TWiT 1052: It's a Nice Day for CRM - AI Slop, Media Power, & the Future of Trust

[00:00:00] It's time for TWiT This Week in Tech. We've got a great panel in Georgia. Dow is here, Ian Thompson. And from France, Patrick Beja will talk about the new Sora 2 app, the number one app on the iPhone App Store. Is it just increasing the amount of AI slop in your life? Yahoo is about to sell AOL to a small Italian company for $1.4 billion. And is Electronic Arts worth $50 billion?

[00:00:28] The Saudis say it is. Paul Mettenmore coming up next on TWiT. Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is TWiT. This is TWiT This Week in Tech. Episode 1052. Recorded Sunday, October 5th, 2025. It's a nice day for CRM.

[00:00:58] It's time for TWiT This Week in Tech, the show where we cover the week's tech news. I've assembled an international cast for today's show. All the Americans were busy on a Sunday afternoon. So Ian Thompson is here. You're an American now. You're a citizen, aren't you? The paperwork is still going through and the shutdown hasn't helped. But yeah, I'm getting there. Okay. He's a reporter at the register. Don't pay any attention to his accent. He is all in mind.

[00:01:26] I still say petrol instead of gas. I haven't gotten quite that bad yet. Oh, and I like what's happening to the blur. For some reason, do you see that in the gap between your head and the headphones? We're seeing what's behind you. Oh, really? How marvelous. Okay.

[00:01:44] So I'll leave that to people to deduce what you're reading. That's hysterical. Well, thank you, Zoom. Thank you. Also here. Now he's actually from France. He's in France right now. In fact, he's going to be going down to Nice to compete in the street fighter competition. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you what's your what's your street fighter handle, Patrick Bajon? Oh, it's not Patrick. I'm not Patrick everywhere. If you want to find me, I'm not Patrick. Which is totally confusing.

[00:02:10] Well, you know, Patrick was taken on Twitter like 15 years ago, was it? So instead of being the real Patrick, you're not Patrick. Yeah. And no one can ever forget it. Not Patrick is etched into your brain the first time you hear it. It's great to have you, Patrick Bajon. It's staying up late for us. Thank you. I appreciate that. My pleasure. We'll try to get this done before three in the morning.

[00:02:35] And from Canada, she's up there in Montreal. It's Georgia Dow. Hello, Georgia. Good to see you. It's been a long time. YouTube.com slash Georgia Dow. Last time you were here, what were we what were you talking about? You were doing because you do the therapist reacts videos and things like that. And I don't know what show I was doing. Because you're always doing the latest thing. Now you're doing what?

[00:03:04] Now I'm doing, I did Peacemaker was the last one. Peacemaker. Yeah. Strong or broken. I love it. Yeah. I love it. And she always what I love about Georgia. She has many costumes to go along. Usually. Yeah. Yeah. This is this is this is the going the extra mile. Well done. Bravo. It's just a reason for me to dress up. Let's just be honest. Oh, let's this is the real reason you have a YouTube channel. Exactly.

[00:03:32] I love it. It's great to see you, Georgia. It's just fun. Thank you for joining us. So we've got Canada, England and France in the house. That's nice. We'll get a nice international perspective on the news. The hot story this week is the number one app on the iPhone app store. Sora 2. Now, a couple of weeks ago, I think OpenAI announced their new video generation platform.

[00:03:59] It competes with VO3 from Google, both of which are able to create video with audio from a text prompt. But I think OpenAI has upped the ante here because they have released a tick, basically a T. AI tick tock. That's what they're calling it with these with these videos. And it's somewhat addictive.

[00:04:28] Even though I don't know how it got to be number one. You have to have an invite to do it. But iJustine literally has posted about 100 videos every few minutes with a pig. One of the things that happens when you sign up for this, and I was able to get an invite. Thank you, Anthony Nielsen. Is you create what they call your cameo, which is your image of yourself. You pose for the camera.

[00:04:56] You recite three random numbers, which I think is their scheme, to keep you from digitizing other people besides yourself. Because the numbers are random, so you have to do it live. And then you're able to create videos like this. It's the latest advance in portable telephone. The entire transmitter and receiver are contained in this single case, and it weighs a shade on the file. I don't know where the other audio is coming from, but it's leaking through. I think that's pretty good.

[00:05:21] It literally takes 10 seconds to create this cameo, and I can see why people are going crazy. Invites are being traded on Reddit and Discord, and people are getting in. When you get in, you get your own invites. I think I have four. Don't ask me for them, because I'm going to give them to... Mike is in here. Anthony Nielsen. I did a little video of me and Anthony doing a TikTok dance.

[00:05:48] But almost immediately, people started creating videos from copyright material. There was quite a bit of it. So almost immediately, OpenAI had to back down and say, oh, we're going to put some guardrails up because people are doing too much stuff. Now, you can still do South Park. Here's a South Park meets Jesus video.

[00:06:18] I have to figure out where my other tab is open. I've got another... There we go. I've got two Tora tabs open, I think. Actually, I don't. I don't know where it's coming from. That's all right. We don't really want to hear it. It is the AI slop generator par excellence. What do you think? I suspect they got a lot of calls from lawyers pretty soon after release. They did.

[00:06:44] Sora update number one, Sam Altman says, we've been learning quickly how people are using Sora. Taking feedback from users, rights holders and other interested groups. We're going to give rights holders more granular control of the generation of characters. Now, one of the things you can do after you make your cameo is you can say, only I can make videos of myself or only my friends or it's open to the public.

[00:07:08] And I thought, well, what I thought actually defensively better make it open to the public because then I have plausible deniability no matter what videos are posted of me. Right? That's smart. It's Sora. I didn't do it. Look at you. Whereas if I had held on tightly to it. Thinking like a criminal. I like it.

[00:07:32] So, and by the way, Sam says we're hearing from a lot of rights holders who are excited about this new kind of interactive fan fiction. How many of those are excited about me? George Lucas. How many of those are women? I'm just saying. I don't think that it's women being like, oh, I can't wait to see what people post of me. Well, I just deemed her credit made hers public. And so there's a lot of stuff. People have been using my avatar and kind of fun ways.

[00:08:01] I'm somewhat flattered by it. There's some stuff that I find offensive. For instance, Martin Luther King is frequently. Dream. I have a dream that one day across this great nation, Chick-fil-A will be open on Sundays. No line too long. No. Now, I find that offensive to be honest with you. But I guess the estate of Martin Luther King has not been consulted in the use of that video. Or maybe that video is public domain now. I don't know.

[00:08:32] So what do you all think of this? This is really, in my mind, the launch of AI's video. I think there are two aspects to this. The first one is, as you've pointed out, the rights holder and the copyright issues, which are, you know, just like with everything AI related, very difficult to figure out. And I think that OpenAI is smart enough.

[00:09:01] You know, they have smart people. They realized when they launched this, they were like, this is going to be an S show. And the other thing is, of course, the fact that now between VO3 and a couple of others in this one, AI, generative AI video has arrived. It's here. It's good enough. You cannot trust anything you see anymore, right? And it's been the case for a while.

[00:09:25] But you browse Sora and everything looks somewhat believable. Everything. You're still a little AI-y, but only if you really look closely, right? You have to really be looking for it. And maybe I'm flattering myself that I can tell. It's not quite exactly right, but it's good enough. Just like images were, I guess, a year ago, you know, a year and a half, 18 months.

[00:09:53] And so, you know, that's the world we live in now. It's things have arrived. I don't know if it's good or bad, probably a bit of both and a lot of one. But yeah, it's here. Video generative AI video is believable. So that is going to change things. There's a group of people who I think are viscerally upset with AI-generated content in general.

[00:10:20] Like, it's really upsetting to them, right? And those people, like, it's a witch, burn it. They want, I mean, they want a silver cross. They want a silver bullet. They want a stake through its heart, which I understand completely. But it feels to me, it's a, Georgia, you're a psychologist. It feels to me like a disgust reaction, like an involuntary reaction to AI.

[00:10:44] Well, I think that it goes into that feeling of uncanny valley, of what can you believe, of people having, you know, all of these different artists and people that are usually that would create things and their jobs and what are they going to do. It's such a quick shift. It's such a fast shift that our society hasn't really kind of, you know, gotten to the place where they can understand it and feel really comfortable with it. And so I think that it also kind of deflates that feeling of trust and can you actually see

[00:11:14] what you want to see or just believe whatever you want to. I think that a lot of ways this will be the justification for I didn't do it, you can't believe it, what might be happening. And so I think that there's a lot of shifts of whenever a technology changes and our culture hasn't changed with it, a lot of people can have this adverse reaction. And for some of it, you can understand. And for some of it, it's just change is hard for people. Right.

[00:11:41] I think in France, I don't know if it's exactly the same in the US, but in France, it's very much the artists and creators who are outraged, probably, you know, at least partially rightfully so, and disillusioned and angry at big tech, which didn't ask for their consent in using all of that content to train their models.

[00:12:08] Whether or not they should have, I think, is morally and legally still to be determined. But the reaction is very much that. And it's a general like, well, there you go. Big tech is screwing up everything again. It's burning the planet. Because obviously, you know, people who post 100 videos, I don't, I have nothing against

[00:12:33] iJustine, but when you said, oh, she posts one every 10 minutes, I'm like, how many trees did that burn? Well, that's the other, that's the next question is how much is this costing open AI? And it's got to be significant. It's absolute fortune. Sure. I mean, somebody was saying before the show began, I can't remember who it was. Was it you, Benito? That he'd heard it was $5 a video. I've seen the same figure. Yeah.

[00:12:59] That seems, that's mine, because I got to tell you right now, there's thousands of videos a second being generated. I mean, they have a lot of VC, but they, so the other thing that Sam talked about in this post after saying, sorry, rights holders is we're going to have to somehow make money for video generation. Yeah. People are generating much more than we expected per user. And a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences. We're going to try sharing some of this revenue with rights holders who wants, who want

[00:13:27] their characters generated by users. So they're going to try to figure out, first of all, A, there's no ads in it. So they've got to, obviously there's going to be ads, right? And then B, they've got to figure out some sort of micro payment system for rights holders, hoping that he says, our hope is the new, this new kind of engagement is even more valuable than the revenue share. But of course we want both to be valuable. So I, I, I admire, I have to say, I admire chat GPT's gumption.

[00:13:57] Well, the bank balance helps as well. I mean, there's a, there's kind of an Uber-like feel to this where, you know, it's like, we'll give it away free. Yeah. We'll build a market share. We'll lose money for decades. Yeah. We'll lose money for years because there's always more coming in. And then once people are hooked, then we start charging for it. It's bold. Is it not? They, they, they can't, I don't think they can charge significantly for it, but they can develop some kind of business model. I think there's going to be an ad, there's going to be an ad model. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:25] Ads or, but even ads like how, or, well, data maybe, but how much can they make with ads? I don't know, but it's, it feels like big tech in general. It's not just, you know, Uber or whoever. Get the users and then worry about revenue later. Sorry, Georgia, what were you saying? And just all of the information that you're giving to them every single time and all of that, that they can then use later for something else. I think that, you know, the, if you take a look at the privacy policies, like they're really scary.

[00:14:55] Like if you actually read them. Well, I have given them my image, haven't I? Now. Yeah. Yep. But, but then I got out of that. I got me and Justine bouncing on a trampoline together, which is adorable by the way. But do you have the right to be forgotten because you're not in the EU? Yeah. Yeah, I guess I don't. By the way, this is not available in the EU, is it, Patrick? Well, no.

[00:15:19] But, but I think, you know, I'm not sure it's about anything legislation related. The DMA or anything? Yeah. The DMA or DSA, maybe, but I don't think so. I think this is about controlling the amount of money they're burning. I understand creatives are hurt that there are stuff's being taken, but what about creatives using this to create? I mean, here's a picture, a sketch of a kitten that comes alive. I mean, you could really make, this is, you can make movies with this. I mean, it's, it's fascinating.

[00:15:48] I mean, it's really powerful technology. I think what we're seeing now is a lot of experimentation, which is just kind of hokey. But there is already interesting stuff being done with AI. I don't know if you, if you go on TikTok or Instagram or these platforms a lot, but there's a lot of AI, not slop, but AI videos like Moses live blog, vlogging. Oh yeah.

[00:16:17] Moses the influencer or Jesus. Yeah, exactly. And those are wild. It's, and it's, it is entertaining. It's fun. Like there are like aliens discussing their contempt for humanity in a podcast, like YouTube podcast format. Like it is, it is cute. And I think it's going to be open a lot of possibilities.

[00:16:41] The question is what is being not taken away, but I certainly don't subscribe to the idea that, oh, this kills creativity. It takes the soul of creation away from humans. And, you know, I think this is a little bit overblown, but a lot of those people who are so anti AI, I don't think they're the people who are considering this for like,

[00:17:08] like the longterm people who are trying to negotiate rights and all of that. They know that you can't put the cat back into the bag right now it's here and you have to deal with it and you have to defend your ground as much as you can. But I don't think the people who are like, oh, I've posted like once a four panel comic that I tried when chat GPT released one of their updates. And I was like, I just prompted and it spit out this four panel comic. It was kind of okay.

[00:17:37] I got yelled at. Yeah. Well, as I said, there are some people who are really viscerally offended by it. And I want to respect that point of view. I think that those are people who are consider themselves humanists and consider this kind of machine generated imagery to be offensive and deeply offensive. There are so many issues. So many issues. There's the environmental issue. There's the rights holders issues. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:06] There's also the issue of slop itself. Here's a Fast Company article. We need to stop the slop of OpenAI Sora and MetaVibes AI video apps before it's too late. We risk drowning in a sea of vibes based garbage. Well, it's happening at work as well. I mean, I don't know if you saw the Stanford study on work slop. Yes, work slop. Yeah, exactly. Incredible stuff. It's just like the amount of stuff that you can. And it's kind of like Microsoft in the days of word processing.

