Tech News Weekly 356 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 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Coming up on Tech News Weekly. Abrar Alhiti of CNET is here, and she kicks off this week's episode by talking about how college students have figured out a way to use Meta's smart glasses to essentially dox people IRL and in real time. Then I finally get the opportunity to talk about all the drama going on between WordPress and Automatic and WP Engine. It is a back and forth mess, and boy it is juicy, juicy tea. Afterward, daniel Rubino of Windows Central joins us to talk about all the cool new features Microsoft has announced and, in some cases, rolled out for its AI co-pilot plus PCs and co-pilot in general, and then we round things out with a conversation with Christian Selig, the iOS developer, who at one point made Apollo and now makes Juno, which has just been pulled from the App Store. Yeah, we got a lot to talk about on this episode of Tech News Weekly, so stay tuned.

01:05 - TWiT (Announcement)
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01:08
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01:11 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
This is Twit. This is Tech News Weekly episode 356, with Abrar Al-Hiti and me, micah Sargent, recorded Thursday, october 3rd 2024. Microsoft's latest co-pilot updates. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. I am your host, micah Sargent, and I'm excited to say it is the first week of October, spooky no. So that means we are joined by the wonderful Abrar Alhiti of CNET. Welcome back, abrar.

01:50 - Abrar Al-Heeti (Co-host)
Thank you. I'm very excited for spooky season, fall season yeah, got to hit up the pumpkin patches, eat some apple cider donuts it's the best season.

01:59 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
And oh, my goodness, this is off topic. No, it's not. It's on topic for what we're talking about. My goodness, I got I. This is off topic. No, it's not. It's on topic for what we're talking about. Um, whole foods right now is selling a spiced cider. Um, sparkling water. It is the best thing. It's a best sparkling water I've ever had. It's got like cloves, cinnamon, a little bit of apple in it and oh, it's so good and I just want to buy every box that they have.

02:26 - Abrar Al-Heeti (Co-host)
Oh my, oh, this, this podcast sponsored by Whole Foods. I wish it needs to be, because I'm sold.

02:34 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's so good. Yeah, literally everybody out there. If you like sparkling water and there's a Whole Foods somewhere near you, which there probably is, go find it. It's so good, it is delicious. I hope you do try it and I hope you text me about it. I will. I'm looking forward to that. So, for folks who are tuning in for the first time or who haven't been here in a while, this is the part of the show where we have our stories of the week. These are stories we read, that we thought were interesting, that we wanted to share with all of you and, as is tradition, abrar, you'll be kicking things off.

03:08 - Abrar Al-Heeti (Co-host)
Yes, I wanted to talk about the creepy side of smart glasses, which won't come as a surprise for anyone who's really been following smart glasses even as far back as Google Glass. But there's this project that some Harvard students worked on called EyeXray, and what this does is they use glasses like metaray bands and what they're able to do is essentially use facial recognition as they're walking around to scan people's faces and then use reverse facial recognition tools to figure out, to find some URLs with some information that matches what's been scanned, and then using large language models, to add details like a person's name or their job or addresses, relatives. It's so far-reaching. The interesting thing here is not only can they use tools that have existed for so long, but what they mentioned is that the prevalence of large language models and how good they've gotten has made it easier to have this very comprehensive data again, just from putting on smart glasses like Meta's Ray-Bans and just walking around and scanning people's faces as they're walking by. They mentioned that this is not a tool that they're releasing so that anyone can snoop on people. Thank goodness. It's kind of just to demonstrate how these smart glasses, which Meta pitches these as glasses that can kind of blend in and look like regular glasses, which is cool, but then also raises concerns about. Well, if they just blend in, like when people had Google Glass and were dubbed glass holes, it was because it was like it was obvious that you were wearing something. That looked kind of dystopian and odd and unsettling. But these glasses are designed to just look like glasses and so it becomes harder to tell. Even if there's a little light that shows up when you're recording, not everyone's going to notice that light, especially in bright sunlight or if they're in a crowd. So it really just does raise these concerns because I feel like we're already. I feel this when I go out, but I feel like everyone's always not everyone.

05:16
There's a lot of people who are, I think, especially in California, who are maybe vlogging or taking videos or TikTok videos anywhere, but especially in certain areas, and you have to be conscious of that.

05:29
You kind of think will I end up in the background of somebody's video at some point without consent? And that's fine I mean, it's public spaces, you can do that but this is like next level, right. It's not just you being in the background of somebody's video, it's them finding out everything about you and so they had this video that they posted, which was basically them walking around and talking to people and just sharing like, oh my gosh, are you so-and-so, don't you work at so-and-so? And they had all this information that they had just gathered, which is really creepy, and these people kind of went along with it Like yeah, I am that person, and it kind of seemed like this endearing, like oh, I know who you are and I know your work and I've read your research or whatever, but it's really just them gathering all this data super, super easily just by putting on these Ray-Bans.

06:08 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That's pretty chilling, right, I mean with us. No, it's a sort of what is that? Dramatic irony, in the sense that we know what's going on. The person doesn't. Um, it's. What's interesting about this is it's one example of how we see, uh, big tech actually like this is this is big tech pushing for this future, because think about the Bella Ramsey ads from Apple.

06:43
Um, where the actor where the actor starts to walk into a room, sees somebody that they're supposed to know, backs up and then asks Siri, who's this person? Where do I know them from? That kind of thing? Siri tells them and then they're able to go on and have the conversation. It's being pushed as a cool future feature, a feature that you would want to have, an option that you would want to have, an option that you'd want to have. But while that is the way that that's done is through somebody's own, you know data that's available, where it's looking at your location that you've shared, that you've adopted, blah, blah, blah.

07:24
Having it be the other way around is chilling, but I always come back to when it comes to this idea. There is a part of me that is very aware of the fact that we are all given when we sign up for a service, the opportunity to read through terms and conditions, and we are all given the choice of whether we sign up for a service or not, and we do have a responsibility to understand or choose not to what we're giving when we make those choices. Soft, humanitarian side of me which is a much larger side of me is railing against the machine here and saying we need to do a better job of telling people what's going on, have them be more aware of it. But there is a small part of me that I guess, tries to have empathy for literally everything, and so I have empathy for the company in that situation and I say the company's doing their due diligence in having it be in the fine print that this is the situation and that your data is available. And I've noticed, as many people do, that it does oftentimes take object lessons for humans to learn not to do something or to be better about something, and so maybe these are object lessons that have to happen.

