Windows Weekly Episode 769 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.

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for windows weekly. Paul Thurrott is here. Mary Jo. Foley's here a big Microsoft event coming up in a couple of weeks, April 5th. What will they announce? Mary Jo Foley has some thoughts. Yes, that was the windows source code that got leaked. Microsoft admits it. So what and edge 100 coming your way. It's all coming up next on windows weekly. Stay here. Podcasts. You love

Mary Jo Foley (00:00:26):
From people you trust.

Leo Laporte (00:00:29):
This

TWiT Intro! (00:00:30):
Is TWIT.

Leo Laporte (00:00:34):
This is windows weekly with Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley episode 769. Recorded windows day, March 23rd, 2022. The insects are winning

Leo Laporte (00:00:47):
Windows. Weekly is brought to you by it. Pro TV. Give your team an engaging it development platform to level up their skills. Volume discounts. Start at five seats. Go to it. Pro.Tv/Windows, and make sure to mention WW 30 to your designated it pro TV account executive to get 30% off or more on a business plan. And by Intel orchestrated by the experts at C D w to deliver increased performance with the built for business 11th generation Intel core V pro process sister, learn more at cdw.com/intel client. And by progress progress has the technology you need to secure, analyze and integrate your applications, network and processes. Find out more and download a free trial at progress.com/TWIT. Hello dozers, it's time for windows weekly. The show we cover the latest news, our Microsoft with Paul Thurrott. He is the Admiral act bar of windows weekly to him. Its all, it's a trap. It's all a trap Thurrott.com. There's a Wooki in Mary Jo Foleys because that rookie is Sorachi the cat Mary Joe Foley from all about microsoft.com. Hello you too.

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:10):
Hello? Leo.

Leo Laporte (00:02:11):
Lil Leo happy spring.

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:13):
Yes.

Leo Laporte (00:02:14):
Did you have springlike weather in the, on the east coast this week?

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:19):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:02:19):
We did kinda warm. We don't

Leo Laporte (00:02:21):
Now it's cool again. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (00:02:23):
It's spring is unpredictable.

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:27):
It is. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:02:31):
Every day I walk out it's 38 degrees in the morning when we walk the dog and I look at my phone and I say, Hey, it's 62 degrees in Mexico city. Why are we here again?

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:40):
We're not getting that much cold weather here, but yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:02:43):
Paul has a place, you know, in Mexico city. So everybody's invited down there,

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:50):
Finalize

Paul Thurrott (00:02:51):
That before we start setting up

Mary Jo Foley (00:02:52):
A schedule. But in the penthouse we take it over. We,

Leo Laporte (00:02:56):
I really want that penthouse so badly. Oh man.

Paul Thurrott (00:02:59):
I meant, I meant to tell you, you know when I first got back, I, I had flown the day before and I was, I maybe seemed a little downbeat about what was going on. You

Leo Laporte (00:03:10):
Were a little, I don't know if you were tired. You were.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:12):
Yeah. You, so there was a bunch of things going on at the time. First of all, we were getting on the plane to come home and found out that the wire transfer we did didn't go through and there wasn't anything we could do about it until we got home. Oh man. I had to deal with like the fraud department at oh, the citizen bank or whatever it's called the next that morning. Yeah. And my wife had a little health scare as well. Oh shoot. Not to get too far into that. Everything's fine's okay. Oh right. Yeah. But I, the, I was that day. Yeah. Yeah. I was a little shell shocked. So everything's good. We figured out the wire transfer everything's on my wife. Good. The fraud department is called 18 times now. But they, they, they, I think they're finally catching

Leo Laporte (00:03:55):
On, is this the, the hack I known as Paul, right? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:58):
We noticed you're moving by and $25,000 increments every day and

Leo Laporte (00:04:02):
Well, they have to curious. Yeah. They have to report that to the feds. So

Paul Thurrott (00:04:07):
Tell 'em what it is. And I keep telling 'em, you know, when we hit a certain number, it's gonna stop. So,

Leo Laporte (00:04:11):
You know yeah. My, so they won't let you do the whole amount, just 25,000

Paul Thurrott (00:04:15):
And that's on them and I'm like, guys, if you let me do the whole thing, I would've done it

Leo Laporte (00:04:18):
Once you could call me once. Yeah. Yeah. My bank just got in trouble with the feds for

Paul Thurrott (00:04:24):
Not doing

Leo Laporte (00:04:25):
This for not yeah. Not complying with the reporting. I think they got a pretty big fine too. S a a good, yeah. Cause they're yeah, they're supposed

Paul Thurrott (00:04:35):
Like guys, I just I'm like, listen, I'm moving money to Mexico. What's the problem.

Leo Laporte (00:04:41):
No big deal.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:43):
As people do, who are drug dealers? 

Leo Laporte (00:04:46):
Yeah, 140 million fine. They got from fins. Yeah. Wow. So that's why citizens has taken it pretty damn seriously. Yeah. that's nothing to mess around with. They wanna know. So, you know, you're, somebody's sending huge amounts of cash to Mexico is sort of a red flag. I'm thinking I

Paul Thurrott (00:05:07):
Don't, I feel like I've been really transparent about it. I don't understand.

Leo Laporte (00:05:14):
Anyway, The more importantly is the Penas still available. Oh, I don't,

Paul Thurrott (00:05:20):
I don't know.

Leo Laporte (00:05:21):
I'll just, you know what I'll solve, I'll save the pro solve the problem. I'll just bring a suitcase with $40,000.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:27):
So actually, oddly enough, you think in Mexico, this would not be an issue. You can't do that in Mexico. You cannot pay for things with cash. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:05:34):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:34):
Oh, wow. The only, except very small. I think it has to be under 10 grand in cash. The rest of it has to be wire, a wire transfer or a shark

Leo Laporte (00:05:40):
Or well, now that you USA is reporting to fin send, I don't think I'm gonna buy anything.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:46):
I seem surprisingly knowledgeable about financial transactions in X, 12

Leo Laporte (00:05:51):
Of a sudden you are an expert. That's not what we're here for. We're here to talk about notion. No, we're not here for that either.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:59):
Well, we can though, cuz notion is great.

Leo Laporte (00:06:01):
Isn't it? So Paul and Mary Jo have been using OneNote all this time to share their notes, to collaborate, to share them with me and Micah. And you

Paul Thurrott (00:06:09):
Know, by the way sorry to interrupt. I just, as a and Mary Jo and I have, I think, I wanna say 12 years of notes or something in OneNote. We, we, and and Mary Jo will remember this. Like I do whenever they announced OneNote originally, probably back in the office, 2003 timeframe maybe long time ago when they announced OneNote. I remember saying to them like, I don't understand why you made this product. It's very specifically something I need, but I don't. I mean, it doesn't like there's a big market for this kind of thing, but of course, you know, students, you know, whatever. Right. I loved OneNote and I don't know what happened to it. Exactly. But 

Leo Laporte (00:06:47):
No, when I remember, so I used to use Evernote when Evernote was a continuous scrolling paper tape, remember that, and then they eventually changed, but then OneNote did this same thing, which was a, was a continuously scrolling note. And I loved it.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:03):
Well, you know, I, so being what's the word I'm trying to say. That is appropriate for a general audience being the type of organized human being that I am. I like the ability. I liked the ability in one note to be like year, ah you prefer that hierarchical. I like that kind of thing. And you know, we're doing that now in notion of course, but yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:07:24):
Notionally can do whatever you want. Of course.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:26):
Right? Yeah. I

Leo Laporte (00:07:28):
Don't know, including, by the way, put a picture from the penthouse in Mexico city and a little glass.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:34):
I can put a picture from the penthouse in there. Do you want me

Leo Laporte (00:07:37):
Toto? Sure. It's a block oriented notetaking program. It's web based, which is kind of guys.

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:43):
This is, this is gonna be distracting. You guys are gonna play with the I'm like things are showing up and disappear with a dynamite stick at one point I'm like, what is happening?

Leo Laporte (00:07:55):
Sorry. Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (00:07:56):
I'll I'm like watching the notes. I'm like, what is happen right now in the notes?

Leo Laporte (00:08:01):
But notice how

Paul Thurrott (00:08:02):
Collabo use notepad. I just need text. I don't understand what

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:05):
I want text. You know what? I don't want anything. Just the text right

Leo Laporte (00:08:09):
There. When is loop coming up? Cause this is, you know, Microsoft has decided a kind of clone notion, which is

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:16):
So, you know what? I bet I more and more I'm thinking about this. I bet the announce loop the app at this windows. Oh, this thing coming up work event thing. I bet.

Leo Laporte (00:08:25):
I bet. Of course they do. Yes. Yeah, no, that's interesting. That

Paul Thurrott (00:08:28):
Makes sense. Because it's only available in some sort of limited preview now

Mary Jo Foley (00:08:33):
It's component, right? It's the, the loop components and teams are there, but then you're gonna have the loop components and outlook in OneNote. That's the next thing. And the app, they never gave us a date for it. They just said, we'll tell you more about the date for the whole app in the early part of 20, 22. I'm like, oh, I bet it's gonna be at that event.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:54):
Interesting. Interesting. Well,

Leo Laporte (00:08:57):
It's the same idea, right? They call it a flexible canvas with portable components. It

Mary Jo Foley (00:09:02):
Is. They even use the word canvas that that's how similar it is. It looks just like notion pretty much. Yeah, it does.

Leo Laporte (00:09:09):
Well. And you know, I mean, there are lots of notion like things out there.

Mary Jo Foley (00:09:14):
I know you can't say they can't clone another app. That's not illegal. Right. As long as you spin on it.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:21):
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:09:24):
You know what, it also reminds me a little bit of is, is a short lift product from Google called Google wave. The idea was you were able to put in these components, collaborate with these components in months to be, oh, that looks so much like notion. Oh my God.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:39):
But in their defense it only is exactly like notion. No, I mean, it's, it's 

Leo Laporte (00:09:44):
It

Paul Thurrott (00:09:44):
Is, you know, Microsoft has a lot of components they can add to this, like they do for teams. Right. Right. I mean it

Leo Laporte (00:09:51):
Just a framework for obviously for lots of little plugins

Paul Thurrott (00:09:55):
This within the Microsoft world, I

Leo Laporte (00:09:57):
Think you could put your outlook calendar in it and you could put, it's a, it's a SharePoint. It's

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:01):
A little it's is it's like SharePoint. Yeah. Even I think SharePoint's the back end on this thing. Of course

Leo Laporte (00:10:08):
That would make sure

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:09):
It. Yeah. But you know, when I don't fully grasp, but maybe I will, once I use loop is I feel like a lot of the things are showing you, you can do in loop, you can do it in teams too, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:10:20):
Yes. By the way. That's okay. That's a good point.

Mary Jo Foley (00:10:23):
You know what I mean? Like, so how do you decide which one you want,

Leo Laporte (00:10:27):
Ultimately remember this whole theory that was like 20 years ago now with document centric computing.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:34):
Oh yeah. Which windows 90. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:10:37):
I think that's actually what this, what we're still going back to, which is this idea of you, you work in a document and yeah. You might have a team's plug little thing there. You might have a call going on. You might have that's right. You know, and then, so it makes sense. It would be kind of everywhere and it's little bits of everything and it should be everywhere you work.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:57):
Teams is a new way of communicating with the people you work with, whether they're inside your organization or outside. Right. And right. It, in the beginning, it was like, well, wait a minute. Are we gonna get rid of email now? Or, or is this something that works alongside it? And I think honestly, over time we sort of transition to this teams becomes the thing. And I think this is that for document collaboration. Yeah. Like Leo said, whether it's, you know, we used to use word or Excel or PowerPoint or in our case, OneNote, this kind of is a modern kind of take on all of that stuff in a way. Not that you're gonna be doing hardcore spreadsheets or whatever, right. No, no. But you can create a document and then share it to the web from here. Like we could publish our notes to the web directly if you wanted to. True. You

Mary Jo Foley (00:11:40):
Know, it's interesting. I feel like, I feel like there's a lot of overlap also between the loop app as they've shown it. And Microsoft whiteboard, like to me, those two things are very similar also, right? Like you're working as a team in a shared space. People are putting things there. You can see who's putting what, when, where, so it's almost like a, a like a project management thing. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:02):
The shared space thing I think is, yeah. Is the key to that. Although, you know, white, I mean, I guess technically whiteboard works remotely as well. You can have remote participants. Yeah. I don't know.

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:12):
I asked them one time. I said, I said, I asked them, can you put a loop component in whiteboard? And they're like, yeah. And you can put a whiteboard in loop. I'm like, okay, now I'm really confused

Paul Thurrott (00:12:20):
Right now. And you just destroyed the universe. Congratulations.

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:25):
I'm like, okay. Every time I think I'm sort of grasping loop that

Paul Thurrott (00:12:28):
You it's the same rules as time travel. It doesn't make any sense, but it all works. It's

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:31):
Fine. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I think maybe I, more and more I'm like, maybe they'll show that there, because that makes there's not, we don't think there's gonna be a spring ignite. So you don't wanna wait until like fall ignite to show loop again, because that'll be a whole year. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:49):
I, they have to ship something before next November, this November. Right. They have to, right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:12:54):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:12:54):
The other thing that's cool about this, maybe not traditionally cool for Microsoft is it is platform agnostic, right? Yep. So

Paul Thurrott (00:13:04):
That's cool for Microsoft.

