Windows Weekly Episode 862 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Kotharatz here. Richard Campbell is here. We're going to talk. Finally, the first show of 2024. Finally, microsoft just admits that they have killed Windows Mixed Reality. I guess we saw it coming. Moment five coming next month. There are new versions in the Dev Channel and Canary Channel of Windows 11. We'll talk about that. Microsoft 365 is too complicated to use and the New York Times sues Microsoft over AI. It's all coming up. Next, on Windows Weekly. This is Windows Weekly with Paul Therade and Richard Campbell, episode 862, recorded Wednesday, january 3rd 2024. One click to malware.
01:02
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02:21
Collide is designed for companies using Okta. It works with macOS, it works with Windows, it works with Linux, it works with all mobile devices. So if you have Okta and you're looking for a device trust solution that respects your team, visit collidecom slash ww to watch a demo today. See how it works. That's kolidecom slash ww. It's time for Windows Weekly. Hello Dozers, hello winners. Here we go again in 2024. Happy New Year to our wonderful panel of Windows experts. Mr Paul Therat from Theratcom, the author of so many fascinating books, like the Delphi 10 Bible and that kind of thing. No, and Windows, what do you call it? Windows 11. Sure, hi, paul, good to see you for a new year. Happy New Year. New Year. Richard Campbell also here from Run Is Radio and Dotnet Rocks. He's in Madeira Park, british Columbia.
03:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Someday I'll finish that darn book on the history of Dotnet, but not today.
03:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
He's still working on it. You know someone I Richard. You know someone who could help you with that?
03:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, people who could help me with that? Would you actually do that, Paul? Are you that generous? Of course.
03:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I would. I volunteered, I would be happy to help. Wow, that's nice.
03:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think that's got to be my mission this year is get the damn thing out, get it over with, get past it.
03:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Your resolution, as it were.
03:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah.
03:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's cool. We would all love that.
03:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
My first resolution was I was going to take pictures of all my food. I did that for the first meal in the new year and then I was real comfortable breaking that resolution. It's a terrible thing to do.
04:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Don't ever do that, so I did it once. Now I break it down. My resolution is to eat all meals.
04:08 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There you go.
04:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what I'm going to do with them.
04:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well that's when I don't have to.
04:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I like resolutions, I can actually achieve Right. So here we are again with Windows Weekly. I'll tell you, the big thing in my world is Microsoft has put Bing Chat on my iPhone, your iPhone, yeah, and for free. I like that you still call it Bing. Chat. But what is it now? What do you call it Copilot? Oh yeah, yeah, it's Copilot.
04:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It says Copilot With a healthy side helping of ChatGPT4. We're going to talk about this.
04:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, I pay yeah, I pay 20 bucks a month for ChatGPT. So my question to you, which I know you will answer soon, is does this replace? Does this replace that?
04:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, this is for people who aren't paying for it, right? Oh, because there's no way to. There's no way to link your ChatGPT login or whatever, right?
05:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I also I have to say I also have made some custom GPTs mentioned that last year I really love and use, so I guess it's worth the 20 bucks a month. All right, okay, yes.
05:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
What's going on? First, let's talk about what's not going on. What's not going on. Two days before Christmas, or whatever pretty close to it, microsoft formally revealed what we've always kind of known for long. Known in that is, that it is deprecating and getting rid of the Windows Mixed Reality platform, which is their VR platform.
05:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, they denied that for a long time, didn't they?
05:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They did as recently as just a few months ago. Yeah.
05:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Because, it was room that you know that that was was good. Yeah, yeah so.
05:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I was speaking of things that don't exist anymore. I was in New York at the Microsoft store a couple of years back and and I witnessed something kind of interesting. I think we were, I think, in fact, we might have been recording a show there, but I saw them bringing all these boxes out from the store and putting them on a truck, and the boxes were Samsung Mixed Reality headsets and I was like wow, I was like what's going on there? And they're like nobody's going to buy these things. We're getting rid of them. I was like okay, and oddly, in a weird coincidence, I just came across that photo because I've been going through my photos or whatever, and so I have the photographic evidence of it.
06:30
But yeah, but that was several years ago, so they stuck on, or they held on to this thing for a while. They have not updated the software platform in a meaningful way in roughly forever, I guess, is the way I would say it. And you really have to go back to probably 2016, 2017, right around that time for when Microsoft started doing those creator updates remember, for Windows 10. And a big part of that was like paint 3D, remix 3D. They were going to do an integration with Windows phone at one point where you were going to be able to take a 3D picture of an object and turn it into a 3D model that you could then 3D print and edit and so forth, and Windows Mixed Reality was obviously a big part of that. But yeah, it's not you know.
07:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's interesting because the rumor is strong that Apple will announce and release the Vision Pro headset end of this month, early next month. Like we're weeks away from that. Apple, having put probably close to $100 billion into it over 10 years and has making it devices going to cost 3,500 bucks, is all in on that, their Mixed Reality. Do you think that? Well, Microsoft is giving up because Apple's getting in.
07:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, I think they're giving up because Meta, for whatever reason, has decided this is a big deal for them and they have this series of MetaQuest devices and they partner with Microsoft and the productivity stuff. So you see, microsoft Office that was a recent announcement.
08:05 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is such a polite version of the explanation. It's like well, Zox spent 10 billion, we don't want to spend 10 billion, so let's go use his 10 billion Well we don't need to, we don't need to.
08:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's not our business. It's making hardware.
08:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, it's, it's what does it mean? All lenses, Dan Microsoft. No, that's no, but it's you know the thing is, it may be pining for the fjords.
08:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah right, hololens has had some limited success, obviously in some very specific niche or what we'll call them vertical markets. I will say not niche markets, vertical markets, you know, like NASA going to Mars, that's a big market for them. That's good. Automakers who are building cars smart, that's a good use of this device.
08:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It was their jet engine thing, but the big. They got sabotaged by the military. I think personally like the military railed them.
08:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You can also argue that the military kept this thing going, in that if the military hadn't signed on at all, maybe it would be over, right?
09:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But it also, you know, the I've I've heard rumor pretty good ones that just waiting for the right hardware, like there's no point in they got the. Hololens 3 prototype and said this is just not good enough.
09:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And maybe this is a Qualcomm problem. Didn't they go to arm for the Gen 2 chipset Right? They had Tim Sweeney on stage when they announced this, remember, yeah?
09:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I mean they're trying. So you can't argue with Alice Kipman's vision of put it all on the head right, Like he wasn't wrong. I would be careful with that phrase.
09:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Absolutely. That's why, I'm pretty sure that's why you no longer has a job.
09:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I notice I'm wearing rather large spectacles today because I want to get used to being a nerd wearing rather large spectacles, but I'm not willing to go so far as to is to strap a computer on my forehead.
10:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's right, you know, I, I think, I think social standards change when the experience is compelling enough. Once upon a time, walking around with a phone in your hand was not socially acceptable either.
10:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That my objection is not what people are going to say. I've given that up a long time ago. My objection is it makes me queasy even to think about strapping that thing on for any length of time.
10:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The thing that bugs me about mixed reality I guess we'll call it a virtual reality is that many years ago now, remember, google came out the little cart, the cardboard thing, right, yes, you put your phone in the back of it and at that time and to this day, you can do a very simplistic thing.
10:40
I would do this in Paris, because I know the city very well Do a street view thing in Google Maps Well, actually, at that time it was a street view mobile app, whatever it does matter and just put it on some street in Paris and then you click, click, click and it goes down one screen at a time, like we used to do in video games. Before it, software came around and turned it into real time movement. Right, that's, that was the way the dungeon quest games work. You would click, click, click down, and even in that limited context, there was something really magical about this and I always felt like that these devices and the things we have now especially, could be used for really immersive kind of travel aids for people who are maybe are handicapped in some way or just can't afford it or whatever might be there, not going to this place physically, but they can be transported there virtually, and what I think is a really compelling way.
11:27 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think the best thing you do in the VR scenarios like that is like oh, and also show it to me in 1941.
11:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, oh, my God, please, I would never come out of this thing if you could do this.
11:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Or 1600.
11:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what I would love, I actually had that epiphany in Rome. I'm walking around on the forum, all tumbled down, but trying to imagine what this must have looked like in its heyday. And that's exactly this is the problem.
11:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, the simplistic example of that is you're in a museum and there's a dinosaur skeleton. You put up your iPad or whatever as you phone and see the light.
11:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can see that the animals. I would wear a headset for dedicated purposes like that, if I'm touring Rome or a museum, and I wear that.
12:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, I wear a phone, it's just something simple sitting in a like a Paris cafe and you have got that immersive kind of Dolby Atmos style sound. So glasses are clinking and people are chatting and the doors are opening, closing, coffee's being made and you know like you could lose yourself in this I mean pretty easily. Okay, all right, I mean.
12:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I try to drink the coffee.
12:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, someone could hand you a coffee and I would put it over the top, that's for sure.
12:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, it's like an escapade.
12:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're assuming you could find your mouth without being able to see the cup?
12:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I have a hard enough time running my mouth without anything in my face.
12:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I have lots of friends in the gaming industry and one of the things that you know big conversation about the difference between the three foot experience having a screen and the three inch experience having on your face is that acceleration matters Right, like reality in most first person shooters is that you're running at 30 miles an hour because it's boring. If you're not, if you actually use it normally, run at normal human speeds yeah.
13:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is right. The video games are like this. They'll say you know if you were on? Your face. Call it. Duty is 30 miles an hour or whatever, yeah.
13:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And so there was net. They could never. With the I mean notable exception of Alex, the cost to make a game that worked well in VR wasn't worth the number of headsets that existed. So she's like it never has gotten there and it ended up. I mean, alex is again a great example of this. It actually isn't a good idea. You know, video games are also storytelling and storytelling requires cinematography, and VR undermines cinematography. It takes you now you can look anywhere, so you do not where the story is, and half of the detail of Alex, if you watch the meta, is the character Alex trying to get you to look at.
13:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, that's actually a problem in 2D games as well. Again, forcing the gamer to be looking at the right place, that's a tough.
13:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's a tough Now when you turn it into a three dimensional world like good luck. You're going to wander off into a French cafe instead of saving the world.
14:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I would, that's true. Yep, I'd ride it out in the cafe, that would be my thing, anyway, yeah, I think Microsoft has is doing in mixed reality slash, virtual reality what they did in mobile, which is just kind of acknowledge we're not going to be a major player on the hardware side, but we can still play a role here and we'll bring our you know, our productivity solutions to these platforms Right. So we'll see if those. Well, actually, does anyone remember Was there a big I don't actually remember when Microsoft, apple announced their headset? Was Microsoft a little part of that? No, right, no, there were nothing. Okay.
14:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They are pushing productivity with their Vision Pro which to me just I just don't want to. You know, I guess I'm the wrong person. I just don't want to period, but the last thing I'd want to do is put, do Microsoft Word or an Excel spreadsheet on the thing, and then people say, oh, but you have five foot screens all around you and yeah, but I got to do weird motions, and I mean most of the gaming scenarios in these environments are just a 2D screen floating in space.
15:15
You know which is interesting? I mean, apple's not really focused on gaming, at least not until games come out, I guess.
15:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, and then we'll really focus on it. Sure.
15:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
One thing that the Mac break weekly team seemed very excited about is watching movies in the Vision Pro. The other thing Apple's pushing is you can use the Vision Pro, or now your latest iPhone, to do stereoscopic video.
15:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They call it spatial video, and you know it's very moving to see possibly like an IMAX type experience where it actually isn't just, yeah, it has to be. We used to go to an IMAX theater and it was almost like going to a tennis match, where you had to kind of physically, you know, take in the entire thing. So big. But maybe that's the point, because if it's, because otherwise what you've got is that flat screen floating in space experience that I don't think that's particularly compelling. Yeah. I'm happy.
16:10 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Apple's working on it. You know that Tim Cooks made his bet and maybe something will come of it, but you know that's a good way to look at. Show me the app.
16:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm skeptical. Show me the app, but I'm thrilled if they come up with something and if someday I can wear these nerd glasses and I get a heads up display on them. There you go. Sure, be cool, I'd be happy about that You'll never see.
16:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That You'll never see Lucie, everybody's name, leo. Then we'll know you have it.
16:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, right, no, it's perfect, Somebody like me. I don't, I have terrible face recognition. I did so. I have good face recognition but not name name memory. No, no, I don't need, I don't do either. So basically, you're, you know, you look like a thumb to me until I, you know, you say your name. So I need something like that that would superimpose on the thumb your face and name.
16:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Sure, that would be good, Just look like a horrible blob doll version of my face.
17:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, I could think. And you know what this? The Meta glasses from Ray Ban are not. They're actually more spelt than what I'm wearing. Mike Elgin says they sound as great on them. You can talk to Meta's assistant there there's a camera. They just announced a feature where you can use the camera to recognize something by taking a picture of it and the assistant will analyze it and come back to you. So you know, we're kind of getting there, and maybe Apple, by putting a lot of money into this technology, you'll we'll get there too. I seems like Meta has the lead here at this point.
17:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I feel like the two things Apple has going for it is that they've got the 10-release product until they've done it.
17:43
They love to spend money, yeah, but they also tend not to release anything unless it's, you know, to a point where they can really make a difference. And they have a history of other people showing up with their platforms and showing what, what makes this thing make sense, like Adobe with the Mac or the health stuff on the watch, which was not the primary point of it when it first came up, but from year two on it was because that's where everyone went.
18:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It does seem like Apple's learning that lesson, because they're not really prescribing a use for it, I think they're, they're taking out a wait-see.
18:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That could also, but that's what Microsoft did with the whole lens and it was almost like a yeah if you build it, someone will come and there was a lot of gatekeeping around the HoloLens too.
18:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You couldn't just buy it and get a dev kit. You had to submit a prospectus.
18:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh really, yeah, it was a huge, very event.
18:29 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, the beginning, yeah, okay.
18:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's true now, but as soon as these come out 500,000 lucky people, it may yeah, that's the thing We'll see.
18:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The HoloLens never came down in price, right, it's still very, very expensive. Yeah, it's a lot of hardware and there's not enough of them.
18:44 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Like the mass manufacturers should not have a thing. Like it's, it's going to stay stuck there, and so is the Vision Pro. And the bigger question here is when do you build the next one? Like when? When do you obsolete the few customers you've got?
18:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just, I just for me to be saying about. Apple's future with this thing, but maybe I know, maybe there's something Well the problem is they they
19:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
they not a phone and a you know we've managed to program society to replace phones on a regular basis, but you don't replace your PCs. You know what we have.
19:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Definitely program society to do is to stare at a screen all the time, and so that is kind of halfway to wearing a helmet all the time. Yeah, sure.
19:25 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So maybe now throwing in unbreathable atmosphere, you know, a couple of other features, and we're on Mars.
19:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Nobody, nobody who watched the original Stowers thought that the best scene was the one where he was wearing the helmet he couldn't see out of. You know and I and that's the only part of that movie we've made so great- Do you want the Jordy glasses, though you might want those, yeah, yeah, maybe the bizer.
19:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Pretty sure that's a hair band you're wearing over your face, dude. What's up with that Exactly?
19:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What do you think Jordy could see in that? I mean, I haven't watched it. Is that be dazzled? To know. Does he say what he can see in?
20:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
it. Oh, he says, sees multi-spectrally. That's what made him such a good engineer, okay, I think. I think they tried to show it once. They made a feed off of Jordy's visor and he saw all these weird colors and things, but he was able to see through the walls.
20:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, but it was like made with a Commodore 64. So good.
20:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Little jagged. I just don't know.
20:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I really don't know. I know, I know, you know I like markets that are uncertain too. Like it is fun that we're still exploring this and that we haven't decided. There is a way you don't know what's going to come next, because there's lots of different pieces of it.
20:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's cool. I honestly feel like AI is more in that realm than AR.
20:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I think AR is far more experimental than large language models. Long-term models are firmly down the engineering path. Now, 2024 is going to be the okay, show me the money.
20:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's the.
20:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
App Store era. Now Right, well, it's a scientist. Have moved on. So this is engineers making product and what we've got Right, and that's good I'm going to.