09:18
This thing where it's like let me show you what it means because you've decided not to read through the fine print and you've just said yes, yes, yes, yes to everything. You need to see that to understand the impact. I'm curious, abrar, anecdotally, in people that you've talked to that are outside of tech. How often do you find that they have a deep concern for their privacy? And if you do take the opportunity to kind of explain, hey, when you're watching TV on this TV that you bought, that was a budget TV it's tracking what you're watching. I want to hear what's been your experience in that kind of thing over time and if people are concerned about this or they're just kind of like well you know, it is what it is.

10:10 - Abrar Al-Heeti (Co-host)
I think that's exactly the problem. I think we get really excited about new technologies and we get really excited about oh, this is a free service, if I can sign up for any of these social media platforms, this is a discounted product that I can take advantage of. And then you realize there's always a price, right, it's not. You know, there's no such thing as a free lunch, there's no such thing as free tech, and so you kind of learn a little bit too late what the cost is.

10:35
So we see people who do kind of have to wait for something like this to come out, where they're like oh, this is quite serious and it's not like it just sprung up overnight. Right, we've been building up to this for so long, these platforms have been collecting our data for so long, and so then you get a piece of tech like this. And it's not just about the glasses right, people are concerned about what glasses can record and capture, but it's about everything that it's able to access and what that bigger picture looks like. So, yeah, I think you know, we who are in this space, whether we're we're reading or writing these tech stories we know what the privacy implications are, we understand the dangers, but we still engage in it, right? And so imagine if you don't necessarily know um everything that's at stake and um, and yeah, I think a lot of it is just um very much in the dark.

11:28 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Yeah, yeah.

11:29 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Uh, it's I, I. I celebrate this, this use of the technology as a means, because very clearly you know they're not making it available to people. They're literally showing you look at this things you can do with it. It's not great that this can, this can happen, um and I. So, going back to the question that I asked you, um, answering it for myself, I will say that I have seen, which I've been happy about, an overall increase in awareness of one's sort of data value and one's privacy, and I like that. That has happened, but it only reaches to a certain extent, and that's been.

12:15
The fascinating thing for me is, while I have seen more people showing concern about an app, say, tracking them I specifically brought up the TV example because that is so far down the line for people that, again, anecdotally, I've explained that in the past and that's just one that they don't really care about and there are a few out there where it's like, oh, that's doing that, that's fine, that makes sense, and it's it's not to the level that we have and the awareness. I think that we and by we I mean those who study this stuff every day and who do in different ways, read through terms and conditions and understand the implications therein. And because I almost saw there used to be a whole heck of a lot of of apathy about privacy and especially the phrase you would always hear They'd always kind of joke I don't care if the CIA is looking at my stuff, I'm not doing anything wrong. If somebody wants to look at my stuff, I mean I'm just boring, so who cares? Well, that was the refrain I used to have, that that used to be my stuff. I mean, I'm just boring, so who cares? That was the refrain I used to have, that that used to be my refrain.

13:39
And then I remember the day that it changed, because a good friend of mine convinced me that that apathy was only making things worse. And then I, you know, so I became kind of hypersensitive to it, at least an awareness of it, and I saw a decrease in that apathy, an increase in that concern. But I'm wondering if it's tanking again a little bit, because it can feel a little overwhelming, right when you just were at a place where you kind of have to accept and this is the thing that I kind of struggle with saying that but do you, you almost do have to accept that it's going to be out there. We're all having not just our phones now but also our't really have the option to not exist in society. So yeah, it's just kind of there.

14:39 - Abrar Al-Heeti (Co-host)
I do think we've kind of grown numb to it, because think about all the times that we hear about all of our most personal data being leaked right by whatever it was, whether it's a corporation or whether it's a product that has been violating our privacy. I do think it's so hard to still feel shocked or angry by it when it happens all the time, and so that's just kind of a disappointing reality. And then, on the flip side of it, these companies clearly create a product that is valuable for people, and so they're not going to walk away from it if it's a tool that helps them connect with people or makes their lives easier, and it's just a really unfortunate cost that you have to pay. I mean, that's the price that you pay for something that you want to use and find it difficult to remove yourself from. And even if you don't, even if you're not on social media again, there are ways that your information is going to be compromised anyway. It is so hard. Privacy I don't think it exists anymore and I just think that's.

15:38 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's a tough pill to swallow, but that's kind of where we're at right now, absolutely All right, we need to take a quick little break before we come back with my story of the week, but until then, I guess let's all have a little more awareness about the cool sunglasses we see people wear, especially if somebody comes up to you wearing sunglasses and they're like hey, I know you, you're blah blah blah. From blah blah blah. I'm already skeptical about that because it's like do you really know me? I don't know. Anyway, just that skepticism is important.

16:07
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16:52
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18:29
All right, we are back from the break and that means it's time for my story of the week. I had planned to talk about this last week, but we had a really great conversation with Emily Dreibelbis and so we kind of carried that in to the next portion. You should go and watch that episode as well, but this is still ongoing, so I have the opportunity to talk about it right now. I have the opportunity to talk about it right now. You may have heard about, maybe, a little company, a little organization, a little software system called WordPress and the drama that's going on between WordPress and another company. If you haven't, well, now's the time. And the reason I think this is so important is because folks might not be aware WordPress is the software we'll go with, that is responsible for a whole heck of a lot of the websites that you visit. It's the sort of back end for a whole heck of a lot of websites that you visit, and, given that it sort of powers so much of the web when things are going on with WordPress, you want to know about it.

