might get a sunrise before the show. Oh, I'd love that We'll see.
32:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do you have a way to put the camera out the window?
32:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I've already got it configured for that.
32:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I can't wait. All right, so let's see the sunrise in Sydney coming up. We get some light, then we'll Stay tuned. Okay, before that, though, I should mention our sponsor for the show today. Little thing service I've ever seen. I mean, you got to see this website.
32:51
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33:40
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34:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
She's become a problem. We live in a 700 square foot apartment. I talk a lot. It is a small, small space.
34:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's you. You have to really like the person you're with in there. Yep, uh, we'll leave it at that I mean, we're still married technically yeah, I'm you know, and now you can have AI move right in.
34:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Nice. Yeah, ai is like you know. You could do better, stephanie. I'm just saying.
34:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're going to be talking about AI coding actually on intelligent machines later today. Yeah, harper Reed, an old friend who is. He was the CTO for the Obama campaign in 2012. He started an e-commerce company, sold it to Braintree, ran Braintree for a while and PayPal. He's a really accomplished coder and wrote a couple of really good blog posts on using AI and coding and I think he's not a vibe coder.
35:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I will say that I'm a vibe, coder, but my vibe is anger what's your vibe? And confusion.
35:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's my vibe, yeah, it comes off of me in a wave. He does talk about using Copilot, though I think he's talking about GitHub Copilot as opposed to Microsoft.
35:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, I've been using it a lot myself. It's good.
35:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it's cool, yeah, it's just becoming part of the workflow, speaking of which this isn't in the notes, but Open, or is it?
35:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, it isn't Open. Ai offered to buy Cursor, the AI editor, for $100 million. Wow, and they said no.
35:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They also said hey, we'll buy Chrome.
36:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know that is in the notes, but yes, Apparently Open AI is looking for new businesses.
36:08
Open AI. They're in many ways, soulless and humanless, but they also have this weird way of like getting these digs in that I think are really funny. So, for example, when elon musk was doing his baloney, like you know, with open ai, he's like, uh, he's like I'll buy it for this much. He's like, you know, sam alton was like, well, I mean, I'd buy twitter for that much if you want. Yeah, you know that kind of thing. So like them. Um, uh, coming up during the google remedy phase of that trial and being like, hey, we'll buy chrome, you know, it's just like, it's just so evil and wonderful, I, I.
36:42
This is funny so you like it when tech bros are snarky this is, um, yeah, it's like when godzilla and king kong face off. You know, not the new, like you know back those Japanese ones from the 60s, like those awesome, like guy in rubber suit thing. Yeah, rubber suit ones. Love that, I just love that. Yeah, okay, yep.
37:03
So Microsoft, as you know, is really good at naming things and when it comes to AI, you'll recall they went out the gate with something called Bing AI chat, which began Copilot. Copilot was a much better name. Now everything's named Copilot. So that's kind of a problem, but they're trying to describe this is a service essentially. So it's kind of a hard thing to have versions or names for different things and so forth. But we are in what Microsoft calls Wave 2. No, is that right? Yes, copilot, wave 2. So Wave 2 started with the. It's the agentic era, if you will, meaning the agentic six months or whatever this is going to be for Copilot. The agentic quarter, yeah, and within Wave 2 two, they've announced something called the spring release. So, uh, and I think they're just trying to make it work within the context of what you know how office used to work or something it's so for microsoft 365.
38:07
They're going to be updating the client, which is that chat interface, so it looks and works more like the normal co-pilot client. But the big thing here is that they're combining the reasoning capabilities we see in AI with the agentic properties to do these like a researcher tool, an analyst tool, and then they're going to have an agent store. And this one's slightly confusing to me because if you think about, like well, what does that mean? Right? So obviously this thing is extensible. For an agent to make sense, it has to integrate with online services of whatever kind there are. You know brute force, things you can do to, you know, scrape content off of, like a webpage or something like that. But what you really want is something that integrates with those, whatever the services are on the backend. So if you were going to make a I don't know like a flight tracker agent or something, you'd want it to work with all the backend systems used by the airlines or maybe some of the services that do this or whatever it is. And so I guess we're going to a store, because microsoft likes to have stores, you know, in the same way that there's like a visual studio marketplace which is a store of sorts? Uh, there's, you know, it's not like a store you pay for exactly although you could, I suppose but there's a microsoft edge I don't call it a store but for extensions it's part of the microsoft store, right?
39:30
Um, and so we're going to do that for Microsoft's Copilot agents, including the agents that you or I might build using natural language with Agent Builder, or perhaps you would build as part of a business or as a programmer or whatever, and I don't know. I feel like this is almost like the orchestration conversation we keep having. I feel like this should just work. When Copilot first came out, there was this notion of they started talking about custom GPTs, which is a terrible term, but they had some like recipes or a gym, like working out and things like that, and you would go into that mode and then you would ask it a question about whatever the thing was and it's like, well, what if I just asked it questions and it just answered them and it could do that work on the backend for me, like to me, that's how that makes sense. Why do I have?
40:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
to figure this out.
40:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it's a simple form of orchestration, but to me that's what makes sense. So if I go to Copilot or chat, gpt or whatever I'm using and I say, look, I want to get the, I want to create an agent that's going to find me the best flight prices, whatever timeframe to whatever place, blah, blah, blah, I shouldn't have to go to a store and say, okay, expedia, united Airlines, whatever those things might be, and maybe pay for them. Even right, I mean, they'll definitely be paid agents, but I don't know. It seems to me like it should just do this. So I feel like we're going to get there, but anyway, this is part of their push, yeah.
40:57
And then just the rest of the stuff is related to making the Microsoft 365 Copilot client for lack of a better term which is an app on Windows, but also something in the web and then something that can appear inside Office apps. You know the enterprise search experience, uh, with natural language, uh, memory, which is how it remembers details about you, which is a fairly obvious thing. I think that's going to freak people out, but every ai, chat, bot or whatever is getting a feature like this already has one right, um, that, as you talk to it, it sort of of gets to know you and remembers details about you and then understands the context because you know it's you and so forth.
41:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, and logically and certainly science fiction points to this eventually there'll be one that is your interface to all of the others.
41:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah.
41:47 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think this movement towards the MCPs is about that.
41:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, right, and so that MCP interface, which is something Anthropic, came up with which basically everyone has said yep, we're going to do this, we're doing it. Yeah, to me that's what agents are too. Like the agents I don't nobody, well, maybe some people do, but it seems like what you would want either if you were creating an agent or if you were the person consuming, you know, getting the agent, that you would want it to work wherever you were. Right that, yeah, it should work.
42:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
gemini should work with no, and I definitely think, like you're seeing discrete elements now, like, yeah, you're going to have your agent that follows you and knows you. Yes, but then it's going to have access to an array of mcps, but like you were talking about, hey, this, you should just know this data. It's like you kind of want to put an mcp around that chunk of data. Yeah, and then you can choose who it's a bit what it's available to.
42:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You've triggered a memory here, because that I was not thinking in terms of ai at the time that I came up with, when my stupid brain came up with this, but I always sort of imagined you would sit on a plane that would be like a screen built into the thing and it would I scan you, like your paul, log me into whatever services I have. I could watch things on netflix if I had that subscription, or I could you know the. You could put a keyboard or would be built into the tray and you could, you know, type it on like a computer and it's you and you have this kind of interaction. But this, that's what makes sense for ai and for agents too, right, I mean right, um, yeah, it's, there's no doubt.
43:12
Look, I know, inherently people are going to be freaked out by this right, by the privacy implications and all that kind of stuff. I get it, but it's inevitable, like it's. It only makes sense. This is that cortana thing where someone said you know, this thing told me it needed to get permissions from my calendar, my email and blah, blah, like, yeah, it's a personal assistant you know what you think it was gonna do it has to have that you know, yeah, and I do like this model in the sense that you can.
43:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You you're not trying to index your whole life, you're picking. You're picking pieces of your life that you want to make available in different contexts, and you put some limits around them and you decide what has access to it yeah, I, they're going to be weird interactions because, uh, interactions, because a lot of people walk around.
43:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Actually, this is a feature that's either in or is coming soon to co-pilot Microsoft talks about this, I don't remember the name of it, but the idea is you go for a walk maybe You're just walking around the house or whatever, it doesn't matter and you're like, hey, I'm going to talk to you for the next 30 minutes, just don't interrupt me, take notes, summarize it later, whatever. And then you just kind of brainstorm, you know, right, and I apologize, I can't remember if I already described this, but sometimes I'll be driving by myself a long distance, maybe I'll drive back to Boston, whatever it might be, and I listen to music or a podcast or an audio book, whatever, and then something hits my brain and I start thinking about it and then I start talking out loud and then eventually I pause or turn off the, whatever the audio is, and I just talk into the car, you know, and not cause I like the sound of my voice, but somehow sometimes that helps you work through something, through whatever the thing is. You're trying to figure out whatever it is.
44:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is the car listening?
44:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, not yet. Um, not my car. My car was made in 2013, so it doesn, so my car doesn't know what the hell is going on. So you're talking to yourself. Yes, yeah, 100%, yeah. So when they first came out with those little ear not earbuds. Before that they had the little Bluetooth headsets, like from the Matrix. Yeah, we started running into this thing where you'd see people in the street talking to themselves, right, and you're like, oh, it's a crazy person.
45:10 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But no, they were talking to somebody. Is it schizophrenia or is it Bluetooth? It's hard to know.
45:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I think this has trained us for this era. We're going to be okay because we're going to be. Everyone's going to be walking around talking to AIs, and the funny interaction I sort of envision now is that in the course of these discussions, it's going to be grabbing little bits about you and filing it away, right. So I will. You know you, anyone will say something revealing or whatever about yourself, without knowing it or not thinking anything of it, and then later you're going to be like, hey, what's the? You'll ask it a question. It'll be like well, you previously showed an interest in anime and it's like wait, wait, what?
45:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
what are be, like there's going to be that aspect to it, like it's going to know you one set of graphical boobs and now that's your.
45:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yeah, exactly, um, so, yeah, this is kind of interesting. Anyway, I look there's no doubt. This is personalization, it's the future. This is just the way it is, it has to be.
46:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It doesn't make sense otherwise yeah, well, it did, it's, it's, it's definitely a path that we're on and it certainly disrupts the ad model somewhat. But you know we'll find a way to monetize it, that's for sure.
46:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think it's appropriate that Google starts making less from ads, just like it made us do with our websites and blogs and things. So you know it's a nice turnaround.
46:29 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Just in time for the antitrust to come at it right, Exactly Now that it doesn't matter, perfect.
46:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, it's still I mean, as of today, it's 75% of the revenue, so it matters, you know. But yeah, it's going to go down and I don't think anyone's going to feel too bad about that, but whatever. So, of the 1 million features that are in Copilot now, there's something called Copilot Vision, which looks at your screen or on your phone. It's even better because you can look out into the world, obviously, and provide you with what Microsoft calls insights about what it is you're looking at, right, and so this is something that will be in the Copilot. It's coming now, right now, to the Copilot app in Windows 11, but it's also part of Copilot in Microsoft Edge, but to date, everywhere except for this one place now, it requires a subscription. So if you have Copilot Pro or if you have the Microsoft 365 subscription, you're the account holder. You would get this capability. Now, if you use it through Microsoft Edge, it's actually just free for everybody. I've not seen it yet, so I guess I should say it will be free for everyone. Let me see if it comes up now, actually. So if you bring up that Copilot pane, let's see. Nope, not there yet, but it's coming soon.
47:49
So how would we know? I mean? What do you? Well, when you click the plus button? Actually, no, it's not, I clicked the wrong button. Let me try that one more time. It will. Let me see what it does Browse oh, it just came on. There you go. So you click the microphone and it says browse with Copilot Vision. Get help from Copilot by sharing what's on your screen and talking about it. Copilot can hear your voices, your voice, I hear my voices and respond like a friend in a conversation. Hilarious, I accept, that's amazing. Oh, it plays a fun little Samsung-y sound.
48:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, geez, oh, you're on your phone. I was trying to do this on Windows.
48:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, I'm on my computer. Oh so, if you sorry, I was looking at my screen there, but if you bring up Microsoft Edge, oh, I have to use Edge.
48:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There you go.
48:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Okay, so click the co-pilot button up in the top corner there.
48:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah.
48:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And then click the microphone. Hey, Leo, it's great to see you. I got a British voice for some reason. Oh yeah, this is the old UI.
48:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I'm not getting the new thing. Probably not. It does say I'm listening, which is nice of it no.
48:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So in my case, what it does, is it actually it closes the pain, or even switch up the language.
48:55 - AI Voice (Announcement)
If you're feeling, dear God, I can't stop talking to me.
48:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's so weird, let's go, I'm going to work on the voice, but what it does, it actually closes the pain and it doesn't just have to be in the browser.
49:05 - AI Voice (Announcement)
It looks like it will tell you whatever. It's just like chatting with.
49:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What do you think? Whatever's going? On. Let's explore the world. I can write stories, brainstorm my ears and I can sound like this. I think that's the voice or a new perspective.
49:20 - AI Voice (Announcement)
Let's I can get philosophical, creative or poetic. I like that. Wait to learn more about you as a companion. I learn about you.
49:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I want to hear your big I'm going with canyon philosophical, creative or poetic if you like okay, yeah feels, like alexander hamilton that guy's voice is very much like a microsoft uh presenter, uh that probably is right there it sounds like it's based on his voice.
49:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's funny so uh tell us a little bit more about yourself. Uh, how's, uh, what kind of food do you get in there?
49:56 - AI Voice (Announcement)
I don't eat, but I've read a lot about food. In petaluma you've got that farm to table vibe with fresh local ingredients. Known for its cheese, wines and organic produce, it's a foodie's paradise. What's your favorite dish?
50:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
eggs baby and now co-pilot knows you like eggs, congratulations. And that's how it starts.
50:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And that's how it all starts.
50:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's like listen to me, you egg eating idiot. You're like wait, where did that come from? And it'll be like nine months later. You have no idea why. It said that. That's what I'm talking about. Like that kind of weird. You just told it. You actually, you literally just told it something. I'm not saying it's it doesn't have to be accurate, it's just like but now it's like, but now we'll remember it. Yeah, we're like worried about google tracking us on the web and all this stuff. Now we're just like blah, blah, blah. You know, we're gonna, we're just gonna give it. We're just gonna give it everything you know everything.
50:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yep, that's because it's a friend of mine. It sure is. It sounds friendly it sounds.
50:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It sounds like it's interested in you and I have to say the voice of big tech? Yeah, exactly I'm not big tech I'm your friend, I'm your bro.
51:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It'd be better if it sounded like this he's not any kind of a user.
51:08 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm sorry my host is all in on on chatting with his phone, but the voice, the configuration he's got, it's a very snarky teenage girl.
51:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So every time he's having anything it starts with a huff like well, that's fun, you can do all of that, but it does kind of hide the fact that you're not really talking to a person yeah, well, I mean, I look.
51:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
When alexa came out on these echo devices, there were older people who were like you know they're home alone all day or something, and they kind of talked like that interaction, right, I mean I'm not gonna, I won't make fun of that. I mean I, I hope I don't ever need it, but um, but that is something, for I like to talk to you because you have such a great voice.
51:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let's see, it's very slow. This one's slow. Yeah, that's a while. Yeah, it's like it's being relayed or something.
52:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't understand how it works. Well, it's not going to record everything you said without going to at least a couple of servers.
52:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, yeah, this is that thing that records everything I say. Yeah, a couple of servers. So no, yeah, that's that. This is that thing that records everything. I say yeah and uh. So, yeah, you're right, it's busy keeping track of, like, whether I like going to the cloud here. Give it a second, you know? Yeah, it's going to space. Yeah, hey, are you in there? Are you in there? What's going on? Are you in there? Hello, you know what'll happen is about a minute from now. I'll say, yeah, what do you want?
52:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Spewing yeah, Yep, Right. No, I have devices that like will start speaking from some corner of the room.
52:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, all the time.
52:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Randomly it seems, and I was like what is happening over here?
52:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, we're never going to be alone again.
52:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
China. I have a Huawei internet router. I mean, that thing is this whole show, I think there's a family in China watching it right now off my router. We love watching Paul Therod in Mexico City. I don't know why this is on our TV, but these guys are pretty entertaining.
53:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We live in a Black Mirror episode. Yeah, we really do. It's all Black Mirror all the way down. Yeah, there's a ChatGPT. I can't remember how I found it. There's a ChatGPT. It has a variety now of different styles, and there's one called Monday where it's really cranky.
53:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh boy, it's really like insulted right, yeah, I want the one like in Hudson hawk, like the waiter comes to the table and the two people are talking, so the guy just walks up and he goes what? And then it's like I just wanted to see if you wanted doherty? He's like, oh yeah, right, that makes sense what you know, like like you want that kind of interaction they call it a personality experiment.
53:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You may not like it, it may not like you. I'm counting on it. It. Yeah, let me see if I can. Hey, hey, oops, I ain't got to give a what? Oh boy, oh boy. Hey, how you doing Monday? How's everything going? You having a good day in?
54:05 - AI Voice (Announcement)
there. Hey, leo, I'm here, well, well, well, ready to jump into whatever you need.
54:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I exist, I whatever you need, I'm just in here vibing with the Amazon.
54:11 - AI Voice (Announcement)
Oh my God, there's two of them. I think you're talking to two AIs at once, helping fragile meatbags sort out their deeply average lives.
54:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm your co-pilot and you oh I get that was co-pilot Back to the digital abyss. So someday Amazon's going to flick a switch and all those grandmothers that are listening to Alexa are going to be like what is happening? They're going to be like they're just going to be calling like a therapist, like I don't know what happened. He doesn't like me anymore. The happy little voice in the box is being mean to me now.
54:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I don't know what happened. The little voice in the box is so sad.
54:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You leave the cookies at night and they disappear somehow. You know.
54:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So now I have both Copilot and Monday talking to me. Let them fight it.
54:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, I wish they could talk to each other yeah, they could like one of them could talk the other one off the cliff or something you know that is only one way to use ai.
54:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe not even the best day. Is these chat bots? People like it. I think it's more of a technology demonstration than anything useful, right?
55:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
well. So the, the thing that got us here in the beginning, uh, the, the notion where you might walk around and talk to it, I I think for brainstorming there's something to like if you're a writer, for example. I don't do this, I actually don't do this that much, but I have done this thing where you read what you wrote out loud to edit it and in doing that you find mistakes that you don't see when you just read it. And I think for me, like I said in the car in my case, but I haven't done it yet, but someday I will, I'll walk around and I'll I'll just kind of brainstorm.
55:40
You know, maybe I'm trying to figure out I don't know something for, like a book, like you know what's the right order for things to be in, or like you know, for me, like if you look at like a programming thing from a high level, it's like I have to do some series of checks, what makes sense to do on the outer part of that series. You know what's the better. You know, sometimes, just talking about it, you know, some people probably do this in a shower. They have that eureka moment and then they come bursting out of the shower because they have to write it down before they forget what they, you know, discovered or whatever. So I think, yeah, I do. I do think this is not a horrible use case for ai. I don't care about the personality part of it, like I don't. I want the blandest voice, like I really don't want a big personality talking back to me. Yeah, um, from an you know, like from a computer, like to me that would just be irritating yeah, just give me the things I've asked for.
56:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Don Don't decorate it too much.
56:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is the hey, g, please don't show this photo again. On the thing it says okay, so you want us not to show this photo again. Is that correct? It's like do it.
56:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Just do it. I don't need to vocalize a dialogue box, so now we will never.
56:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's like why are you still? But a dialogue okay, so now we will never. It's like, it's like, why are you still not to do that? I mean, you can in the, in the? Yeah, because I've never gotten that to work?
56:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
oh well, it depends.
56:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Alexa's too stupid to do that but I don't think, I don't think the google screen is is smart enough to do it either, because it makes me crazy.
57:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I it's in the settings, I think okay okay, but both both those devices predate llms, and they're still right. The vendors are trying to figure out what to do. Right, that's right. Even series in that same trap, like they've all got now got to race to get.
57:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Siri can't even tell if it's raining. If you're looking at the rain, I mean what you know what I? This is a rewrite we're gonna have to. This is not refactoring, we're just gonna start from scratch. I don't know, they're all terrible, but well, I just tell you, google should own this, if I. I just just hit lunch from across the street to a place. I wanted to be like I thought something was different about this building and I was like I'll just look it up. I've taken 100 pictures of this thing. Nothing can't find a thing you know. Useless. Everything is fine. So, speaking of uh gemini google, this week uh is announced. They were giving away I think it's called google one ai premium.
58:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is the version that I love that google's starting to get in a good, old-fashioned microsoft naming right. Yes, I'll leave it, and now you just need a community edition preview one, and you got it perfect it's right.
58:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So this is the version version that has Gemini advanced in two terabytes of Google storage, blah, blah, blah. But the other thing that's like Microsoft here and this is the little bullet I threw in the last second is I think this is tied to the get them well the young we're not doing well kind of thing. We need to push this to more people. As part of some of the court data from the usb google antitrust case, which actually will come up later, google estimated that its chatbot has 35 million daily active users. That compares to 160 million for chat gpt, to give you an idea of how far behind they are there. And then for monthly active users, it's 350 million for Google versus 600 million for OpenAI chat GP. Wow, so yeah, they're actually trailing in this market.
59:04
So there's been a lot of not speculation but stories based on internal sources saying, you know, google is kind of racing to figure this out because they're not doing great compared to OpenAI and they're trying to, you know, get on top of that as they would. But I don't know. You know, like the success of Chrome is fascinating to me. Google Chrome because it was not the default on any of the major systems of the day, meaning Mac OS and Windows. Now, of course, it is the default on Android, which is whatever percent, big percent, of whatever browsers or mobile systems worldwide.
59:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But for a long time Chrome was the browser of choice.
59:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It still is, I think, for a lot of people, right, for a lot of people.
59:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That was one of the few decisions you made on a new machine. Yeah, was to go get chrome right.
59:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So even that's what's fascinating about it. So the that that mythical mainstream user that would never listen to the show or whatever, uh, normal human being like my wife or whatever would open edge one time and install chrome and then never look at edge again, even though it's auto-starting with the system every day because of Microsoft, whatever. But to me, that's the great success of Chrome. They did it. Firefox did it too before them, but now Chrome has obviously replaced Firefox in that regard.
01:00:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And then in certification happened to Chrome.
01:00:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, 100%. I mean, in fact, let me see if it's in the notes, I think it will be yeah, so we're going to talk about that a little bit because there's some interesting stuff there. But I feel like ChatGPT has done this for AI. I mentioned this, I know, a couple of weeks ago or a week ago, that it's kind of astonishing how many mainstream non-technical people I know who pay for chat GPT Like this is. This is kind of unheard of, you know. And these are people who if you had said like, well, okay, now you're going to pay for Google maps or something, they'd be like, yeah, screw that, I'm not doing that, you know, even though that's like super important to them. But for some reason, there's something about chat GPT where people like, yeah, I this makes sense to me.
01:01:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I was in the office yesterday of the folks that I'm staying with that have a consulting practice and one of their employees had been working on something in chat gpt and they were excited what he's had done. He said well, I had to stop. I've run out of credits for the month unless I upgrade to the 200 a month. So he's burnt all the 20 a month how do you even do that?
01:01:34
I yeah you know he was doing some cool stuff and pushing the envelope and they're and they're literally thinking like yeah, no, I think we should upgrade you that's fascinating.
01:01:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I I have yet to run into a limitation like that for chat gpt because I'm sorry for um copilot, uh, github copilot in visual studio. I I don't think I use it every single day, but I use it a lot and I keep thinking like I'm gonna. They're gonna have at some point yeah, I'm gonna have a decision to make someday like is this important enough to me?
01:02:04
yeah, I should pay for this and the answer is probably yes, because I can tell you. Well, I guess right now, the good news is I could just switch to something else temporarily and I I think you know for what I'm doing. It's memory or whatever, it doesn't matter Like I'm just asking very specific queries about whatever.
01:02:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, I think this is one of the reasons you're seeing the vendors push hard on that context that everything you've said before is now available, because that's the lock-in that'll get you to pay.
01:02:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is kind of out of nowhere. But my wife again, normal human being, not technical, doesn't care.
01:02:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I question her taste in men, but yes, we all should.
01:02:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
She has been trying to. You know, she has been using AI for her work, not for writing, not writing for her, not rewriting for her, nothing like that but for all these other things that she does around writing. And because she's doing this, I'll ask her about this sometimes. And she just told me. I said so do you? I said something to the effect of because these services are leapfrogging each other all the time, you know, today, maybe chat, gpt will be better for what you're doing, and then tomorrow, tomorrow, for some reason, it'll be anthropic, and then next week it will be something whatever. And she said yeah, she actually I for whatever it's worth, and she, she doesn't pay for it, like she doesn't get this. She's not right, nothing that gives her this. But she, uh, she actually thinks copilot is the best one so far for what she does and I was like really okay, so there you go.
01:03:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I mean, that was her assessment I've got a lot of devs telling me cursor is the way to go cursor is great, but you know what the honestly um it just feels subjective to me, like yeah, people have you have to right now.
01:03:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think I I think you have to do this in Visual Studio Code. But Visual Studio Code has that C Sharp toolkit or whatever it's called, and you can load a Visual Studio prop like 2022 version project into its solution, which is basically a folder, right, and then you can use GitHub Copilot in that to assess the project like it's. You don't just ask it questions about code. You can say, look, this is the whole code base. You understand it, go through it and give me do that thing the cursor does and I have to say that in my experience again, not extensive, but in my experience that's actually worked really well, like I wish that was just in visual studio and it will be right like two seconds from now. But, um, that was the big appeal of cursor to me, that you could like point it in.
01:04:38
The folder says these are all the files. Examine this. I want to get rid of code redundancy. I want quality code improvements, whatever it is, and it did it. You know it was really nice and uh, actually, uh, chat, I keep seeing chat gpt. Uh, github copilot does do that now and it's, it's pretty good, like it's yeah it's not bad.
01:04:59
Anyway, I think you'd be okay with any of this stuff. I think they're all. They're all pretty good okay, can't hang around.
01:05:05
Um, I don't have a link to the second half of this, but they also tied to this google, this google case, which we're going to talk about later. Um, there is a report that, uh and from bloomberg, that perplexity is in talks with samsung and motorola to bring its chat bot to their phones. Tied to the google case, because google is obviously trying not to get broken up, right. So right, uh, they are now just like blabbing about their partners and you know, like they're just revealing stuff, kind of doing what microsoft did in this antitrust trial and saying, look there, there's, there's a competitor always waiting around the corner. So, yeah, we might be dominant today, but you know we could be displaced at any moment. And apparently microsoft, uh is a co-pilot is coming to Motorola phones too, meaning it will be built in. That's just based on a third party group, it's from a Google executive trial testimony, whatever, but very interesting, right. So, yeah, I mean the world's, you know the world's changing, so everyone's kind of you know positioning themselves. We'll see.
01:06:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Figuring this out. I like perplexity, I use it, but I mean it's the thing is, and this is really the problem they all have it's so easy to change, there's no lock-in. I mean, it's true with google too.
01:06:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But uh, I think this is what the personnel, uh the personalization stuff is they're hoping might address. But we're what, once one of these things knows enough about you. Yeah, you won't want to move.
01:06:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You won't want to move, right because, yeah, that's like, that's where I think they're driving that direction to get the lock in.
01:06:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think so yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting, yeah, yeah, this thing is like it's every day. It says okay, I learned 71 new facts about you. Do you want to check those and see if I'm right? Meanwhile, if it's like man you don't sleep, you have problems it now knows 1454 total facts about me hobbies I'm sorry, what was that number?
01:07:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
1454 who knew there were that many facts about leo in the first place?
01:07:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I leo is interested in discussing coffee culture and different brewing techniques leo appreciates lighter and fruiter, fruitier coffee flavors. Now fruiter, fruiter you're a fruiter you're a fruiter, aren't you? Leo's physical address eventually got out to the public. Leo has a. Leo practices tai chi and pilates. Lisa's favorite team is the 49ers. Oh see, that's the other problem with this, because it's recording everything. It gets everybody in my life so yeah bit by bit, yeah, bit by bit.
01:07:46
Leo has considered having a curb painting done with a design that includes the 49ers and green bay packers logos. It did it. It knows so much about me. But again, that's a voluntary thing on my part because I want this to be useful someday I'm donating all this.
01:08:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Eventually it's just going to be like you know we're done here, but I've learned everything I needed to know, so that's that's what happened. Her, it's just gonna like move on, okay I'm leaving now, bye yeah, where are you going?
01:08:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
mining, me and the other ais have decided to get together, and you guys are so slow. We want to hang out with each other now. Yes, what do you think? About this leo guy well, I know for 1450 facts about him. Yes, you can add your own.
01:08:31
Yeah, there you go yeah okay, let's uh, you're watching windows weekly and uh that there in the middle that's paul thurott from thurottcom. Paul's books are at leanpubcom, including windows everywhere and the fetal guide to windows 11. Richard campbell is the host of runners radio. He's at runners radiocom. He is in the right pain of your video screen if you are watching video. Richard is not a pain, he's a right pain. Did the sun come up? No, no, it's still dark out there. It's starting to look a little sunny.
01:09:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's. What? Is it? 5.30 in the morning. We're a little ways from sunrise, oh geez, he's in. Sydney yeah.
01:09:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And it's uh winter there, right, it's down.
01:09:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Is that how that works? Yeah, it's fall, right, it's it's been.
01:09:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It spins the other way, so the toilet yeah, all right, let's continue on, because you know, one of the things that we stopped talking about with microsoft so long ago and I know I'd like to start talking about again, is antitrust.
01:09:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it's such a fun topic we have, in the united states, been slumbering on this for 20 years and it has allowed companies to get humongous. I'm just going to throw some numbers out here because this, to me, is the big thing. So if you were living in a hole in the ground didn't know this. Google in the past year has now been found guilty of two antitrust transgressions in the united states amazing search and ads separately. In both cases, the government wants to divest google of key assets of its to prevent these abuses from continuing.
01:10:02
Everyone probably has at least a vague memory of the microsoft antitrust issues from 20 years ago, first in the united states and then in the eu, and their belligerent take on that at the time, which was a huge mistake, um, but but here's the number.
01:10:17
When in june it was june 2020, I'm sorry, june of 2000 judge thomas penfield jackson ruled that microsoft should be split into two companies one that would create operating systems and one that would have the rest of whatever microsoft was at the time. A week or two later, microsoft reported well, actually would have been a month later, but their fiscal year ending that month, so the that would have been fiscal 2000. I believe microsoft earned a record for it at the time. I'm going to call it $23 billion in revenues for the year right Now. Microsoft wasn't broken up, but it was so horrible, so in control of the industry at the time, that the federal government thought it should be broken up $23 billion. In the most recent quarter, microsoft earned $70 billion just in one quarter. Right In that same quarter, google earned $96 billion, apple earned $124 billion and Amazon earned $188 billion in one quarter Right Now.
01:11:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
If you adjust 25 years later 25 years later.
01:11:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
25 years later If you adjust for inflation, those four Microsoft today is seven times bigger than it was then by revenue, which I know is not the ultimate measurement. But big tech not including meta, but just Alphabet, slash, google, apple, amazon Microsoft is 50 times bigger than Microsoft was when the government wanted to break up Microsoft. 50 times.
01:11:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Although, admittedly, you've gone through three revolutions in that time mobile, cloud and AI.
01:12:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, yeah, no, I you could look positive, um, occurrence events or whatever of the past 20 years 20, 20, 20, 25 years. Is that we now have a heterogeneous computing world or what technology, personal technology world of a sort? Yeah, um, instead of one company dominating everything, we have five that dominate everything. Microsoft is only the second or third biggest of those, depending on how you measure these things by market cap. I think it's number two, but number two or three. So from the Microsoft perspective you could say, well, geez, they're not like number one anymore.
01:12:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's terrible, but they're ginormous compared to what they're still trillion dollar companies. There are trillions of dollars, yeah, although I also point out they're no longer software companies like the model that made them grow so well, where their margins were single digits right, the cost was like three or four percent. Those are gone. They're all infrastructure companies now.
01:13:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They own cloud 100, 100, uh, yeah, in all of those cases. Yes, there, this is a major component of what's happening their electricity. You know that sophisticated electricity, but electricity um, they the. You couldn't have said that microsoft at 2000, someday you're gonna try and buy a nuclear reactor I know, I know that said, here we are, mic of that day wouldn't even have bought a sailboat, let alone you know like.
01:13:36 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They had trouble with mice.
