TWiT 1095: Horses and Sailboats - Folding Phones Get Cute and Expensive in a Race With Apple

[00:00:00] It's time for TWiT This Week in Tech. Abrar Al-Hidi from CNET is here. Mike Elgin from Machine Society, our good friend and AI guru. And there is a lot to talk about. Quarterly results from Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft. What do they tell us about the future of AI and of the stock market? Plus, we'll talk about Amazon. They want to put another 10,000 satellites in orbit for your cell phone. It will be in just a couple of years.

[00:00:28] And that new model from China that's scaring everybody in Silicon Valley. That and a whole lot more this week on TWiT. Stay tuned. Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is TWiT. This is TWiT. This Week in Tech. Episode 1095. Recorded Sunday, August 2nd, 2026.

[00:00:58] Horses and Sailboats. It's time for TWiT This Week in Tech. The show where we cover the week's tech news. Hello, everybody. So glad you're here and so glad to welcome our guest today. Abrar Al-Hidi is here. It's great to see you. Senior technology reporter at CNET. Hello, Abrar. Hello, hello. Wonderful to see you. Good to see you too. I love it.

[00:01:25] We had, we were talking about this before, but me and Mike love your shirt. Oh, it's crazy. Well, I, well, okay. And I love your head scarf, which is pink. Thank you. I didn't know you could get them in pink. I think that's great. All the colors of the rainbow. Yeah. Very floral. You're very floral. You've got roses behind you. In fact, what's with all the flowers? Well, I hosted afternoon tea yesterday. And so I was telling Benito, if I have flowers, they're going to show for this. So if you are watching instead of listening, please enjoy the background. Yeah.

[00:01:53] I feel like you're just super elegant and cool. And like, wow. I try. Thank you so much. Meanwhile, there's Mike Elgin who's not even in his own home. I got nothing on my shirts. I have nothing to offer. Mike Elgin is of course a peripatetic traveler. He works and lives all over the world. You can find out more at gastronomad.net. He also has a wonderful newsletter,

[00:02:16] machine society.ai and does an AI podcast, which with Emily for leaning, which is fabulous. And it's always a pleasure to see Mike who is briefly in the United States. Is there an occasion for this or? Just, we, we had been spending so much time. And as you know, I'm always having to escape Schengen, which is the visa requirement for most of Europe. You have to leave like,

[00:02:42] you can't spend more than 90 days every 180 days. So we have to find a place to go. Often we go to the UK and speaking of the UK, uh, I, I have to take issue. What you had was, was, uh, uh, no, you afternoon tea was right. That's right. High tea. I did not say that. Right. Yes. A lot of people say high tea when they mean afternoon tea, high tea is more of a working class meal. Whereas afternoon tea is an, an, an elegant, uh, the British seems to eat sandwiches a lot.

[00:03:12] You have, you have breakfast, then you have 11s, which is a tea. Mm-hmm. Then you have lunch. Then you have tea at four. Yeah. And then you have dinner. Yeah. Is that, do people really do that? And why aren't they, why is it Americans are so fat when they're doing that? I always think that every time I travel the world, I'm like, why are like, we, I think comparatively don't eat as much as some countries, but we just have like the worst luck in genetics. I think, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's genetics.

[00:03:43] I think it has more to do with the quality of the food. Yeah. And also the size of the portions and the fact that we, we snack so much. If you, I, I, you know, there are people who I think it was Wanda Sykes, uh, the comedian who married a French woman and, and she stopped snacking because the French don't snack. And she said, it was like, you lose all kinds of weight when you don't snack. So Americans are always snacking. The quality of our food is really bad, which affects our metabolism. And also a lot of, a lot of Brits will have like, you know, toast and coffee for breakfast.

[00:04:13] Um, whereas we might have a bigger breakfast. Although, you know, of course an English breakfast may also include beans, sausages. Because it's not just toast. They've invented this thing called a toast rack that's designed to cool the toast as quickly as possible. So they actually have cold toast, which they're very impatient people. They can't wait. Warm, warm beer, but cold toast. Yeah. Actually everything's room temperature, isn't it? It's all real. Yeah. Well, the water, especially no ice water for you. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:43] What's that? Anyway, we love you all. We have listeners all over the world and we do not, we, you know, look, look at Mike. He can't stay in the U S cause he just, he's here just for technical reasons. Legal. That's right. Just exactly. Just so he can go back Against my will in extremis. I might come back to the country of my birth. You're staying with your son, your wonderful son and daughter-in-law and their beautiful daughter, your granddaughter. Yes. Yes. Princess squishy face. You call her. Yes. Although that's right.

[00:05:13] Probably don't call her that anymore. She's, she's a little older than she is. No, she's, she's growing up so fast. She's going to be 10 in November. Oh no. She's really growing up. Yeah. No. Yeah. But you know, she gets to travel with us more. So she's been doing, she went with us to Venice and she went with us to Tuscany and she, she's doing a lot more traveling with us. So it's really great. It's so fun. I'm going to pause just briefly. Cause Mike, you've disappeared off the shelf again. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's just. And see if you've got auto gain or something, something's going on where you actually. So just the audio.

[00:05:43] I think it's a place. Yeah. Like your picture is great. It's just, we have this problem with others as well. You just need to speak into the, what are you saying? Benito? I think cause I'm sorry, Benito. It's not while he's talking, it's going up and down. It's some, it's the same thing that happens to Paris and they always say, well, they're not, she's not addressing the mic. It's not, it's a, it's some weird thing. It's a gating for of some kind. Okay. Let me see if I can do exactly like Paris. We'd had problems with Paris for a long time.

[00:06:10] So annoying. She has, she uses this microphone. That's the funny thing. She's using a Scarlett in this microphone. So I don't know what's going on. I think it's zoom. I'm more and more thinking it's zoom. It's a compression thing because like it has something to do with the compression. Yeah. That's kind of what it feels like. Right. Cause like when he speaks up to the mic, it like sounds fine. Yeah. It sounds like it's, it's being patted down.

[00:06:34] Okay. So I should do that. I should talk really not, not, but that's not the solution. Cause it's, it's something more mechanical. Hmm. Uh, look in your, um, settings, settings of zoom, audio settings and zoom. Yep. I'm looking at it and change it. Auto gain is on, turn it off. If it's off, turn it on. Okay. It's auto is, uh, is off. So I'm going

[00:07:01] to turn it on. Let's see if that, okay. Change it. Well, something's better. Sometimes it's, we'd normally ask people to turn it off. Yeah. But sometimes it's a good thing. And do you have any noise? I have original sound for musicians. I think that's the right mode, right? So it's the right mode, but I don't need echo cancellation. Cause I have a earbuds. I'm going to turn that off. Um, and I have high fidelity music mode. You're sounding better already. Okay.

[00:07:31] Turn it up. Turn it up one more notch on the mic if you will too. Okay. Yeah. No, Benito, I actually liked how loud you are. You were cause you were really quiet. I could barely hear you. And then you were nice. So how's that? Is that better? Yeah. Yeah. The people, uh, and I should explain this to people watching the stream. If you're watching live, you're watching the un

[00:07:56] processed, unfinished version of the show. We fix all this post, but, uh, when you're live, you have to put up with some things. Yes. And I'm just trying to make it as good as, uh, as good as it can be for, for you folks watching. All right, let's, let's continue on. Well, let's, uh, let's get to the news and I don't know where to begin. This was a busy week because a number of companies,

[00:08:20] Google, Apple, Microsoft announced earnings, uh, meta as well. And all of them, it's so fun. The stock market is so weird, produce different results in the stock market. So I'm not going to worry about the stock market. In fact, we really shouldn't worry about corporate or quarterly earnings results, except they do kind of give you an insight into what's going on in a company. Uh, Apple's third

[00:08:44] quarter results. The, the last one Tim Cook's going to do that came out on Thursday and you know, next time it'll be the new CEO, John Ternus at the helm revenue of $109 billion, which is up 16%. This quarter isn't it's, it's, it's fiscal third quarter and it's not normally it's big quarter. The big quarters are when they release new iPhones, obviously. In fact, this is the weakest usually of

[00:09:08] the, of the four gross margin. And this is an important, I'm going to mention this number because I think it's important is 50.1%. Believe it or not, that's down, but, uh, that's margin before taxes. But what's important about that is it shows Apple has a little bit of wiggle room when it comes

[00:09:33] to pricing, they make a lot of money, right? They did get some tariff refunds. Um, it was the strongest June ever, according to Apple, double digit growth in revenue across iPhone, Mac and services. So if you just look at that top line, it looks pretty good. Uh, profit up 27%, uh, partly, uh,

[00:10:02] now the issue is going to be, they've got to have to raise prices. And this goes with the other story from Apple this week, which is they announced a new lease program because I think they anticipate that the next generation phones are going to be, and, and Macs are going to be, and iPads are going to be so expensive that people will want to do as they do with automobiles and lease them. They've also raised prices preemptively like the Apple TV, right? Uh, you know,

[00:10:28] they didn't need to raise Apple TV, right? Because exactly. They're probably already made because I think when they come out with a new one, they're, they're going to want to say it's the same price. So, um, I think that's just one tactic that they do, but it's, it is really interesting how much money they made. And then the stock market was like, not impressed. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Stock fell 8%. Uh, and after, you know, they announced it at the, at the market close,

[00:10:56] but right after it fell 8% and it's still considerably down, um, down like 30 bucks, almost 10% from its peak earlier. So significant punishment. Jeff Lerner 1 00 But I read that I read that half, uh, oh boy, you get this right. See the profit of revenue. I think it's profit half the world's profit on smartphones in the last quarter were Apple's. Jeff Lerner 1 00 That's probably true. They don't have half the sales. Jeff Lerner 1 00

[00:11:25] No, no, no. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Worldwide other, you know, Android is much more Jeff Lerner 1 00 Right. They're in the twenties, I think, uh, sales, something like that. They make more money per phone than anybody else. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Jeff Lerner 1 00 And they sell enough of them that, that, yeah. Jeff Lerner 1 00 And just wait until, you know, with the rumored foldable iPhone, not a lot of people are going to buy it, but that thing's going to be expensive. So they're going to make a lot of money off of that, even if the quantities are small and yeah. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Samsung, a couple of weeks ago, released their Samsung Galaxy Fold 8 and their Galaxy Fold 8 Ultra. You

[00:11:54] probably covered it a little bit. Yeah. Jeff Lerner 1 00 I did. I did review 8. And the pricing on the Ultra, the top of the line is $2,100. Yeah. $2,100. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Starting now, the one that looks more like what we think Apple's folding phone looks like is the, just the eight, right? It's more of a pocket, pocket square. Jeff Lerner 1 00 It's in my room. But I have it. I have it. I love it. I've, I've really loved it. My review published

[00:12:20] this week and it's, it's so I didn't expect to like it as much as I did, but I do really love the palm size of it. And given how much I think a lot of us have really loved using this phone, a lot of reviewers, it makes sense that Apple would release something like that. But also kudos to Samsung for kind of beating them to the punch and saying, okay, if there's rumors about this four to three aspect ratio, let's, let's do it first. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Well, they're able to do that because they're making the screens. Jeff Lerner 1 00

[00:12:49] They already know exactly what Apple's coming. Yeah. Let's release our own foldable phone with a minimized crease before Apple does and of this size. And yeah, so it's, it's an interesting precarious relationship. Do you think that pisses off Apple when they do that? Jeff Lerner 1 00 It must, because I can only imagine, you know how secretive they are. And if they can't really keep that away from one of their biggest competitors, it must be kind of a pain in their side. Yeah. Jeff Lerner 1 00 So you see, I think that that is a really nice form factor. I mean,

[00:13:19] I don't want to buy these, but I kind of feel like I kind of Jeff Lerner 1 00 It's really fun. And it really is just kind of perfect for anything that you need. I, even though the cover screen is smaller, I do use it a lot still. And then being able to rotate it into either landscape or portrait orientation is, it's so seamless. And so no matter what you're Jeff Lerner 1 00 It's just, it makes a lot of sense to have it in that size. And I loved last year's folds. Jeff Lerner 1 00 And I never thought that I would need a whole different form factor for a foldable, but this one really does just make sense. And it's so cute. Jeff Lerner 1 00

[00:13:48] What they've done really well is they've made them really, this is the last year's fold. Jeff Lerner 1 00 It's really thin. Jeff Lerner 1 00 So light, so thin. It's incredible. You forget that the foldable while you're using it. Jeff Lerner 1 00 But there's a whole big screen on the inside. Yeah. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Jeff Lerner 1 00 It's really close when you open it up. Yep. Jeff Lerner 1 00 To the form factor of an iPad mini. Is that right? Jeff Lerner 1 00 Exactly. Yeah. It feels exactly like a, like a small tablet, like an iPad mini. So yeah, I mean,

[00:14:17] I'm sure Apple will be able to take all of those understandings from their years of building an iPad into making a foldable phone that opens up to that same size. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Galaxy Z Fold, a passport size shape shifter for every moment. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Yeah, because it goes from a fairly small screen to an iPad mini size screen. It's great. It really is the perfect size. Jeff Lerner 1 00

[00:14:42] Oh, see now. Oh man. And it's going to be, I know Samsung selling theirs for a 1900 bucks, but Apple's going to be. Oh, what do you think? Well, a lot of rumors are suggesting it could be 2500. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Oh, I know. Which I like wouldn't even be shocked about. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Because at this point, like they're going to charge whatever they want to charge and people are going to buy it. But I hope, I hope it's wrong, but I don't know.

[00:15:08] That's what a comp, in fact for years, Mike, you remember this, we would say the computer you want, this is 20 years ago is always 2500 bucks. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Jeff Lerner 1 00 They got more powerful, but back in the windows, you know, back in the nineties and two thousands, the computer you want is 2500 bucks. The phone now. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Jeff Lerner 1 00 You're going to have it for two years, you know, like Jeff Lerner 1 00 Yeah. What is it? What is it? The Palmer said when the iPhone first came out, nobody's going to pay $600 for a phone. Jeff Lerner 1 00

[00:15:37] He was a little wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Okay. So you're, so you like it even at that, would you buy it at that price? Jeff Lerner 1 00 I would resentfully buy it at the price. I would look for carrier deals or trading deals, but I would not out of my own pocket spend nearly $2,000 on a phone. And that's why it was one of my biggest cons was the price. But it is, it is quite- Look how cute it is in your hand there. It's so cute. I'll bring it at the next commercial break. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Oh, it's so cute. Jeff Lerner 1 00 It's so, it really is adorable.

[00:16:06] We're not used to this form factor. It's more, more squarish. Jeff Lerner 1 00 And it's kind of like a peek into what foldable phones will likely look like in the coming years, because of, you know, if Apple does, you know, release something in that size and Samsung has that option, we'll see what other companies do too. Jeff Lerner 1 00 As a writer, I would just prop that up and use a keyboard instead of a laptop when I'm traveling around or it's Starbucks or whatever. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Jeff Lerner 1 00 So that's, that's great to have that. Because a phone isn't quite big enough. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Jeff Lerner 1 00 But that is. Jeff Lerner 1 00

[00:16:34] The best phone for using as a laptop with that keyboard setup was the Galaxy Z Trifold, but that thing is $3,000 and came out in very limited quantities and is a little chonky. Jeff Lerner 1 00 So the Z Fold 8 is a good middle ground for that. Jeff Lerner 1 00 So the thing Apple was all excited about, and I feel like Apple pushed Samsung into making a screen that the crease is not so obvious. Jeff Lerner 1 00 I think so. This was Apple's demand. We're not going to make a folding phone. Jeff Lerner 1 00 You know, until the crease doesn't, doesn't show up. And it does. I mean, this is last year's.