21:08 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Richard has sent me something over the holidays which I had seen, actually, but you know, corey Darkrow was talking about the AI hype cycle and compare, you know, or a bubble, I guess he called it and you know, comparing it to previous bubbles. And I was a little nervous going into this, because I really like this guy and I'm thinking, man, he's going to jump the shark on this one, but no, he actually said something that I agreed with completely, which was that sometimes bubbles leave things behind. It's not always hype, hype, hype. Oh, it goes away, it's gone, forget it, never happened. And I, in that sense, I think AI is maybe a little more like AIG than it was Always leave things behind.
21:46 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think you can make that case.
21:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm sorry, useful things.
21:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The dot com bubble left behind a bunch of infrastructure like fiber. The railroad bubble I mean all those original railways went out of business and went bankrupt to belly up, but we got infrastructure out of it.
22:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I also beautiful rail trails now. So those are nice. No, I mean Corey's very look, corey's super smart and he's very cognizant of the history of these and I think, but I saw the, I saw the blurb and I thought, oh, this is going to be time I disagree with him. Right here we go. And then I was like, no, no, I got it. This is good yeah.
22:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think something's happening with AI. I really do. I I don't know why.
22:24 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Look I from. From my perspective, if it's all I think it is, it's going to be the greatest thing in decades, and that's just making standard what I would call office productivity work easier and better.
22:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And I I think it's a 30% boost in individual info worker productivity.
22:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Huge and I think expert systems, as we've talked about before, finally are real and you could put all your auto manuals into an expert system and, and you know, you wouldn't have to look up, you know page through stuff and you can get answers to questions and we well.
23:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm thinking in terms of corporate knowledge.
23:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here we have the great baby is transformed, the great baby boomer resignation going on.
23:08 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Maybe we have one chance to gather up what they know before they're all gone.
23:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean, yeah, this is what BI was supposed to be right A dashboard that you can look at, that gives you insights into your business, and I think that's exactly what we could get.
23:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, people who are good at visualizing data, or presenting that visually, I should say are are their jobs are safe.
23:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So um well, are they? That's a question I mean they've been safe.
23:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, since, uh, you know, data visualization is still requires a person, I mean that will probably change.
23:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, that's that's that's that's going to die over the past several years.
23:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean you can get pretty good visualizations already.
23:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean you can design a webpage by drawing a sketch on a napkin with an AI.
23:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So now you can do one by saying here's a document, make a webpage.
23:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think what'll happen is data scientists will move to a higher level. We'll still need them, but they'll be doing higher level stuff.
23:58 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Uh, but they, we didn't have enough as it was. Oh, there you go. We're raising the average capability, not the expert capability, right?
24:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So there's an AI section later in the show. Okay, how are we gonna do this?
24:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let's not let's not but it's fair to say this is you? Know I never look at the show notes, cause I like to be surprised.
24:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So if I am pretty, actually I write them, and then I'm surprised by what they say later, because I'm like oh, did I say that?
24:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay? Yeah, In fact have we gotten to the first item on the freaking down with the first item? Okay.
24:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Our national light bar is over.
24:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is that? Oh no, I'm still in 2023. No wonder.
24:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I forgot.
24:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's a new year.
24:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, I'm not going to use to have to write checks a lot. I would usually be like a late January guy before I got to the new year, you know. So I'm actually impressed.
24:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I actually put this note in the right place right off the bat and then all the last time trying to catch up with you.
24:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That is not. That's not how the world works. Something's going on.
24:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I was back in the last year, so now I'm in today's episode. Well done, uh you. In case you're as confused as I am, this is Windows weekly. That's Paul Therese, that's what you're saying it's 2024 guys. It's 2024.
25:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And you know you still don't have a flying car.
25:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, Right, all right. Windows 11 is next on the agenda.
25:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So one of the many, many, many, many confusing things about Windows 11, also tied to the updating which is just a once a year just kidding, it's once every week it's this notion of moment updates, which are kind of a feature bundles they put out once a quarter. Um, and you may recall, heading into the last fall, we were talking about what would have been moment four but was going to be Windows 11 version 23H2. And I was thinking I think these are the same thing and they are the same thing, and um, and now, even though we've moved on to a new version, we're still talking about moments. So it's not moment one for this version, it's moment five. It's moment five, right, so moment five is coming in February. Um, it's being positioned as some kind of a major update, because of course all of these things are. But if you go through the list you're not going to single, you're not going to see a single thing in there that we haven't seen in insider builds already. And so that's kind of interesting, because we've been looking to insider for maybe some hints about what we think of as Windows 12. And you know, we talked about that.
26:24
May or may not be what that thing is, but, um, there's nothing surprising here. It's the Inc Everywhere feature. It's, uh, the ability to do uninstall more apps. It's the changes to Windows spotlight on the desktop and widgets, where you can get rid of the the news feed and just have widgets what an idea. Um, all tab to co-pilot, uh, the Windows 365 improvements, etc. So there is not a single item in this list which is slated for February at moment five, that is newer in any way Interesting in the sense that it's like, oh, I didn't know that was happening, Like this is all just very, you know, in fact, uh, when we get to the insider program stuff that uh cause some builds just dropped today. Um, these bills include some of these features, right, because of course they do. So nothing surprising there. Um, and we'll continue.
27:17
I, I will say Microsoft, the way they did 23H2, the way they it was really just 22H2 version two like the next version of 22H2, um, the way that moment five, as part of this round, does suggest that, whatever happens, whether they call this thing Windows 12 or not, it is going to be kind of a big break, I think. I think they're coasting right now with the, with this. I don't think they want to screw with this thing until they figure out. You know what that next thing is, and it may just, you know, they might just go with Windows 11 because that's going to be the best branding thing to do, but I do think it's going to be a little bit of a departure, but right now we're just kind of coasting. So, anyway, moment five we had a couple of, we had two good months. Enjoy those.
28:00
Uh, before, um, they start screwing around with Windows again, right, so we'll say we'll see what things look like. But uh, what is the third? So next Tuesday is patch Tuesday, so two weeks from Tuesday is the first preview update, assuming they stick to schedule, which is a stupid assumption, paul, why did I even say that? But anyway, making its way down to, you know, like a preview update in Windows Update. This is almost certainly going to happen.
28:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But I certainly appreciate you thinking about the. There's a rethink going on, the teams are being a bit more reorganized. You know Windows is in a new stage and I think what you're really looking at is almost like what's going to be 12? What do we want to put into 11? And what and is that dual battle of like need new stuff for 12,? 12 is its own rethink, but also what can we test in 11 that'll be good for 12?
28:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There's some interesting public indications too. The guy who runs Windows now has been out on Twitter saying, hey, what do you think about the start menu, like do we rethink this a little bit? What do you think about the taskbar, like what you know? He's starting to kind of just publicly be like, just throw some ideas out there, you know, which I think is also very interesting, and I think that whatever might come out of this kind of discussion is getting a feel for the room or whatever. Yeah, isn't going to be Windows 11, moment 6 or whatever it's going to be, whatever Windows 12 is called, right.
29:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, that's my guess, whatever it may be called. But I really appreciate like that they are. There is more focus now. They do seem a bit more thoughtful. You know, good things will happen.
29:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's a lot like, you know, when, when Sonofsky's team took over Windows, they had to service Windows Vista before they did seven Right, and it was a lack of enthusiasm there. Oh yeah, but they, but they had to right. So you have to put out the service pack, you have to fix the problems and you know, begrudgingly or whatever, they did it. And and I kind of view, what's happening right now in Windows 11 is being similar to that, without the maliciousness. But the idea is it's kind of a new group, at least certainly new leadership, and they have a different kind of, you know, take on how things are. So it's nice to see them kind of being public and and discussing that stuff.
30:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
So we'll see, we'll see what comes up. I just like their idea that there's a face for Windows again.
30:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, face, you don't want to punch me.
30:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, yeah who is the face for Windows.
30:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I wish I'd say that's my problem I can't think of. I don't even know his name. He's a well-known face. No, he's, no, he's not. That's the but. That's kind of the point, Right it's a new Windows.
30:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's not the focus of the company anymore. It's a new, not a script unmemorable.
30:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, no, no, well, not, not a script, it's not fair, just it's it's no, no, no, it's just someone we are just not super familiar with. You know, like when Terry Myers since took over Windows, I knew him because he was Windows phone, but Windows phone was not a ever a huge deal. I mean, I think to the outside world is like who is this guy? Wow, you know, I mean this is this. This happens from time to time.
31:05 - Richard Campbell (Host)
For a long time I just felt like that he lose a bet, like he drew the short straw. He's got mobile. Now you got Windows, like they're really going to drop all the stuff on you.
31:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, I, you know, I'm not, we can't give him full responsibility.
31:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
He did?
31:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I think so. But but then he, but he also completely screwed up, right. So this is kind of the thing I love, terry, I, I, you know I really liked the guy. Personally I preach. The thing I liked about him was he was coming at it from the right place, where his predecessor absolutely did not, and he really wanted the whole ecosystem to work together and be better for everybody. And I think they had some. I mean, I don't think anyone would disagree that Windows Phone had some good ideas as an organization for sure. And you know, bring that stuff to big windows. As I thought of it, yeah, that sounded great. You know, it's just, it wasn't his fault that they could have and should have done that three or four years earlier and didn't. And by the time he started doing all the stuff maybe it was too late. You know, was that's not his fault.
32:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think it's also the cultural side of you know what, the shell shock of the changes in Windows and the problems that it had made. A bunch of good people left and some not so good people left, and you've got to rebuild any and a culture as well.
32:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Is there anybody better than our friend Mark Brzeznevich, who left because of Sinovsky? I mean, think about it. This is the guy who essentially reversed, engineered the NT Colonel from outside of Microsoft. I mean, you know, like you're going to, you're going to turn that guy off. God bless me still at Microsoft, you know.
32:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, and working away.
32:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, genius, anyway, yeah, so I look this is going to be a very interesting year for Windows, I think. Whatever they call this thing, whatever happens. But we do listen. Anyone who went back and sort of thought about all the conversations we had about different updates and the monthly stuff in the screwy way it happened and moment this, moment that and blah, blah, blah, whatever. You do get this kind of feeling, it felt aimless, you know, like we're not really sure we're treading water here, we're not sure what the direction is. I think there was over a period of time that leadership change kind of screwed things up and I think what we're seeing now is that just people getting their feet, they're going to see legs or whatever, and so I think it's, I think it's going to be interesting, and plus we have this whole AI PC thing which we'll be talking about in a moment Practice your goal for Windows now, not just dot in the eyes and cross in the T's.
33:27
That's right, yeah, yeah, the creator stuff we talked about we mentioned creator update because of Windows makes reality felt a little forced, and the sad thing about that is their central message. At that time You're going to think it's a long time ago, right, 2016,. Everyone is a creator. Right Is actually correct. It doesn't mean we're making you know physical things or you know posters or whatever, like it doesn't mean it's artwork or whatever, but we all of us create something like that's the you know, when we're using Windows, you're using it to create something and they just latched onto the wrong things, unfortunately, yeah.
34:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think that's the big thing is coming out now is starting to get a more of a feel for what people actually want from Windows and how to approach it.
34:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You know yeah, this is a little off topic, but I've mentioned in the past one of the tricks or one of the hard things about Microsoft for me over the past several years has been keeping up with the volume of change in the cursive. Microsoft 365, right, right, and that every month for a very long time and I'm talking several years they would come up with a. This is what we added to Microsoft 365. It was a book and it was like, and it was all links to sub pages for individual products and they were hard products.
34:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, yeah it was crazy and I had the internet eating mail up to a weekly and like yes, it's shorter but not better.
34:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, but it's impossible and actually we're going to okay, actually, somewhere in here. I do have a thing about the complexity of Microsoft 365. I don't want to blow that away, but it became very hard to keep track of what was happening where and you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, like, whatever. You could be cynical about this or whatever, but I think one of the interesting things about AI is that it gives them this other layer of things they can add to Microsoft 365, in this case, across the board. So individual features are heading to Word and Outlook and Excel and PowerPoint, whatever else. And you know, ai or not, or however advanced you think they are, or however advanced they may be, really are, or whatever. These are the types of things they've been doing all along, really, yeah, and the central innovation here in a way and again, this sounds cynical, but is they figured out how to charge extra for it?
35:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Right, well, yeah, I'm like you finally get it to Brandon and we talk about the roles of co-pilot. Yeah, one of the biggest ones is the navigator. Right, like, listen, you don't think, oh, I need Word, oh, I need Excel, you think I have to solve X problem? Well, now we actually have an interface where this is like an orchestrator. Is what you're basically the problem, right, yeah, because often the correct answer is two steps back. This already been solved there, batman.
35:53
Gladys down the hall made it right. The thing that was creepy and dull now becomes a feature in co-pilot.
36:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The reason that's funny to me is because Microsoft for years struggled with trying to get people to use other products and were in an office when they would only use one or two. Right, so some guys are just Word is their life and they have to use that because of mail or whatever. Or Excel is your life and they have to use that because of mail, whatever. So you would go to an office event and they would introduce some new version of Office 127 new features across all the apps, blah, blah, blah. I mean every once in a while they'd be even be a new app, but then they would invent a scenario where a person would have to use every single tool to accomplish some task.
36:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The greatest demo of all time.
36:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It was the biggest forced nonsense. You know, it was always ridiculous right, I don't know.
36:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I have worked with the people making those demos where it's like yeah, they must be too much Just like leave me alone. I have to do this.
36:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and also I'm going bald because of this. Thanks, yeah, it was always very forced, but see, that's the thing. The truth is we don't office Microsoft 365, whatever it's dozens, hundreds of tools. You don't have to use all of them. You just hit the point and you shouldn't. You don't have to know about all of them. I think the goal here is to right, like you said. Just, here's the task how do I complete this thing? And it might involve, you know two or three of them or whatever, and in the future, hopefully, it will be more seamless. Right, you won't be launching apps necessarily. It will be kind of an orchestrated experience, like I keep referencing Steven Beteach talking about it. He's the only guy I want to see this year. That's all I care about. I'm going to go to build this to see him. I just I can't wait.
37:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Okay, there's that. No, I love it, and you've jumped across several units here.
37:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I did. I know we're going to come back to some of this. I apologize for that. So, getting back to windows, sometime over the break, I think right before Christmas, microsoft quietly re-released their installation media for 23H2. And I mean that broadly. So in other words, if you download the ISO, if you use the media creation tool, if you use the installation assistant or whatever the name of that stupid thing is that you run from the web.
38:00
They actually changed the bits and it was just. It was just a fixed one bug which, unfortunately, was an accessibility issue and was important to fix. So narrator works fine in 23H2, but narrator during setup did not work at all. So it would appear to launch, but the UI wouldn't come up, it wouldn't work, and so people who need that to set up windows could not. So they actually I honestly pretty quick. I mean they didn't release the media creation tool version of this media until mid to late November, so within a month they got this thing fixed. So it's out there. So if you download this, any of these things, if you download the ISO, you create installation media and I don't want to redo it because not only does it have the that fix, but it also has every all of the updates through December 2023, right, so it's a little more, it is.
38:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean not that they're ever going to talk about this, but it really.
38:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
23H2 is a rough Like how you think it is the literal definition of it's coming in hot.
39:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, and again, and again, and again. And they're primarily punishing the early adopters, the folks who haven't gotten around to it. They're going to miss all this fun. They just never see it.
39:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So, okay, I you know what I made a mistake in not writing about this. But one thing I we moved, you know, we moved here to the place we're in now sometime in mid November or whatever, and I spent much of the next month just kind of getting my little office set up and organizing all my stuff. And so one of the things I've done over the past month now, I guess, is pull all the computers I have her out and kind of boot them up and get them up to date and everything. And I have to say, the most astonishing thing about the computers that I had put aside during the move and didn't have access to during that you know, couple of months or whatever, is that the majority of them never went naturally to 23H2. Right, and, and my guess is that if I'd let them like these aren't computers I use every single day, all day long, right. So I'm guessing that if I actually use them regularly, I would notice over a period of a week or so that they probably would have been offered 23H2. But none of them were, and what I did for all of them was use that.