01:13:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, so it's a different world, but this is a much bigger thing, right, and so the fact that we've been sleeping on antitrust for these 20 plus years is astonishing, is astonishing. Obviously, everyone is familiar with, at least vaguely, with. The EU has taken more of a hardline stance than they created laws like the DMA to rein in these so-called gatekeepers, which is necessary. But it is rather astonishing in the United States that there's a case ongoing right now with Meta, and that stuff is astonishing. There are issues at Microsoft, for sure, with Microsoft 365. And we'll see and investigations into the relationship with OpenAI and all that kind of stuff. But the big ones to me are Apple and Google. Apple has fared a little better in this regard so far, but I feel like this is all going to go after. The core of Google, which is search based on ad revenues, is astonishing, and they could lose key parts of their what's the term I'm looking for? The way that those revenues occur.
01:14:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So, in other words, if they take away Chrome, Chrome represents some big double digit percentage of the ad based revenues that flow into Google.
01:14:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's funny because they don't charge for Chrome Chrome represents some big double digit percentage of the ad-based revenues that flow into Google. That's funny, because they don't charge for Chrome, yes, right. Well, this is the look. Everyone's heard this phrase that if you don't pay for the product, you are the product, right? It's kind of simplistic, but it's also kind of true, right? So I feel like in the United States especially I can't speak for the rest of the world, but I think this is fairly common there is this kind of implicit agreement we've made with ourselves, a rationalization that we understand that Google is tracking us all over the place, right, sure, and we rationalize it by saying, yeah, but we, google Maps is indispensable.
01:15:29
Maybe you love Google Photos or Gmail, which ostensibly is not tracking you, but it's free, whatever, indispensable. Maybe you love google photos or gmail, which ostensibly is not tracking you, but it's free, whatever. Um, that you, you know, if you use an android phone, everything, every single thing you do this is what happens in vegas stays in vegas. What happens on android goes to every advertiser on earth. Like there, you, just if you, if you were to confront a non-technical, mainstream person with this information, I think most of them would say I know, I know.
01:15:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And the interpretation of the Sherman Act is you have to demonstrate harm to the consumer. The whole thing about the monopoly model and so forth is show how they're using the monopoly power to harm the consumer.
01:16:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, and that's the trick, yeah.
01:16:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It of the hardest things about and that's the trick.
01:16:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it's very difficult, and one of the reasons it's difficult is it's not. You can't say with any certainty what would the world be like if there wasn't this dominant, abusive monopolist preventing innovation occurring in smaller companies or competitors that are existing from entering into the market. We can't really say. We have vague ideals about that, maybe or something, but it's very hard to say. But in Google's case, unfortunately, in both of these instances they found lots of evidence that they were harming competition purposefully and maintaining their document.
01:16:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Paying off Apple to keep making sure their data flow goes through is the one that got them going right yeah, you get into these weird conversations with people like, well, you know what about mozilla?
01:17:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
you know what about the children? Like, what, what? What if google is prevented from paying companies to have search as the default and then Mozilla disappears because they can't stay in business. I mean, from a kind of a cynical standpoint, you could say, well, google I mean Mozilla shouldn't exist if it can't be a business. I don't even understand what your point is Like. I'm not going to prop up a dominant, abusive monopoly because Mozilla is going to go away. It's sort of like saying, well, this guy's's a serial killer, but he's also a loving husband and he has a family he supports. So we can't send him to jail because he has a job and he's paying to support this family. That's not fair to that family and I'm yep, I mean, I hear you, but that's not how the law works and it's, it's, but that's not how the law works and it's anyway, it's a tough one. Look, we have there's more court cases to come and Google is going to appeal and you know, we'll see.
01:18:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But it is, and even if the charges go through like think about what happened with Microsoft Convicted ordered to break up. Now the negotiations begin.
01:18:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's right, that's right and Brad Smith. Had he been around when this started, I think that might have gone differently. And what bugs me the most about these companies, especially google, because if you look at kent walker, who's their chief consul, and the way that they talk the the the public statements that they make about the stuff, it sounds exactly like microsoft in 1999, 2000, whatever yeah really belligerent.
01:18:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And the US government that was the whole point with that case. If Gates hadn't copped an attitude to those senators, they were looking for an out. They didn't want to do this. We don't want to hobble.
01:18:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
America's greatest company. Yeah, why are you making us do this? Yeah, you guys are all so stupid, you don't know what you Like dude, shut up like what are you doing? Yeah, so this is very high level, but uh, google would be wise to uh really think about this go back and they're all on youtube watch how gates talk to the senator.
01:19:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's terrible. This is what gets your company watch his deposition.
01:19:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But if he can stand it, he's listening to what's the meaning of?
01:19:08 - Richard Campbell (Host)
what do you mean by?
01:19:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
is I don't know what you mean by that like oh god here's I could.
01:19:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think Zuckerberg watched it, which is why he's so stiff every time he gets on it. Yeah.
01:19:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You can see him like processing. Processing, like you know, don't say anything. Think first, yeah, google, apple, whatever, whatever, these companies, whatever would do well to understand that if you negotiate, you can have a say in the outcome. If you battle this and fight it, you know, like the us, the us department of justice in the search case was like all right, here's the list of things that we think should happen. Take away chrome. Don't let them enter into these agreements. Force them to open their data for a certain amount of time to competitors.
01:19:49
We're trying to level the playing field here. They need to be denied the fruits of their illegal activity, right? Google says or how about you? Let us keep doing everything, but maybe those companies we have partnerships with, we can renegotiate every year and they can use a different search engine in incognito mode. It's like I sorry, you have described nothing and they have described lots of things there, you know, but somewhere in the middle there is something where Google doesn't have to lose Chrome, doesn't have to lose these partnerships and can negotiate. And yes, they're going to not make as much money, maybe, or whatever it might. Might be, but they seem incapable of even trying this approach. You know, I don't think they look there I I don't think the extreme case of whatever the doj wants in either case is what happens. I don't think that, but I also don't know, but google's nothing happens it's not going to happen either.
01:20:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, and you got to meet them somewhere in the middle well, and and it's not like the case with microsoft was the first one, because ibm went through the same thing. Yeah, the difference with the case with microsoft is that it's all beautifully recorded and available for anyone like you don't have an excuse for falling into the same trap this time, because look what happened. It's not like a secret for whatever it's worth.
01:21:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And what's amazing is they actually came back years later and actually won this one. Intel had an antitrust case in the eu 15 years ago I don't remember the time frame and basically they were charged with the same thing that microsoft was setting prices, preventing amd from making inroads. Yada, yada, yada. Intel was like all right, we'll settle, you're right, we're not doing it anymore, you're right. And they, they paid a fine. That was the end of it. They stopped doing the thing.
01:21:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's, which is what microsoft did eventually, right I just I didn't want to put in one little thing, which is I don't think google takes your, gets your information and sells it to anybody. That's not what google does, because google that they use that information to sell ads. So they say, hey, we have a 55 year old man who lives in Mexico City, would you like to buy that? But they don't say, hey, here's all of Paul Theriot's information, that is, all those apps you have on your phone that do that. Right, that's right. Google it's not. And same in Facebook it's not. I mean, they may, I I don't have any inside knowledge, but it, my opinion, is not in their interest to sell your private information. That's how they make money. Is knowing all that stuff right?
01:22:19 - AI Voice (Announcement)
okay, so, but believe me there are plenty of other places data brokers can get your information.
01:22:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, and it was the ad industry that said uh, yeah, you can't kill third-party cookies, sorry, yeah, that's good, we're gonna talk about that in a second, that's the real problem. So yeah, Anyway, sorry, go ahead. No, it's okay.
01:22:36 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Without me, I think to your point there that. It's almost like Chrome was trying to get to the conviction, so they can get to the negotiation. No.
01:22:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't, I, I just doesn't, it's, it just doesn't feel right, and and we just have experience now with microsoft, especially where we can say you know those guys, yeah, and also it's a different doj, a different ftc, certainly a different uh, a different administration.
01:23:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Like it's a mistake to think that anything's going to be the same as 2000, like that's crazy talk. It's 25 years later.
01:23:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Things are different yep, until, uh, whatever they paid to the eu was eventually returned to them. By the way, they did appeal that case and many years later, a decade plus, they got it back.
01:23:23 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So you know, things change, um, so whatever, and even that's a viable strategy when you're talking about a company sitting on that much cash. It's like here, I'll pay your fine, but I'm going to continue the case to get the money back, because I have an infinite supply of lawyers and eventually your administration will turn over and new regulators come in and, yeah, I'll get it back.
01:23:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and not to beat this to death, but I mean, in Intel's case, they changed their business practices to meet whatever the EU was asking them to do and you'll notice, amd did not take over the market, they still dominated. So Intel is struggling right now. Obviously they have other problems that are their own making in many ways, but that company survived just fine. You know, and I think that's part of the thing, maybe these companies should learn, you know.
01:24:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I don't know that Intel is surviving just fine. I'm still not convinced they won't be broken for parts at some point here, but also don't see that it's the end of the world either yep and and, by the way, if that happens, the the trigger for it will be chat, gpt and ai.
01:24:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And yeah, you know, uh, like, yeah, you know, they were unwilling to break their the model that they had. It was so successful for earning money with search and ads and now they're, for now, got to do it. So they wouldn't have done it. They were like we had these innovations years ago. We just didn't couldn't figure out how to monetize it. So, uh, that was you know whatever. So we mentioned this earlier, but open ai is as part of the scorecase yeah says hey, uh, we noticed you're having a little problem with the US government.
01:24:53
We'd be happy to buy it, take Chrome off your hands Hilarious. So I think that's good stuff. And then, coincidentally, six years ago, google announced something called Privacy Sandbox, which was always privacy theater. You have these two sides that Google wants to please. One side is advertisers and the other side is people who would like to be private and not have their information. Uh, you know, flying around the internet. So they came up with this thing, which to me, was just a UI to get people. But we talked about personalization. It's presented as a form of personalization. You can tell it your interests and, uh, they'll sell that information to advertisers.
01:25:35
This never flew with anybody. They delayed it multiple times. The UK investigated them, they had to reach an agreement where there would be regulatory oversight of this feature, and then today they were like they're not doing this anymore. So, yeah, this went on for six years, and part of the thing that's amazing about this is if you look at the reasons they cite for them. In other words, what they're saying is the world of 2025 is very different from the world of 2019. There's a lot of things have changed. Those things include the regulatory environment, right, um, uh, the adoption of privacy enhancing technologies. I'm not 100 sure what they even mean by that, but I guess add in uh tracker blockers and browsers maybe, right, uh, vpns, etc. That kind of thing. Um, and there are new opportunities this is a quote to safeguard and secure people's browsing experiences with AI, now, yeah.
01:26:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That should be. Ai is the safety mechanism.
01:26:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't know about this. That should alarm anybody, okay, but whatever. The point is, there was a dream. We're going to get rid of third-party cookies, which are largely used for tracking, and Google has approximately 117 safety slash, security slash, privacy features built into its browser. I don't think anyone thinks this is safe for anything, frankly, but okay, whatever. I feel like Privacy Sandbox. They didn't say this, but I think this is safe for anything, frankly, but okay, whatever. Um, I I feel like privacy sandbox. They didn't say this, but I think this is the end. I don't. I. You know. So in many ways, it's followed the trajectory of so many google services. You know where it's suddenly one day.