[00:18:36] It's good enough. But with this, you've got entire swathes of business material being created by AI. And the study found in particular that I found interesting was if you're on the receiving end of this, you trust the other person so much less and you dislike them more. So I think the long-term effects of that are going to be really interesting on corporate culture. Yeah, I think we're seeing this happen. And the specifics of this, shoddy work has always existed.

[00:19:06] But this pushes your... It puts shoddy work in the hands of everyone. Well, it pushes your workload because it looks good enough. Like it looks like it kind of makes sense. And the people who receive it have to work extra hard to figure out what the heck this is about. Sorry, I don't know how much we can... What the heck this is about. And they have to spend a lot more time and they don't want to go back to the person who sent it, like asking, what did you want to say in this thing?

[00:19:36] Like, it's a really interesting study. What are the psychological risks of this? Are there any... Does it loosen our grip on reality? Well, it makes for us to be able to believe our own unconscious or conscious bias much more so. Because when you have a bias to whatever that might be, this makes it all is like truthiness. It confirms what you believe.

[00:20:01] Yeah, you can see a video and if you already are inclined to believe something, you can now dismiss whole swaths of arguments just by maybe this isn't true or I've seen this video that did X, Y, and Z. And because of that, it blurs that line between what is real and what is fake so that we can just become even more in our own biases. And because of that, we can then kind of just stay inside of our bubbles.

[00:20:28] And what unfortunately happens is that we become even more extreme. The more that you are fed things, even if it's a lie, even if it's a lie, you're just telling yourself. You hear it enough times, it becomes true to you. Even if it's boldface. Even if it's... Our feeling for confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance can work together to make us even more ardent, even more fanatical into radical beliefs.

[00:20:53] And that, especially when they're unfortunately with social medias, they're all trying to vie for our attention. And we've already found out that one of the strongest emotions that can keep us on... So if we're happy, we go outside and we do other stuff. If we're upset or angry, we stay there and we try to shout into the void or feed off of it. And so they know that they can use that to actually keep us there.

[00:21:17] And so unfortunately, even though any tool can be used for good and ill, social media companies are vying for our attention and want us to keep us there. And so it already inclines us to feed us into these really negative head spaces, which can cause a lot of anger, depression and radicalized views, which can be really damaging. Absolutely.

[00:21:41] I mean, it is remarkable in that we've moved in the space of 40 years from you've got your information from like five or six television stations, maybe a dozen newspapers, the radio maybe, or just the local news. And now you can basically build an information bubble around yourself of just stuff that you want to read. That's scary. You could do that with social media in general already. Now it's just a lot more content. It's that we naturally do.

[00:22:10] Now there's certain personality types, or if you're already media savvy, or you're already like taught how to be able to filter through and question things and know what should be questioned. But for a lot of times, people are not given that already as a mindset. And so for that, for people that are already vulnerable populations or already angry, and we're not good at processing information, we get spoon fed kind of crap. We just believe crap.

[00:22:38] Speaking of angry populations, there's now a whole industry of pundits, anti AI pundits. Financial Times just had a profile of Ed Zitron, who's Gary Marcus. There are people who are making good livings decrying this and yelling at it and saying it's ruined, you know, for a variety of reasons, all the reasons we just talked about. I just want to, I do want to point out on the other side, let's not, this is pretty amazing stuff, right?

[00:23:05] Does this in a way kind of prove the concept that there is something happening in AI? It's not, it's not snake oil, right? I mean, this is, it's amazing. There's 100% a bubble because we don't know where the reality is going to settle on what these things can do and what they're good for. But the fact that there's a bubble doesn't mean it's pointless and useless.

[00:23:35] Like what just on the technology side, what it can do is incredible. It's unbelievable that you can do these things with a computer. But, you know, the reason these valuations are going so high is that the promise is very, very lofty. And we don't know if we're going to get to AGI. I don't think that LLMs are going to get us there. But it doesn't matter.

[00:24:02] Even if everything stops today, even if progress stops today, there's still a lot of optimization that can be done. But what we can do with those things, with those tools, is it's magic. It's unbelievable. So I do, I agree, Leo, that it's a very complicated technology as most of those impactful technologies are. And there's a lot of negative stuff about it. I don't want to discount that.

[00:24:30] But yeah, on the technology side, there's no doubt it's going to be useful to something. To what extent is the big question. And no one knows that. No one knows yet. So it's difficult to ascertain how good or how useful it's going to be. There's a clip from Friday of Jeff Bezos at the Italian Technology Summit that I thought was really good. I don't know. I probably shouldn't play it, but I will summarize it for you. He says there's two kinds of bubbles that we've seen in the past.

[00:24:59] There's industrial bubbles and there's financial bubbles. We have many examples of industrial bubbles, the dot-com bust of 2000, or going back even farther, the bubble around railroads in the United States. Most of the early railroad companies went bankrupt. Same in the UK. Yeah. But in both those cases of an industrial bubble, what you got was infrastructure. You got fiber. Absolutely. Of the dot-com failure.

[00:25:28] You got the transcontinental railroad in the United States as a result of the railway bubble. And so there is a benefit in the long run to these financial bubbles. He said, yes, or these industrial bubbles. He said, yes, indeed, many of these companies will fail. They are not viable, but we will get some benefit. He can contrast that to a financial bubble like the 2008 financial crash in the United States, which nobody benefits from.

[00:25:53] It is a bubble that people get sucked into and then lose fortunes on. And I think that that's kind of reassuring. And I don't know if I still think Jeff Bezos is a smart guy, but a very good monopolist, but a smart guy. But I think that that's kind of a good description of what's happening. Oh, yeah, this is from...

[00:26:18] Yeah, I mean, I spoke to an entrepreneur about this and we both agreed there is a bubble. You know, it's going to pop at some point. It's not necessarily a bad thing as well. Well, he made the interesting point, which was if you look, go back to the dot-com bus, for example. Yes, a lot of people, a lot of companies went down. A lot of money got lost initially. But within five to six years, the industry had grown way past anything that had actually lost in the crash. And now you can sell kitty litter online. Right? So... Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah.

[00:26:47] I think it's very clear that this is not the kind of bubble that a lot of people think of when they think bubble, which is like tulips and NFTs. It's the... A lot of people go back to the dot-com bubble, but it's like, that gave us the internet, people. Right. It wasn't that bad. Okay? Yeah. All right. I want to take a break. I'm not going to make this an all AI show.

[00:27:13] I just wanted to talk a little bit about that because it's taking the world by storm right now. Wait until you tell them that we're actually all AI. All of this was fake. And now I'm going to take you to the real panel. We're just puppets. I don't know. Is this available in Canada, Georgia? I don't know if it is. I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure. Would you be tempted? I think it'd be great. I would love to have fun with it. Like the thing is, is that I would really enjoy getting to see what I could do with

[00:27:42] it and what I could create in that really cool, eerie feeling. Like I'm all into testing it out, but then it's like the, like, I would definitely not be wanting to like put out my like image for like anyone to be able to have or use. But then again... Just remember, plausible deniability. I know. I know. I know. When I start my life of crime, I'll be switching that. There's so much video. There's hundreds of thousands of hours of video of me. And there's quite a few hours of videos of you out there already.

[00:28:11] I know. I know. It's such an irony. Which can easily be manipulated. I know. I'm already... So better to embrace it. I've already done that. Exactly. Exactly. Just jump into the storm is what you're saying. Yes. Of course, I'm old at the end of my career, so I can afford to say that. You're young and still have a long way to go. Let's take a little break. We'll come back with more. Georgia Dow is here. It's wonderful. I have all three of you. Ian Thompson, Patrick Beja. We're getting a little bit of an international perspective on the news this week.

[00:28:39] You might be amazed at the Italian company that's about to buy AOL. We'll talk about that in just a little bit. Oh, bless. Yes. But first, a word from our sponsor, Zip Recruiter. We love Zip Recruiter. We use Zip Recruiter for hiring. You know, the holidays are just around the corner. I guess if you include Halloween, they're right here, right? Businesses are hiring for seasonal roles. Yeah, this is when seasonal hiring starts.

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[00:30:23] Zip Recruiter, the smartest way to hire. Back to the show we go. I was a little stunned. This is a Reuters exclusive. You ever hear of Bending Spoons? Mm-hmm. Yeah. They're an Italian unicorn that has bought a lot of stuff. Apparently, according to Reuters, they're in advanced talks to buy AOL. AOL's got... I know. Well, get this.

[00:30:53] For $1.4 billion. It's just mad. I mean, AOL just shut down their dial-in service. Yeah. So I don't know quite exactly what they're expecting to get from this. So AOL's been through a lot, right? They were bought by Yahoo, which was then bought by Verizon, which then sold 90% of it to Apollo Ventures, which is a private equity fund. And of course, the first thing a private equity fund does is strip away all the value and then hope to sell it on because they incur a lot of debt to buy this.

[00:31:22] I didn't realize this, but according to Reuters, AOL owns a lot of other companies like McAfee and LastPass and others. And I think that's because maybe Apollo, which owned those, bundled them into this thing. Benning Spoons is known for developing apps. Just shows you how valuable it is. No comment from Benning Spoons or Apollo.

[00:31:51] Reuters says we have four different sources who are saying this is going on. I just find this amazing. I had never heard of Benning Spoons until they acquired, what was it? It was something I used. And I went, they just got sold to who? It's a very strange name. I don't know if it's based on Uri Geller or what. They have Evernote. They have Meetup. They have StreamYard.

[00:32:22] And 300 million active users. But apparently, if they get AOL, they'll get hundreds, millions more. Many people still use AOL. Yeah. I mean, I think it's the private equity play, which is basically you've got a corporate body made up of lots of different parts. And over time, you can spin out the most profitable ones and sell them off and get your money back that way. But an over-billion-dollar valuation seems incredibly high.

[00:32:50] 1.4 billion dollars. Yeah. Well, all right. I guess there's still users out there for AOL. I just, I saw when I was researching this, I did see one article that said, AOL use has jumped in the 25 to 54 age group. I thought it was all old people like me. Who, 20, what 25-year-old is using AOL? Wait, what happens if you go to AOL.com?

[00:33:19] Like, what is it now? It's like a news site, right? It's like my, like, see, here it is. This is AOL.com. So, you know, these legacy sites often have just a lot of people still visiting them. Yahoo still has billions of monthly active users, I believe. Brand recognition, data, like what can they get out of it? I think force of habit primarily. I mean, it's just like, that's where I've always gone, that's where I'm always going to go. That's what it is.

[00:33:49] Yeah. But that's why it surprises me that young people are turning to AOL. Like, maybe it's a nostalgia thing. I don't know. Or maybe they want to play Kino Safari. I don't know what it is. Maybe they want to understand what that film You've Got Mail was all about. You've Got Mail. Yeah, that's right. Talk about a film that does not age well. No. Nobody will know what that means. Maybe they will. Maybe Benning Spoons will bring it back. All right. Well, I thought that was. It's aged about as well as Axl Rose, but yes.

[00:34:18] Oh my God. He has not aged well at all. No. I would be remiss if I did not mention. Oh, let me do this before I do that. One out of five Americans now gets their news from TikTok. TikTok, as you know, is about to be. I don't know what. How should we say this? Bifurcated. There's because there will be a new AOL or rather TikTok America app.

[00:34:48] Oracle and a bunch of venture partners will. Be primary owners of TikTok. Is it confirmed? Well, OK, that's a good question. Our president said it was. Yeah. Well, you know, he says a lot of things. That's a really good question. China has not confirmed. Yeah. Biden has said nothing. Xi Jinping or one of his underlings have said nothing.

[00:35:17] You think it might not be. Larry Ellison will be the big winner, the founder of Oracle and his son, David Ellison, who's going to acquire, you know, basically the right to propagandize young people. I don't know. It makes me it makes me very nervous. Well, I mean, I've seen reports that, in fact, yeah, they get the right for editorial control. But who gets the money? That's the important thing.

[00:35:45] You know, is it's the White Dance originally still gets to keep most of the cash? Yes. As a matter of fact. Yeah. So that's a little strange. Here's the the press release from the White House. Saving TikTok while protecting national security. But again, we have no confirmation of what the deal structure looks like. Like we were told that the White Dance would license the algorithm to the U.S. partners, which is odd.

[00:36:16] Well, no, I mean, I think I think that that could make sense. Honestly, to me, the only concern here is that you're if it had happened under any other administration, it would be OK, fine. Whatever. The concern, one of the concerns was how the Chinese government could could direct the algorithm to influence. So now it'll be our government directing the algorithm. Right.

[00:36:46] That's the problem. Bring it home, baby. Bring it home. It's everything you were worried about if the Chinese government had influence on the algorithm is now. And, you know, I'm sure some people would say, oh, well, it would be the same with any government, but it wouldn't. And maybe we can talk about this. Yeah.

[00:37:07] Well, I'm a little concerned because Ellison's son, David Ellison, has already acquired Paramount, which means CNN. And CBS, by the way, they are also buying Barry Weiss's journal and she's going to be the editor in chief of CBS. She definitely has a right leaning bias.

[00:37:30] They're about to buy or apparently interest in buying Warner Discovery, which would then I mean, basically they would have access to almost all the news delivery in the United States. I mean, a huge amount of it. They have their link to Skydance. They're linked to Annapurna. Like Larry Ellison, I think The Verge wrote an article on this. He's getting into a lot of media.