40:07
You know, download Windows 11. The top link is whatever they call it the Windows, the installation assistant downloads an EXE. You have to do the PC health check, even though it's Windows 11, make sure you're compatible, which it always was. There were no blockers, nothing and then you install it. It takes a little while, but it works and it's fine and you're up to 23H2. And I? That was surprising to me, but most of these machines are off the majority of the time.
40:30 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's right. So, and they were literally were off. We speak to the call home effect right, Like how much of the deciding for an update is based on the frequency of call home.
40:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, more than I would have expected, because in each case I went into Windows update and if that switch wasn't switched I switched on the get up as soon as possible. You run all the updates, you go into the software makers vantage or HP software update or whatever it's called, and you know, make sure that the driver updated everything. You know whatever. I updated all the apps you know. So edge is something you have to update, edges, like if the edges and on the most recent version at some time you don't get copilot, even if you're on 23H2, there's all these weird little yeah.
41:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And then whenever you set change, I might have used a bug somewhere in that sequence of years because it also has to do that assessment of when's the best time to update automatically, so it may need a certain amount of uptime to know that.
41:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, and so there is this notion that 23H2 was actually on all the computers. It just wasn't enabled. So I didn't get the enablement package right. I, you, you get a 22H2 version of every update right, so you're getting all the same updates on one or maybe two of them. I did notice that it's like a Windows configuration update goes through Windows update and then you reboot and then you get it right, but easily. I don't want to misspeak. I wish I should have kept track of this. I didn't. I just didn't expect this, but as many as I would say eight computers. I had to manually upgrade to 22 at 23H2.
42:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And I would think any machine is routinely off that just didn't have that call in time and that monitoring of usage time is the one that ends up. You have to force it. Yep, yeah, so I? You'd have asked me this. Even by my standards, you have an anomalous number of machines.
42:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't, I don't well, I, I'm a total. Do you have a full? I don't, I don't. Can you count them? I'm not.
42:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, of course I count them.
42:23
It's not I, just it's got toes, many, it's over, it's over 20 of them. You have to remember I have a problem and also I no, I have to. I test, configure for the book, especially like one thing. I've spent the past two weeks plus working out you're going to see some of this later Some, like you're scurrying a Microsoft accounts and pass keys and all this kind of technical. How do these things occur? You need I mean you have to, you have to approaches from multiple angles, different accounts, different types of configurations. You know it's I don't know. I have to test and test, and test and test.
42:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So, anyway, my primary workstations at 10, you know, are you schlepping these around with you from place to place?
43:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They're all over the, the condo or whatever you want to call this.
43:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do you have a long table with 20 machines on it?
43:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, no, I have. I used to do something like that a little bit, but no, that's, that's not particularly efficient. So this is something Richie probably knows a lot about. I was this is, I had to sort of look into this but Microsoft, yeah, yeah, side loading, right, which is not the way I would have thought of this.
43:28
But if you look back at the history of the Microsoft store, which used to be called the Windows store in Windows 8, and the point behind it in the beginning was, this was going to be how Microsoft and third parties distributed these new modern mobile apps we're going to run on Windows, right, these apps that could go to sleep in the background and were really efficient and all that kind of stuff. So they had different names over the years. That became UWP, but that never worked. Microsoft did a lot of work to remember the bridges, to help people bring code bases to the store. Yeah, and eventually they said, look, we're going to have to package any kind of app in such a manner that it can be put in the store, and so desktop apps started appearing, web apps, you know, whatever.
44:10
They also didn't actually work out all that great, and so Microsoft has allowed I don't remember when they started doing this, but they've been allowing developers to use that MSIX packaging, as we call it, or the package format, and deploy those apps from the web. Right, and because of some of the protections built into this platform, the idea was it would deliver some of the promises of the store with regards to trust and security, even though you're getting it out in the wild or whatever, and you are side loading it. Right, which is actually how they did describe. It Turns out this is completely unsafe and so, unfortunately, you know, there was a good reason for the store to exist Still is. There were many good reasons, actually and so Microsoft had to turn off the protocol that enables someone to double click on an EXE from a web browser and install it directly from the internet. Right, the good news.
45:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm sorry. I mean, you're exactly right, like it's. What we had in the MSIX protocol was one click to malware.
45:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, one click to malware. That's not the name they marketed in under, but that's where you were.
45:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
That's a great name, though we did all this work on the PC to manage your one click to malware. But how about take away the click?
45:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right. Take away the click Take it even easier, yeah, so the good news is you can still click on that thing. It will download now, and then you have to run the installation locally.
45:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, and the idea then is that and the UAC kicks in and all the other protections yeah, defender, and whatever else you might have to say All those things you click OK on to make go away, yeah, yeah those things you ignore, you click those and it's fine.
45:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So, yeah, I mean, look, there's no version of the future. We're downloading in EXE from the web is not going to be slightly risky, right, I mean. So, hopefully, how about? Yeah, I know.
46:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I appreciate they tried Listen. It was only Apple that ever made the safety promise in their store, and even they couldn't keep it.
46:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, I mean, that was the promise of the Microsoft Store. The Windows Store at the time was it's a source you trust, the source that puts malware in Windows today.
46:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's showing you the budget for the people who are actually evaluating the software in a meaningful way, right.
46:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That was always the thing Like what's the oversight like here, actually? And it's college interns, part-time, if you're lucky, and they're all clicking. They're actually reading a book and clicking through.
46:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's mostly software running against it. They scan it. There's a bunch of good tools for all of that, but it only means it catches known vulnerabilities, not clever new ones.
46:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, yes, but I defend, Eric, said or they do have this kind of a. This is probably not the right term. I think they call it like a heuristic kind of a reputation plus behavior derives a score and maybe it says, hey, hold on a second. This might be suspicious.
47:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You always get down to two problems. There's only two solutions, both of which are bad. You ask the user. They're not qualified for an opinion, They'll just press but they need to make it go away. Continue with doing, or you block it, which means you annoy a certain number of people who believe they're doing the right thing. I really want to see that picture of Anna Kodakova like let me do it.
47:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I have two app pics later in the show, at least one of them, and if I'm not mistaken, both of them actually throw up a smart screen. We don't trust this place because we don't know enough about it. No-transcript.
47:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But I recommend all of them.
47:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So, I don't know what to tell you that's like, at some point you just have to go with your gut. Is that the message? No, security is not go with your gut. What is security? It's something smarter than that. But anyway, yes, they tried and I appreciate that. And I don't think we're ever going to come back to a point where Microsoft says you know what, we figured out this MIS I X thing and we're going to enable that protocol again. I think we're done direct install from internet, which is too bad because it's why the web pages win.
48:11 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, because deploying software is too hard and still too hard. People will always win because good is dumb.
48:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's why, okay. And then, two seconds before we started this show, microsoft shipped two Windows Insider program builds the first of 2024 and the first since I don't know a third week, second, wake of December. Neither is super, you know big deal, but Dev and Canary. The Dev build has some new weather experience on the lock screen, so we're all going to want to upgrade to that. And then some voice access improvements around language support, et cetera, et cetera, which I think we've seen elsewhere before before this build. But okay, canary, same voice access changes. If you do a clean install with Canary build a WordPad and people will not be installed. People technically hasn't really been in Windows for a while, but that's okay.
49:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's too bad.
49:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yeah, well, you know people, they call it, you know they think they're people. Steps recorder we already knew this. Deprecated that will. That's now displaying a banner saying, hey, do you use something else? It has some recommendations for that. And then this one people.
49:18
I bet everyone is confused by this, but if your computer ever goes into energy saver mode, the little battery icon will display a heart today. And it doesn't make any, it doesn't you? My vision is bad enough that I'm like what is? What is something that's going on here? And now they're they're experimenting with a change where I think it's like a little leaf type icon, so it looks a little bit more like a, you know, like a green thing or something, not a big deal. And then nearby sharing this is one of those moment five features will let you dame your PC. So for the two people that use this I think they're actually me with two different user accounts this is actually kind of a big deal, because when I share now and I have multiple computers on um, you will say share to an SS Paul's PC, paul's PC, paul's PC and it's like that's not very useful.
50:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And if you mouse over them, you can see which clear and it says it 20 times.
50:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh yeah, Well, it's depending on how many I have on, you know, at the time, Um, so now you're going to be able to go in and say you know, I don't know why, wouldn't just do the PC name Although I, it's probably because most windows PC names are something stupid. Right that Microsoft automatically um, gives you. I actually named my PC, so I would know if I could see those names. That would be good. So, yes, they're doing that.
50:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
All of my PC, all of my computers, are named for South Park characters. You got to call out to your energy saver icon when we get to the surfaces part.
50:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But first okay, oh, okay, okay. So uh, this was a. We're moving on the surface here, Sorry, we have one surface story.
50:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, wait a minute. Yeah, go ahead and move on to surface. Okay, go ahead, I'll let you do that, then we'll take a break. Go ahead.
50:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
If it's just one little tiny story, no big deal, yeah, so we got two computers coming in the spring that we know about now surface pro 10, surface laptop six. Uh, they will have these MPUs or AI chipsets. Um, they will be both, um, qualcomm and arm based versions of surface pro 10, just as they were for surface pro nine, right, and a surface laptop, I believe. Let me make sure before I get it I believe it's just going to be, yeah, just Intel, and remember, surface laptop used to be Intel and AMD. Um, I believe this, it looks like this one is going to be, uh, just Intel.
51:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Unfortunately, however, no, no snapdragon. But you know, what's more important is the NP usage.
51:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes. So here's the thing If you're familiar with surface, if you're familiar with MPUs, if you're familiar with meter lake and how this is the first generation to offer this integrated into the die, uh, on the mobile side, um, you will know that in September, that AI event, uh, Microsoft announced surface laptop studio two, which I keep saying, I believe, I'm almost positive, this is true it was the only computer that was ever made with the what was it? 13th gen Intel core CPU. It was an eight, probably an eight series, I would imagine, Um, but it had a non-integrated MPU has, I'm sorry, on the mother, you know, on the mother board, the the slot right.
52:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is that the one? You got rich or no?
52:23 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yep, it is.
52:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah.
52:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Okay, and I have a story about it too. But oh, good, I would.
52:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Okay, so, um, according to Zach Bowden, microsoft is going to market the new computers that are coming out in the spring as the first real surface AI pieces. It's like, um, but what about this thing that you know? It's like, uh, you know, meteor lake is going to, uh, you know, jumpstart the AI PC era. And it's like, oh, you should tell Qualcomm, cause they've been putting these things in PCs for like three years. Like, what, like, what are you talking about? But, anyways, all right. So what happens? What's going on with your computer.
52:58 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Uh, you know that energy saver mode, that it's that it's horrible and everyone hates it. Yeah, yeah. But I just let it run, cause I'm like, what do I care? I'm almost always have that machine plugged in. It's. It's keeping the battery from being fully charged. That's right, yep. And so you know, I wonder if it's because of electric cars now, where we're totally used to the idea of you only charge your electric car a certain amount.
53:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is okay. Here's the problem. This relies on you never changing your behavior and never needing to take it on the go. So, unless something has changed, I've not seen a surface PC in a while, but the way this used to work is you could go into the surface app and you could turn it off for now. So the idea is you're going on a trip tomorrow and you're like you know what? I need this thing to actually go to 100%.
53:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You fully charged yeah.
53:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I can turn that thing off and it does, it goes to 100%. Then you can take it with you, do whatever you do, but next time you use it or whatever that thing turns back on like at the time. Now this may have changed, but when I was using surface PCs you couldn't make it. Just just don't do this, you know. So maybe that's changed.
54:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I hope it's smarter, Like can you tell you're not on your home network, Can you? Can you tell that be based on IP, that you're traveling, which means you tell you when you're in a Seattle?
54:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
when you're in a hotel on the other side of the country, which for me would be Seattle, and you have set your line for 430 in the morning in air flying, I can tell you the last thing you want is for your phone to be trying to intelligently charge over night, not be charged, for your PC to be trying to. I don't want these things to outthink me. I want them to kind of work with me and you're right, that would be one of those intelligent ways.
54:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The correct thing is yeah, be conservative for my battery around home, and the last longer and the rest of the time, charge it.
54:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, charge the damn thing as soon as I'm not at home charge it I, I, I would take it a step further and say look, I can make bad decisions with the product I paid for with my own money. So if I just want to ruin the battery and don't care about that and want it charged all the time, you should let me do that too. You know that should be an option.
54:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But it's also should you think about a company thinking in terms of sustaining a lifespan of a machine rather than encouraging its immediate replacement?
55:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Hmm, yeah, this may be a regulatory requirement of some kind. I mean, this might be tied to the right to repair stuff.
55:08 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Are you talking about logical government policy? That's strange.
55:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, phones are doing this too, so there must be something going on. Yeah, they are.
55:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I think we, I, I, if nothing else they're reading and writing on the wall that says that's what I mean. Either make either make it easier to replace the battery or or or, or, make it look like the battery or be kind to the battery.
55:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's really hard to replace because of all the glue. Yeah, that's between you and the electric vehicles I've owned.
55:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You can say and the manufacturer recommends, don't charge it past 80 or 90%, and then, but you also can say charge it 100% Always, or that's the thing they gotta.
55:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
they gotta make this earlier. There needs to be this notion that I need this tomorrow morning at whatever time, like I, yeah.
55:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Max, in a car you can do that, but how hard is it? Can't they do it with a laptop and a phone? I don't know.
55:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You can. It's just really hard. It's hard to do it, it's hard to find. It's a one off right and no one right, no one. Look. We people don't even use two step verification. How are you going to get them to properly charge a phone?
56:09 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You know yeah, I like the idea of my laptop. Realizes that I just stopped at an airport lounge. Oh crap, you're traveling, charge everything.
56:15 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, charge, charge as fast as you can charge. Yeah, exactly, your little feet will. That's it. That would be very smart. I bet they don't do that, but I would they should. That would be a great Windows 12 feature there, you go.
56:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Hmm, there you go, there you go and did you have a little green leaf to tell people about Richard there.
56:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, the mind was that I noticed that it's not fully charging the battery. No, I mean, I was the.
56:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think it's, I think it's a heart today. I think it's a little heart.
56:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it was hard, it should be, so I'm interested to see when I go on the road with it, which is going to be a few weeks as an extended. Yeah, Because they you're going to want that thing charged. I'm interested to see if it does. Yep.
56:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Charge that sucker.
56:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm not going to do anything.
56:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I expect it to. This is one of those trust, but verify moments I would.
56:59 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I would be your experiment. Paul, I am here for you Okay.
57:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, I appreciate you taking this one for the team that's here to serve Okay.
57:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let let me pause. That's what that big orange ad three here means. Okay, just so you know. That's what I was sticking in there. But before I, before we go on, I do want to mention to folks that we are doing the best we can to monetize this show and all the shows we do, and it might require a little help on your partners too. Actually, there's a whole blog post, a Twitter TV, of the 12 things you can do to help us, including share the show with friends and subscribe in a podcast player.
57:48
But there are a couple of things I'm thinking of. One is, if you work for a company that would do well on this show or any of our shows, go to your marketing guy, a gal, say hey, have you, have you heard of Twitter? Have you considered Twitter? We'd like to get more people in our, in our bucket of advertisers, and you can just get them to email, advertise a Twitter TV. We'll give them a kit and all the things they need to know. But that would help us out if you, if you know somebody who might be good on one of these shows, and please mention Twitter to them.
58:20
The other thing, of course, is something you can do directly, which is join club twid. We, I'm so proud to say, cross 10,000 members yesterday, wow, I know. Now that is still, you know, one and a half percent of our total audience. Unfortunately, we want to get to five or even 10%. That would put us in a good position financially to continue with all the shows. We've got to grow the shows. That club is really important because the ad dollars are shrinking. The numbers of audience members shrinking as well means less revenue. But you can make it up for us If you join club Twitter at just $7 a month you get ad free versions of all the shows.