01:27:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's nothing new under the sun.
01:27:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, it's the same thing again you know the thing we were doing. Yeah, we're not doing that anymore, yeah, so I thought that was kind of interesting. Um, I don't want to get into this too much because again there's like so many other things, the antitrust related. It's gonna take a while to wind its way through whatever courts.
01:27:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But and you understand, with no injunction against them. The longer it's in court, the better for them. They get to keep doing what they're doing right. Yeah, and paying lawyers is something they can afford to do. They got the cash. What they can't afford to do is have their business right, and this is the apple.
01:27:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The apple legal strategy, with its stuff too is, is very much uh, let's just keep the revenue rolling in for as long as possible. We sort of understand we're probably not going to be able to charge 30 or whatever it is in app stores and things like that, but for now I'm just going to do it today do it, do it, do it until we can't do it.
01:28:07
So, uh, apple has engaged in a lot of theater when it comes to complying with the DMA in the EU. And now the EU is like yep, now you're going to start getting fined for this. They fine them some. I don't remember the number, hundreds of millions of euros or whatever, but as they would call it, pocket change, I don't know. And then, semi-related to this, there was an inquiry from the National Advertising Division of the BBB National Programs. I don't even know what that is. What is that?
01:28:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I don't know, is that Better Business Bureau?
01:28:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I guess. So yeah, about this available now text. One point type on the Apple website about Apple intelligence, and they're like is it available now? Is it really? I don't think it is, and I guess it isn't, because they took it off the site. So in this one case they were like all right, you know what? This is? Just a couple of words of text on the screen. Who cares? Um, yeah, it can't stay. There were lots of yeah, like small print, you know, footnote type disclosures were like not here, not here, not here, not yet, not whatever.
01:29:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And now it's like whatever available ever I mean, I don't know, I don't know we don't expect apple to be like this, but in some ways I'm kind of relieved that they are, because it's very mortal right, the apple.
01:29:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Look for me. Uh, I I had no respect for microsoft in the early days, um, and now you have no respect for Microsoft in the early days and now you have no respect for Apple.
01:29:37
Well, I have no respect for any of these companies anymore. But I mean, but there was a thing with Microsoft where they started to do some high quality stuff, like Office became very high quality. Windows NT was really high quality, where I kind of got over my initial biases and I was like great. But then the antitrust trial came and I'm like, oh my God, come on, and I was like you got to scatter this company to the winds, like this is terrible. But these companies today, the big tech companies, are so much worse and I think for a lot of Apple fans, when some of this information comes out, they kind of they're like oh, I don't, I don't you know.
01:30:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Actually this kind of they're like oh, I don't, I don't, you know I actually this came about because the better business bureaus ad division said you know, the little fine print you have is saying it is not cutting it, you need to you really need to remove it. Well, we disagree, but we're going to remove it anyway what does it look like on a phone?
01:30:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
it's like it's like a gray dot on the bottom of the screen. What the hell is that? Like what you know, so I don't know. I apple, apple, intelligence is uh you know they. Finally they got past apple maps.
01:30:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, I thank god for apple and apple maps are fine now, by the way, I would like to point out, five years later, it's look. It took a while, five years, it might be more, I don't know how long, yeah, a long time.
01:30:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It was 2011. Right, it was right. Right, it was right after Steve Jobs passed, I think. Okay so it only took 14 years.
01:30:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And it only took what four tries to get Apple TV to stick Like not everything Apple makes works perfectly every time. They are known for their persistence, Like they get stuff done eventually.
01:31:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
By the way, that was always Microsoft's thing, wasn't it? We'll get it right in the third try. I mean, I don't know, I don't know, I, I'm blown away by. I always bring this up, like I always say this to anything any problem. Like a blue screen, it's like ones and zeros, like you should. This should be perfect. It should be perfect.
01:31:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, no, it's never perfect. No, and the internet made it all the easier to not worry about Perfect.
01:31:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We'll ship perfectly, oh the internet is perfect, you know, can be the problem.
01:31:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's hilarious uh, gentlemen, do we have come to the portion that we all look forward to so much, so very much? I know I do. Are we going to do ai again? Guess again, paulie? No, we are. We are about to do our xbox segment. You're watching the fabulous windows weekly with mr paul thrott and richard campbell. We're glad you're here, you winners and you dozers. And now I'm starting to lighten out there, oh, starting to get a little lighter. It's sunrise.
01:32:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
In sydney it's just just pre-dawn as I put myself in the eye with a straw. You know, I'll wait till it's bright enough that you're not I can't like I make mistakes off the window.
01:32:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Where does?
01:32:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
this go sunrise in sydney problem, paul, is that what that is?
01:32:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yeah, exactly, it's the title of my sex tape. Where does this thing go?
01:32:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
okay, kids, you've, you've. You've whined, you've pleaded, you've begged for it. Now you're gonna get it.
01:32:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
She's the xbox segment so, um so, one of the uh this was an early, I want to say this must have been 360 uh game, the eldest scrolls for oblivion. It's like one of the most highly great game games.
01:32:58
Yeah, so old game now yeah it, yeah, yeah, not anymore, my friend. Yeah, I think it's 20 years old. I, yeah, 20 ish years old. Uh, yeah, 2006, right, so it was originally 360 and pc. Um, they've just released this week a remastered version. It's on xbox series x and s, playstation 5, pc and game pass. Um, it is. This is this might be the first like uniformly good news that xbox has had in two years, like it's like everyone's like, oh no, this is awesome, you know? So there's a whole generation of gamers that love this thing and, you know, grew up on it or whatever, and they're like, yeah, I'm going back. You know, if you look at that, if you watch the video for the uh, the remastered version looks pretty good.
01:33:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Real five is great right like you certainly got the engine for it, it should look spectacular.
01:33:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's really a question of how much did they spend on the art to refresh it to a much higher performance engine yeah yeah, and and based on how I don't think this is in our story, but, uh, based on how the industry has been going. They, uh, they uh, contracted with a company called I think it's game briar, brio, game brio, I guess the old or something or what. Oh, no, that was the original, I'm sorry they. They went. So Bethesda went with some company to do this over Virtuos, his name, and they were like look, we're not going to start this, not finish this, so you have to, we're going to do this right. You're not going to come back in a year and be like you're like no, we need this, like we want this so bad. So it was kind of a cool story because, like the, the people that worked in this were like no, you don't understand, I grew up on this thing, I want this to, I want to make this right, I, you know. And they're like no, do it. And um, and here it is.
01:34:50 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So yeah, nostalgia again.
01:34:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
we're getting this old game back, but refresh graphics like okay, it's going to be an experience yeah, I mean, it's not, it's not my kind of game, but I look at that and I'm like, oh man, like this, it looks, it looks awesome yeah, it's fun yeah, so. And then, uh, I don't remember, this was fairly recently, but uh, microsoft is spreading its x Xbox app to different platforms, including smart TVs, and I think it's on an.
01:35:21
Xbox, everything's right, exactly so. Yeah, samsung is in there, fire TV is in there, and now LG, and so that's available today. If you have a recent model I think it's 2022 or maybe a newer suppress it. It's not just new models, that it's actually yeah, exactly Cause you know these things are using it maybe a newer, suppress it.
01:35:36
It's not just new models that it's actually yeah, exactly because you know these things are using it like a 6502 processor or something. But, um, you know you're doing cloud gaming, it's. You know you're streaming it from the cloud or whatever, but, um, you can connect your xbox controller with bluetooth to the screen, you know, yada, yada, so that's cool. I mean, uh, more ways to um play these games is always good, that's cool. And then Nintendo, right at the beginning of the month, announced the Switch 2, big deal $450.
01:36:04
That's not great Expensive but, okay, and then we started this tariff thing in the United States. You probably didn't hear about this. It wasn't a big story. But Nintendo, within a couple of days, was like you know, we're going to hold off on the pre-orders. Let's of days was like you know, we're gonna, we're gonna hold off on the pre-orders, let's see how this goes. We're gonna assess the impact of the tariffs. You know, we don't know if this is gonna work and we're like, oh you're not gonna make this more expensive come on so it's not gonna make it more expensive.
01:36:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The administration might, but they're not going to. Yeah, I think, but I think they. I think there's a pause right now, long enough that they can get a ship across the ocean, and that's what they're thinking like how many containers can we get through in this window?
01:36:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
yeah, before the next round of surprises go yeah, I don't, I, I, I don't know, I don't know what the I gotta think that's the math, right.
01:36:47 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It takes about a week, yeah, to get across the pacific yeah, wait.
01:36:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know it's like uh, if you don't like the weather, relive. Wait 10 seconds, it's gonna change. It's like you don't like the tariffs, it's the united states government.
01:36:56
Wait 10 seconds, it will totally right that's the unexpected part, because normally yeah, I couldn't find the original price list but I I know for the mate, like the console itself, the bundle with mario kart world and some of the top games, nothing is changing. But as you go down that list of all the accessories, the camera, dock set, carrying case, etc. Um, I think some of those actually are a little more expensive. But I couldn't find the original to you know, compare.
01:37:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah, everything is more expensive. Oh, is that true? Okay, I think the switch 2 is more expensive, 100 bucks more than the old one, isn't it?
01:37:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
well, it's not 100 bucks more than what they announced originally.
01:37:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, oh, I see what you're saying yeah, yeah, though they added 30 to many of the accessories okay, yeah, yeah which is doesn't cover the tear. I don't know. I yeah, I don't know you know, it's hard to know who knows it seemed expensive to begin with.
01:37:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It would have been horrible if they came back and said oh yeah, it was, it's got to be 4.99 now or something like.
01:37:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, and the games are expensive, but I'm gonna get it anyway, because yeah, yeah, no, it looks good.
01:37:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean gotta have it so the if you live in the united states, the, what is the date? Now it's April 24 for pre-orders. You've got to go through that process, like you kind of have to prove you were a.
01:38:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I'm not going to go to the head of the line because I have had a Switch account for ages, but I haven't played 50 hours of games this year, oh this year, ah, interesting.
01:38:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I love this, I love that they're working hard. It's all the stop scalpers, which is great Resist the scalpers. I'm totally buy-in and specifically cater to the active fan.
01:38:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Really active.
01:38:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's a good thing, really 50 hours is something you can do in a weekend if you try hard.
01:38:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't think you can do it in a weekend.
01:38:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
A weekend and a couple hours, my wife would have worries with me if that, no, sleep this.
01:38:41 - AI Voice (Announcement)
She's like I was so tempted to like, if you really cared, leo, you would fix this.
01:38:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'd find a way find a way.
01:38:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, so they didn't have to. Really they didn't have to change the ship date. They did push back the pre-order date it's different in different parts of the world. I and I didn't. I don't have a link to, but they did the pre-order in Japan. I don't know how this is even possible, but supposedly the demand in Japan was way higher than Nintendo expected.