[00:38:00] Yeah. And when you see the, you know, I didn't worry so much when Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post. I think. Maybe you should have because he seems to have slanted it considerably. Yeah. But, you know, it was so like you could worry about it and think, OK, maybe some things will happen.

[00:38:24] Maybe something like I think now the model is what Elon Musk did with X kind of. Right. And it's not even subtle. It's the well, it's the Donald Trump model. And it feels right out of succession. They're building a media empire. Larry Ellison's 81, but his son David is young, runs Skydance.

[00:38:51] It's it feels like they're going to have control of TikTok, control of CBS, control of Paramount. Well, they have control of Facebook. They have control. Yeah. Apparently YouTube. If there were if there were an interest in and I imagine there is using those platforms to influence. American opinion, they would have an incredibly powerful tool.

[00:39:20] Well, the FTC is also has already said this week that they're thinking about relaxing the rules on me on media ownership. Right. Now we've already got what is it? Four or five companies controlling about 90 percent of the media in the US. And that could shrink down even further. And then as you as you point out, that opens a real possibility of just like, OK, we've got all the media channels. We can say what we want.

[00:39:42] It's going to be very it's going to be interesting, which works really effectively, especially if you find someone to scapegoat or something to make you angry about or something that makes people feel frightened. The fastest way that people will give up their rights, their feelings of fighting is if they feel like there is a greater threat. If they're scared. Yeah. Yeah. It works effectively. It has a very strong lasting power. And then everyone kind of settles into the new norm of what they're around.

[00:40:12] And we often want to be on the large majority of the team of whatever is the sway of public. It's just kind of that us and them psychology of we don't want to be in the smaller pool or the losing pool. And so then people will slowly even those that might be a very differing opinion, their opinion will slowly sway. And so it can actually change the entire zeitgeist of a culture.

[00:40:37] And it really only takes like a generation and a bit to be able to do that. Yeah. Well, just be aware. It's something that seems to be going on right now. It is why I make my pitch every show we do for independent media that is not controlled either by the federal government or the FCC or by big corporations. Thank goodness we have a pretty vibrant culture of independent media through podcasting and YouTube.

[00:41:08] That may be our saving grace. Maybe not. I don't know. I will always remind you to my history teacher at school who taught me something very important, which has been part of my journalism career ever since. When you read or see or listen to anything, think about who is saying it, why they're saying it, who paid for them to say it. Those three in conjunction can be a very good guide to how seriously you should take something. Which is lovely if that was taught in schools today.

[00:41:38] Yeah. But it isn't. We're not taught. We're more and more taught to just follow and do and be obedient. Like the entire school system is made to enforce compliance more than free thinkers. You're lucky if you're in a school system that teaches you to think freely, to be able to be rebellious, to be able to say no. But often sitting in a classroom for eight hours listening to someone prattle on, depending on what they can say and what they can't say,

[00:42:05] that's now also being legislated, unfortunately often does the opposite. Yeah. Sorry, am I just the downer? I think that I'm like- No, no, no. You're- I'm on the podcast here. I'm sorry. No, no, no. You're not. You're not. If you could turn your mic up a little bit, though. Sure, sure. You're a little bit low for us. So they're complaining. Pappy Cappy can't hear you. I can't hear you, he says. I'm sorry. Georgia. Georgia. So we're going to take a little break.

[00:42:30] I do want to talk about Apple removing some apps. Google did the same at the behest of the federal government, which didn't, wasn't this a big deal when the Biden administration asked, apparently asked, actually they denied that they asked, but were accused of being, of asked of taking down tweets. This seems like the same thing in the other direction. Anyway, we'll talk about that in just a little bit.

[00:42:58] Apple capitulating once again, if you ask me, but we'll ask you. That's what matters. We're also going to talk. Oh, I meant to talk about the TikTok deal. Well, we'll get to that. Apparently it was J.D. Vance's doing. And a federal agency that is not running under the shutdown that could be bad news for all of us. All of that coming up in just a little bit.

[00:43:25] You're watching this week in tech with Georgia Dow, who's not a downer. Cheers us up. You cheer us up. But you speak truth. And that's important. Ian Thompson, who is, of course, the king of snark from the register, which is the record of snark, I believe. And fully independent media as well. Yeah, exactly. So you're not owned by any private equity company or anything like that. No, we're still owned by the founders.

[00:43:55] That's kind of amazing. I mean, I think you're one of the few. I'm 25 years old and we're not selling out yet. Good. Don't sell out. Don't sell out. And Patrick Beja, always a pleasure to have him. NotPatrick.com. He runs a few independent podcasts himself. I do. What is the political climate in France like these days? A few years ago, we were talking about the yellow vests, right? That everybody was pulling out of their car.

[00:44:25] Yeah. Well, so in a nutshell, it's too long to describe. But I will tell you. My friend Sarkozy went to jail. I was so disappointed. Exactly. The only French president I've ever met. Did you meet him? Okay. Loicule Meur introduced us to him. We were at the Elysee Palace. Wow. Mr. Sarkozy. He's only a yay high.

[00:44:49] But I had no idea that he would have a future in prison. He was judged and condemned. He should do hard time in jail. Wow. He's a bit old, so maybe he won't go. For basically not embezzling. How's it called? He got money from Gaddafi to run his campaign, apparently. What? That's what he's been judged. What? Guilty of. Yes, it's pretty crazy.

[00:45:17] But the crazier thing, you're talking about media. Like, I actually voted for the guy back in the day. And regardless of your political opinions, the thing that is crazy is how much the media and his political camp is shooting the justice system in the head and journalists like decredibilizing everyone because they don't want him to go to jail.

[00:45:47] And they're like saying that he didn't do it, that the judges are corrupt. And they're destroying the credibility of the justice system and the journalist's profession in this candle, which is, I thought, like, they're the right wing who are supposed to be law and order. This is the law. This is what happened. You trust in the justice system. That's what you're supposed to do. Anyway, sorry. I don't. I'm glad it's not just us. That's all I'm saying. I just.

[00:46:17] I was going to say, it did make me think about the current situation over here. We weren't alone in all of this. It's not as bad, obviously. But my biggest concern is how traditional media is how it's turning out to be now. It's owned in large part by a very wealthy person who is turning everything into controversial right wing issues. Everything. And I didn't think it was going to happen here. Money ruins everything, doesn't it?

[00:46:46] Money just ruins everything, I swear. Well, it's happened in the UK as well, unfortunately, with Brexit. And my apologies, Patrick. If I could have voted, I would have voted against it. But, you know, it's one of those things. It has not worked out that well, I think. No. No, not at all. Yeah. All right. Well, we've got two folks from the Commonwealth, one from the EU, and I'm just sitting here trying to figure out who I belong to. Oh, you rebellious colonial. I'm a colonial. I am. We're going to take a break. Come back with more.

[00:47:16] You're watching this week in tech. Our show today brought to you by the Thingst Canary. I love this thing. Thingst Canaries are, in a word, honeypots that can be deployed in minutes. Now, normally, creating a honeypot is a real chore. In fact, I remember talking to Bill Cheswick, who wrote the very first honeypot, and he said how difficult and tricky it is, and nobody should do this. Well, you don't have to anymore. It's an appliance that can impersonate almost anything.

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[00:50:26] Visit canary.tools.twit. Edit the code TWIT in the how did you hear about us box. 10% off and that 60-day money-back guarantee at canary.tools.twit. The offer code is TWIT. Back we come to the tech news. YouTube bends the knee. Charlie Wartzel writing in The Atlantic, Welcome to the era of big tech capitulation.

[00:50:54] Google paid the Trump administration $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit. Trump brought the lawsuit after they suspended his channel after the January 6th riot at the Capitol. YouTube said at the time it was, quote, concerned about the ongoing potential for violence. They did reinstate the account in March of 2023. But they settled $24.5 million.

[00:51:22] $22 million goes to the trust for the National Mall. That is the nonprofit group raising money to finance in addition to the White House. I don't know. Is that the ballroom or something else? That's the ballroom, yeah. Tackiest thing I've ever seen. Do you get a plaque or something? The Atlantic says most creators are lucky if they get a gold plaque from YouTube. Trump's getting a new ballroom. And it's just everybody in Silicon Valley.

[00:51:50] And I don't know if they're getting the deal they think they are. Because it seems to be, you know, as soon as you give him some money, he wants more. Meta and X settled similar lawsuits paying $25 and $10 million respectively. Trump and associates have been paid now $59.5 million for these private companies enforcing their own rules. Amazon apparently gave Melania Trump $40 million for a documentary that nobody's going to watch.

[00:52:20] I was going to say, I mean, really, what is it going to be? I just went around in a big hat. I mean, when she went over to the UK, all we saw was the hat. The hat. Spy versus spy hat. And then, of course, all the tech CEOs who donated a million dollars to the inaugural fund. YouTube can afford it. It's not a question of whether they can afford it. But it's capitulation. But here's real capitulation.

[00:52:46] Apple has agreed to remove at least one, maybe more apps, ice tracking apps, after pressure from the Department of Justice. The DOJ. And by the way, Google's done the same thing, saying they're protecting vulnerable communities. Ice? Really? Okay. Pam Bondi said, we reached out to Apple today demanding to remove the Ice Block app from their app store.

[00:53:15] And Apple did so. Ice Block, as you know, did a kind of mediocre job. The idea was you would contribute, if you saw ice in action, you would contribute that information to a social network so other people could avoid it. Bondi said, it's designed to put ice agents at risk for doing their jobs. I guess, you know, I guess, does it put law enforcement at risk? Ice Block's owner told 404 Media, we're determined to fight this.

[00:53:47] Is this capitulating to an authoritarian regime or protecting law enforcement? Well, I mean, this is very much what Apple does. I mean, it was hilarious when they started advertising themselves in the US as the privacy-focused phone company because try that in China. They roll over the Chinese government whenever they want. Same thing in Russia. Try to get a VPN app on the app store. They've deleted tens of dozens of them. So, I mean, Apple does what's best for Apple. And they always have, and I suspect they always will.

[00:54:18] They are, I guess, obligated to follow the laws of countries they operate in. But this is not against the law. This is a request from the Department of Justice. I'm honestly a little disappointed at Google and Apple capitulating on this one. I think there's an argument to be made that they, you know, they're justified in removing it.

[00:54:39] I think it's an accumulation of so many things that makes it very clear that Apple and all of the big tech are, I'll try to be measured. They are fighting the demands of the government a lot less than one might have expected.

[00:55:07] And given the nature of that government, I think it is concerning. You're talking about China, Ian. And that is, I don't know, have you guys read Apple in China? Yeah, wonderful book. No, no, I haven't. That sounds worth a read. It is very, very good. Incredible. Really good.

[00:55:27] It really, it talks about how Apple, in a sense, was manipulated by the Chinese government to transfer so much technology to China that they are now, in fact, unable to leave China. And paid for training. And they sent billions, billions of dollars to China and lots of experts. And it's really like, anyway, the book is really good. But, I mean, things changed when Xi Jinping arrived.

[00:55:56] And China really did take a turn. Before that, you could argue, you know, this is the usual playbook. Like, you pour money into a country and open commerce, and then they turn to democracy. And then Xi Jinping arrived, and then things didn't happen that way. But, yeah, China is capitulating to, I'm sorry, Apple is capitulating to China. You can argue they do it in every country. Like, they respect the law. They do it in Europe, actually.

[00:56:27] They've protested a lot more about Europeans trying to enforce their vision of the Internet than they have for all of the other ones, all of these other ones. You know, China, Russia, and the U.S.

[00:56:43] And the fact, even though I'm not saying the U.S. is like China or Russia, the fact that they are kind of in the same neighborhood in the conversation, and the fact that those big companies are not saying anything, they're going along. Like, they're not even saying, actually, we're not sure about this. And, like, it is, yeah, bending the knee at every level.

[00:57:12] Like, the COVID influencers being allowed back on YouTube, for example, was another example of it. Yeah. And, again, the argument could be made that, you know, it's been five years and you don't ban them forever. But the letter they sent with this decision, putting it all on the Biden administration, saying, oh, they forced us to do it. We really didn't want to.

[00:57:40] We thought it was freedom of, like, it was. Anyway, we don't want to really litigate that part. But all of these things put together, paint a picture that people won't look favorably on in, you know, 20 years or 30 years. Apple is fighting for us in the U.K. Yeah, OK. Bring up my government.

[00:58:05] As you know, the U.K. government was asking, demanding that Apple create a backdoor into its advanced data protection, which is end-to-end encrypted. Apple's response was to withdraw ADP from the U.K. Apparently, it's not over. The U.K.

[00:58:27] Home Office is now asking that Apple create a backdoor into users' cloud storage service, but stipulated that that applies only to British citizens this time. Last time it was to all people who used Apple products. So this was – Yes, you can think of it as a Brexit bonus, if you like. They wouldn't try this with the EU, but Brits are – you know, they can stomp down on those.

[00:58:54] It's yet another – but for some reason, the U.K. government – well, for obvious reasons, the U.K. government really, really wants a backdoor and end-to-end encryption. And they are going to carry – you know, they are pushing and pushing. They have done since the 1990s. Even though the intelligence services are selling them, it's not the best of ideas because if you create a backdoor, someone else can find it as well. Yeah. Apple said on Wednesday – this is from the Financial Times – Apple is still unable to offer advanced data protection in the United Kingdom to new users.

[00:59:23] We're gravely disappointed that the protections provided by ADP are not available to our customers in the U.K., given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy. As we've said many times before, we will have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services. And we never will. Well, the Home Office says we do not comment on operational matters. It's just so pointless.