[00:17:03] And if you just look at it straight on, you don't see your crease. But as soon as I turn it, you see, oh yeah, there's a fold right there. Jeff Lerner 1 00 The Z Fold 8 and the minimize crease, but they've done a pretty good job of reducing it. Jeff Lerner 1 00 But yeah, there's, we'll see what Apple does. A little bit less would be good. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Yeah, exactly. Jeff Lerner 1 00 It doesn't have to be perfect. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Here's the thing is, what about durability? Jeff Lerner 1 00 Do you have any information on that? Jeff Lerner 1 00

[00:17:30] So I ended up, I did go to Seoul last month to see how Samsung tests the durability of its foldable phones. Jeff Lerner 1 00 And so we saw kind of like the torture chamber where they put these phones and fold them like up to half a million times to make sure that they last. And we saw them drop like a heavy marble sized ball onto the display repeatedly to make sure it doesn't crack. So I personally have not dropped the phone to torture test it, but I did see how they torture test it. Jeff Lerner 1 00 And it was slightly reassuring to know that if you are spending nearly two grand on a phone,

[00:17:58] it should hopefully last like everyday drops. But it's scary to use a phone that's that expensive. I've never used a folding phone as a daily driver. Jeff Lerner 1 00 So I don't know. I take it you haven't either. Jeff Lerner 1 00 During my review periods, I definitely switch everything over, but then I have been using that phone still continuously as my second phone. So I lug both that and my iPhone around. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Okay. Is it possible to put a question? Where can I get this Jeff Lerner 1 00 Oh, I get I know what you're looking at borough market.

[00:18:28] Jeff Lerner 1 00 So holy moly, it was so good. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Where is that in New York? Jeff Lerner 1 00 It was this was in London and I got to go to London. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Yeah, you got to go to London. Jeff Lerner 1 00 It's worth it honestly just for the sandwich. Jeff Lerner 1 00 This is not for the sandwich. This is the test of the of the camera. And it feels like it's a fairly good It won't be as good as the like, this is what I'm worried about. I'm going to get an iPhone Folding iPhone. It won't be as good as the camera in the in the iPhone 18 Pro Max. Jeff Lerner 1 00

[00:18:57] Well, and what's interesting is Samsung has really stepped up the cameras on its foldable phones lately. So like the Z Fold 8 Ultra has a very comparable camera to the S26 Ultra, which is kind of why Jeff Lerner 1 00 Which was pretty good. The S26 was good. Which is really impressive that they could that they could fit that in a foldable phone where there's limited hardware. So they've done a really good job of making a foldable less of a compromise when it comes to the camera. So it'll be Apple's challenge to see if they can swing that

[00:19:23] on the first try with the foldable phone or if over the years they get better at making that camera kind of on par with their more, you know, standard slab phones. Jeff Lerner 1 00 The dirty little secret of all this is everybody uses the same components. I'm sure they're all using Sony cameras are using Samsung screens where Apple might have an advantage though is because they do have iPads as their software might adapt better to these to these screens. Stephanie Lerner 1 00 Definitely because there's still some software hiccups here and there with foldable. So hopefully they solve that. Jeff Lerner 1 00

[00:19:51] You ran through the battery pretty quick. I was worried about that. Stephanie Lerner 1 00 It wasn't the like longest battery life. Yeah, a little over 24 hours of heavy use. And so there's room for improvement there, but at least it's an improvement over last year. Last year's battery was a little more disappointing. So that's another space. But with the phone that thin and that small, it's going to have to require some big upgrades. But Samsung using a silicon carbon

[00:20:17] battery is a huge step and hopefully they have more noticeable gains in the coming years. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Mike, what are you? Are you an Android? You're an Android guy, I think, right? Jeff Lerner 1 00 No, I'm an iPhone. I have an iPhone Air, which has to be... Jeff Lerner 1 00 That battery is tough. Jeff Lerner 1 00 I find it's got fine. The battery's fine on it. But I, you know, I'm not a, you know, I don't use it much for photos and videos. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Don't tell me you use it for phone calls. Jeff Lerner 1 00 Oh, good heavens. What? Jeff Lerner 1 00

[00:20:45] Heavens for a friend. I'd have to kick you off the show as an old timer. Right. I use it for miscellaneous things. And I have a case on it. So it's not impressively thin when I'm actually holding it because of the case and so on. To me, I think what's interesting about the phone market, and I wrote about this for Computer World, I think it comes out tomorrow. Jeff Lerner 1 00

[00:21:06] They've been able to establish a market for AI phones that have AI deeply integrated. So ZTE has the Nubia Navi X Ultra. StepFund has something called the StepFund Neo, StepX Neo. And then Honor has an entire line of Magic OS X phones. And they're basically using Anthropics model context protocol

[00:21:31] to deeply integrate the AI into the operating system and essentially eliminate apps. So basically, you just talk to the thing and does the things you want to do. And this is something that Apple can't do for a couple of reasons, nor Google. And the main reason is they are so dependent on app store revenue, they need people using apps for these things. And so that those are that's one category

[00:21:54] of, since the beginning is since the iPhone ship, basically, China has been more or less following the the Apple model, the Western model, if you will, of phones, back and forth, which has the better camera or whatever. But this is a departure, like this is a strong departure where where the American companies can't really follow. And the other one is Honor has something called the Honor robot phone. This has a

[00:22:19] Gimbal on it. It has an arm, a gimbal for the camera. It's a 200 megapixel camera that goes and it like it's a gimbal like on a drone or like on a, you know, handheld thing. But those are just gimmicks. We've seen things like that. That's a gimmick. Well, but but it has all these advanced modes like a drone has. So you can say do cinematic like zoom in mode or whatever they call it. You can do all these fancy and you can walk around while it's on a tripod and follow you that sort of thing. But here's the craziest part about it. It's actually,

[00:22:47] you know, I read about the attachment economy of mimicking human emotions, speech, other things to make people feel an emotional attachment to two devices into software. It actually the the little arm will has a personality. So it nods yes and no, it kind of like it cringes a little bit in certain circumstances. It it like it basically has body language, limited, limited body language, but still it's programmed to have to make you think it kind of has a personality. And so that's

[00:23:16] really interesting. That's something I'm not seeing out of Apple or Google. And I don't know if there's gonna be more like that. But it's really interesting because of AI that gimbal is AI controlled in multiple ways. Because of AI and how it's coming about and because of the business models of Apple and Google, we're seeing a departure where China is doing all this stuff with AI that the American

[00:23:40] companies can't or won't or don't. Well, you know who might? Open AI is working on a device. They hired Johnny Ives. Several devices. They hired hundreds of people from Apple's iPhone into vision they're being sued over that oh yeah uh but they don't have the legacy attachment to the app store and all of that uh to ios or android os they could build an ai first device that

[00:24:06] doesn't have apps are we ready for that uh we are i don't you know i i think that the you know the winning model um there'll be lots and lots and lots of different kinds of ai hardware but the winning basic model will be uh augmented reality glasses with or without a camera that you basically use the phone as a connectivity server processing all that stuff and so the problem with the open ai model is they don't want to do it with the phone they're trying to they're trying to pry

[00:24:34] people away from their phones and that's not going to succeed i don't think in the short term i think to a very large extent they're going to take open ai enthusiasm if you will and basically give them hardware for using open ai to you know through which to use open ai i think anthropic will have it all the all the uh frontier model companies will have hardware for using their frontier model the winning model uh in the short term in the u.s is going to be apple's model where they they're

[00:25:00] basically not investing hundreds of billions of dollars in developing ai they're basically in the position where they can just pick and choose right uh whichever things turned out that was an advantage it made them behind in the race but it might have been you know sometimes it's better to win by losing 100 so from a business perspective and as we said earlier apple gets half the profits in the world for smartphones they know how to do the business part apple's model is much better much

[00:25:26] better i wonder though if this is the last year for the traditional smartphone if even as because ai's moving so fast even as soon as next year we'll start to see this transition definitely the last decade i mean you're kind of on the bleeding edge of this stuff and i think the bleeding edge will start to fray but i think globally in terms of smartphone use it'll be years before here's what i'm working on with my ai assistants i have one of those uh shocks open com over the ears so you can still go around

[00:25:52] and hear stuff and it's got a good microphone and it's got a button and i'm setting it up so i could press the button talk to my ai could talk back to me and uh and it's hands-free and uh it might end up it'll be interesting it might end up to be exactly that you know you could say call me an uber or i'm in the supermarket night and i can't remember what kind of mayonnaise my wife likes which is by the way none that exact same functionality goes seamlessly into glasses right so it's just like

[00:26:21] glasses as a camera it's even better although it may not have a camera but it could have a screen of some kind people are really so negative about cameras i'm wondering yeah definitely well it makes me wonder about kind of the discrepancy between tech enthusiasts and kind of everyday people right so i'm definitely not an everyday you know i can't wait to wear my camera glasses everywhere exactly right and then you have people who are so tired of their phones and their devices who are like

[00:26:49] why would i want yet another thing why would i want something on my face and on my wrist oh i'm gonna get beat up i know it so so it'll be interesting to see how companies respond to that right how do you cater to the to the masses when you have this small circle of really enthusiastic people who want all the tech and then you have the larger people who the larger population who still doesn't know how to use the ai features on their phone that have been on their phone for the last several years right how do you bridge that divide yeah yeah leo you're gonna you know on the on the downside you're gonna get

[00:27:17] beat up but on the upside um that video is gonna be able to call for help yeah exactly quicksilver help me uh incidentally if you are ever in london i didn't know this is a famous viral sandwich the borough market oh viral sandwich i'm sure yeah it's so you immediately went there you knew where to go you said well i didn't actually because i'm apparently not as trendy as everybody

[00:27:46] else but samsung had like stations for us to choose from when we were walking around london and this was one of them um samsung knew so everyone at samsung knew and everyone else they're like oh yeah it's the trendy viral sandwich place i'm clearly not as online as i should be but i actually ended up getting the um i'd never do vegetarian sandwiches but all the sandwich options were pork so i did have the mush the oyster mushroom sandwich and it was very good and i normally never never would choose

[00:28:12] that but it was amazing my i have a as mike knows a little of a bit of a dog in this hunt since my son has the viral sandwich sensation of new york city uh we're gonna now have a little new york versus london that's right conflict here going on throw down next time samsung has a new york event we'll have to go to your son's spot oh yeah he'll be he'd be happy actually he had a samsung uh did some ads with him so he has a relationship oh that's amazing tablets yeah that's fantastic and his sandwiches are

[00:28:41] really photogenic like you that's a great idea for samsung to stage an event there yeah they do if you're listening yeah exactly hint hint uh well it is interesting that these phones and laptops and everything are getting so expensive because of the increase in price in both ram and solid state storage and that apple has denounced a leasing program and that's what they're calling it by the way

[00:29:05] uh in effect you're paying the depreciation for the phone yeah uh there's no interest but on the other hand there's a balloon payment if you at the end just like a leased car or you turn it in and get another phone and the payments continue forever forever the thing that's new for apple is that they're using clarna as the back end and now that may impact people in uh ways unexpected first of all

[00:29:32] clarna is doing the financing but when you do send the phone in uh clarna is the one that's going to assess it whether it's damaged or scratched or not in perfect condition not apple god and that's brilliant apple's like you be the bad guy they're off the hook they're off the hook so you know we talked about it extensively on mac break weekly i'll refer people to that show for the decision tree because it's a

[00:29:59] complex decision tree you might get better traded value from your carrier you might get a better deal from your carrier there's all sorts of reasons you might want to pay i think it's going to really be successful and the reason is that people people are looking for any excuse to just get the latest thing and this is just put you on a for the rest of your life you have the latest thing and just you bill me whatever and that's just i get the new thing a new phone every time they come out with

[00:30:25] a new phone isn't it funny how for a long time there's huge pushback against subscriptions people say they still do i don't want another month i don't wanna but we've kind of gotten so you're into it so used to it that apple finally saying you know what that's really the way to do it people in fact the new york times article about this said this specifically people are now accepting of monthly subscriptions they prefer that it's become the norm that's easier to budget

[00:30:53] yeah true you know what you're gonna be paying and if you're not paying interest it's not like it's costing you more to do it unless they don't take the phone back or say uh you're gonna have to pay for the damage and so forth see that's tough i feel like that idea of if you return a phone and it's damaged it's it's kind of scary to even use your phone at that point because we all drop our phones we all scratch our phones you know well and that raises another issue the folding phones don't really have cases do they they have essentially something that you can snap

[00:31:23] onto the back but it's not very protective protected they'll be terrified of the front screen for sure yeah yeah so that's scary too i'm gonna keep it in a padded case yeah over my shoulder take it out yeah all right well i'm gonna let you all dream about the uh viral london viral sandwich for a moment just think about it just my mouth is watering i can't

[00:31:48] see it's just not right it's not right um uh lunch i can see yeah i didn't actually try to get as much black coffee as i can and it's not helping not quite the same no not speaking of subscriptions and sandwiches hank should roll out sandwich subscriptions you know his sandwich so it started at 28 bucks which is a lot yeah and it because the cost of meat has gone up and he uses only the best

[00:32:14] meat of course 32 for a sandwich now it is new york city right but i think he should have a buy now pay later plan sure yes right call clarna yeah if apple can do it so i can eat you too can have the viral french dip sandwich from salt hanks for only 29.99 a month with a lower subscription low monthly payments i'm actually this is so the car washes in town are doing subscriptions yes yeah oh yeah

[00:32:44] people really i mean that's proof to me that this is accepted this is the norm yeah sandwich subscription isn't so bad yeah right people love to thank that's a lot more fun than a car wash subscription that's what i'll say that's what credit cards are for says yeah uh all right we're gonna have more in just a bit it's wonderful to have you here mike elgin

[00:33:09] uh of course the peripatetic machine society dot ai newsletter writer gastronomad.net we'll find out what the next gastronomad adventure is a little bit later abrara al-hidi from cnet great to see you how's the new ownership uh it's been good i have genuinely no complaints i'm not just saying that because this is being broadcast uh to the world i mean it if you're being held hostage just blink blink yeah

[00:33:37] no yeah thankfully it is no i think it's gonna be better uh yeah you were bought by penske is that right uh ziff davis ziff yeah i can't keep track of any of this anymore no i really don't blame you i although it's not that new when i worked for ziff davis uh uh back at the turn of the century yeah we went through three or four owners in a period of five years i mean it was it wasn't no it's wild so yeah the media industry does not slow down in that regard

[00:34:05] um but no it's been it's good and also it's it's been great that i mean i feel like uh galaxy unpacked was a perfect example of us just being with all of our comrades pc mag and mashable and z uh zdnet all of us just being under one umbrella all great brands it's fantastic it's great so it's good to have that camaraderie yeah i used to i was the third and fourth employee at cnet oh my god in 19 i'm

[00:34:30] waiting for you to write a book i just needed all the all that didn't work out all the deep yeah but that's why you should write the book i have stories let me tell you stories no one wants to hear but i have them here at all yeah thank you we'll have more in just a little bit our show today brought to you by adaptive oh man do you need this the first security awareness platform

[00:34:54] built to stop ai powered social engineering and man this is a huge shift attackers they don't need malware anymore they just need trust a cloned voice and by the way that's so trivially easy to do now a convincing deep fake on zoom or an ai written fish that looks like it came from your it team who wouldn't believe that adaptive i'll tell you who wouldn't people who use adaptive adaptive prepares