59:00
You get access to the discord a great place to hang. You know we've been doing the advent of code in there. It's been very helpful for me. It's been a lot of fun. But there's all sorts of stuff, geeky stuff, minecraft server and things and you also get the twit plus feed, which includes shows we don't even put out anywhere else, like that's where iOS today went, hands on Windows, hands with Paul does, pants on Macintosh, micahs does and Scott Wilkinson's home theater geeks and the untitled show, and et cetera, et cetera, sir. So if you would please tell your friends, club twit, join club twit. Seven bucks a month, $84 a year. There's family plans, there's corporate plans. Twittv, slash club, twit. That's all I'm going to harangue. I just want to mention that Now we can go on talking about Microsoft 365.
59:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah. So I'm kind of curious what people think about this one, because, through some series of coincidences, in some ways, I've had problems with various tools that, honestly, are kind of core to my existence Things like OneDrive, microsoft Word, right, and it's weird because, as a writer, I've been using Word for almost 30 years actually, maybe more than 30 years, roughly 30 years and even I'd only use I don't know 5, 8% of its features. I mean, it's, you know and it's. There's been that kind of creeping complexity problem in office. And now Microsoft 365, we talked about the hundreds and hundreds of new features they release every month and, back in the office days, all of the attempts Microsoft made to kind of simplify these apps adaptive menus and toolbar, smart tags Remember all these side panels.
01:00:43
The ribbon, finally. The biggest feature in the ribbon was you could hide it, because it was this giant mess of UI at the top. It was supposed to be adaptive, right, in a way of a simplified ribbon. Today that nobody has because blah, blah, blah, whatever. Who cares it's, it's just kind of a mess, and I worry that AI will actually make this worse in some ways, right, because there's going to be all this AI functionality and that, in some ways, what Microsoft really needs to do is things that are like loop, where it's kind of a redo, a new way of doing things, rather than just piling more and more and more.
01:01:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm sorry. Your answer to too much complexity is to add more complexity.
01:01:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I don't look. I'm not a product designer, I'm just a complainer. No, but I, I go ahead. I'm sorry.
01:01:30 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, it's the classic, it's the XKCD thing, it's right. There's too many standards here. We need to centralize standard.
01:01:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, that was yeah, that was the approach matter tick, I look I we mentioned this. It's funny. We've blown through a couple of these things earlier, but a Steven petition, this notion of orchestration and that how apps are going to look very different. And you know, today and Mike, like Microsoft before it was, we were ready for this tried to do this document based thing in Windows 95. Remember, I don't, you don't think like, okay, I need to do this, so I'm going to run this app. You think I need to do this, so you click on an icon to do that and maybe it runs that app.
01:02:06
You know, windows phone did the same thing, right? Not? I need to share a photo with someone online, so I need to use the what's the name of that? Up again. It's like I just go into this photos hub and whatever services I have configured, I can share photos that way. Right, these were always good ideas. But I guess the theory now is that AI will finally make this dream kind of a reality and I'm I guess I'm arguing it can't happen fast enough because I need the things that I used to do, two things be simple and actually work. You know, and I gotta tell you some of this, yeah, some of the Microsoft stuff that I've been relying on for a long time no longer falls into that category.
01:02:46 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Wow, and it's super common in software to say the simple stuff doesn't work and the stuff that does, yeah, simple.
01:02:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, yeah, so I don't know, I'm not, I don't have a solution here, but I've certainly noticed the problem. I also will point out sort of the irony slash hypocrisy of complaining about Windows 11. When the goal there was to make it simpler and we were all freaking out because you took away the feature I wanted, right, and that's the other side of that coin, which is okay, we tried and you complained about that. So what is it? You know what are you looking for exactly?
01:03:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm looking for what you're not doing. They always need their feature. Yeah, that's the one you removed.
01:03:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But even like for something like writing, because that's the thing I would focus on, obviously. I mean, what are we talking about here? Couple of heading styles, italics, bold hyperlinks. I think I'm almost done. You know, like this is not much else I need, right, I would?
01:03:34 - Richard Campbell (Host)
like to get you. Not the only one, paul, paul, it's just you but I don't think.
01:03:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't think it is. I will tell you, I write documents and word, of whatever length, I mean it could be 300 words, it could be 3000, five. On Friday I write one like this, often six or 7000 words and word is completely spelling. Grammar check this thing and I pasted it into the web. Someone really looks at it and they find 25 different errors that word never saw and yikes, and their ones you agree with. Yeah, as a writer, I mean, that's the other thing the problem with AI, right, you have to be, you have to be the actual pilot and say, yep, that is a problem or no, that's. You know that's not a problem and word is actually really bad at that and as far as I'm concerned, that's kind of a core feature. Right, that's.
01:04:23
Microsoft turned that capability into something called the Microsoft editor. You can download this crap and put it in your web browser if you want. Strongly recommend. No one does that. It's terrible and you can always tell when the Microsoft guys use it for their own blog posts because it contains spelling and grammar check. You know, promise, that they're stupid. They didn't catch, so I don't know. Anyway, yeah, I'm not. I'm not trying to move away from Microsoft stuff. But I do feel like they're doing what they can to push me away from Microsoft stuff and I kind of wish that would stop. I wish the slow boil that was Microsoft loop would would become something you know, because that's something I would consider for sure.
01:05:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, the problem here is that a product team is able to manage a product and to make his best product they can. As soon as they have to work in the ecosystem, they run into a whole bunch of giant monsters. You know that have a lot more political cloud than they do, that have a lot more experience than they do, and trying to and trying to work through that ecosystem is really hard. I am, and the co-pilot solution is an awesome solution.
01:05:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
For no other reason to then to envision the purse fight yeah, right, actually, right, yeah, to take the next step and actually create this. This came up, I don't know, two, three months ago. You can talk about this in the context of web browsers and say a web browser should be the stripped down nothing and that you would enhance its functionality by some set of extensions that you need or want, right, and that because you're signing in with some kind of account, every time you use this browser anywhere, you get that version of that browser. Right. To me, that model makes sense. Visual studio code that's exactly what this thing does. It is a kind of a stripped down product that has whatever support for whatever languages and things built in.
01:06:11
But if you're a JavaScript guy, there's a set of things you're going to want to do. If you see, sharp guy, there's a set of things flutter, obviously. You install those extensions, whatever it might be, and you turn visual studio code into your thing and you sign in with your Microsoft account or your GitHub account and it all comes back Right, and that's how I mean. How does, how does Word and Excel not work that way? Right, it does have some form of setting sync. It's not transparent. There's no documentation for what it's. I can tell you what it doesn't sync, because I can tell you what I have to manually set up every single time I set up this product Right.
01:06:43 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's a lot of stuff. You're still app centric, even gates. Back in the day it's like no apps, just documents. Right, just the thing you want to work on. But that tool can step into the role, yeah.
01:06:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So you click on a document, some tools opening, right, and I guess what I'm saying is I want that tool to be as simple as possible. Middle molest, however you want to say it, and I also. You know we, what people, don't think this way. I have to think this way because I, most of what I write, goes to a very specific thing, which is WordPress, with a specific configuration, and I can't just copy paste from Google docs or you know open whatever it's called. You know Libre office or you know pick your app, it doesn't matter, it doesn't work. I the the.
01:07:24
What gets pasted into that thing is garbage. It's the code is garbage and if we ever change our theme, everything will be misaligned and miss. You know it will all change and look terrible. And word for all of its faults is the only thing I know about of the box that actually just paste right into work, cause they, you know, of course they support that right. So it's, it's kind of a problem. Like I need a one, a one note I would have used for writing, but one note could not paste into WordPress. Same thing. I'm a little I should. I should probably like to sub loop. Maybe they won't either, I don't know, I actually don't know that one.
01:07:59
Pace is a hard problem too.
01:08:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It is a problem. Yeah, it's a hard one, it's just going to happen yeah. Come on.
01:08:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is it really that?
01:08:06 - Richard Campbell (Host)
hard. I mean you're talking about an interface to every piece of software, a format for each object that gets moved, Like here's the problem that you think of. We take it for granted.
01:08:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
DocX, the word document format isn't an open standard, it's a it's. It's basically just a, an XML description inside of a zip file. So it's not. It's really not that complicated. It is open for anyone to implement. So Google docs should be able to create perfect word documents. It should be able to paste perfect. I don't understand Like I should be able to not change my document format but use any tool I want. I also should be able to strip down word to just the eight things in the toolbar that I want and say save this. And that's my word. And that's not how word works. Yeah, no, no, it's too bad.
01:08:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, it really, and you shouldn't have to do that. It should be doing that. Why am I showing you things you don't use?
01:08:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, right, there was. I don't know what happened to it, but last year, if you I think you still have to do this if you signed into the insider program and word or whatever app you use, you would get us they don't call it this anymore but the simplified ribbon which I think they're now calling a personalized toolbar. So you had to be in the insider program I think you still do. You had to use the product for some number of days and then one day I would say hey, we made you a personalized toolbar and it was supposedly based on whatever you use, so it would show you the stuff that you use the most. I'm not positive, but I don't think it ever showed me anything other than what it always showed me. It was always the same exact toolbar. And, by the way, why couldn't I just click a button and say use the simple one? You know that's. That was never a thing and, to my knowledge, that thing has never been rolled out to stable. I don't think.
01:09:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You want the whole word, but it just isn't show. Like you don't care how big that app actually is. You don't care less. Yep, just your features. This is like right exactly.
01:09:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There are people are like man, I just wish they would let me install only the apps I want. And I'm like, why? So you can say, say 14 K, and not have three icons in the start menu? Who cares? You know, you know there's no size to those things. The size is office. It's like the size is going to be the same. It's basically right.
01:10:15 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean do you like the exes when you? What you're complaining about is looking at an array of controls, like you're in the cockpit of a 747 and saying, which is the, where's the one I want?
01:10:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, when you write, paul, for your books do you write in word?
01:10:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, the books I write in visual studio code Really.
01:10:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, and yeah, because?
01:10:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
because visual studio code is in many ways a perfect tool, by which I mean you can configure it in any way known to God. You can make it look like Microsoft Word. By the way, that's one plugin, but I have a series of extensions, of plugins, or whatever they call, that are designed for markdown specifically. But, also there's a thing in there. You know, if you use terminal is a. I forgot to call the this thing, but it's a control shift P in visual studio code and it's like a palette, like a command palette. I think it's the name.
01:11:07
And there's an extension I use that outputs to HTML, that I install for this purpose, so I can go from markdown to HTML.
01:11:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's just a it's, you know, one keyboard command and a click and then I pasted into WordPress but I have to do it in a way that if people are writing they don't want word, they may end up wanting to end in word, you know, like for your publisher or whatever, but you want to write in something that's simple. Exactly, that's exactly and and then export it in a way that your publisher or your C, m, s.
01:11:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I just briefly I'll tell you. What I did do was I started using a markdown to editor called type pora, which spent around for a long time. I love type pora, yeah, paid for it. The problem is it doesn't spit out clean HTML code, but it does have a command in its toolbar called a copy as HTML code. There's no keyboard shortcuts, so I went into the JSON configuration file and I added one, control M, and now I can control M instead of control C, and what I've copied is clean it, perfectly clean HTML, nice. So when I, when I paste into WordPress, it's perfect, I don't have to do anything extra. I just have to remember control M, because if I control C and I'm screwed right. So that because I think it's not good Cause there's something about markdown today. You think these are such simple markup languages. You would think this would be very straightforward, but they try to apply styles and my point is that word is really a business tool, not a writer's tool.
01:12:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It could be a writer's tool. It's just too much. Yeah, it's just too much.
01:12:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's not that word is successful as an app, it's at the word document format is successful. It publishes, expect it. Everything works with it. Right, that's the thing. And, and you know Google docs for years has supported doc X and doc to some point, to some degree. Whatever it might be, you can save in that format if that's what you want. Are those things perfect on the other end, like at the output? If probably not right, probably not. It depends, I'm sure, on what you're using, what features you're using. But yeah, I don't mind the power of the app being there, I just don't want to. I just want it in my face, yeah, and then there's, there's annoyances to it.
01:13:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You gotta it's great because it is powerful. It can do anything, as long as you, you know, have an extension for it.
01:13:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, oh, it's unbelievable. The success of Microsoft Teams is very much like this too. Microsoft Teams obviously has a base set of functionality. It's pretty big, but they did that apps, the app store thing in the extension model and you have these Teams apps hugely successful. You know browsers work this way. Right, you add functionality through extensions which can blow things up, but that. But it kind of puts it on you, which is why I find Edge so offensive, because they bloated that thing and it should really should be a stripped down, very Spartan browser, if you will that you can say this, this, this, but not this and this, and I wish they did that. I would probably use it if they did, but they don't.
01:14:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yesterday, steve was talking about the fact that Edge keeps running in the background at all times. It has a little that is, by the way, just like every other thing. It is a, not just browsers. I mean zoom does it's everybody's starting to do that and it really bugs me these little stubs that are always running.
01:14:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So I'm actually it's funny you say that I see more of that now than I used to.
01:14:29 - Untitled Linux Show (Announcement)
So, for example, notion now has one of those things it didn't before and I've been using yeah, I am.
01:14:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I find these little intra-icons they justify it. I find it offensive. Yeah, it's offensive, it's in.
01:14:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
CPUs. It's using memory and they justify this thing. Yeah, but now it launches really fast, or it's. You know, it's always available in the background, but really. I think, it's a spy on you. I think it's just to keep an eye on what you're doing and to have presence.
01:14:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Hey, buddy, are you? I'm sorry, are you taking notes in another app? Yeah, excuse me.
01:14:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What are you up to?
01:14:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm right here. Yeah, just about those friends, but it's.
01:15:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's become a really pernicious trend in software. It's, by the way, the same thing on Mac. It's everywhere this funny.
01:15:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's. Yeah, this has been. It's wait, this has been an issue for years and years and years. But I have actually noticed that with a couple of apps, just literally in the past month or so, like notion is one of those. Like all of a sudden there's a notion. What's that thing doing there?
01:15:22 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I don't like it. Yeah, I don't like that. What are you up to? Yeah, you kind of want to snap a. Show me all communications between this product and within this process. Well, here's an idea.
01:15:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean task manager obviously has a startup apps interface. There's a more modern version of it and settings that, but honestly, they do exactly the same.
01:15:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Every Cinevich has a good one with process explorer. I mean, there's a, there's some good tools out there.
01:15:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And you can go in and you can say yes, no, yes, no, whatever, and that's fine. But I would also like a little lock button where I say this doesn't change, never start this. And if somebody tries to put something in there, let me know and I'll tell them yes or no, right, I mean, but that's not a thing, that's not a feature in Windows Should be.
01:16:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Your participation. Install ends on clicking. This, but it puts the onus on you as the user and the malware deploys. Yeah.
01:16:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, but you have to. You have to go and look sometimes and you might be surprised what's in there?
01:16:13 - Richard Campbell (Host)
This is part of your, your tips and picks this week right. It's like doing a little housekeeping. This is more housekeeping you could be doing.
01:16:21 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, exactly. Yeah. The promise of the paperless office or whatever, that computers were going to fix everything for us is not materialized.
01:16:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
computers have fixed everything Can you imagine.
01:16:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Anyway, we can dream Anyhow. There you go.
01:16:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Maybe we should all just start with Visual Studio Code, maybe. Maybe Microsoft should make a word plugin for Visual Studio Code and just leave it at that. There probably already is one, by the way.
01:16:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So someone it's logical to wonder why I don't just use Visual Studio Code to write everything Right and the. The issue there is that I actually write in code when I write in that product and there's a. You can have an optional side pan that shows you the rich view Type or a works like word. It's the rich text view. It's like a. What you see is what you get Self-to-deal with code from time to time, which is fine because Markdown is simple and I know it really well now.
01:17:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah. So it's a way to go and it's one of those things Once you build the reflex muscles, it's very compelling and Markdown ain't going anywhere. You know so an awful lot of stuff out there that depends on Markdown. It's a good skill to have, yeah.
01:17:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yep, yeah, no, it's a. I love it, I love.
01:17:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Markdown. You want to talk about the New York times. I do.
01:17:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I love you so much so I hate the New York times However as a content creator, I have to say yeah, every day I so I do read the paper. I should say I read it. I also read the Washington Post every day. I'm a weird subscriber.