[00:59:46] I mean, you can already get companies like Celebrite who, for a commercial service to law enforcement, will break people's phones open and get the data anyway. Right. So you don't need to make everyone – treat everyone, tar everyone with the same brush when you can actually do this in perfectly legitimate ways. But it's just a teensy bit harder. Now, we should point out that only ADP, this advanced data protection, is end-to-end encrypted. If you store something in Apple's cloud, Apple has the key to iCloud.

[01:00:16] And Apple has given that key to law enforcement when asked by a subpoena. It's happened in the United States, we know. And I presume it would happen in England, too. So I guess the Home Office is asking for more than just that. They're asking for a backdoor in advanced data protection. Exactly. I mean, you know, it's the same with any kind of service. Proton, which is, you know, one of the gold standards of secure email, will hand over data to the police if there's a good and judicially approved reason.

[01:00:47] With this, it just seems like massive overreach. I mean, we've seen this with the Ripper powers 20 years ago. At one point, they were offering to allow parish councillors, you know, which are elected by about 400 or 500 people in a small town, access to anyone's internet traffic history. It was, you know, it's a question of, it's a constant battle. And you've got to keep fighting to try and get something suitable through.

[01:01:12] The director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, tweeted that in August that the UK had agreed to drop its demand. And partly because she said we have treaties with the UK that they won't spy on our citizens and we won't spy on theirs. So I think this new request is to satisfy that. Oh, we don't want American information. We just want British citizens' information.

[01:01:42] Yeah, it's then you've got, it's how many steps down the line do you go? Because yes, you can backdoor someone's phone. As you've got with the Patriot Act over here, you can surveil someone and you can surveil the last two or three people that they actually spoke to. That becomes international and very, very quickly. Right. So just be aware it's back on the table. And yeah, even if it's only UK citizens, if I'm talking to, you're still technically a UK citizen.

[01:02:08] If I'm talking to you and they crack it, they're going to get my end of the conversation too. Oh yes. And I'm a UK citizen for life. You can't give it up if you're born in the territory. UK, huh? All right. Okay. Well, I wouldn't rush to do so anyway. We talked about funding. The federal government, of course, has shut down one. And, you know, if you're going to a national park, I'm sorry. I was going to on vacation this week and I'm glad I decided not to.

[01:02:37] Um, however, you might be interested to know that the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, signed into law in 2015, which allowed organizations to share cyber intelligence with the federal government and each other, is also shut down during the lapse.

[01:03:00] Without it, according to Politico, the private sector is less likely to swap vital information for being exposed to legal risks. They're no longer protected. Senator Gary Peters, who's a ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, said, we're without this critical line of defense. Every hour we delay. Oh, it needs to be reauthorized. I guess that's it. And of course, Congress is not sitting right now.

[01:03:24] Every hour we delay is an open invitation to cyber criminals and hostile actors to attack our economy and critical infrastructure. Now, fortunately, they do not listen to this show, so I can talk about this. Maybe I shouldn't be talking about this at all. Well, as we saw with the kerfuffle over the CVE and MITRE rankings, I mean, it does seem like this is way down on the administration's priority list. Well, they've also fired a lot of people from CISA. So, yeah, I feel like we're more vulnerable.

[01:03:53] That was really noticeable at Black Hat and DEFCON this year. I mean, I was talking to a lot of the CISA people and they're like, look, there's still a lot of really dedicated, skilled people there. But at the same time, they've also lost a lot of the older generation who have either been laid off or just decided, I'm just going to retire. I'm too tired for all this. And we're losing some definite skills. It's deeply concerning. We are six days off from the vote on what is it? The chat. What is it? They call it.

[01:04:24] Chat control. Chat control. I want to ask you about that when we come back. All right. We're going to take a little break. Another fine law out of our mother nation, the UK. Oh, no, no, no. This is an EU. No, this is EU. That's right. It's EU. All right. Yep. No, we're not guilty on that one. That's where you can address this then. All right. That's right. I forgot. This is an EU proposal. All right. We will talk about that in just a little bit. You're watching This Week in Tech. Georgia Dow is here. So nice to see you.

[01:04:54] Also, Ian Thompson from The Register. And our good friend Patrick Beja, not patrick.com. You don't work in the game industry anymore. No, I cover the game industry with my podcast. But no, I don't work in it. Did you bring the English language ones back yet? The Phileas Club is back. Oh, good. With a new format where we get letters from different people around the world every show.

[01:05:22] And they address the letters to Phileas. And they tell Phileas about what's been happening in their countries. I love that idea. Do you use AI to write those letters? I use Meet People and their microphones who very kindly contribute to them. You actually asked them. Very nice. Very nice. Is that also at NotPatrick? It's linked to NotPatrick.com. Yeah, NotPatrick.com will get you everything. My socials and my shows. It's currently down for maintenance, it says. Is that true? What?

[01:05:52] No, it isn't. What? Oh, there it is. It was just temporary. Okay, good. All right. So it's a wonderful feat of engineering, of web engineering. If you go to the little arrow, see, you have for each show. Because when you do a podcast, well, when you do multiple podcasts, how do you link people to all of the... Isn't that nice? Isn't it? Oh, we should steal that. And get more. So you have the main links. Yes.

[01:06:22] Kevin, the web developer who did it is a genius. A little bit of Ajax or CSS or something going on there. That's nice. Yeah. I love it. There's other bits. Yep. We'll be back in just a moment. Our show today brought to you by Zscaler, the world's largest cloud security platform. I didn't know that. The potential rewards of AI are obviously too great to ignore, but so are the risks.

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[01:07:12] ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot saw nearly 3.2 million data violations. And it's all inadvertent, right? But maybe it's time to rethink your organization's safe use of public and private AI. Jeff Simon is a senior vice president and chief security officer at T-Mobile.

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[01:08:21] You asked about who gets the money from the TikTok advertising. And according to the information, oh, I have to sign in. I have a new browser. Doesn't know who I am yet. Let me just sign in real quickly. The bulk of the money goes back to China. ByteDance control over the commercial operations of TikTok's U.S. business. It continues. In fact, it's not about money.

[01:08:51] It's not about the money. It's about the propaganda. According to the information, it could raise questions about whether the deal is compliant with the federal law that was passed and widely ignored last year. That requires ByteDance to divest from TikTok. In other words, there are still operational ties.

[01:09:12] And in particular, they'll maintain operations of the advertising e-commerce in China, which doesn't satisfy some members of Congress who voted to force the sale or ban TikTok. You asked about that. I thought I'd throw that in. Yeah, no, I mean, it's about control at the end of the day. It's, you know, you have control over the strategy of TikTok in the U.S. And the money, well, China can keep that. You know, there's plenty of it floating around.

[01:09:41] So let's talk about chat control. And I don't really understand the ins and outs of EU legislation. So maybe that's the first place. Chat control, is this a bill, a law? It's EU legislation. It's EU, OK. Which would require client-side scanning of devices. So basically, before you send an end-to-end encrypted message, your message gets scanned to make sure it doesn't have abusive material on it.

[01:10:10] And I apologize for the cat sounds in the background, but I've just been jumped on. But yeah, I mean, it's been talked about since 2022. I think the Swedish, because countries have rotating presidencies of the union, it's up to them what they bring up. And the Danish government has done it this time. And if they get it, I think it's... Denmark supports it. Austria opposes it. Belgium's undecided. Bulgaria supports it. Croatia, Cyprus supports it. Czech Republic opposes it. It's not unanimous.

[01:10:39] Estonia and Finland oppose it. France supports it. Germany goes, I don't know. Greece goes, hmm. Hungary and Ireland support. So, I mean, Germany's the big player in this. Because if Germany gets up behind it, it's probably going to get through. They have 21 members of the European Parliament. Yeah, it's based on population. Or I'm sorry, not 21. That's Greece. They have, holy cow, 98 members of the European Parliament and 624 MPs. Yeah.

[01:11:08] So that's a big block. Well, it has been a fascinating third act twist that Germany is increasingly the haven of democracy and freedom of speech in Europe. But, you know, I don't know, Patrick. I think I suspect we might disagree on this based on our earlier conversations. But personally, I don't know. It's having software on your device which scans your messages that I feel very uncomfortable with.

[01:11:34] So, just to be clear, this is what Apple wanted to do, I believe. The same kind of infrastructure. It's not, well, it's scanning in the sense that when you send pictures, I believe it's only pictures. Correct me if I'm wrong. It says private messages as well. Right. But it hashes them and compares them to a database of existing. This is what Apple was proposing. Right.

[01:12:01] This comparison of hashes, not actual images. That is what I think they're proposing. The fight chat control site says including messages and photos. Yeah. Which I've been a little bit like I've been bitten so I'm shy about these kinds of sites with their kind of fudging the exact nature of the proposed. legislation.

[01:12:31] If it's just scanning, hashing and scanning against, you know, and comparing to an existing database for child porn, essentially. I think it's defendable. The issue is not about the process because the process itself is, I think, safe.

[01:12:53] The issue is once the system is in place, then the government can say, well, you know, child porn is all good. But how about these photos that we don't like? Like some, you know, some other types of, you know. Apple was going to use a database of photos from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is considered kind of nonpartisan and reliable in that respect. I'm not sure what the, where the EU would get the hashes from.

[01:13:22] I'm guessing this is a similar thing. Yeah. But so, so that's the issue. The issue is not that the, the proposal itself is, you know, cataclysmic. The issue is once you open that door, then anything goes kind of, the next government could decide, you know, this is the kind of, you know, controversial topic we don't like. And we want you to scan it and send us the notice once you find it on someone's phone or sending it to someone.

[01:13:49] So I understand the concern, but I don't think it's in, in its proposed implementation as bad as some people make it sound. It's that it makes it, we get comfortable, more and more comfortable with an encroachment of government onto our private devices. And what is privacy for that? And I think that very similar to what you were saying, Patrick, is that once we get comfortable with a certain amount of our privacy being sold away for a good cause,

[01:14:19] it makes us also much more complacent to say yes to one other good cause. And we get more and more comfortable with giving up our rights to, for a greater good. And unfortunately, governments don't ever want to give up power. And so it's always going to be one more piece that they're stepping one little tiny bit closer. And if you look at it in, in each step, it seems very, very small, but slowly in the aggregate, it can become really large until we don't have any feelings of privacy.

[01:14:49] And so I think it's also that change of the entire way that a culture feels about what is private and what isn't. And that comfort level of having something on your phone that is taking a look at, even if it's just in a hash, to be able to see what is there and how far that might go. So this is from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I don't know if you trust them a little bit more, Patrick, than the advocacy site.

[01:15:16] And their headline is, Chat Control is back on the menu in the EU. It still must be stopped. Chat Control, they write, is a dangerous legislative proposal that would make it mandatory for service providers, including end-to-end encrypted communication and storage services like Signal, to scan all communications and files to detect abusive material. This would happen through a method called client-side scanning. That's what you said, which scans for specific content on a device before it's sent.

[01:15:44] I mean, the fact, it's not just images, it sounds like, in other words. It is also the text. In a memo, the Danish presidency claimed this does not break end-to-end encryption. EFF says that's absurd. Part of the issue is these phones are a kind of a new beast for all of us.

[01:16:08] There is so much of us and the information about us stored in these devices that I think they're of a greater concern than, you know, breaking into your house and looking through your, you know, your file cabinet or your desk, right? I mean, the irony is that we pay $1,000 apiece for these things as well. Yeah, to steal all of our information. The funny part is that actually the phone is a more, like, there's more information about me on my phone than there is in my own mind.

[01:16:36] Like, the amount of stuff that I've forgotten in comparison to how much my phone has remembered, it's completely different. And so having access to that would be, you know, it is like minority report, but like on supercharge. Meredith Whitaker, the CEO of Signal says it will pull out of the EU if chat control is passed. Instead of complying with the law, they would stop offering Signal just as Apple stopped offering ADP in the UK.

[01:17:03] It's a significant threat, I think, because Signal is the one app that you can trust. Absolutely. I, you know, I don't want to play too much devil's advocate on this, but I do feel like there is a form of absolutism in the defense of privacy. That can be a bit counterproductive because if you go down, you know, if that is the,

[01:17:30] if your argument is we can give nothing and nothing can be done, then you say out, you say no to some things that might be reasonable as well. Like this version, yes, it might scan for text, but this version, the problem is in what you ask it to scan, right? If we. And who is deciding that? Yes, exactly.

[01:17:58] Let's say for the sake of argument, let's say we can guarantee that forever. I understand that's not how it works, but we can guarantee that forever. The only thing that it will scan for would be, you know, CSAM. Right. That'd be okay. I'd be okay with that. Yeah. Right. I actually thought the Apple proposal was not the way Apple wanted to do it was privacy protecting and they, they pulled back on it because they got so much pushback from their users.

[01:18:27] Well, I mean, but as Georgia has pointed out, it depends on how the rules change in the future. So for example, going after CSAM, I'm with you on that because, you know, not only are the images themselves disgusting, but that's, that's a kid getting, you know, seriously hurt. But at the same time, then if the government says, well, we're now also going to scan for this, we're now going to scan for that. And, you know, the White House just this week was talking about, you know, Antifa as though that's an actual organization, you know, being the equivalent of terrorists.

[01:18:56] So do you scan for Antifa messages now based on the same principle? Certainly our government would want to do that and would feel justified in doing that. This is exactly right. This is the last paragraph in the EFF article. Phones and laptops must work for the users who own them, not act as bugs in our pockets in the service of governments, foreign or domestic. The mass scanning of everything on our devices is invasive, untenable and must be rejected. Go ahead, Georgia.