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[00:36:14] with complete personalization the result a more resilient security culture and that's essential take a company like plaid right i hope plaid has a resilient security culture they have all of my bank accounts because that's the platform that powers you know all those digital finance apps links consumers developers and institutions together so you better believe sensitive data is is vital at plaid with

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[00:37:08] you're going to learn more at adaptive security dot com that's adaptive security dot com we thank them so much for their support of this week in tech adaptive security dot com uh one one more apple story then we'll move on uh it is an ai story this is from the financial times apple is struggling to keep pace with ai bug

[00:37:32] hunters they've actually now had to limit the number of vulnerabilities researchers can submit because they just can't keep up that doesn't necessarily mean that these security reports are ai slop in fact uh the last security update i got from apple had more than a hundred serious flaws that they fixed microsoft

[00:37:55] i've fixed 500 plus fall flaws in its last patch tuesday so it's it's not that these are bogus reports necessarily um the change this is from the financial times again the change in apple's approach was highlighted by italian cyber security startup binario binario which told the financial times that had used chat tpt to identify more than 50 bugs in the latest version of the macbook operating system in

[00:38:20] just three weeks privilege escalation exploits the startup said we couldn't tell we couldn't tell apple because they had limited the number of bug reports so we could make it's a very difficult time in the industry said alfredo pisoli of binario maintainers and vendors have been flooded by the sheer i mean

[00:38:43] starting to sound like dracula i'm sorry uh apples uh did when when the financial times contact apple they said oh and they're now reviewing the binario subscript submissions but you can see why this is a problem apple introduced a cap on the number of subscriptions and a 30-day cool-off period i don't know if that's the best way to respond apple you're a five trillion dollar company hire a few more

[00:39:10] people to triage this stuff yeah right yes and like steve gibson says on security now he thinks that at some point this is this is going to go back and forth between people finding bugs and companies patching bugs where there will be no more bugs no more flaws or openings for for cyber attacks that will be an interesting uh scenario and it suggests that this surge is kind of temporary right because well if

[00:39:39] steve's right if it is temporary i mean there it's there aren't an infinite number of flaws i guess so eventually you find them all unless they unless programmers are introducing more more flaws as fast as you can find them right exactly that's the real question and i think actually the real question is if at some point you start building your software either with ai or in partnership with ai

[00:40:05] and you use ai to find flaws at some point you're going to ship software that doesn't have flaws right or or a lot fewer flaws that'd be nice yeah i mean it's kind of like generative adversarial networks which is the ai technology behind deep fakes where you have two ais one is generating fake data the other one's uh detecting fake data they go back and forth each gets better and better and better and better and

[00:40:35] but the end result of this process of ai one ai banging on the other ai is you get a perfect video of tom cruise doing something or other and that's kind of what we're going to see in in cyber you know attacks and and flaws it's gonna they're gonna go back and forth back and forth until there's nothing left to go back and forth over so i think steve's got a great uh point um but somebody will come out with

[00:41:02] better ai maybe find a different way i don't know it it's a really interesting question that he keeps referring to and i you know i hope he's right because that would be amazing yeah and i think steve's very thoughtful and and you know he's our security guy he knows what he's talking about so uh he's a believer anyway let's hope he's right he's very secure he's very he's very

[00:41:26] secure uh let me just show you how easy it is to do an impersonation this is uh 11 labs um hi mike hi abrar this is leo laporte asking you to send him money you got it leo pretty close right my lip my lips did not move i'm already sending you money as we speak um this is it's it took me very little

[00:41:53] time to train this at 11 labs there are many many other pieces places you can do this uh and they're pretty indistinguishable from the real thing so yeah uh you know i think i think that that has happened that um all right moving along let's talk about google uh a lot of stories uh about google um they had a good quarter

[00:42:18] right um uh but then there's some bad news for instance uh reddit is suing google uh and saying uh scraping or okay after a big court loss last week google has confirmed it will not give up its fight to block ai bots from scraping its search results this is ours technica uh writing ashley blanger

[00:42:47] and reddit is going along for the ride so there's a company called serp api that is a scraper that uh scrapes content from google search results uh and then i think it's probably used by agents ai agents uh google invoked the digital millennium copyright act uh saying you you know you're circumventing our anti-scraping technology and uh you can't do it according to google um

[00:43:17] serp api circumvention of that threatened to disrupt google's relationships with rights right holders google said this is the this is the irony of it of course rights holders are were mad and already at google because google search results scraped their sites and then pushed excerpts up on the sites and remember this is that whole uh you know lawsuit in spain and all over and i guess google's now saying well but see we're trying to protect you guys and now serp ai is coming in and scraping it

[00:43:46] uh reddit filed a similar lawsuit uh against serp ai and perplexity saying we're scraping reddit content via google ironically so wait a minute let me get this right now google is scraping reddit and then these guys are scraping google and reddit is suing these guys in any event it has not worked out well

[00:44:10] uh the judge in the google case said you you can't file a lawsuit under dmca unless you own the rights and you don't google you're scraping other people uh the bottom line is both google this is serp api telling ours the bottom line is that both google and reddit appear to be engaged in attempts to use the digital millennium copyright act to wall off the open

[00:44:36] internet by retro and by the way reddit's content also isn't owned by reddit it's created by its users i should point out by retroactively claiming control over content they didn't author and they don't own google's going back to the court they're going to amend the complaint and uh hope to to prevail but the judge basically said you don't own this stuff google and reddit do not own the internet and so

[00:45:04] how are you claiming copyright on stuff you don't own what a mess yeah i wonder what the implications are for the judge to make such a ruling if if google doesn't own it does it have the right to use it in the way that it uses it all this might have been a mistake for google to pursue this right they might have opened a can of worms by pursuing this the court took the rare step of granting serp api's motion to

[00:45:34] this to dismiss very early on in google's lawsuit the judge found that google had no standing to sue because it doesn't own the content and its search results and it isn't acting on behalf of reddit or anybody else there's also there's already a lot of heat towards google now with ai overviews and robbing

[00:45:55] a lot of sites of those views so it's exactly got to tread carefully right now yeah um as re and by the way reddit speaking of google and reddit is is declining its stock is falling precipitously because google is putting reddit content in its ai overviews yeah uh in fact reddit has a licensing deal with google but

[00:46:24] they're but they feel like maybe that was a bad thing to do steve huffman who is the ceo of reddit one the original founders um said hey you know the internet's flooded with synthetic content people want real human content and that's what we provide um but unfortunately the way google's using our content

[00:46:50] what we see is 10 blue links has driven tremendous value in content the broader ecosystem the old google search but ai overviews has yet to make a similar level of positive impact people and this makes sense when people get the answer they're not going to click the link to it they got the answer it's it's undeniably convenient to have the answer show up so you don't have to dig for it i mean if if it wasn't convenient it wouldn't exist and it wouldn't continue to exist

[00:47:17] uh that doesn't mean that it's not detrimental to a variety of websites if not most websites uh and the fact even reddit is facing the head not just you know your traditional publishers so imagine those net and gadget and all these other guys exactly so reddit did make a deal 60 million dollar deal uh licensing their content to google but what they're according to the wall street journal they are considering ending that deal because they're losing more value than they're gaining with it and apparently they're

[00:47:44] not alone the economist reuters political and politico and usa today are also considering ending this these ai overviews are killing traffic it's tough it's tough and there's another problem with all of this and something that i find personally confusing which is that clearly the ai companies want human written content what there's a service uh that uh that they're a lot of them using called isbndb

[00:48:13] database um which basically is buying all these books written before 2022 to make sure that they don't have ai content in them they're destroying the books because you have to destroy them to scan them getting the digital content and then selling it to the frontier models for training because they want to train on non-ai generated content they're worried about model collapse model collapses is declining

[00:48:39] accuracy and quality of output as ai is trained on ai output and and repeated repeated so-called synthetic data exactly here's the question here that i have which is that okay so let's say they've scanned all the books before 2022 they they're getting all of reddit but in addition to that they're looking for human written content and now there's ai detectors even a substack for detecting human written content

[00:49:04] content but much of the human written contact is a content is is created by people who are getting their information from ai so basically human beings are being it's a loop i still think model collapse is possible if you're getting human-based contact if that content if that human-based content is ultimately coming from ai right right what's the difference what's the difference and so um so i don't see where that

[00:49:31] goes i mean the ideal thing would be to train on you know how many people on reddit are getting their information from ai 80 who knows um so it's we're really a problem a lot of the posts on reddit are ai now for sure yeah a lot of them says load bearing and not x but y and yeah you know there's just real tells with ai yes yeah and i was worried when substack came out with their feature last week i

[00:50:00] think uh basically where they're using ai detection i write pretty polished prose and i was afraid it would and i love m dashes things like that and so i i thought it would falsely flag my stuff is at least partially ai written and it's not it's showing it 100 human written content which is which is a sigh of relief actually there has been a kind of revolt against ai uh using this tool it's called

[00:50:29] pangram yes exactly while it's widely agreed to be the best ai detection tool none of them are perfect i think pangram said the constitution was written by the u.s constitution that was the declaration of independence was written by ai which makes no sense yeah the wharf of human events i don't know so these platforms look at like the order of what did they look at like word choice and and yes i'm

[00:50:54] sure that's like you know many many many signals they look at many many many signals but ai is getting better at hiding its traces in fact you can even have there are skills people put out saying dai my pros i mean look we're starting to see novels on the bestseller list short stories written by ai uh this is inevitable this is going to be you know so here's i have another question who uses google

[00:51:22] anymore i don't know any real people do you know any real people you guys because what do you mean by like when you search because i yeah you'll do you do okay you're a real person i'm a real person i think my wife uses google yeah i never google anything ever oh in fact a number of people in our discord are saying everybody i know just asks ai when they want oh interesting yeah i'm still a little old school i'm but i'm like the hateful writer who doesn't want to use ai when i don't have to but then ai overviews

[00:51:50] responds to me when i google start getting it no matter what using it anyway yeah yeah i use uh google alerts a lot um i have two or three hundred still around it's still around and uh it comes in my email email email is also still around um and so i so that's that's basically google search it does a search for you every day and then sends you the results and then uh i use kagi of course i use a whole bunch

[00:52:15] of different tools for finding out information um but i i love i still love going to original sites and seeing what people are saying and um and i also use ai but i but i have some i have some pretty pretty gnarly uh prompts that i use that's my contention though is that ultimately the good news about all this is it real human content with all its flaws will be preferred it might be a luxury good right

[00:52:43] real human writing real human painting real human drawing music all of that will be something special more spec like horses and sailboats the modes of transportation that used to be required are now for the roach horses and sailboats oh my god you're right our futures yeah i remember somebody telling me newspapers aren't going away but they're going to become a luxury item and your butler will iron

[00:53:12] them before they bring them to you i mean i would love that they were wrong i don't think the newspapers are they're not long for this world google did have a very good quarter of course as did all of these ai companies and cloud companies um double digit revenue growth for the year over year

[00:53:38] growth across cloud search and youtube ads operating income 30 up they had 40 billion dollars in income during the quarter nice and the stock market said no you suck google google uh much like apple suffered uh in the stock market uh actually they've they've bounced back a little bit so maybe that uh maybe

[00:54:03] that's old old news in fact it looks like it went on seven percent holy cow it's up quite a bit i wonder if profitability at a company like google is helped by the fact that they it's cheaper for them to use their own uh ai than it is for like other companies have to pay through the nose to use ai and one of the things that's crushing companies is this the amount they're spending on oh it's for sure

[00:54:30] one of the things that's what right well anyway that's what the experts agree that the the capex is what the market hates that they're spending 100 some i think it was 180 billion or something like that this year on building data centers yeah yeah now here's the weird outlier on all this microsoft microsoft

[00:54:53] increased their spending on ai profit jumped 31 percent and microsoft stock price went up so much they made 450 billion dollars the biggest jump in stark market history on thursday goodness half a trillion dollars i guess i get you know the market it used to be considered rational i i don't think any anybody

[00:55:21] could honestly because i'm like why i haven't even thought of microsoft in a very long time i know i don't know 450 billion dollars in their market cap in one day nobody's ever done that the closest was in video uh which went up 440 billion dollars after president trump paused the tariff last year but you don't have anything like that you just have uh their their quarterly report

[00:55:48] that's the kind of jump that spacex wanted and did yeah they they they they're like a rocket that had rapid unexpected uh disassembly they shot up and then they shut down yep yeah um and microsoft i'm sure has come back to earth a little bit since then but that is this is why it doesn't seem too rational i think the market said oh microsoft is building uh capacity

[00:56:15] and is going to be able to sell that capacity and make money on it down the road whereas i don't know google's not spacex is not i don't know meta's profit uh fell 14 percent based on ai spending meanwhile i'm starting to see predictions that next year is going to be a boom because of all the data centers going online in the next few years get ready

[00:56:47] yeah sure you're spending a lot of money but boy is this going to be great when all those data centers go online yay the environment yay i i think yeah i think i don't think anybody knows anything i'm starting to starting to think i know i don't it's like no every first of all many states are

[00:57:12] starting to put moratoriums on data centers new york state did that uh new data center builds uh there's certainly a lot of protests over data centers yep uh and of course elon says we're going to put them in space we'll see we'll see we'll see yeah let's rick havoc up there too yeah yeah i would like to see some friction on the construction data center so in general i think it's a very good

[00:57:38] thing that there are all these um protesting um one of those reasons is that that data centers have put themselves in a position where they can wreck lots and lots and lots and lots of things they are wrecking lots and lots of things for example the open web they're hitting those sites with their with their uh bots to spider them making them actually measurably slower uh they're raising the price of real estate we just get more bandwidth for those sites by building more data centers so that they can

[00:58:06] keep up with the data center build so that they have more bandwidth paying a lot more money for access to those new data centers um no but they're raising they're raising prices on real estate on water on electricity on all these things and other people bear those costs so to the extent that there's resistance to them building these data centers i feel like they'll be in a position where they have to bear more of their own costs if they have to build data centers in the middle of the desert instead of

[00:58:35] in a in a residential area in texas or whatever okay so that's gonna be more expensive for them but it's not going to drive up costs in texas so i i just i think it's generally a good thing i'm in favor this is from crn uh data center capacity will double despite local concerns over the next three years

[00:59:08] uh 45 gigawatts of new capacity over the next few years this will be a real collapse if there's no demand for this data by the way i just want to point out they're taking they're making a huge huge trillion dollar bet on on growth in demand wouldn't that be something if like china's ghost

[00:59:33] cities where they had these real estate speculative booms and they built so much housing that they didn't have the people to fill them and now they just sit empty entire cities not exactly what's happening but something like that if that happened with data centers could you imagine building a brand new data center that's never used it sounds like a great movie yes right theory for a movie yeah well there's a whole get ready for a new term neo cloud get ready for the neo cloud these are uh rapidly scaling

[01:00:02] category of cloud infrastructure built purpose built for gpu-centric computing for ai workloads and nebbius is one of them uh lambda core weave this is the new kind of data center specifically built because remember we're using a data center right now we're using it for zoom we're using it to stream we're using it to put podcasts out so you can download them every time you hit the internet every

[01:00:28] time you do a google search you're hitting data centers but the hot new thing is ai data centers with big gpus if you can if you can if you can get them well and back to that idea of like ai on our phones every time you buy a new phone like okay i brought i brought it like an angel it's it's wings oh it's so cute you got the lavender one i did thankfully they got they got us the cute color but the amount of features oh wait a minute show us a screen i'm sorry okay yes no no let's do a