Leo Laporte (00:13:06):
Yeah. Now that's no, that really is in Microsoft. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:09):
I just happened to go through this period of history, but in, at PDC 2008, Microsoft in now the, what we now call the office web apps, right. Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. Right. And at that time they had those giant ribbon UIs, cuz that's what was current at the time. Now they have kind of a slip strip down thing. Those apps have not really advanced that much. In fact, it's kind of a sobering thing to say, here we are, what 14 years they still don't work offline. Right. So this kind of thing, I, I, in some ways starting over from scratch was something that makes more sense for the world of today rather than trying to adapt your old fashion thing. That, which by the way, dates back to the 1980s is probably is, is probably good for them. There'll always be people for whatever reason. You're maybe you're publishing a book or something Microsoft word, or you need Microsoft Excel for obvious reasons or PowerPoint, for whatever reasons people use that. But I feel like this, this thing, this notion like thing solves most problems for most people, You know, not everybody I know the hardcore Excel users, especially, and I'm gonna freak out over that. But but you can probably put a little, I'm sure you can. I'm sure. I I'm positive one of the, one of the loop loop components, whatever the term is is would of course be Excel. Like if you need to fire up some Excel thing, you'll have Excel inside of loop. There's no doubt about it.

Mary Jo Foley (00:14:32):
Yeah. Well

Leo Laporte (00:14:32):
We, you know, remember I, you, maybe you do or not Claris will works way back when which was a processing program. That was, it wasn't any one thing you would put a word processing documents, paint in a spreadsheet pain. And, and what I

Paul Thurrott (00:14:46):
Liked, oh, Microsoft tried to do this. Remember embedded document works. You'd have like a, an Excel. Well, they did it. Oh, office too. That, yeah. Yeah. You'd have an Excel component inside of word. And when you clicked inside of it, the tool bars would change to Excel. Toolbar.

Leo Laporte (00:15:00):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:01):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:01):
I, that didn't confuse anybody

Leo Laporte (00:15:03):
As much as I like notion. I love the idea of, of a company with a size and scope and team and research of Microsoft because they could put all, all sorts of stuff in there. It'd be really

Paul Thurrott (00:15:15):
Cool. That's right. They already have, it's all set up. They they've, they've shown us the model with, with teams they

Leo Laporte (00:15:20):
Have, and once they have a they've

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:21):
Framework, they're gonna work with third parties to get them to go with the platform too. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:26):
Who owns slack now as a Salesforce?

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:29):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:15:29):
Sales that's right. Salesforce.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:31):
So Salesforce should be looking at notion right now, like right now.

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:35):
Yeah. You know,

Paul Thurrott (00:15:36):
Or Amazon or Google or anyone who thinks they're gonna compete with Microsoft three,

Leo Laporte (00:15:41):
Amazon would be good for this actually. Yeah. Google tried. It has already gave up on it. Cuz Google had wave and they

Mary Jo Foley (00:15:49):
Amazon though, like they've got chime. Like they don't know how to do apps can't

Leo Laporte (00:15:53):
With this. Right. They don't know how to market 'em they have a million apps.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:56):
Well here's, you know, that's true. You just said Amazon has chime and 99% of you've never heard of like what, like what is this thing? Yeah, Yeah, no, one's heard of it

Leo Laporte (00:16:05):
Amazon, I think. And thiss interesting that Microsoft's not doing this, but Amazon's choosing to be the back end for everybody. Right, right. Yeah. You do the front end. We'll do the backend. Yeah. Microsoft could credibly do that. And I think sometimes, well,

Paul Thurrott (00:16:18):
By the way, well, okay, so actually we're gonna talk about that a little bit today, but Microsoft started as the front end because Microsoft has that history on the client or Amazon has started on the back end because that's what they needed. And they said, Hey, we could, maybe we could sell this. But it's interesting that both these companies have moved, you know, toward each other and are crossing paths. Right. Because Microsoft wants to be the back end too with Azure and whatever else. But I mean but they started from where they started. Amazon has been incredibly successful being the back end. But Microsoft's been pretty successful. I mean, they're, they're definitely the, they're the bang of the cloud computer.

Mary Jo Foley (00:16:57):
I don't think that is success.

Leo Laporte (00:17:01):
Let me try that way.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:03):
It's like the Cadillac of cars.

Leo Laporte (00:17:07):
Right. So let's get, we actually haven't even started the show. Right. This has just been foreplay for the excitement that is to come windows 11, beta testers start your engines. Yes.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:21):
Restart your engines. Really? Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:17:23):
I thought we were already doing that.

Mary Jo Foley (00:17:25):
Right. So everyone listening to the show, I would believe knows that there are three rings that Microsoft primarily is testing windows with. Right? There's the dev channel, which has been getting a lot of these windows 11 features that we talk about on every episode, then there's the beta channel, which has gotten a couple things, but not much. And then there's the release preview channel. So today right before the show, Microsoft released a test build that has the same number to both the dev and the beta channel. So this is a sign like, okay, we're moving things forward the beta. Channel's gonna start testing some of these things that have only been in the dev channel to this point. I don't wanna spoil Paul's pick, so I'm not gonna say too much

Paul Thurrott (00:18:11):
More. That's fine. That's no, no. It's okay.

Mary Jo Foley (00:18:12):
It's okay. So

Paul Thurrott (00:18:14):
Although we have to talk about this, I don't think

Mary Jo Foley (00:18:16):
We, we do mean, yeah. So there's a magic window. I think Paul's gonna clone that phrase. 

Paul Thurrott (00:18:22):
Yeah. And this is a slightly different magic window, but yes it is. There is a,

Mary Jo Foley (00:18:26):
So you can switch start starting today between these two channels now. So if you're in, if you're in the beta channel and you're like, oh, I don't want these features cuz they may or may not be part of the final product when it comes out, you know, in the fall, the 22 H two release the feature update, you can jump out of the beta channel and get into the release preview channel. Or you could jump dev channel from the beta channel. Like you can switch right now, right? Like this is the window of our, this

Paul Thurrott (00:18:54):
Is unusual. So this happened, it is, this happened last summer. I don't remember the exact timing, but Microsoft got in a little bit of trouble because at some point they switched the build, you know, the channel for the, they switched the, I don't know, you call it. It's like a build tree or trunk or something for yeah. The dev channel. And they, they in doing so they killed the ability to jump between dev and, and beta. Now I complained about this at the time, because I thought this was just a new capability. Like we're gonna let people jump between channels, which to me makes tons of sense. But apparently it was just a temporary thing and they never really explained explicitly that this was happening. So a lot of people found themselves unable to switch and they were kind of mad about that, which is understandable this time they are being like very clear about it. Like they are, this is temporary. They should be. Yeah, exactly. So they've, they've at least learned that which I appreciate. So anyway, it important to know

Mary Jo Foley (00:19:52):
It is. So you're, if you're in beta channel, now you can test these things we've talked about on previous episodes, like the start folders, the live captions the redesign task manager, tablet, optimized task bar. There's a whole bunch of other things. I don't think it's every single thing and the dev channel, because if you remember, what is the dev? The dev channel is the experimental channel. This is a channel where they put things in there that may or may not ever ship, right? It's not connected to any particular release, the beta channel. You have a better chance of things shipping if it's in that channel, but not a hundred percent of a chance.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:27):
So let me ask you a question about what you think about what that means. Okay. Because there are two, my, my head goes into two different directions here. Okay. One is that this may indicate that windows 11 is reaching a point where, well, I should say the next version of windows 11, this feature update is reaching a point where it's gonna be finalized. And so they want to broaden the availability of what they think will be this next version of windows. Yeah. So that more people can test it. But the other half of my, my brain says you know, the windows insider a program is so terrible in so many ways that what they can do is what they've been doing, which is that AB testing type stuff where you do get the same build. And it has the same level of features. But if you're in the dev channel, you may get additional features based on this AB testing, cuz they'll flip switches that you may not get in the beta channel. So I mean, but

Mary Jo Foley (00:21:18):
I think it's the former of those two things that you said. Interesting. okay. But, so this is a little bit confusing cause I've been watching the headlines on today news and I see some people saying, oh, Microsoft's done with 22 H two, like the feature update's done. You, you cannot say that at this point. Right? Like, and from everything I've seen, like things people have shown me internally, this feature, update's not coming out till October. Right. It's like, we're still months away from this thing coming out. And you know, they'll do is they'll probably finalize it around the summer. Right? Like around June, July, it'll be RTM. Then the next several months they'll keep tweaking it. Right. They'll be adding things through cumulative updates. They'll be testing retesting. So to say, it's almost done. I feel like it's going out on a limb at this point. I don't even think you can. It's frozen from a feature perspective because I feel like they can keep adding. They still can keep adding features for quite a while to this thing.

Paul Thurrott (00:22:16):
Yeah. And right. Hmm. So I mean you have something in the notes about this upcoming event, obviously build is coming as well. Right. And later than that, so there are some milestones where they could possibly announce new stuff. I, I feel like build might be a, a good place to announce features for this next feature update.

Mary Jo Foley (00:22:37):
Or maybe April 5th or maybe this other one, right? Like they're having this thing. They call the hybrid work event for windows. So technically they could show us some features that haven't even gone a test yet. If they wanted it to say like here's a sneak preview of something where we may add, you know, before this thing goes live. Right. You know, the thing, the thing I, I keep going back to is Microsoft said, there's only one feature update to windows 10 and windows 11 from now on. It's always gonna be latter half of the year around October. Right. But they've added so many caveats and asterisk to this so they can add features in all different ways, through all different mechanisms. Right. Just because there's one feature update coming doesn't mean all the features are in that feature update. They can add things through like the updates stack mechanism and through the store and this and that. So to just say that, because this is how they've always done it. And all the features have to be in by a set time and then it's RTM. And then it goes to customers that old model is gone for windows. Right? Yeah. They could throw features in any way they want, anytime they want pretty much there's. Even though they said there's one feature update per year,

Paul Thurrott (00:23:47):
So it's not gonna go gold.

Mary Jo Foley (00:23:50):
No, I almost feel like, you know what, I've always been one to say, they should keep calling it RTM. Cuz that's what people understand. But I I'm gonna stop using that terminology because I feel like now you can't really even say that anymore about one dose because of all the, these they've got these like even ways of updating,

Paul Thurrott (00:24:08):
You know, Vista seven. I mean, these are a long time ago, these releases would RTM. Right. But they would still ship an update. Right? The, the story kind of shifted to like, yeah, yeah, it's finished. And it had to go out to PCs and PC makers rather. And they'd put 'em in new computers and everything they had in the stores and then you get it home and you were run windows update and you immediately have a, what we now call a cumulative update, whatever it was called back in the day. Yeah. Because, and that's the nature of everything. We do electric, everything digital today is like that you buy a, a phone, you buy a tablet, you buy the first thing you do is, oh yeah, of course you have an update.

Mary Jo Foley (00:24:41):
Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:42):
Yeah. It's never done exactly.

Mary Jo Foley (00:24:44):
Right. Cause the OEM people making PCs, they get the builds, you know, like the people are gonna ship PCs. This holiday season, they'll get a really early ver version of this. If they even get this, they probably won't even get windows 1122 H two. Right. They they'll just be like working from the current build. And then late, when you turn on your PC, you'll see, oh, I have an update. And that'll give you all the new bits that are part of the feature update. Right? Yeah. That's just the way

Paul Thurrott (00:25:09):
It works. Yeah. It's it will give you new versions of apps. You'll you'll get yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:25:14):
Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:14):
You know, you'll, you'll get these. Let's just, we we've been technically doing this for a long time.

Mary Jo Foley (00:25:19):
Yeah. Yep. This kind of thing. I know. It just feels new because of the terminology and the way they talk about it. But you're right. This is how things have work for a while in windows.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:28):
It also, it feels, it, it, I think the reason this feels different too, is windows 11 is so incomplete. You know, they ship this thing so quickly, didn't deliver on two thirds of the things they promised, then it's been kind of a drip slow thing ever since we've only had that one little, you know, feature. We can't call the feature update, but that they need new words now because they keep, you know, it's, it's a, a small set of features that they had last month.

Mary Jo Foley (00:25:54):
Right. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:57):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:26:00):
So, yeah, it's kind of a a milestone day today in terms of moving, moving things along exciting

Leo Laporte (00:26:08):
A milestone.

Paul Thurrott (00:26:10):
I wish we could call it something. I liked having names for things.

Mary Jo Foley (00:26:13):
Yeah. Missed that. Yeah. We can make some up. We're good at that one.

Paul Thurrott (00:26:20):
Well, I mean, you, you do sort of want to position it like you did in the past, like you were saying, you can't really use the term, you know, RTM anymore, but what, what would do we have called this kind of thing? There's nothing like it. I mean the

Mary Jo Foley (00:26:31):
Gold master, right? Like we used to call it that we did, we used to call it that.