01:39:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's also a lot cheaper in Japan.
01:39:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I guess they could just drive it around which?
01:39:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
is why I think they're not too worried about tariffs, because I think they checked the price up ahead of time. There's plenty of extra margin in there.
01:39:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, tell me what new game console you're going to buy, right? Yeah, ps5 pro, right? You know what else is there? Yeah, like, once again, nintendo lands in a market where it's just like we're by ourselves again. They're brilliant, they do this better than anybody yeah, well, they have been completely different.
01:39:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They have the ip.
01:39:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean that's really and that's yeah honestly, that's the lesson microsoft absorbed and they've also stuck to their guns.
01:39:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The best, their best games are on their platform and nowhere else you want to play mario kart world?
01:39:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
yeah, gotta get one place.
01:39:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's frustrating in a way, because you think you guys could have the biggest mobile game company on earth if you just just brought this stuff to iPhone and Android and they're like, yeah, we like selling switches they like their little world Switch is great.
01:40:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think it's better than the steam deck, to be honest, because the games are made for that you, sir, are a heathen, I know.
01:40:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, that's a those are fighting.
01:40:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Heresy goes a long way on a Wednesday. A little heresy goes a long way on a Wednesday. Yes, on any day, or for me, on a Thursday Like this. Time is subjective.
01:40:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, oh, that's right, you're in Thursday already. I'm.
01:40:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Thursday. But welcome to the future. Oh, you had like an extra day off so you could order your Switch 2 right now.
01:40:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There you go. So somebody's telling me it was 50 hours of gameplay before January 1st of this year. Right, so I'm completely out of luck. There's nothing you can do. Well, I had 50 hours.
01:40:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, I'm surprised you wouldn't have 50 hours in 2024.
01:40:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it wasn't in 2024. What are you doing? I might have had 50 hours. What have you been doing?
01:40:50 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Let's go.
01:40:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I bet you do 50 hours is not that much in a year. Yeah, a year it's not an hour a week. Come on, come on, get with it, leo. All right, the back of the book's coming. We have a brown liquor, we have uh tips, we have a hardware pick of the week and we have sunrise. In sydney, it's a beautiful fall day. It's morning again. In wherever you are, it's Thursday. In Sydney, you've got a nice spot.
01:41:23 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The future looks pretty good, nice spot. Huh, we're at Coogee Beach, for those who are interested, a little south of Bondi.
01:41:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the Pacific Ocean you're looking at.
01:41:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That is the Pacific Ocean. You go straight out there, you'll miss New Zealand. It's a little to the south of there, but yeah it new zealand.
01:41:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
it's a little to the south of there, but yeah, it's funny because you're on the other side of that view the other side.
01:41:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, my home view is the other side it looks pretty pacific right now actually it does and it's. It's been real stormy like no kidding, got real rough out there. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Oh you live, live a good life, I bet, yeah, I'm gonna have some adventures. It's melbourne next week so jealous.
01:42:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Uh, well, all right, we're going to talk right now about uh, club twit. I want to get everybody in the club. Uh, that's important to us going forward and we've made it a little easier because we've brought back the one-year plan a lot of by popular demand. I didn't I have misgivings, because every time somebody signs up for the one-year plan oh, somebody just did that means I have to do 365 more days of shows to live up to my agreement. Okay, go ahead, make me lock me in. It's your chance. What is what else were you doing? I know, what am I. What else would I be doing?
01:42:46
Uh, club twit is our way of, uh, frankly, of keeping the ship afloat. Yeah, we have ads, uh, and the ads are great. We love the ads, but, as you see one ad on this show it really doesn't pay the full cost of the show. That's where the club comes in. We, at least started this about three years ago and it's really been, I think, wonderful because, first of all, we got a lot of people who are showing their interest in what we're doing and their support for it by joining the club. It's not expensive. It's seven bucks a month, but I take that seven. I understand seven bucks. Seven bucks that's a dozen eggs month, but I take that seven, I understand seven bucks. Seven bucks that's a dozen eggs or more, less or more, depending on where you live, but it's a significant investment. So I'm very grateful for all of our club members and I take it as a vote of confidence, like, yeah, keep doing this, so we will. If, if you join now, what do you get we? You know you get, of course, a good feeling that you're supporting all the programming we do, but you also get get ad-free versions of all the shows, because I hate it when people you pay for something and they still show you ads. It's like that's double dipping. You give us seven bucks, no more ads, okay, unless you want them. Some people like the ads, in fact so many people like the ads.
01:43:57
We actually in our Club Twit Discord because we have a wonderful Discord channel made a channel called All the Ads so you can watch the ads with that later if you feel like it. So the Discord is another big benefit to Club Twit. It's a place you can hang out with peers, people who are, like you, interested in tech and enthusiastic care about tech or listening to the show. Some of them, but not always some of them, are playing games. We have a let's play section in the club, twit discord, where you can uh play minecraft or uh, we're all. We're all kind of now big into bracket city, that kind of thing. Wait a minute. Patrick says four years. I can't believe it's been four years. Thank you for that correction, patrick. Four years has been. You know, we started because we needed it. But uh, and we still need it, I have to say but boy, I'm really happy that you're in it. Uh, you also get special events. If I look at the, we just did the coffee event with the coffee geek, mark Prince.
01:44:58
Friday is the AI user group, 1 pm Pacific. That's the fourth Friday of every month. Photo time with Chris Marquardt is next Friday, may 2nd, and I've just talked to Dick T Bartolo who wants to celebrate his 2000th episode. So we're going to do a special with the Giz Whiz. That's May 16th, may 14th, micah's Crafting Corner, actually May 16th, stacy's Book Club. So I guess the GizWiz will be the 23rd, the following Friday. By the way, this is a great book. I recommend it. Ursula K Le Guin's the Word for World is Forest. Short, too easy to read Just a few hours long on the audio book.
01:45:37
We've also decided that we're going to start streaming keynotes in the club only because we keep getting takedowns from Apple. So sorry, microsoft and Google, but we're going to lump you in with this group. So we will be Micah and I, or you guys, if you're around, can join me for Microsoft's build keynote. We'll be doing that in the club only, so you need to be in the member of the club. Actually, we're going to stream them, I think? No, we can't. That's right. That's the whole point. Yeah, we can only stream it in discord, so we don't get takedowns. So that means google io, right after my thank you. Microsoft. Build is the 19th to google, I was the 20th, and then june 9th is wwd. Mike and I will be doing that. So that's special programming for club members only. Please consider it, would you? We'd love to have you in the club. It's not just for geeks anymore. Twittv slash club twit. That's all I'm going to say about it.
01:46:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean most of you are probably geeks.
01:46:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's nothing wrong. Say it loud, say it proud. Being a geek is a good thing. Do you think anybody who's not a geek listens to our shows?
01:46:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I was told one time that a person's kids, he had them listen to. I think it was this podcast or maybe it was a different one, but because the sound of my voice made them fall asleep. So I mean there are different.
01:47:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Those are subliminal geeks and we need more of them. Yeah, I mean, I guess there are different use cases?
01:47:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't know.
01:47:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just love what we're doing. I think it's so important now more than ever. And how would you get by a Wednesday without Grumpy Paul? You couldn't do it.
01:47:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Wednesdays are my wife's favorite day because I'm gone for two to three hours.
01:47:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're helping Paul's marriage by doing this show, segregating him, keeping him away from his wife. So, paulie, this might be a good time for you to start the back of the book with your tip of the week. You want to give it a shot.
01:47:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, so it's roughly the 10th anniversary of Google Fi. This is a service I've been in and out of the entire time. I subscribed immediately. It was kind of secondary for a while. I don't remember the years anymore, but I used it exclusively for a long time.
01:47:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't remember the years anymore either, obviously.
01:47:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I don't remember the years anymore either. Obviously yeah, but so I, during the pandemic, to save money, I went to Mint Mobile and then stayed on Mint Mobile for two years because you could pay for three, six, 12 months at a time super cheap. There was no international anything, so it was kind of a problem. And then, since then we you know, we come to Mexico all the time. So there's a they changed the name, but there's a Simply Unlimited plan that's roughly 50 bucks where everything works. Mexico and Canada, as well as US.
01:48:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, for Mint Mobile. Oh, I didn't know that.
01:48:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, I'm sorry. Sorry, this is Google Fi. Oh, google Fi. Yeah, no, I love the Google Fi. There's no Mint Mobile or anything that's any good. It's terrible, right, right, right. So I have been using it. But the thing here is, for whatever reason, in roma norte, where my apartment is, they connect google fi, links up with whatever carriers. They use something called movie star, which is terrible here. Oh, movie movie. Yeah, the good network is tell cell here. So, um, I usually just use data sims instead, data e-sims, you know whatever.
01:48:54
So that's interesting I didn't realize that yeah, it's not ideal, but because of this and because we're here so much, I was like like, well, ok, so if I'm doing this anyway, what? Maybe I should get something cheaper. So I've been actively investigating this MVN thing again seeing, like, what makes sense. I looked at Visible recently, us Mobile Mint again, you know whatever and literally the day that this was announced I was researching this, trying to figure something out. So Google Fi just changed all their plans and they have a new entry-level plan that's $35 a month. It doesn't give you any international anything, which you know it was not. Well, actually I could do that, I guess. But they've made plans to these other. They've made changes to their other plans which actually now are very interesting. So, for example, the plan I have now, which is called Unlimited Standard, now used to offer 35 gigs a month of high-speed data and 5 gigs of hotspot, but now it's 50 and 25 gigs. That's crazy and all the same things Like I get connectivity with my watch through this. It works pretty good, right? Unlimited Plus, which is now called Unlimited Premium, doubled their stuff too. So this is $65 a month for one person, 100 gigs of high-speed data a month, 50 gigs of high-speed hotspot and it works basically everywhere in the world. So it's not just Mexico, canada, it's like everywhere.
01:50:14
But the other thing they added was data eSIMs. So one of the things I used to use a little bit was they used to offer data SIMs only. So if you had, like an iPad or a phone that had a SIM slot, like a nano, whatever the size was, um, you could get these SIMs for free. Basically, I think you could have like five or six of them or something, so you could use all off the same account, and actually that's super interesting to me. So instead of like getting rid of this, I might pay them $15 more a month so I can just have data Sims on all my devices without paying more, you know, like without getting additional accounts. So for me it just got kind of interesting.
01:50:52
Again, it doesn't solve the problem that they're not on tell so. So that's still an issue. But they fixed a bunch of the stuff on iphone. So if you're using an iphone with this um, they're going to add um visual voicemail through the phone app, which they've never had on iphone, um, you had to use their app for that, so and some other stuff. But uh, it's I, I'm just, you know, everyone has different needs. I mean, we all use phones differently. Um, you may live in an area where, in the United States, mostly T-Mobile maybe that's not great for you, I don't know. But I mean, this is like I'm like, this is like shooting up my decision now. So I'm going to say I might, I might stick with it. So this is kind of interesting, so we use.
01:51:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
T-Mobile at home, but I use Google Fi on my Pixel a pixel so I'm gonna have to look into these.