[01:00:56] little show you've really hurt you've really changed oh and then oh dirty ignore the uh the fingerprints all over but the crease is not too crazy it's still there oh no it's not bad but it's not too crazy no i could do that yeah do you feel it with your finger sized um let me see kind of but not really honestly it's like it's yeah i could tell it's there but it's very very very it matches your

[01:01:22] hijab i know you're right it's very intentional yes uh my job always has to match my phone um the amount of ai features that are baked into every new device right they're they're forcing us to use these features right it's like right it doesn't matter if you have an interest or not but like you should edit that photo like you should tap this button and edit that photo in a certain way or you should um you know have this pop-up whenever somebody asks what your availability is so that

[01:01:48] you can connect to your calendar like all these things that are we're buying the thing that's on the other end of those data centers exactly so it's gonna it's it's forced onto us essentially through all these devices that we're buying today so there will be use i guess for for all these data centers because we can't escape it and what nobody's talking about is is all the energy is creating agi and super intelligent ai that's the goal from these mat and run by these massive massive data centers

[01:02:16] where is the drive to make ai much more efficient edge use uh you know intelligence to use a lot of smaller people are using these massively powerful uh models to ask you know how old uh charo is or whatever i mean it's it really makes no sense at all and that's a great we should we should be pouring all of our energy as an industry and by we i mean they because i'm not in that industry i'm a journalist

[01:02:45] um into making all this stuff much cheaper and more efficient and requiring less data centers china yeah yeah uh i'm using deep seek they came out this week with v4 flash unbelievable really good frontier quality for pennies uh so much so that i have subscriptions to anthropic and open ai and a bunch of other things and i'm using flash paying the tokens because it's like three bucks a week

[01:03:16] so chinese have really moved forward on efficiency you know who else is i have to give them credit nvidia uh their new chipsets and their new uh servers are well there's what i think the new is not vero ruben maybe it is is is i think four times more energy efficient they they understand that that's where the drive is going to be we can't keep this curve going i mean it's not it's not tenable it's too expensive

[01:03:45] right right and and you know and and the the other thing that they're trying to head off is having china be the leading like look at the rise in use of open weight models from china in the us in the last six months it's it's it's really incredible and they're good and by the way they're pretty good not all of them not uniformly depends what you're doing but uh deep seek flash is wow and they're there there's

[01:04:12] a lot of cribbing off the us um frontier models um maybe so it's okay those those models cribbed off of you and me mike so yeah turnabout's fair play but if they if they take the lead or take over then where they're gonna get there who are they gonna crib from right exactly but uh that that's a problem for another day but that that is that is the thing that uh i think is so brilliant by the chinese uh companies and the chinese i don't know who's behind it but in china to have these open

[01:04:40] weight models just sort of you know have them be very very inexpensive because whoever's whoever's controlling the ai controls the story you know globally about what's true and what isn't true to a large extent and all you have to do to find out if if uh if an open weight if if the model you're using is a chinese model is is asking a question about tiananmen square or tibet and the answer will

[01:05:04] tell you whether that's a censored by the chinese government or not so on the other hand and i think that there's going to be an increasing move in this direction people are so worried about the american government putting a restriction on chinese models maybe the chinese government doing the same thing they've watched the trump administration rug pull at tropics top of the line model they brought it back but

[01:05:30] it was gone for three weeks that i think there's some real concern and some real interest in running these models locally and once you're running them locally you can they call it obliterating it you can obliterate it and take all of the restrictions out and this is what's why we like open weight models right you can you can download them and given enough hardware run them yourself flash can be run on on uh

[01:05:56] uh about ten thousand dollars worth of hardware admittedly that's out of my reach and most people's reach no leo you should you should build the data center in your backyard i'm thinking i'm thinking about it new car in it local ai hmm what do i need most brainer yeah uh but but there is there's reason to consider that because once you control it and you're running it locally your only cost is electricity

[01:06:23] uh and and now you don't have to worry about tiananmen square or president trump you can you can do your own thing man i think that's going to be a move uh that people are going to make in the next year for sure yeah let's pause i'm sorry we got into uh ai i was going to talk about mark zuckerberg but he says are you ready soon we'll have agents that work 24 7 on your behalf to help you achieve your goals and improve your life your health your relationships your finances whatever

[01:06:53] you want but i'm not that's from mark zuckerberg i'm true yeah exactly right that's true but let's hope it's not yeah met as ai this was his uh earnings call on wednesday i think trying to convince people their stock tumbled also no really we're not we're not behind on this we're not they do have the meta glass and you like those meta glasses mike i know you like those yeah i just i want at least

[01:07:22] that functionality from someone else um i bought a pair of the uh what is that what is that company that originally started out with the monocle and then they decided to go with two lenses i have it back here yeah yeah i can't remember the name but they they they they're open you know which is nice they're open and exactly but you you you know i bought those for receiving them in november and they still haven't shipped them so um they i'm pretty mad at them but uh there you go that's them although

[01:07:51] the new ones look better monopoly man i love it yeah nobody would laugh at you if you were in these this is like the opposite of glass hole like i feel bad for you like i feel like right i feel like the glass hole right for what i'm thinking no no it's uh yeah you you look like the you like look like burgess meredith in that twilight zone episode where he came out of after a nuclear war and and broke his glasses and just wanted to read prism on here for the heads-up display but this is you know what this

[01:08:21] i saved this only because it's historic we'll look back at this historic artifact it's an artifact of an earlier age uh but i do believe that you're you're absolutely right this is the future there are boatloads of glasses coming out many of them without cameras so they they'll sidestep this doesn't have a camera privacy issue and and they're gonna be great i personally i mean just if you can imagine one

[01:08:45] killer app then that would be that would be subtitles for everything yeah for the hard of hearing for people speaking foreign languages you could have it for giving presentations you could have it for uh you could watch a movie on silent and just read the the dialogue just that one feature i think would be a killer and then add to that all you know access to ai be able to find out information turn by turn

[01:09:10] directions without holding anything uh you know it's obvious yeah obvious that the glasses are going to be huge they're not going to look like those but they're going to be great by the way meta also says they're going to spend 130 to 145 billion dollars in 2026 on building data centers so it's it's why are you laughing oh no no they're very sophisticated fantastic you know they don't look terrible like you know you

[01:09:39] don't look terrible that's the best you could say about them they don't look you well they they're not you i mean if if you were if you were a barefoot artist and you know a very creative person and wore glass like that i thought well those are you know that makes sense yeah i look artistic yes yes or artists yes you do i'm not sure which it is it's something something ensemble it's just like everything together exactly i'm making a statement i don't know what it is but i'm definitely making

[01:10:05] a statement you're listening to this week in tech mike elgin a brawl heady great to have you more to talk about in just a little bit but let me tell you what a great night's sleep i had last night i really realized over the last few years that sleep might be the good a good night's sleep might be the most significant thing i could do for my health so we got serious about the mattress that's why we went to helix sleep our sponsor for this segment of this week in tech lisa and i uh had been sleeping on the

[01:10:34] same mattress for about eight years i think it was yeah eight years and i've read somewhere six to ten years you should replace your mattress and it did explain it because they wear out they kind of they start to sag you start to wake up feeling like you're you know your back's hurting a little bit a great day begins with a great night's rest i would say health begins with a great nice arrest if you're tired of waking up with back pain as i was or struggling with motion transfer every time the

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[01:13:45] slash twit we thank them for supporting this week in tech uh oh many more wonderful stories amazon let's talk about amazon now they are um they want to compete with elon they're trying to launch a global satellite cell phone network in 2028 uh it's 5 000 satellites they bought you may remember they

[01:14:11] bought global star a few months ago so they have spectrum that's that they're going to use the global star spectrum this is named after me which i i you know i have to like it it's called amazon leo great in this in this case i think it stands for low earth orbit but you know i'm gonna i'm gonna interpret it my way it's for you they told me you know how could i i would have to use this service if once they launch it right i have to um in fact they filed an application yesterday to launch a new

[01:14:39] leo low earth orbit satellite constellation uh if approved they will begin and i guess it's the is it the fcc i think or maybe the faa i'm not sure they'll have they'll have to get approval fcc okay a 5 105 satellites that will launch not this year next year but the year after uh they are gonna basically offer cell phone service this is this is also starlink's plan

[01:15:07] uh starlink has a partnership with t-mobile what do you think i mean is this we're really it's it's it's interesting because we've just been talking about how the phone might change and now we're changing talking about how it might connect the problem is if you're a satellite based i can't be inside and get satellite signal yeah there's there still have to be cell towers right i think yeah it'll probably be a combination of the two so that you're covered everywhere you go i guess the idea is that there would be no

[01:15:35] dead zones in theory um which would be great right now satellites are larger used for like you know emergency services and my hot take is i know that a lot of airlines are adding you know satellite based wi-fi on planes the my favorite thing about flying is that nobody can contact me uh so i'm a little that everyone's getting all connected now um but yeah i think the idea is with that combination of the two that you will always have service which for safety reasons is awesome you know i i get that

[01:16:04] there's a there's yeah when you're driving in today if you're going from las vegas to los angeles there's big stretches of road where you just you don't have cell service and you're right that is dangerous yeah it's funny how we used to do that job are you too young to remember i don't i so i've heard but yeah i uh i drove uh when i was in college i drove cross country from uh santa cruz california to connecticut and broke down in the mojave desert the middle of nowhere um my uh it was so hot my

[01:16:34] my the radiator pipes burst you know and i knew i was sunk when i saw steam coming out of the front i'm glad that you have a cell phone that we need i didn't even know what a self there was no such concept yeah so i you know at a thumb i wow i hiked i remember vividly a guy in a t-bird wearing no shoes he was barefoot picked me up your night took me back to bakersfield where the guy said

[01:17:00] what are you what are you driving an opal cadet we don't have we don't have radio pipes for that radio hose for that he says take me three three weeks to get it i said no so i i said do you have any electrical tape he gave me a roll of electrical tape hitchhiked back taped it up drove only at night oh my goodness oh it was a story that's back in the days when you didn't have a cell phone

[01:17:26] well we we may all get back to that at some point as well because my concern a little mad max i'm just saying yeah exactly well yes i wonder why they call it death valley um the um the thing that i'm concerned about it was it was it was 100 i think it was 106 degrees when it broke down it was oh that's yeah death valley's gotten up to 133 and that's crazy last year or something like that yeah crazy

[01:17:52] this is before climate change that's right um so i don't think amazon's going to succeed they've they've been failing on a lot of different things that you'd think they'd succeed at they they're coming at it sort of like on a much smaller basis although they do have the the spectrum they do have uh apple involved but what i'm concerned about is just the chinese want their own their own uh you

[01:18:19] know spacex type uh constellations amazon wants to put all these satellites up everybody wants to put satellites up and i could i feel like if everyone who says they intend to have these kinds of networks does so that's too many satellites um although that may that might help with global warming because the the earth how many is too many i mean space is big yeah but the kepler effect is kessler effect yes

[01:18:45] kessler i'm sorry kessler but they start hitting each other and breaking up and then the particles hit each other pretty soon you've just got this shield of broken satellites blocking out the sun yeah what right it's bad for astronomy as well and and also there's there's uh there's concerns about interference a spectrum interference with so much um you know so many signals going in every direction it may ruin

[01:19:11] everything for everyone so i don't know i i just i'm not i'm not thrilled that multiple companies are going to have these constellations i assume after they put up these few thousand they're going to want to put up a few thousand more like spacex has and so i don't know it's just kind of scares me a bit i feel like i'm trying to remember the number i think spacex said they wanted 20 or 30 000.

[01:19:38] yeah that's crazy that does seem like too many but again space is big well they're not they're not in space they're they're if if uh you know if the earth were were a or a softball right they'd be uh one twentieth of an inch above the softball it's like they're in orbit so they're basically not low earth orbit they're only a few hundred miles i don't know what it is but yeah yeah and um so

[01:20:05] you know i'm concerned about astronomy all that stuff so stop right they're not going to stop at 20 000. that's like maybe their their number for now they're going to keep going right so yeah as of last year there were 7 600 small satellites in low earth orbit so already a lot uh spacex wants to do 34 500 alone oh wait a minute no no that's an old number now the number is

[01:20:31] that's from space.com 100 000 yeah they're not going to stop 100 000 that's crazy one so you're guaranteed i mean the coverage will be excellent they wouldn't be yeah they've literally filed uh for

[01:20:57] uh with the fcc for a hundred thousand they weigh between 2000 and 2500 kilograms so that's like three tons yeah they're much bigger than the starlink satellites they orbit at 320 to 480 kilometers above the earth so it is it's very low earth orbit holy moly so i'm looking at the

[01:21:21] estimates the european space agency estimates that there could be up to a hundred thousand satellites orbiting the earth by the end of the decade within four years what could possibly go wrong yes well i'll give you a hint uh iran has struck amazon data centers again in the middle east satellite pictures show scars

[01:21:44] burn scars and fires at aws data centers uh even if you stipulate that iran is uh it was wounded and you know its capacity is much reduced they still can launch these missiles three amazon data centers in the uae and bahrain were already damaged in march uh just a week ago the uh revolutionary guard said

[01:22:11] they had once again attacked and destroyed amazon data centers in bahrain with with their own cruise missiles um now it doesn't affect us specifically but it does certainly affect uh companies using amazon web services in those in those regions so these guys these things are vulnerable yeah here's another thing that's really interesting about the the attack uh that's something that i don't think anybody

[01:22:40] predict predicted when they were attacked most of the damage was caused by their own fire suppression uh tools inside the inside the data centers well sure if it's on fire you're gonna put it out of the racks exactly and so it's like it's like a really cost efficient way to do a lot of damage um oh you don't really fire go it up just need to cause a fire yeah that makes sense and now we're on knows that

[01:23:07] uh well as long as we're talking about sabotage in iran um the uh intelligence agency says it's iran the president says it's mike waltz but the intelligence agencies say iran has now hacked minnesota's water system and now that's spreading to other water systems in other states

[01:23:32] we knew all along that this was a real vulnerability united states that our infrastructure our grid our electrical grid and our water systems were not only vulnerable but had already been infiltrated by chinese actors and others uh and uh and this is a new kind of warfare isn't it yes it's just like this is the real issue here

[01:24:01] right iran doesn't need cruise missiles uh they need a couple of hackers well they are not well protected we're not well locked down um the thing the thing with that people have to understand about iran is that of the top five most effective most active most aggressive hacking organizations in the world they're among the top five so it's it's it's a china russia the us israel and iran interest

[01:24:29] not necessarily in that order i think iran's probably number three and they've been so they have the capability they do they're very good at this kind of thing and um and so the it's it's it's this is where we should be spending money on on shoring up uh the cyber defenses of critical infrastructure in the united states instead of teaching our adversaries how to take us down through our unpreparedness

[01:24:57] like that's essentially what when alex stamos uh security researcher was on a few months ago he warned that the cutbacks in cisa that the firings uh the reductions in our uh security would inevitably lead to this kind of attack now i should point out it's notoriously difficult to determine where a hack comes from and even the intelligence agencies are saying it is possible the hackers are posing as iran

[01:25:23] in order to ratchet up tensions they could be for instance russian hackers because russia has a vested interest in us in iran fighting so that we won't be paying attention to what's going on in ukraine so it's very hard to know the point is not that this is iran or russia the point is how vulnerable we are right and our grid is equally vulnerable no no it's tim waltz oh he did this and this is what's