Paul Thurrott (00:26:37):
Yeah, we did. Of course that's

Leo Laporte (00:26:38):
Worse INM. I mean, I'm sure it is. No, it's not, but I mean, Microsoft probably hates it more than they are to, they hate

Mary Jo Foley (00:26:44):
It. Yeah. Yeah. They hate it. Yeah. They hate RTM. They hate gold master. They're like, it's, it's a whole new way of doing the operating system. Those terms are irrelevant, but then they use 'em themselves. They use them in their own documentations

Paul Thurrott (00:26:55):
When Microsoft would test something like just windows seven using random version, there was another team already thinking and working on the next version, there was another team working on like what would become a service pack, right? There was a team, probably the same team as that last team working on the, a, a new service pack for the previous version of windows. Yep. So these things were all kind of happening in concert all the time. Anyway, but now they're sort not, not exactly, but they're testing multiple things publicly now and they don't really align with anything in many cases. Right. That's kind of the weird thing about the insider program these days. Like the dev channel is not some version of windows. Yeah. The betting channel sort of is, and I guess arguably the release preview channel is sort of a version of windows, but we've gotten, you know, it used to be very concrete. We understood what we were doing. And today it's all very vague.

Leo Laporte (00:27:48):
Let's take a little time out. So you can put some more icons in the notion. And I am going to talk about one of our sponsors for today. How about that show today brought to you by it pro TV, your it team, the skills and the knowledge to ensure your business is a success. Where do you get that training? It pro TV because they will love it. And you know what a team that loves the training they're getting is gonna do it is gonna more likely to finish it and get those skills more than 80% of users who start a video at it, pro TV. This is an example, more than percent actually finish it. They go all the way through cuz it's that good? It's that informative? That entertaining the it pro TV ed entertainers are chosen for their expertise, of course, but also for their ability to express it, their passion their ability to make it fun, entertaining your team is gonna actually enjoy learning from it.

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Leo Laporte (00:30:30):
You can assign full courses. You can even assign individual episodes within courses and the episodes are all 30 minutes or less. So they're very they're bite sized. You can, you can say Hey, I need you to you know, learn up on single sign on here's the course, you can watch it during lunch and you, and you'd be done the reporting and the it pro TV business plan is really, really good. So you'll know immediately how the team's doing, but you can also justify it by saying, look, here's the, here's the ROI. You can show you, you know, show the boss, Hey, this paid off it pro TV. You know, they have individual plans. We talk about those all the time. I wanted to make sure that businesses knew that team training is also available. Give your team the it development platform.

Leo Laporte (00:31:12):
They need to level up their skills and enjoy the journey too. That's important. It's available for teams from two to a thousand, their discounts for teams starting at five seats and I've got an E even better discount. You can combine them it pro.tv/windows 30% off. When you mention WW 30, tell your it pro TV account executives say WW 30 WW three, zero, 30% off or more on your business plan. They're really great. It pro TV go to it. Pro.Tv/Windows, please use the slash windows. So they know you're a part of the, of the dozer, crowd it pro.tv/windows. We thank them so much for supporting windows weekly dozer. Is that a positive term? A negative term dozers don't know I've been listening. My son, you know, he's become an influencer. He's excellent. 2 million followers in TikTok. You know, Mary Jo, your neighbors are fans. I

Mary Jo Foley (00:32:13):
Know my neighbors love the guy, by the way. They're like obsessed with them. New

Leo Laporte (00:32:17):
Salt, new salt, out salt, hank.com. He's got Jimmy Tru now. That's awesome. Yeah, you'll like it, but why did I bring that up? Oh, because he's doing a podcast. I'm starting to listen to these podcasts from these, this, you know, millennial generation and they all do that. They all do dozers, you know, Hey, hose heads. It's like, they also talk really fast. It's a, it's a different generation. And honestly, as an old school podcaster and you guys are also old school, it's a very foreign territory for me. Right. So I'm just trying to hip it up a little bit by calling you dozers.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:01):
Yeah. I understand. As much as I can with being

Leo Laporte (00:33:04):
Old.

Mary Jo Foley (00:33:05):
Yeah. Same being old school podcasters.

Leo Laporte (00:33:07):
Yeah. We're old, you know, they're gonna come around. They'll come back to us. We know this is the right way to podcast. There's only one way to podcast this way when using notion

Paul Thurrott (00:33:17):
Only one way to rock.

Leo Laporte (00:33:19):
Right. are we playing chicken? Is that what we're doing? Did you mention, you mentioned the new build. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:33:30):
Oh no. So that we have a build today, but a build Friday or there was a weird off build on

Paul Thurrott (00:33:35):
Friday. Oh, this is the, yeah, this was an off, an off this,

Leo Laporte (00:33:38):
The one that came out on Friday. Yeah. Off brand build.

Mary Jo Foley (00:33:42):
Okay. Off brand build.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:44):
It usually comes out today. Right? It's usually Wednesday.

Mary Jo Foley (00:33:46):
Yeah. Or sometimes Thursday Friday's very unusual. Right? Like that's. Huh? Okay. But it had a feature that a lot of people have been dying for, which is naming options for the start menu folders. Like people are like, where can, why can't I name the folders? Okay. Now you can, with that built,

Paul Thurrott (00:34:05):
This is exciting stuff. And I can see,

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:08):
Wow, no there, well, for enterprise people, there's also the ability. There's a way to have a policy for excluding USB removable removable drives from BitLocker encryption. Yeah. There was like one enterprise feature. There was some fixers and there was the naming of the folders. And that was kind of it.

Leo Laporte (00:34:27):
Woohoo.

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:28):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:34:28):
That's worth rushing out on a Friday. I'm staying home this weekend. I got names of folders. I naming,

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:35):
I wanna name all my folders.

Paul Thurrott (00:34:36):
I think if you spend too much time organizing the start menu, you're probably

Leo Laporte (00:34:41):
Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:34:41):
Yeah. Yep. Agree.

Leo Laporte (00:34:44):
Actually, to be honest, I don't really have anything to do with the computer. So little jobs like that are, are, all I do is all

Paul Thurrott (00:34:52):
The C that's

Leo Laporte (00:34:53):
All you customize what you live for. I swear to God, there are people

Paul Thurrott (00:34:56):
To the task

Leo Laporte (00:34:57):
Part. No, there are people you go to you go there's PC as to race. If you go to some of these subreddits Linux, windows, it's all about what I can make it look like. They're clearly not doing any work.

Mary Jo Foley (00:35:11):
I feel like windows phone. That was windows phone. Right? Like people would spend so much time getting

Leo Laporte (00:35:15):
That screen

Mary Jo Foley (00:35:16):
Customizing like in that customized way. Right? Like guys just put some icons on there. They're like, no, no, they all have to be the same color or in a pattern. Yeah. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:35:25):
No Android people do this.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:26):
One's big. This one's

Leo Laporte (00:35:27):
To some degree. That's the difference in iPhone users and Android users. Yeah. Your everybody's iPhone looks Bo standard. It's all the same, but everybody's Android. Mm

Mary Jo Foley (00:35:36):
They're all. I do nothing to customize mine. I really don't like, it's just a row of icon.

Leo Laporte (00:35:41):
Yeah. You should have a windows. I mean yeah. Iphone.

Mary Jo Foley (00:35:44):
No, I should not have a iPhone. I should not.

Leo Laporte (00:35:47):
No. Are they bringing back the briefcase? No. No. Okay.

Mary Jo Foley (00:35:52):
The briefcase, no.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:54):
Another windows 95 feature.

Leo Laporte (00:35:56):
Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Love got to love the briefcase. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:36:01):
That'd be a good thing to investigate the history of sync on windows, you know, all the different

Mary Jo Foley (00:36:06):
Ways we do. You know how confusing that would be? Oh man. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:36:09):
Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:36:10):
It was a period of time. The Ray Aussie era when we have, we had three primary different ways to

Leo Laporte (00:36:14):
Do that. Mr. Mr. Mr. OTI. All right. So that's good.

Paul Thurrott (00:36:20):
I liked him a lot, but unfortunately he allowed Microsoft different groups of Microsoft to release the same thing in different, slightly different

Leo Laporte (00:36:28):
Forms. Not good. Yeah. Not good. Let's talk about, I actually have seen more and more people pick up on your article Paul about having, having that water stamp watermark on your, you know, your windows 11, because you would dare run it on a substandard system. You idiot, you fool,

Paul Thurrott (00:36:52):
You cheap bastard.

Leo Laporte (00:36:54):
So now the question is, are they gonna, is, are they gonna go farther to just market? Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:36:59):
Right. So I think they should

Paul Thurrott (00:37:01):
Publicly shame you.

Mary Jo Foley (00:37:03):
So all, all this does right now, this came, this went into beta and release preview channels. That's why people started freaking out more. It's not on mainstream PCs yet, as far as I know, but if you're running windows 11 on a PC, that is not up to my Microsoft CPU and, and TPM standards. TPM. Yeah. You're, you're gonna see a little thing in the corner that says your system, doesn't meet the requirements for windows 11, when you, then you're kinda waiting for the other shoe to drop. Right. You're like, okay, so what are they gonna do now that I don't meet the requirements right now they do nothing. That's all it is, is the watermark. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:37:41):
But I mean, just to talk about the slippery slope again. Yeah, yeah. Try running windows seven today. Right? Right. So windows seven today will occasionally and then increasingly pop up a full screen window. Yeah. That tells you that you're not in compliance. So exactly you is, is this going to head in that direction over time?

Leo Laporte (00:38:03):
Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:03):
I mean, maybe so that's my question. Right. I went to, I went to Microsoft and I said, okay. So can you just give people a heads up? Like, do you intend to do more than just show them a little thing in the corner that says this? Are you actually gonna start blocking them in some way? Are you going to like right. You know, have full lashing activation type, screen things going on or like, and, and they won't comment. They won't comment at all. Like they won't say anything. Right. And they're like, yeah, we have nothing to say. Well, no, of

Paul Thurrott (00:38:30):
Course not. No. Yeah. You don't you don't tell the world you're gonna invade Ukraine. You just, you do it one day. I mean, I, I 

Mary Jo Foley (00:38:37):
Yeah, but, but this brings up the question, right? Well, it brings up a few things. So if you're savvy enough to be like, okay, with running windows 11 on unsupported hardware, do you care? Like, you'll be able to find a way to get rid of the watermark. Like there's ways you can look it up. That's right.

Paul Thurrott (00:38:53):
And that's an for, there are, there are way this registry changes you can make that fixes this very nicely. But actually, but you're, I think you you're hinting at the real underlying issue here, which is no one normal is gonna see this because no one normal took a computer that would not upgrade the windows 11 and force the issue. Right. I mean, that something that technical people do. So yeah, I mean, I feel like people get into things like this and they understand how to get out of it. Right. They understand there's a way out. Yeah. So, you know, we, we're kind of making a big deal out of the problem is that this hardware requirement exists. Right. Let's be clear about that. Like, yeah. The wind to seven other, the windows 11 hardware requirements are completely arbitrary. Completely arbitrary. Yeah. And we don't have to go down that rabbit hole again, but no, Microsoft just drew some line in. Here's the one for Intel. Here's the one for AMD. Here's another one for TPM. And if you, for some reason, don't have these completely arbitrary pieces of hardware, then we're gonna start doing this kind of stuff to you. So you know, you, you, as the technical person kind of forced the issue and you'll be fine. I mean, you know, I, I don't wanna see something on my desktop. Mary Jo would probably never see it. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:10):
I wouldn't even notice it. People were sending me pictures of I'm like, where, where is this one mark? And they're like, I'm like, am I just missing it? And they're like, it's in the raining corner. And I'm like, okay, like it's tiny, it's tiny, tiny, like small words, you know?