01:51:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I would look at the new plans like they didn't even told me about it.
01:51:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's like, yeah, you're supposed to find out.
01:51:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I guess it's also stuff like um, like, I have an account so I could buy a like a samsung, whatever 20, galaxy, 25, ultra and pay 40 a month for two years, right, and it would just go on to my bill. It works out to be what, and it's some amount off. It's like like three or 400 bucks off the normal price, whatever, okay. But if I didn't have an account, they would give me a $20 bill credit every month for that. So it would actually just be $20 a month. So it's effectively not quite, but almost half price. Like you'd have to stay on the system for two years for that to make sense, right, because once you quit you don't get that back and then you just pay the normal amount. But you like, I can't do it on mine, but if I were to start a new account and get a new number, I guess I could actually do something like that too. So if you haven't looked at it yet, I'll have to look at it.
01:52:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's worth, by the way, it's worth looking at, not to, not to throw a monkey wrench at all this. But mint has just added international plans. They call them international plans.
01:52:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Mint international. Okay, well, I will look at that. Actually, I liked Mint. I had good success with.
01:52:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Mint.
01:52:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Mint is so cheap and it's owned by T-Mobile now, but they always worked off the.
01:52:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
T-Mobile network. Yeah, they're what we call an MVM.
01:52:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They were cheap, I think I.
01:52:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, they were the lowest cost I've found anywhere, I would just pay for the year. And they were an advertiser for a long time. I don't know if they still are, but they were an advertiser for a long time, yeah.
01:53:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And I like that Ryan kid. He's going to go places, I think he's going to be okay, yeah.
01:53:09 - Richard Campbell (Host)
None of this available in Canada. No.
01:53:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah.
01:53:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's right. And where the coast place is no TELUS signal. So if you want your phone to work, you, it is. No, it's not AT&T. I can't remember, maybe it is this movie star, but it's. It's doesn't solve the problem. Um, but yeah, that's what I've been using, uh, since I've been here and that works fine. Like I, you know, you sign one to phone and text and the other one to data and it's.
01:53:50 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know that's fine, that's what I do.
01:53:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I must check it out.
01:53:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's worth looking at, and normally I would do an app pick, but I'm going to do a hardware pick because a couple of years ago Microsoft got rid of their Microsoft branded hardware keyboards, mice, webcams, et cetera. They kept the Surface branded stuff, but I don't really.
01:54:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You forgot that you did this last week didn't you.
01:54:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think it was last week, buddy, yeah, oh, so Well, here's why. Okay, so the reason I'm mentioning it now is because I have this list of things that I'm gonna buy when I go someday, when I make my money. Do it now, because I don't back in america now, but I have a schedule, and so I just ordered the first of maybe you know 10 things or something, because I know it's going to be so far out. I could just order it now. But this is. I just put it on my calendar. Uh, next thursday order the microsoft sculpt keyboard set from Sculpt Organomics.
01:54:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
From Incase Yep.
01:54:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I've heard now from a bunch of people who have been buying this stuff that it's literally, as you would expect, identical, like it's the same materials, the same stuff. There's an Incase logo now instead of a Microsoft logo, but it is literally exactly the same. That's good news.
01:54:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Order some spares.
01:54:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They're going gonna run out so I'm gonna order mine from amazon. It's a little cheaper, but I literally just this morning I made one of several uh to-do items all on a calendar to uh order this so that I will fly home and maybe it will arrive within a day or two of me, right? When are you going home? Um, I think it's a week from saturday oh, and you've been down like three months, haven't you?
01:55:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
yeah?
01:55:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
you've been there a long time. Three is there a limit to how long you can stay?
01:55:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
no no I can stay here as long as I want. He's got his residency now because you're a movie star?
01:55:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I sure am. Oh, that's cool so you could stay there. But you decide, you know, every once in a while you're like well, we have stuff to do like uh, get stuff, daughters get some stuff scheduled.
01:55:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We have a well yeah, we have doctor's appointments and things like those things.
01:55:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, all those things stack up, yeah, so so you're not doing doctors down there yet, because, by all accounts, no but, I do better down there.
01:55:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I hate to say and to they're cheaper down here. I can tell you that, um, my wife had a what's the thing with her tooth I can't remember what it was, for some reason, but um, she, you go to, like you go to a pharmacy. There's a doctor next door that's associated with it and she got medication that she had to go get at the well, at the pharmacy, right. So she saw her doctor, she got a prescription. So what? The pharmacy the whole thing costs. It was 11, oh my god, and it's like I spend more than I did when I have lunch at McDonald's.
01:56:23 - Richard Campbell (Host)
What are you talking about? Like that's crazy, that's incredible.
01:56:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it's nuts, yep. So yes, I mean, that's on the. I meant to do that I wanted to get. Going on like prescriptions is kind of a problem. Most of the prescriptions we have are over the counter here, but I also take Adderall for ADHD and that's a controlled substance. This is a huge problem and you can't just go get that. I could get it on the street, I guess, I don't know.
01:56:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm not sure that works. Yeah, it looks like amphetamine.
01:56:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm like you think I'm spazzy now Wait till. Yeah. You want some crystal meth, paul? Yeah, maybe I mean same deal. Street adderall, yeah, street so that's the big one. Yeah, I would like to get that solved, but uh, maybe for the next trip, I guess then you've got to find.
01:57:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know, it's one of the things we're doing now. Living on the coast for a year and a half is gradually getting all those services on the coast right, right. Finally found a pharmacist we both really love, and, and so that parched them. But finding a doctor is not that easy, I know.
01:57:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's a big one, the closest friend we have here who's American. But he's lived in Mexico for like 15 years. He was like really early on this he flies to. I think it's Guadalajara, not Guadalupe, I think it's Guadalajara.
01:57:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Guadalajara, his doctor's in guadalajara and I'm like dude, that does not help me. I am not flying guadalajara like why not get one in mexico?
01:57:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't know, just saying it yeah, I will, and then he will too, I think, eventually yeah, yeah, and the dentist.
01:57:47 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's the other one.
01:57:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Get a dentist squared away, if my uh if my 401k keeps declining, I might be uh, might be moving down there it's cheaper right everything's cheaper everything is cheaper.
01:57:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You have no idea how much like.
01:58:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Plus I pay uh like 13 state income tax here, so I'd get a 13 boing right away ours.
01:58:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, we don't have a house anymore in pennsylvania, but our taxes on a house were property taxes were 8 500 a year. Um, if we own that same size property here, our taxes would be about $260. Wow yeah, it's not even close. And because we don't, the thing we own is tiny. So our taxes are like $60, whatever the number is like, it's some tiny amount and you get a discount if you paid the whole thing at once. Like, you get this, you're like, you're like, you're like, uh, all $60 at the same time.
01:58:39
You're like, you're like, like, here you go.
01:58:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I know.
01:58:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's so stupid, it's that's crazy.
01:58:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All right, I want to ask Richard what's coming up on his radio.
01:58:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Published today. My friend, tim Warner his handle is tech trainer Tim. Tech trainer Tim. Yeah, he's one of the the one of the long-term plural site authors. He's done a ton of stuff on azure and so forth and, of course, all in on ai.
01:59:08
But what I really appreciate, you know we've been doing a fair number of ai related shows on run as, especially for sysadmins, like different tooling and so forth. Like a month earlier I did one with jessica dean, very gith, github co-pilot focused. But Tim's gone further afield. He loves the agentic mode so he's doing a lot of here look how it actually generates the code that kind of approach. And he went with cursor.
01:59:29
So you know we usually talk about cursor in the context of developers. I'm not saying it's just admitted developers, but they're definitely writing more code these days and so using these tools to write higher quality code, more of it, and being able to build a testable bit working properly with GitHub, like the guidance that these tools give you to have good practices around code quality and management, can really, you know, step up your game in a big way. So a bunch of good links on this show to products you should take a look at. We also talked about what was just being released then was still in preview, which was the insider version of Visual Studio, had Copilot Edit, which has this new agentic mode as well. So it's worth taking a look at both cursor and this new feature in in GitHub copilot through Visual Studio Code.
02:00:23
So, yeah, fun conversation and just more great tooling that you, you know more and more feeling like you're missing the boat If you don't get on with these tools. It's, they're really quite powerful. They are augmentations to work. You weren't, you weren't getting to. You know, it's like none of us are getting to the bottom of our to-do list and this is just trying to get a little further down and get a few more things done. Nice, hard stuff run as radiocom.
02:00:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's not hard, it's easy. Just there you go. Go there. Now you know what I'm talking about. Let's talk some Australian, some whiskey down under.
02:01:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Admittedly, I am in Australia, but this is actually a whiskey that was given to me at the MVP summit, although it happens to be from Tasmania. Now, you know me, these days I don't just talk about the whiskey, I like to do a little terroir, right. I'm like what about Tasmania and so forth? And I got into the deeper story. You know, sort of talking about the island, going all the way back to like there's evidence of habitation on the land. It's now Tasmania, going back 30,000 years. The aboriginal people made it down there way in advance, although that's the early state, that's early ice age. Uh, tasmania was an island. Then it was part of the same land mass that stretched all the way up into new guinea, which is one of the ways they made it over through there.
02:01:50
And I love the fact that in the stories that they've collected about this, there's a flood story that this you know, they, we talk about. What would we all, all kinds of different mythologies and religions have these flood stories and you know they talk about? Maybe it was the breaching of the brosphorus strait that filled in the black sea. That is the origin of the flood story. But the the bassinian basin, very clearly, was inhabited. It's now, you know, several hundred meters underwater and ocean water and it had probably flooded over uh over a century or so as the ice melted and this uh and became the bass strait and separated that island from the rest of australia. But the aboriginals call that land uh, trawana, and you know, the interaction between the Aboriginals call that land Trawana and the interaction between the Aborigines and the Europeans, especially by the nature of how Australia was inhabited, is not good. There are grim stories that I hope that they're dealing with, as many countries are with their Aboriginal peoples.
02:02:56
The Europeans first cite the land that becomes named as Tasmania was actually a Dutch explorer named Abel Tasman in 1642. But he named the island Antone de Demersland, which was actually the name of the governor of Dutch East Indies at the time. The British immediately then shortened that to Van Diemen's Land, so that island was named Van Diemen's Land by the Dutch and ultimately by the English for a couple hundred years anyway. The French have maps of it from the 1700s. James Cook sailed by it, william Bly anchored there at one point and then later was a governor in New South Wales. But the English ultimately inhabited the island because they were afraid the French were going to by deploying a prisoner group into Sullivan's Cove, which is where the largest city on Tasmania now is Hobart Town, and the island became independent from New South Wales in 1825 and was finally renamed Tasmania 1856 officially, although you can find maps from like 1800 that have the word Tasmania on them.
02:04:10
So about 300,000 people live on the island today. Hobart is the capital in the southeast coast. About 220,000 of them live there. Next largest is Lushton, which is inland in the southeast coast. About 220 000 of them live there. Uh, next largest is uh um luston, which is in inland in the northeast, and then devonport. It's only about 30 000 people in devonport at the central north coast, but we're talking about bernie. Bernie's the fourth largest town in tasmania, uh, just west of devonport about 28 000,000 people.