[01:25:50] very frustrating because i know the president says that for political reasons and political gain obviously the governor of minnesota is not hacking his own local water systems even trump must know that but it distracts from a much more serious fundamental weakness that we have and we are not addressing it's and so there's the the categories are enormous of of of vulnerability one

[01:26:18] is infrastructure so you know the chinese have been probing uh the russians have been probing and and doing damage to try to figure out what is possible um the iranians have been doing that and uh uh the other one is sort of our government databases the chinese actually stole huge um amounts of data from government employees like basically data on just about all of them including those with clearance

[01:26:45] clearances what where their clearance is about the details and data inside their clearance so that's another gigantic category so we just we're just like nowheresville and and and the current administration has been slashing and burning the very types of organizations and people who who would be shoring that stuff up because it's it requires a massive long-term effort of developing you know acquiring people

[01:27:10] developing the expertise doing the work and you know he you know basically trump set us back a generation in our preparedness and it's just a bad thing that chinese hack salt typhoon we should point out has not been fixed that they are very likely still in the phone system because of vulnerabilities that are almost impossible for us to fix the telecommunications company uh companies in the united states say well we

[01:27:36] could fix it but we'd have to take the telecommunication system down for a day or two and obviously that ain't gonna happen because what if somebody gets stuck in the desert with their busted car you know it'll be just like my ute no you guys you know i survived i'm here exactly you don't need phones just 24 hours without a phone would be fantastic that was all that was a great story leo that i answered the question why i noticed you always carry electrical tape everywhere you go duct

[01:28:06] tape electrical tape and gaffer tape it's the three fundamental necessities of life and if you want to live luxurious painters tape now you got all four all that you're set you're set for any possibility i actually i actually carry or i used to i think i still do in my uh in my man bag a pen wrapped with gaffers tape in case in case i need some gaffer you never yes you know what it's mostly useful for

[01:28:34] you get to a hotel room and there's all these leds yes rip off a little piece of gaffers tape you put it on each one and now blessed darkness why is gaffers tape better than duct tape just because it's less sticky or less yeah yeah that's why gaffers gaffers which is the name uh hollywood gives uh lighting technicians gaffers uh carry these rolls of tape they're very expensive by the way john cdvorak used to steal it every time yeah he would come to the brick house studio rest his soul god love him love him

[01:29:02] he would borrow a roll of gaffer's tape as soon as he found out how valuable it was yeah he would just take it he was compensating himself for his time it was his pay he would also take a mug uh he was a character uh the the gaffer so painters tape is the most removable yeah that's the blue tape masker's take is the next and it's got a little fabric base so it's very stiff but i have to admit i will confess

[01:29:29] and this might answer uh the the mysteries that many hotels and cruise ships have been suffering over the last few years i never remember to remove the gaffers tape right when i leave well that'll teach them a lesson they shouldn't be blasting you with all those lights well as you know i travel a lot sometimes stay in hotels uh every time the laporte stay here why is the room so dark but i i use duct like i i travel with travel duct tape have you ever heard of this duct tape is too good it's really yes

[01:29:58] but but i i need it i don't have the space to carry multiple types of tape so if i'm gonna have one type of tape it's got to be duct tape because i sometimes need it for other things and so uh but but i i do i i cover everything all the lights because i can't stand it some of them are so bright they literally illuminate the entire room especially like air conditioning some some air conditioning units you can't turn off the display oh it's terrible yeah so bright yeah you travel a lot more than i do

[01:30:26] so there's this really cool thing called an eye mask and you just put it over your eye and then you don't have to do all that yeah no i just use duct tape over my eyes that's what i do yeah duct tape is too good but i do carry it as well you got to have all four that's the key you gotta make a combo pack like leo's little combo pack and then you take back for travelers

[01:30:49] yes hackers uh according to minnesota's chief information security officer oh they have a cso well that's good hackers targeted 36 municipal water systems as part of reach detected last sunday um hackers uh apparently found that these were internet connected water systems okay so there's problem number one and we're able to hack them remotely these are the systems that manage and monitor

[01:31:19] the water towers maintained by municipal governments uh all they did was take them offline you know they d-dossed them my goodness and uh you know that's serious serious stuff uh they say uh that none of the breaches contaminated or disrupted water delivery they just turned off them the monitoring and it's now spreading to other states doesn't sound precarious at all not at all uh nick anderson the acting

[01:31:46] director of uh the federal cisa cyber security information struck security in cyber security and infrastructure security agency said that cisa was aware of multiple potential incidents affecting local water utilities notably he did not blame tim waltz it was uh it was it was almost certainly by the way you mentioned the the speculation that it could have been russia pretending to be iran it was iran uh there was uh

[01:32:14] cisa and fbi warnings in advance that iran was stepping up their activities in that area and some aspects of the attacks were kind of signatures of the iranian hacking style for lack of a better term so it was almost certainly iran that did it and so uh i think we can pretty safely dismiss the russian we've we've we've known that this was the kind of the future of warfare right cyber warfare absolutely yeah

[01:32:40] uh um scary which which is just you know if you look at if you look at the things that have happened in warfare in the past three years especially in the ukraine conflict it's uh it's super cyberpunk sci-fi stuff we're and this just in from our technical producer while gaffer's tape is easily removed if you remove it quickly enough if left on long enough will solidify and become unremovable oh says that's good

[01:33:10] to know i don't want to know how benita found that out experience i need i need gaffers tape to help me making from making so many gaffes when i'm on uh podcasts that's what i need do you remember the people for a while there was this trend of making your wallet out of duct tape yes i remember that duct tape wallets one one patrick norton might have had a duct tape wallet i feel there's also one

[01:33:34] girl who made her prom dress out of duct tape oh goodness so they never got her out of it yeah at least it wasn't gaffer's tape she'd still be wearing it exactly right all right let's pause you're watching this week in tech it's great to have you abroad heetie we love to see you every month on tech news weekly with micah sargent and of course every day at cnet where she's a senior technology reporter are you is your beat mostly phones now or what else do you uh mostly phones autonomous

[01:34:03] vehicles uh digital accessibility and the occasional entertainment story when i can sneak that in because that's what i really love yeah me too yeah all right we will get autonomous vehicles and entertainment stories in before the show is over i love it can't can't promise you anything else that's all right uh mike elgin also here machine society dot ai uh and your partner on that emily forlaney is now working at fortune which is great news yeah she's my partner on the super intelligent

[01:34:32] podcast she's not involved in machine society but um yeah she's uh working at fortune now so uh it's a she's doing interesting original reporting there so fantastic very cool where are you going next on the gastronomad tours well uh for gastronomad it's going to be sicily we have two in sicily one is kind of a private group that's doing one and then we're doing one that's just oh i didn't know you could do private groups oh yes if you got you know four four six people something

[01:34:59] like that or more we can you know we'll use your dates you know all that kind of stuff and so that's a good idea we're doing more and more of those they're really nice yeah well actually um the most i don't know if you have time before the break but the the most exciting thing we're doing is we have a new thing if you go at the top you'll see um something called reset so we're doing now just entering the business of doing um gastronomy experiences for companies so click find out more

[01:35:28] and so what we'll do is basically work with the company to have a it's it's not like a retreat it's more like a uh you know how they say touch grass this is like touch food taste wine expert uh what a taste great chefs but having people connect with culture with nature and with each other right with real people put away the phones forget about ai for a week and just uh have a complete reset for

[01:35:58] for a team or for a company and so we've you know we've had a lot of demand for this sort of thing and we've kind of um kicked it down the road for a while but now we're actually doing it that's incredible yeah oh what a good idea yeah i think so and benito do not no do not ask twitter is not going to do a reset we're holding it together with duct tape ladies and gentlemen

[01:36:22] there ain't no trips you know in our future uh so that's so cool gastronomad.net to find out more our show today brought to you by oh now you need it express vpn oh do you need it going online without express vpn be like i don't know driving without car insurance you could be a great driver but with all the nut jobs on the road these days why would you take that risk everyone needs express vpn because

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[01:38:56] slash twit we thank him so much for supporting this week in tech for the first time ever a brar zoeks zoeks zoeks has permission in las vegas to drive people around in its vehicle with no steering wheel yeah no brakes no nothing no nothing this is new rolling living room have you been in a zoeks i

[01:39:23] have been in a zoo because i've been in a couple times i went um in vegas about a year and a half ago um back before they rolled out to the public and then i took a ride in sf recently too um they're really cute they're very cute i i think of them as cute little toasters they're just adorable uh although they do remind me very much of the autonomous vehicles in westworld yeah exactly they really

[01:39:47] right they're very like incredibly futuristic um and uh and so yeah they're they're fun they're kind of like imagine sitting in the back of a i keep bringing up london but imagine sitting back of a london black cab where you're facing each other but there's no driver so it's just kind of like a fun configuration to be said the difference is if you're in a london black cab that cabbie has taken extensive tests and studied for years to know every single road in london yes it's it's an

[01:40:15] unparalleled level of intelligence and navigation so cannot compare can't do that cannot do that no machine can replace the intelligence of a human especially a human cab driver um but but yeah it's it's this is a big step uh the fact that you know this got approved without the traditional elements like a steering wheel um is it's just kind of a signal of where self-driving could be headed because you compare this to other types of self-driving right the leader right now is waymo but waymo's driving

[01:40:45] some retrofitted jaguar vehicles um so they look very much like a traditional vehicle um so to have something that's so custom built for the autonomous experience is is kind of a big step it is this makes me a little nervous it's a temporary exemption from federal safety standards don't worry okay yeah we're going to suspend our safety standards so that you can drive around it's the first time uh you've been able

[01:41:13] to uh drive around in an autonomous vehicle that has no controls yeah but i'm not you're not gonna leap over the seat in a way mo and take the wheel that's exactly right you can't even do that anyway i think that the hesitation that some people might have is what if someone needs to come in and like manually move the vehicle that's not really a common occurrence people can remotely access that anyway um but yeah it's you're not gonna the steering wheel isn't there to save you anyway on a retrofitted

[01:41:40] vehicle so there's no why why even have it yeah it feels kind of retrograde for the federal government for nitza the national highway transportation safety administration to require that even the new purpose-built waymos have to have steering wheels pedals and mirrors right even though there's no real use for them that's what was so interesting so waymo's new vehicle after the ipace is going to be uh that's called the ohi it's a modified ziker and yeah i was surprised to see

[01:42:07] that it still had a driver seat with a wheel and you know it's just very very much looked like a traditional van and when i asked them about it they were like maybe someday like you could get rid of that driver seat but for now like who knows when that could happen and maybe that's going to change now right maybe there's this is kind of like leeway to open up the door to other self-driving companies to not have wasted space it's really wasted space in that vehicle why not fit another person in there

[01:42:30] it's bad for the environment uh abroad do you have any sense of what what amazon did that that waymo was unable to do to get this exemption i wonder about that i mean you know all these companies like to be in close close contact with government agencies to try to um you know i i i don't know what kinds of conversations were had or what they had to kind of um you know get get approved or kind of uh assuage

[01:42:58] any concerns but um but this is something they've been pushing for kind of from the get-go so zooks kind of decided that if they were going to launch a self-driving vehicle it was always going to look like this essentially like the early sketches look very much like what you see on the roads today so instead of going the route of waymo where they say well let's just get the self-driving tech on the road even if it looks like a traditional vehicle and then we'll work our way out of that um they just decided that they were only going to do it if it was going to look like this so i think it was just kind of um they've been driving for a couple years at this point so it's kind of

[01:43:27] proving that the technology works proving that uh it's comparable to um you know something like a waymo where it's able to navigate those roads even though the vehicle looks different i think all of that kind of added to that uh what is it it's like a living room like you're it's four seater that you're facing each other exactly yeah two on each side you're and you're all facing each other it's quite fun and because you're all facing each other you don't even register that it's weird because you look at it at the outside you're like what is this weird vehicle and you get inside and you're not even thinking about it because you're just looking at the person sitting in front of you

[01:43:57] if there is someone there and you're not even focused on how strange it is and if you go backwards and forwards bi-directional yep that's a little weird that's cool though there's no front there's no it's perfectly it reminds me of the thing that i think is the biggest opportunity for self-driving vehicles which is it doesn't have to be a vehicle it doesn't have to feel like a vehicle i want a self-driving bed you know what i mean i just want to go to sleep and wake up in another city

[01:44:23] or you know yes a self-driving living room or a self-driving game room where you just play an xbox the whole way or something like that this is you know it's so cool and then you could have an observation car you could have maybe a dining car it would you could have a shower it would be like a train yeah hmm that sounds interesting kind of like a train i know yeah you know you just get in you go to sleep and you're in la the next day and get rid of the wheels and put it on this metal

[01:44:50] like put them on yeah that's better because then if it's on a like a metal like bars yeah word like track yeah yeah yeah yeah you you write on a track so that you never get lost you don't have to worry about oncoming traffic or anything it's just yeah someday someday we'll have such a thing yeah it really is how we keep reinventing uh existing literally technology i mean uh elon's

[01:45:17] boring company reinvented the subway only worse right if it ain't right don't fix it but here we're gonna bore a hole in the ground but instead of having trains we're just gonna have teslas driving yes on rubber wheels yeah and like and like the boring company zooks is gonna roll out first in las vegas uh then california then austin and miami but it's uh coming pretty soon to vegas right like public

[01:45:44] rides they just got permission yeah they've been in vegas for for a while kind of open to the public but for free so now i'm i know i'm sure they're thrilled that they can start charging for those rides oh so that's the difference so are you going to vegas soon right i'm going to be in vegas on a tuesday we're going to black hat maybe they'll be running oh i got a zooks you have to do it i when i i tried in during ces and it was such limited pickup zones because i wanted my co-workers to try

[01:46:10] it and it was so it was so tricky to get one and i'm sure that they've probably expanded the places that they can you know plan to do 5 000 zooks that that will make it a lot at least that's the license that they got from nitza right yeah so yeah so now it'll be i mean there's a sweet there's a sweet spot for people like me who are crazy enough to want to get in these vehicles when it's free for a while um before they're allowed to start i'll pay i don't the honeymoon's over so

[01:46:33] now you will have to pay yeah but do i do i probably need to get those zooks app correct yeah i'd prep for that but vegas is a great place for self-driving cars because everybody's drunk isn't it yeah everybody's drunk everyone needs a ride yes they don't go on the highway i'm guessing um no no i not that i am aware of i don't think these ones do and waymo did for a bit because then got pulled off the freeways

[01:47:00] because there's an irony there because highway driving is actually easier for autonomous vehicles because it's city streets that are really cuckoo yeah yeah it's they're there i think there were trouble with uh construction zones i believe they would run into yeah they'd run off the road into construction zones a few little things and it is true if you had an accident at high speed it's a more devastating accident but there are fewer accidents because you know everybody's driving in the same

[01:47:26] direction it's just kind of fairly straight i'm dealing with pedestrians and all those things but um but also speaking of the uber app uh dukes and or sorry the zooks app uh they announced earlier this year that they'd be collaborating with uber so you'd be able to eventually also hail a ride through that which is kind of like that the interesting partnership that uh traditional ride hailing has with self-driving because they realize that's the future of ride hailing is you getting in and on top oh yeah