Paul Thurrott (00:40:24):
Yeah. But it's, It's like a, how often are your eye? You can't never, you can't not see it. You

Mary Jo Foley (00:40:30):
Know, how often are you, wait, how often are you even looking at your desktop? Like, like that, aren't you just living in apps? Like you're are just switching between apps. You're not even looking at that desktop. I think. I don't know. But you know what, the question, this raises the bigger question this raises is is, is Microsoft just playing chicken or are they gonna do something right? Because my inclination and feeling is, and I can't, I can't say I'm a hundred percent sure that I am right about this. Of course, I can't say that. And I'm not telling people they should be running on unsupported hardware. I'm not, but I feel like Microsoft is just kind of leaving that loophole there, that if you know enough, how to do it, you can run windows 11 on unsupported hardware. They've hinted that maybe someday we might stop giving you updates if you do that, including security updates. Right. And there's no way they're gonna do that. Like, think

Paul Thurrott (00:41:21):
Of what that would be so irresponsible. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:41:24):
But, but

Paul Thurrott (00:41:25):
Right. It would, but this is, this is like the dev channel thing. I, you know, some number of weeks ago, I said, look, you should be using the dev channel. If you're listening this podcast, you gotta have one PC on this. And you know, of course the natural reaction is like, well, hold on a second. That's a one way street. Like one, if I do that, I can't, I have to clean install windows, whatever to get out of that. And it's like, yeah, you can do that. You're smart enough. This is not a difficult thing. If it works out that Microsoft forces the issue in this, they literally stop shipping security updates. They literally start putting these horrible, full screen things up in front of you. You can install windows 10. You'll be okay. You know, it's, it's not, it's not a horrible, it's the outcome is not horrible. It's, it's, it's, you know, the requirements are horrible, but it, you know, you've decided to go down this path. You'll be okay. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:10):
Yeah. I think it, I, my, my take is it's gonna be the way that Microsoft left a loophole open to upgrade to windows 10 for free. And they never closed that loophole. This is gonna be that, oh, by the

Paul Thurrott (00:42:24):
Way's still there. I just did it. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:25):
It's it's never gonna go away, right? Yeah. Yep. They're gonna leave that there. And if you're smart enough to use it and know about it, you'll be able to it, same thing with running on unsupported hardware up to a point, right. Like I think there'll be someday, maybe when windows 10 goes outta service, like in 20, 25 where they'll be like, okay, we're we're not letting you run it anymore on honestly,

Leo Laporte (00:42:45):
They could close this loophole. They, I mean, if they really didn't want people to do that yeah. They could, they could just make it impossible to do

Mary Jo Foley (00:42:52):
Exactly. But they left it there. Right? Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, there's a reason

Leo Laporte (00:42:55):
They lifted. Well, so why do they put the notice there so that you don't blame 'em

Mary Jo Foley (00:43:00):
You? And I think just to try to threaten people a little bit more, like, I look, we don't want you doing this. Right. Well

Leo Laporte (00:43:05):
Maybe they just don't wanna support it. And so that's right. You call 'em and they say, well, do you have a little thing in there that says it's not supported? See that? Yeah. Don't call us.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:15):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:43:16):
I bet you that's the real reason. I don't think they wanna hurt. Yeah. Threaten people why they're not telling you that is beyond me, but,

Paul Thurrott (00:43:23):
Well, I mean, look, you could just be, you've got something in windows set up that prevents it from installing on unsupported hardware. And there are ways around that. So people have done this, they've gotten around it. They're running it in the unsupported state. I mean, it's not like Mary just said, yeah. It's not a horrible thing the way it is right now. And honestly, if you used to insider builds, the watermark on those builds is actually bigger and more overt or whatever. But I don't know. I just feel like the thing you have to think about is the audience, like if this was normal to people would be very upsetting. Yeah. But if it's technical people, you're like, guys, you know what you're doing? You're fine. You, I know you have a USB key that has windows 10 on it right now. I know you have this. You're fine. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:44:06):
You're

Paul Thurrott (00:44:07):
Gonna be fine.

Mary Jo Foley (00:44:08):
Yeah. Yeah. I just say don't panic cuz I see so many people panicking over this water thing. I'm like, yeah. Well it's not time to panic.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:19):
I look, I, there there's a lot of things in windows 11 that I think are freaking people out. Right. yeah. And aside from the hard work requirements thing, we've talked about the requirements around the Microsoft account, which apparently is now gonna extend to pro there's that default apps interface stuff, which is just Indi, inexcusable and indefensible, you know? So there's a lot of things like this. I, I, this thing by itself is not a big deal. This thing in the context of everything else they're doing is like, man, there's a lot of a lot of user hostility here.

Leo Laporte (00:44:51):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:52):
You know, which is a little hard to

Leo Laporte (00:44:53):
Tell. I don't, again, I don't think they're being hostile. I think they're just saying don't don't count us, us for support. This is unsupport. Cause if they really didn't want you to do it, I'm telling you they could come out with an UN, they would unable message. I'm sure they

Paul Thurrott (00:45:09):
Could, but I, they, so they did that with the, the default app interface. Remember when windows 11 first came out a bunch of third party apps worked around that his and, and Mozilla did it with Firefox brave did it? I think there was a, a third party app just to do it for whatever browser. And Microsoft said, no, no, no, no, we, this is how we want the thing to be. We're gonna, we're gonna break those work rounds. And then they did that. I mean, if you do that for this, I mean, all you're doing is escalating for no good reason. It would be the people that want to do this would keep working around whatever Microsoft did and it would just keep going on and on and on. And it would just be, it's kind of best just to let, from Microsoft's perspective, let people supported with security updates and just don't worry about it. Yeah. No, That, that's my,

Leo Laporte (00:46:00):
Yeah. Fair enough of that. Fair enough. You wanna talk about the 

Paul Thurrott (00:46:08):
Hack? Yeah. There's such

Leo Laporte (00:46:09):
A big deal about this, but don't, it feels like two you years ago, the windows source code.

Paul Thurrott (00:46:14):
I was gonna say this actually

Leo Laporte (00:46:15):
Happens. It seems like it happens a lot

Paul Thurrott (00:46:17):
Often. It's not a big, you know, like it's not a big deal at some point, Microsoft is

Leo Laporte (00:46:20):
Just

Mary Jo Foley (00:46:21):
Let's thing and Cortana guys

Paul Thurrott (00:46:22):
It's thing, man. I know if they could destroy everything, it's

Mary Jo Foley (00:46:25):
Not like windows.

Paul Thurrott (00:46:26):
That would be one thing. Yeah. So a group ELAP us, I guess we're calling them sounds like a Linux distribution. Apparently broke into an account of one person. Now Microsoft is saying that got access to a bunch of things related to Bing and Cortana mostly. And then provided an I and gigabyte archive file with over 200 mic, 250 Microsoft source code projects, which when extracted is about 37 gigabytes, which they claim is about 90% of the source code for B and about 45% of the source code for Bing maps in Cortana. So maybe Cortana's gonna coming to Linux now. I don't know. Anyway, Microsoft came out, I think it was today or maybe late yesterday and said, yeah, no, this happened, it was a limited thing. It was only one account that they compromised. Okay. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. I'm always kind of fascinated when something like windows leaks, right? Like windows source code. That's always, you know, you want to dive into that thing and like find the actual main, you know, function that's in there somewhere. Yeah. You know, this is the, this is the loop that does everything, you

Leo Laporte (00:47:35):
Know, where does windows start? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:47:38):
Right. I mean, you know, it's in there somewhere it's in there

Leo Laporte (00:47:40):
Somewhere.

Mary Jo Foley (00:47:41):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:47:42):
It's probably main dot CPP. Exactly.

Paul Thurrott (00:47:48):
Windows.You.

Leo Laporte (00:47:49):
I wonder now conspiracy theory. I always like the conspiracy theory, maybe Microsoft, they, they can't release the source code because there's too many proprietary things in there that they don't even own. So that's right in the past, they've always people always been saying, oh, you know, open source and Microsoft can't. So one conspiracy theory would be, they don't mind if you look at this, what are you gonna do? Compile it and run windows. Right. No. Right. I

Paul Thurrott (00:48:13):
Know. Well, by the way, so we, the reason we know what you just said is true is Microsoft decided@somepointtoopensource.net, right. And that didn't mean just taking the source code and really, you know, making it available. They couldn't do that for exactly. That reason that you said. And ultimately what they had to do is rewrite.net. That's what.net core was. Now we just call it.net again. But that multiyear process of trying to get an open source version of everything we had before required them to rewrite almost the whole thing, because you know, they license things. They 

Leo Laporte (00:48:47):
The only reason I think it isn't is it's kind of embarrassing, you know, that they got hacked. Yeah. But honestly I don't think they care so much if people have the source code. There's not like you said, you can, you can't even find the main

Paul Thurrott (00:49:03):
Well, like it is. It's definitely there somewhere. Right.

Leo Laporte (00:49:05):
The fun thing to do is to read the comments cuz right, right. Then probably it's so San Heis in corporate is that's not, you know,

Paul Thurrott (00:49:13):
Interesting. Yeah. They probably have automatic cleaning of that now. Yeah. Not in the old days. They certainly didn't. I mean, there was some embarrassing stuff

Leo Laporte (00:49:21):
Was fun. That's

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:21):
The best the old windows code. And do, but you know,

Paul Thurrott (00:49:23):
This is, this is the whole, remember the, the whole thing about open source is eyeballs, anyone could look at the code, you know, you look at the code and you realize, no, one's looking at this code, Terrible looking at this, what am I gonna do

Leo Laporte (00:49:36):
With this? The really the truth is the only people looking at it are the other maintainers and they look at it cause they have to understand it, to add to it. Yeah. So yeah. You might have a handful of people looking at any given project. Yeah. But that's more than none. I mean, and they're all independent. They don't have an ax to grind, so they're not, you know right

Mary Jo Foley (00:49:56):
Guys, two words, Bing maps,

Leo Laporte (00:49:59):
Bing maps, baby. Did that week out that's

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:02):
Yeah. Bing maps. Cortana. It's like stuff everybodys like yeah. What

Paul Thurrott (00:50:06):
B maps? This little thing, huh? Yeah. I

Leo Laporte (00:50:08):
Don't think Cortana would be that useful without the, the, the data, the, the, the, what do they call it? You know, the machine learning data you know, by itself the source. Code's probably not that

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:23):
Probably not interesting. Useful. Right. Useful.

Leo Laporte (00:50:24):
Yeah. Certainly not interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just thinking.

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:29):
Yeah. I think you're

Paul Thurrott (00:50:30):
Right. Hold on guys. I gonna do a city flyover of Allentown on big maps.

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:36):
Go for it, man.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:38):
It is literally a video. It's not it's it's a video.

Leo Laporte (00:50:41):
It's so funny.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:43):
Well, that is Allentown. Yeah. Right.

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:45):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (00:50:47):
Is this from the source code? You're doing this?

Paul Thurrott (00:50:49):
No, no. This is on the big

Leo Laporte (00:50:51):
Map you actually using the app. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:50:53):
Yeah. I was hoping for a lower Macungie flyover curiously that does not exist. Wow.

Mary Jo Foley (00:50:58):
Surprising.

Leo Laporte (00:50:59):
Probably apple maps has it though.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:03):
Right. They built a Disney world Paris and they're like lower Macy's.

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:07):
That's nice.

Leo Laporte (00:51:08):
If you see small planes flying over with cameras, you'll know.

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:12):
Yeah. You know, what's happening.

Leo Laporte (00:51:15):
Let's see here edging along edging along, this is all about crud. We haven't heard the word crud in a while.

Mary Jo Foley (00:51:27):
Yeah. We haven't. It's time to bring it up again. CR it to annoy people who hate

Leo Laporte (00:51:30):
It. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:33):
It's like poking a bear. I don't know why you do that. It is. It's fun. Yeah. So this is a, probably a minor issue, but Chrome and chromium based web browsers are about to hit version 100, which apparently it's gonna break the internet just like Y2K did for some reason. So yeah, we can brace ourselves to that. So my edge just version 100, just hit the beta channel. I think it's gonna go stable sometime actually pretty soon. I think it might be the end of this month probably. And there are gonna be, there are some concerns about compatibility problems because of the shift to this three digit version number. Here's an idea guys. Why don't you make it now? So that it's a four digit number. We can just skip this the next time, you know, make it 0 1 0, 0. Just, I don't know. I'm not a, not a computer scientist, but maybe be a little more sophisticated with version numbers. I'm also just of a mind that it is fascinating to me that web browsers version versioning has escalated, right. Web browsers for a long time. Like, well, most web browsers were in kind of a, a six week schedule. Now it's a four week schedule. I mean, basically we're getting a new version every week,

Leo Laporte (00:52:53):
You know,

Mary Jo Foley (00:52:53):
It's crazy. Although enterprises can delay it, right? Like they have a way they can

Paul Thurrott (00:52:58):
Have it. No, I'm just saying, in other words, we're not, we're not on edge 17, right? Front edge, 100, like this thing has only been around for

Leo Laporte (00:53:06):
Three

Mary Jo Foley (00:53:06):
Years. That's true. Or whatever, short time it's

Leo Laporte (00:53:09):
To match Chrome numbers. I mean, that's the real reason. So, you know, you're on the same chromium version. So they, you start at one.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:18):
No, no, that's true. But I mean, because of the six and now four week schedule, new versions come up all the time. But

Leo Laporte (00:53:26):
That's cause it security is, I mean, you gotta

Paul Thurrott (00:53:29):
No, no, it's fine. I don't mind keep I'm not I'm I'm not right. I'm not saying we should be on version 3.11. Cuz they had networking. I'm saying maybe because you, this has been going on for a long time. Like we should have been prepared for this.

Leo Laporte (00:53:42):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:43):
We meaning people make webs and websites,

Leo Laporte (00:53:45):
I guess.

Paul Thurrott (00:53:45):
Yeah. This seems strange to

Leo Laporte (00:53:47):
Me. They always ask me when we you know, like we're coming up now on episode 900, they always say, well, do you want cupcakes? I'm saying no, no, we don't do cupcakes for 100. S you gotta do silver

Paul Thurrott (00:54:00):
Resident. Silver.