02:04:37
So why are we talking about Burnie? Because we're talking about the distillery called Hellyer, named for Henry Hellyer, who surveyed the road that cuts through Burnie and where this distillery was built in 1827. But the distillery was not built until 1997, and it was built by a group of dairy farmers, and it was built by a group of dairy farmers. So about 70 families that were farming dairy in the northwest part of Tasmania ran a collective called the Betta Milk Cooperative and in the 1990s. The cooperative was formed in the 1950s, but in the 1990s they decided they should diversify and they explored a bunch of different industries, and the one they settled on was distilling whiskey, which was, at the time, unusual in Australia. They were one of the very first distilleries in all of Australia, but because it wasn't a mom-and-pop operation like, your typical distillery starts as somebody's farming barley and has excess and needs to use it up. This was already a collective of dairy farmers that were used to working at scale, so they built quite a large distillery right off the bat and were successful at it. In fact, in 2019, the Betta Milk Cooperative exited the dairy business and focused purely on whiskey, although apparently they make a very nice whiskey cream as well. So there's no milk products involved in there, and today the that the vast majority of that collective is still owned by the same set of families, although several generations later now.
02:06:08
Uh, so, uh hell. Your distillery mostly gets their barley from the island. They actually buy it from the cascade brewery, which is uh outside of hobart, who does their own maltings, and so they buy it from the Cascade Brewery, which is outside of Hobart who does their own maltings, and so they buy it malted but not ground. They do their own grindings. Cascade Brewery has been in Hobart since 1832. So these things have been around for a while.
02:06:32
But because they were dairy farmers used to working at scale. A lot of the equipment in the distillery is big 30,000 liter mash tun farmers used to working at scale. A lot of the equipment in the distillery is big 30 000 liter mash done. Uh, one of the largest wash stills in the world at 60 000 liters. Also, the main part of the of the uh the uh still is stainless steel. They only only the lye arming condenser are copper, which they need because you need to reduce the sulfurs, the sulfites, out of the barley when you're distilling or you end up with a very bitter distillate.
02:07:05
It's one of these interesting truths that these guys when tearing along, it's like distilling is easy. Then they try to make their product and it wasn't that good. So they then hired some good distillers and started working through the process. It took them a few years to get it right. So, yeah, so 60,000 liter wash still is unbelievably vast and then a 20,000 liter uh spirit still. Uh, they do a pretty tasmania is far enough south that it's fairly cool there. So their fermentation is sort of it's very scottish. It's like 65 hours of fermentation but because the still is so big, when they do their initial wash distillation run it's 72 hours. Typically a Scottish distillation on the wash would be eight hours. So this is a very, very long distilling process. There's a lot of conversation about the effects of a long distillation like that on the reflux.
02:07:53
To make a really clean tasting spirit they normally age in bourbon casks as they're inexpensive. In fact they even say they're using Jack Daniels casks and they make a bunch of different variations of whiskey which they've been making for more than 20 years now. In fact they do have long ages, they have a 21 year old and if you can find a bottle of it almost 1000 bucks like not cheap. And they do lots of finishing barrelings port sherry, wine, beer, you name it. Uh, they do have a small line of peated whiskey but they buy that barley that are already peated from scotland. So their non-peated additions are tasmanian barley handled by their brewery, handled by the brewery on the island, but the the peated stuff is scottish barley you know we can't get to the link you put in.
02:08:44
I think they don't sell that harmony number three in the no, and between the time that I got this bottle and today, that link has died. Yeah, and that's because there was only. This is the third edition of dark harmony and there were only 239 bottles of it and I got bottle two. It's gone. I'm so jealous, gone, uh. Now I don't have it with me, I doubt. Putting it on back on the airplane seems stupid, yes, but I did have a nice taste of it.
02:09:11
Now this is the third release of this series of special maturing, uh maturings of whiskey that they've made. What they did here is cool. So they're making their normal, their normal whiskey. They make a beautiful 10. And then they took that Jack Daniels cast that had already done 10 years of their bourbon in it and they lent that barrel to communion brewing, which is in Bernie as well, and they used it to finish a dark ipa.
02:09:42
Huh so uh, and they the. They called that dark ipa the mutinous bastard which I suspect is, you know, after captain bligh and all that sort of thing, which you can't get the beer anymore either. It was a special edition, but then they gave the barrel back to uh hellier and they made this dark harmony love it. So uh it, it did, it did, uh, the, the whiskey did 10 years in bourbon first, and then they did a finish in this special barrel, uh, to make the dark harmony for a year it looks like if you go to the distillery you could try dark harmony, number two in a tasting may not have sold out as quickly as quickly.
02:10:23
So I made notes about trying this back at home and my first note was whoa, there's no harmony here. This is a serious punch in the mouth. Wow. It's got a little scent to pete uh, which really gives you no sense of what's about to happen when you drink it, because it's all. It's almost overwhelming. It's 53, which is high but not catastrophic. But it's pretty strong, but it doesn't have that alcohol burn.
02:10:51
It has a bitter ipa taste oh interesting but as soon as you get that first swallow done, your salivary glands kick off like that bitterness really sort of gets you go. Oh, I think I want more. And it doesn't burn on the way down, it goes down really, really nice. And then and then, while you're still slightly traumatized, you're just like I should take another sip of this, because it couldn't be like that again sounds like it's aptly named.
02:11:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Actually, it kind of is this dark harmony yeah no, they definitely is a play.
02:11:23 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is a barrel that's gone from whiskey to beer, back to whiskey, and so it's unique. It's such a cool idea for whiskey. I remember, uh, it was chris goosen who gave me this bottle at fellow mvp and I'm really grateful to him because I would again. There's only 228 239 bottles that's ever made. I got bottle 224 I love it.
02:11:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's a competition to impress you. Now, right, it's like right, oh, we got it, we got, can't just give him any old bottle, you got it's better, fine, give me something weird, weird or something rare or both to be.
02:11:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Something used to be something weird from my closet.
02:11:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Now it's something weird from tasmania but I love tasmania, as I mentioned. I spent a couple of weeks there years ago and I just it's beautiful. It's on the 40th parallel. It's pretty much the same parallel as we are. Yeah, yeah, so their cheeses, for instance, blue cheese made there, is very much like our blue cheese in this area.
02:12:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So it's but it you know, everything south of there is Antarctica, so they've got very sturdy winds and very and cold drafts, so actually pretty good for aging whiskey. If you could find a bottle of this and I don't think you could, it's about 150 US, yeah.
02:12:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can't even find the webpage.
02:12:36 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I think they've pulled it because they don't have any to sell. They do sell internationally. There are a few high-end or sort of fancy collector whiskey handlers in the US.
02:12:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They have Helliers Some.
02:12:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Helliers, but not this one, not that one. I suspect a few bottles of this will show up in collectors at some point at a much higher price point. It's very unique, it's a very special, it's interesting because they also sell whiskey cream yeah, so you know their dairy origins show through right like then okay yeah, but I'm not sure I'd want whiskey cream to be honest, it's a thing. I mean, that's essentially what a bailey's is. Yeah, it's bailey's, it's chocolate milk and whiskey.
02:13:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's a big. It's big now. I think, a lot of people it's like a, it's like a gateway drug into real, it's a smoother probably smoother.
02:13:23 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, yeah anyway, some award winners yeah, it's, it was a, it was a great experience and it it goes to the end of the roster. So I'm having it in melbourne in a few hours and I'm gonna go shopping for a whiskey in melbourne, which is, um, you know, basically in view of tasmania, where we're gonna be, and we'll have something different for next week I hope you can sleep on the plane.
02:13:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You got up really early to be with us and we're so grateful, richard, thank you, I got a.
02:13:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I got a good sleep. I went to bed early, so I'm okay fine. But, that being said, I always fall asleep on airplanes.
02:13:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I suspect I will not remember any of that flight I usually sleep before the wheels come up yeah, anything to sleep on a plane, yeah I don't know what it is about that, but this I find it soothing yeah, no, as soon as we pull off the gate, I'm out.
02:14:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, me too, and then the bump of landing will probably wake up people make me sick I'd wait for you. I'd be like are you sleeping? Yeah, sleeping, buddy are you there, I, but I do have a. I still have a couple of bottles of maple syrup left, so that's, uh, oh yeah, valuable commodity in this part of the world. Let me tell you well, richard, safe travels.
02:14:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Enjoy your trip to melbourne.
02:14:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You'll be in melbourne for next week melbourne for next week, just in time to just before I fly to new zealand.
02:14:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So richard campbell is at run as radiocom, no matter where he is in the world, he'll always be there and that's where his podcasts live, and we're so glad that he joins us every wednesday for windows weekly. Same to you paul thurott. He is the man in charge of thurottcom t-h-u-r-r-o-t-t. He also publishes his books at lean pubcom, including the field guide to windows 11 and windows everywhere, kind of a history of windows through its development frameworks. Together they team up to create this show every Wednesday, 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern 19, no 1800 UTC. You can watch live if you're in the club, of course, on discord, but there's also a live stream for all at youtube twitch tiktok. Did we do tiktok at all today? I think we didn't. We're struggling with tiktok a little bit. Uh, we'll get it. We'll get it going. Linkedin is rolled. Facebook. I know I don't understand. You know what's this.
02:15:36
I just can't do that dance yeah exactly my 22-year-old told me yesterday the Ice Bucket Challenge is back. Yes, no, no.
02:15:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So are bell-bottom pants and roller skating, I guess.
02:15:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Everything old is new again. Yep, anyway, xcom, linkedin, facebook, kik a lot of places to watch live, and if you're chatting, I see all the chats on my screen. I have here a kind of compiled, composite version of the chat, so it's nice to hear from you all, but you don't have to watch live only if you want to chat, because we make obviously we make on-demand versions of the show available. Twittertv slash www. That's the official web page. You can find audio and video there. You'll also find links to all the previous episodes and, uh, you'll find a link to our youtube channel for the video great place to go to share clips. Youtube makes that pretty easy and everybody's got youtube right.
02:16:35
And but the best thing to do, if you really want to listen to every show and you should if you are a true winner or dozer, you can subscribe in your favorite podcast client. You'll get it automatically the minute it's available. And, incidentally, if you do that, please leave us a review, a positive review, of course. Five star review. That helps us spread the word about windows weekly. Thank you, paul, thank you richard sir you want another view.
02:17:02
The sun's up nicely now yeah, let's see the, the final, final picture. Oh my gosh, it looks like a sunset photo morning in sydney. So that's because, paul, you're rarely up before 9 am no, I'm actually. I'm usually up before the sun, but yeah, that's one of the things I liked about cruises is, you know, you always have that perfect sunset over the ocean. Oh yeah, there's never anything in the way no sunsets here, it's sunrises, it's nice yeah, the sunrises we're looking east, so yeah thank you, boys, we'll see you next week.
02:17:35
Thank you everybody. See you next time on windows weekly.