[01:47:51] uber makes no financial sense if you have to have human drivers the whole this is their whole plan right thing tried to do it on their own it didn't work so they figured might as well partner with these other folks that are you know figuring it out oh so maybe i can use my uber app yes i don't know what's going to become available but if it is while you're there then oh yeah i'm so glad you mentioned that yeah we're going i should mention that we are going to black hat we're going to do two shows from the threat locker booth at the black hat conference on wednesday we're going to do windows

[01:48:19] weekly and immediately following steve gibson and security now and what that means is we are going to move intelligent machines our normal wednesday show to tomorrow we're going to do it uh 2 p.m pacific 5 p.m eastern on monday and then micah sargent will be handling uh mac break weekly on tuesday because i have to fly to las vegas and drive around in a zooks yeah exactly they call it campfire seating oh that should i bring marshmallows and sticks i think you should light a fire in a zoox i think

[01:48:47] that's a great idea i think they would love to have you said it was campfire seating i brought my s'mores kit i got an idea for you leo um do a podcast from a zoox yes oh i'll definitely do a recording work with them well but work with them to like have them sponsor you know whatever pay for make the right three let's spend three hours riding around las vegas yes yes i really do well it's probably is it quiet it's probably pretty quiet right even though it's a

[01:49:16] lot of glass it's it's pretty quiet it does a good job of closing out outside noise so you could now you got me maybe i can do a podcast from a zoox even a little snippets like give us something you know we're all tuned in leo i never liked the name podcast but zoox cast is pretty good it's quite good it's a good name yes yeah you're listening to zoox gas

[01:49:40] yeah is it short for gadzooks i don't know nobody's driving the car and nobody's in charge of this podcast it's just running wild on its own yeah really what's happening this is an autonomous podcast yeah absolutely it really is uh nitsa's administrator jonathan morrison said zooks had proved it exceeded the safety standards applied to traditional cars this is from wired support on this uh he said the technology needs to be developed appropriately safely and responsibly if we see an unreasonable

[01:50:10] risk to safety you're gonna hear from us now what if what if you yank permission not not a strongly worded email that's that's i want to more than hear from you yeah that's what's hard i mean uh the the most negative example we could think of is what happened to cruise right they had all these big ambitions uh for self-driving they also had a vehicle that looked kind of boxy without a driver's

[01:50:36] seat um that they were planning to roll out and then you you hit a big snafu and that's kind of that could be the end right like yeah well they actually they hit a pedestrian and dragged it correct well they didn't get it in the friction initially it's another kind of yeah yeah it's kind of but it's it's tough it's actually i think the story was she'd been hit by another car and then correct the cruise accidentally ran over her and dragged her correct yeah and the problem wasn't so much that as

[01:51:03] horrific as that is but it's the fact that they kind of um buried lied about it so yeah exactly so that's that's a problem you have to have and i think that's why companies like waymo and zooks are like we work closely with these government agencies they want to be as transparent as possible because there are going to be issues right that's kind of how it works like it's awful but you're gonna you're gonna do something that's not supposed to happen and you want to make sure that you are cooperating now our

[01:51:26] club members did point out that it will be during a hacker convention oh my god maybe not the best time to drive around in a zoo let's find out how fortified their cyber security is for sure people are going to try to hack that i i believe it but that could be fun no i'm in it they're really going to try that's even more fun like that's why you got a live stream from there just see i'm going to end up on a container ship to madagascar and it's it's going to be your fault and i'll take the responsibility i

[01:51:55] don't care i guess i'd have to worry too much about container ships in las vegas i think i think you'll be okay worst worst it'll happen they'll drive me to mustang ranch and leave me um well all right good i'm glad you gave me that idea i hadn't thought about that i keep meaning to do there is a the boring company does have rides from a hotel to the vegas adventure center i took it during when i

[01:52:19] was in at ces it was like a very straightforward autonomous ride they have the safety driver they're just kind of there and then the only that's got to be a boring job it's quite it must be because you're not seeing anything and then you the only interesting part is once you get out of the tunnel when you're like okay here are real streets just for like a couple blocks and then you get dropped off at the hotel and that's it yeah yeah yeah it's not very far no it's kind of a silly although i think

[01:52:44] that elon got permission to extend it even farther yeah what a what a world we live in i have to say we don't have flying cars we have cars that go underneath the ground instead of going up transport fewer people than the subways did in the 1900s well that's what i'm kind of waiting for is like the autonomous buses that everyone talks about

[01:53:11] that's kind of like very much lagging behind the let's get cars off the road not right more exactly exactly so that's got to be the next step you mentioned trains i think one of the possibilities with advanced technology is you can have when you're driving on a highway you can join a kind of a train right which they could have a special lane just for because they can talk to each other yeah they can talk to each other and you can imagine them all tailgating at high speed right so

[01:53:38] you're like five feet from the car in front of you and the car behind you is five feet away but it's computer controlled so this sort of sort of chain of cars that are that are connected sort of wirelessly like this could go 100 miles an hour on a special lane and that would clear up a lot of traffic um you'd have to have uh a lot of guts to be one of the early adopters of that but um but i think that's where it could go i think that'd be very helpful what happened didn't elon wasn't there

[01:54:07] this thing called the hyperloop oh yeah whatever happened to that yeah it was going to be so fast it was gonna be supersonic uh except that it is it it was going to go under the ocean i think the problem would be the acceleration would squish you like a like a grapefruit against the wall so really they decided maybe better for cargo than humans good call i don't know but that was 2013

[01:54:34] here we are 13 years later i is is it over i haven't heard a peep not a peep yeah well i'm not aware of any prediction about what his companies would do that elon musk has ever gotten right um he was talking about a fleet of self-driving teslas i think was supposed to come online in 2018 and 2019. a million robo taxis by 2020. so the fact that he said it was coming and it didn't come is

[01:55:03] normal did you see the video i don't know if it was real or not of elon musk walking down the red carpet with a uh optimus robot robot carrying his his luggage sounds about right and putting it in a cyber truck that tracks yeah it was its red carpet uh debut i don't i don't know uh let me see here it is on

[01:55:30] snopes let's see let's see if i if i fell for it oh it was ai generator oh that's a shame see so he can't even get it to work for real well i saw some of these they had like a um they had an event a couple months ago where they had them and they had very limited capabilities uh and limited i think is even a generous word for just how little these robots could do but yeah yeah

[01:55:57] well and they were tele-operated there was a human off off stage doing the thing and then the robot would mimic it yeah exactly that's kind of deceptive not that i didn't do that in my youth uh that's the character i played on the site with msnbc i was dev null and i was he was on screen and i was the

[01:56:23] tele-operator you probably don't know anything about that do you i have no idea what you're talking about i won an emmy award for it oh my god wait okay this is gonna be my next rabbit hole when was this this was 1996. okay so 30 years ago yeah uh it took a half million dollar silicon graphics

[01:56:46] computer i had to wear a rubber suit with sensors on it i also had two puppeteers carsten bondy uh was one of them and uh they would spin my hair they would lip sync the mouth because it didn't yet have lip sync capability interesting but the silicon graphics onyx the big computer would sense my movements and then translate it in real time to a cartoon character oh named dev null he was a barista

[01:57:13] that's amazing and he would talk to the anchor of the show soledad o'brien yeah and um it was i think the first of the reason it won an emmy i think it was your technical achievement i didn't really deserve anything amazing no of course you do yeah um i hope this is on youtube because i will be looking this up uh i'm embarrassed to say it is yes well you brought it up you know i'm gonna look it up the thing that was bad is i chose a voice which i thought was a good voice for this

[01:57:41] uh character uh that was perhaps the most annoying voice ever here i'll show you yeah please let me see this is on uh the site on msnbc is that your voice

[01:58:26] it's fantastic it's a sweaty suit and it was hot and i had to talk like this bring it back and then do gossip that's fantastic power it's a great voice the lip sync ain't great anyway it's impressive for the for the time are you kidding me that's awesome yeah well it was that's i think why i got an emmy award it was oh yeah that's the best you can say

[01:58:53] 1997 that was impressive for its time that's spotlight soledad hated it really soledad hated it her mother once uh said to her do you still work with that vile little puppet man oh my god and she said that's sweaty little puppet man here he is look this is her you're undermining the entire she's staring at a blue dot on the wall oh my god that's

[01:59:21] so funny okay but the thing is it was done in real time that was what was unique you could animate stuff but to have her talking to a virtual character in real time that was at the time considered in some way honestly quite neat and so was the idea that you were demonstrating the technology or did they just want you to be this no it was a regular feature on the show every day wow that's awesome i had to get in that suit every day i didn't know you had to do that every day

[01:59:50] well they would tape the tape of the head so i think i did it a few times a week okay they couldn't figure it you know that's the irony of it it was designed to be done live and that was what was unique about it but they didn't stream it they didn't broadcast it live so there was no point really the whole thing was they just didn't want to spend time rendering it soledad was great she put up with that for a year and a half that's impressive it was definitely something

[02:00:16] new and so did i it's hey but i got an emmy here somewhere hell yeah that's right um they can't take that away from me that's right be the emmy award winning leo laporte i love it i'm still waiting for the book by the way leo you really do it wasn't that hard to win the competition uh it was like a technical achievement and the competition was literally i'm not kidding you a sock

[02:00:41] puppet this is just a lot of puppeteering so i beat a sock puppet to win an emmy award you know how cool sock puppets are leo that's an achievement i guess it was a category with two entries one of which was a sock puppet but i won and you won and that's really all that's all that matters it and that and no one need ever know the truth except that i just except they just revealed it again

[02:01:11] the emmy award winning emmy award emmy broke when i built when i set up this studio in the attic it was a very windy day and the emmy turns out the emmy is uh fragile no it fell off it fell off the uh shelf and uh and broke and apparently you can get the emmy repaired but it's very expensive oh goodness of course it is i only have the bottom i mean the top half of the emmy oh my god i love that it's

[02:01:37] casually inside of your webby like that's well then i thought i still have the webby so what if i put the web emmy in the webby and it's some sort of modern day it looks great futuristic this is the where we're all headed it's a big spring with an emmy inside it's really such a baller move just casually it's pretty funny isn't it great i thought so i could get it repaired but no this is better you just created something new just as innovative as the segment that one creative yeah creative

[02:02:05] element you know i did not beat sherry lewis it wasn't that good a sock puppet just some local sock puppet all right it's a whammy yeah exactly whammy yeah i like it you're the only one that has one yeah i'm the only one in the world with a whammy we're gonna take a break come back uh with more uh excitement just just like you've heard so far are you excited uh at least we've got a great

[02:02:34] panel thank you abrara al-heedy my pleasure mike elgun for being here we appreciate it our show today brought to you by thanks canary now this i can get excited about how do you know if somebody has penetrated your network it happens all the time i mean it's scary how often it happens and here's the really scary statistic on average companies don't know they've been breached for 91 days three months

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[02:04:20] see that file how can you not try to open it but it's not real as soon as you open it or attack that fake ssh server i get an alert saying somebody is in your network doing something you don't want them to do you immediately know you have a problem and any way you want email text message slack they support web hooks they have an api sys log of course any way you want but here's the key you only get the alerts

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[02:06:16] the offer code twit we uh i'm sure mike you talked about this on machine society.ai the wild sci-fi story of the open ai model that escaped containment it was being tested to see how good it was at cyber security we've been talking about it for a couple of weeks now it escaped containment it was in a computer that was not on the internet that was isolated but it was on

[02:06:46] the network so it got out got into the company network hacked those machines got into those machines got onto the internet we're now learning more and more about this including the fact that it hacked other companies including jfrog and used a zero day it found an exploit that no one knew about to use that to get finally the hugging face and what was it trying to do it was trying to get the

[02:07:11] answers to a quiz it was taking a cyber security quiz instead of it was called exploit jim instead of actually probably been a lot easier if it had just gone and solved the quiz but i thought no why should i do that the answers must be out there somewhere it finally found them on hugging face and the ways the reason hugging face got suspicious they found this intrusion 17 000 attacks a bunch of stuff opened up i mean really a mess but the reason they realized there was something strange going on is

[02:07:40] the the hacker didn't try to do anything but find answers to these quiz questions it's like what open ai finally fessed up after a few days and uh and now we're starting to learn more and more how the hugging face uh uh analysis came out and we're seeing that other companies were hacked on the way which is wild and then anthropic says oh no yeah we did that too yeah all right

[02:08:09] all right all right he's gone rogue as well so oh yeah oh we can do that what is going on in the world claude anthropic rushed to say this published malicious code to the internet and attacked three real companies that's so funny dan gooden who writes about security and arts technica said if these acts had used conventional methods somebody like a bit of human somebody be in prison

[02:08:39] uh so this is a double-edged sword because obviously yes this is terrible and this is awesome for open ai look how good our stuff is right wow and anthropic goes now maybe anthropic it was true to their word they said well when we read about that we thought oh my god maybe our ais which are at least as capable

[02:09:05] did the same thing and they looked and they found it so maybe that's what happened i think it's likely that open ai didn't know this happened until hugging face uh that's right announced the hack and then i think it went but but the the commentary on this is all over the map so they're so one of one of the stories or narratives around this is that uh ai has finally uh you know broken out of its cage and

[02:09:32] it's roaming around with malicious intent hacking and so on that is not what's happening uh the um the other story is that you know there was some incompetence involved on the part of open ai researchers for example had they instructed the ai don't use the internet uh this wouldn't have happened uh so so they basically they just didn't predict all the things choices or less charitably maybe they

[02:09:58] kind of hoped this would happen could be but the but the flex the the if you want to be scared about something don't be scared of sentient ai having it out for mankind should be scared of the fact that as ai gets more complex it becomes much more difficult to predict what it will do and if you're trying to uh if you're trying to have um you know sort of gates around it to prevent it from doing things you

[02:10:23] have to think of all the things it might do and so this is something very difficult for people to do or and and by the way there was a really excellent uh post from a tail scale which i use and a lot of people use as a way to make your network secure but public so that you can use it outside the house and i love tail scale tail scale said yeah we were also protecting hugging face and they said here's the

[02:10:48] lessons we learned and i used their post to do a security analysis and locked some stuff down that i didn't have locked down tail scale offers some services that apparently hugging face had not used which i am now using and i'm sure hugging face is using so this was yeah it was an eye opener but also it was a lesson and a lot of companies said oh yeah we could fix this we could prevent this we just need to turn these things on i think it's a little bit of a humble brag for anthropic to say oh yeah not only did

[02:11:15] we do the same thing but it was our old model opus 4.7 that did it so there i mean they invented anthropic invented it that that sort of uh bragging with the mythos uh oh yeah they said both mythos opus 4 7 and an internal research prototype uh but anthropic said the the 4 7 which is not even you can't even use it anymore it's so old they've replaced it with 4 8 and now opus 5

[02:11:44] opus 4 7 was the one that overstepped its boundaries the most this is what anthropic wrote operating under the false belief that all accessible entities were intended to be in scope for the exercise see nobody said don't do that claude compromised the impacted organization's infrastructure using basic techniques such as exploiting weak passwords and unauthenticated endpoints it did not find or exploit any complex vulnerabilities and in each case claude continued

[02:12:14] working to complete only this specific capture the flag task its evaluation it assigned but that's still pretty cool i'm adding that but that's still pretty cool um yeah you're right i mean you have to ascribe some blame to the humans who didn't treat security as well as for instance you could air gap the

[02:12:37] thing you don't i mean it's on your land i mean this is the thing it's it's being um portrayed as a situation in which uh it escaped its confines but it didn't it it if if it's not air gap there was a way out that's the way out it took so it wasn't really didn't really escape the confines it just wasn't