Leo Laporte (00:54:01):
Yeah. I think when we get to TWIT 1000 or, or windows week, we 800, then we'll have yeah, no 800. Not even, no. We need to go to a thousand, a thousand then we'll have cupcakes. I'm just saying yeah. Don't don't we expect cupcakes.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:16):
We, we probably do roughly 50 episodes a year.

Leo Laporte (00:54:19):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:21):
So years off it just gonna be like, that's like four years away. Four it's five.

Leo Laporte (00:54:26):
Okay. We can't get a cup Duncan. We'll go to Duncan. It's right. We can do it. Get you some cupcakes. It's a,

Paul Thurrott (00:54:35):
I don't understand

Leo Laporte (00:54:38):
Balloons. You want balloons? You ask

Paul Thurrott (00:54:40):
China, say here, I'm just like I Don candles.

Leo Laporte (00:54:42):
Do you want, okay. Okay. Beer.

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:45):
We want beer

Leo Laporte (00:54:47):
Edge one.

Paul Thurrott (00:54:48):
Add something to dunk it in. I think is what we're asking.

Leo Laporte (00:54:51):
Duncan

Mary Jo Foley (00:54:52):
Duncan to direct to

Leo Laporte (00:54:53):
Duncans the best. Duncans the best coffee they say. They say I probably should break here cuz this show's rolling along. You guys are just trucking. I try to slow you down.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:07):
We have so much stuff

Leo Laporte (00:55:08):
Though. Do you have a lot more to go? Oh

Mary Jo Foley (00:55:10):
Yeah. There's more there's stuff

Leo Laporte (00:55:12):
Coming. Well, I got two more ads. Do you have enough stuff to let's just do

Paul Thurrott (00:55:16):
Let's do let's just finish up edge.

Leo Laporte (00:55:18):
Okay. Finish. Oh, you're not done with edge.

Paul Thurrott (00:55:20):
All right. No, this is one there. One finish edge

Leo Laporte (00:55:22):
Finish edge. So

Paul Thurrott (00:55:24):
Microsoft edge has gained an really what I think it's an excellent accessibility feature, which is the automatic generation of image descriptions for users who are browsing the web with screen readers. So if you think about if you know anything about HTML or whatever, when you post an image to the web, you're supposed to put up a description. So the people who can't see the images will get a, an understanding of what that image is. I'm mean almost nobody probably does this, but this thing will do that automatically. And that's neat. And of course my mind immediately went to pornography. I apologize, but that's an exception. It will not describe that kind of an image. So you, that's what you're looking for. You're not getting that. Excessively small images, successfully, large images, decorative image gory, sexual or pornographic images will not be automatically described.

Leo Laporte (00:56:13):
It's gonna go, Hey I, I don't really know. I,

Paul Thurrott (00:56:17):
I it's like calling a, it's like calling on the phone. Like what? I just want to hear it. I don't know. Sorry. I'm sorry. I went there, but anyway that's no, but it's a great feature.

Leo Laporte (00:56:27):
So it's a great feature. No, in fact we have a sponsor user way that fixes all that, cuz that absolutely. If you're using a screen reader, your images are just empty holes on

Paul Thurrott (00:56:39):
There's it's a sibling space. Yeah. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:56:40):
So I think that's a good thing.

Paul Thurrott (00:56:42):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:56:43):
All right. Now, now I could talk about CDW. All right. I've just been waiting for this moment. Windows weekly brought to you today by Intel Intel orchestrated by the experts at C D w they understands to keep up with the business needs. Organizations of all sizes have to stay secure. They have to stay connected. They have to stay protected. And that takes powerful processors that are built for today. And tomorrow, like Intel's built for business 11th, gen Intel core vPro processors, the 11th gen Intel core vPro processors provide you with a performance security and remote manageability needed to continually move forward and stay productive even while on the go. And of course, CDW works with Intel to provide the right technology to fuel productivity and innovation. CDW can assess your distributed workforce and their needs to implement the Intel vPro platform and configure devices powered by the 11th gen Intel core vPro processors, accelerating digital business transformation.

Leo Laporte (00:57:54):
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Paul Thurrott (00:58:53):
Laugh, fool me on Leo. Shame on what was the

Leo Laporte (00:58:58):
Quote. That was the, the Bush. Yeah. Fool me on shame on he couldn't get it right. Fool me. I can't remember though. Yeah. Okay. Nice job, Scotty.

Paul Thurrott (00:59:10):
Yeah. You know, you know, you're doing a great job brownie

Leo Laporte (00:59:11):
Doing a great job

Paul Thurrott (00:59:12):
Brownie. Wow. Wow.

Leo Laporte (00:59:17):
Some, some deep cuts there from Paul and Lee.

Paul Thurrott (00:59:19):
Yep. Let's talk about the cloud. Boom, bum boom. And specifically about China. Yeah. I don't it's like, all right. So mic China asked Microsoft to halt a figure, a feature of bang, which is, and it itself is amazing called auto suggest. What is it? Auto suggest it's like you might be living in a total totalitarian state. If what? I don't even know what, yeah. I don't know. So I have to assume they've gone after Google as well. Like you kind of, you kind of, I don't know, bang, like this Bing a big deal and China, I don't know.

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:02):
So I think somehow one of few, really, no, they're one of the few search engines allowed in, in China and it's because they agreed to do basically what the Chinese government wanted in terms of censorship. Right. That's how they are operating there. So yeah. A lot of people are questioning though. Like why did they try to like limit auto suggest what was showing up and auto suggest that that, you know, was concerning to the government.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:29):
So I think the problem is that they were using, which is this amazing sentence to even say they were using algorithms. Right. Well, yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:41):
It's

Paul Thurrott (01:00:41):
Computer that's I don't know.

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:45):
Yeah. I don't know either

Paul Thurrott (01:00:46):
Don't want those algorithms out there can start banning the algorithms. That's gonna be next.

Mary Jo Foley (01:00:52):
Yeah. It's a tough place to do. Business

Paul Thurrott (01:00:56):
Thing is the only major non-Chinese search engine available in the country. Yeah, yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:01:01):
Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:03):
I dunno. Well, not for long, right?

Mary Jo Foley (01:01:05):
Yeah. Right. I know.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:06):
I think you can say goodbye to that. Yeah. It's not gonna last forever.

Mary Jo Foley (01:01:10):
Yeah. But the better cloud story, which has to do with gaming from MJF, by the way.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:21):
Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (01:01:24):
Microsoft did a whole lot of game developer conference announcements today and surprise, surprise. The Sutter piece was Azure of these, right? So they, for the past few years, they've been trying to get more game developers to use Azure, to test build, and even run their game. Just the way that Microsoft runs the X cloud service off of Azure. But today they announced a really interesting thing, the Azure game development virtual machine. So this is a VM that's pre-populated with a lot of things that game developers might want like the unreal engine, visual studio play fab direct X. All these fans can be preloaded customized in a VM that people can use to either spin up a game spin up game development, workstations or servers build servers or as a base image for building your own custom environments for your developers. They also have a new program ID at Azure. It's kinda like ID at Xbox. I just said, Xbox, I can't believe,

Paul Thurrott (01:02:28):
I can't believe you even knew that existed. That's fascinating.

Mary Jo Foley (01:02:31):
I do. You know, I know it exists, but I have no idea what it is. It's some kind of program right. Towards give people access to free tools. I'm just saying words. Yeah. Like I know what a little bit here.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:45):
Okay. You help. So ID and Xbox is a program for independent, like our so-called indie developers. So I assume that ID at Azure is the same thing, but for well

Mary Jo Foley (01:02:56):
Game developers

Paul Thurrott (01:02:57):
For game developers using Azure.

Mary Jo Foley (01:02:59):
Yes it is.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:01):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:02):
Yep.

Paul Thurrott (01:03:02):
In other words, don't, it's not just for EA and act vision and this companies make it accessible to indie developers as well.

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:11):
Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. You know the one. So I was looking back cuz I've written a few things about gaming, always in connection with Azure, surprisingly. And one of the comments from one of my older articles about this was Microsoft said, you know, we always ask like, what do they get out of doing gaming at Microsoft besides the fact that the subscription services very popular? What they said on the record was all the work a game developers do on Azure helps accelerate what we're doing in cloud computing. Sure. And the reason for that is games are some of the most complex things.

Leo Laporte (01:03:48):
Exactly. The most demanding. Right?

Mary Jo Foley (01:03:50):
Yeah. So, and so when you learn how games work, when they're streaming, when they're running on your, on your streaming platform, it helps you figure out how to make you better for every kind of application. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:04:03):
It's true for hardware too. I've always said that. That's, that's why you do that's why PC makers love games. It pushes the hardware. Yep. Pushes the network.

Paul Thurrott (01:04:14):
I, I feel compelled to share the story, Joe. I hope, I hope you don't mind. Oh, you won't mind. This makes you look good. So

Mary Jo Foley (01:04:23):
I was

Paul Thurrott (01:04:24):
Writing my, I was in researching my and writing this programming window series I was doing, I got to PDC 2008 and looking back on it now I realized this was an inflection point, which is what I eventually wrote about it. That the, to that date, when you went to a PD, they were always around major new platforms and they were always client platforms. It was always windows, but this PDC was where they announced Azure. And it was a huge shift for the company and what I, what, I, I don't remember what I wrote originally, but what I eventually wrote was most didn't appreciate it at the time. But the 2008 profess developers conference was an inflection point for Microsoft, yada yada. And I went, so the thing is I found among the many things that I found in my research was Mary Jo and I and Tom Warren and Rafael and long Zang and possibly some other people maybe Kip I think was involved.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:21):
We did like a group live blog of 2000, the 2008 PDC. And I found the transcript from it. And I, I swear to God, I, I, I, I, yeah, I actually, I found what I wrote. I originally I said it was not obvious at the, but this was the, the dividing point. That was the Microsoft of old and the rear view mirror. And then this is the new Microsoft, but in this, in this thing, there's like Mary Jo wrote like, literally on that day she wrote windows seven might be more demo friendly than this, but this is Microsoft's future, in my opinion.

Mary Jo Foley (01:05:57):
Thank you.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:58):
And

Mary Jo Foley (01:05:58):
I was

Paul Thurrott (01:05:58):
Like,

Mary Jo Foley (01:05:58):
Everyone, God, thank you. Tell it,

Paul Thurrott (01:06:02):
You know? Yeah, no, she got,

Mary Jo Foley (01:06:04):
I remember we were all that day. Yeah. We were doing that day. I remember that we were doing a live blog and you guys were all blah, blah, blah. About, oh, this is the boring stuff, blah, blah. What are we get in a windows? This is,

Paul Thurrott (01:06:14):
This is what my commentary amounted to. This is an exact quote I wrote Asure. God bless you. Meanwhile, Mary Jo's like, this is the future of Microsoft.

Mary Jo Foley (01:06:24):
This is like the,

Paul Thurrott (01:06:25):
This was like the level of difference, like where we were at at this time. Like I just didn't, I, I couldn't, I'm like, this is a windows server hosted by Microsoft, I guess.

Mary Jo Foley (01:06:37):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:06:38):
Guess it sort of is, you know, but yeah. Anyway, big change.

Mary Jo Foley (01:06:42):
Oh man. It, it was a huge change and, and just trying to get our arms around it and like when they were briefing us on it, I remember just sitting there, I was talking the Omni tubs who was heading up edge at the time

Paul Thurrott (01:06:54):
On stage talking about this. Yeah. And

Mary Jo Foley (01:06:55):
He's drawing on this whiteboard, like this really complicated diagram of how Azure was built and all our components, the stack level diagram. And I'm like writing it down, talking to him, blah blah. And he stands up and he gives me this big hug and he goes, you got it. You got it. This is great. You got it.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:13):
So right. That's actually really interesting. Cuz I also had a similar experience where I walked out of the keynote thing and this person from PR said, Hey Paula, what did you think of the windows Azure stuff? And I'm like, I gotta be honest. I don't really understand it. And she said, well, that's okay. We have a, a special one hour session for the press. That's right now. And they'll answer any questions you have. And I'm like, great. So I went in there and asked a bunch of questions. In fact, I probably asked more questions than everyone else combined. I had a lot of questions like how do you, it was the first one I had, by the way I get to that one second. That's really funny. So I walked out the door, I saw the same person. She goes, you answer all the questions. I'm like, yeah. She goes, you get it now. I'm like, no, I still don't understand.

Mary Jo Foley (01:07:51):
So

Paul Thurrott (01:07:53):
I said this to Mary Jo too, actually. In that keynote Ray Ozzie was the first person to utter the term Azure. And he said it that way. He said Azure they say that word at least four different ways during the keynote. There's one guy who says it two different ways in one sentence, we didn't know like no one knew. Yeah. No one knew. I think Ray got to

Leo Laporte (01:08:14):
Decide it's Azure and that's it. Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:17):
Thats it. I think that's exactly

Paul Thurrott (01:08:18):
Right. And this was in many ways his internet services, disruption, memo, you know, and the and Azure was architected by who else? Dave color, right along with the

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:33):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:33):
Along with, you know, hypervisor bay, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. I just, it was just a okay.