[01:19:24] Yeah, we could play the if, if game. And if that was the case, but unfortunately it is not. And we can already tell, you can tell what someone's behavior is going to be, not by what they say, but what are their actions. And the best way to define what someone's actions will be were what were their actions in the past. And we already know that when someone, that this is this kind of creeping vine, and it is just a creeping vine, that governments will change the way it is.

[01:19:51] Because privacy policies will change it, and you don't have to re-sign the privacy policy. They send you a whole bunch of like kerfuffle, and then, you know, if you're going to use the app, it's kind of suddenly there. And so unfortunately, that is the beast that we are dealing with. I would love to be able to say, just trust. This seems reasonable. We should say okay. And they will never ask for anything else. The rules will not change, and people will not become complacent. But unfortunately, people often can't be bothered to constantly fight.

[01:20:18] We're inundated with so much information that it can be overwhelming. And we become addicted to the technology that we use. And so all of it is a, I wish that I'm not always the dark horse in this podcast to be able to say like, this might not, we might not be able to trust at face value. I wish that we could. But unfortunately, that is not often the case, and definitely not in the case of the way the governments use the information they have.

[01:20:47] They can actually go through the court system to be able to unlock, take a look at, and sneak through. And I think that we should always be wary when we're giving up our rights and our privacy for something. Yeah, to be clear, nobody likes or nobody I know supports child sexual abuse material. This is a horrific, horrific thing. But it's one of the four horsemen of the infopocalypse which gets rolled out. You know, it's terrorists, it's organized crime, child abusers, and it's drug dealers.

[01:21:16] And anything on those four. Because it makes you seem like a horrible person if you say no against it. Of course, but you can't oppose it without it. A very inflammatory argument. And so I think that that makes people want to be on the good guy side. And that anyone that's saying no against it must be like a horrible person. How could you say no? Let's protect the kids. Yeah. But that's not what we're doing here now.

[01:21:44] Like, you also can't say, oh, well, you're saying it's to protect the kids. So you must be doing something nefarious and you can't do it. Oh, no. No, I'm not saying that. Right? That's... So, but to, you know, yield a little bit, I will say that what's happening in the U.S. right now,

[01:22:02] in the past few months, is the best reminder that, yes, things that are put in place can be stretched and then used to do things that are not... Yeah. So let me ask then the logistic question. So the vote is October 13th or 14th. This was proposed by the Danish government. The entire European Parliament votes on it. First of all, do you think it'll pass?

[01:22:30] It looks like they have enough support to pass. Yes or no? From what I'm hearing, it all comes down to Germany at this point. Okay. They have such a big block and they're undecided right now. Yeah. I mean, the Chaos Computing Club, one of the groups that I would... Yeah, I would actually trust with security have come out against it. But honestly, no one knows which way it's going to go. I suspect there'll be an awful lot of backroom deals. And then if it happens, then what happens?

[01:22:57] Does each country enforce their own version of it? Because you don't have a EU-wide law system, right? Or do you? No, but every country has to implement it into their own way. Yeah. And it usually takes a couple of years for it to have to be implemented. And could it be implemented differently in each country? Well, it would be the same effect. It would be the same thing. Okay.

[01:23:25] I mean, it's also a question of possibility, as we've seen in the UK, because they recently passed a law saying, yes, you have to be able to backdoor end-to-end encrypted messages. But then there was a cop-out and they said, once it becomes technologically feasible to do so. Right. Because no one's actually found a way to do this, which doesn't break encryption. Right. So, yeah. I mean, and Patrick, you know this as well as I do. In the EU, when countries can implement these laws in so many different ways that, you know, it depends very much on a state-to-state basis.

[01:23:56] Well, there's a lot of opposition to it. I'll be very interested to see what happens. It's six days away. I'd be interested to see if it passes. I think all hell will break loose. I think all tech companies will, you know, this kind of creeped up on everyone. It was first proposed a couple of years ago, I think, and it went away pretty quickly. And all of a sudden now it's back and it's like, oh, we're going to vote now. And it's like, wait, what?

[01:24:23] So if it does pass, I think a lot of, you know, Apple and, you know, Google and Proton, well, maybe not Proton, they're Swiss, although they have their own troubles. Well, Switzerland, yeah, has also been proposing changes in their traditionally very strong privacy protections. Yes. Yeah, huge changes. I mean, as Patrick has said, Proton, you know, a very good, you know, commercial private email company are saying they might now have to move out of Switzerland.

[01:24:52] And that was one of their big selling points. I mean, I remember when we had the Black Phone, do you remember that from the noughties, which was a totally secure handset? And they were building and hosting in Switzerland for just that reason, because they have very strong data privacy laws. It said that they were in a mountain in Switzerland, as I remember, which made it extra, extra private. So what are the laws that they're proposing in Switzerland? Proton says we're considering leaving.

[01:25:20] Proton was started, by the way, by some CERN physicists, and I think is the equivalent of a public benefit company. It's not a for-profit organization. They've been doing so much stuff, not just encrypted email, but file storage, password protection. They have chat, Lumo, which is a... I'm sorry, they have AI, Lumo, which is their chat GBT competitor. I don't know if they have chat.

[01:25:48] So it's interesting how many things they have going on. There are some VPNs also in Switzerland who are there for the same reason, who are considering moving. NIM VPN says you cannot invest in privacy in Switzerland right now. Yeah. I mean, it's a digital ID system. It's very similar to the one that's just been promoted in the UK.

[01:26:15] They just voted to back that in Switzerland, by the way. Just by half. By 50.4%. Yeah. This is funny because this is something traditionally people in the United States have really, it's been anathema, especially to the conservatives, to have a national identity card. We have state identity cards, drivers, licenses, and IDs, but to have a national one has always been anathema. But I feel like we're moving in that direction, to be honest.

[01:26:45] I mean, to be clear, the one that's pushing Proton to threaten to leave is not the national ID card. They have an insane, and you know, I've been defending this chat control thing for the past 15 minutes. So they have an insane proposal about surveillance, mass surveillance.

[01:27:11] They want every company that has 5,000 users or more to essentially retain all the data that goes through their service. They want the ID, everyone to provide a piece of ID, a form of ID to use the service. And they want that information

[01:27:41] to be made available to police services without a court order. Yeah. Wow. Like, it is, like, I've never seen any law go that far. And for it to come from Switzerland that has been so protective of private data and privacy in the past, at a time when the entirety of the European Union is looking for alternatives from, you know, big American tech

[01:28:09] and it's turning towards Proton and other Swiss services is on every level mind boggling. So I don't understand what is happening with that law. I don't know if it's still being discussed or still being pushed, but it's insane. And we've talked about a bunch of insane things today. This is probably on the top of that list. Andy Yen, the founder and the CEO of Proton, says the only other country with similar laws is Russia.

[01:28:39] They've decided, they announced in July that they are moving out of Switzerland. Most of its physical infrastructure will be moved. Well, maybe this is a mistake to the EU. They are, they say, investing more than $100 million in the European Union and plan to help develop a sovereign Euro stack for the future of our home continent. Well, this is why it's such a great business opportunity for Europe to actually have strong data protection laws. Because if you can't go to America and you can't go to Russia and you can't go to China,

[01:29:09] can't go anywhere. EU is, you know, could actually make bank from this if it played its cards right. Is there any, I'm curious if there's any country that offers kind of strong data protection that could become a haven for companies like this. Traditionally, Well, Switzerland so far, but not anymore. By the way, that is, they're considering it. That is not yet the law. Yeah. No. I mean, Iceland would come from the government. They have to get, they have to get a public response,

[01:29:38] but apparently does not need, parliamentary approval. Switzerland has a weird legal system and judicial, no, I'm sorry, legal system. They do what's called in French, votation, which is for most laws, I think for most laws, they get the whole country to vote. Like literally, for big important laws, everyone gets their ballot and votes yes or no on those laws. Not just on elections, on laws. So, I believe that's

[01:30:08] what needs to happen for this one. Okay. Okay. Well, we'll watch that with interest. I guess Proton's taking it seriously enough that they're already starting the move, although now with chat control, maybe they're going to regret that decision. I don't know. Chat control compared to this. Where do you go? Yeah. Where do you go? I don't know. I was going to say, Iceland's traditionally been a good place, but that's part of the EU now as well. I remember when I was visiting the Bahamas some years ago, they said,

[01:30:38] yeah, we have plans to become a data haven, but I think it was more like a smuggler's paradise than it was. A place where Proton might want to move. I don't know. I think that's a great economic opportunity for some nation that's willing to take on the rest of the world because obviously the world is going in that direction. All right, let's pause for station identification. This is Twit, and I am so glad. I love the international perspective here. It's really nice

[01:31:06] to get that variety. Most of the time we have Americans on talking about American issues, but I'm really glad we get Patrick Beja here from representing France. Ian Thompson, who lives in the US, is soon to be a US citizen, but maybe. Maybe. Don't know what'll happen. Depends if they let me in or not. For one, welcome on you glorious leader. Yes. Do you feel like you have to moderate your social media postings because you're applying for citizenship now? No, I always did. You will look at them, right? They do look at it.

[01:31:37] Yeah. Oh no, they look at it, but I mean, I've always been fairly moderate on that because I'm a guest in this country, and I don't think it's particularly fair for me to actually go and start slagging off a country that's hosting me as a guest. That's great. That's why I don't hold back about British politics, but hey, you know, I'm a British voter now. Yeah. It's nice to have Ian from the Register and of course from Canada, from Montreal, which is really not Canada. It's Quebec. She's from Quebec. Quebec, right? Is that separatist movement still happening? Is that,

[01:32:06] are there still people? Yes. No, for sure. There's definitely a resurgence. I'm all for it. I'm a Quebecois by Ancestry. So I'm all for it. La Porte. A Francophone. It's great to have you, Georgia. And maybe if you have a little spare bedroom, Lisa and I can just come up and move in. For sure. Come by. Move in. Yeah. Maybe take one of those. How many VR rooms do you have now? We have four. Four. One for each member of the family.

[01:32:37] But like they're used rooms for other things. You can just move everything around if you happen to want to play some VR. I'm not doing as much VR. I'm playing more Night Rain right now. So. Night Rain. Is that the new one? It's an Elden Ring, like fast paced Elden Ring game. Those are hard. It is a little bit brutal, but there's something really salient about it because it's 45 minutes. You have to speed against the clock.

[01:33:07] It's quite a lot of like fast paced fun and the night slowly encroaches upon you. And so you're squished into smaller and smaller places trying to fight the bosses before the night comes and sucks all of your life. I like the idea of it's only 45 minutes. It really is about that every single time. You can't waste your life playing it. You're going to have a 45 minute session and then it'll be over. And then it'll be over. You will win or you will die. At first, you usually just die.

[01:33:37] And then you get better at winning. But it's kind of brutal. It's really quite fun. And it's nice because it's easier to pick up. It's not like a game where... Elden Ring was too hard for me. It was so hard. Elden Ring, you just have to get used to dying and not fighting everything. And you learn the patterns of each boss, right? You really have to learn the patterns of each boss and what they bring and what to fight. So you have to think about the strategy. But it's a microcosm of what Elden Ring is. Night Ring.

[01:34:07] Okay. I might have to check this out. You should try it out. Yeah. You should try it out. Yeah. I played that French one for a while. What was... That's everybody's... Expedition 33. Expedition 33. Oh, yes. You told me to play this, Patrick, last time you were on. I played Expedition 33 for some of it. Did you on it also? Did you finish it? I saw the first video. I have not yet finished it because of Night Ring. Like I'm in... Look, when I play a game, I'm very like... I'm going to go

[01:34:36] all the way into the game. And did you finish it? And should I finish the game after I'm done Night Ring? You should finish it. Is it that it's worth it? You should... I'm not going to say anything. Just finish it. Oh, okay. No spoilers. I really love the storyline. Like the storyline and the characters drew me in and then crushed me, which I enjoyed as a therapist. I enjoyed that process. Okay. I'll do that. Yes, finish it. I was playing it and enjoying it because I had it on Game Pass.

[01:35:05] And then two things happened. One, I died and I didn't reincarnate or anything. I just was gone. And I thought, well, that's sad. And then the other is they've raised the price of Game Pass. So I decided, you know what? I quit. I'm done. I'm done. I'm going to play the piano. Learn to play the piano instead. But this Night Ring looks tempting. It's on Steam. It's a fun one, but it's fast-paced. It's kind of brutal. It's very stressful at first. Like there's a high level of stress. So I don't want you to not go in with the thought of...

[01:35:35] I'm used to that from Elden Ring. Yeah. Oh, then this is a little bit like Elden Ring on a speed drug. Yeah. Oh, I like it. Oh, you know, unfortunately, I have to play it on Windows. I can't. I don't have a Windows machine. So it's not available on Linux, huh? Rats. Rats. I got the new framework desktop, which I'm really loving. It's super fast. Oh. And actually, I bought it for

[01:36:04] as an AI machine because it's got that new Ryzen AI Plus Max 395. Very nice processor and 128 gigs of RAM and stuff. So it's great. In fact, we had our AI user group on Friday and everybody said, oh, you got to download the 120 gigabyte version of the OpenChat GPT. And I... But I don't know if it'll run. And it is. It runs beautifully and it runs about 20 tokens per second. So I was very pleased.