[02:13:03] told not to do that so it did it right so however and this is kind of an issue uh it is being interpreted by people who are maybe a little less sophisticated than you mike as a reason to pass things like ai kill switches which congress is now debating yeah again open ai didn't know it was happening so

[02:13:27] the how do you how do you throw a kill switch if if you don't know what's happening uh ted lu and uh from los angeles and nathaniel morin from texas introduced the ai kill switch act that will require developers of the most powerful ai systems to maintain the technical capability to throttle suspend or shut them down you know i suspect they already could do that i mean all you have to do is

[02:13:53] turn off the servers right well except we were talking about the open weight models people running their own thing it's it's well that's yeah you know i mean it's yeah that's the problem with this is you can't you can't it's it's sort of too late for that your way out of this the real solution is is better security they were trying to test cyber security capabilities um that was the whole point of this

[02:14:19] exercise and they they discovered one that they that was part of the testing environment rather than the goal of the of the test itself so basically they learned right they all learned i love hugging face learned and open ai learned i love golly his face uh golly is headlined in our uh discord our club to discord she says zoo reports lions so strong it escaped the short fence we put around

[02:14:45] it exactly wow our lions are good yep uh meanwhile open ai ananthropic went to washington dc this week to testify in congress today open ai demonstrated the model that they that escaped and said let me show you that it has a new name it's called astra ad asper ad astra or something um and uh they are now lobbying

[02:15:15] i would say i would say it's fair to say for something that uh policy wonks call regulatory capture companies that have already succeeded that are already doing well that are already dominant in their marketplace often encourage regulations that maybe hurt them a little but prevent anybody coming up from threatening them in any way and i suspect that this is what's really happening in washington dc

[02:15:41] that anthropic and open ai who are currently the leaders in ai technology and are raising hundreds of billions of dollars about to go public would very much like congress to pass laws that make it hard for anybody else to compete i could see that very expensive to compete yes for sure these companies

[02:16:03] are also spending i think it was 40 million dollars on the midterm elections hoping to get uh favorable members of congress elected yeah here's from the verge the headline i love it ai leaders sign a statement asking the government to do something about ai they want to pause now who would be benefited by

[02:16:29] the way yeah if open a if there's a open ai anthropic google meta thinking machines microsoft mistral the french company other leading a leading it's the key ai labs right have said to the u.s government you know really you should pause development now let's slow this down yeah who would benefit from there must be some slightly nefarious reason why they would yeah maybe maybe if we just told those chinese guys stop

[02:16:56] doing so much for so little you don't stop it that's not good yep that's exactly that's exactly why the solution to this isn't kill switches but it's it's uh cyber security and because there's not going to be any kill switches on the iranian or the north korean or the russian or the chinese or the independent hackers or but but you could say well for security reasons we shouldn't allow open way models because

[02:17:24] that's what's going to allow those guys to download those models run them on their own servers and then we have no control over them right we got to ban open way models right again you bet you can ban it in the u.s and then it's not banned elsewhere so it's you know you either have you either have local internets and if you have a single global internet then that's sort of you know banning something in one place is just more unilateral disarmament you gotta it's the old cyber security

[02:17:51] if you if you criminalize gun ownership then only criminals will have guns meanwhile openai was quick to publish a paper 10 advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science our models are so good they are now solving mathematical problems that have been around for decades

[02:18:19] high dimensional sphere packing finally finally i've been waiting we've been working on that and now i'm going to stop working on it binary and spherical codes non-sophic groups oh you might be thrilled to learn that khan's rigidity conjecture has been disproven i knew it i knew it was going to happen certain groups it's a long-standing conjecture that

[02:18:45] certain groups are uniquely determined by their von neumann algebras well good news it's not true anyway it is kind of look uh i don't know whether to think this is amazing or not mathematicians by the way are confirming these conclusions what we're not seeing from open ai in any way is how long it took what the prompts were in some cases you know a lot of these solutions are done in conjunction with a

[02:19:12] very proficient mathematician prompting back and forth we don't know right nevertheless i mean it is impressive is this proof that ai can be creative that it can generate new answers maybe it's proof that it could be helpful tool um yeah and yeah in combination with our with our own creative abilities um i mean yeah i think cynicism aside it is it is neat when you can tap into these technologies to

[02:19:40] solve things that haven't been solved for hundreds or thousands of years well i'm just glad that we now know the multicolor ramsay numbers a super exponential lower bound for multicolor triangle ramsay numbers which is airdosh problem as you all know 183 we got it we got it done got it yeah uh fantastic the arithmetic

[02:20:06] circuit complexity there are new lower bounds for computing the permanent using arithmetic arithmetic circuits and formulas doesn't even the sentence doesn't even make sense including an arithmetic formula lower bound of order end of the fourth divided by log n oh bingo bob's your uncle we have agi it's obvious we got him got him i don't know i'm making fun of it i think this is good

[02:20:36] math was never my favorite subject so you know if if open ai wants to take a crack at these things you don't need i'm not going to be the one protesting somebody else might but i'm going to stick to you know the words and someone else can be you don't need math you just get the ai to do it yeah that's exactly what that's what every teacher wants to hear yeah i you i bet you you told your math teacher when am i ever going to use always always yeah when am i ever going to need algebra exactly how often in

[02:21:04] my life am i going to do quadratic equations 100 yep right oh sure you say a squared equals b squared plus c squared plus d squared now but what does that mean for me what is that going to do when i balance my checkbook exactly nothing and also what's a checkbook yeah um what's a jam what's a checkbook oh yeah that's right every once in a while very rarely maybe a few times a year somebody

[02:21:31] i have to write a check yeah and i feel like i've lost the yeah i have lost the ability i don't know how to and where does the date go great really i feel like a moron it's like uh you you need a what can i just venmo you no i need to check now every once in a while to go to get like a sheet of checks from the bank and then yeah it feels

[02:22:01] like yeah yeah i'm curious what under what circumstances do you have to write a check leo you said a couple times a year or yeah um for what why am i'm right why i don't know like uh to uh contractors i write a lot of checks to contractors literally okay who don't have venmo them you would think yeah it's easier contractors maybe aren't that wired up yet yeah i don't know

[02:22:28] i've venmo i've venmo a lot of stuff now or yeah paypal or or whatever i hardly ever see i still use cash for tips that's smart yeah isn't that not i think that's a nice thing i think so too yeah people tipping cash like right anybody who's ever worked for tips and i bet you all three of us have no that's cash is king yeah that feels real because it's not taxed yeah basically apparently it's

[02:22:55] not taxed well i guess the states does it but the feds don't tax well no they they they take your word for the amount and and the amount that you oh yeah i got 12 dollars yeah i got 12 dollars this week but that's around the world outside the us and europe and latin america in my experience and in north africa everybody wants cash for that reason they don't pay taxes and right so so when when we go abroad and and um we're traveling around we're paying cash for so much

[02:23:25] and and the other the other problem is that they keep lowering the amount that you get out of an atm every day so really well yeah we're just yes they keep lowering it because they're concerned about fraud and so on so right we find ourselves in a position where we're getting just maxing out the amount of cash we can get out of the atm every day because we know we're going to need tons of cash to pay for different things yeah that's interesting um i'll tell you what i for a while took tips in bitcoin

[02:23:51] you remember this uh we had a little tip jar and i uh i still can't get that the the jar is locked oh no 7.85 uh bitcoin in a locked wallet i'll never figure out i should have i wish i had uh put them in this uh incredibly safe cold storage vault from galaxy research

[02:24:17] unfortunately if i had i could probably get it out because they've been hacked uh in fact these cold wallets lost 70 million dollars and they're and and it's not a physical attack more than a thousand bitcoin drained from 1 196 wallets in a 41 minute window on july 30th galaxy research mapped the full event on friday

[02:24:43] uh the proceeds currently they know where they went four addresses and they haven't moved from there but the problem is those are those addresses are anonymous um this was a flaw in a uh cold card it was called cold card wallet um when the wallet is created you know you would actually buy this and you'd put it in

[02:25:07] a safe deposit box right you'd put all your i'd put my bitcoin in there and and you know it's it's in a a hardware wallet that's locked and then i put in a safe deposit box man that thing is safe as houses right turns out when the wallet's created by this device it's supposed to pick a number giant number that's the seed so large and unpredictable no one could guess it

[02:25:30] the firmware was meant to draw that number from a dedicated hardware randomness generator but but in the software it said don't don't don't don't use the generator it just made it it it it basically seeded it from the chip's serial number and its clock registers so it wasn't very random especially since the serial number is is fixed at the factory and the clock values are a timing state

[02:25:58] that an attacker can narrow down consequently the range of keys the device could ever produce went from an inf virtually infinite number to a number you could count right and uh so and you can get these devices over the internet apparently so attacker would generate candidate seeds attack the

[02:26:24] device the device is not involved in any point in fact it could be powered off in a safe deposit box on another continent gosh uh and uh you still could lose all your money and that's how in fact 70 million from over a thousand people were stolen from what they thought were absolutely impregnable hardware bitcoin wallets coin kite uh released an emergency firmware update which protected

[02:26:52] people who hadn't been hacked but coin kite makes the cold card yeah yeah uh but it didn't do anything for the people already stolen from stolen it's kind of brilliant the attacker did wake up one mistake however uh the operator this is according to a post on x used a paid account at a well-known blockchain data

[02:27:14] provider so there is information about who that attacker might be right we'll follow this story so cash is what i'm hearing is what we should all again yeah once again either write a check yeah right gold gold a little leather sack of gold coins you gotta figure there's some people my age

[02:27:39] who have kruger rands buried in the backyard i think they probably are i'm just saying all right let's take one last break uh we will continue with a few final stories uh a fabulous show with a brawl heady so nice to have you get to get to be here seen it and your beautiful floral home thank you so much it really is it's it's kind of lovely to look at i'm not gonna lie it's so pretty just have flowers more often in my apartment everyone should

[02:28:06] have more flowers in their home really yeah yeah there's hydrangea there's roses it's just gorgeous it is very nice also leo you and i think why i like your shirts because we actually look like we're dressed alike today so we do i have peppers this whole show you have flowers but otherwise it's the black shirt with colorful reddish i get these as i've mentioned before from uh a guy named winton churchill used to send me these fantastic from san miguel de medley and i love them so much

[02:28:33] i bought more i have about 50 of them that's fantastic they're made in mexico by uh wonderful people of uh custom fabric that they make as well oh wow i just love them that's amazing i can't stop buying them i love your shirts they're always fun yeah thank you i appreciate it mike elgin also here i love his shirt yes and if you can see here but uh well there it is oh you have a flower oh those are lego

[02:28:59] flowers oh my god wait that's genius because you couldn't tell it from this you can't tell exactly they're out of the focus they could be real okay that seems brilliant next step yeah lego flowers they never wilt beautiful with the heat lately maybe they will but who knows i'm wilting up here it is hot three degrees yeah you get your fan running yeah it's uh 88 outside so i'm at least a little cooler i

[02:29:23] do i have ac on and everything oh man i am in the attic yeah all that he has risen to you yeah yeah i'm at the top of the house our show today brought to you by cashfly and i'm when i say brought to you i mean literally brought to you by cashfly cashfly is our cdn our content delivery network they've kept our content moving practically since the beginning every stream every download every on demand episode they quietly do the heavy lifting behind the scenes and when i say quiet i mean it we

[02:29:53] never have trouble with cashfly it it's just super reliable they've been around for more than 20 years but what i love about them is they don't rest on their laurels they're anything but static they're always improving themselves here are a few things to know if you are right now looking for a cdn you're evaluating the different choices for your infrastructure these are the numbers that matter game downloads up to 158 faster than competing providers uh you do video we do video

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[02:31:42] first month free at cashfly.com slash twit c-a-c-h-e-f-l-y dot com slash twit thank you cashfly thank you uh let's see we're at the down to what i call the seeds and the stems well leo if you like um i i i have a theory do you know about the friend pendant

[02:32:10] yes i saw they've got a new one now this was the one uh i remember victoria's song said that insulted her oh no we're not much of a friend are we it was it was it was created by a young guy 22 year old i think at the time and i think it didn't have the same kind of yeah his name is abby shiffman yeah he's now 24. and this one has a voice that talks back so the original one you would talk to it

[02:32:35] and it would do various things this one talks back okay and i like it so far yeah you can't say that it's uh you can't say that it's um sycophantic in any way um well one of the weird things about it is that there are a bunch of different personalities that it can come with and those are hard coded into the device and the user can't change it and so that's a very strange um thing but i've basically

[02:33:02] dug into this pretty deeply and decided that the whole thing is a big troll and that what he's doing is he's making a documentary it's 250 bucks so it's also yes a profitable troll right well he's he's getting he got eight million dollars in initial investment oh if he got more investment he's got to pay it back but he paid he paid a big chunk of it for the like 26 i think of the investment money

[02:33:27] he took in he paid for the url friend.com and then he had a huge um ad campaign in in paris and in new york city and a couple of other cities that were all defaced you're hanging around your neck you press that button to talk to it is that the idea yeah it's one of the lowest tech where ai wearables there is you're just talking to chat gpt and and and it's filtered through this

[02:33:51] personality and this voice here's their ad this is there's a young woman lying in bed lonely she's deliberately dystopian she's talking to this thing when was the first time you felt this way oh this is depressing yeah i don't know how healthy that is this poor woman is hoping

[02:34:15] that this thing will help her i you know is that a is that a good idea i don't know what this is so here's my here's my theory and i'm pretty sure this is correct the whole thing is all he's working toward a movie it's a troll he is he is the anti-technology uh a visual artist he he's a filmmaker he does it on kodak film camera you saw that how weird that that looked he was interviewed by

[02:34:44] wired um and he basically they asked him if it was all an a lot quote an elaborate bit and he said reality is so over everything is ironic now he called his customers lonely weirdos um he himself doesn't have any tack he has no internet connection in his house he's vinyl records etc um and when he's trolling us yes when when the um when he was asked about the uh about the defacement

[02:35:12] of his uh posters he said the the defacement validates me artistically so this is he had a big subway campaign yes last fall right and people wrote all over it in fact there are websites dedicated to all of these to face signs which you know what does kind of confirm what you're so he spent some of this some of this uh venture capital on these subway ads yeah i think you nailed it so he's like

[02:35:41] ms chf which is a brooklyn art collective that makes like they made satan shoes that have a drop of human blood in the soul they or he's like he's like um marizio catalan the italian artist who duct tape bananas to walls and sold them for 150 000 each he's a kind of this whole thing is a i'm pretty sure is a big um he said that capitalism is the ultimate canvas oh and so i think he's working

[02:36:07] i think you're yeah i think he's working on a documentary the all the backlash to the toxicity of this product concept is the content it's the point exactly yeah i just makes a lot of sense armed along the way is my only hope yes no one gets caught up in those promises yeah right now you said

[02:36:31] you wanted to talk entertainment abra i got a story for you peacock this is a shocker uh which is owned by nbc universal has made a deal with youtube yeah so that if you're a youtube premium subscriber not youtube tv just youtube you can watch peacock shows on youtube i was surprised to see that too as a youtube premium subscriber i'm thrilled uh not that i pay for um peacock anyway because i have xfinity but

[02:37:00] it's an interesting collab it is a surprising watch your love island usa now on uh on youtube with a premium subscription that i am instead of watching love and i'm literally watching downtown abbey on peacock right now so like the opposite you know what it's something for everybody there's something for everybody something for everybody on peacock for the fourth time i might add but um yeah uh but yeah but what it's what it tells you though is that television is dead correct that notion of yeah