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:39):
Fun code name. Fact about that PDC. Now we're going down memory lane here. Okay. Code name was red dog of Azure. That's right. And all the execs who presented that day on stage had red shoes

Leo Laporte (01:08:51):
Had

Paul Thurrott (01:08:52):
Better than anybody. But what is red dog name after

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:55):
It named? After a strip club? That's right.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:59):
That's

Mary Jo Foley (01:08:59):
Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:00):
Which In Silicon,

Leo Laporte (01:09:02):
They needed to come up with a better as

Mary Jo Foley (01:09:04):
No here's the story. They were in a van. They were going down to visit the Hotmail team, the Azure team before

Paul Thurrott (01:09:10):
Azure team, the Hotmail team really at the strip, low

Leo Laporte (01:09:12):
Lord.

Mary Jo Foley (01:09:13):
No wait, no, they were going down to visit them and Microsoft's California office. Right? Because they're like, you guys know how to run a service. Right. So we gotta talk to you. So they're in a van, they're driving down the street. They pass the strip club called the pink poodle and somebody, I don't know if it was Dave Cutler, somebody in the van said, we shouldn't codename this, the pink poodle. And somebody said, no, we, that sounds like Dave

Leo Laporte (01:09:32):
Color. I remember the pink poodle. It's funny cuz I don't remember as club called red dog from my use, there wasn't one in San Jose. But I do remember the pink poodle that's hystericals

Paul Thurrott (01:09:41):
Red dog. Like a, they

Mary Jo Foley (01:09:42):
Almost called it

Paul Thurrott (01:09:43):
Pink,

Mary Jo Foley (01:09:43):
Pink,

Paul Thurrott (01:09:43):
Poodle

Leo Laporte (01:09:44):
Pink poodle. It's like a size

Paul Thurrott (01:09:46):
Show from the seventies. You know like red

Leo Laporte (01:09:47):
Dog, red dog, red dog, red dog, number nine.

Mary Jo Foley (01:09:50):
The big Clifford, the red dog. That's

Leo Laporte (01:09:52):
What I thought they should have said is oh yeah. We named Mr. Clifford the bit big dog.

Mary Jo Foley (01:09:57):
Now the real story came out and everybody was like, that can't be the real story. That's so S a real story.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:03):
I think the first time you mentioned this in print, you didn't say strip club. I think you called it a

Leo Laporte (01:10:08):
Gentleman club.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:09):
No, you called it. It was, it was like a, like a, a dive bar or so like, or some kind of a thing like that. Like you kind of walk,

Leo Laporte (01:10:17):
Actually. It wasn't, they couldn't serve liquor as I remember because,

Paul Thurrott (01:10:21):
Oh God,

Leo Laporte (01:10:21):
You couldn't get a liquor license. If you were a strip club.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:23):
Well, Dave Cutler wouldn't have liked it then, but I mean, Yeah, no, I just, I've just, just

Mary Jo Foley (01:10:33):
Why don't we have fun code names like that anymore.

Leo Laporte (01:10:36):
I know why,

Mary Jo Foley (01:10:36):
Like why

Leo Laporte (01:10:37):
It's a great origin story. I love it. I've lost track. Should we talk about hollow lens?

Mary Jo Foley (01:10:49):
Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:10:50):
Apparently the is not. So I saw rumor that the army, like Microsoft tested hollow lens again with soldier and they prepared everybody by saying they're not gonna like it.

Paul Thurrott (01:11:02):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:11:02):
Is that true?

Paul Thurrott (01:11:04):
Remember that scene in the movie Starship troopers where they're fighting insects and it's not going very well. Yeah. That's what HoloLens is like. 

Leo Laporte (01:11:15):
So they didn't actually say that, but, but I had read that they were telling people so we don't know get ready cuz we know they're not gonna like it.

Paul Thurrott (01:11:22):
So there was a leaked email obtained by business insider, insider that they know they're gonna be getting negative feedback from the customer, which is the us army soldiers. Don't like it, it has terrible low light performance, terrible thermal imaging performance.

Leo Laporte (01:11:39):
You know, if, if, if, if I were a soldier and I'm in a firefight and the thing doesn't work, I'm not gonna like it either. Well,

Mary Jo Foley (01:11:46):
Here's an idea

Paul Thurrott (01:11:47):
Over your head. Yeah. That it includes

Leo Laporte (01:11:49):
Blind yourself. I mean,

Paul Thurrott (01:11:51):
It's just

Leo Laporte (01:11:51):
Then run on out there.

Mary Jo Foley (01:11:53):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:11:54):
So

Mary Jo Foley (01:11:55):
I mean, we already knew this contract was in trouble because last fall the army had to say they were postponing the deliverables data in it. So there already was trouble. Right. And it's also

Paul Thurrott (01:12:05):
Worth mentioning that some chunk of this team has left. Right. That we talked about this a month or two ago. I don't remember. But a lot of the guys, a lot of heavy hitters, wasn't Don box part of this organization.

Mary Jo Foley (01:12:18):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:19):
Left the company and went to meta or wherever. 

Mary Jo Foley (01:12:23):
Yeah, he wants to,

Paul Thurrott (01:12:24):
So there could be, there could be bigger, you know, Microsoft doesn't want to, well, Alex Kipman came out and said everything was fine. Of course he did. But I think there are some issues over there, so

Mary Jo Foley (01:12:33):
Right. And this is on a small contract, 22 billion over 10 years. Yeah. So Microsoft really wants us to work. Right. And yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:12:43):
Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:12:44):
It's not going well. I think it's fair to say not going well is definitely fair to say. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:12:51):
Yeah. That's true. That's true.

Leo Laporte (01:12:55):
Hmm. Surface go now has LTE. I'm glad to see that. That's a good thing.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:01):
Yeah. So actually I, I, this might be a new version of surface go three with LTE. I can't remember if they, there was already one, but anyway, it's only, well only it's, it's 4 99. This is less expensive than the wifi only version of service code three, which is kinda curious, you know, it's until Pentium processor, four gigs of Ram 64 gigs of EMC storage, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, no, I guess there was a previous I'm sorry. So there was a version before, I guess the previously they were only making LTE available on the highest end version, which was that core I three version. So now you can get a lower end version of it is what this is. So did they ever ship the surface pro with LTE? I think they did service pro eight. That happened too. Right? I

Mary Jo Foley (01:13:47):
Think, I think it did. I believe it did. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:49):
Yeah. I think I was confusing those two. And then just some firmware update stuff. Surface laptop three with AMD got a firm update, but more impressively surface du oh two has gotten both a firmware update and the March, 2022 Android security update. So that's actually starting to happen on a reasonable schedule and that wasn't always the case. So that's good. I don't wanna spend too much time on that, but anyway, no. And then just very briefly Dyna book, which is the company that now owns what used to be the Shiba PC company is releasing new laptops over the course of this month. So this sec, the first round was a set of port dejas from early this month. Now they've got two new versions of the Tera business class laptops, 14 and 15 inch 12th core sorry, 12th gen P series, which is the 28 wat you know, more powerful version of those chips. And those are available now roughly a up. So nothing super, super dramatic. But this is my favorite story the whole week I I've been waiting. Leo, did you change the picture to a chicken?

Leo Laporte (01:15:01):
I did. Yeah. Get noticed that chicken playing that

Mary Jo Foley (01:15:05):
Was a while ago.

Leo Laporte (01:15:07):
I think, I think we need to have a theme for each one of our see,

Paul Thurrott (01:15:10):
Right? No,

Leo Laporte (01:15:11):
That's our no show and worksheets. I'm just saying, I like

Mary Jo Foley (01:15:13):
It. It helps you distinguish which one it is.

Leo Laporte (01:15:16):
Okay. Yeah. By the way, that's gonna be, I will allow it. It will be, yeah. You actually do have to approve it. It will be the, The way you find this from now on is you'll, you'll see a chicken, I'll

Paul Thurrott (01:15:27):
See the chicken and unknown and

Leo Laporte (01:15:28):
You'll know that, you know, chicken and the pet house view and you'll know it's so that must be 7 69. Yep. Right. But it's not done. We could change it again, you know? No,

Paul Thurrott (01:15:39):
No, I like it.

Leo Laporte (01:15:40):
It's

Paul Thurrott (01:15:40):
Kind of, there was a beer glass before I

Leo Laporte (01:15:41):
Think. Well, whiskey. Yeah, yeah. A whiskey. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:46):
I I'm just, this is, I, I, we don't have enough time to get into the full history of Google's path through to tablets, but suffice to say there was a period of time when mini tablets were kind of a big thing, seven, eight inch tablets. There was an nexus seven. Actually there were two versions of the nexus. Seven, those were very popular. And then every other tablet they ever made this tank, there was an nexus 10. There was an nexus nine, there was a pixel C and eventually Google said, look, no one is writing apps for tablets on Android. They're just phone apps blown up to big screen. So why don't we do this instead? We'll put ChromeOS on tablets. And then you'll have that full screen experience with web apps and all that kind of stuff. And we'll let ChromeOS run Android apps.

Paul Thurrott (01:16:27):
And for a few years, that seemed to be the strategy. But this past, I don't know, just two, three months, there are multiple examples of people from Google or job postings and whatever where Google has decided literally has explicitly said, tablets are the future of computing and what they base this on is tablet, uptick, tablet, sales uptick, during the pen to it's kinda like Microsoft coming out and saying, Hey guys, guess what? All that Azure stuff we've been doing, that's fun. That's, that's hilarious. That's the past. The future is windows computers, cuz we sold a lot of them during the pandemic. And they're literally like they did a, a, a 12 L project to make Android work better on large screen and folding screen devices. They Google had their gaming conference like Microsoft just did. They had theirs last week. They talked about this then there's a job posting for a senior engineer of Android tablet app experience where they said that the future of can computing is shifting toward more powerful and capable tablets. Man. If only Microsoft had adopted the tablets like 20 years ago, these, what are you talking about anyway? So I, I don't know any thoughts on like tablets in, do you future,

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:45):
I guess don't you think they're just doing this cuz of iPad or no.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:49):
Yeah, but iPad's been around for 12 years.

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:51):
Yeah. Like

Paul Thurrott (01:17:52):
In other words, like,

Mary Jo Foley (01:17:54):
I don't know.

Paul Thurrott (01:17:55):
Well, no, I mean, so Apple's big success with the iPad was getting developers to adapt their apps to that form factor. Right. They, they're not just stretched out iPhone apps and you know, who knows maybe one of the things apple did originally was they let iPhone apps run. Well actually they still work like this. You can run 'em in a little iPhone size thing in the middle where you can double size 'em but they look like an iPhone gets terrible. So they don't, they don't stretch to fill the screen. Like they're just terrible looking. So I think developers were like, okay, well we're gonna make apps. You know? And obviously with that extra screen real estate, you can have multiple columns and different layouts and things. And iPad apps honestly are pretty great. Like they're, they've done a great job with that. And on the Android side you get like an app.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:36):
That's just, it just stretches out. So it looks terrible. It's all just laid out like a phone app. I think the interesting thing about 12 L is which works again, unfolding displays as well as big displays is the OS itself, tailors to this bigger screen. So they have multiple column for settings and you can run two apps, you know snap side by side. And even if they're just like phone apps, they look fine because they're just, you know, side by side. But it's just kind of interesting. Like they're like forget everything we've ever done. The future is tablets. We're going all in baby. Yeah. It's just funny. It's

Mary Jo Foley (01:19:10):
It's it is weird. Cuz you guys both have talked about how terrible Android tablets are. I don't think of every, yeah, they're terrible one. I don't think I've ever even terrible held one, but

Leo Laporte (01:19:19):
It's a software

Paul Thurrott (01:19:19):
Issue. The software's gotten very good. Yeah. It's a hard,

Leo Laporte (01:19:22):
Just a software issue. Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:19:24):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:19:25):
So they're doing what they can do,

Leo Laporte (01:19:27):
I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I did order that Samsung note eight. Yeah. But it hasn't come yet. I don't even know if it works. It's

Paul Thurrott (01:19:36):
Beautiful. And you know, Samsung probably does some stuff with the UI. I, I I'd rather see this come from Google frankly. And actually when Google announced 12 L I don't remember the list of device makers was Samsung even on the list.

Leo Laporte (01:19:51):
I don't know. But that's what 12 L was for right. Was tablets.

Paul Thurrott (01:19:55):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, Samsung's the only one making compelling

Leo Laporte (01:19:58):
Google,

Paul Thurrott (01:19:59):
I mean, and also foldables actually, as

Leo Laporte (01:20:01):
It turns out. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:20:03):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:20:03):
You know what I am excited about though?

Paul Thurrott (01:20:06):
What's that I'm

Leo Laporte (01:20:07):
Getting an Xbox series X,

Paul Thurrott (01:20:09):
You are how'd that happen?

Leo Laporte (01:20:10):
Anthony Nielsen, who already has several, it seems like the people who have them are the ones who find out, oh, there's more to be bought. He said, Hey I have a, a series X in my shopping cart at Walmart. You want it? I said, yes. Yes. So what what game I'm gonna play Eldon ring. I think on it. I already bought it and then play it on the

Paul Thurrott (01:20:32):
Play later is the one you gotta look at? Which

Leo Laporte (01:20:34):
One?