[01:36:34] And it's nice to have local. But it also, because it's got a good GPU, it could be good for playing Night Rain. If they had a Linux version. Maybe I can use Wine or something like that. Proton. Yeah, that's right. That's what everybody does. Yeah. All right. I'll try it. I'll report back. Oh, okay. I want to know. Well, you're an inspiration to me. I tell you. You are. Are you excited about the metaglasses? That's not VR, though. Those aren't VR. It isn't, but I will be interested I will be interested.

[01:37:04] I'm all there to look at the world. There's big Apple news about VR, which we will share with you in a moment. Kind of a surprise from Mark Gurman, our Apple rumor guy. But first, a word from our sponsor. And I love this sponsor, Spaceship. I love all our sponsors. We only do sponsors I love. That's the truth. But Spaceship really is cool. We've talked about them a few times before on the show. And for good reason. It's becoming very quickly

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[01:41:32] He says, instead, they took a look at what Meta's doing with the glasses. they're going to go all in on glasses. Did you ever get a Vision Pro, Georgia? You're a Meta, you use the Meta stuff. Yeah, I've used like the Oculus and then like I have like the, the, some of the other ones like I have the PS4, PS5 one, like I have a few of them, the HTC Vibes, but yeah, maybe.

[01:42:03] Huh. Do you, did the idea of glasses with the heads up display attract you? It's intriguing to me, like it's intriguing to me, but I, again, that thought of wearing it, like it depends how much it gives me versus how much it takes away from what I'm interacting with. I think that the distraction, like I don't wear my watch usually unless I'm like going out and it serves a purpose because I don't want my tech to constantly be annoying me. I think that that distance I think is kind of healthy for my personality

[01:42:32] type. So, it would really, it would really depend. Like I don't, I would already be easily distracted. So, it's, it's intriguing to me and would I try them out? Yeah, I definitely would. But as somebody who's all in on VR, you know, the idea of having a helmet on and you're in another world, you're not seeing what's around you, you're in another world playing a game or whatever, are you disappointed to hear that Apple is not putting any more money in that direction? By the way, this is just a rumor Apple has not confirmed. Yeah, not really because I was

[01:43:02] not really thrilled or I didn't find it really compelling. I think that they did not find a really good use case to be able to make something that I would find salient and I'm like, I'm kind of the target audience. like I was all in with AR. So AR would be something that I would be really interested in. I could do that minority report and be able to like kind of interact with all of the different pieces around me while I, well not maybe while I worked during my day job, but like while I worked during my like nighttime

[01:43:32] kind of stuff, that would be really a lot of fun. And so that I found it not that compelling and enjoyable. I was, I did feel that Apple missed the mark. So the company, according to German had been preparing a cheaper, lighter variant of its headset. He even had the codename N100 for release, not next year, but the year after 2027. He says Apple announced internally last week that it's moving staff from that project to

[01:44:02] accelerate work on glasses. I mean, this had traditionally been Apple's mode of operation in that they're not necessarily pioneers of new technology, but they are superb at taking existing technology and making it an awful lot better. And I think glasses is the right form factor, to be honest. I mean, yeah, if you're playing a game or if you're a simulation or something like that, then yes, goggles make a certain amount of sense. But having something that you can carry around with you that,

[01:44:31] as Georgia says, isn't too intrusive could be a really good seller for them. And let's face it, they haven't produced that much new that's new and exciting in quite a while. I mean, it's really a very different product though. Oh, it's not the same at all, is it? Yeah. Yeah. The Vision Pro is kind of, if you want to do an easy analogy, the Vision Pro is like a computing platform, they call it spatial computing, and these glasses would be like a watch, kind of. You know, it's the same kind of

[01:45:02] horizon, computing horizon you can look to. So I think it's pretty clear that the Vision Pro is not taking off, and they're seeing this other thing that's taking off. The thing is though, in order for glasses to work, you need very solid AI. You need extremely solid general conversation. They don't have it yet. I mean, there is this app that Gurman was talking about. What's it called? They're using it internally. Yeah. That apparently

[01:45:31] is good. So maybe they're getting there. But yeah, it's very, very different product. To me, it's very interesting that they're getting into the smart glasses game, and I think it would seem to me like, what do I know? But it would seem to me like they're right to. It's more useful and exciting. But I wouldn't want them to give up on the Vision Pro paradigm either because I think it's an interesting proposition to have this

[01:46:02] computer all around you in your space slash slightly VR. We'll talk more about this on Tuesday on Mac Break Weekly because we have two Vision Pro owners and advocates on the show, Jason Snell and Alex Lindsay. I've been very lukewarm about the Vision Pro from day one. To be clear, German says Apple is still planning to refresh the Vision Pro with its newer chip, maybe even as soon as this year. But the fact that

[01:46:31] they are canceling plans for a later generation sounds like they perhaps are giving up on the Vision Pro, which would be kind of a shock. No, I don't think they would be giving up. Maybe they're putting it on the back burner, but I wouldn't think they're giving up. They're really just getting They've always wanted to do glasses is the other thing. Tim Cook has always thought that glasses would be superior to a fully enclosed headset. The fully enclosed headset limits what you can actually

[01:47:00] do in software and user experience. Whereas, I don't know, when I first saw Microsoft's Halo AR system, for example, I was kind of like, this is going to be really useful because you can function. In HoloLens? That's it. Halo's a game. Sorry, HoloLens. And it was very clunky, but it did work. And, you know, AR seems to be the way that's going forward and VR seems to be stuck in a bit of

[01:47:30] a technological ghetto, as it were. Tim Cook said, according to Gurman in 2016, quote, few people are going to view that it's acceptable to be enclosed in something because we're all social people at heart. He always thought glasses were the way to go. So, maybe the justification for Vision Pro is, it was a, I think it always was, a developer project that was really intended to be a learning process for them on the way to something that is more appealing like glasses. Glasses still, there are a lot of technologies that aren't

[01:48:00] really there yet. Battery technology, computing, you're right, AI, the way Meta is doing the display is not AR, it's just a little screen inside your eyeglass. I feel like we want, I think I want is something that superimposes information on the world as I walk around. Instead of having something that's very heavy, you're using, you know, if you're wearing anything that's that heavy on your face for such a

[01:48:30] long time, it's really kind of exhausting. Yeah, that's no good. And Meta has shown that for a day and then you end up with neck pain. So it's not, it's something that you can use for a period of time, but then you feel kind of exhausting, whereas glasses is something that many people wear anyways, and it can superimpose information to that to be additive instead of subtractive. Not for everything is VR, like subtractive, like it adds a lot to the world. It's very, very cool. I do still enjoy it,

[01:49:00] but I find it tiresome. Like I'm tired, I'm a little bit exhausted at the end of wearing it. Right. I was too and slightly nauseated. Yeah. Whereas this is just, these are the current generation Meta Ray Bands. I'm very tempted. I don't think I'll get the updated version, because I think they're still all just stepping stones on the path to something I really want. I don't think we're quite, technologically, I don't think we're quite there yet. Hi, this is Benito. I think

[01:49:30] the problem with Apple is that they ignored the gamers. They didn't want to try to port any of the games, and that would have been really what people bought it for. That's why Meta succeeded with MetaQuest, right? It was a gaming platform first and no gamer would have bought an Apple Vision for gaming. They're not, I mean, It would have to have some really amazing games. I'm not going to say no. Don't tell me no yet, because really,

[01:50:00] if I could go in there, I'm wearing a Mac, I felt it. There was whatever, Centivision, I felt the air on me, there was a platform underneath. I might have been in, but it really didn't see, it did a lot of everything and not very good at anything, unfortunately. It was pretty. It was pretty. It was amazing technology. I mean, right? That's what it really was, is Apple showing off its tech chops. Patrick, if you could play Street

[01:50:29] Fighter in VR. Think how good you'd be. Or really fit, at least at the end, you'd be really, really like doing it. I can play Beat Saber for that. I enjoyed Beat Saber and the MetaQuest. I really thought that was fun. I like that. Gaming is changing a little bit. Microsoft is raising the price on its Game Pass Ultimate to $30 a month. It seems a little bit high.

[01:50:59] They're raising it on everything. Well, but you could justify the Xbox with tariffs, right? I don't think this is about tariffs. The Game Pass thing is software. I don't think there's tariffs on that. That's what I'm saying. You could say, I understand why you added $100 to the Xbox because you got tariffs, but the Game Pass is... It went up $10. It went up 50%. A lot of people are very upset

[01:51:28] about this. What happened exactly is that Microsoft announced a few days ago that they are raising the price of Game Pass, which is their subscription service. When you get Game Pass, you get access to a number of games. It made sense to me because I am a casual gamer. I'm not the kind of person, I'm not going to play like Georgia that rain game hour for months. I want to try a little of this, a little of that. So Game Pass made sense. I got access

[01:51:58] to 100 games and I could play a little bit of this for the same price. That's how I played that weird French game. But serious gamers, do they do that? No. They're going to buy the game, aren't No, but they did because Game Pass was an incredibly silly level good deal. It was so cheap when it launched. So there are now multiple tiers of Game Pass and different ones have different number of games. games. But the

[01:52:26] big feature was day one inclusion in Game Pass for games that would release. So when they would release, a lot of them would be included in Game Pass. And that's what you want. You want day one releases. Otherwise you're playing an old game. big feature. And now they've pushed it away and away and away. And it's only in the ultimate version of Game Pass now, which has just gone from 20 to 30 bucks. And a lot of people are very upset, understandably, but no one really understands why they

[01:52:56] did it. And the reason is actually quite simple. Game Pass used to be a product that they would lure people into their ecosystem with. It was a, how do you call it? Produit d'appel in French. Like a subsidized product to get people to play on Xbox. The thing is now. We call them door buster specials in the United States. It was a door buster special for Microsoft. The thing is now

[01:53:26] they don't have an Xbox anymore. So they have to price the service at the price that it's worth or closer to it. Like it's not subsidized for getting people into the Xbox ecosystem. And I think a lot of people will say, oh, but what are you talking about? They still have an Xbox. No, they're not like very, very much not focused on Xbox hardware. Is it over for Xbox? For the hardware? Yeah, pretty much. They're not going to make another one.

[01:53:56] Well, there was talks. Now the rumor is they might be canceling it, but they've been saying for a few years, yes, we are making another piece of hardware. It's going to be the most powerful console you've ever seen. And it's incredible. It's crazy. Things have changed since then. But even if they were to do it, I think my big theory for it is that they would run a modified version of Windows on it and that they would unify their hardware platforms.

[01:54:26] And so they wouldn't need to do it specifically as an independent console. It would just be Windows in a box essentially. They're developing a gaming-focused version of Windows for the ROG Xbox Ally, which is one of those little portable gaming PCs that look like a Switch. An Xbox. Yeah, a portable Xbox. And so they're developing a version of Windows that when you first load into it for the gaming version, it doesn't have

[01:54:55] a lot of the desktop components. So it's much lighter, it has more RAM, etc. It has an Xbox app like Fullscreen that's easier to use. And my guess was they're going to give this to a lot of different developers. They would put it on a Windows machine, call it an Xbox, and say, there you go, we have a new Xbox. And so they wouldn't need to worry about a console. It seems now at least there's a rumor saying they're not going to do it. Even if they do,

[01:55:26] it's not really the same kind of device that Sony and Nintendo are putting out. And it's not the same business model. Microsoft is now very much a developer, a publisher. So they're into software and buying Activision and Bethesda and all of those. It was supposed to be giving games to the Xbox platform. In the end,

[01:55:56] it just gave games to Microsoft and they're going to put their games on every platform. Windows gaming is still totally dominant, isn't it? I mean... I wouldn't say dominant. It's not bigger than console gaming? Well, okay, so revenue wise, PC is about comparable to all of the consoles together. So yes, in that sense, it might be dominant. But mobile is both of those combined again. So it's PC plus

[01:56:25] console is mobile. But mobile isn't really gaming. Mobile is... Well, so here's my definition of gaming on mobile. It's a lot of casual gamers. What's the difference between a casual gamer and a core gamer? I ask you. Well, I have the answer. A core gamer is someone... Bathe less often. That might be the case, but it's a corollary. So a core gamer is someone that

[01:56:55] makes time to play. A casual gamer is someone that plays when they have time. And a lot of mobile gamers are casual gamers in that sense. They just play when they have nothing else to do and they want to... Tell my mom that when she plays Bejeweled, she plays that all day. She might not be a casual gamer. She might actually be more of a gamer than she knows. I once lent... I had one of those early Windows phones that had a stylus and I once

[01:57:24] lent it to a friend who played Bejeweled so much that the screen was scored with lines. They are playing Bejeweled wrong. She was rather addicted to the game, I think. I guess so. There are very hardcore mobile game players. They exist. I remember I did play one game similar to that. It was a swipe game and I actually burned through some of the... I no longer

[01:57:54] had fingerprints on one part of my finger. That's a sign. That was a warning sign. I know. Ian and I like the definition, Patrick, but apparently that's not good. Well, there could be some casual core gamers, that's all. There might be a midpoint of people that will take time to play a mobile game and that is their joy and happiness. It's a spectrum. It is. It's all games. I mean, it's all games, I understand.

[01:58:24] I play chess on my iPhone. Am I a gamer? Well, I think that I like Patrick's definition. That would be, did you make time to play chess or do you play chess when you have time? Those are two different things and I think that that is a definite mindset. It's almost the difference between what is an addiction versus what isn't. That would be one more step. Whereas you have now taken time what you should be using to do something else and now your entire life is crumbling because you're doing this instead.