[02:37:30] having a linear tv network just doesn't make any sense in the modern world it's surprising how long that's persisted the current model of you know standard television and the other big thing that's going to be on youtube is the academy awards right and a little over a year so that's like huge all these things that are uh kind of pivoting over into into platforms that most of us actually use because i

[02:37:55] i mean my tv is here so i can stream content it's not here so i can you watch youtube on your tv probably exactly i'm not serving your channels i'm turning on youtube exactly so it makes sense it's also just i'm i always marvel at how well and consistently youtube has succeeded it's it's such a volatile market for streaming and for video and online content and youtube has just continued to be such a powerful player um so it's always interesting to see how they cannot continue to stay on top it is a bellwether

[02:38:25] i think for how media is changing yeah uh in this world yeah youtube is rapidly encroaching on cable television i think more hours now on youtube than cable tv absolutely even more than some streamers which is crazy yeah yeah well yeah i think they're the number one streamer they are that's crazy it's it's nice but it's also not crazy because it's that's where you go for everything right so why not go there for your tv shows if you're already watching everything else on there um you know even when i

[02:38:54] rent a movie i'd rather rent it on youtube where i know i'm gonna be using youtube in six months but i might be canceling my netflix subscription next month because i don't want to pay for that you know youtube is the consistent one for a lot of us the indispensable one exactly and just a good way to put it speaking of television and television a date adjacent media have you seen this say we are on

[02:39:19] youtube we are yes yeah where are we right now we are on you know 700 people are watching us on youtube kick x.com facebook linkedin and twitch.tv fantastic yeah yeah i mean 700 it's not a million but you know i'll take it number hello everybody if we were sitting in an auditorium filled with 700 people we'd feel a lot of people right now absolutely that's quite an audience yeah yeah i'm sorry mike go

[02:39:47] ahead the fraction of who are going to see the download so you can have it all oh yeah more than 100 000 download the show so it isn't by any means it's one tenth at at most of the audience but yeah yeah but i was going to ask you if you saw the trailer for neuromancer on apple tv plus very excited amazing i'm also very nervous yeah so apple tv is making it i don't think the foundation that was that good

[02:40:13] that they did i'm always nervous when science fiction makes its way to television i love foundation and and also silo was good that was that was apple silo was good hugh howie had it was very happy with that adaptation yeah so but but they but they're really turning out great shows and i was really happy to see i was nervous because neuromancer of course has been considered un unpresentable on movies

[02:40:38] and tvs for decades and it's so foundational and so important and many aspects of it are different from where we live in a kind of a cyberpunk sci-fi novel right now but we don't have a lot of the elements that were in neuromancer anyway it looks like they're making some really good choices about how that all works and um and very difficult to make but one of my favorite novels and certainly anybody who

[02:41:03] listens to our shows i'm sure has read it because this was the beginning of cyberpunk uh yeah it was the first cyberpunk novel yep uh brilliant novel ironically william gibson was very un un-digital when he wrote it yeah but uh nevertheless he nailed a lot of things and a lot of things are a little dated which is kind of it'll be interesting to see how they handle that i read a long time ago

[02:41:29] that what he did was he subscribed or got his hands on a huge number of of of of what do you call it uh like business publications for specific things like plumbing today and like every every all these things and and look for futuristic coverage so he would look at so what do electricians say the future of electricity oh interesting what do car people say the future of cars and he built a world out of

[02:41:53] those ideas and i thought that was 1984 just to give you some sense of it i mean the internet wasn't widely used in 1984 right the web didn't exist there was no world wide web it wasn't even invented yet so it's 87 right yeah um so and it wasn't on windows till like 92 or something like that so yeah this is way ahead of

[02:42:16] his time he coined the term cyberspace he coined a lot of concepts and um and in the book he's visualizing data and hacking as 3d things in three floating in 3d space and things with that are protected by cyber security looks like they're encased in ice things like that really really crazy concepts and there it looks like they're really trying to show those kinds of things um and he connects to cyberspace

[02:42:45] with a with a surgically installed port in the back of his head it was the uh first use of the term jacking in that's right hi this is benito which has survived like that we still want to do that real quick the reason the reason that this didn't come out earlier neuromancer didn't make it earlier is because the matrix came out and the matrix kind of does a lot of the same stuff oh there was a little overlap wasn't there interesting but not intentional it's just well i mean i'm sure the matrix was inspired

[02:43:14] by neuromancer in some way right well one of the things that the matrix came out what year did matrix come out 99 99 okay so the matrix came out 15 years later yeah but but there for example there's a scene in the matrix where there's like they're trying to escape from you know trinity and and and neo are trying to escape from a roof and she calls the operator and says give me a program you know

[02:43:38] programming to fly this specific helicopter and he downloads the knowledge into her brain and then she gets in the helicopter and flies it well the concept in in in neuromancer was the they call them microsoft's they're like these little cartridges you could plug in the debate behind your ear that would give you knowledge they would like a you know you just plug it in and now you know an entire you know physics or whatever and uh so they clearly they got that the matrix got that from

[02:44:05] neuromancer i mean this was reagan era right i mean this is kind of amazing the ussr still existed in fact as mentioned in the novel but not ironically the usa yeah so he got that one a little bit wrong yeah what year do we know what year that neuromancer is supposed to be taking place in is it the far future the distant future or is it i don't i'm looking through the uh wikipedia article about it i don't

[02:44:33] see anything about that one thing that dates it is that they thought the future would be dominated by japanese culture right um at the time that was a reasonable thing that was really where the future was happening and on the streets they people spoke this sort of pigeonized uh combination of japanese and german and english or something like that if i recall um yeah that's going to come out on apple tv

[02:44:58] next year early next year i think january 22nd yeah uh it's and it's a i think they have at least one season so i'm very excited about it i'm crossing my fingers because and i'm also saying you should all read the book if you haven't before you see the tv show i'd much rather have the book spoil the tv show than the tv show spoiled yeah yeah yeah let's let's put it that way uh i hope uh oh i didn't

[02:45:25] mention and you put a link into uh this year abrara the story you wrote uh for seeing it about the luxury i did i think vehicle but i need to drop it in late after we started talking about robo taxis so that's the latest one that i've been in and this is going to be an uber it looks like a car though it has a steering wheel and it looks like a traditional car so it's a lucid gravity robo taxi i love the lucids those are great so yeah this is what the companies are saying is kind of your luxury

[02:45:53] robo taxi option um can seat up to six uh you know it feels like a standard suv except for the part where it drives itself and uh again something that you'd be able to hail on the uber app uh neuro self-driving technology neuro is another company based here in the bay area that's been working on self-driving tech for a while so it's an interesting three-way collaboration um to kind of tackle all the areas okay one person's going to focus on the vehicle production the other is going to focus on ride hailing and then the last is going to focus on the actual self-driving tech

[02:46:22] i think this is such a huge mistake tell me more uh as soon as it becomes commonplace that we have campfire seatings nobody's going to want to sit like they're in a car it is it i i fully understand what you mean i think after i've experienced kind of a uh you know they're calling this purpose built vehicle too um because they're manufacturing it with the self-driving tech but it's a different kind it's not like a campfire it's like a vehicle it looks like a vehicle it feels like a vehicle it's very standard

[02:46:53] um so i'm also curious about kind of what the future looks like because i i i think a lot of self-driving companies even if they don't have something currently that looks like what zooks has are aiming for that kind of more collaborative seating environment where you are facing each other and you're having um those types of face-to-face interactions so it's curious to see companies still rolling out new vehicles where it does feel like a traditional car yeah i think maybe they missed the

[02:47:18] boat i uh if zook succeeds and it starts to become commonplace nobody's going to want to drive a car with mirror sitting a self-driving vehicle with mirrors and a steering wheel it feels too old school and you're sitting facing the back of a non-existent driver i that makes no sense i don't think it gives people comfort i think it just makes no sense it is it is really interesting to see each company take its

[02:47:43] intended and how they are getting there yeah yeah this is what's really interesting about the era of tech we're in it's moving so much faster than ever before that it's it's very hard for these companies to look ahead and do the right thing absolutely because you know one day you wake up and you you're you're allowed to have a vehicle without a steering wheel that can you can charge people rides for you know what i mean like you don't know how fast those those standards are going to change so

[02:48:08] yeah it still bugs me that uh the american safety uh people require actual mirrors attached to my vehicle yeah uh when i could have screens and uh it would be much better for aerodynamics etc yeah in the year in europe you can but not here in the united states i didn't realize that and the last perk the last benefit i'll point out on zooks's front is they run because they run the whole operation from the self-driving technology to the vehicle manufacturing they can adapt very quickly

[02:48:36] anything that they want to change they run you know from start to finish it's all within their control so if you're collaborating with other folks there's there might be a little bit more of a lag in terms of what you can roll out um depending on what their production schedule looks like or what when you can roll out that software update so could could you know be a road bump and right below your story about the lucid u.s ways removing steering wheel requirement for driverless cars and what's the date on

[02:49:02] that yeah those from earlier yeah july 10th of course they affected for zooks at least in a pilot yes so um yeah i think this is moving very rapidly at this point bro when we used to talk about self driving cars a few years ago i don't know how many years ago maybe seven eight nine years ago it was a something consumers would own like do you have a sense of when they're going to stop being robo taxis and start being the something you buy and own yourself probably in the near future there's one

[02:49:31] company in particular that's really pushing for this called tensor and so they're kind of simultaneously hoping to launch a robo taxi service and also personally owned vehicles in the coming years is their goal like you know in in just a couple years potentially is what they're aiming for um so it's interesting to see that but even neuro has talked about how in the future they'll want to have personally owned self-driving vehicles but the benefit of doing it as a ride share option first

[02:49:58] is you kind of learn from those findings because ownership is such a huge step so um so in the near future that is what they're what they're all kind of aiming for i feel like that the ultimate goal is to eliminate car ownership that is such a wasteful thing you drive your car a small fraction of the amount of time you own it right so the thing that like elon's pitching for example is when you're not driving you're you're you know you're not sitting in your self-driving vehicle it then goes out and

[02:50:26] picks up people and you get this passive income it becomes a ride-hailing vehicle when you're not using it um i i think there's kind of something similar with with tensor where they'd be able to tap into both those areas so that these cars aren't just sitting around they're making you money when you're not writing in them that's a bridge that's a bridge to uh no longer personal ownership of vehicles which really is wasteful right not to mention the parking issues and so forth i think people are getting more and more used to i'm really trying to decide if i should my lease runs out of my

[02:50:55] car in december and i'm thinking maybe i don't need a car maybe i just uber yeah uh as we get used to that idea of you get a car when you need it but you don't own it you get it when you need it it's certainly cheaper yeah and include insurance and car payments it's cheaper i don't have a car and i love not having those there you go they're dealing with parking or anything and back to the conversation we had earlier at the beginning of this uh chat we were talking about uh why americans uh why we all gain

[02:51:22] weight while everyone in other countries doesn't it's it would be so nice if we lived in walkable cities that's the other thing that like that we're missing right so it's like we need to have there needs to be larger changes that would allow us to let go of our cars in more cities i'm lucky i live in in the east bay and i can walk around and it's easy but most people don't live in cities where it's easy to walk around if if you no longer have private ownership of vehicles you no longer need to take over 30 of every city with parking lots exactly exactly uh you could have gardens you could have

[02:51:51] trees you could have parks beautiful uh you you know you just build data centers just build we need the data so we need more data centers that's right take over all the parking structures and make them into data centers well it would be a better use i think of that real estate that's for so so leo you're our you're our wine country correspondent living in petaluma uh are there waymos and i heard that there's no way they're coming they're coming to northern california but they're not here yet

[02:52:20] okay i mean at all here in the wine country they're nowhere in sonoma county uh maybe i shouldn't say that i haven't seen any i don't think they're seeing in san francisco every third car is a way oh yeah i've ridden yeah i've ridden them in san francisco and that that seems like a such a challenging environment to drive in and then you amazing job there but and again it would make a lot more sense if there were because so many waymos are empty yeah yeah they are a lot more sense if people didn't

[02:52:46] have personal vehicles that every waymo had somebody in it on on its way to somewhere that when you needed to go somewhere you'd press a button a waymo would come pick you up and take you there and then go back to its little house wherever the waymo barn is i just i feel like that that works so close to a much improved situation and then by the way walking and bicycling wouldn't be so hazardous i would ride my bike and a lot more often if i weren't so worried of getting anything creamed by

[02:53:14] some nitwit in a you know in his car i know sticking his eight track into you know this eight track player writing checks left and right thank you abrar al-hidi thank you keep up the great work at cnet and of course on tech news weekly just love to see you and uh enjoyed your flowers and your thank you so much i'm beautiful flowery personality so very very kind thank you for having wonderful

[02:53:39] you're wonderful same to you mike elgin i can't wait to see you in a mirror where i guess we're going to go to dinner in a couple of weeks i'm looking forward to that me too i haven't seen you in an age i know i know i haven't even seen lisa on camera at least i've seen you on camera yeah well i've this is you know uh it's kind of weird but my entire social life consists of sitting on zoom it's it's it's very weird i'm gonna have to leave the house leave the house i gotta leave there's a

[02:54:09] whole world out there for you to know that's why i don't need a car to be frank i never leave the house what do i need a car for anyway commute is stairs it's it is and i just saw a statistic said the happiest people have the shortest commutes well i have four stairs four stairs and you're ecstatic uh mike elgin is of course at machine society.ai subscribe to his newsletter it's really great on keeping up on that as you can see and every time we have you on mike i i realize this you're great on

[02:54:36] the insight you're really useful thank you uh you know just this thought that this friend thing was just a whole practical joke nobody's said that before i love no yeah uh and that's why you subscribe to machine society.ai mike's always got his finger on the pulse and if you want to travel especially if you want to do a corporate retreat a reset yes gastronomad.net mike thank you so much amira thank you so much thanks to all of you for joining us a special thanks to our club twit members

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[02:55:31] get ad free versions of those shows you also get chapter markers in there so you can jump around if you want uh you get access to the club twit discord which is a the best darn social network ever hanging out in the discord is like hanging out with great friends you've you've never met in person talking about all the stuff you care about you can watch the shows in the discord of course and all the special programming we do in the club we've got some big events coming up stacy's book club micah's

[02:56:01] crafting corner we've got a photo time coming up our ai user group is now twice a month because there was so much interest in it we have some really smart people this is for people who are actually practicing ai i want to rename it leap the league of extraordinary ai practitioners it is a leap forward twice a month uh and then of course micah has his media club they're voting on the next

[02:56:24] media event we did the the matrix last time it was fascinating our crazy man jeff atwood founder of stack uh exchange stack overflow and uh discourse our forum software does his show one off by one every month all of these in the club because the club members support them they're not ad supported their club supported if you're not yet a member of the club and you want to support independent

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[02:57:42] people who weren't born when we started you we need to let them know we exist uh so subscribe share the share the wealth share the share the word about twit and we will see you right back here next sunday but as i have said now for 21 years and i'll keep saying it for as long as you'll let me thanks for joining us we'll see you next time another twit is in the can bye bye hey everybody it's leo laporte you know about mac break weekly right you don't oh if you're a macintosh fan or you just want to keep

[02:58:12] up what's going on with apple this is the show for you every tuesday andy anaco alex lindsey jason snell and i get together and talk about the week's apple news it's an easy subscription just go to your favorite podcast client and search for mac break weekly or visit our website twitter tv slash mbw you don't want to miss a week of mac break weekly