Paul Thurrott (01:20:35):
Flight SIM.

Leo Laporte (01:20:36):
Oh, the flight SIM, right? Of course. Yeah. Do I have to get pedals?

Paul Thurrott (01:20:41):
Well, I mean, look at it first. I mean, and then go down that rabbit hole, I guess, but yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:20:45):
SRA knows it's Xbox dot. I mean he's, he's like, he's getting all like I'm outta here. Give me some kibble. Yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready. Yeah. No. And let's see what else? Yeah. I'm excited. I'm excited. Eldon. Ring's gonna look very nice on it. Michael, our son is playing it on a PlayStation five and it's gorgeous. And really it's so annoying to me cuz it's the hardest game I've ever played. And he says, I'm almost done. I said what? He said, well actually I could finish any time. There's just this one area at the map. I haven't, I haven't explored yet. So as soon as I get in there, it's like dude,

Paul Thurrott (01:21:19):
Young people are the worst

Leo Laporte (01:21:20):
Dude. Oh. But then he says, he says, but I don't play online. PVP there's people there who are so good. It's like what?

Paul Thurrott (01:21:28):
I was my, my story better than like this I, my, my son used to, I don't remember which version of call of duty it was. But one of the perks, the, one of the things you could get from like a 25 kill streak was like a nuclear bomb and it would just end the guy.

Leo Laporte (01:21:41):
Nice. Nice.

Paul Thurrott (01:21:42):
So what he did was he, he got a 25 kill streak. Didn't use it, killed himself, got another 25 kill streak and got a second one. Cuz he wanted to see what happened when he had two. So I, I was like, I've never gotten one by the way. I've never once never, ever

Leo Laporte (01:21:58):
Started to get another one. Just see what happens when you have

Paul Thurrott (01:21:59):
Two news. I was like, what happens? And he goes, oh, well you sent off the first one and the game ends cuz at the gate you

Leo Laporte (01:22:05):
Flew everything up.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:06):
So he is like, you add one in reserve.

Leo Laporte (01:22:09):
I do have to ask you, I saw and I just saw outta the corner eye in my eye and it can't be true. Is there gonna be, is Snoop dog coming to call of

Paul Thurrott (01:22:16):
Duty? Yes he is. To towards them. Yeah. Season, whatever

Leo Laporte (01:22:19):
It is I thought I must be, be

Paul Thurrott (01:22:21):
Hallucinating that was missing in this game was like a 60 year old, former rap star

Leo Laporte (01:22:27):
Must bizarre Lisa Weeks. Lisa and I both are saying is Snoop dog everywhere now is he like he is, he's everywhere. He's doing ads with Martha Stewart. He's got a show with super bowl. He was at the super bowl. Now he's in call of duty for crying out loud.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:43):
I know it's like he's become a respected elder Staman of is

Leo Laporte (01:22:48):
Whatever. Is it the gin and juice model mean? What is he doing it?

Paul Thurrott (01:22:52):
I don't know. It's the war zone part of the game. It's the battle Royal. Wow. I assume what that means is you can

Leo Laporte (01:22:57):
He's the bus driver, maybe

Paul Thurrott (01:22:58):
Get a skin and look like yeah. Stoop dog in the game or something like that.

Leo Laporte (01:23:02):
I don't know.

Paul Thurrott (01:23:03):
I don't

Leo Laporte (01:23:03):
Know either. He's trying to find his quarter. Let's do the Xbox segment. Mary Jo Foley. You are on hiatus enjoy and call the rod

Paul Thurrott (01:23:16):
We're in that awkward sea week of the month. So there isn't a lot related to re releases, but active vision blizzard had a regulatory for islanding this week that noted that the us federal trade commission has asked them for more information about the proposed acquisition by Microsoft. So there's no understanding of what they were asking for exactly. It's not. We knew that this was gonna get a lot of regulatory scrutiny. We knew this because the target date for this is the end of Microsoft fiscal you year in June next year, not this June. So they, we know this is gonna take a while. And there's a huge number of regulatory bodies that are right now examining this explicitly. The ones that we know about are the us department of justice, the FTC European commission the UK competition and markets authority and the China state administration and for market regulation, just in, in case you thought video games weren't important. So anyway, that's, you know, I don't think it's a big deal. I think it's still gonna go through, but there you go. Hey, do you have a steam deck by the way, Leo, did you get one? He's gone. Nobody's there. All right. He left. So Microsoft added support or to what? To Xbox cloud gaming to valve steam deck. Sorry

Leo Laporte (01:24:31):
I was playing with my steam deck. No that's okay. You ask me something.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:34):
Do, do you have a steam deck?

Leo Laporte (01:24:35):
No, I order, you know, I'm on the pre-order list. Yeah. I'm just happy to be getting an Xbox one X, come on a series X. Give me a break, man. Well,

Paul Thurrott (01:24:45):
I'm just I'm I'm

Leo Laporte (01:24:45):
Do you have a

Paul Thurrott (01:24:47):
No I'm yeah, no, but

Leo Laporte (01:24:49):
No,

Paul Thurrott (01:24:51):
No,

Leo Laporte (01:24:51):
No. I don't know. I, I don't know if I need one. I have an Nintendo switch.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:54):
I have the weird like readers just

Leo Laporte (01:24:56):
To see, you know, like, I don't know. No, I'm happy I'm gonna be playing my, but

Paul Thurrott (01:24:59):
I'm interested. I mean, I like the idea of it, right? So this thing it's Linux based. As we know, I think last week we talked about the idea that we can now put windows on there if you want that for some reason. And it is it's a handheld gaming device, yada yada plays PC games basically. But now you can play Xbox cloud gaming games via Microsoft's edge browser on this thing. Right. Cuz it it's Linux, it's sports, Microsoft edge. So that's available if you want that. That's kind of the nice thing about this. They,

Leo Laporte (01:25:28):
They play well, I wonder

Paul Thurrott (01:25:29):
They, well, I it's streamed streaming.

Leo Laporte (01:25:31):
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:33):
I dunno. It'll probably be

Leo Laporte (01:25:35):
Okay. I think that's kind of silly to buy a fancy expensive high end gaming device and then do something you could do on a phone.

Paul Thurrott (01:25:43):
Okay. So I would just say that the nice thing about the steam deck is that it it's a PC, so it supports this wide range of things. And this is another choice. I mean you IPO, you could pro well, I don't know how that works. If you put windows on it, you could probably do like the Microsoft stuff. Obviously you could do epic games. It obviously works with steam, you know, per the name out of the box and, and Val has done a good job of getting Linux compatible titles into steam. So that's, you know, that this is kind of the end game, I guess, for that kind of thing. But that's

Leo Laporte (01:26:14):
The best thing.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:14):
I it's just another option, you know, it's not a, it's not a closed system. Right. So you can, yeah. It's nice.

Leo Laporte (01:26:19):
It's another option. Yeah's a PC and LBC.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:22):
Yeah. So we were talking earlier, Mary Jo Kiy was talking earlier about what Microsoft is doing with Azure in the game space, through a developer conference they just had today or yesterday, I guess today Microsoft had one last Tuesday. It was called the Google for games, developer summit. If you wanna be put to sleep, I strongly recommend watching the keynoted have watched it TWITce and it works every time, but I watched it for a reason because there's been a lot of speculation about what was what's going on with stadia and also some questions about this Google play games for PC thing that Google's doing without Microsoft's help. And on that ladder note that's that they have now come out and said, it's a high performance emulation. So we kind of get that, but what's going on with stadia. So Google is doing what it can to improve stadia for end users, which makes sense, you know, making it easier for developers to pour it to this thing, yada yada yada.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:16):
But the more interesting thing perhaps is that they're also doing, which is something that I actually recommended, you know, 15 months ago, ish, which is they're gonna make the stadia backend available to third parties through a new service. So it's basically, you know, if you have an individual game and you just wanna make it available to customers this way, or if you're a game studio or a game publisher or whatever it is you can use the stadia backend or you could license it now from Google going forward, it's called immersive stream for games. There was a thing that at and T did a year ago where they made BA Batman, a Knight available for free to at and T mobile carriers subscribers funny or not funny, it's not funny, but ironically it only worked over wifi because at and T is terrible, but actually they've expanded that to support five 5g this week. So anyway, that's an interesting future for stadia. I think it makes sense. That's and I think

Leo Laporte (01:28:09):
It's hysterical. You couldn't wait a minute.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:13):
I know I

Leo Laporte (01:28:13):
Offered it, but you had to use wifi.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:16):
Yeah. So it came from at and T, but it would only work over wifi. Wow. Now it works over 5g as well. Although you gotta know it, it, it sucks up your data. Right. So right. Honestly, you're better off using wifi.

Leo Laporte (01:28:27):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:29):
So I think, you know, this is the type of thing. When you, when you hear about Xbox game cloud gaming, you're like, great, this is an excellent, you know, yes, you should do this, but Microsoft does have this Azure backend and they are they have a deal with Sony possibly to host their next online, whatever their PS follow up is called or whatever it is P is now, I think it's called and they're doing ID at Azure and they're gonna, they're gonna bring this to indie developers as well. So I think it's interesting that both Google and Microsoft, which both have incredible infrastructure cloud infrastructure and have this video game investment are gonna make this stuff available to third parties as well, which I think it makes sense.

Leo Laporte (01:29:09):
Yeah. I mean, I'm glad that it's not dead.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:13):
Yeah, I am too. I honestly, I mean, from a quality, just from a pure quality perspective, I haven't used it in a while now, but I mean, in my experience stadia was the highest quality cloud of

Leo Laporte (01:29:25):
All of them is best. Huh?

Paul Thurrott (01:29:26):
Of all 'em. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:29:27):
I mean, I love the idea and I, you know I have a stadia account and I just got the new Amazon thing whenever that is.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:34):
Yeah. If you use that with that controller, actually that's good too. But I, I think the games like they have over two and games on stadia. It's a nice, yeah. It's a nice selection.

Leo Laporte (01:29:42):
Yeah. robot in our this court has a steam deck actually and he likes it. Okay.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:29:52):
He plays grand theft auto five rocket league fall out four. He says the buttons are similar to the Xbox elite controller. So he likes with game pass.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:04):
It's the new Atari links.

Leo Laporte (01:30:06):
Yeah. I would think that the screen's just too small. I mean, I play games 50 display

Paul Thurrott (01:30:13):
Seven, nine inches,

Leo Laporte (01:30:14):
Eight

Paul Thurrott (01:30:14):
Inches seven. Yeah. Yeah. It's better than a phone for sure. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:30:19):
You know, that's true. And a younger generation that's been playing a phone. Won't see. Won't feel crank that's

Paul Thurrott (01:30:24):
Right. They'll think it's an IMAX or something by comparison.

Leo Laporte (01:30:27):
It's surround

Paul Thurrott (01:30:29):
It's

Leo Laporte (01:30:29):
All around me. It's all right. Is that it for boxy?

Paul Thurrott (01:30:34):
That's it? I'm,

Leo Laporte (01:30:35):
Sorry's very gel. Still

Paul Thurrott (01:30:37):
The big story.

Leo Laporte (01:30:39):
Yes.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:39):
So alive.

Leo Laporte (01:30:40):
Yes. Well, let's do a little mention of our sponsor for this segment because of the back of the book is coming up, brought to you by progress. Progress has been enabling enterprise experiences for decades and has assembled the technologies that will empower business to thrive in a post COVID world. Most companies don't have the resources to invest in technology, not like the digital Goliath. Anyway, they, they need to use technology to create a differentiation of course, but with a smaller investment. Well, you can do that with progress, use progress as your trusted provider with progress, any organization can achieve the level of differentiation that's critical in today's business environment, whether you're an it professional concerned about networking and infrastructure, security and compliance, or you wanna enable web and digital experiences, progress has a solution for you. Like move it, their managed file transfer, move.

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Paul Thurrott (01:33:22):
Yeah. So with Microsoft releasing the same build to both the dev and the beta channels, and more importantly, giving us a temporary window to switch back and forth between dev and beta, which again is something they, I think they only done one time before back and last summer, I guess. So the, the question now is, well, you, you have an out, I guess, you know, should you take it? And I guess that kind of depends on where your head's at. I have been using the dev channel for the book because I want to time it with, I want it to be, have the new features. Like I want to do it now and then do it again, you know, three months from now or whatever. And I'm actually starting to think that maybe the better channel now that they're kind of in the same place might be the better place for me to focus because that's more indicative of what we are gonna see in the next feature update.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:20):
Right. I mean, but it's kind of a personal thing. You, you still, you still can't get out of the windows inside a program, right. If you're in the, the dev of the beta channel, you can't go back to stable. Right. I hope that that changes in the future, but there's more of a chance of that happening with the beta channel. If that makes sense. Cuz the J channel's always gonna push forward. But you may still have to do a cleanest stall if you want to get out. You know, it's like the, the Mo every time you try to get out the keep pull you back in, I dunno, but yeah, I think I'm gonna, I it's, it's complicated for me. I'm gonna have to keep multiple machines around on, you know, on each cuz I don't know what to trust, but anyway, you do have an out, so it's a temporary window, a magic window, as we say,

Leo Laporte (01:35:05):
Get there before it slams. Is it your experience with dev channel's pretty stable. I mean, that would be my only concern. 