[01:58:53] We could add to Patrick's theory. I like it. If you forget to pee, then you're a gamer. Is that it? That's it. You boiled it down to its essential argument. Microsoft, it seems, is very much going towards just being a software company which strengthens Sony and Nintendo to do whatever the heck they want and raise prices left and right and that's

[01:59:22] not an awesome result. But the gaming market is still very, very diverse and fragmented. You have multiple players in many different areas. What's the deal with EA being purchased by the Saudis for $42 billion? $55, $20 of which is debt. $20 billion of those $55 billion to buy EA is debt. This is the biggest leveraged

[01:59:52] buyout in history. Yeah, in history. So why is EA worth so much money? Because they're a very big player in a very big industry. They do sports games primarily, right? They do a lot of sports games. They have EA EA Sports FC, which used to be FIFA. And they have Madden. They have a bunch of sports games. They have

[02:00:21] The Sims as EA. And they have a bunch of other things that are more core gamery, which we can, in the industry, everyone seems to think, you need to pay back those $20 billion. So there's a lot of things that are going to be stripped for parts. So that's a private equity like Silver Lake typically does. This is also Saudi Arabia's public investment fund. They bought Pokemon Go. And actually, I want to say they improved it a little bit. It's a little bit more fun to play.

[02:00:51] And Monopoly Go. I've seen a lot more ads for Monopoly Go because of it. Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners is also participating. He's got ties to the Saudi Arabian royal family. So this is very much just like sports watching. It's like sports watching. It's the same thing. Is it? Is it? Or the Riyadh Comedy Festival? It's all the same thing. Making the Saudi family be okay? It's money. I mean, I'm guessing

[02:01:20] that what's his name? MBS thinks that there is money to be made there. It's part of his what's it called Saudi 2030 plan. Well, they're smart because they understand oil is not going to last forever, right? They have huge amount of money now because of their oil wealth, but it's not going to be forever. I think I remember the leader of the United Arab Emirates saying, you know, my grandparents lived in a tent and rode camels.

[02:01:49] I'm driving a Lambo, but my grandchildren will probably be living in tents riding camels. And so we've got to diversify. We've got to find other ways. We take the capital we have now in plentitude and build something. And that makes a lot of sense to me. Of course. Yeah. I'm not sure EA is the best way. Yeah, exactly. Maybe it is. You know, FIFA makes a lot of money. I mean, it's not FIFA, it's UFC.

[02:02:20] Yeah. And maybe they have opportunities around all of this. They actually bought SNK, which is a Japanese or formerly Japanese gaming company focused on fighting games, of all things. And they put football players and DJs in their latest title as like fighters, which is a bit weird. It feels like ABS likes games. He's like, hey, yeah,

[02:02:50] yeah, we'll do we'll let's have one. We'll do something. I don't get why this would be greenwashing or whatever washing though. I mean, why is this going to improve people's point of view of Saudi Arabia? Depends what they do with the games. What are they going to put in the games now? There's a lot of war games. They make a lot I think that most people don't know who owns the games that

[02:03:20] they play. I think that most people probably don't care. I think that it is one of the fastest growing addictions besides social media. So I think there's probably a lot of money that is in gaming. It does really make you wonder what's their set of media. It does you know they could say don't put this or do point this in. There's a lot of unconscious bias that goes into gaming and games. I don't know. I think they could use it but probably it's just about money.

[02:03:51] Maybe it's just money. Maybe why not both? Is there data in there that they might want? I don't think so. Not really. No, but there was an article that just came out about the study game time has increased dramatically in the past 10 years among 20 to 34 year olds male especially. I can see how that's a demographic they would like.

[02:04:20] They play free-to-play games. They play Fortnite and Call of Duty Warzone. The other thought I had is that maybe you're going to see more of this as people get more and more concerned about the stock market being a bubble and a crash coming for a variety of reasons including tariffs and the AI bubble and they're looking for alternative ways to invest that might be out of the stock market. If that's the case, you'll see

[02:04:50] more of this kind of thing, I would imagine. Although, I think, to be honest, they might be smarter if they waited until the bubble pops and then they can buy the stuff up for half the price. If you're in it for the long haul, that's the time to buy, isn't it? Yeah. I don't know. I agree with you. I'm not a lot of games. They own the Formula 1 gaming franchise. Electronic Arts owns the Formula 1 gaming franchise as well.

[02:05:20] And that's something the Saudis have been very keen on as well. They love their racing. Oh, they do, yes. That's interesting. Maybe that's how you go about it. You don't change anything. And you're like, look, they're good people. They didn't change anything. The Sims can kiss. Even if they're two women. And so there you go. Was that the point of the comedy festival? It might have been right to say, look, see how liberal we are?

[02:05:50] It would seem maybe the Saudi crown is interested in portraying themselves a little bit more favorably, but maybe they don't really care if American women kiss in the street as long as they don't in the streets. Don't do it in Riyadh. Yeah, It's kind of Riyadh. Okay. So, yes, I mean, I was out in Saudi Arabia for a week, a while back, and it's a system which is never going to take off over here. But as you say, Patrick, it's more about,

[02:06:20] hey, we have comedy festivals, we're cool too. Money is a global market, so it makes sense that they want to globalize and be able to deal with that. I don't think that it's going to really change people's viewpoints upon them unless they alter the media in which they control, such as Reddit and other places that have definitely different areas of being able to control that. So, who knows? Let's take one more break. You are watching This Week in Tech.

[02:06:50] We're talking about the week's tech news. And a little bit more with Georgia Dow, Westmount Therapy. She still gives out her email address. You did this during the COVID pandemic, and I think people wrote to you. It's very helpful, so thank you. And of course, you can watch Georgia's Therapist Reacts videos, and she talks a little bit about psychology as well on YouTube at Georgia Dow. D-O-W is her

[02:07:20] YouTube channel. 267,000 subscribers, Georgia. Good job. Yeah, it's okay. That's good. Can you make, it's none of my business, but can you make a living on this? People could. My channel goes up and down depending. If I choose something that's really popular, it might do really well, and it might not, but I just try to choose the different things. I think the views are going up over the last few years. Up and down. I think YouTube has a downturn now. I do

[02:07:49] games that I'm involved in, and some of those do well, and some of them don't in different shows. YouTube wants you to follow in a stream, so its stream that it wants me to follow in is in the anime area. How do they tell you that? Do they send you a memo? No, it tells you really quick. You get rewarded. It's a Pavlovian response. You get rewarded really nicely for doing the videos that YouTube is happy with. If you keep on doing the same type of thing,

[02:08:19] it'll keep on promoting you. The algorithm gets angry if you switch that up a little bit. Almost half a million views on your video on Invincible being lonely. I think that's good. I think Invincible was actually a pretty good show. You did Severance, Irving's Secret Past. My son did this with TikTok. He paid really close attention to what got the views, what got on the For You page, and he

[02:08:49] was able to leverage that by leaning in on the stuff people wanted to see. I have a second job. I can do that. I have that ability to be able to do that. I think that other people are in a very fortunate position. You're getting good views, though. Very solid views. I'm looking

[02:09:18] at this. It feels pretty good. That's nice. Good job. I think the costuming is very important. I don't know. I don't know really if it is. It's kind of fun and silly. I think seeing you in the Wolverine wife beater with the metal adamantium claws. I made those claws. They were pretty sick. They flopped around a little bit. I was pretty excited about those claws. I hope to get to wear them again. I could see why people would want to watch that.

[02:09:48] It's great to have you. It's good to see you again, Georgia. Thank you for being here. Also with us, the wonderful Ian Thompson at The Register. You are on my regular daily beat check where I go and I list for stories to talk about. I always go to the register because your coverage is so right on. We've expanded out so now we've got offices over here, offices in the UK originally of course, and then Australia as well.

[02:10:20] We try and maintain a global news flow as it were. I also like it that you haven't fallen prey to every other site now has all these new redesigns and they're doing weird things. This is just text basically. It's a step above the drudge report. It's just texts. I like that. It's very clean. It's content rich. Basically, we didn't try and pivot the video or anything like that.

[02:10:50] It works. It's what the readers like. If they don't like it, they tell us about it in very, very extreme terms. We do a redesign very carefully if it happens at all. You have the best thing there is in the world, which is a devoted readership, and they will let you know. Yeah. I mean, tech publications are, their circulation is tanking since Google basically changed things around. If you're relying on Google for clicks, then you're in trouble at the moment. You are smart, so you don't.

[02:11:19] Have you noticed a drop in referral traffic from search? Some, but you see, 60% of our traffic is people coming direct to the site. It's about building a solid quality site rather than relying on gaming Google and they can change rules whenever they want. Nice. The register.com. I like it. And of course, not Patrick. Who is Patrick? Patrick Pajov, not patrick.com. getting a little late.

[02:11:49] Are you in Paris again now? I am in Paris at the moment. On your way to Nice for the big fight. For the big fight, which will last approximately 13 seconds. I checked out my opponent. Oh, no. And he is master rank on like five characters. I barely get like I'm two divisions below. So my goal was actually to win one round. And I don't know if I'm going to be

[02:12:19] able to achieve that. Who do you play as? If I may ask. Manon on Street Fighter. A little bit of advice, Patrick, you should practice a live game and not on the internet. You should practice side to side. I don't have friends. The latency is very different when you play in person. He probably has friends that wouldn't be as good as him. And it would just be like fighting. They would be horrible. And then they wouldn't be friends anymore as well. The latency is different. You can really feel the difference in the latency.

[02:12:50] My game is at 10, so I'll go in early if I can and try to practice there. So I will have an extra half hour of trading. Thanks for the advice. So this is at EVO Nice. It's coming up on Friday and Patrick says, so you're, I don't know what this means, but you're platinum five. Sounds good. Sounds like a good level. Yeah. It's better than I've ever been, but there's platinum five subdivisions per rank. And so after platinum, there's diamond

[02:13:19] and then you get to master. So it's not even like one rank above what we would call in chess. You're an expert, not a master. I would, I guess that would fit. And that guy, because you get your, you know, he's a master. He's a master on like five different characters, as I said, goes to local tournaments all the time. don't know what character he's going to choose either? Well, I checked out his profile. Yes. And so he has five. I guess I'm

[02:13:48] going to bank on one and try to learn how to counter that character. But yeah, so my big dreams of winning one round are probably, but then, you know what? It's a double elimination tournament. So I always have the losers bracket to win one round. Do not despair because upsets happen. That's what makes these tournaments exciting. You could surprise everyone. win. I did train with a listener who offered to

[02:14:18] play with me and he is master and I won about a fourth of the games. So we, yeah. Now, General Tab has a question. He's, it's his opinion that you don't have a chance against anybody less than 30 years old. is your opponent less than 30 years old? It is very possible. You could be 15 for all you know. You don't know. That's not true though. Some of the best players are in their 40s. Some of the best players are in their 40s. Yeah.

[02:14:48] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Again, it's that, it's that muscle memory that you end up developing to that, but it's just someone that's five different characters that you are going to have to be at that level for, yeah, the fast twitch muscles. Yes. And actually the being there at the tournament, I have never done it. So I will be completely like I did an online tournament with my listeners. There were five of us and I freaked out completely and couldn't, you know,

[02:15:19] the anxiety, but it's interesting because anxiety will add, if you have mastered a skill, anxiety will actually make you better, like not think it's actually a better scope. If you haven't mastered a skill, then it makes you worse. So sometimes shutting off and not knowing and just letting yourself be in the zone, really the problem is you can't care whether you win or lose. You don't want every loss that you have to play over in your head. You want to be able to kind of, whenever I work with people that are at high level

[02:15:48] performance kind of work, you want to always only be in the moment and not worry about every mistake that you make because if that plays, you're not there in the moment that you need to be to be able to do it. What she's telling you, Patrick, is use the force, Patrick. I will try very hard to use the force and not care about anything in that very moment. Put on that helmet. Have so much fun just being there. Yeah, you're going to have a great time. That's the main thing. In fact, that's probably the best way

[02:16:18] to approach it. It's just, I'm going to have fun. I'm going to do this and have fun. I'm going there because since we're talking about EVO, I have to talk a little bit more. EVO is a legendary tournament that happens in the U.S. in Las Vegas and in Tokyo. The best fighting game players are Japanese. Probably the best known moment of esports history is one called EVO Moment 37, which is an incredible move that happened in

[02:16:47] 2004, 2003, and that put those things on the map for a lot of people. Going there is not about winning that one round, which I promised myself and my community and my listeners that I would, I treat you about being able to say I'm an EVO competitor. It's true. EVO is the best esports event. Get all the shirts. Benita is vouching for this. The best esports event. Especially because the FGC is the best esports community also. Now, how did you

[02:17:17] get invited to it? How did you get invited to it? It's Any old person can go in there. They're doing Street Fighter. They're doing Tekken. They're doing Guilty Gear. They have Fatal Fury, Dragon Ball Z. The thing is, especially in popular ones, maybe not in Nice,

[02:17:47] but you have thousands of competitors that go there. The first couple of days are literally rows and rows of consoles with people playing their matches. It's like one of the only esports competitions that works like that. When it's in Las Vegas, for Street Fighter alone, I think last year was 8,000 competitors. Imagine, 8,000 people. That's for one game. Tekken is maybe 4,000 and the others are also in the hundreds and thousands.

[02:18:17] It's a very iconic thing and that's why I'm going. I don't care if I win. You can always take a walk on the promenade and look at the ocean. Do you have this fancy controller thing that this guy has? No, I don't have that one. I have another one which is not the standard. You're a hitbox guy? I can talk about this for two hours. You're a hitbox guy?

[02:18:47] No, I do not have a hitbox. I really don't play that much. I started training a month ago half an hour a day. I do it. I went from platinum two to platinum five. That's crazy. Do you get to bring your own controller to the event? Do they check to make sure you don't have macros programmed into your controller? They do.