19:41
So let me give some background, because this involves WordPress and then a company called WP Engine. Wp Engine, it's a third-party hosting provider, so that means that it uses WordPress and provides little storage places online for people to have a website. It was founded in 2010, and it uses WordPress software, which is open source, to offer managed hosting services. So in this case, what we mean is WordPress, as an open source software, is available for anybody to use for free. However they want to and offer if they want to, companies can offer managed hosting. So you can imagine you go to a website and you're trying to create a website. You pay them some money and then they help you create a website and it just so happens to be that it's WordPress that is kind of the backend of that website that you're creating.

20:48
In 2018, there was a private equity firm called Silverlake that acquired WP Engine. Automatic, with two Ts, is the company that's behind WordPresscom and is the company that is run by one of the creators of WordPress, and Automatic has long criticized WP Engine, this third-party provider, for profiting from WordPress without contributing enough to its development. So one of the things with open source software, it's sort of this agreement that we're all working together to make this better, and if you're going to make money off of a thing that is a community project that we're all working on, then you should, you know, throw in some resources to contribute to the success of this open source software. Well, automatic and the CEO of Automatic, matt Mullenweg, feels like WordPress, or rather WP Engine, has not done a good job. On September 20th of this year, there was a conference called WordCamp, and WordPress co-founder Automatic CEO Matt Mullenweg, actually attacked WP Engine. Not only did he attack it, he called it a cancer in the WordPress community, accused the company of quote strip, mining the WordPress ecosystem for profit while contributing only minimally to the open source project. The next day, doubling down, molenweg said look, I stand by what I said at WordCamp and now I'm writing a blog post. That blog post further criticized WP Engine, claiming that the company contributed only 40 hours per week to WordPress development, and said that's insufficient because the company is huge and makes a whole heck of a lot of money. Mullenweg also kind of hinted that legal action might be on its way over WP Engine's use of the WordPress trademark. Interestingly, the WordPress trademark is, it's sort of all spelled out as part of the WordPress foundation and it explains that there are instances in which the trademark can be used and used freely. But the company actually or the foundation updated that page to clarify in such a way that it specifically was talking about WP Engine.

23:19
A couple of days later, wp Engine actually responded to Mullenweg's multiple attacks by sending a cease and desist letter to Automatic saying Mullenweg was harassing the company through text messages and calls leading up to that conference on the 20th, and WP Engine claimed that Automatic had demanded quote a very large sum of money in exchange for not escalating the conflict publicly the conflict publicly. We later found out that Automatic had reached out to WP Engine and said hey, we want you to either pay an 8% royalty fee on your revenue for using WordPress or we want you to allocate 8% of your workforce to working on WordPress development. And we don't know exactly what the terms of that were. But the idea from WP Engine was if you don't do this, then that means that we are going to say very bad things about you in public. That's what WP Engine claimed. Say very bad things about you in public that's what WP Engine claimed. The next day after that, september 24th, automatic sent its own cease and desist letter to WP Engine accusing it of unauthorized use of the WordPress trademark, misleading consumers unfairly profiting from its association with WordPress. Believe it or not, this continues to go. The next day, automatic doubled down and said WP Engine's use of the WordPress name has caused brand dilution and confusion because people think that WP Engine is directly affiliated with WordPress, some people even calling it WordPress Engine.

25:05
On September 26th, they decided to take the nuclear option. Wordpressorg blocked WP Engine from accessing its servers, so WP Engine's customers weren't able to get crucial updates and plugins. It was, according to the register, intended to force WP Engine into contributing more to the open source project or paying that trademark licensing fee. Wild that it went all the way. Mullenweg heard from customers of WP Engine and others in the WordPress community and decided to temporarily lift the block on WP Engine's access to WordPressorg servers. So he said that the company would have until October 1st to find a resolution. Wp Engine was instructed to either pay a licensing fee or it needed to establish its own mirror of WordPressorg resources. So stop pulling from our resources. If you want to have these resources, you're going to have to do them yourself.

26:10
On October 1st, wordpressorg reimposed the block. So this is a couple of days ago as we record the show. On October 3rd, wp Engine preventing customers from accessing key WordPress resources, which has escalated the legal tension between the two companies. It was yesterday, as we record this, that we finally heard about Automattic's deal with WP Engine, or proposed deal with WP Engine. But ultimately, when it comes to this, we've got a situation where so much of the web is powered by WordPress, either directly or indirectly, as it is with these third parties, and it has sent shivers through the web and, as always, brought up conversations about what impact a single company can have when it's responsible for so much of this, in theory, publicly accessible resource that is the internet. Have you ever played around with WordPress and I'm also curious just to hear about your, your thoughts on this drama.

27:17 - Abrar Al-Heeti (Co-host)
I drama is the right word. Um, I do use WordPress actually for my website, which is kind of my portfolio, um and so, uh, this is all very fascinating, because I wonder, too if you've ever seen any example of anything kind of like this. I mean, this is. It's so fascinating. You're right in that something like WordPress, which is like yay, open source, can be so a little a little brutal a little. I mean, I think that's that's what it kind of comes off as. So I feel like this. This seems like it's something that probably isn't going to settle down anytime soon, are you?

27:52 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
getting that vibe? I'm getting that vibe. Yeah, the rancor that is here is rather thick, and I think that's the big thing is there are a lot of emotions involved in this, which is kind of wild to see. I mean, to call a company a cancer and then to be like not only that, but I'm also going to follow it up with a blog post, that's going to get that company upset. And you have people. I mean you have to remember that there are people who work at WP Engine who are regularly working on WordPress as part of what they do. It's just that Automatic felt like there weren't enough of them. So the people who do work at WP Engine who weren't being recognized in that, I know a lot based on what I saw from social media and the responses there. They were genuinely hurt by that and felt like, look, I am, uh, I do care about WordPress and I do care about this.

28:57
And then you've got um interruptions in profit, which are in revenue, I guess I should say, which is always a scary thing to do.

29:07
You never know where that's going to go in terms of legal um implications and it's kind of it all goes back to for me the dangers of having one person who is a I don't know what is the word I'm looking for um.

29:35
I'm in no way comparing the uh owner of x, formerly known as twitter, to uh the owner of automatic, because they are very, very, very, very different people.