Paul Thurrott (01:35:13):
Well, yeah, but I, I, well, okay. Mostly I've actually had some screens this past week on dev. That's not typical, but this is sort of like the conversation we had about the the watermark on an unsupported PC in windows 11. You know, if you're technical enough to, to be doing this thing we're talking about. I mean, that, that shouldn't bother you too too much. I, I wouldn't go on a trip with just a dev machine lap hop, I guess is maybe the way I would qualify that. But

Leo Laporte (01:35:41):
That's reasonable. Yeah. But it's, but you can use it as a production machine, as long as you have a yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:46):
Fall. I do. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:35:48):
And you press command S control S a lot or whatever it is on windows F five shift.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:55):
It is control S oh,

Leo Laporte (01:35:57):
Okay. If

Paul Thurrott (01:35:57):
You're saving to OneDrive, it's automatic. You don't

Leo Laporte (01:35:59):
Have to worry about, oh, nice,

Paul Thurrott (01:36:01):
Nice. I still do it compulsively. I, we, we just talked about one OneNote and how we've been using this thing for at least 12 years and every single week add stuff to the notes. Or maybe I'm talking to someone like I'm doing a meeting with someone and I'm taking notes. I compulsively hit control S in OneNote and it doesn't do anything. There is no saving in OneNote. I can't, I can't stop

Leo Laporte (01:36:25):
Doing it is muscle memory. Yeah. It's pretty funny.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:28):
No, it's you just you're broken like that. You just get so used to it. Compulsively saving all the time. Yes. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:36:37):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:37):
Anyway. All right. So at pick of the week, this is kind of an only bit of goodie, but I, you know, I bring up new machines all the time and I was just thinking about this. Every time I bring up a new windows machine, what typically happens is I have some list of apps that I know I need. Right. I mean, office, et cetera, notion now, you know, is one of them affinity photo is something I use every day, for example. And then I, I, I, I tend to install things as they they're needed. Right. So, you know, Wednesday rolls around. It's like, oh, I gotta record. One's weekly. I need zoom. Obviously I gotta go get that before, you know, not at one minute of two hopefully or whatever, but I try to re you know, you, that's how my brain works.

Paul Thurrott (01:37:13):
Like I, when I need it, I kind of install it. The app that I install that I like the most and I use every single day, honestly, is screenshot. This is a screenshot utility. I know there are a lot of 'em people talk about like share X, for example, which is a store app. This is a desktop app. You get it on the web, just search for green shot screenshot. It's a it's free. It works amazingly well. It does all the keyboard combinations. I have it short circuiting, the windows I'm sorry, the print screen key. So if I do just print screen, it takes a screenshot of the entire screen. All sprint screen does the, the, you know, the cur window control, print screen does whatever selection I wanted to do, et cetera. So auto saves the format that I want. I love it. Like, I, I honestly don't know what I would do without it, like, I really, really like this utility. So something to check out, if you needed to take screenshots, it's not a screenshot. It's a green shot. It's a green shot. That's right. Cuz it's environmentally friendly too. Yeah. For some reason, is it? No, no,

Mary Jo Foley (01:38:16):
Not at all. No. Sounds good though.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:19):
Enterprise pick of the week, Mary Jo Foley.

Mary Jo Foley (01:38:23):
Okay. This is a very obscure enterprise pick just to forewarn people, but there's a reason I made at the pick. So Microsoft's doing a lot of work in research and internally on applying AI technologies to to some of their services in the cloud to make them work faster, work better, be more efficient. And they've been very focused lately on trying to make translator work better and be a better product. So they say there was an update they applied this week to translator that they say will improve the quality of the machine translations and also help these the service support more than just the regular old languages that people always have trained data sets for. So they're trying to extend the amount of just supported and also improve the quality of the translations. If you, if you are somebody who really gets into, like, how does this work though?

Mary Jo Foley (01:39:25):
And is it just, don't say, add AI and stir, like if you really wanna get into it, there are some resources they made available this week. And I'm gonna tell you what to search for, to find some of these. They have a project called XYZ code project. So if you do a search for that, it combines models for text, vision, audio, and languages to create systems that can better speak here, see and understand. So you can really kind get into seeing what, where Microsoft's going with some of its cognitive services and AI technologies, when they're used in combination, then they have this other thing. I'm not even gonna try to explain this because it's really complicated, but you can look it up. If you wanna try to delve into this, it's called Z code Z code uses this thing called the mixture of experts approach.

Mary Jo Foley (01:40:15):
I'm not even gonna try again to define or explain that. I read the research post on this like four or five times, and I'm like, you know what? I'm just gonna point people to it and say, if you wanna know more go over there. I, I, because I know I cannot do it justice, but the, the reason I made this to the enterprise pick is I think it's very interesting that Microsoft isn't just saying, okay, translator, it's good enough. And you know, it's working and it's fine. They're really doing a lot of things under the covers to make this service work better. And the last time I used Google translate, when I was in Japan, I was amazed how good it was. I didn't even try to use like Microsoft translator, but now I'm, I'm curious kind of how these things compare and if Microsoft translators getting as good as Google translate is. So it's gonna be interesting to watch how they evolve this over time.

Leo Laporte (01:41:05):
Yeah. It's kind of this mixture of experts. Things kind of interesting.

Mary Jo Foley (01:41:09):
It is, right. I'm like, I can't really explain it because in that field, but it's, it's got a lot of different moving parts and you can read many research papers and blog posts about this. If you think you might be interested,

Leo Laporte (01:41:22):
It's, you know, it's fascinating to learn about the strategies. Yes. AI uses to kind of be more human it's hard. And so yeah, at, I can only understand at a very, very high level, but it's, I think it's interesting trying to solve these. Yeah. Me too. These problems enterprise pick number two.

Mary Jo Foley (01:41:41):
Okay. This is much more of an, a mundane enterprise pick. So Microsoft announced recently a whole skilling campaign and the United States to try to up the number of some cybersecurity professionals available for companies to hire. They were working with community colleges, doing some things around Microsoft, learn to create new coursework that people could access for free. And today they announced their expanding this program to 23 more countries. So this is like all free. Good. Like if you're somebody who is thinking, you know, I'm kind of bored in my career, I wanna tr kind of trade up into something that's more interesting and more lucrative. Cyber security is a great place to be to be focused. And now the countries that they've expanded this to, they range from like Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Mexico, Mexico, Paul, you could study the, this while you're in Mexico.

Mary Jo Foley (01:42:35):
Oh, goodness. Yes. By UK, all, all like a lot more countries are involved in this now. So you get there's like all this free coursework from Microsoft learn learning. There's 47 learning paths, hundreds of hours of content. Microsoft also is working with schools, especially with community colleges, the learn for educators program. They're giving them all this training and tools and trying to help the whole, not, not just the us, but the whole world bolster the number and types of security professionals that are available for companies to hire. So I think it's pretty cool that they're doing this neat. Yeah. Neat. And if you're somebody who's in, who thinks like, yeah, that would be pretty interesting. And I've just been put off because of the expense and all that. All most of this is free. So there you go.

Leo Laporte (01:43:24):
All right, beer time, everybody bear me.

Mary Jo Foley (01:43:29):
Okay. This is a pretty cool beer project. A lot of the beer community likes to rally around causes and come up with creative ways to support different communities through beer. So right now the Ukraine is on everyone's mind. And there is a beer project called resolve resolve freedom is the name of it. They have their own website even that you can go and check out. It's connected with this thing called global empowerment mission and resolve the resolve collaboration. Beer is helping to fund emergency aid inside Ukraine, to the fighters, the families, to stay behind humanitarian aid to women and children who are trying to cross the border at to Poland. So how do they do this? They get breweries to sign up, to make this beer. They give 'em the recipe and they say, here's the recipe for this killer beer and Keller beer. If you've never had it as a German LAGR type beer it's neither clarified nor pasteurized, which makes it something kind of a little more interesting than your usual will lager the breweries commit. They make it, they put the label on the cans and then the sales of this beer go to this global empowerment mission project. They're signing up breweries all over the us. So if you see something called resolve freedom, that's the beer that's doing. That's part of the support organization.

Leo Laporte (01:44:48):
And it's an open source recipe. So yes. Anybody can make it recipe. Yeah,

Mary Jo Foley (01:44:53):
Yeah, yeah. They give, they just say, here's the recipe. Here's how we, how you make it. If you wanna make something's so cool based on this.

Leo Laporte (01:45:00):
Have you tried it yet?

Mary Jo Foley (01:45:01):
I have not, but one of my local breweries has it and I've gotta try one KC, BC,

Leo Laporte (01:45:05):
What are the comments like in the, in the code?

Mary Jo Foley (01:45:08):
Like how they are, it's

Leo Laporte (01:45:09):
Weird. No, no, no, it's not, it's not that it's just like a cooking recipe. So yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:45:15):
Yeah. It's not that kind of open source. It's more like we just give people the recipe instead of like keeping the recipe secret and private, like most,

Leo Laporte (01:45:22):
You know, and they actually, one of the designers is from Ukraine is from Kiev or Keve. So that's cool. Keve E actually Keve. Oh, wow yeah, so, but there's a list of all the participating breweries. So you can see if you can get it from your favorite and they're

Mary Jo Foley (01:45:43):
Adding more every day. It's, it's all over the us. It started out mostly, it looks like it started out heavily in New York, but it seems to be expanding beyond New York.

Leo Laporte (01:45:52):
Well now hungry and, and the UK all over our local Danville brewery Danville brewering company has it. So I'm gonna try it there. That's really great. Really neat resolve. And it's use it's the website is resolve Ukraine, beer.com. Right. If I get that right, I think so. Got right. Resolve Ukraine, beer.com. Yeah.

Mary Jo Foley (01:46:17):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:46:18):
Well, thank you, Mary Jo. Thank you, Paul. You're welcome that. Thank you, Leo. Thank you.

Leo Laporte (01:46:25):
That concludes this thrilling gripping edition of windows weekly. We do windows weekly every Wednesday, 11:00 AM Pacific 2:00 PM. Easter. Now we are on summertime, so we moved. We sprung forward. So that means we're minus UT minus seven. So we are now doing an 1800 UTC, but you can find out all about that by just going to the website, TWIT.tv/ww. If you do wanna watch live, there's a live stream at the website, live.TWIT.tv chat live@ircdotTWIT.tv or in the club. TWIT discord, always a lot of fun there. You're doing a fireside chat in a week, Paul in a week. I think it's maybe I'm wrong. I think it's the 31st. Am I wrong? I don't know. Let me see. Three events coming up. I up soon. It's next week. It's next week. Just I'm glad I mentioned it. Tomorrow 9:00 AM Stacy Higginbotham's book club. Unauthorized bread will be the book by Corey doctoral. It's an Ave. You could read it right now. I can tell Ann's writing these because he writes Mrs. Stacy Higginbotham.

Mary Jo Foley (01:47:40):
Yeah, He calls me miss Mary Jo, miss Mary Jo.

Leo Laporte (01:47:45):
I love it. Mr. Paul Thurrott will be doing his ask me a anything on March 31st. Jeff Jarvis has just been booked brand new one fireside chat on the 14th. All of that's available to members of club TWIT club TWIT helps support the network development of new shows like this week in space, the first club TWIT generated show. We also do the untitled Linux show the GIZ fizz, these book club, lots of other stuff, thanks to members like you. So if you're not a member, go to TWIT TV slash club, TWIT seven bucks a month, add free versions of all the shows, all those special events that TWIT plus feed there's and our eternal. Thanks. And we really appreciate it. So please join club TWIT, TWIT.tv/club TWIT. Of course we still offer the show free. If you go to TWIT.tv/ww there's a YouTube channel dedicated to windows weekly. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast player and get it automatically and leave us a five star review. It's another way you can show your appreciation for the hard work Paul and Mary Jo put in each and free week. I think notion worked, worked well. I do. So I was able to put in a chicken

Mary Jo Foley (01:49:01):
Stick. A dynamite was in there at work. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:49:03):
Yeah. Cause a dynamite show. So, but I can't wait to see when is that Microsoft event? It's next?

Mary Jo Foley (01:49:10):
April Finn.

Leo Laporte (01:49:12):
Okay. So it's a little ways away. Yep.

Mary Jo Foley (01:49:14):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:49:15):
As we get closer, let me know if you think we should stream it.

Mary Jo Foley (01:49:18):
Yeah, we still don't have any, are they gonna stream or anything? Yeah, they'll stream it open to public.

Leo Laporte (01:49:23):
I think we kind maybe should. Yeah. We'll know. We'll know. All right. Thanks Paul. Thanks Mary Joe. Thanks to all of you dozers. We'll see you next time on windows weekly. Bye bye.

Ant Pruitt (01:49:34):
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