01:17:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I hate the papers you love to hate. You got to have them.
01:17:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I don't mind the Washington Post usually, although they're tech guys I am yeah.
01:17:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I don't read the text section away.
01:17:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I know, yes, I shouldn't even bother, but but the New York times broadly makes me insane every day. But but okay, whatever I, I, I, whatever you think of the New York times they do generate it, just play word all in a move on, sure, and even the screw that up, I don't get whatever. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm talking to started If they, if they ruin the wire card, I'm going to murder somebody. The point is anyway, I love a wire cutter. I pay for that separately.
01:18:24
I say Let me tell you about biggest crap with the New York time. This is, this is what the New York times does. I pay for this thing. I also pay for the wire cutter, right? So whatever that costs, whatever that subscription costs, if you want to play their games, it's a cost. For that, they have the cooking.
01:18:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But you can buy one thing that gives you everything, right, don't you?
01:18:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, you can, and every single time I log into the web I get a full page ad that says hey, we know you're a subscriber, but you should subscribe to everything. You know what? Screw you. That is, that's offensive. That's crazy. You have ads and you're trying to upsell me from the thing I'm already paying for. No, no, no, no, no, I hate them so much. Anyway, the New York times has sued Microsoft and open AI, which I think is beautiful, for copyright infringement. The idea is that they have basically can demonstrate very easily that they have trained open AI, a chat GPT on New York times copyrighted.
01:19:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know? You know who else is trained on a New York times content Me, In fact, we do exactly what open AI does with all of our shows, which is is read the stories and then talk about them. Well, that, are you going to criminalize? Ingesting content? Well, so what you're just, yes, I so if a machine does it, it's different than if a human.
01:19:42 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think the argument here is that the argument actually I don't think Microsoft and or a open AI have made the argument, because these companies talk privately trying to settle this right that they are doing some sort of a transformative or yeah, there's a transformative process that occurs where we are. Yes, we are digesting your content, but the thing we're spitting out is not your content. It's a discussion about whatever topic that was informed by your content, to which the New York Times says excuse me, look at these verbatim side by sides where you're literally taking our exact content that we charge people to read.
01:20:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You're making the fair use argument like what. Leo does when he references a New York Times article is in fair use and, by the way, even if I read a paragraph verbatim, it's still fair use. Yeah, because you had a long and, incidentally, as.
01:20:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Mike Maznick points out, the New York Times does this to other journals too, so I they want to criminalize their own behavior.
01:20:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think you're reacting early.
01:20:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh, I think this is what this is at all.
01:20:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Actually no, they don't. That's an unintended consequence they want. They want to have a carve out because they're special and they're not special.
01:21:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They want to have a carve out because what they do is expensive and they create unique gender. You know content of their own that they charge people for, and they would like to be paid for this if it's going to be used for this purpose. This is actually the closest comparison I think there is, for this is what Google did with news publishers, a big and small, from around the world, where they would just screen scraping and putting the results into search, and publishers started suing them and government started going after them. So now this is called Google publisher or whatever. That has an agreement with every content publishing house on the entire planet, and every month there are multiple blog posts about how we've reached a new agreement with someone else who creates their own content. What the Times want is that to happen, which I think is perfectly as a content creator, I think it's perfect.
01:21:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Let me read this paragraph from Mike's Mike Maznick detector. The larger point is if the New York Times wins well, the New York Times might face its own receiving end in lawsuits. The New York Times is somewhat infamous in the news world and you might verify this or not for using other journalists work as starting point and building off of it, frequently without any credit at all. Okay, if the New York Times successfully argues that reading a third party article to help its reporters quote, learn about the news before reporting its own version of it is copyright infringement, you might not like how that's turned around by tons of other news organizations against the New York.
01:22:29
Times, if this is a common creator's argument that somehow something I'm doing is special in a way, when a machine does it no no, that's not it.
01:22:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That is not it at all.
01:22:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, the point is verbatim copying and publishing somewhere else under your own payroll. Somebody might go to chat GPT instead of reading the New York Times.
01:22:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'm saying that the New York Times has demonstrated that they spit out verbatim copy from the New York Times to right but it's still fair, you paying them instead.
01:23:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's still fair? It's not. It doesn't have an economic impact. You can't Times nobody's going to read the New York Times by going to chat GPT.
01:23:09 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's like saying no one's going to read the New York Times on the internet, which is what people probably did say 20 years ago.
01:23:13 - Untitled Linux Show (Announcement)
It's not like that, it's a little bit like that it's just chat.
01:23:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Look, go ahead and go ahead and use chat, gpt and try to get the New York Times story. You're not going to get it, no you're not going to get it. Just because the New York Times was able to configure some prompt to get that. You are not going to be able to read the New York Times on chat GPT.
01:23:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's not the usage of it, and if that's not the usage, then it's fair use. Somebody was taking your podcast and just republishing them but it's not republishing them.
01:23:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the thing. New York Times claims it's republishing them. It's not. It's transformative use. And I tell you, it is a slippery slope of the New York Times wins this which, by the way, you're not because every single court has held again and again that whatever an AI does with that content is transformative use.
01:24:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It is fair use. So I think the end result is actually going to be just that there will be a settlement and that the New York Times will be paid for this use, and that's what it really wants. And the lawsuit was a measure it had to take because they could not reach an agreement as to what this was worth. That's something they've come out and said yeah, unfortunately.
01:24:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Google has opened this can of worms by paying some journalism sites and I think actually a open AI has done it. And I think open AI has as well. So unfortunately, they've won this can of worms. I wish they had just said no. No, this is transformative use. This is no different than a human reading. It's a tough thing.
01:24:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's a tough one. That's a tough one. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
01:24:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're saying there is something especially different about a machine doing this than a human. That's not true.
01:24:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That to me doesn't really make that really important.
01:24:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I think there's something especially different about a human doing it than a machine.
01:24:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But in general, what is the?
01:24:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
technology.
01:24:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The region of Harvard was just fired for plagiarizing, and if you look at what that plagiarism was, it was nothing. This is way more blatant than what that woman did. I don't know.
01:25:08 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I mean, I appreciate that these rules need to be pressed against. I don't know which way this is going to go, but if we don't have this pressure it is going to. You can't wait until it's over.
01:25:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The problem with technology is it moves so fast and then some market disappears. It's not like journalism in general or newspapers specifically have been doing great recently.
01:25:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's the argument, but I think that's a bogus argument. We have to save the creators.
01:25:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
We're also going to see both sides of this, because the Japanese are going the other way. They are more and more opening up. Everything is for. Anything touched by an AI is open to use, I think that's correct. I just a real question of what's going to happen to creators Like we're going to. The experiment is taking place, yeah right, and it could be destructive. We don't know what's going to be interesting, but the times has gone through the near death experience of all. News is free.
01:26:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I have a goofy little blog of my own. So let's say, I'm looking at my news feed and some site that does what I do says, hey, microsoft announced something today and I go to and of course what I seek out is the original Microsoft post. I don't want to go to based it on whatever they write. A lot of these goons don't even like to that. So I got to go search it or I think about like, okay, where could it be? What blog you know we went to?
01:26:29
We went to this on the show the other day and I found the original Microsoft thing and then I write a story based on what Microsoft has said. Do I owe that original thing that was in my feed some sort of credit, because that's where I saw that this happened, or does that not matter? You know, I mean there's a little ethical debate, but I mean that's the tip of the, that's the one pixel tip of this giant iceberg of what is ethical and or legal and this is what's, I don't know. I think the New York Times is right to want to be compensated for their content being used.
01:27:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think you're insane, but okay, I don't think you want that to happen because I think you would be regret it in the long run. The New York look, they created some examples. I want you to go to chat GPT and try to, you know, get the New York Times out.
01:27:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's a lot of work from a third party to do with that. They're not like. You know that I don't even know the content, like I mean, but my point is that they've.
01:27:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
These are specious examples of New York Times. Is providing I anybody going to go to chat GPT instead of reading the New York Times?
01:27:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Not today, but people go to read the news.
01:27:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's a very good news source. He is not doing original journalism. That's the next thing.
01:27:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's not a good place for breaking news editorialization.
01:27:48
I could picture someone saying in the same way. They would say, hey, you know Google, or you know hey, whatever Amazon's thing is, say, I heard something just happened, what's going on? And I could picture them doing that with open AI or whatever, or chat, gpt, whatever comes out of that. I mean it is what it is today, but that doesn't mean it stays that way. I mean people, google, search that stuff, so this is, I mean, this is another way to get to that data. You know it's fine if it's like this. You know AI is great at summarizing things and you can say, hey, look, here's a bullet list of all the important points of the story. That's transformative, I guess.
01:28:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But just the New York Times doesn't want them to do that.
01:28:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, I could see that If I were, open. Ai.
01:28:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I would say well, screw you, new York Times, we won't ingest your stuff. Well, use your data.
01:28:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Right.
01:28:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They should not ever pay for this stuff. That's a big slippery slip. They made a mistake.
01:28:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Wow, Right Well the question is, how good will a machine? Well, that's like saying they sucked in my book and you know there's going to spit out chunks of it and it's like I wish I could spit out chunks of it.
01:28:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It transforms it, it summarizes it, it does not know when it doesn't.
01:28:54 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But what if it didn't? That's my point.
01:28:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, stable diffusion ingests a lot of different artists and maybe it can create something looks just like Thomas concave, the painter of light. But Thomas concave would have no justification. Yeah, exactly, they wouldn't have no justification, because that's how every painter works.
01:29:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I do think there's a like what people are waiting for with AI generated art, for it to finally spit out something we're like wait a minute, that's a painting that exists, like you know, so far, no right, but it's that was a million monkeys, or whatever.
01:29:29 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It was always. Well, let's face it, this whole thing started with the mangled Getty logos Right.
01:29:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, but they're mangled right. They you know so they're transformed.
01:29:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yes, I wonder how Getty feels about that. Yeah.
01:29:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, Getty doesn't like it. They shouldn't put their you know pictures online.
01:29:51 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I am surprised to hear you taking this stance.
01:29:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Oh well, of course I'm going to take this copy right of material online.
01:29:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, Because I that's how I work. I look at we don't do original journalism here. I don't Hold on a second.
01:30:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But you do, you do Actually. I mean no, no, we don't.
01:30:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean most of our shows, like twit, for instance. Those are we're. We're reading all the news articles and talking about them.
01:30:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
But you know, but you're not, you're not narrating a red article.
01:30:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're just gonna read a paragraph from it.
01:30:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Sure, of course, but that's what, that is Fair use.
01:30:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the definition.
01:30:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's what the definition was for Playing 10 seconds of a song is very useful. Playing the entire song and not paying the artist is theft Right, that's just.
01:30:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, it's just chat GBT regurgitate entire New York Times articles ever.
01:30:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, and therein lies the use of this case Just set those lines Right. Is it saying what is?
01:30:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
the problem. Yeah, fair use. You need some kind of a definition of at what point does fair use cross the line into just copyright infringement.
01:30:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, Do they, and all right. And do they have to ensure that they don't like. Could this just be an extra sub routine? It says never regurgitate. Yeah, sure.
01:30:58 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, and they probably have it in there and it's a screwed up like a switch statement or something.
01:31:03 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's just a bad bug. Yeah, I mean like but this is the point right Like we are in a new phase with new tools that can consume ravenously all the information available there and regurgitate in various forms as long as it can we. So now we have to modify and improve our fair use rules and say what's right, we're fair and what's not.
01:31:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So one of the four tests of fair use. By the way, fair use we act like it's a law. It's not. It's the right to, it's the right to defend yourself in court, as Larry Lessig famously said.
01:31:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
By the way, part of it involves actually actively protecting yourself, and that's really what the New York Times is doing here.
01:31:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
If they don't do this now, they don't get to what they need to demonstrate.
01:31:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The four tests are include the effect of the use upon the potential market, what they have to demonstrate, and no court. By the way, this is a failed case, guarantee you. But what the court would have to say is yeah, people are reading chat, you bet, instead of the New York Times, it's, it's hurting your market.
01:32:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Are they? Do they have to show that it's happening or that it could happen, because the effect of the use upon the potential market. The purpose of the character we use the nature of the car, rewrite it work, the amount and substantiality, the portion taken and the effect of all, the New York Times has a market and that market could go down because people don't feel they have to prove.
01:32:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
By the way, this is why they put all those clips in specious clips. They'd have to prove that somebody would read chat, gpt and say the New York Times, good luck, you can go ahead and try and do it.
01:32:34 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I could you prove that no one would do it, that it's impossible, that I would say it's to do that.
01:32:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, you're not going to get the New York Times and more than you're going to get a lot of New York Times.
01:32:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Honestly, it's anyway. But like anyway, look I, it's a giant news gathering organization. They have enormous costs. Their business model is not, you know, doing well today for sure that's their rationale, but that's not a reason to throw out their solution to business. But this is open AI. Is the spear, the head of the spear here right For AI? So they're not just worried about really about open AI. They're worried that if they allow this and do nothing about it, that other, less scrupulous places will use this as the example. Is it looking ever protected?
01:33:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're a there's a long history of mainstream Media trying to preserve itself and preserve its business model by coming after new media, and that is just an old form of media trying to preserve its business model. It's not supporting. It doesn't support innovation, doesn't support the future. It says well, let's go back to news.
01:33:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Thank you very much. I don't know that. That's their responsibility.
01:33:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They have a responsibility to the company to support themselves. The courts are going to say, no, we're going to, you're not losing.
01:33:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
We'll see, we'll see. I don't think this will ever hit any courts. I think what's going to happen?
01:34:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
is that you called it? Is it extortion? Play hey us is more special.
01:34:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And that opens the floodgates, because they were, like I said, there's a precedent with Google and I think that's the model they're going to have to. I mean, look they, microsoft and open AI have kind of written this kind of free horse for quite a long time, you know, building up this incredible empire that no one can assail. That has nothing to do with the New York Times or any newspaper. It has to do with Google and Amazon and all these small companies.
01:34:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Well, and has been brought up in the chat. And those tech giants are making billions? Yep, well, that was in the lawsuit, right? So get your, yeah, get your hand out now or forever, you know, hold your piece.
01:34:45 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, or you just kiss a good guy, yeah right, Yep. No, I really. I don't really think this is specific. I think it's more like this shows what's possible. Here are some examples and it's it's not like this is going to get better, Like we also they also jumped to the biggest game.
01:35:04 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They went with New York Times, which you should do a possible name, and Microsoft. Yep, there you go, perfect, smart. I think it was smart. I think the lose because whatever the you know, whatever precedence, whatever, they do is what happens.
01:35:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, it's just the way it is right now. So, whatever I mean, you know I it's not I you'll lose, whatever money it costs you to make this case happen and pay the lawyers, I guess. But it's not like the New York or a Microsoft or open. I could like counter sue them for damages or something I you know they're so it's. I think this was I. I I'm surprised they didn't reach an agreement, frankly, well, and I'm sure exactly Microsoft.
01:35:45 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Now they're playing court step chicken.
01:35:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is what could have happened in the Epic Google case, because these guys you know the, the, the terms that Epic wanted were what it is already doing for Spotify. Like, all it had to do was just be agreeable and do that thing. Yeah, we're like, but they're playing this game. We want to write out those revenues as long as we can. Yeah, the difference between Spotify and Epic, by the way, is that games are something like 85% of the revenues that app stores make. Music is not. So that's the, that's the, that's the rationale there.
01:36:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Incidentally, the other thing that's telling in this lawsuit is that the times is demanding a jury trial because they know a judge will throw it right.
01:36:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
An emotional play yeah, but you're only going with the facts. You're not going to win it. Yep, okay. Well, that's they're, right.
01:36:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They couldn't, they couldn't win it for the jury, because the jury is going to say, oh, the poor New York time.
01:36:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I yeah, I'm sure I don't know that. I'm sure they seem very powerful to individuals. I don't know.
01:36:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But having this case we get, having this resolved, would only strengthen the ability to build LLMs, because it adds certainty either way, and so you don't use what you need when you want to raise money we really want to act, as we did when the internet started, in favor of innovation and supporting a new technology.
01:37:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I know that's having the old technologies say oh, wait a minute, what about us? It's like radio suing TV saying, well you know well, hold on a second.
01:37:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's a little too general, because I mean you know you could argue when cars were happening. Microsoft really cow. Well, I mean what? Yeah, like, what's the like? You know, we're not going to have cars because the other guys that breed horses are too powerful.
01:37:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here's what happens. Here's what happens. Microsoft and Google and open AI. I agree, they pay licensing fees, which kills innovation where it really supposed to and needs to happen, when open source, and that while you're doing is solidifying the power of big tech?
01:37:50 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
who's responsive?
01:37:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But you're talking about this is very big, Like New York Times, open, AI, Microsoft none of them have any responsibility to open source Like they're right, they all have business, which is why this is a terrible lawsuit, because if they succeed, either by in court or by getting a licensing agreement, the only people that disadvantages is open source AI development, which is the most important thing right now. Period.
01:38:17 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Wow, okay, so GitHub co-pilot is out and co-pilot chat.
01:38:24 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Co-pilot's been out for a while, but co-pilot chat's the new part.
01:38:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And in the story I think we can all agree on at least GitHub co-pilot has been around for a couple of years I think two and a few years, probably something like that. This is $10 a month for individuals, which makes it one of the more inexpensive AI subscriptions, and they're a chat product which is probably at least six months old-ish from the private beta.
01:38:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it was in private beta for a while.
01:38:53 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, is now generally available, and this is just one of those beautiful examples of where AI really makes a lot of sense, because anyone who has written any software code will tell you that they've run into a roadblock at some point. Every day, probably the Google that thing go to a bunch of different websites, spend a couple hours on Stack Overflow reading the answers that were voted to be the best that don't actually solve the problem, and going to the next one down and reading some of the responses, and by the time they're done, they forget what they're even doing. And what this does is bring in the summary of knowledge on these topics into the product that you're using, in this case, visual Studio or code or the ID of your choice, but typically it's going to be probably code or Visual Studio, and I'll be good through these things. And I have a guy it's a guy on my side who pays for this because he's learning how to program in a particular programming language and this is like the cheapest and best way to do that. It's $10 a month. It's like a crazy good deal.
01:39:54
You could use it to take this block of code that's in C sharp and convert it into Perl or whatever language, java or something. Rust, yeah, we've rust. There you go. That was a stupid example, but the idea that the program language transition thing, which is something. When I was doing that app, the Nopad app, I late in the game found a Charles Petzold book written in Visual Basic, if you could believe that, which I later found was just a translation, but where I used I took his code for printing from in Visual Basic and rewrote it in C sharp and I can tell you that was a couple of wasted weeks of my life and that would be something you know I would be really good at what would you do for you now, yeah, yeah, I mean of all of the co-pilot conversations, because I'm very much in a phase on the run as a dot in rock side where it's like show me the money, don't tell me the possibilities, just show me working projects.
01:40:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Though the consistent success story has been GitHub co-pilot that developers are loving it. But now I'm hearing PMs looking at the at the multi-sprint stats. So after a year of the team up to speed on this, this is the difference. You know. More frequent check-ins of code. That works. It needs less remediation, like generally fewer blockers. So it's great. So the PM view is like a code quality is a big thing.
01:41:22 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
There may be even a code style standardization kind of thing Else right yeah.
01:41:28 - Richard Campbell (Host)
If you write in prompts that encourage a style. It's. One of the interesting angles for GitHub in general is to get more enterprise-y, where a set of enterprise architects, can you know, declare a style and anybody working inside of that enterprise account would then get that style and that doesn't exist yet, then it should. I have Charles.
01:41:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Petzold sues you for taking his vision. Basic code.
01:41:57 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I can't.
01:41:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I gave him credit, oh that lets you off the hook.
01:42:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Also, the book is out of print and the book's out of print. It does actually fill me out of the hook. So, and then also, this kind of came out of nowhere. Microsoft never announced this was happening and didn't announce it when it happened. But over the past week they've released a standalone Microsoft co-pilot app on Android and then on iPhone and iPad. It looks and works exactly like the web product and like the Microsoft I'm sorry, the Windows 11 sidebar, whatever you call it, the co-pilot sidebar although it's the full co-pilot experience. So it also does the creative stuff. It's not just the, you know, it will create pictures and do all that kind of stuff.
01:42:40
It does have one thing that I don't believe is in any of the co-pilot products here yeah, it was chat GPT-4, right, it might go a little more slowly, right, this is a. There's no payment required to use the app. I'm sure there will be a. You know, a, what do you call it? Like a limit to how much you can do in a day, and yada, yada, yada, but it's, it's, it's pretty much the full deal. I mean, honestly, it's kind of a great way to access these capabilities, Like if you want to steal the New York Times, for example. It's a really portable way to do that. I defy you to do that. Yeah, I was gonna say I did.
01:43:23 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You feel free to tell me to go after myself. That's my nice. I installed co-pilot right now on my Android phone and it came with hi, I'm Bing. I'm here to make your life better with artificial intelligence.
01:43:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yikes, yeah, there's so many things wrong with that sentence. That's funny. Hi, I'm Bing.
01:43:42 - Richard Campbell (Host)
No, you're not.
01:43:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I think this was a smart move in their part, because no one's going to download the Bing app to do this. Yeah, this is kind of it's built into the edge app in many ways too, and, uh, I think it's an immediately restarted and changed that.
01:43:54 - Richard Campbell (Host)
it says hi again. I'm happy to help you with anything. How can I make you high again? I'm just kidding With Bing Deemphasize. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't, you know. I know you thought I said Bing, I didn't really mean it.
01:44:05 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Just kidding. Yeah, sorry, sorry about that. That's offensive now, right, bing, yep, sorry, sorry, sorry. It's like when you're at the gym you don't point at a woman and then start talking Uh, that's, that's a mistake I learned the other day. Um, so I was being complimentary and it was someone I knew. Anyway, um, okay, so that, moving on, uh, and in Xbox we have uh, it's January, we have their first dump of Xbox game pass titles.
01:44:32
I am happy to report, for the first time in probably several months, uh, not only do I recognize most of these games, I actually want to play some of these games. So, for example, resident Evil 2, the remake version is coming out toward the middle of the month. This is the. This is like technically third person remake of uh, with all the graphics and sound and all that stuff that looks awesome. There's a world war two first person shooter I've never heard of, called hell, let loose. That is coming out, I think, in a uh tomorrow. So that one I'm definitely going to give a shot. Uh, assassin's Creed, valhalla, which I have played, in fact, uh, I don't think it was on Xbox, I don't remember where I played that. I played it a little bit. Um, we happy few which has got kind of a clockwork orange um vibe to it. It's to me. I don't know what it is really. So that's, uh, those who remain. There's actually a lot of good games here.
01:45:19 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Um, so this is not even getting into the app division stuff, yeah.
01:45:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I know this is just, and this is just the first half of January, so that's looking good, so that's that's good. I haven't been able to say that in a while Most months are, but you know, a couple of times, usually it's twice a month, you know, you kind of look at the list You're like, oh, what's going on here? Um, but yeah, that stuff looks great. Um, microsoft confirmed, we actually we wanted to talk about this last minute, I can't remember, but, uh, sometime in the middle of late December, whenever it was, they announced or revealed, confirmed, really, uh, that Bobby Kotick uh was leaving on December 29th, so he's gone. Uh, that lingering suffer, uh, sulfur smell will dissipate in time. Um, so we're free of that nightmare. Um, yeah, yeah, I mean, he'll be missed. He was such a great guy. Hmm.
01:46:06
Woof or something I don't know. Um, there was a store I don't remember when this was from, maybe, uh, sometime in November but Sony had reached out to PlayStation customers who had purchased uh content from Discovery which is that TV channel, for lack of a better term and said hey, uh, sorry, because of our licensing deals with this company, uh, you're going to lose access to that content. We're not paying for that anymore. Um, a lot of people complained.
01:46:32 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I bought this. Where is it?
01:46:35 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Uh bought, yeah, bought with air coast, you know? Um, yeah, this is the problem.
01:46:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You didn't read the part where it's where bought was in air quotes.
01:46:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I'd like to see there be outs when this kind of thing happens. They're often aren't.
01:46:49 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I'm disappointed that they we didn't get a class action from it. It seemed like the perfect chance. Maybe that was, and maybe that's why they've changed their mind, because they finally saw the writing on the wall and went we're headed towards a class action. That could really complicate this for everyone.
01:47:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, um to be clear uh, this is not in part two, in perpetuity. Uh, it's, it's gonna be at least 30 months, yeah, so that's not quite three years, but um yeah. No no no, not a big, we don't care too much they kicked the problem down the road.
01:47:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The problem still exists. Right, you created a set of customer expectations. You cannot fulfill them. It is bad for it is bad for its vendor who did this deal, it's bad for the copyright holder and it's bad for the customer.
01:47:29 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You made a mistake. This has not. This has happened in different places, different ways. Remember the um? The original version of the Martian audiobook was read by RC Bray and they. I don't know what happened. There was some disagreement between the publishing company and that. That yeah.
01:47:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I never got anywhere to explain the change in readers.
01:47:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I would love to know what happened there, but I believe the the latest version is read by that kid that was on Star Trek. Uh, I think Wil Wheaton, I think maybe does the new version Wil Wheaton is actually very good. He did, you know, ready player one, which I thought was very good, and he did the masses of doom audiobook. But but I see Bray is just like possibly my single sounds arch. It always sounds like he's a little bit.
01:48:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, yeah, clumped, but uh, yeah, or clumped, but RC Bray was an actor and he well, I guess it's an actor, but I keep.
01:48:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I have never. I people I multiple times laughed out loud to his reading of this book and people next to me on a plane one time I was on a train in, I think, at Barcelona we're literally like you got to tell me what the joke is and I'm like it's kind of a long story, it's kind of you know, it's kind of right.
01:48:38 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They're going to take an hour.
01:48:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, cause it was like my reaction was so over the top. You know it was just, but anyway beautiful.
01:48:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And so the stuff happened. He said well, we, I love RC Bray. I mean it was very positive about RC Bray, so I'm sure it's some licensing deal.
01:48:52 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, no, it wasn't him, it wasn't the author. It's audible. You know that. It was as audible.
01:48:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was the recording rights for those books, so I think it's too bad.
01:49:00 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Anyway, that's. That's one example that I've sort of seen, although I my understanding is, if you bought the RC Bray version, you still have it in your library. I think I do. You can still listen. Yeah, I believe so. Yeah, so there's that and there's. You know, this has happened from time to time, so it will happen. This is this will happen more. There's no doubt about it because, you know, as these platforms kind of come and go after a while, it's like, well, you know, I don't know what to tell you, Like so we'll see.
01:49:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The important message is you don't own this stuff and don't pretend you do yeah.
01:49:30 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, exactly yeah. But they they have misled their customers in the first place by applying Right, you bought anything, that's right. Yeah, you've only paid and the license? Yeah, this is.
01:49:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
This is a little off topic because I tell you, but you'll see where, where I got to this, there was a crazy headline that said that Microsoft was responsible, would be responsible, in a couple of years, or approximately 250 or 240 million computers heading to the landfill, and the theory there was that Windows 10 was going to go out of support and Windows 11 has these artificial, as I would call it, hardware requirements and if they just eased up on that, then those computers wouldn't go into the landfill. So this is a little bit of a play on. I don't know how you think about things, but can anyone tell me what the problem is with this theory about the Microsoft being responsible for these things heading into the landfill?
01:50:23 - Richard Campbell (Host)
They didn't buy them. It was, it's got. They're always going to be going.
01:50:27 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They didn't even make a. They always no, but but because of their licensing, you know, or whatever. Oh, I see. So, here's the thing those computers were always going into the landfill.
01:50:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, it was just a matter of time, Right so? And you can only do.
01:50:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Linux. You know why not? Yep, you could. You know, you could put that Chrome OS flex thing, whatever it's called, yeah, yeah, linux. Yep, by the way, you could work around the hardware requirements Very easy. Microsoft actually documents one way you could do that. Um, so I just you know, it's like this computer is always going to go into the landfill.
01:50:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like it's, it's, it's just going to be a matter of time. It's the same kind of mud raking stuff green piece and others have put out for years.
01:51:01 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's a typical star of the New York Times would publish Franklin and, uh, you know, chat with, chat through those pieces.
01:51:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, let's see how they do yeah.
01:51:07 - Untitled Linux Show (Announcement)
They feel um. Yeah, by the way, the Martian um still in my library.
01:51:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Narrated. Barreste. Bray. So that's the good news, yeah, so that's good, you know, um tell anybody.
01:51:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The reason I thought about that was like you don't own anything Technically you're going to die. So you know you're not taking it with you.
01:51:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know what you're going in the landfill.
01:51:25 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I am. Oh no, I'm not. I'm actually going to make sure that doesn't have to.
01:51:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Microsoft. Seven billion of us are going to end up in the landfill.
01:51:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, if I get my way, I'm going to end up in the Senate in Paris. But you know we'll see. And I'll let you throw.
01:51:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh you're going to have the ashes in the sense oh no one's going to.
01:51:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yeah, no one's going to. No, I'm not going to put my body in the ashes. It's like you know, stephanie, fly my body to Paris. And you know, just buy me a CD.
01:51:51 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I, you know, just nobody's going for the liquid helium option. I'll see you in a hundred years.
01:51:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's like I don't know if you, I want you in the exit row.
01:51:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, it's fine, he's actually none of us are going in the landfill, because that would make too much sense, right, right.
01:52:07 - Untitled Linux Show (Announcement)
We're just going to set aside some of the most valuable real estate on the planet and use it to store bodies.
01:52:12 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's really smart. What is this weird paged ritual we're doing here, like, what do we have to? What are we doing? Yeah, okay, anyway, I'm sorry it's kind of a side track. Two more non-Microsoft Xbox stories, sort of gaming stories. Metaquest2 has a permanent price cut, winston Vental to Apple about to come out with their really expensive thing. It's a $50 price get, so the base model is now $249 versus 299. I will say I mean I'm these things are getting to the point where you could kind of casually buy one now. Right, you don't have to be super hardcore about the price, that's actually the right price.
01:52:51
I makes me mad. I have the.
01:52:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
MetaQuest Pro, which cost me $1,400. Oh yeah, Now it's a thousand.
01:52:59 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And what's the resolution of each? I like 160 by 160.
01:53:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, it's better than that. That's the reason to get the pro right. They have better screens.
01:53:06 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, it's still well, this thing is pretty good. It's 1832 by 19, 20, 120 years.
01:53:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You want to test, you know put your toes in the VR water.
01:53:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, yep, yeah, I think that's that, my God. The add on for the PlayStation is $500, or is it $600? It's really expensive. It was expensive, I remember. Yeah, yeah, it's really expensive. So that's that seems like a good price to me. And then steam, as promised. This was not a surprise. As of January 1st the other day they've dropped support for Windows 7 and 8.x Something to do with them being unsupported, I guess.
01:53:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's cool, though, that you can still have a Windows 7 machine and play Steam. Yeah.
01:53:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, I honestly I think it has something to do with Chrome, doesn't it? It's yeah, because it uses an embedded version of Chrome and that doesn't yeah. So they're, they're beholden Like those games would still work, right. I mean, you'd have no problem running the games, but you can't. Yeah, right there.
01:54:02 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Shake it to.
01:54:03 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Steam itself. Yeah, yeah, yep.
01:54:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All right, there you go. That by Fred's is the Xbox, the world famous Xbox segment. Paul Therat, theratcom, richard Campbell run as radio and you're listening to Windows Weekly. Let's go to the back of the book now. And how about a tip of the week, mr Therat?
01:54:26 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, I have kind of a set of tips. I'm going to be talking about this in more detail on hands-on Windows soon. I spent a bunch of time over the break turning into a security expert sort of I'm not really, but I mean it's I. You know I there's. This was all inspired by the past key support that exists in Windows. So some people may not know this, but Windows natively supports past keys and Windows 11, 23h2 has a past key manager for the first time. This is actually something you don't actually even get on iOS or Android. You know, go figure, like I'm an actual native to the platform past key manager, which is kind of useful, although they do have ways to manage past keys in the for your accounts and whatnot. So, tied to this I you kind of look at when you look at security for accounts and things, you kind of have to go back to the beginning, and so I actually ended up adding a chapter to the book about properly securing your Microsoft account and I had people I know, like my wife, shut let you, let me into their accounts like a look and see how they were configured, to see how, how well they were doing, and I got to tell you. It wasn't too bad. Actually, I was really nervous about my wife, honestly, but what I basically boiled it down to is that you kind of have to come at it from like backwards, because most people have had their Microsoft account for a long time, just like they've had a Google account, amazon, apple, whatever it might be. I got mine in 2002 when Xbox Live came out. I still have the same exact account.
01:55:52
That my account would in any way be configured correctly is actually somewhat of a miracle, but it is, and it really boils down to to step verification multiple secure, alternative sign-in methods that you control Email addresses right. Especially, you're good An authenticator app on a phone that's locked down with biometric security perfect, and that's basically the story. But I you should probably I recommend people read in the art. There's a whole thing you really want to do, because one of the scary things like this is probably not true of everybody. We could all do this right now together, collect the views of the group.
01:56:28
But if you go to the Microsoft account website, contact microsoftcom, go into security dashboard and look at advanced security, there is in there a activity monitor or activity list or whatever. You can see your sign-in attempts and I got to tell you I got a lot from China, vietnam, russia, germany, uk. I am not in any of those places. They've all failed, and that's good. Also, microsoft's smart enough not to constantly throw me up prompts. Right, it can tell using what? Probably using AI. I don't know when to prompt and what not to prompt, right? So these are failed login attempts. So it's doing a pretty good job. Mfa bliss on the weekend. What is?
01:57:05 - Richard Campbell (Host)
it. Somebody's trying to get it, yeah, yeah. It's like you know this is job-logging code, and.
01:57:09 - Untitled Linux Show (Announcement)
I'm like I didn't ask about login code but as soon as you say.
01:57:12 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I didn't ask for that it doesn't bother you again, yeah.
01:57:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
The thing that's weird is on the Microsoft account website and when you go into the security dashboard, they don't actually give you a link to report these things. You can't report them. It's only when it gets through to you that you can report it. So I thought that was a little interesting. But yeah, two-step verification, as Microsoft calls it with the Microsoft account. There's a similar scheme for Microsoft Worker School account. Obviously, your organization has to enable it.
01:57:41 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I was used to discover as an administrator, it will relentlessly pester you to enable it Like it's not every single time you open up the M365 and Mincline if MFA is not on by default, it's like listen, listen.
01:57:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I have never hated myself more than those times I've had to go into the Microsoft 365 admin console and try to find a feature to enable and this was an example that I found it, by the way, I was pretty proud of myself, so I enabled this. As an organization of one, I didn't enable this in my my I almost said tenant. It's not a tenant, it's just my domain or whatever. Anyway, so you do that. So that's, that's a job. This is a little interesting thing about Pasky's. Real quick, because the Pasky's are another topic.
01:58:27
Windows doesn't need to be support them If you think about it from a convenience perspective. Security has to be secure, but it also has to be convenient. People don't, like you know, taking extra steps and everything you really kind of need to. The only thing that's more convenient than improving or verifying an authentication with a phone like an authenticator app is doing it on the device you're using, right. So if you're using your computer, that's secured with Windows Hello preferably biometric, but also pin you can you can store the Pasky on your computer.
01:58:56
Some accounts will prompt you to do this automatically. Google is very aggressive about this, so if you're signing into a Google account, it knows that device you're signing into is secure because you sign in with Windows Hello, it will integrate with Windows Hello and because the Pasky is stored in the TPM and the secure security storage and you have okayed that, you've authenticated it after being authenticated against the Microsoft account you used to sign into the computer, it knows it's good and that's how your phone works too. Same thing right when you get a Pasky or like a Google prompt or whatever, which is essentially a Pasky. This is also when you do your housekeeping go remove old devices?
01:59:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yes and so okay.
01:59:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So it's funny you say that because tie to this is a topic that will be near and dear to your heart, which is when you move to a password, a new password manager, like Bitwarden, like we did. The thing people forget to do is not just turn off auto fill and blah, blah, blah whatever from your browser or wherever you're using it, but delete the passwords, like actually get them out of there. And the problem is it's 2023. All of us have used dozens of browsers by now. You must have I don't mean you, richard. I'm sorry, but we must all have Derritus from whatever logins we made over the years in Safari, chrome and other things. We, you know, chrome, vivaldi, wherever we, whatever we used, where our passwords are out there in some place. Like you got to clean that stuff up.
02:00:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
When I moved to Bitwarden was then go through all of those accounts. Yes, change all the passwords. It's been a while since.
02:00:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I installed or moved to Bitwarden but, as I remember, it offers to import all the passwords from your browser. The browser saved passwords and yes, and I think you can delete them. Oh, delete them. Oh, okay, I think it does, but I might be wrong.
02:00:39 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, here's the problem. So you like say you were using Chrome at the time when you did this. You're like okay, I've moved out of Chrome. It deleted all my passwords from Chrome. Nice, chrome isn't the only web browser you've used in your life. Right, this stuff is all out there in the world. Like you actually have to go find those things and fix that, yeah, and this is a.
02:00:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You have to have them installed. You have to have them installed, yeah.
02:00:58 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Leave them moved.
02:00:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Change them.
02:01:00 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There you go, that works too.
02:01:02 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, pick your method Right. That's a good idea too. So that's actually a good idea.
02:01:07 - Richard Campbell (Host)
But yeah, we take an hour a day at the end of each day and work my way further down the list of bit torrent. Log into each account. Try to figure out why I ever had this account. I think the account, if I could change the password.
02:01:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Richard, I've always. I want to be clear about this. I have always loved you and right now I could not love you more than I do at this moment, because you have the same sickness that I have and I love it.
02:01:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's called.
02:01:31 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
OCD. Yeah friend, friends and obsessive behavior. This is something I think people would listen to and they'd nod their heads and say you're right, that's the right thing to do, and then they might not do it because they don't have this problem. Now, hopefully, a lot of people listening to this show do have this problem, because you should all be doing this thing, which is actually fixing it.
02:01:52 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Everybody does have this problem. It's just a question whether you acknowledge it.
02:01:55 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It's just some degree. Okay, yeah, that's fair, that's fair. So here's the thing. So brass tacks, so you can put in a little bit of something you put into your calendar. It's the beginning of the year, maybe this is a good time for it, kind of a spring cleaning kind of a thing, or whatever. But you look at your online accounts and make sure they're as secure as they can be, and part of that security is very simple things like make sure your address is correct I know this sounds stupid, but or go into those additional sign in verification methods and make sure if they're email addresses, you actually control that damn thing. You know, don't let someone else get the email that will allow them into your account, right? So, anyway, I've written.
02:02:32
This is a chapter in the book now for the Microsoft account and it is a an article on my site. I think I'm going to go do Amazon, google and Apple too, if that means anything to anybody. But fun, a little bit of historical background here. Passcase these things that this new thing, right, this new form of two step verification of a really came out of the work Microsoft did in the pre law in long run days to create next generation secure acupointy base and palladium and what became the TPM and secure storage and this kind of proven model. And then later Windows hello although I know they weren't the first to get the biometric sign and stuff. But you kind of have this end to end system where the device you're using is secure and can be used to prove the security of other assignments on other devices. Right, and it's it's. I think it's going to work because it's both secure and convenient.
02:03:27
And this is why security keys never really took off with the general populace. It's a little too much to ask, you know. And even authenticator apps, I think, are a little too much to ask. My wife was like what are you talking about? What am I? There's a person on my side was like I, I want to reduce the number of times I have to look at my phone and have it say yes, it's you and it's like no, you, you don't you. You need that.
02:03:47 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's a no, you're better off.
02:03:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, there's my, there's my yeah, yeah, and I got mines in the other room because I've been writing about. That's part of the new chapter. It's security keys.
02:03:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Remember that. Remember the coin pocket, a pair of key, a pair of jeans. Yeah, that's a fine.
02:04:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Perfect size for you. Yeah, yep.
02:04:04 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, a Yuba. A Yuba key is really just a. It's really, it's basically a TPM for storing pass case. When you think about it, it's a portable TPM.
02:04:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I wish you more than I mean. There's a limit to the memory and so it doesn't store. I think it's 32. It's pretty good though.
02:04:19 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, it's not a huge. Yeah, right, I mean, look, there's all kinds of issues I bet you they'll make a one that has enough memory that you can just, you know store everything.
02:04:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, you might end up with hundreds of pass cases.
02:04:32 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
And they'll put a screen and a camera on it and they could call it a phone. Yeah, yeah, you're right, no, but yeah, that's a good point.
02:04:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, and we're halfway there.
02:04:38 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, that's the thing I mean a phone is something everyone actually does have with them, so that that becomes the obvious thing to use here.
02:04:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And I think that. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think TOTP time-based one-time password is as good as a Yuba key right In a lot of ways.
02:04:56 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yes, absolutely, it's very similar.
02:04:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, I would say the interesting thing is your phone and somehow gets it on lock. Yeah, but it is because in each case.
02:05:07 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, the device. Whatever the device is, whether it's the key, your phone or the PC, we're using a pass key You've done some kind of pin. A pin is the minimum, sort of. Is like the polo is the minimum, a pin is the minimum. So it's that additional step that gets you through that you know thing. So A you have the key.
02:05:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's very good security.
02:05:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean, yeah A you have the thing you have, to have the device right.
02:05:31 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You have it physically. You have to be able to unlock it and you have to get into it. Yeah, right, right. And then you throw in the new layers of security that exists inside the infrastructure, like Entra that say hey, this has been a long time since this device logged in. You're in a different location, you've ever worked for Right. So I'm gonna have to give more stuff. We're gonna throw in an additional one.
02:05:46 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Right, they also mix things up. Sometimes you have to do it's just your face, your finger, whatever. Sometimes you'll say here's a number, select from a group of three. Sometimes you'll say your app's gonna give you a number, now you type it into here. You know they kind of mix it up. And so I think that these things together, but really what makes this work, I think ultimately, is the security of the devices we use, whether it's a PC or a phone or a tablet, I guess thanks to what is essentially TPM on board, regardless of the device type, and then the secure biometric authentication types.
02:06:17 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Really, worth 250 million PCs going to the to the, yeah, I mean or a little more security.
02:06:23 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I mean the seagulls need something to land on what's the difference. Okay, sorry, I beat this tip to death. I apologize. I'll be doing some episodes of, like I said, hands on windows. That will cover this stuff.
02:06:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh good that I will want to see yeah.
02:06:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, and then just a couple of real quick pelted some more quick, they hope MS edge redirect, which used to be called something else, Like it doesn't matter is a utility.
02:06:48
Redirect is such a better name. I honestly right, I know I don't. Okay, I don't know why they called it, but I think Microsoft complained about the original name. They're one of those utilities you can install that will prevent windows 11 from ignoring your choice. Right when you launch a widget story, it goes to edge even though you use chroma, whatever it says. One of those ways you can get around that, they've added a feature to the latest version called Europe mode, which is hilarious and you mode.
02:07:15
Right, yeah, it's so big, like the E M M A or whatever E M M E M E A mode, whatever. It allows you to enable all those features they're enabling outside of the, you know, inside of the E M E A, no matter where you are. So it's very interesting. Related to this, this is kind of fascinating Microsoft enables the those features that it's only going to supposedly bring to area. A plain text file that's in the system 32 director and your computer, and it's a JSON file which is very easily human and machine readable and it's very easy to edit. You have to take the file over.
02:07:53
That's not actually a big deal, I'm. I'm thinking we're going to see a lot of utilities that do this is what I'm trying to say unless they somehow obfuscated or protected or whatever. But right now this is this is unstable today. It doesn't do anything in stable but in the inside of program, depending on the channel channel you're in, it, you know, turns features on and off or enables features or whatever it's. It's pretty simple. So we'll see how that evolves. That's going to be one of the big things we'll be looking at this year, I'm sure. And then I mentioned I probably mentioned this before, but I want to mention this one again. I've used a lot of different tools during my kind of photo collection, consolidation, slash decolouring thing. I am now done almost with 2019, which means I only have three more, four years I guess four more years to do out of a 60 something year history, which is pretty freaking amazing.
02:08:43
And the two one tool really put this over the top is this thing called media sorter. All one word. It is one of those apps. When you run it, it's going to flip the, or, do you install it, it's going to be smart screen. We don't know who this is. It's fine, he says. You know, please don't sue me if it isn't. It's worked amazingly well. And what this thing does is the tool I had been using for this purpose, which is, in other words, you look at files and you put them into folder, folder, folder structures that are based on a very specific criteria, which, in my case, would be a date based folders based on date created for, like photos, like date. Date taken, I guess, was the metadata. Date taken is not in all photos or image files, it's not in movie files, and so every year, as we, as I, went on, there were more and more files that were not getting sorted correctly. And this one sorts against all of the metadata that a date based metadata for images and videos, and it works perfectly.
02:09:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Or it doesn't try and fix the metadata, it just recognizes all of it.
02:09:43 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
It. Can I have it not do that? So in the beginning I was using it actually to rename files because I wanted just to see the dates to, because I didn't think they were going to be correct. But they were always so correct that I was like I'm going to stop renaming files and I'm making copies to be because I'm not, I'm not overriding the original. But I decided to. No, I'm going to, I'm going to pour this stuff into these date folders that I was using another tool for, but it works with everything and it's.
02:10:06
This is so this thing plus all dupe, which is a way to compare two or more folders and get rid of duplicates based not just on file names and things like that, but also the content. So you have something that's the same file name, same size, same type of thing and some you know hash of whatever the digital representation of it is. It's. These are the same and that's another tool. Once you get it right and you can kind of test to make sure you just like, yep, I can just bulk delete duplicates now and it really these things have turned this from a. I'm going to spend the rest of my life on this too. I'm going to finish this in the next week or so. Wow, you know, all of a sudden you built up a set of skills here, yep, yep, and I got it. And what made it possible? Well, a lot of experimentation, but this media is sort of tool is unbelievable. So it's great, awesome, love it.
02:10:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Nice. Well, that means I guess it's time to move on now to Mr Richard Campbell's run as radio pick of the week.
02:11:10 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, so who's Aaron Chapel? Aaron Chapel is the corporate VP of the Azure core product and Azure design, so she is one of the infrastructure gods at Microsoft and came from Windows, so she's also one of the I think, few that could lift out of that team and move across we talk about. Why is Windows struggling? It's like rock stars like Aaron Chapel aren't there anymore. They're working on Azure. And she had just come on I got this interview at Ignite was one of mine and she had just come off the keynote stage too, so she was jazzed. That's great.
02:11:46
Yeah, cause she she'd had a great keynote, like really delivered well, but we were talking it was pretty serious topic really Cause we were, you know, saying, hey, this is going to be our first show of 2024. I do a what I think show. I'd like you to do your. What, what should the system has been thinking about and it really came down to this doing more with less, which has really always been a true thing for system. We never get near as much as we'd hoped for and I always press on the ROI side of that. It's like you need to speak finance well enough to get your funding, show how this is actually an asset to the company, not just expenses.
02:12:23
Uh, but and of course she leaned hard into the cloud side of things sort of right sizing your cloud implementations. There's a lot of money to be saved switching from cloud migrations that were that came from on-prem, where you tended to optimize for peak, where you you had enough resources, so no matter how busy something got, it was good enough. That now turns into a significant monthly expense when it lives in Azure or any other cloud, and so now you start to optimize for scale that you wind it down when it's done under a lot of load and you wind it up when it needs to be there, and that can turn into a lot of dollars and well, spend time. And, of course, she hinted very strongly at the Azure advisors. That already exists, the tools in there, that sort of say hey, there's a better way to configure this. That sort of thing is turning into an Azure co-pilot and so we're about to get some large language models that'll help us, as admins, organize our Azure more effectively and hopefully save some money.
02:13:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, Lovely yeah, runasradiocom Doing more with less in 2024.
02:13:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Been a recurring theme. I just do less with less.
02:13:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Just do less.
02:13:35 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Let's do some brown liquor First of the year, so I figured I'd pull my Christmas whiskey. This is the bottle that I got for Christmas. You'll notice it's empty because it's not Christmas anymore.
02:13:48 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
A few days after Christmas. Actually, it's not true. I moved it into the decanter oh that's pretty.
02:13:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's just aesthetics, right. There's no, it does nothing. It does nothing.
02:14:01 - Richard Campbell (Host)
The era of the decanter comes from a time when you didn't buy whiskey in bottles, you bought it in barrels. Or if you didn't want to buy a barrel, you took your decanter down to the shop. Or, let's be clear, your servant took the decanter down. You didn't want your whiskey to be a chunky style. You have it filled from the barrel and then you come back with your decanters. I got a nice decanter and glass set.
02:14:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
How long can you keep whiskey in that decanter? Does it degrade?
02:14:30 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I wouldn't know, it doesn't last that long.
02:14:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Foolish person asked that question.
02:14:36 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That is theoretical at this point.
02:14:39 - Richard Campbell (Host)
There's a discussion about oxidation in whiskey.
02:14:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Why it's a big problem. It oxidizes fast and it's terrible.
02:14:47 - Richard Campbell (Host)
It's a much lower alcohol and it has far less stable compounds. It's not at the same stability. We're here talking about a higher alcohol level. This is stuff you use as a preservative for crying out loud. It's largely been filtered and so forth to be stable for a long time. That being said, keeping it for years is unwise because it does oxidize. We talk about flavors being muted. I have done the trial of hey. Here's a Beaumont 25 that I got two years ago. It's been sitting at half a bottle for a year. I bought a new Beaumont 25, ran into different malting you know it had to be and tried them side by side, and the newer bottle is brighter. The flavors are more intense. The one that's been sitting for a while is down. How long do you keep a bottle of whiskey? Less than a year. My real point has always been if you're down to below a half a bottle, drink it. Sit down with a friend and finish it.
02:15:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Drink it Preferably not alone because that leaves the bad thing. It's like the Nike phrase Just drink it.
02:15:57 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Just drink it. You're literally a little rough. Anyway, I never talked about Lysia Craig before, so I thought small batches was the original Lysia Craig edition. It says right on the bottle here Lysia Craig, father of bourbon.
02:16:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow, that's a big statement. Yeah, a little bottle.
02:16:16 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Are you going to let that go unchallenged? Why?
02:16:18 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Certainly not. Oh interesting, today's conversation is about well, how long is that? Now, to be clear, lysia Craig is a real person or was a real person. He was born in 1738 in Virginia. He's a real old person yeah, it's a pre-revolution, that kind of thing and he moved to Kentucky County Virginia in 1782. Kentucky County Virginia doesn't exist anymore.
02:16:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You now call it Kentucky, it's Kentucky oh okay, oh, I got you.
02:16:48 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I got you. Yeah, as the states started to appear and Kentucky becomes a state in 1792, what was Kentucky County, Virginia, now becomes Kentucky, and he was a Baptist minister and died in 1808. There are many references to him they the town that he moved to was originally called Lebanon. It got renamed to Georgetown. He was one of the people in the ministry of law literally named for George Washington, and there are strong claims that some of the first bourbon whiskies ever made in 1789 were done in Georgetown. And so I mean Craig was definitely there. He just was in the whiskey business at the time. He was in the clothing business, so he owned a fulling mill.
02:17:31
You may wonder what the heck a fulling mill is. A fulling mill is something that makes, is part of the process of making wool and cloth, you remember? But it's the 1700s and the industrial revolution really hasn't landed yet Right. So this is the manual way to make wool and clothing, which involves large barrels and people stomping in barrels filled with wool and urine. The process of fulling is to drive out the oils from the wool to turn it more into cloth, because when it comes off the animal it's covered in lanolin and a bunch of other impurities, and so you strip it out and, by the way, this has been gone on for thousands of years. So you're talking about the most mature version of wool and fulling, which was these large plants. They had more mechanization and so forth, but shortly after that it would evolve sharply.
02:18:24
But some of the first whiskey made was made in a fulling mill, likely that Craig had built, because it had much of similar equipment. It had mechanisms for heating and for cooling and so forth. There's lots of whiskey makers in that area. At that time the water was very soft, came coming through limestone and was ideal for it. Was Elijah the first? Probably not, but he was certainly in there. There is another apocryphal story associated with Elijah Craig that he was responsible for charred barrels that you've. Today every American bourbon is made from American oak that has been toasted. There's varying levels of charge depending on the whiskey and so that apparently Craig as farmer we don't know that he was a farmer had a fire and the barrels were burned, but not burned up, and he didn't want to waste them. So he filled them with whiskey anyway and shipped them out, and they found that they liked the flavor better.
02:19:24
Now, charring barrels is also not an unusual technique. It had gone on for thousands of years as well. It was big in the sailing to keep water fresh that if you put water into raw barrels it tends to get funky because the bacteria interact. So you char the inside of the barrel first, and that makes it far more sterile as well as, generally speaking, the charcoal takes away bad flavors. Now you just add a flavor to the water, the water will turn tea colored, as it literally is extracting tannins from the woods as well the other. We've learned now through modern science that one of the things that happens when you char the inside of a barrel is you're breaking down longer lignite chains into shorter chains that are actually smell good and are flavorful. That's where a fair number of polyphenols and things come from. Is that charring effect A sense of sweetness although it's not really sugar and something else?
02:20:24
But at the point being, if Elijah Craig was in the whiskey making business in the 1780s, where is his whiskey? Because I got one here. Well, the name Elijah Craig does not appear on a bottle of whiskey until 1986. Oh, so, done, done, done. So in the 1960s so 200 years or so later, of the Elijah Craig trademark was taken out by a group called Commonwealth Distillers, although these guys own the TW Samuel's brand and a few others, but they never did anything with it. When Heaven Hills acquired the brand in 76, they sat on it for quite a while as well, but when they finally were releasing a premium whiskey they decided to dust off that brand, and that came in 1986.
02:21:11
I mean, Heaven Hills is not one of the old distilleries. They very much started up in the 1930s after prohibition. It was the old Heaven Hills Springs Distillery. It's one of the few that are still family owned the Santoris and so forth. The world have not grabbed them. It's still the same family since it was started. They're known for having some of the largest barreling facilities, storage facilities in the world over a million barrels in store in Heaven Hills. They also have been a big business. They have rounded up a lot of brands.
02:21:42
So when you hear Evan Williams, it's actually made by Heaven Hills. So is Larson, the old Fitzgerald Parker, Heritage, Pikesville, Rittenhouse those are all Heaven Hills brand and of course Elijah Craig. And they also make rums and tequila and a whole lot of other stuff we don't talk about on a whiskey show. So we'll move on from that In the 80s, which was a bad time for whiskey. Coming out of the 70s, the main thing had been to reduce the price of whiskey because people were drinking high balls, because the booze was cheaper, and so they made cheaper, cheaper whiskey until it was not good whiskey and in the 80s they had everybody started to realize hey, drinking hard got to go to the other.
02:22:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You all bangers instead.
02:22:21 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, let's go the other way, let's make a premium product. And that's when the Elijah came out and that the first edition was originally called the Small Batch 12. So it was a 12 year old whiskey, very unusual for the time, made in relatively small batches because they didn't know who was going to sell that well and it sold so well they ran out of 12. So they dropped the 12 from the name because now they were using eight and blending it to make small batch and you don't want to say eight on the barrel at all. And then they got. You know it got fancy with it. As whiskey became more popular In the 20 teens they started making barrel proof editions. So a few times a year as they release individual barrels of Elijah Craig At barrel strength and you could get them and this is one of the ones you get a custom order, like if a company wanted a barrel, that kind of thing. They also did old editions 18s, 20s, 20s.
02:23:14 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
So my market restaurant does this they buy barrels.
02:23:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it's a way to make a premium product. You can buy them from America's Mark too. There's a few that do that, but the killer of an Elijah Craig.
02:23:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Could you get individuals buy a barrel of whiskey?
02:23:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Absolutely, we could totally do a twit barrel.
02:23:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You'd have to really like the whiskey.
02:23:33 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, I have a couple of Elijah Craig Manhattan's. This is a thing Typically a typical barrel.
02:23:40 - Richard Campbell (Host)
if we go for, you know, a proper aging, it's going to be between 200 through 100 bottles. So I mean, the way you do this is we offer it up to the club and then we go pick a barrel, we wait for it to age and then we have it bottled with a custom label and everybody gets one.
02:23:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, that's a great idea. Yeah, it might be.
02:23:58 - Richard Campbell (Host)
How long would we have to let it age? Well, it depends on the whiskey we pick and what age we're going to go. The whole point of doing is Leo's and we have to make a truck to the distiller, sample some barrels and I believe you have to do it in person.
02:24:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
That's the way it goes. I love this idea. I know, people want the Richard.
02:24:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Campbell barrel, you know there you go, pick that whiskey. But to close this piece out, what's the most important part about this whiskey? What's great about it? It's not expensive $40.
02:24:28 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Oh yeah, it's the best. It's the best bourbon whiskey I've ever had at that price.
02:24:33 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, I was all prepared to spend hundreds and you do not know. I mean, if you want to, you can go find yourself an Elijah 20 hard to find and you'll spend a bundle, but pound for pound, one of the nicest whiskeys you're ever going to drink for $40.
02:24:49 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
As a notorious cheapskate, I could not agree more.
02:24:53 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, it's just, it's great. It's one of those things where it was a gift at Christmas and I'm like I have one of these in ages and I took a taste of it, oh yeah, and pulled up the decanter and keep it by me. This is mine.
02:25:10 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You could find cheaper whiskeys, but they're not as good. Yeah.
02:25:14 - Richard Campbell (Host)
And then this one kind of punches above its price Most whiskeys of this quality, of this flavor profile cost more than this. So it really is. I'm going to try some. We look at other $40 whiskeys, you know, and then, and none of them are bad. Remember my, I'm firmly in the camp of the best kind of whiskeys. The one I have in my hand, yeah, what you like, but yeah no, it was a good one. I have an idea. You decide, what am I going to write about after tasting this Like well, right, and supporting Ray there bottle at Evan Williams, a written house. Those are all good whiskeys, you'll enjoy them too. I'm going to go with the original. I mean, and that's what's cool about this? All right, right, that's from the eighties.
02:25:56 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, it's not an ancient, so I already know the answer to this question. But I was recently introduced to something I believe is pronounced China. It's like C E N A R, it's an artichoke base liquor. Oh my goodness, it is fantastic for drinks that, like you, might use vermouth in otherwise, or an apparel, maybe, so sweet. I think a nice no that's the thing.
02:26:20
It's like I'm looking for things that don't have sugar, right, so it's kind of a yeah, I'll do a little cocktail thing later at some point. C Y N A R, I guess Cures normally have sugars in them. Well, I on the lower end, I mean like a lower end.
02:26:37 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Yeah, when I really want to get away from sugar, I drink whiskey.
02:26:41 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Well, yeah, there's a nice China kind of Manhattan to be had.
02:26:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Honestly think that the alcohol does turn the sugar in your body, but maybe I'm wrong, it has consequences.
02:26:55 - Richard Campbell (Host)
I have been taking this for a while about talking about the origin of cocktails and so forth. I've just been a little wimpy to finish it. We love it. I posted the NET book first.
02:27:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, net first, and then you can have your China or whatever the weird stuff that Paul wants to pour down your throat.
02:27:13 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Is it avocado or artichoke? It's artichoke.
02:27:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Artichoke, oh interesting.
02:27:18 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
You should put a little. They could use an artichoke garnish. You know kind of scrape the meat off of the leaf there when you drink the cocktail. It'd be great.
02:27:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, let's not go crazy, I'll wait till it's definitely comes out. It's an Italian bitter aperitif of the Amaro variety, made from 13 herbs and plants. Right, it's very Amaro, predominant, among which is the artichoke. And the reason, the name, because artichoke is Sainala scolamus, which the drink derives as Sainala. Sainala is dark brown, has a bittersweet flavor, 16.5 ABV, launched in Italy in 1952. So you know, gina Lola Bridget had loved it. Low sugar, low alcohol, meant to stimulate appetite.
02:28:11 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Yeah, appetite for alcohol, am I right?
02:28:16 - Richard Campbell (Host)
Cause I struggled with that.
02:28:20 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
I'd never heard about this until about I don't know two weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah.
02:28:26 - Richard Campbell (Host)
You go down the Amaro path, there are many side streets.
02:28:30 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
They sure are Holy cow it's. It's like the mole of aperitifs. No of. It is like mole isn't it. Yeah, yeah, there's so many. Yeah, all you can do is try. You know, never really master it, but yeah there is no try, there's only do.
02:28:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's right. Mr Paul Therat, you know what he does. He writes these long, beautiful works of art articles for his website, theratcom. In fact, the best stuff is behind the paywall. So become a premium member. That's what I did, and boy, there's good stuff in there. His books are also at lean pubcom, including the field guide to windows 11 and windows everywhere, which is all kind of a history of windows through its programming, languages and tools. Lean pubcom Theratcom. Mr Richard Campbell is at, run as radiocom. That's where he producesnet rocks and the show run as radio, and the two of them are our esteemed moderators. How did Mary Jo? What did she after the show? Was she happy? Did she say it was great to?
02:29:37 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
be back. I can't wait to come back again. I think she got it out of her system as well, and say it.
02:29:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
She was like I'm never doing that again.
02:29:44 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
She's like oh yeah that's right.
02:29:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's why this I remember now.
02:29:47 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
No, I loved her ever back as many times as she wants to come back.
02:29:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's really a nice surprise to see her, and if you didn't hear the Christmas episode, we had a best of last week, but the week before Mary Jo Foley joined the gang and that was a lot of fun. We will be back next week and every two Wednesday, that's 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern, 1900 UTC. We do stream it live when the show is recording, like right now on YouTube. That's youtubecom slash twit. But of course, easiest thing to do is subscribe and get a copy after the fact so you can listen at your leisure. A couple of ways to do that. The website is twittv slash w? W. There is also, of course, a YouTube channel dedicated to Windows Weekly's video. It's a great way to share, by the way, because it has a nice little clipping feature, and if there's, you know, you want to say hey, they were talking about Sinar or something. You can clip that. Remember he was being an idiot.
02:30:40 - Paul Thurrott (Host)
Let's get that part and put it on Twitter.
02:30:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, that's I'm sure. Yeah, you can also subscribe in your favorite podcast player. Pocket cast is a great one. We recommend Windows and Mac and iOS and Android. It's a great little tool. Let's see what else. A little plea, if you will.
02:31:00
We it's a survey time. We do this every January. For the next month, we are going to have a survey at twittv slash, survey 24. It's our 2024 annual survey. We do this once a year because it helps us understand you better, to know what programming you like or I'm interested in, what you're not interested in. It also helps us go to the advertisers without tracking you, gives us some generic information about our audience, which they really want, and so it helps us sell ads, and it's a very easy thing to do. Five minutes, that's all. Don't answer anything you're not comfortable with. But there's nothing. Really, too, I don't think there's anything too inquisitive. Twitter TV slash survey 24. Thank you in advance. It really helps us to get those responses from every show. We want to make sure every show is represented. Paul, richard, have a great week. We'll see you next time on Windows Weekly.
02:31:53
Bye, bye.
02:31:55 - Untitled Linux Show (Announcement)
Hey, we should talk Linux. It's the operating system that runs the internet, but your game consoles, cell phones and maybe even the machine on your desk. But you already knew all that. What you may not know is that Twitter now is a show dedicated to it, the Untitled Linux Show. Whether you're a Linux pro, a burgeoning system, or just curious what the big deal is, you should join us on the ClubTwit Discord every Saturday afternoon for news analysis and tips to sharpen your Linux skills, and then make sure you subscribe to the ClubTwit exclusive Untitled Linux Show. Wait, you're not a ClubTwit member yet. We'll go to twittv slash club twit and sign up. Hope to see you there.
