Tech News Weekly 316 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.

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Tech News Weekly. I start out the show with some stories of the week. First, it's about an Xfinity breach. Allegedly 36 million Xfinity customers have had their data stolen, and you might very well be one. Then I talk about a new feature in Microsoft Co-Pilot that lets you auto-generate songs, and we auto-generate a song for the show.

Afterwards, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of The Verge stops by to give us a year review of the smart home and what we can and shouldn't expect in the new year. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg gives us some of his time to talk about Apple watches and how you don't necessarily have to worry about the Apple watch on your wrist being in play when it comes to this patent dispute, but what you should be worried about going forward. And, last but not least, Stephen Shankland of CNET joins us to talk about AI photos, digital image manipulation and how you can tell the difference between something that is, you know, lightly edited versus something that has been generated wholly by AI. All of that coming up on Tech News Weekly. This is Tech News Weekly with Mikah Sargent, episode 316, recorded Thursday, december 21st 2023. No one's taking your Apple watch.

0:01:37 - Leo Laporte
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0:02:02 - Mikah Sargent
Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week I talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. I am your host, Mikah Sargent, and we're kicking things off this week with my stories of the week because we've got three great interviews coming up afterwards. So the first story that I wanted to talk about pertains to quite a few people out there. If you are a Comcast customer and you may know it as Xfinity, because for some reason Comcast has a weird name for its sort of broadband portion of its product you should be aware that you may very well have had some of your data stolen or leaked, as it were, based on a new revelation and disclosure from Xfinity that says that the company was sort of fallen victim to the Citrix bleed vulnerability. So before we kind of talk about what data was taken and everything, I did want to briefly mention Citrix bleed and what is going on there. So Citrix is a company that is more well known among very large scale customers, like governments and huge businesses, or the aerospace company Boeing, for example, the world's biggest bank, icbc, or perhaps one of the world's largest port operators, dp World. These are huge companies that make use of Citrix's technologies, and one of, or rather two of, these products are, according to TechCrunch, netscaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway. These platforms are something that you and I probably don't run into specifically or regularly sort of interact with, but these large enterprises and governments use these, according to TechCrunch, for application delivery and also VPN connectivity, so you can think of potentially different organizations that are sort of sub organizations getting connected to the main servers and being able to access stuff that's part of the company or part of the government, and they do that using, perhaps, the VPN connectivity. And then, in the case of application delivery, a lot of times, governments and corporations will create these different applications that are used by individuals, that are customized to whatever those needs are. Now, what's going on with this is it's kind of a pretty bad, pretty bad vulnerability.

On October 10th, citrix said hey look, we've got this issue for on-premise versions of these platforms, and what it means is that, basically, it allows a bad actor, as it were, to gain access to the systems using session tokens, and so what happens is, typically, if I were to log into one of these systems, right, I would type in a password and then maybe I would use a means of two-factor authentication. So in order to access, let's say, the government of sergeant right, and the government of sergeant is using these tools and I am an employee of the government of sergeant, and so I go on and I type in my username and my password and I then get presented with a thing that says oh well, you need to plug in your two-factor UB key. I plug that in, I gain access. When I gain access, I am presented with a session token that says this person has accessed the government of sergeant system because they have properly typed in their password. We know that it's their password, we verified that and their two-factor code is accurate. So now you're given the session token.

Well, this was allowing these hackers, these bad actors, to get these session tokens independent of a password or two-factor, at which point then they were able to get all through and in the system and get what they wanted. So that's an understanding of kind of what Citrix Bleed is right, that it is providing quite a bit of access to these hackers. And so Citrix said look, on October 10th, look, this is an issue and we have some patches for you. But on October 17th that was a week later they came back and said by the way we did patch it and everything. But we have seen exploitation in the wild, meaning that they did see people making use of these exploitations, and so there were quite a few large organizations, like we mentioned earlier, that were hit with it. Comcast just now has well, just recently, has joined the club of saying we also were part of this.

They unfortunately gained access to the internal systems of Xfinity between October 16th and October 19th, but they said that they themselves, that Comcast themselves, xfinity, did not detect that malicious activity until October 25th While they did the research to figure out what was going on. They determined on November 16th that quote information was likely acquired by the hackers and then in December the company said look, we think customer data, usernames, hashed passwords and last four digits of social security numbers, dates of birth, contact information and names were all I should also mention security questions and their answers were all accessed. Now Comcast slash Xfinity is continuing to look into this. They say you know we're still doing data analysis to determine how much information was taken, what information was taken and if there were additional types of information that was made available. But they did not say, or should say it did not say, as it is a company. It did not say how many Xfinity customers have been impacted, but I have to give credit where credit is due.

Carly Page of TechCrunch did a little bit of sleuthing to determine the answer to the question of just how many Xfinity customers were impacted. Maine's attorney general received a filing where Comcast said 35.8 million customers are there about were affected by the breach. And then Page went on to look at Comcast's latest earnings report. That shows that the company has more than 32 million broadband customers. So that means that most, if not all, xfinity customers have been impacted. That means I was probably impacted, as I am an Xfinity customer and know quite a few Xfinity customers in this area.

So we don't know if there's some sort of ransom involved with this, what it means in terms of how they go forth, but whether or not this information is out. There is as it stands. They haven't been able to find any of the information that was taken from Xfinity published anywhere, which suggests that this could be a ransom situation at some point. In any case, xfinity says hey, you're going to need to reset your passwords and you should use two-factor or multi-factor authentication to make sure that your account is secure. So if you're out there and you have Xfinity, or if you even have a Comcast account that for some reason is not Xfinity, be aware of that and consider turning on. Well, not even consider. Do turn on two-factor authentication. Do reset your password.

It needs to be done and be wary as we hear more from Xfinity and what's going on there. All right, I wanted to briefly mention as this is Tech News Weekly, where we do talk a lot about artificial intelligence a new feature in Microsoft Copilot. Microsoft Copilot has added a plugin with a service called Suno S-U-N-O, and that service is an AI Music Generation app. And so what you can do with Microsoft Copilot is say hey, I'd love for you to make a song for me, and you can set all sorts of specifications. They give some suggestions for how to do it, including just saying generate a song that's upbeat and inspirational, designed for workouts, and then you would have a song that's all about working out.

It can be instrumental, it can have lyrics, anything in between, and what was great is that we first saw here at TWIT the possibilities of this technology. Yesterday, as we record this on Windows Weekly, Mary Jo Foley was the special guest on the final episode of Windows Weekly for the year the final live recorded episode of Windows Weekly for the year, and a wonderful moment that we'll show you here, where Leo generated a song to celebrate Mary Jo Foley's. Play this right now, okay. God is that Mariah Carey.

0:12:11 - Windows Weekly Ep. 860
What's happening, oh, this is almost a spoken word. So everybody, mary Jo Foley, you will find me all for this life. All our hearts are full of joy and pure bliss. We'll sing this. Let's make new memories. I wouldn't say this is great, or maybe needs to continue.

0:13:02 - Mikah Sargent
But, that's too bad. That's too bad. That's my favorite part of that. That's too bad. Yeah, not great.

I was curious, if you know, maybe it was just sort of a poor generation that it ended up sounding so vocoder-ish, and so I thought I would try to use this tool so anyone who has a Microsoft account can go to copilotmicrosoftcom and ask it to write an upbeat song or write a song rather as long as you kind of use those words, then Soono should, and it should automatically activate. If not, there's a plug-ins option in the far right side of the site where you can turn on Soono. So I said write an upbeat, inspiring song designed for a tech podcast called Tech News Weekly that interviews consumer tech journalists who have published important articles about the week's tech news, and Soono generated a song called Breaking the Bites. This honestly sounds like Justin Bieber has been asked to create a song. That's a little preview. We'll play the full thing at the end of the show, but I'll read a few of the lyrics. They're out there digging, hunting for the truth, journalists in tech searching for the clue. They bring the stories, the news we want to know. With every article they let the truth show. I mean just touching, truly inspiring. No, it's goofy but it's fun, and so, yeah, if you'd like to give it a try, you just head to copilotmicrosoftcom and enable that sueno plugin to give it a try. I'm curious how much you're going to be able to do for free, because this does seem to involve a lot more processing than your standard even photo generation or just text generation, right? Because you've got to generate the lyrics and then generate music and voice and everything else that's involved. So it seems like it's kind of an involved process. But, in any case, very fun stuff from Microsoft and its copilot, and we'll learn more. You know, I'm keeping an eye on what they continue to add, given that this is not something that is tied to chat GPT, which we know is kind of the underlying tech for a lot of what Microsoft is doing with open AI. It's interesting to see these plugins be available via Microsoft copilot that you don't necessarily get if you were using open AI tools. All right, those are my little stories of the week for the end of the year.

It's time to get into the meat of the show and up next we will talk about the state of the smart home and how we keep missing out on promises. Alrighty, it is time to talk about where we are when it comes to the smartphone. The smartphone, no, the smart home. It is a year in review, but also a look ahead. Joining us to talk about this is The Verge's own, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, who has been on the show before to talk about matter. Welcome back.

0:17:01 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Hi, mike, I'm very happy to be here. Yes, merry Christmas, happy holidays, happy Hanukkah, everything, everyone. Oh, yes, thank you and to you.

0:17:10 - Mikah Sargent
It's wonderful, and the lights in the background you've got glowing there. I mean it just, it looks great, it's awesome. So let's, let's dig right in. So, first and foremost, I think we have to go a year back, right. Let's think about how you were preparing for 2023 at the end of 2022. What did you expect to see from the smart home at the start of the year and then throughout the year, and what, instead, have you seen this year?

0:17:41 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Well, it was very much a precursor to the launch of matter. That was really much what we were preoccupied with at the end of 2022. They had just had the big launch event in Amsterdam and we were expecting, or anxiously awaiting, a sort of wave of new smart home devices and upgrades to our old smart home devices so that we could embrace this new communication standard in our smart homes that was designed to make everything work more smoothly, more simply, more reliably and also with more privacy and security, or more security, and so there was a lot of hype. I will admit I was probably part of that hype because I was excited and I was listening. You know we were talking to a lot of companies who were excited too, and so we were expecting a big rollout of new products and, as I said, some updates to existing products.

And we did get new products and we got some updates, but basically what happened was it was slow, it was very slow going, a lot of slow uptake with this new protocol communication standard matter, and it's been a bumpy ride for the last 12 months and, whilst there's been a lot of progress, I feel like we really are not where any of us hoped we would be with this, this simpler, easier smart home. I don't know how. About you, mike? Is your smart home working perfectly?

0:19:16 - Mikah Sargent
No, and see, this is the thing that's so disappointing is, like you, I also had this, this hope that, essentially, this promise that it was going to be what I wanted it to be. And here's the thing. The problem is, I got a taste of awesome before it got bad again, and the taste of awesome that I had was thread. Thread as an underlying technology was magnificent and miraculous in terms of what were once like horrible Bluetooth devices into truly instant means of being able to control my smart home. And I had no connectivity issues. Battery life lasted really long time, all of that. And so I was super pumped about thread and thought, you know, okay, matter as the kind of overarching sort of octopus that connects all of this stuff together, that it was going to only add to my excitement. And I'll tell you what.

There were three devices that I updated with Matter Firmware, and from that day I have not been able to use any of them anymore. They I can't get, communicate with them, I can't connect to them, I can't. I've reset them, but they factory reset to the new firmware. So they're just. They're just bricks that I for some reason keep around and look at, I guess, when I'm wanting to get angry all of a sudden.

0:20:42 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Just to you know, your little smart home morgue. Yes, exactly.

0:20:46 - Mikah Sargent
That's exactly what it is.

0:20:47 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
I have those two, I know, and it's sad. I don't know why that is the case. It has, and I think this was one of the big problems, though, and one of the big promises that got broken. Hopefully it can be fulfilled at some point. But is that our old devices in the smart home would come with us into this new promised land of matter? And you know, to be fair, matter is a connectivity protocol. It is designed to make it's a language for smart home devices is designed to make them talk to each other.

All the exciting things we do in the smart home adaptive lighting, you know, great smart home scenes that wake you up in the morning with your blinds raising and your lights turning on and your music playing those are all done by the platforms. That's not what matter does, but what matter does is make all of that stuff easy, should make all of those things easy to set up, so you should be able to have this great experience in your smart home, even if it's just as simple as turning lights on when you walk in through. You know an emotion sensor works, but if your motion sensor used to work and then you upgrade it to matter and it no longer works, which it sounds like maybe one of your experiences and certainly was one of my experiences that is not a good experience. Exactly.

So that is yeah, and I think one of the things I've really taken away from this last year is that we aren't going to be able to upgrade our existing devices to support matter. This is really going to be a future protocol that helps the smart home grow, the only you know. The one caveat there is if you're working with devices that come through a bridge, because it seems to be easier for companies to update their bridge and then all of their connected devices can communicate in matter. But those aren't matter devices, they're just working through a bridge, so it's sort of a band-aid and you know, like Philips, hue has done that, switchbot has done that, akara has done that, so those devices are actually some of the ones that have worked okay for me, although I just actually published a piece today about some of the issues I had with Hue and the matter upgrade.

So it's not smooth sailing in any of those instances, unfortunately, but it's better. It's been better there than trying to add a firmware upgrade to an existing product. But going forward, I think we're going to see more devices that come out with matter as its sort of foundation, and I think from that point we can expect a little bit more reliability and more of those promises to be fulfilled. But that's also just really sad for all of us who have been in the smart home for the last decade. I'm not replacing everything.

0:23:24 - Mikah Sargent
Right, exactly, I've already made my investment and I would expect that these items would work with it. I mean and this is actually it leads perfectly into this next question. There are always going to be new folks who check out the show but who maybe have not heard a lot about smart home stuff. So first tell us a little bit about matter and its promise for a better, more connected smart home, and then we can continue to talk about how it really hasn't delivered on that promise.

0:23:52 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Right and okay. So matter is a communication protocol. It's a language for connected devices to communicate with each other in your home, locally. Currently, the majority of smart devices you bring into your home rely on the cloud to some extent. So if they want to tell another smart device to do something, it has to go up to the cloud, maybe through a bridge, back down again and through your phone. And whereas with matter everything, just like you and I we're chatting to each other, your devices can do that, and that should mean everything's faster, more reliable and also you're not relying on the cloud. So more security and that's the sort of basic promise. But the other thing that matter brings is interoperability.

So one of the issues if you've looked at the smart home or been interested in the smart home at all, but not taken the leap is well, does it work with my phone? Does it work with the smart speaker that I have? Does it, you know, is it going to work with my partner's phone? And matter brings compatibility with any matter platform, and all of the big platforms are on board Amazon Alexa, apple Home, google Assistant, samsung SmartThings, home Assistant, like all. Everyone has sort of come on board with matter, so that is one of its sort of big selling points. You buy a device that works with matter. It should work with any platform you want it to, and with multiple platforms. So if I have an iPhone but my husband has an Android phone, then he can use Google Homes and Google Assistant to control the lights in our bedroom and I can use Apple Home and Siri. So that's, that was sort of one of its big, big promises.

And the other thing is that we should also we should start to see more devices. We should have more great smart home devices, because right now, if you try and build a smart device, you have to go to all of those platforms and say, okay, how do I work with you? And for a small company that's a lot of effort. So with matter, you're supposed to just be able to develop for this one protocol and then you can work with everyone. So, but that's not.

That's also been one of the problems we've run run into is that not every platform supports every category of matter. So there, and matter right now only supports a small number of devices, device types, apologies. So you, your light bulbs, your sensors, your shades, so a lot of the kind of key parts of the smart home, but still not everything. In the smart home. Locks are also supported. They did just announce a whole new slew of devices, device types, that will be supported, including robot vacuums and refrigerators, so it's sort of it's getting broader, but we still don't have any devices from manufacturers that support the work in those categories. Yeah, that's all.

So it's just been a lot of catch up, like we were all waiting for it to work, and I think, yeah, one of those issues maybe we're, we've all been I think perhaps they should have done this all behind the scenes, for the last three years and then come out with it in 2025 and said hey look everyone, it's great.

0:27:01 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, can you actually, from what you know about it, can you give some insight into the way that the CSA, nais, zigbee Alliance, works in terms? Because one would think one, upon hearing what you've just said, that they've added, they've broadened the device types, yet there aren't any devices that are, you know, fit into those device types that are available. One would think that, yeah, all of this would happen behind the scenes. So is it just lots of different people sending emails back and forth and someone ends up hitting publish before it's time? Do people, do they actually gather in a room and maybe make a sacrifice to a deity and then they start looking like what does this look like behind the scenes and why is it such a mess?

0:27:52 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Well, I think the reason, the reason it's so public and the reason it's taking a while, is because it is a somewhat unprecedented industry collaboration. So all those big companies that I mentioned earlier are working together. So you have Samsung engineers sitting next to Apple engineers sitting next to Eero engineers. You know everyone's working together to try and bring this standard to fruition, but it is driven entirely by the people who are building those products. So it's sort of death by committee in some extent, I think. So you know. So they have what are called Tiger teams, and if a company wants to, if someone wants to start what says okay, I want robot vacuums to work in matter, you have to find some other companies that want to work with you, which means you're working with your competitors, and then you have to decide how it's going to come into matter and then you have to get yourselves together. So you know you're pulling people away from work, from their regular work, to work on matter. And then say to the CSA okay, here we have this potential addition to the spec. It will make robot vacuums work in matter. Can you add it? And they're like okay, well, you have to have it ready by this time, and if it's ready, then we can add it to the matter train, because there's two releases a year is what they've said and they've so far delivered on that. So the next one will be next spring and so they have to.

Everyone has to sort of get all their ducks lined up in a row and you've got multiple companies, multiple organizations working together. So the reason it's public is because that puts pressure on those companies to do it. So you know, every time I write an article saying where's my robot vacuum in matter, it's more likely that someone's you know, gonna hopefully, you know, not just me, but everyone, you too talking about matter and saying we want this. There's market pressure and that will help bring matter to fruition. So the more we complain about it, hopefully soon we'll get it indeed.

0:29:50 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I mean that that ultimately seems to be kind of the. The thing holding this back is the design by committee. And you know, I was curious in the beginning, just when I think about the small companies that are involved in this of course, the TP links and the Belkens, and not super small company, but you, these smaller companies that are making yeah, nanna leaf Eve, exactly that are making these products, they have more of a dog in the hunt than the big companies, right, because we used to go, okay, which team am I on? And then I'm going to get devices that fit that team. So it was, yeah, it behooved these companies to kind of keep things walled off in a way.

The big ones Apple, amazon and Google because you would then buy into this one device type and get all Google homes now or, in theory, in the future. It's the idea that I could have a Google Nest home sitting next to a home pod mini, and that's okay because all of the devices work together. So what do you think is the the reason for those big companies to play ball here? Because is it just about, you know, offering? It just seems.

0:31:08 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
It seems counter intuitive to what boils down to the very capitalistic mindset of large companies well, actually, the main motivating factor for these companies to be involved is money, because there is not the smile home has not taken off in quite the way as was predicted initially predict primarily because it was. It's so complicated because not everything works together. So you know, one of the selling points probably of Amazon's assistant is that they did a lot of work to get it so that everything would work with your electric assistant. But if you spent much time with that assistant or that app, you'll realize that just because it says it works with Amazon doesn't mean that it really does in the way that perhaps you wanted it to. So what? What?

What matter does is twofold for these companies. The biggest thing is it if it makes it easier and everyone works together, it reduces a barrier of entry to the smart home and, in theory, many more people will start buying more smart devices once everyone sees how easy it is to use them, because right now it's not that easy. So, which is a gift guide segment? Recently, and I and they they asked me to recommend what smart home devices I thought people should buy and I was like don't buy, your friend, smart home devices, you're just giving them a pain in the arse for Christmas maybe a light maybe a fun light or something.

But you know, don't, don't turn in unless you're gonna be there.

0:32:45 - Mikah Sargent
It department yeah, you're giving yourself a task in the future?

0:32:48 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
yeah, so if you, if so, that will you know once it gets easier. Math is supposed to make and it does. That is one thing matter has done well is that will connect. It's much easier to set up devices now. You don't have to download a manufacturers app, you don't have to create an account. You know, you, you, it should. In most cases, it's a.

It's simpler and, if we can get there, make it as easy as pairing your Bluetooth headphones, which everyone knows how to do. Now, if pairing a device to your home is as easy as that, and how long did it take us to get it to be easy to pair a Bluetooth headphone to your phones? I mean, honestly, that has really only gotten easy in the last couple of years. So so that's where they're going. If it's easier, you'll buy more of them, just like there are billions of Bluetooth headphones out there and that you know there's more and more people buying Bluetooth headphones. More and more people will buy smart devices.

That's better for Amazon, alexa sorry, that's better for Amazon, google, apple and then the other benefit here for these companies is when they have a stable, secure connectivity platform protocol to work on, they can build more interesting experiences on top, like things like Apple's adaptive lighting and smart things, energy management, and when they don't have to deal so as much with the technical side of you know, making sure everything works together. When everything does just work together, if it ever just does work together, then these experiences will be a lot easier, and those are things that they could potentially monetize, you know, and get some, get some cash out of you, for I mean, if it gives you benefit, then you may, you may pay for it.

0:34:24 - Mikah Sargent
So I think that those are the two reasons. Those are. Yeah, that was a great answer and very helpful. One final question that I have for you real quick. Do you think 2024 in your heart of hearts, do you feel this is the year we see matter, deliver on this connected home utopia, or is this a? Is this a growing pains thing that could extend a couple of years?

0:34:45 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
yeah, no, it's not gonna be ready in 2024. Sorry, I mean maybe my, your smart sensor that didn't work will come back to life and it will work. There may be some small improvements, but overall I and this again to be fair to the CSA, who is the family, the organization behind matter, and they said this at the launch event it's going to take a while until we're at a point where it is what it was originally promised to be. There's gonna be improvements along the way and hopefully you'll start to see some thread device improvements with matter once they sort out the whole thread border route issue, which I think we talked about last time I was on, and so it's it's, it's a journey, as they keep saying. I just I'm a bit concerned that momentum will stall and companies will stop putting effort in. As I mentioned, it's quite a big effort for these companies and I just I'm worried that that is going to then just cause it all to fall apart yeah, that's, we don't have an alternative, right?

I don't see what the alternative will be, you know, other than going back to our ward gardens and our, you know, locked-in ecosystems and, to be fair, some of those work fine, but there's not. That's, that's not for everyone and that's not going to take the smart home to the next level well, jen, a pleasure to talk to you.

0:36:11 - Mikah Sargent
Really great insights into the smart home. Of course, folks can head to the verge.com to check out your multitudes of articles about the smart home. Is there any place else?

0:36:21 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
they should go online to keep up with what you're doing yeah, I'm on X at JP2E and then I'm also on threads and I am the smart home mama.

0:36:33 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, thank you so much and happy holidays to you and yours thank you. Alrighty folks up next, we have got to make sense of what's going on with the Apple watch.

And who better to join us to explain what's going on then? Bloomberg's own Mark Gurman. Welcome back to the show, mark. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me. Now I, I this is. This is wild, because this is the first time in a long time that a tech story has reached the masses in such a way that I heard from family members asking me do I need to hide my Apple watch under my mattress? Is someone going to come and take it? Is it going to be disabled? I hear that Apple has to stop the Apple. There's a lot of misinformation out there that boils down to an interesting patent dispute. So let's, let's, let's please make sense of this. What's going on with the Apple watch?

0:37:45 - Mark Gurman
okay, I'll break it all down. There's a company called Mossimo. They're based in Irvine in Southern California and they're known as pioneers in the blood oxygen sensing space. They sued Apple in the beginning of 2020 over 10 patents and over trade secrets. They feel that Apple met with them in 2013 to steal their technology rather than to partner with them, as they believed Apple was meeting with them for right. That was seven years before the lawsuit.

Apple introduced the Apple watch series 6 in 2020. Now, as you probably know, the blood oxygen sensor was a big upgrade. Then in 2021, about nine months after that, mossimo asked the United States division of the International Trade Commission to seize sales, to block sales of Apple watches with blood oxygen technology, because Mossimo believed and told the ITC that those watches violate patents. The ITC ruled in October October 26th, just a couple months ago that Apple indeed violates two of the Mossimo patents and they ordered Apple to two things. They ordered One Apple could no longer import Apple watches with blood oxygen into the United States. That comes into play, obviously, because all watches from Apple are manufactured in Asia right, so it's international, needs to be imported, needs to pass customs to get into the US. That can't happen. Part two is Apple itself has to seize from selling the watches. That's why you'll still be able to buy them from Best Buy, target, walmart, etc. Until supply in the United States runs out. If we actually hit that point Now to answer some of these concerns from friends, family, anyone watching this your Apple watch as it exists today will not cease to function.

It's not banned in the sense that it's going to be removed from your wrist or taken away from you. The functionality on the watch itself that's already been sold is not going to go away. If you buy one before December 25th, so December 24th will be the last day you can buy them in an Apple retail store. That functionality is never going to change. This would only impact subsequent models. If the functionality does indeed change. I don't believe it will. The other thing I just put a story out saying that if your watch is out of warranty so if you have a series six or newer that's out of warranty remember these watches come with a one year standard warranty Apple won't be able to replace the watch. Now, why is that important? Any physical elements that happen to the Apple watch? The screen cracks, there's an issue with the speaker, anything breaks on the physical hardware. Apple doesn't do repairs, in the vast majority of cases, to the watches. They replace them and so Apple won't be able to do those replacements.

0:40:31 - Mikah Sargent
In response to this ITC-related ban, so that's the crux of the issue at this point. Okay, so that last one. I did not consider that last one, and so then I have to wonder does Apple already and maybe this is the thing for most companies does Apple already have somewhere in the fine print of the warranty that says and if it's ever banned in the United States or elsewhere, we will not, because I'm wondering that, because how unprecedented is that aspect of it.

0:41:06 - Mark Gurman
Let me be clear this is for out of warranty watches right, oh, okay, out of warranty.

Okay, got you, got, you got you If your watch is in warranty with the one year standard warranty. So if you've bought an Apple watch in the last 12 months, you're good. Or if you get Apple care, I believe you can extend it with Apple care plus an additional three years, or up to three years, something like that definitely more than a year. You'll pay extra for that, either monthly or, you know, altogether in one installment, you're good. This applies to. Let me give you an example you bought an Apple watch series seven when it came out in 2021, you still use it.

Your screen cracks today. Your screen cracks after December 25th. I should say you won't be able to get it replaced at Apple. You'll have to go to a third party to deal with it, to maybe repair the screen. So that is a headache potential headache for consumers who want to get their watch repaired. Now Apple's trying to make it easier. What they're going to tell customers is we're going to write down your information, we're going to log you in the system that you have an Apple watch that needs to be repaired and as soon as this situation is clear and we're able to repair your watch, we're going to contact you. We'll set up the replacement.

0:42:11 - Mikah Sargent
Okay interesting. So they seem pretty. They seem pretty optimistic, then, or I should say it seems pretty optimistic that this will eventually blow over. I want to address something that I kind of heard people asking about talking about, which is a conversation around Apple's choice to announce that it was going to be halting sales, and whether this was a means of trying to force the hand of the Biden administration and the specific trade group. What do you feel about this in general, in terms of of sort of how this is playing out? Is this just Apple abiding by the absolute black and white rules of what's going on? Do you think that the company had hoped to get a final pardon, so to speak? What is the ideal way that this plays out and in comparison to how it actually is playing out as it stands?

0:43:15 - Mark Gurman
I think it's kind of mixed. Certainly, apple was hoping to get a final pardon, so to speak, or a reprieve from the Biden administration or the US trade representative. Now, technically speaking, that is something that could still happen before December 25th. The ruling came in October 26th, but that includes a 60-day presidential review period. So anytime between now and December 25th, 26th, biden administration, the trade representative, catherine Tai Ambassador Catherine Tai, I should say can step in seems unlikely at this point, given how far down the road we are In terms of when Apple is stopping to sell the watch.

If it was some sort of ploy, well, apple retail stores are closed on December 25th. The last day of Apple Watch sales in US retail stores is December 24th, so they're going up to the buzzer in retail stores. Online is a little bit more complicated. The buzzer there is actually in 15 minutes from now. That's when the Apple Watch is scheduled to no longer be on sale in the US online store. That's noon Pacific time, 3 pm Eastern time.

Why? Well, some see it as a ploy. The way that I see it, and I think this is correct they need distribution time. They have time to process the orders. They need time to potentially import, if you need to import any component from overseas and you also need time to deliver it to the customer, for the customer to receive the item before that deadline. I believe that extra four-day wiggle room that they've given themselves by shutting off the online store today is the reason behind that. I guess the benefit there is all this noise around the span and the sales stopping, I think would create maybe some noise to get the ambassador or get the president to act. Maybe that is a potential benefit. They thought it would maybe accomplish that, but I certainly think they're doing it in order to abide.

There are all sorts of terrible things that can happen to Apple. If Apple does not choose to abide by the order. There could be further lawsuits. Mossimo would go to the US government asking for an immediate injunction. Apple could get sued, they could potentially get fined and it wouldn't be a very good look for the company to go against a government issued order. There's all sorts of reasons this is happening.

Now I will say I am a little perplexed how it got to this point. Quite frankly, I thought this would never happen. When we saw this ban come into place at the end of October, there was no way that Apple wasn't going to get some sort of reprieve. There was no way Apple wasn't going to issue a software update or make some sort of hardware tweak immediately. There was no way Apple wasn't going to reach some sort of licensing agreement or settlement with Mossimo. The fact that we got to this point, despite Apple knowing for months, even a year, since the beginning of this year, january, that this was a strong possibility, I think is a little bit of an egg on the face for Apple that they were not prepared and they're actually going to have to go forward with this Now.

The big question is how long is this going to last? Is it possible that this lasts a week? Certainly, is it possible it lasts a month, two months, three months? The question is, what is Apple's cap on how long they're going to let this happen for? I think probably three months, right, but we shall see. No time is very good. I guess the one silver lining for Apple. The benefit is that a lot of the holiday shopping is done already. The quarter is done in 10 days from now, so I don't see this having a revenue impact of any significance on Q1. That's the most important quarter of the year. We'll see it in Q2 and Q3, certainly.

0:46:42 - Mikah Sargent
Let's talk about the options that Apple has from here. You mentioned software tweak, hardware tweak, to let this continue. There's obviously no world in which the company just says, okay, we're never selling Apple watches with this sensor in the United States, ever again. But is the third option maybe a waiting game to see who gives? Is there an option where they come to some sort of settlement agreement with Massimo? Can we talk about what's possible, I think with particular focus on software update, because I do remember hearing a few questions about wait. How can the company changing the software address the patent concerns here? Is there enough that can be done in software, in which case it's kind of almost a silly thing where it's like, well, if I just flip a few bits here, then suddenly it works just fine and it's not violating your patent. So yeah, let's dig into that.

0:47:42 - Mark Gurman
Yeah, michael, there's five real possibilities by my account. First possibility is that Biden or the US Trade Representative steps in before the 25th, 26th, to veto the ban. That's option one. That would be what Apple's ideal scenario would be. Option two would be they get a federal reprieve on appeal, but that process can only begin after the ban goes into place. So that's something that on December 26, december 27th, apple will get to work on.

The third possibility is some sort of settlement or licensing agreement with Massimo. To the best of our knowledge, there have not been discussions on that, but maybe, as time goes by, that's something that maybe gets discussed. The fourth possibility would be software. If Apple's able to, as I'm told, get a software update out that allows them to disable or shift the functionality, that would be in violation of the patent. That is a possibility. But that has to go and get submitted to the US Customs Agency, which makes the decision on whether or not to approve the fix. So if that gets approved, the ballgame is over. If that gets rejected, then we have to start thinking about the nuclear option, right?

Option number five, which would be the worst case scenario for Apple, where they have to make a hardware fix, from what I'm told, getting a hardware fix that could take a year to redevelop the sensor. The easiest solution would probably be what's known as a feature delete, which would mean that Apple removes the blood oxygen sensor from the watch, recases the watches and gets those out the door. That could take two to three months. So my guess would be, in the worst case scenario for Apple, if this falls under a hardware fix, they would do a feature delete and then redesign the feature in time for next year's Apple watches.

0:49:22 - Mikah Sargent
Wow, can they not just disable it in software and keep it out there? Well, they would have to do that.

0:49:29 - Mark Gurman
That would probably be option 4.5.

Right so the first try would be to get it redesigned in software. The second trial would be to get it removed in software. But there is so much debate on the letter of the law with patents and how you read the patents If it is a pure hardware patent, if you have to combine the hardware software. So Apple's belief, their belief, from what I'm told, is that they can get this done in a redesign in software. They can change a bit a few of the interface elements of the blood oxygen app on the Apple watch. They can tweak some of the underlying algorithms, like you said, move around some bits, get this done and make them awesome or issue a thing of the past. If they're able to do that in a matter of weeks, get that approved and get this out the door, that would be a very significant and positive development for the company.

If this, if that fails and they have to move into a hardware fix because they refuse to do some sort of settlement, that would be pretty bad for the company. But look at the sales for the Apple watch 17 billion a year. Iphone 200 billion a year. So this is more of a really bad headache than anything material for the company. But it's embarrassing and everyone's talking about it and, quite frankly, this should have been dealt with and we should not be having this conversation. We should be talking about the vision pro.

0:50:42 - Mikah Sargent
Right, yes, exactly. Yeah, they should have done this tweak in the software already, or firmware, if it needs to be somewhere in between. Like what? Why is this? Why is this even happening? You're spot on with the egg on the face thing. Mark, I want to thank you so much for your insights. Every time you join me, it's always a great conversation where I end up learning two or three things that I had no idea about, and I know our listeners appreciate it as well. Of course, folks can head over to Bloombergcom itself to keep up with what you're doing, but where else should they go so that they stay up to date and learn more about that vision? Pro headset.

0:51:18 - Mark Gurman
Yeah, I'm @markgurman on X, Mastodon threads wherever, and Mikah, it's always a pleasure being on here with you and I'm looking forward to next time. So thank you for having me, as always, and have a great holiday, yeah happy holidays to you too.

0:51:33 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you, alrighty folks. Up next, we are going to prepare ourselves for a future where AI imagery is everywhere, or is it already everywhere, or has it always been everywhere? There's a lot to talk about, and we will get there in just a moment. Joining me today on Tech News Weekly to talk about what you need to know when it comes to photos in the age of AI is Stephen Shankland of CNET. Welcome back to the show, Stephen. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me on, yeah, and thank you for writing this guide.

So this guide that you wrote, I mean, wow, it is quite a piece. Everyone should go and check it out. We won't be able to even dig into half of what's here, and that's good, because we want you to go to CNETcom and check it out. You wrote this guide back in November, but I happened across it the other day and I thought this is a great way to round out the year because, going forward, we're going to see even more AI generated imagery than ever before, and I also love that this piece kind of encapsulates well, not encapsulates, it reminds us, rather of the fact that a lot of what we're seeing even now has some level of AI involved in the creation of the photograph, that digital imagery in general is not an exact reproduction. So let me start with a question that I love to ask when it comes to these kind of longer, in-depth analyses, and that is what inspired your choice to write this piece. What came to mind, what made you realize that this was something that was worth talking about?

0:53:19 - Stephen Shankland
Well, I am a photographer myself a professional photographer, as well as just everything in my personal life, like most of us and I have been facing this question for years. As photo editing tools have been getting more powerful, more sophisticated, how much editing is too much editing? And that was kind of a me problem, because I'm a photo enthusiast. I spend a lot of time behind cameras, but as smartphones got better, this became an everybody problem, because the photos that you get off your phone are really heavily processed and some of that is good and some of that might be going too far. But basically I realized this was a problem that everybody is having now, and then you multiply that by AI showing up deep fakes, social media, and it really seemed like it was a good time to dig into this.

It's been an area I've been following for years, and with each new smartphone that comes out, each new improvement in computational photography that smartphones add, it gets more urgent, and so I thought this would be a great time to dig in. So I talked to dozens of people for this story. As you say, it's a huge piece. It covers a lot of different subjects, but I think it's really timely. Yeah, I agree.

0:54:28 - Mikah Sargent
So let's start by kind of contextualizing, which was the word I was looking for earlier. When we think about the photographs when I snap a photo with my smartphone or someone snaps a photo on their DSLR and they've got the settings set to auto we have to remember that there's stuff going on behind the scenes to make that photo what it is, and every time we look at it on a different screen or we print it out or anything we do with it, that is once again a reproduction and in almost every case not an exact reproduction of what we would have seen or would see with our eyes. So can you talk a little bit about you know, in the research that you did the state of non-generative AI digital photography and kind of the overall message you were delivering with that part of the piece.

0:55:32 - Stephen Shankland
So what happens when you take a photo is not just a very simple mechanical process where some photons fly through the air, stick to your image sensor in your smartphone or your camera and then get translated into a JPEG. There is a huge amount of processing that goes on between those photons and the JPEG you see on a screen. So I think that I've been running into a lot of angst recently about is our smartphones processing images too much? Are they getting away from the truth? And part of the objective of my story was to point out that, even like with the barest minimum amount of processing, it's already several steps away from the truth. Smartphones have to do a huge amount of processing. Some of that is AI, some of that is other algorithms. They have to do a huge amount of processing just to produce that usable JPEG. They have to make up a whole bunch of red, green and blue data that never actually arrived on the sensor. They have to do sharpening, they have to do color balance, they have to do some compression.

There's all kinds of steps that go into making a photo, and these days it's really quite complicated. So any modern smartphone Samsung, apple, google it will. Actually, when you take a single picture. It will take nine, 10, 15 frames and combine those all into one single image. So it's already not one single moment in time and they're pretty good about it. But sometimes you get an artifact from that process and, for example, I took a picture recently of a nice morning sunrise scene and there's a jogger coming toward me. I looked at the picture of that jogger and his head is completely missing in the photo and that's because the Apple iPhone I used to take that particular photo had combined different images taken at different moments of time and in one of the images there was a body of a jogger and the other there was nothing there, so his head is missing. So there's a lot of processing that goes on.

Now, in the current age, there's even more that's AI related. So, for example, your smartphone will typically block off different areas. Let's say this is a face, this is a tree, this is a grass, this is the sky, and AI is used to identify that all those subjects. It's called segmentation and it will process the photo differently as a result. For example, a Google Pixel phone has a completely different imaging processing pipeline for whether there are people in it or whether it's more, you know, a landscape or architecture photo, something without people in it.

So there's a lot of processing, and AI is a big part of that. That's not generative AI. That's just using AI algorithms to produce what is arguably a more faithful representation of the scene that your eye actually saw. So there, like I say, there's angst about whether there's too much photo processing going on, but, believe me, you would hate the photos that came out of your smartphone if there were no processing going on, because they would look like garbage. Those little tiny image sensors even though they've been getting bigger over the years, they still just can't produce a great image. So the phones stack a whole bunch of images together and you end up with a pretty good result at the end of it.

0:58:34 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I agree with you wholeheartedly. You know there's I've seen this play out a number of times anecdotally where someone will take a photo with an app and there's a specific app I'm not going to mention its name, but people will probably know and its whole purpose, its whole, the whole existence for it is to take photos of things and then send those photos to other people. And every photo that is taken with the app, especially with the front facing camera, is filtered, and they do that so that you are more likely to send the photo. Now it has extra filters where you can beautify and add dog ears and all sorts of other stuff, but by its default it is there's there's light filtering that goes on for the default photo that's taken. And so the the sort of story that I've seen play out several times is someone takes a photo with the front-facing camera in the app and then later on, at some point, they are trying to do another photo outside of the app. They take a photo with the front-facing camera from just the iPhone and they like why does my photo always look so bad when I'm taking this photo? I hate how I look in this and you know trying to explain that, and you know whether they believe it or not as a whole, you know another story. But, yes, even the difference between the processing that takes place is kind of interesting to see at times and also the choices that different companies make for the processing. That's where the we, each year, have seen those MKBHD camera shootout tests, and oftentimes the photos that end up winning tend to be overly saturated and perhaps sharpened, and it all comes down to kind of a taste that is set by the manufacturer and the software creator, paired with your own personal taste to create the, the image that you end up with.

And yeah, absolutely, if we turned all of that off, what that would look like is like oh dear.

So that's that's one thing.

Let's break into something that's halfway between true photo AI generation, where I go to a website and I say make me a photo of a gingerbread man holding a cup of coffee, and that's fully generated, versus something in between, like using Photoshop to take something out of the background of a photo.

What I remember, a common sort of meme that existed that quickly became just a joke that you would say, which is that one shop you can tell by the pixels, which was a way of saying that that that image has been digitally manipulated by Photoshop, because if you zoom in very closely you can see that the pixels here aren't quite arranged how they should be. What is kind of the current state of photo manipulation with Photoshop and these kinds of tools and I guess more so people's feelings about those? Right, because that's what you talked about before that there's a lot of conversation about everything's over generated, but at the same time we see Google and other companies showing these magic eraser tools, and so I'm curious kind of where things are when it comes to that and how people feel about it.

1:02:12 - Stephen Shankland
So I talked to a lot of professional photographers and ordinary folks as well, and here's the situation. So there is a lot of photo editing capability out there. It gets better every year and what's more notable, I think, right now is that it gets more accessible every year. So it used to be you'd have to buy Photoshop. A lot of people would not have the money to do that or the time to learn it. But with each passing year that gets, those tools get easier to use. So that means you can expect them to be used more often.

The Google Photos magic eraser tool, I think, is a great example of this. That allows you to pretty easily swipe over somebody and then zap them out of the photo. If they're cluttering up the background, or if you don't like that telephone pole or the piece of trash in the lawn, you can zap that kind of thing. You can also select somebody and make them bigger so they occupy a larger part of the frame if you want to emphasize your friend in the photo. So these tools are more automated and there are a lot of different feelings about this. So I come from a photojournalist kind of background. That kind of thing is just absolutely no, don't do it. But even in photojournalism you're allowed to mess around with the exposure a little bit, change the white balance, and so you do some editing in photojournalism. But you're not removing telephone poles or bags of trash or people. But for people's personal photos it's actually very common. People don't think it's a big deal at all. It's fine to just sort of spruce up the photo a little bit. And also among professional photographers I talk to, they also think it's good. I mean, they think it's acceptable to do a lot of editing and maybe tidy things up. If there's a car in your landscape photo, you can. You know, if there's a car in your landscape photo, you can zap the car. If it's kind of true to the scene, that was actually there, that's good.

One photographer I spoke to said, you know, for example, for a moonrise it doesn't have to be that that you could actually, you know, photoshop a moon into an image as long as that moon could plausibly have been there at some point. That's too far from my tastes. But there's not an easy. You know, this much is too much and this much is appropriate. It's hard to say. The thing you have to be mindful of is what's your audience? Is this. You know, something you are just sharing with a couple of friends. Is this something where there's some greater expectation of truth, of documentary value? In that case, you know, dial it back.

One of the interesting decisions that Google made with their magic editor tool is it's something you have to actively do. So there's some AI process that goes on when you take a picture with a Google Pixel phone, but it's mostly just reproducing the scene. That's there Trying to do a good job reproducing that scene. But then, after the fact, you can go and, you know, expand people, obliterate, trash things like that. But that's something you have to consciously do. That's not something Google automatically does. So they made a conscious choice for that more scene altering changes. You have to do it yourself. Google's not going to do that for you automatically, and I respect that choice because I mean, honestly, a lot of people. They do want to look beautiful in the photos. They don't want to have distractions in the photos. You know, you see people they take 15 or 20 photos because they want to send the one where they look the nicest, not the one where they're blinking or, you know, have a weird face. You know that's just how we are right. We always want to look our best.

1:05:38 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, absolutely. And then let's round things out here, I think, with the really important part as we come into this new year. We're all about these AI-generated photos. There are a number of photos that have gone out this past year that folks thought were real, and we have learned a little bit that we need to be more mindful of the fact that a photo might not be real when we see it, and by real we mean that the event truly took place that is being captured in the photograph, right? So what are some tips that you came across in your research for folks to help spot these photographs that are AI-generated, so that if I see the Pope eating a gingerbread cookie that is made of I don't know brownies I don't know, trying to think of something weird, that I could go oh, that's not real. I know the Pope doesn't like ginger. Tell me about it.

1:06:49 - Stephen Shankland
Sure. So this is some advice. Now, bear in mind that this advice is going to be obsolete six months or a year from now, because if you look at a photo and you say, oh, that's generated by some generative AI tool, if you're able to immediately come to that conclusion, then that generative AI tool failed. So you can bet that the engineers at OpenAI or at Adobe or StableDiffusion or Mid Journey or wherever their engineers, are working to make the photos look as realistic and plausible as possible. So, with that in mind, right now, if you look at a lot of AI-generated photos, you can often find problems. So if you look at them on your phone quickly, it'll look legit.

If you take a deeper look, zoom in a little bit, see it on a bigger screen like a laptop, then you can often see problems. And there are problems with things like geometry, like people's heads being turned the face isn't quite right or their problems with hands. Fingers are notoriously difficult for some of these AI tools to get correct, although that's improving. It's situations where people are coming into contact with each other, like somebody has an arm around another person or they're hugging or they're shaking hands, that sort of interface between two people. That's a fraught area and you can look at that and you can see problems where two objects are coming into contact with each other, where feet touch the ground. There are lots of those sorts of issues where the AI can generate a single person and it can generate a background, but merging those two correctly is harder for it. So you can look at any situation where things are coming into contact with each other, but there's a broader rule here, which is the context where you're seeing these photos.

And if it's your friend sending you a photo or your mom sending you a photo, you can probably trust it, because there's a social contract between you and your friend and you and your mom. It's implicit. You know, this is me communicating with you. And if you're sending a bunch of faked photos to your friend, they're going to judge you harshly, right? You're basically lying to them, right? But on social media, different rules apply.

On social media, celebrities want attention and trolls want attention and political influencers want to be influential, and that's a situation where they're going to be trying to fool you. And so that's the context situation. If it's from a stranger, be much more careful about what you're looking at. If it's something shocking or provocative or surprising or really eye-opening, then that's the kind of thing where it's you're going to want to apply extra care. Now it's tough because I think that you know, when you see an amazing photo, sometimes it just goes straight into your brain and it kind of bypasses that rational processing center where you're thinking is that really actually Donald Trump getting arrested or is that just somebody's AI creation? I think that you know, emotional impact can happen really fast, so you have to be careful. But the bottom line for me is, if it's on social media, you know, start with an assumption that this is fake and then work out from there.

1:09:57 - Mikah Sargent
That is wonderful advice and, as I mentioned, there are lots of great tips, lots of great insights in this piece that you wrote, and I hope everybody who's watching the show goes and checks it out. Stephen, if folks want to follow you online and make sure they stay up to date with everything that you're doing, where should they go to do so?

1:10:17 - Stephen Shankland
Well, social media is kind of a mess right now, but probably the most mainstream home where you can find me is on Threads at S-T-S-H-A-N-K.

1:10:27 - Mikah Sargent
Wonderful Happy holidays to you and yours, Stephen, and thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, Alrighty folks. That brings us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly as far as Recorded Live goes, because there will be a best of episode as well that you can check out next week. But I thank you so much for your support, for your attention, for your time, for your feedback, and thank you for letting me bring you the show every single week. It has been a pleasure hosting this show with Jason for the longest time, and now solo, and I appreciate it. I've got some plans and some exciting stuff in the works for next year with Tech News Weekly. I'm going to keep zipped about that, though, so you'll have to tune in next year to discover what we do here. And yeah, of course you can head to twittvtnw to check out the show and subscribe to it in audio and video formats. That's the best way to make sure that we can keep doing this show. It is not a pivot, don't you worry. Not a pivot. It's more about maybe having some assistance in bringing you the show every week. You'll see, but thank you so much. If you'd like to get all of our shows ad-free. I must remind you about Club Twit, a great holiday gift At twittvtnw $7 a month, $84 a year. What that gets is a complete ad-free experience of every single one-of-hour show. Plus, you gain access to the Twit Plus bonus fee that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes, before the show, after the show special Club Twit events, like our Escape Room in a Box, which was a lot of fun to do, and we're thankful that we were able to do that. No spoilers I almost had a spoiler there, but I won't spoil anything as well as access to the Discord server, a fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and also those of us here at twit. We've got some great stuff planned for the Discord in the coming year, so be excited about that Again. $7 a month, $84 a year. On top of all of that, you'll gain access to some exclusive Club Twit shows, including the untitled Linux show. Hands on Windows, which is a short format show from Paul Therop that covers Windows Tips and Tricks. Hands on Mac, which is a short format show from Yours Truly that covers Apple Tips and Tricks, as well as iOS Today, which is now a Club show. Thank you, Club members for saving iOS today. We're super pumped about that, Rosemary and I both and, of course, Home Theater Geeks from Scott Wilkinson that has all sorts of Home Theater tips, tricks, interviews, reviews and everything in between.

So head to twit.tv/clubtwit, to check it out and thank you for your support. I am Mikah Sargent, which I'm at Mikah Sargent on many a social media network, and you can head to chiwawacoffeecom, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Thank you to everyone here in the studio. We've got the two Johns here in the studio, Burke, who always makes sure that the calls are as good as they possibly can be, Debi and the continuity team, who makes sure that the ads, when we have them, are also good to go. And, frankly, everybody here at twit, who makes everything that we do possible. I think this is our last show of the year as far as what we're doing live in the studio. So, yeah, thank you, studio for housing us safely for nothing falling on our heads. I appreciate you. Let's keep it up in the coming year, literally and figuratively. Goodbye everybody. Hope you have a wonderful rest of your end of the year and we'll see you in the new one.

1:14:28 - Rod Pyle
Hey, I'm Rod Pyle, editor in chief of Ad Astra magazine, and each week I joined with my co-host to bring you, this week in space, the latest and greatest news from the final frontier. We talk to NASA, chief space scientists, engineers, educators and artists and sometimes we just shoot the breeze over what's hot and what's not in space books and TV, and we do it all for you, our fellow true believers. So, whether you're an armchair adventurer or waiting for your turn to grab a slot in Elon's Mars rocket, join us on this week in space and be part of the greatest adventure of all time.