29:48
What I am comparing is this idea of one person having kind of the keys to the kingdom and being able to make these decisions in such a way that you know, you're just putting out blog posts and you're talking on stage and you're doing this and you're doing that. That's kind of scary at times, and we just don't know the ramifications of what it looked like when these sites were blocked. And, for all we know, there could have been municipalities in the US or elsewhere who have WordPress as a backend through WP Engine, and someone wasn't able to access the community blog that talked about the fact that I don't know an animal escaped from the zoo or something. You know what I mean. There are all these little implications that I think are at play here that have to be remembered when it comes to making choices like this, and that's the part that's kind of scary, because you'd think that the internet was big enough at this point that individuals would not have such an impact on it.

30:56 - Abrar Al-Heeti (Co-host)
Yeah, and these knee-jerk reactions do have that ripple effect. And then I think also, just to go back to that point, of the employees who felt like they were doing enough. It's so subjective for someone to say I don't think you're doing enough, in whatever industry, whatever situation. So, yeah, I agree that when one person does hold the keys to the kingdom, a lot of people pay the price.

31:17 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Absolutely Well, Abrar, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. Of course, folks can head over to cnetcom to check out the work that you're doing. Where else should they go?

31:28 - Abrar Al-Heeti (Co-host)
Yeah, you can check me out on Instagram. Yeah, you can check me out on Instagram Abraar Elhiti. No spaces. I'm on X at Elhiti, underscore three, and also on TikTok at Abraar Elhiti as well.

31:39 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Awesome. Thank you, abraar. Thank you All right, we're going to take another quick break before we come back with a conversation about all of the new stuff Microsoft announced regarding Copilot and AI features. I want to tell you about our next sponsor, though. We're bringing this episode of Tech News Weekly. It's Experts Exchange, and Experts Exchange is awesome. You can join a network of trustworthy and talented tech professionals to get industry insights and advice from people who are actually using the products in your stack, instead of having to pay for expensive enterprise-level tech support.

32:19
As the tech community for people tired of the AI sellout, experts Exchange is ready to help carry the fight for the future of human intelligence, and I had the opportunity to chat with the folks at Experts Exchange and they're very serious about that. They wear it as a badge of honor that AI is not involved in the responses and the kind of you know back and forth in the community. They are humans and they are protecting those humans, and they want that to be the sort of core tenet of what Experts Exchange does. It gives you access to professionals in more than 400 fields, including programming, microsoft DevOps and even more, unlike other places and I love this too. You get a little worried, right, sending a question into a place where people are, in theory, there to help you out. Because what if it's a duplicate question? Then you have three people writing and saying this has already been asked. Why are you asking this again? That's not how it works at Experts Exchange. Their duplicate questions are encouraged. Their contributors are tech lovers who graciously answer all questions. One member said, quote I have never had GPT stop and ask me a question before that happens on Experts Exchange. All the time they're proudly committed to fostering a community where human collaboration is fundamental. You know other platforms betray their contributors by selling their content to train AI models. We've heard so much about that. But at Experts Exchange your privacy. It ain't for sale. They stand against the betrayal of contributors worldwide. They have never and will never sell your data, your content or your likeness. They block and strictly prohibit AI companies from scraping content from their site to train their LLMs, and their moderators strictly forbid the direct use of LLM content in their threads.

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35:37
Yeah, so I figured we could kick things off by talking about Copilot's UI redesign, because there's been a big change overall with the way that it looks and the way that you interact with it and the fact that it now has some very powerful voice interactions. Could you tell us about that?

35:59 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Sure. So when it comes to generative AI right, these large language models, the problem right now is user engagement. So it reminds me of the old days before we had Windows 3.1 and Windows 3, right, with an actual UI. Right, you would just have like a DOS prompt. Now, if you're new to computers and you sat in front of a DOS prompt, you're like all right, what do I do next? What can I do on this thing? Right, it wasn't until we had a nice UI where you could start clicking things and exploring and launching applications, that computers became sort of clicked with people. So that same thing applies to these generative language models where a lot of times you just go to a screen and it's like a little prompt and that's it, and so you have to be like okay, what can I ask and what can I do with this thing?

36:46
So what Microsoft is doing is they're changing the UI and the UX to make it more engaging, turn it more from a tool with just a simple prompt to an agent where something that you interact with. So, like now when I launched a new co-pilot app on Android, which got a refresh this week, it has this new UI and it says like good afternoon, daniel, and it will have a bunch of images and a bunch of things. That's like kind of recommending to me that it can do and try out. So you know, it's like if it's at nighttime it'll be like, hey, I can create a bedtime story for you, or I can do this, or did you know about sleep and what's the best practices for sleep? And so it's supposed to be kind of based on you know, your habits and kind of what you're doing. So, right, just before this call I launched, it said good afternoon Daniel. And it had a block where, when I clicked it, it gave me news briefs and it would basically go through the news that I like to read and understand and it would give me audio summaries of those. So it'd be like someone telling me a story.

37:46
So that's the other half. Right, the voices. Now you have four voice options here, two female, two males, all different kind of styles. You pick the one you like. You can, of course, switch at any time, but this agent will then tell me the news I'm interested in. Of course, you can swipe and skip it, and it's kind of cool because if it's talking about a movie or food or something like that, it'll auto-generate an AI image in the background for that, as it's telling you the story, to kind of give it context and more of an original feel. So it's a really kind of pushing, like I said, into this idea of an agent for these kind of tools. So it should be rolling out to Windows 11 desktop soon, in the coming days. Android and iOS should already have the app updates already. If not, it's in the beta and will be coming out soon.

38:35 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, I was really impressed with everything that was announced and, kind of all at the same time, how quickly it all rolled out. I guess I'm kind of curious at a sort of a pulled back view, because we saw OpenAI and its latest version of its voice features recently announced and up to this point we've kind of seen lockstep between OpenAI and the tools it offers and Microsoft's own Copilot, because we know about the connection between the two and Microsoft's own co-pilot, because we know about the connection between the two. But increasingly there's at least been conversations about how Microsoft is doing its own thing and trying to do its own thing. Do you feel like this is still an extension of what OpenAI is offering, where, as I said, the new voices came around and the new voice interactions came around, and then we saw Microsoft do the same thing? Or is that kind of coincidental in your thoughts?

39:45 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
I think it's probably coincidental, although you can't rule it out right. There are close relations between the two companies, there's no doubt. But I think you know, for a lot of people this all feels like it's been thrown together at the last minute, kind of. And really that is the last year and a half of this AI story is it has been just tossed together. Microsoft came out quickly with this in February and quickly launched it and they called it Bing Chat, right, and that was like kind of angle at the time. And then they changed it, they rebranded it to Copilots and now they're doing this agent thing. So some of this is long-term planning and I believe a lot of this stuff has been sort of in the works now for a couple months because they've been quiet for the last three months in terms of new features for Copilot, but a lot of it is also just kind of course correcting along the way.

40:34
I remember talking to Microsoft in February 2023, when they first launched this, and there was this internal discussion about should it be an agent, something that has like a human-like quality to it that we're used to with these sort of assistants, but now powered by AI, or should it be more just tool-like and at first they went with tool-like, but now it's clear that they're pushing down the route of an agent they're a little concerned about, you know, this idea that people form relationships with these AIs, right, and that's kind of where this stuff goes. Some people want that and that's kind of like the movie Her, which I've still never seen, but I'm told this is what it's like. But it's like, you know, do we want that kind of AI? And that's kind of looks like what they're going to route. They're going down now with this. So, you know, you got to use in windows too. When you turn on your computer in the morning, it's going to. It's going to be a really smart assistant that proactively brings things to your attention.

41:28
Hey, here are the emails that came in last night that are super important. Let me summarize them for you. Here's what you normally open up the first thing in the morning. You know, here's the spreadsheet, here's a calendar appointment. But it's doing a lot more than that. It's acting on it, it's presenting it to you almost like a real human being would, versus just like what we've had in the past. Right, siri and Google Assistant, all these kinds of things have been very mechanical and they're just surfacing data to you versus something that's more curated, and that's really kind of what they're going here a curated experience Got it.

42:02 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
The other feature that was announced is Copilot Vision, and this seems rather involved. It's a pretty cool sort of set of features, so to speak. Tell us about Copilot Vision and maybe what ideas you've had about using this new technology.

42:23 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Yeah. So when it comes to AI, what we want it to do is basically help us out in life Right now. I would say the biggest problem people have, besides trying to figure out what's true or not in the world, is making sense of all the data that we are exposed to every day. That is, we see a lot of images, we see a lot of words, and the human brain only can process so much of that. So this is where computers come in and help you out. So we saw earlier this year Google launched Circle to Search, where you would have any image on your phone. You hold down the little software button on the bottom, circle it and it goes, finds an image for you and related content. So this is kind of like that, but it's a little bit more. Basically, copilot can see what's on your web browser at the time of what's on your screen, and you can kind of ask it any question about what's in that image. You know, like what does that house look like in the background? Who is this lady? You know, is this a famous model? Like you can ask it stuff like that and it's going to be able to give you those questions as if it's a really smart nerd who just knows everything about the world, and it can go out there and figure this stuff out and do it much more quickly.

43:32
I personally find Google's circle to search has been extremely valuable. I broke an old bug I've had for 20 years recently. I took a photo of it what's left of it? And I Googled to search to see if it was still available. Can I still find this on the internet and buy it? And I could. Same thing I broke our bed.

43:52
There was a piece of it that broke. I did a circle to search. It's like it was the remote control for it. It had no part number. It was really hard to find. But I did this, found out on eBay, ordered a replacement part, right. So that is like an incredible amount of technology that we've never had before. That really augments our ability to go out and find data, make sense of things Like you could just see a picture of someone's pants or shirt and be like I want that shirt, where do I get it? Before you had to go into Google and kind of like describe it right. Now you can just let the image engine do it for you and it's pretty darn accurate. That's what's really cool about this, yeah that is very cool.

44:32 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
There are some updates that are coming as well to Copilot Plus PCs. Specifically, you mentioned the kind of circle to search being called click to do. Could you also tell us AI being used in Windows search? This is something that I'm curious to hear about, because this seems to be one of the most common complaints that I hear from Windows users is search kind of sucks across Windows. Do you think that AI is going to help this situation or are you worried that it'll kind of muddy the waters?

45:08 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Yeah, no, I think this will help out. You're right, macs have always had a better reputation when it comes to search on this system. So, using AI and specifically machine learning here, it's going to be able to sift through what's on your laptop or your PC, and all this stuff, of course, is secured. Bbs, it's an enclave, it's all encrypted and stuff. But basically the benefit here is fuzzy semantics, fuzzy logic. So before you had to be very specific with a very specific keyword, the name of the file, right, you had to have that in there or something related to it that was very close right. Now you can be very vague on this, whether it's documents or a PowerPoint. You could just name roughly what you remember and it should go out and be able to find that on your computer for you while doing that.

45:55
We've already seen this. If you have Google Photos, which has been really nice, it could still be improved. But if you just go in there and type dog or whatever, it's going to go through all your photos and bring up the identities of those, which has been really nice, it could still be improved. But, like, if you just go in there and type dog or whatever, it's going to go through all your photos and bring up the identities of those things. Or if you bring up like a bar right, it'll find all your photos. That's the same thing here, just on the PC route. So yeah, this should greatly enhance the search experience on Windows PC, which has been a big complaint for many years.

46:24 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Understood. And then you the search experience on Windows PC, which has been a big complaint for many years, understood. And then you've got a couple more features that are coming as well Super resolution in photos and then generative kind of fill or erase in paint. Tell us about those.

46:39 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Yeah, so I love super resolution. I've had third-party tools like this already. Topaz Labs makes a really kind of. It's kind of expensive, but it's a software that relies on your RTX GPU, but the idea is you give it an old photo or just a low resolution photo, and it uses AI to upscale it and improve it. So right now, I have to pay for that, and it's expensive. Upscale it and improve it so right now, I have to pay for that, and it's expensive.

47:07
Microsoft is building it basically into the Photos app, so it'll be free for people to use. Now, will it be as good as like what Topaz Labs does? Probably not, right? Topaz Labs is specializing in this and it gives it a lot of options while you're doing it. But this is going to be really nice for people who have old photos or find a low resolution photo of something on the internet and they can save it and have it upscale, and this technology actually works pretty well. It has sometimes issues with faces, but that's one area that they've been really focusing on, so I'm actually super excited about that. That's something that I think a lot of people can use, even if you scan old physical photos to your computer, right? This can then greatly enhance those photos, and I think that's a big thing, especially for me I'm Gen X like we don't have a ton of photos, especially digital ones, laying around, so this will be one way to sort of preserve that while also getting a better experience Generative fill, erase and paint.

48:03
So this is always the thing where you might have an image or you're drawing something like it can. We already see this with galaxy AI technology, where it fills in the background, where you might want to make the picture 16 by nine, but it's only three by four, right? So what do you put in the sides there, right? Right now, we're used to sort of even on TV, right, they blur out the sides or they repeat it with the rest of the image. This is basically going to fill in that for you and add those missing objects.

48:31
So, again, samsung's doing this already, google's kind of doing this already too. Apple, I'm sure, is getting in on it. So these are standard tools. They're just going to be part of Windows, though, but they'll only be used on co-pilot PCs, because they do rely on having the neural processing unit which is optimized for doing this. Technically, you could do these with the GPU or CPU on the device, but on laptops that's going to be very power intensive and that's what they're trying to get away from. They want you to be able to do this AI stuff without sacrificing your battery or performance on the device for other tasks.

49:06 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Got it. Daniel Rubino, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today to talk about the whole host of new features that are coming, or have already come to many of Microsoft's generative AI products and others. Of course, people can go over to windowscentralcom to check out the work you're doing. Where would they go if they want to follow you online and keep up with what you're doing?

49:30 - Daniel Rubino (Guest)
Yeah, so I'm still on Twitter, or X as some people call it. That's Daniel underscore Rubino, and I'm also on threads at the same address, so you can go there, follow me. I do respond to a lot of questions when people have them about this technology, so I'm pretty responsive there. But yeah, and we do the occasional Windows Central podcast as well.

49:51 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Awesome. Thank you very much and we'll see you again soon. Great.

49:55
Thank you All righty. We're going to take another quick break before we come back with an interview with a developer who may be familiar to some of you who have been on the show in the past, but I want to take a moment to tell you about Flashpoint, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. For security leaders, honestly, 2024 has been a year like no other. Cyber threats and physical security concerns have continued to increase, and now geopolitical instability is adding a new layer of risk and uncertainty. So let's talk numbers. What does this look like? Last year, there was a staggering 84% rise in ransomware attacks and a 34% jump in data breaches. What's the result? Trillions of dollars in financial losses and threats to safety worldwide.

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Some Flashpoint customers avoid $500 million in fraud loss annually and have a 482% return on investment. In six months, flashpoint earned Frost and Sullivan's 2024 Global Product Leadership Award for Unrivaled Threat Data and Intelligence. An SVP of cyber operations at a large US financial institution said quote Flashpoint saves us over $80 million in fraud losses every year. Their proactive approach and sharp insights are crucial in keeping our financial institutions secure. They're not just a solution, they're a strategic partner helping us stay ahead of cyber threats. So it's no wonder Flashpoint is trusted by both mission-critical businesses and governments worldwide To access the industry's best threat data and intelligence. Visit flashpointio today. That's flashpointio, and we thank Flashpoint for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right, we are back from the break and that means it's time for our next interview. Joining me again on Tech News Weekly is app developer Christian Selig, this time here to talk about, well, another app that has gone through some things.

52:31 - Christian Selig (Guest)
Welcome back to the show. I need like a punch card, I think, for every visit.

52:35 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
You should. When you get to five, you turn it in and you get a developer who makes apps for you instead of you having to make them. Okay.

52:43 - Christian Selig (Guest)
Okay, okay, yeah, I'll work toward that then.

52:47 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So we got to talk about your app, juno. There are, of course, going to be some folks tuning in who have not heard about Juno. Can you tell us what Juno is, what's it for, what does it do?

53:01 - Christian Selig (Guest)
Yeah, yeah.

53:02
So I guess, long story short, juno is an app for viewing YouTube on VisionOS, because YouTube announced, I think a few weeks prior to the Vision Pro launching, that they weren't really interested in doing a first-party app of their own, and I had, through my previous app, apollo, I had quite a bit of experience building YouTube into the app because people would post YouTube videos to Reddit and whatnot.

53:27
I had a lot of code around presenting YouTube videos, so I was like I can whip up a pretty quick little app to present YouTube videos in a way that would be at least better than going to YouTubecom and Safari on Vision Pro, where all the tap targets are more mouse optimized and it's a little finicky with your fingers. Um, so it's like I'll throw this together, um get it out by the time the vision pro launches and have like a nice little simple app that um makes watching youtube videos a little more uh, vision os-esque. Um, for people who have got this new device and want something a little more polished than just like the Safari experience right out of the gate, yeah, so that that kind of was my next question there.

54:07 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
The um, the way that people watched you, the way that people were expected to watch YouTube videos, given that alphabet slash Google said we're not making a YouTube app was that they would go to the Safari web browser and then go to YouTube and hit play, and so right like 2006. Yeah, exactly.

54:27 - Christian Selig (Guest)
Exactly.

54:28 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So you thought you know what, let's do something that's a little bit more clean and polished, and actually I didn't realize this part of it, that you had some experience because of Apollo. Can you go into a little bit more detail about that? You were basically making it so that people didn't have to bounce out of Apollo to go to YouTube app or something. Got it.

54:50 - Christian Selig (Guest)
Exactly so. Ideally, if somebody posted a YouTube app to r slash video or YouTube web or YouTube link to r slash videos, rather ideally you wouldn't be thrown out of the app into a different area. You could just stay there and quickly jump to the comments or something. And YouTube has a really nice way to do that. They have what's called an iframe player and for the uninitiated, an iframe is basically just a portal into a website.

55:13
So in Apollo I did it this way. They had where you would basically just embed the YouTube website but just specifically the YouTube website video player into Apollo, so it would play right then and there, and they had a nice library for doing this. So I basically just took that code and was like this works great for playing a video in line in a native feeling way. In Apollo I can leverage this and at least make it feel like it's kind of like the VisionOS video player, with easier to tap targets, easier to scrub around the video, easier to close the video and whatnot. And that kind of served as the foundation for the app.

55:48 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Got it. Now let's talk about what's happened to the app as of October 1st and, after you kind of reveal that part to the folks who aren't aware, maybe you can tell us a little bit about how you're feeling about Google and Apple's decision.

56:07 - Christian Selig (Guest)
And if you think it was the right decision, oh no, I think they crushed it. No, it's, it's. I think the writing was on the wall after I got an email from Google Like I, I think I shared on my blog months ago that they kind of reached out and we're like hey, we're not, you know, super happy about this. So I was like this has an expiration date, to say the least, and it was always an app that I built, primarily because I was getting this headset and I watch a lot of YouTube. So I was like this would be. Nobody else uses this. It'll be something for me. I don't really care beyond that. And two, it'll be a nice way to get used to these VisionOS APIs, because I've never built for this brand new Apple platform before and it's kind of sound like a good way to get my feet wet with it.

56:48
And fundamentally it accomplished those 2 things. And beyond that, it was just like I charged a few bucks for it, but it was just always a fun project I built and it was in my head. As soon as it stops becoming fun, it's just something I won't build anymore, because fun, primarily, was the the number one goal. I guess, in a sense like I have other apps where, like akin to how you folks are professional podcasters if you had on the side like a podcast about tomato gardening on the weekends or something, um, and big tomato came at you and said we're not happy with the secrets you're exposing, we're coming after you. This isn't, isn't cool You'd probably be like you know what? Like this isn't worth fighting. I just like talking about tomatoes Like that's cool, whatever. Um, not fun anymore. Um, and that was kind of how I approached you know where. It was like okay, if it's, if that's gonna be how it goes, um, that's cool.

57:49 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I guess I'll just of the world, yeah, so that's see. This is why I'm really happy to be talking to you specifically about this thing that you created, because I don't know if you saw, but I certainly did see some people kind of take this thing that happened to you and turn it into something else. There was a lot of analysis and someone, some would say, navel-gazing about this whole thing. I might have missed that.

58:09
No, honestly, oh no genuinely oh, in the sense of this, is about. This is a very powerful company that is in collusion with another powerful company and they're crushing small developers. I saw that I honestly I don't remember exactly who said it, I'm not just doing the like, oh, I don't want to say I don't remember. But then I saw a lot of people kind of hopping on board with that and talking about how it wasn't cool that Google kind of whispered to Apple and then Apple made the decision to pull your app from the app store. So maybe you could, could you give them a little bit more insight into that? And if you, as a developer and a developer who, unfortunately, has gone through this kind of thing a little bit in the past do you feel a sense of unsteadiness or unease as a developer that you know you're working for this large company in a way and you don't have control of your destiny?

59:13 - Christian Selig (Guest)
It's a great question, I guess from Google's end, I think if we can say that it's unfortunate.

59:22 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
We'll bleep it.

59:23 - Christian Selig (Guest)
Yeah, it's unfortunate, but for Apple's and I don't know if I've just been around the block long enough that it's not super surprising. That's iOS man. There's one person at the gate letting everything in and out. That's, I guess, eroding somewhat in recent years, but that's kind of just the name of the game.

59:47
I kind of figured one indie developer, just logically speaking, wasn't worth going to war with Google over. I'd love to think I'm of anywhere near that level of importance, but I'm clearly not. So why on earth would they ever do that? And in terms of that would pretty much be all they could do, I think, and it would really sour their relationship. And I know there's, between their search engine deals and whatnot, there's a lot of money flowing there. So I figured logistically Apple probably wasn't going to step in and do much. But I will say, as others have said a lot this week, it's one of the things where like it would be less unfortunate, I guess, if there were alternate means to like, if Apple wasn't the only person who could say yes or no here. Right, and that is, I guess, one of the prominent argument for the whole sideloading side of things.

01:00:39
argument for the whole sideloading side of things.

01:00:42 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
All right, let's take a little pause, Christian, before we come back with the rest of the questions I have for you, because I do want to tell you about our next sponsor of Tech News Weekly. It's ThreatLocker who are bringing you this episode. Another question for you that I think you know. I know the answer to Do zero-day exploits and supply chain attacks keep you up at night. Well then, you are the person I'm talking to, because you can worry no more. Just harden your security with ThreatLocker.

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01:03:33 - Christian Selig (Guest)
Oh, they were very much clicked for me. I was eating spaghetti and I just opened up my phone and it was like email from Apple Legal and it was like okay, it's gone or something to that legal effect, or no. They said like okay, as a a result of this, your app will be removed, and I like quickly shot back an email and I was like okay, like when will it be removed? Like oh well, send out a tweet or something just saying like heads up, this is this is going to be removed shortly. And I logged in app store connect and it's like removed. I'm like all like. They mean like will be as in.

01:03:57
Like in seven seconds oh my so it was like yeah, yeah, so it was. So it was, um, yeah, no, nothing on my end. I hadn't heard from, I think, either party in like a few weeks, um, so it was just kind of like oh, okay, I guess now, now is when the, the um, the fire at the end of the TNT stick finally.

01:04:13 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, yeah, see, and this this is where I kind of look back to. Before you, you, whether you intended to or not, you were a bit of the. It's like a a really, a really artistic version of your face got painted onto the, the shields and the tabards of of many a champion who was like railing against Reddit at the time. How does it feel? I know that this isn't as extreme that there were only you know, from what I saw and from the fact that you didn't really see this happen. This idea, that kind of your apps have served as a jumping off point for people to rally behind, like big companies making the decision for small developers. Do you internalize that at all or do you feel like it's just kind of like a? Oh, that's an interesting thing to look at. That's happening over there.

01:05:10 - Christian Selig (Guest)
That's another great question.

01:05:12
I guess, again, I've been through the ringer long enough that I kind of have an idea that these companies really don't care immensely about what the public thinks and like outcries, unless they get to like the trying to think like the unity level or the, or like the sonos level as long, like if, if there's like it's like in fight club, if there's like a percentage they hit where people get really angry, um, and it's really hard to hit that percentage.

01:05:36
Um, so 99 of the time I'm just like this it's cool that people are passionate about this, but these companies don't care. Um, and and it's, and it's fun that people are passionate about this, but these companies don't care. And it's fun to be passionate about this with my friends and it feels great that people are kind enough to support me in these unfortunate events. But it's one of those things where I guess I don't put too much stock into the like oh yeah, this is going to change the world. It's like no, these companies. It's kind of like a tale as old as time with these companies. They, they, they see the numbers and they see what they want to see happen and it's really hard to steer that boat in any other direction.

01:06:11 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, good news, you do still have two apps utilities at the time of this podcast. Yes, at the time of this podcast. Yes, for download. Tell us about what you, you, what you have available for um.

01:06:25 - Christian Selig (Guest)
So, yeah, so I've got, uh, two little utility apps on the side, so I've got um. I don't think I've touched either of them in quite a while, but they were. They were fun at the time. Um, they were little safari extensions for um. It was one of those things where, like, you release an app that does what it says on the tin and it's kind of like, well, all right, you're good, yeah, you're good um.

01:06:43
One of them, um, it's like, if you're familiar with amp links on google at all, which are the I used to know what the acronyms stand for accelerated mobile pages, that's it. I've still got it. Um, they're basically like google's little um way of like pre-loading a website in this like mobile format, and it was like a cool idea in theory. Um ended up being really annoying and broke all the time, so it was just a Safari extension. Once Apple released that functionality to iOS that would hook into, detect an AMP link and kick out to just the normal good old website URL that has existed since the 80s or whatever and that still does pretty well today, just because it's a common pain point of the internet. There's another one that just lets you, like um, view the html for a web page, um, but the kind of the bread and butter and even throughout juno, like um, like what's the thing that kind of pays the bills and lets me have these fun projects is, um.

01:07:34
I have an app called pixel pals which is kind of like a virtual pets kind of um experience through like widgets in the app um, and you can choose different pets and raise them and it started as a fun thing in Apollo. That spun off into a different app after it got some traction on TikTok and whatnot and it's just been a lot of fun to build. That's what I've been working on, even since around the time Google started messaging me. I was not working on Juno as much because again, it was a fun project, but even more since it's kind of what I've been spending a lot of time on like tweaking and rewriting and doing some stuff with and it's just it's been a lot of fun because it's a very different project than a traditional like utility style iPhone app, um, where it's kind of like leads into the game territory almost a little bit more.

01:08:17 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, uh, it's, it's a delightful app that, um, everybody should at least check out. It's kind of a fun little way to have a pet on your phone which is enjoyable. Yeah, and I guess the last thing I'll ask because this is something I always ask when I've got a creator of some sort on the show any future plans you care to share? Are you just really focusing on Pixel Pals?

01:08:45 - Christian Selig (Guest)
I think for now, yeah, yeah, I think, like I've been, I've been wanting to rewrite it and more like right now. It's an app that focuses a lot on like the widget experience and like the dynamic island experience, because that's kind of where it was born from, but I want the core app itself to have a little bit more there outside of just the widgets. So I've been pouring a lot of attention there and doing some stuff, like some game engines and stuff that I think will make a pretty fun result once it gets to the shipping stage. Awesome.

01:09:13 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
I'm actually very excited to hear that. Yeah, it should be pretty good, awesome. Well, christian, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. If folks want to keep up with what you're working on and know when any future versions are available, where's the place they go for that?

01:09:32 - Christian Selig (Guest)
Christian Seelig, pretty much everywhere. Wherever you do your social media and not really on Facebook, I guess, but just put everywhere else. You can find me posting nonsense, so it shouldn't be too hard. Awesome, thank you for taking the time, so it shouldn't be too hard.

01:09:44 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Awesome. Thank you for taking the time to join us today. We appreciate it. Pleasure is always mine. All righty folks. That is that. So I've just realized, anthony, that we've got another ad, so should I read that now and then you can insert it in post, or how do we do that? Oh and, christian, you're free to hop off whenever you're ready.

01:10:08 - Christian Selig (Guest)
Perfect, Thanks y'all.

01:10:10 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Let's wrap the episode and then we'll record like a break for maybe in Christian's. Yeah, that'll be a good thing. All right, cool, all righty folks. That brings us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly.

01:10:28
The show publishes every Thursday at twittv slash TNW. That's the place where you go to subscribe to the show in audio and video formats. If you'd like to get every single Twitch show ad free, well, we've got a way for you to do that. It's called Club Twit at twittv slash Club Twit. When you join the club for $7 a month, not only do you get every single Twitch show ad free, you also gain access to the TwitPlus bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show. After the show, special club events get published there. Access to the members only Discord server, a fun place to go to chat with your fellow club members and those of us here at Twit. And access to the video versions of our Club Twitch shows, including my shows iOS Today and Hands-on Mac. Hands-on Windows, untitled Linux Show, plus so much more.

01:11:11
And did I mention that warm fuzzy feeling you get knowing that you're helping to support the stuff we do here at Twit? It's just $7 a month and we would love to see you join us in the club. It's always fun popping in and seeing new people, uh, with us every day, and, um, of course, you can check out some great events that we're regularly doing in the club as well. Um, leo and I continue to add to that list. Uh, I know someone just recently joined because they wanted to check out micah's crafting corner, so, uh, yeah, if you're looking for that kind of thing, then you can join us there too. Twittv slash club twit. If you'd like to follow me online, I'm at Micah Sargent on many a social media network where you can head to chihuahuacoffee that's C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U and tune in on Sundays where I host Hands on Tech, a show where I take your tech questions and answer them, as well as review products. We look forward to having you back again next week for another episode of Tech News Week. Bye-bye, we'll see you next time.