[02:19:17] Do they? Wow. That would be the thing. You see the guy with the other controller and they're like, that move should not have been done that way. Will there be an audience for this? I don't think for the first couple of games. The final round. Then they have an audience. I'm guessing that the big players are going to come to Nice. I've seen that one of them, Bonchan, is in my pool, one of the best players, and he's

[02:19:46] two games away from me. The big players are also in the pools. They will stream some of those events. That's cool. It's a very special event. Amongst the esports and competitive video games, EVO has, I think it's probably the best known with League of Legends Worlds. Those are the two that are the best

[02:20:15] known events. This one has a very special place in a lot of people's hearts. Being able to go to a minor one is something I didn't want to miss. My mom told me never play pool with a guy who owns his own queue and never play street fighter with a guy who brings his own controller. I shall never be playing you, but we wish you the best, Patrick. We'll be following with interest. Leo, I am soon to be an Evo competitor. I think it's

[02:20:45] wise of you to not play very sharp. That's your lower third. That is Evo competitor. Evo Evo competitor. The brackets are online. You can go watch and see how Patrick does on the Evo website. We're going to take a break, come back with some final thoughts in just a moment. You're watching this week in tech. Our show today brought to you by Miro. I love Miro. We do a lot of our shows using Miro.

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[02:23:44] special thanks to the folks who support us in the club. I can't call them donations. They're not tax-deductible, but your support in the club makes a big difference to us. 25% of our operating expenses come from club members like you. I think as time goes by, that is going to go up, which is great. It means we can do more, we can bring you more shows, we can spend more time in special club events. We had a wonderful AI user group on Friday. Club members

[02:24:14] participated. We have so many smart people in our club. That's one of the reasons I love the Club Twit Discord. The Discord is a bunch of great people hanging out together, not just during the shows, but all around the clock, talking about all of the things people are, you know, geeks are interested in. We do a bunch of special events coming up. Chris Marquardt's photo corner is going to be on October 16th, photo time. the day before, Micah's crafting corner, which is always fun, a chill place,

[02:24:44] kind of a Bob Ross like place to bring your craft. He does Legos, but you can do knitting, crochet, painting, coating, whatever. I cooked the last time. We also have Stacy's Book Club coming up later this month on October 17th. I love this book, A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, highly recommended. If you haven't started it yet, you still have time, and then join us at 1pm Pacific on Friday, October 17th for Stacy's Book Club. These are all things the club lets us do. Oh,

[02:25:13] that D&D adventure is going to be fun too. Micah Sargent, our Dungeon Master, is putting that together later this month. We'll get the exact date for you soon. $10 a month, $120 a year. You get ad-free versions of all the shows. You get a special access to all of our hosts. You also get the good feeling to know you're supporting the kind of content independent, non-regulated, without fear or favor content that I think is so important in this day and age. Support

[02:25:43] the club. We really appreciate it. Twit.tv slash club twit. Thanks in advance. Moving stories, although I'm glad to know that we can root for you, Patrick, in a special event. It's nice to know a pro. Let's see, I think we've done a lot of the stories I put in here. Oh, I'm sorry about this. We talked last week

[02:26:13] about Jaguar. Four weeks their production line was down due to ransomware. In fact, they went to the UK government and borrowed two billion dollars to keep the payroll going. And oh my God. Well, the latest is the Asahi Brewery. Oh, no. From the Register, Ian Thompson, no suds for you. Yeah, it's a bad one. You know, I mean, thankfully it's just in Japan, so domestic market, the distribution, I mean, they had interviews with restauranteurs like,

[02:26:43] we're down to our last barrel. I love Asahi Dry. I drink it all the time. It's the biggest brewery in Japan, and it's basically been crippled by an attack. Ransomware. Yeah, it sounds that way. They have said that data has been exfiltrated. So, yeah, it's looking like ransomware. And in those kind of circumstances, they're not going to pay because they've got to strip their systems out anyway. So, it's now down to manual taking orders and delivery. It's

[02:27:12] such a nightmare out there, I tell you. Yeah, I mean, the Jaguar thing was just, because it has enormous knock-on effects in the rest of the industry. A lot of Jaguar's parts are made by third-party suppliers. They're now not getting paid. So, the loan was basically tied an awful lot of people over. The Japanese government hasn't been that good when it comes to offering similar bailouts. Around

[02:27:42] September 29th, hackers began sending emails to executives saying, we know what you did last summer or last night. Numerous, this is from Google, Google's head of cybercrime analysis, Genevieve Stark, told Tech Crunch, hackers associated with a prolific ransomware group are sending extortion email to executives at numerous large organizations claiming to have stolen their sensitive information from a suite of business software products developed by Oracle. Hundreds,

[02:28:13] hundreds of compromised accounts affiliated with the CLOP ransomware gang. So, this is kind of the new thing. It used to be they would just encrypt your data and say, if you ever want to see your data again, send us $1 million in Bitcoin. Now, they're doing that and blackmailing people. Well, yes, it's a classic double attack. So, basically, you steal the data, you lock down the PCs, and then you hold that data for ransom.

[02:28:43] There is, in fact, a new trend of tertiary attacks. They will steal the data and go after their third party suppliers and say, look, we've got all these details on your company because you dealt with the company we've just hacked. You pay us money and we'll protect your data in the data dump. But at the end of the day, you're trusting criminals. And we've seen earlier this year, for example, a school board decided to pay up to ransomware operators just to make sure their data was secure. And they released it anyway.

[02:29:13] So there is no honor amongst thieves when it comes to this sort of thing. I know you're going to the Evo championships, but maybe, I don't know, Ian, are you good at Excel? The Microsoft Excel championships are coming up. I love this. I love this. Excel is, by the way, happy birthday, 40 years old as of September 30th. And the nerds are gathering for the World Excel

[02:29:42] Championships. We have a British skin in the game as well. For the first time, the UK championships are coming up. The FMWC Microsoft Excel World Championship UK. So it's hysterical what they do. Ian, can you describe what this is like? It's basically building the most functional spreadsheet you can in the shortest amount of time. They give them weird puzzle challenges. Yeah. And here they are. Here the

[02:30:12] nerds are. I don't want to smell this room. I just want to say that right now. Players are introduced WWE style. The names echoing around the arena as they're made to march through a smoke-filled neon-lit hype tunnel, whether they like it or not. Once they reach the stage, every move, every Excel spreadsheet move is beamed onto a 50-foot LED

[02:30:42] screen and broadcast worldwide on ESPN. I do love this. You take the most boring application on the planet and you turn it into a game. It's marketing genius. It is. Yeah. It's pretty funny. Anyway, watch for the UK championships and then I guess ESPN will broadcast the global championships. I think it's December that they're doing the global one. Yeah. But yes. So if you win the UK championship, you get an all expenses paid

[02:31:11] trip to Las Vegas to represent the UK at the world championships that's in the HyperX eSports arena on the strip. A three-day Excel knock down drag out fight. I love it. You know, they're all the same enthusiasts. Yeah. Make it fun. Make it enjoyable. I love it. I think that that's great. But it's kind of cool because you take anything that someone's really good at and you watch them do it and it's magical.

[02:31:42] Like it's magical and it just seems like really amazing. And I don't know, I've done an Excel. I'm not good at all. But like I'm not showing up, but I've done an Excel sheet now and then. And it's really useful. It's so helpful. So I don't know. I think that's fun and cool and make it exciting. And yeah. I think we should all go to Las Vegas to watch. You want to see the highlights from the finals in 2023? For a live head-to-head

[02:32:10] competition in an e-gaming arena. It's counting on you. Yeah. Oh, look. Oh, my God. He's going to do an entire range. You can see his keystrokes. That's awesome. Look at the keystrokes on the right. Control plus control shift. This entire case. He's using the trim command. I don't know. I've never seen that done before. Oh, the entire spreadsheet's empty. I was going to say. If you hit delete at the wrong time, it's soul crushing. The announcers,

[02:32:40] that's hysterical. That's why he would be a professional because he wouldn't do that. I would. he would. So is co-pilot allowed? Is co-pilot allowed? No. This year, maybe. I don't know. That's a big part of Microsoft. Mareska, one of our favorite hosts on our shows, is in charge of AI and Python in Excel. now. I would hope they don't. That seems like cheating. It's kind of like turning up to a pub quiz with a smartphone hidden in your pocket. If everyone was

[02:33:09] using it, that would be a different thing because then still the people that could use that better would be still better at it. Totally different scale. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can have a separate room for the AI nerds. Maybe. I don't know. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have come to the end of this thrilling and gripping edition. We wish you, Patrick, the very best in Nice. Yes. Give him hell. Break a leg. Defend our honor.

[02:33:41] I will break someone's leg. He can still play. Hopefully. I'm familiar with Mortal Kombat. Street Fighter is kind of like that, right? You've got two players, you're looking at the side and they got moves and they're battling each other. Is it three rounds? Is it like boxing? What is the... Yeah. Yeah. Two. I mean, it depends how they set it up. But yeah, it's usually two rounds wins a game and you get two games for a match. So best

[02:34:10] of three is how it usually goes. And I will try to find my opponent and break their leg before the match. So they have to... Yeah. Break his thumb. Forget the legs. That's true. Yeah. He doesn't need the leg. That was probably the wrong thing to aim for. I was hoping to do it like half an hour before so they have to go to the hospital. You need to get all the thumbs. You've got to talk trash beforehand. You have to get into his head, really. Get that Tonya Harding stick and

[02:34:40] whap him on the knuckles. That's what you got to do. Honestly, that's great. All mind games. All mind games. It's nice to know that we have some real athletes in our midst. Next I'll enroll in the Excel championship. Yes. Notpatrick.com Follow all the excitement. Join the Phileas Club and all his other wonderful podcasts. Thank you so much, Patrick. So great to see you. Thank you. Thanks to Ian Thompson, TheRegister.com

[02:35:10] Going strong. I appreciate it. Thank you for being here. Anything you want to plug? It's going to be a busy month. We've got Dreamforce in town, so it's going to be 50,000 people flooding into San Francisco and Metallica are playing, but they're not my cup of tea. Wait a minute. They are bringing in Metallica to play for Dreamforce? But Metallica's local. Well, I know it's not a long trip for Metallica, but I think they probably charge a pretty penny.

[02:35:40] Well, I mean, this is traditionally what they've done. I mean, Oracle got the whole thing of trying to make tech conferences more fun by getting in big bands. And I've seen Lenny Kravitz and various other bands there. Dreamforce got into it the same way, but there was this shameful incident when they booked, it's not Billy, who wrote White Wedding? Billy Idol. Billy Idol. Yeah, and they brought him in to do the concert and he changed the lyrics to White Wedding. It's a nice day for

[02:36:09] CRM. Oh, no. I lost a lot of respect from him in that concert. By the way, not just Metallica, if that's a little too heavy for you, Benson Boone is also performing. Wow. His little flip. Yeah, I like that little flip at the Grammys or wherever that was. In his jumpsuit he was wearing. His onesie. His onesie. Yeah. I mean, it can work. Oracle was a bit... They had a whole thing of hiring lots and lots of bands from the 80s. And it was kind

[02:36:39] of painful when Berlin came on and were playing in the park outside Moscone Center. But this was it. You know, in a 40-minute concert, nobody was listening to them at all until that one song came on. They had one hit. You really felt for them because it's just like, okay, you know, let's make them wait for the last one. So, yeah, it should be a good show, but it's mainly the number of cloud people who are coming into town, so there's a whole series of interviews to get set up. Well, and Matthew McConaughey apparently is giving a keynote.

[02:37:09] Hey, the Princess of Belgium is coming over as well. Matthew McConaughey is the Salesforce brand partner of all things. Wow. Maria Shriver and Mel Robbins. Wow. Oh, I love Bozema St. John. She was very impressive at, was it Microsoft event? I think it was. And Sundar Pichai. Well, okay, have fun at Dreamforce. We'll see.

[02:37:44] I love I'm teasing you. I'm teasing you. Have you listened to it? I like it. Yeah. It sounds like all her other albums to me, but I'm not in the demographic, I think, is the problem. Music is good. Whatever you feel, it can be really healing and soothing. Oh, there you go. It's a nice thing. There we go. That's why I listen to Metallica. It's very healing and soothing. Hey, listen, sometimes you want to get the aggression out. That works as well.

[02:38:14] There's nothing more soothing than battery. Thank you, Georgia. YouTube.com slash Georgia Dow. Please, everybody, go there. Let's get her subscription up. We want to get to a million so you get that special platinum button. I want you to get the special platinum button. Thank you, Georgia. It's great to see you. Thanks to all of you for joining us. We do tweet every Sunday about two to five, Pacific time PM. That would be five to eight Eastern time, 2100 UTC, middle of the

[02:38:44] night for Paris. But thank you for being here. If you want to watch live in your club members can watch, of course, in the discord, but there's also YouTube for everybody. YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, X.com and kick. And we're thinking about abandoning TikTok because it's very complicated for us to do. Requires Benito to keep pushing buttons every hour and things like that. So if anybody watches a TikTok and says, no, no, please, you got to keep the

[02:39:13] TikTok feed, let us know. Otherwise, I think this might be the last time we'll do Twitter on TikTok, but there's still six other places you can watch us. And you don't have to watch us live. That's the beauty of it. It's a podcast. Download a copy, audio or video from our website, twit.tv. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to the video. And of course, you can subscribe in your favorite podcast client and get it automatically. That way you'll have it ready for your Monday morning commute. 20 years we've been doing this and for 20

[02:39:43] years I've been saying the same thing. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next week. Another twit is in the can. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing.