Tech News Weekly 366 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. Emily Forlini is here and we kick off the show by talking about a story she recently wrote about NVIDIA's new palm-sized supercomputer how you can use it to bring AI smarts into your home or create new projects. It's all about the AI hobbyist and we're getting pretty excited about it. Then I talk about the new social media app that aims to bring all of those disparate social media networks together in one place. But what's the impact on those companies? Emily asks some great questions and we try to dive in. After that, Scott Wilkinson of Home Theater Geeks fame, stops by the show to give us the rundown of this year in home theater tech and what he's looking forward to in the new year, before we round out the show with a nap Well, sort of.

Nasha Addarich Martínez joins the show to talk about the $350 headband that says hey, I can help you nap a little bit better and a little bit faster. All of that coming up on Tech News Weekly. Oh and, by the way, you should know that the Twit Survey is now live. If you head to twit.tv/survey25, you can fill out the survey and help us get to know you a little bit more. Promise, it won't take you very long and we hope that you will help us out by heading there. Twittv slash survey25. Thank you.

0:01:35 - Mikah Sargent
This is Tech News Weekly, episode 366, with Emily Forlini and me, Mikah Sargent, recorded Thursday, December 19th 2024. Nvidia's affordable AI supercomputer. 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, Mikah Sargent, and this week, on this very festive day, I am joined by the Emily Forlini. Welcome, Emily.

0:02:09 - Emily Forlini
Hi, I'm Mrs Claus, today.

0:02:11 - Mikah Sargent
I love it. Yes, the hat looks great. You have the ball that has the string in between which is one style.

0:02:18 - Emily Forlini
It's very dramatic.

0:02:20 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, incredibly dramatic. You gave it like a wrecking ball and hosted that holiday party. It's great to have you here. Thank you for joining us this week. Jennifer Patterson-Tui, who normally joins us on the third week of the month, is preparing for CES, and so I wish her all the best. We wish her all the best in that and, of course, staying healthy at CES. Maybe the two of you can link up while you're there because I hear that you're going there as well stories that I reached out to someone about, and in getting ready for that, I was like I can't reach out to this person because they're going to be on the show already. So, Emily, tell us about your story of the week and the piece that you wrote.

0:03:20 - Emily Forlini
Oh yeah, so this is one of the more kind of fun things in the AI space. It's NVIDIA's new supercomputer that can run AI projects at home, so it's kind of making AI more accessible to hobbyists, to students, even small businesses. And what I thought was really cool about that is usually when, like all the many hundreds of articles I write about, ai are always like the big tech companies. It's kind of this really expensive, exclusive thing that only the truly biggest companies in the world are able to participate in. And then I saw NVIDIA came out with this little supercomputer. It fits in the palm of your hand and it's $250. And basically what it can do is support larger scale AI projects.

So if you're running your own large language model, you could use that at home. And or it has a big robotics focus. So if you have a robot or, let's say, a drone, you could kind of put it inside that robot and you could use it for advanced functions, like I mean, drones are the hot topic this week. So if you wanted a drone that could, you know, have the vision capabilities and move based on what it sees, that would be, for example, like a vision AI thing that you could do with this small self-contained computer that you could put in it. So very cool. Opens up tons of avenues for AI hobbyists, which is, I guess, a new hobby category.

0:04:55 - Mikah Sargent
Maybe not new, but growing Right. Yeah, growing category Now. Maybe not new, but growing Right. Yeah, growing category. Connect a keyboard to it and I type in what's for plus nine minus six divided by three. Write a poem with that many lines and it does it, versus me going to geminigooglecom and doing the same. Why would someone want this instead?

0:05:24 - Emily Forlini
So you could build your own large language model that's, for example, more private with your data. It doesn't give it to Google or just give it to OpenAI. You could tweak it and customize it for your own use case, Whereas a general purpose chatbot like ChatGPT or Gemini is just kind of all things all purpose player. Maybe you have a specific function for your business, Like you. This is an example I've used before. But let's say you run a hotel and you want to make a chatbot for customer service with just your customer service policies. Like you could create that and host it on something like this. So it's just more personalization, just your own projects, what you want to do versus Like you could create that and host it on something like this, so it's just more personalization, just your own projects, what you want to do, versus a big, huge company's chat pod.

0:06:21 - Mikah Sargent
So then does that mean because if I go to I'm trying to cover type in, oh, I upload a photo of myself and I say make me look like a what is it called? A voodoo doll with pins stuck in my body, claude's going to go. No, no, no, I don't work with human being. Like photos of human beings. There are guardrails and protections in place with these large language models that have the people have access to. Does that mean that somebody could, in theory, use one of these to create their own model that would not have some of these guardrails in place and sort of use it for nefarious purposes?

0:07:13 - Emily Forlini
then yeah, it does.

I mean they still would probably be using the source code from like an open source model, let's say Meta's Lama model or something, but that that is something the open source community is doing and I've interviewed people who are doing that.

Um, a big use case is, uh, like sex chatbots, like porn chatbots, adult entertainment, we'll call it. So yeah, there's some, there's some risky business happening there, um, but I mean, if you consider just an innocent, you know tech interested person like they might consider upgrading from a Raspberry Pi to this, it's kind of like in that field of you know tech, it's kind of like an external computer that you can have and it can run your project 24 seven. So that's another thing that is different than just going to chatgptcom and typing something in. Your computer has to be open, you have to be on, you have to be logged in, you have to be engaged. But if you have a project that's just running constantly on this very powerful little thing, it kind of opens up different capabilities to you and you don't have to be writing prompts all the time, it can do its own thing.

0:08:31 - Mikah Sargent
Dave Plummer, former Microsoft employee, used this device to create a camera that watches for cars to arrive and depart from his driveway.

So that's yeah, that's one use case where normally what you would do in that situation is you would pay a company a monthly subscription to run some sort of computer vision model on its system with your footage, to say, oh, that looks like a car, not a cat, walking up the driveway and therefore I'm going to alert you that there is indeed a car, and then it could maybe track how long the car is in the driveway. It can do all these things and it's all happening locally. So that $249 investment plus, of course, the time Wow, look at those lights in the back I mean the time that you spend doing it. I gonna have to get his setup. Um is is perhaps worth it, uh, in the long run, particularly, as you said, for hobbyists. I can see people you know taking this technology, pairing it up with like a raspberry pie or something like that and making some fun. I there's a part of me that kind of wants to get one of these myself, and do something, but I too, but I don't have the skills.

0:09:46 - Emily Forlini
I mean it's like a hobbyist, but like a specific skilled kind of person. You know like my hobbies might be cooking and crafting and traveling, and you know other hobbies Guitar playing. Guitar playing Exactly. You have to have a different set. You have to have some hard skills to hook this up, but if you can, it's kind of like magic.

I mean, it would just be such a great gift for that type of person in your life. Just that $250 price point is accessible for someone you really care about and want to get something super special for this could be a cool one.

0:10:19 - Mikah Sargent
I think that word that you used, accessible, when I think about the chance for some of these AI systems to become less accessible over time, because everything is a monthly subscription, it feels like.

And if you have so many of those for your absolute necessities plus a few of the things that you like, then also adding on a monthly subscription for the AI system that you're trying to use, and if everybody, if we're at a place where everybody is using, you know, ai regularly for parts of the tasks that they do, right, the idea that you could spend a one-time thing here and work on it yourself and, you know, make it exactly as you want, I think is a really cool and accessible option. I also think that this speaks to where we could see sort of young people getting into coding. Up to this point, it's been a lot of Raspberry Pi, it's been a lot of, like Minecraft plus code equals, you know, learning Python or what have you. Now you get your curious teen an AI dev kit and they start to make a little robot that can, you know, drive around the house and bark or whatever it happens to be yeah, totally.

That's pretty cool. Yeah, what were the use cases that NVIDIA, you know, showed off? Did they have any specific examples of like? This is really how we see it being used, or was it more just like a go forth and do situation?

0:12:03 - Emily Forlini
Both. I mean the press release wasn't super detailed and also there was a video with video and NVIDIA kind of sound similar. There was a video with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and he. It was only two minutes and he just kind of talked about different ways you could use it, like the vision AI talked about. He did say, say I think that I can quote this if I remember he said, like general robotics is upon us, so kind of like everyone being able to create their, their own robot, so I think the robotics is a big focus. Um, it would be pretty crazy if you could create a robot that would like water your plants or feed your dog or something that that could be cool.

I could see definitely a high school robotics team getting funding to buy one of these things and using it to to tinker and bringing that to a competition or something yeah, that would be.

0:12:57 - Mikah Sargent
That would be pretty cool. Um, anything else you want to say about the jetsetson Orion Nano, before we take a little break.

0:13:08 - Emily Forlini
Not much, just it's cool, it's affordable for the right person and if anyone gets one, let me know. I'm trying to get a free sample from NVIDIA, so hopefully I can come with some experience next time.

0:13:22 - Mikah Sargent
That'd be really cool. Yes, if you end up getting that, I would. Yes, we've got to talk about it. I would love to know. All right, we are going to take a quick break before we come back with my story of the week. I would love to tell you a little bit about 1Password, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly.

A question that I think we know the answer to. Do your end users always work on those company-owned devices and IT-approved apps? No, they don't. I didn't think so. So how in the world do you actually keep your company's data safe when it's sitting on all of those unmanaged apps and devices? Well, 1Password has an answer to this question. It's called Extended Access Management. With 1Password Extended Access Management, you will be able to secure every sign-in for every app on every device, because it solves the problems that traditional IAM and MDM can't touch.

I love this metaphor. If you imagine that your company's security is sort of like the quad of a college campus goodness gracious, is it beautiful. There are these nice brick paths between the buildings. Those are the company-owned devices, those IT-approved apps, the managed employee identities. But then you look around and you see these paths that run through the grass the shortcuts that people have taken. Those are the straightest lines from point A to point B. Well, those are also the unmanaged devices, the shadow IT apps and the non-employee identities like contractors. Most security tools that you go looking for are only going to work on those happy brick paths, but a lot of the problems actually take place on the shortcuts. 1password Extended Access Management is the first security solution that brings all of these unmanaged devices, apps and identities under your control. It ensures that every user credential is strong and protected, every device is known and healthy and every app is visible. It's security for the way we actually work today and it's now generally available to companies with Okta and Microsoft Entra and in beta for Google Workspace customers. So check it out at 1password.com/twit. That's 1-P-A-S-S-W-O-R-D.com/twit, and we thank 1Password for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly.

We are back with Emily Forlini of PCMag, And we are talking about social media. My social media use has changed so much over the past three years I would say three or four years where I used to just regularly be on Twitter at the time, now X just reading to see what people were saying and responding and sharing and this and that and the other, and then Instagram, too, pretty regularly, and my use is absolutely tanked. Flipboard has what it hopes, or plans to be, a kind of solution to this problem by way of a new app that the company is working on, currently in beta, and the app is called Surf. So first, before I even talk about Surf, I want to make it clear that Flipboard as it exists right now will continue to exist, and that Surf is an entirely different thing. So, if you're not familiar with Flipboard, flipboard came around the same time the iPad around about the time, the same around, about the same time that the iPad was launched, and it was this idea that you would have, like a social magazine. You could follow your friends, you could see what they were reading and it would present it to you in this beautiful magazine view that flipped through the pages and it would present it to you in this beautiful magazine view that flipped through the pages. Really cool system. And over time, flipboard continued to offer different types of integrations, with RSS feeds and things like that. Now it's working on something called Surf that is essentially giving you the ability to curate your online experience across these different social media platforms.

So, if you can imagine right now if I want to know what my friends are talking about, I have to. I've got, I've got a folder on my homepage on my phone and I launch um. I launch ivory, which is a mastodon client, and scroll a little bit and read some of what's there. And then I launch Threads, the actual Threads app, and scroll through there. And then I launch Blue Sky and scroll through there and see what my friends are saying. That's a lot, and so I barely ever do that. Having one place to go already seems really exciting. That Having one place to go already seems really exciting.

But surf is kind of trying to take things to the next step, where you can combine the people in the post from Blue Sky, from Mastodon, from Threads, from Flipboard itself, from YouTube and from RSS and create your own social feeds. You can also follow feeds that already exist and you can create feeds that have feeds within them. So if you can imagine, one example that Harry McCracken gave over at Fast Company in talking about it was creating a feed of tech journalists, but in the feed you customize it to, say, filter out any stories where they talk about cryptocurrency, and then you can also sort these feeds because each feed has tabs such as watch, discuss, read and listen. So you can tap on watch and it's only going to show you videos from those sources, whatever you've popped in there, and then you could imagine that you could create. Maybe you have a tech journalist feed and you have a I'm trying to think of some other category. You've got a food journalist feed.

0:19:15 - Emily Forlini
There's only tech journalism.

0:19:18 - Mikah Sargent
You've got a food journalist feed and you've got a feed that just covers rating of microwave noodles, and you could combine that all into one feed that has you know my daily, because those are the things that you read about on the on a daily basis. So you're really like curating the entirety of the online experience in one app. The online experience in one app. In theory, that's something that I would want, but I also wonder what that does in terms of creating something where you never see anything you don't want to see, and if that's a good thing or a bad thing. And so I'm curious, Emily, to hear A your take on this app itself, but also just the complaint that exists about the current state of the for you experience, where things are served up based on how much interaction they get.

0:20:20 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, totally, I mean you called out. One of my first thoughts was just this is deep curation. I mean the internet already provides so much more curation. I mean algorithms, if you compare it to something like a print media or just 20, 30 years ago. Now everything is a curated algorithm and this is, it sounds like, an even more hyper-personalized level of curation. So there is. Could you get locked into certain narratives? Could there be less chance you'd change your mind? Just all the issues you already know. I just wonder if all the social media companies are going to let surf do that? Do you think they?

0:21:00 - Mikah Sargent
will Well see. That's the thing, right, is that right now? Yes, because it's hip to be open and to let things be cross-posted and, to you know, not be this siloed experience.

0:21:15 - Emily Forlini
Is that?

0:21:16 - Mikah Sargent
hip. Well, okay, it's hip for the companies that are not trying to be. Basically, yeah, I think it is hip for everything, except for X. X is the only one that's like closing itself down, and I don't think that they're hip. I think that they are contrarian versus meta, which is trying to be more open and make threads compatible across experiences. Blue Sky, which from the get-go has been that way. Mastodon, which from the get-go has been that way. Rss feeds, which, from the get-go, have always been that way. So, yeah, I think that it's hip among extremely online people. We'll go with that to be open.

0:21:55 - Emily Forlini
Yeah for sure. Yeah, I mean, it is true. I mean obviously for my work and for so many people's work, I have to be on the computer and online all the time, and at the end of the year here I'm just exhausted from going on the internet and like going through all these feeds and all these places. It's total information overload. So I mean maybe it really could be an upgrade if, for whatever reason, all the social media companies and just regular media companies actually allow surf to access their, their content. Um, we'll, we'll see. I mean, have you tried to sign up or anything?

0:22:30 - Mikah Sargent
I have, I've, I'm on the wait list.

I haven't had the opportunity to sign up yet. I think that what I've the one thing about Flipboard is it is it has always been a thing where you daily active users for other services, but other than maybe going up, because I hear and of course this is anecdotal and it's it's within the scope of of the people that um are extremely online. I hear a lot about that fatigue of where do I go to find what? Where, like, what's the place, and how this friend decided to be on this platform. Well, I didn't. So am I going to see them? So, in that way, I think this could be a positive if you can have everything in one place and then go to it if you want to respond or, uh, you know, go to it if you want to interact. I mean, twitter even used to be more open as well, and the flourishing of that third-party Twitter client experience meant were people who use the third party client and were very upset whenever that third party option pretty much tanked Because of the API changes.

Yeah, because of the API changes.

0:24:14 - Emily Forlini
That's where I'm wondering like, can surf now, now the API? You have to pay a lot more for it, right that's?

0:24:19 - Nasha Addarich Martínez
the issue.

0:24:20 - Emily Forlini
So can something like surf, which is kind of a startup, afford that yeah?

0:24:25 - Mikah Sargent
Right, I don't think that they're planning on integrating with X at all. So, yeah, that was my understanding, based on the Fast Company piece, is that they're just not integrating with it. Mastodon blue sky threads, rss feeds, podcasts, youtube videos, but just uh, cause here's the. Here's the quote from the fast company. Um, not that long ago, being cut off from Twitter might have proved fatal to an app such as this. Now, some people may consider its lack of Elonization to be a feature, not a bug. So, yeah, they're specifically saying it's not going to have X involved, so you'll be able to see all of the. I guess, if you just say we work with open clients, use us if you want to for those open clients, which those happen to be all the places where the people that I'm trying to follow are.

0:25:25 - Emily Forlini
Yeah. I mean it could be good. It does kind of portray all those sites in a way of like these are, I don't know, almost like tiny little warring states, like reds, blue sky and macedon, like who's gonna win is kind of the vibe, but then x is successful and separate, so it kind of does put band them together into that, that kind of uh we're trying to figure it out bucket, and I mean do you think it's good for them in that way? Can they get ad revenue from this surf platform?

0:25:59 - Mikah Sargent
that is a that is a good question. If those sites start serving ads, um, will those ads go through into something like Surf? In the same way that you know, part of the reason why people use the third-party clients for Twitter was because they could avoid the ads. Yeah, we'll have to see how that ends up shaking out.

0:26:24 - Emily Forlini
Maybe they like it just for the users and that's their play, and maybe it's a smart product just for where the market is right now. I don't know.

0:26:32 - Mikah Sargent
But that could change. In which case? But I think that if you from the, from the, from the starting, uh, what am I trying to say? From the from the start line? Um, if you are saying I am an open platform that will make sure that your content is never siloed off and that you can access it however you want to, and then you shift that away, I think the people who joined it for that reason, your original fan base or your original user base, is going to not be happy about that. Whether that matters, you know that remains to be seen.

But all of these, well, threads is kind of late to the game in terms of being more open, but it is. You know, being more open, um, I think that this is just another way for all those things to be gathered. For example, use a client called croissant or croissant that lets me post to write one message, and it posts to all three of threads mastodon and blue sky, and that is because those apis all allow for it. It integrates well enough that you can search for a username across the three different platforms and tag it properly. It pulls the alt text in, it does all that stuff, and that is only good for each of those three places, because that results in me being a daily active user on Mastodon, blue Sky and Threads all at once. So in that same way, in theory, that's what this would do too, because instead of me just saying, well, I give up, I cannot keep opening all three of these every day, you're going to each of them in your little feed that you see.

0:28:24 - Emily Forlini
Yeah, it's user-centric. It could be good, because the reality is, all of these these apps are so similar I mean threads macedon blue sky twitter. Very similar, same same, same, different website. So if for us. It is true, if you can organize it into one, um, it would organize well, because they're all just the little kind of tweet, tweet things they're called things they are yeah. Are they called skeets on blue sky? I think. I hear that and I'm like that cannot be real.

0:28:57 - Mikah Sargent
No, it was sort of a joke, I think, originally, and then you like lean into the joke. So yeah, skeets.

0:29:03 - Emily Forlini
I'm like, is that an official thing? I hear I see John just popped into the to the chat.

0:29:09 - Mikah Sargent
And Patrick too. It's definitely. Yes, they're skeets, says Patrick.

0:29:12 - Emily Forlini
Okay, got it yeah so it's happening whatever.

0:29:17 - Mikah Sargent
Skeets and posts and toots and all the different things, but they're all yeah, they're all just text and sometimes an image and sometimes a video and sometimes a link.

0:29:27 - Emily Forlini
Right, so you could create a somewhat cohesive looking feed with all that, yeah.

0:29:33 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah Well, I'm looking forward to trying it, because the thing that it will do for me is let me mix the RSS stuff with these social posts at once. That's the part that I'm looking most forward to.

Um, I also am interested to see how well it does the. I want to just see the videos from these people, I just want to see the, the audio from these people, and if that works well, um and so yeah, it's an interesting, um, an interesting way to go. Where you're just saying, I will be the, the multi-armed or multi-legged uh, hydra, multi-headed Hydra that reaches out and pulls in everything.

0:30:20 - Emily Forlini
It's kind of like a humble brag for anyone who uses it, like, oh, I have so much information.

0:30:24 - Nasha Addarich Martínez
Yeah, no way to organize it.

0:30:26 - Mikah Sargent
I'm so exhausted from all the news I read oh, that's a good point, or maybe I'll just continue to let it all go away Just stick your head in the sand. Emily Forlini, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join me today to have some lovely conversations about AI and social media. If people would like to stay up to date with what you're doing, where is the place they should go for that?

0:30:54 - Emily Forlini
So, as discussed, I'm on many platforms, so you can find me in, I guess, tiktok, Twitter X and Blue Sky, and my username across all of them is just at Emily Forlini.

0:31:08 - Mikah Sargent
I thought that was going to take a little bit longer, so I took a sip of water, but you've done the great job of making sure you're the same in those places. So thank you so much and have a great rest of your year.

0:31:18 - Emily Forlini
Thank you. I hope you and everyone listening has a very healthy, restful, happy holiday. We all earned it.

0:31:25 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, I agree, thank you, take care.

0:31:27 - Emily Forlini
Bye, yes, I agree, thank you, take care.

0:31:30 - Mikah Sargent
Bye, all righty Coming up on another break here before we head into our next interview with a familiar face, but I want to tell you about USCloud, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. USCloud is the number one Microsoft Unified Support replacement. USCloud is the global leader in third-party Microsoft Enterprise support, supporting 50 of the Fortune 500. Switching to USCloud can save your business 30% to 50% on a true, comparable replacement for Microsoft Unified Support. See, us Cloud supports the entire Microsoft stack and they do so 24-7, 365. They respond faster, they resolve tickets quicker for clients all around the world and you always talk to real humans. Let me tell you a little bit about their proven track record. You get expert-level engineers with an average of 14.9 years of experience, and that's for break fix or DSE. You get 100% domestic teams so your data never leaves the US financially backed SLAs on response time and initial ticket response averages that are under four minutes. In 2023, 94% of USCloud's clients reported saving one-third or more when switching from Microsoft Unified Support to USCloud. From Fortune 500 companies and large health systems to major financial institutions and federal agencies, us Cloud ensures that vital Microsoft systems are working for more than 6 million users globally every day. Big brands trust USCloud, including Caterpillar, HP, Aflac, Dun & Bradstreet, Under Armour, and KeyBank. Even the IT folks at Gartner have chosen USCloud for their Microsoft support needs.

A director of information technology says quote and within an hour USCloud responded with, I want to say, four engineers. So not only did they bring the right guys to the call, but they brought the cavalry. I just felt like, wow, that was amazing. That was unlike anything I had experienced with Microsoft in my eight years of being with Premier. We made the right choice. So, when it comes to compliance, no one gets it more than USCloud.

ISO, GDPR, ESG compliance. They're not just regulatory requirements. They're actual strategic imperatives that drive operational efficiency, legal compliance, risk management and corporate reputation. So they're about more than just that one field. These standards foster trust and loyalty among customers and stakeholders, they attract investment and they ensure long-term sustainability and success in a competitive global market. So visit uscloud.com, book a call today to find out how much your team can save. That's uscloud.com to book a call today and get faster Microsoft support for less. We thank USCloud for sponsoring this week's episode of tech news weekly

And now we are back from the break and I am thrilled to be joined by a jolly and familiar face. It is the Scott Wilkinson.

0:34:42 - Scott Wilkinson
Hello Scott, hey Micah, so good to see you.

0:34:45 - Mikah Sargent
It's really good to see you too. It's been a long time and I have been thoroughly as our listeners have been as well enjoying Home Theater, Geeks and everything that you do for that show. Thank you, and we appreciate that.

0:35:00 - Scott Wilkinson
It's a lot of fun.

0:35:01 - Mikah Sargent
Good. Good, I'm glad to have you here today because I thought it'd be a nice time, given that this is the final live show of Tech News Weekly, to kind of take a look back on home theater tech this year. Let's kind of start off by talking about what tech you saw this year, if there were any new features that kind of came across for you that interested you, and what were kind of the offerings this year in terms of getting people to go out and buy new home theater gear, be it a TV or something else.

0:35:37 - Scott Wilkinson
Well, there weren't any major breakthroughs that I can identify. As in most years, the improvement has been incremental. You know things have gotten a little better here and there. Um, I am still a big fan of OLED or OLED TV technology. That's been around for now quite a few years and it has gotten better and better over the years.

There are two types of TVs basic TV technology, oled and LCD, which uses an LED backlight, so it's often called LED TV, and more recently they have started to incorporate a technology called quantum dots and therefore the. The TVs are referred to as Q LED, quantum dot LED. But there's there's still LCD TVs. There's light shining through an LCD panel. The LCD panel blocks all the light except in the sub pixels, the red, the or the blue, and that forms the image. They're generally less expensive than OLED, they're generally brighter than OLED, but they suffer other problems that make me prefer OLED, and so you know we saw improvements in both technologies this year, improvements in both technologies. This year Sony announced its latest, both of those types, the QLED. The Bravia 9 achieves a brightness of 4000 nits, which is just a measure of brightness, and that's brighter than any commercial TV has been available so far.

0:37:29 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that sounds really bright that could give you a sunburn.

0:37:36 - Scott Wilkinson
Man, you got to put your sunglasses on for that for sure. Now, the advantage of that is that high dynamic range content is mastered in the studio at either 1,000, 2,000, or 4,000 nits. And if it's mastered at 4,000 nits and your TV can't achieve 4,000 nits which virtually none of them can, except this Bravia 9, then they have to kind of roll off the brightness. If the brightness gets up there, higher and higher and higher, the TV can't do it, so it's got to use processing to to sort of roll off or limit the amount of brightness that it'll produce.

On this new Bravia 9 it doesn't have to do that, wow it can it can display the content exactly as the creator intended with, and that's a big advantage.

0:38:31 - Mikah Sargent
Is there a way for someone? Is there some secret code on the Blu-ray disc jacket that says that it was mastered at fourth out? How do you know?

0:38:43 - Scott Wilkinson
that man? That's a great question. That is a great question and the answer is typically not. As far as I know, there is not a code or a note or a little badge on the badge. You just kind of have to know or do research. Go online and you know. A lot of websites that deal with this kind of stuff will tell you, you know, they will dig in and they'll find out, but it's not generally well known that that is a problem. I couldn't agree with you more. I wish, I wish it were well known. It gets a bit geeky, you know. So maybe a lot of people don't care or aren't even aware of it. But for those of us who are and do care, I want to know what was it mastered at?

0:39:29 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so is this something where you're just looking through Reddit threads and that kind of a thing Got it. To figure it out, yeah, or?

0:39:35 - Scott Wilkinson
going to flatpanelshdcom or avsforumcom. You know a lot of people talk about this on AVS Forum.

0:39:44 - Mikah Sargent
Now I want to talk about something that I have noticed, maybe over the past couple of years. More and more I see the average person, and by that I mean somebody for average, for us, meaning they're not super, super techie, they're not, you know, gearheads who are regularly buying stuff. Anecdotally, on occasion I've gone to someone's home talking to them, whatever, and they start talking about their projector. They don't have a TV, they have a projector, and these come at different price points with different brightness levels and that kind of a thing. Where do you stand in general on projection technology? And, more importantly and I really the important part here is to get into the mindset of someone who is not going to spend thousands of dollars on um, the, the light rejecting, or the ambient light rejecting panel. What's some advice that you would give to the average person who got their projector on Black Friday from Amazon to make the picture even the slightest bit better? What's your advice there?

0:40:59 - Scott Wilkinson
Well, I'm afraid my advice is to get an ambient light rejecting screen. I mean, unless you're willing to watch in the dark, okay, and when you're talking about your average consumer, as you have sort of stated, let's start from that platform. They don't want to watch in the dark, they don't want to make a dedicated room with no windows, you know, and they can turn the lights out and they can turn it into a black hole. That's the only way you're going to get a good picture. Without an ambient light rejecting screen. If you want to watch in the daylight with the windows open or the lights on at night or whatever, without an ambient light rejecting screen, the picture is going to look totally washed out and lousy, not compelling in the least.

0:41:53 - Mikah Sargent
Not compelling to us. Well, yeah, I suppose you could say that but I don't think that they even know to be compelled, if that makes sense. No, I'm, I'm, I'm being genuine, like they. They're thinking I've got this big screen and that's cool and so great and I'm going. You do notice how blurry that is right, like you're like. But look at this big screen I have.

0:42:19 - Scott Wilkinson
Yeah, I'm not talking about blurry, so much as washed out. Yeah, I mean, I think anybody who looks at a picture that's super washed out and the contrast, you know, from the darkest to the brightest, is really low, like 10 to 1 or you know something, super low. It just looks washed out, it doesn't pop, it doesn't. It's kind of like, really Is that? I mean? Anybody looking at a picture like that, I think would be dissatisfied. Yeah.

0:42:46 - Emily Forlini
No, that's fair I really do, I really do.

0:42:49 - Scott Wilkinson
Now, in regards to projectors, I want to mention this.

You're probably talking about a projector that you mount across the room from the screen Right and that really requires a dark room or an ambient light rejecting screen.

There's another type of projector that has actually gained a foothold in the last couple years, called an ultra short throw or UST projector, and they're often called laser TVs, and the reason they're called that is that they use a laser light source and they are intended to replace a flat panel TV. So instead of the projector being across the room, it's right up there against the wall where the screen is. It's like on a credenza or some sort of surface that's up against the wall of the screen and it shoots the light way up at a steep angle. You do need a special screen, but it then reflects that light out into the room and that special screen is by nature, ambient light rejecting as well as specialized to reflect light coming up at a steep angle and then going out at a flat angle, if you will, and those can replace a flat panel TV be perfectly fine in a well-lit room. It basically replaces a TV.

0:44:18 - Mikah Sargent
Speaking from personal experience yes, they look great. I've got the Hisense that Leo used to have. Yes, and we've got that set up in our living room now. And even with the lights on because of the screen, paired with the fact that it's right there. Yeah, it looks great.

0:44:39 - Scott Wilkinson
And the technology has come a long way since that one you got from Leo.

0:44:43 - Mikah Sargent
I'm sure, I'm sure. Yeah, it's gotten a lot brighter.

0:44:47 - Scott Wilkinson
They even support a high dynamic range format called Dolby Vision. Some of them do which no TV does.

0:44:56 - Mikah Sargent
That is what I was going to actually ask you. Next is a little bit about, and please finish that thought, and then I'll touch on the Dolby Vision thing.

0:45:05 - Scott Wilkinson
OK, well, anyway, dolby Vision is a format of high dynamic range, which means that the blacks are blacker and the brights are brighter than your standard dynamic range of most TV. It really makes the picture look great. But TVs, well no. There are many TVs that do support Dolby vision. There have been no projectors that support it. I misspoke before. Pardon me for misremembering. Plenty of TVs have Dolby vision. Virtually no projectors have had it. These ultra short throws now are starting to get it, which is really interesting, and yet another example of how they can replace a TV.

0:45:51 - Mikah Sargent
Right, I'm realizing we only have a couple of minutes left, and so I wanted to ask you what's coming down the pipeline that has you interested going forward? Because, again, there are people who just buy a new TV every eight years or something like that there are people who are you know what's going to get people interested in getting, and it doesn't even have to be televisions, it could be home theater gear. Maybe there's a new sound system. What's got you excited looking, looking into the?

0:46:25 - Scott Wilkinson
future. Well, there's a couple of things, and unfortunately, the ones that I have in mind are not going to be for general consumers.

0:46:34 - Mikah Sargent
Got it. Oh, okay, okay.

0:46:36 - Scott Wilkinson
But the big news at CES, I think, for us, for us home theater geeks, is going to be and this, this got leaked. I can say it because it's been on the internet on various websites HDMI 2.2. The next version of HDMI HDMI, currently 2.1, has a maximum bandwidth of 48 gigabits per second. Displayport, as you know, has a bandwidth of, I think, 80 gigabits per second. Displayport, as you know, has a bandwidth of, I think, 80 gigabits per second. But HDMI 2.2, we are rumored it will match DisplayPort. Now the unfortunate thing is it will probably require a new cable and a new connector.

0:47:26 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, no, really.

0:47:28 - Scott Wilkinson
A new connector. I hate that. I hate that, but because the bandwidth of the current cable is, I think, pretty maxed out.

0:47:38 - Mikah Sargent
So Ah see, I can understand needing a new cable, but I don't want to. That means that none of the stuff that I have would work Will work Well.

0:47:46 - Scott Wilkinson
the good news is you don't need it anytime soon. True, I think the biggest market for HDMI 2.2, at least in the beginning is going to be gaming.

Because that needs as much bandwidth as you can get, but movies, 4k movies at 120 hertz refresh rate are going to be. That's supported by the current HDMI. So are we going to go to 8K, 120 hertz? Are we going to go to 16K? Maybe years in the future, but this is not something that consumers need to fret about right now. Oh no, I've got to replace all my stuff. No, you do not, but it just goes to show you that technology is constantly being improved.

0:48:34 - Mikah Sargent
One of the biggest bugaboos of HDMI compared to DisplayPort was lower bandwidth, and that problem apparently will now be no longer looking forward to that tech making its way down, and also we'll be excited to hear about the kind of higher up the scale not so much consumer tech, of course. People can head to our site to check out Home Theater Geeks, twit.tv/htg. Are there other places they should go to keep up with what you're doing, like the Home Theater of the Month?

0:49:09 - Scott Wilkinson
The home theater of the month. At avsforum.com, I do a monthly feature called Home Theater of the Month, where I highlight a home theater of an AVSforum member and boy, they just do some fantastic home theater installations. These are all dedicated rooms. We were talking earlier about projectors and you have to be in a dark room. These are all dedicated rooms. We were talking earlier about projectors and you have to be in a dark room. These are rooms that can be blacked out completely because they want to be cinematic, and if you go to a cinema, you've got a projector behind you shooting onto a screen in front of you, and that's what all of these home theaters do Awesome.

0:49:50 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, they are pretty cool.

0:49:52 - Scott Wilkinson
And they're really, really cool. They're great to look at. The DIY ones are not that expensive. The ones that have been installed by an installer can be really expensive, but I like to look at ones that are accessible and others that you know. Like you don't read a car magazine to read about Hondas, you read a car magazine to read about Ferraris and Lamborghinis, right?

0:50:14 - Mikah Sargent
Accessible and aspirational.

0:50:16 - Scott Wilkinson
Correct, correct, exactly right. I like to mix those up.

0:50:21 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome. Well, Scott, I wish you the best holidays you could possibly have and I appreciate you for joining us today and also wish you the best with Home Theater Geeks in the new year.

0:50:33 - Scott Wilkinson
Thank you so much, and you too. I hope you have a great holiday and a great new year.

0:50:39 - Mikah Sargent
Thanks so much, all righty, we'll see you later.

0:50:41 - Scott Wilkinson
Mkiduk.

0:50:42 - Mikah Sargent
Bye-bye.

0:50:43 - Scott Wilkinson
Bye now.

0:50:44 - Mikah Sargent
All righty up. Next we are going to talk about napping, if you can believe it, but we have a quick break before we get to that.

This episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by CacheFly.

For over 20 years, CacheFly has held a track record for high-performing, ultra-reliable content delivery - serving over 5,000 companies in over 80 countries. At TWiT.tv we've been using CacheFly for over a decade, and we love their lag-free video loading, hyper-fast downloads, and friction-free site interactions.

CacheFly: The only CDN built for throughput! Ultra-low latency Video Streaming delivers video to over a million concurrent users. Lightning Fast Gaming delivers downloads faster, with zero lag, glitches, or outages. Mobile Content Optimization offers automatic and simple image optimization so your site loads faster on any device. Flexible, month-to-month billing for as long as needed, and discounts for fixed terms. Design your contract when you switch to CacheFly.

CacheFly delivers rich-media content up to 158% faster than other major CDNs and allows you to shield your site content in their cloud, ensuring a 100% cache hit ratio.

And, with CacheFly's Elite Managed Packages, you'll get the VIP treatment. Your dedicated Account Manager will be with you from day one, ensuring a smooth implementation and reliable 24/7 support when you need it.

Learn how you can get your first month free at cachefly.com/twit. That's C-A-C-H-E-F-L-Y dot com/twit.

All right, we are back from the break and, as I promised, we're going to talk about napping. I have to tell you I'm very excited about getting this next guest on the show, as a sleep nerd myself, hearing from Nasha Addarich Martínez, managing Editor at CNET. Welcome to the show.

0:53:26 - Nasha Addarich Martínez
Hi, thank you so much for having me here.

0:53:29 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, pleasure to have you join us. So you had the opportunity to try out a headband that is supposed to help with sleeping. This $350 headband promises on-demand naps. Maybe you can start by telling us a little bit about it, but, more importantly, what made you curious about testing it, given your interests?

0:53:53 - Nasha Addarich Martínez
Yeah, so I've been working in the sleep industry for many years now and in doing so, I've tested so many products that claim that help you sleep right. I've tested anything from supplements to tech, to wearables you name it and some of them work. Some of them are just pure marketing, and when I heard that there's a headband that can help you sleep on demand, I was like I really want to put this to the test to see if it works or not, but also because I got invited to nap in the middle of my workday and I'm like I absolutely want to go get paid to take a nap. So let's do that.

0:54:31 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I think I would pick up on that too, absolutely so when it comes. So you said you worked in the sleep industry for years. Do you mean as like a, if you can talk about that? I am curious about that aspect.

0:54:45 - Nasha Addarich Martínez
So at CNN I oversee the sleep and wellness verticals. So on sleep we write about and we are all sleep science certified coaches on there, so we know a lot about sleep, how to get better sleep and all of that. But we also spend a lot of time with hands-on testing with all of the products that we review. So if you go on Sinacom, you'll see that we've tested all sorts of things all the magnesium supplements, all the melatonin supplements, all the sleepy time teas, all the bedsheets, mattresses, pillows, you name it, anything that you can think of that's related to sleep. We've tested it all. So with that comes many, many years and experiences of just testing what's out there on the market and separating fiction from hype.

0:55:36 - Mikah Sargent
That is the most important thing Now you talk about with this device. It's got EEG capabilities and also uses buzzword AI to interpret brain activity. Can you tell us in simple terms how the technology actually works?

0:55:51 - Nasha Addarich Martínez
Yeah, so basically when you are sleeping, your brain is emitting a type of frequency right through your brain waves and what this headband does is that it detects those brain waves and helps offset high activity so that you can fall asleep. Basically, it's like noise canceling for your brain. So when it detects this high frequency, you feel, but you also hear, like a light buzz. So it's like a very subtle buzz that you feel on your forehead, but you can also kind of feel it in your mind. It's a weird sensation. So yeah, basically that's what it does it just helps offset that brain activity to kind of help you relax and ease your way into sleep.

0:56:38 - Mikah Sargent
Interesting. Yeah, I think many of us, especially watching the show, are going to be familiar with noise cancellation technology, so the idea of brain noise cancellation is a pretty cool concept. Can you tell us about your experience at the Crosby Street Hotel, where you actually did get to go get some sleep while getting paid? What did it feel like using the headband, and then how because in your writing it seems like it happened pretty quickly In practice did you start to really feel those effects really quickly? And then I think for our listeners, they would want to know if you as a person typically have any trouble falling asleep or if you're one of those folks who can just sort of close their eyes and drift off.

0:57:15 - Nasha Addarich Martínez
I'm not going to lie. I fall asleep pretty quick, quickly. So my sleep latency, which is like the amount of time it takes you to fall asleep at night, it's pretty, pretty quick, like my head hits the pillow and I'm out. But I'm not so great taking power naps during the day. So for for full context, I did not have coffee a few hours before testing. This was around 2 pm, so I did have my morning coffee. I was asked to not have any afternoon coffee, or at least like two to three hours before testing, so that happened. Also very important for context, I had Lai, who is my social media manager, with me in the room. Everyone else left, but I want you to know that it is extremely hard to try to nap when you have a coworker in your room.

So that really impressed me, that it worked because I had someone who was filming my entire nap, watching you the whole time.

Yeah, and she was hoping that I would snore so she could have a soundbite. So I was like really self-conscious about it. But yeah, so I put on the headband, we turned it on and I could feel the buzzing. So it's like rhythmic right. So you would feel it like at a certain beat and it was really really fast in the beginning and as I started to drift off I started to feel how it got slower. And as I started to drift off I started to feel how it got slower. So it's like a heartbeat like, say, like you're running and you feel your heartbeat going really really fast and as you're pacing down it starts to slow down a little bit. So that's the same way I felt the buzzing. And then next thing, I knew I was just waking up to the sound of the door opening.

0:58:50 - Mikah Sargent
Wow, that is pretty cool. Yeah, it is pretty cool. The data that you the data, rather showed you that you achieved an alpha state during your nap, and so tell us about what that means in comparison to, maybe, what someone would expect when it comes to a nap.

0:59:07 - Nasha Addarich Martínez
Yeah, so okay. So when you're in alpha state, it means that you're in a resting state and you're asleep, but you're kind of still aware of your surroundings. And this is what I expected for a 25 minute nap, which was not in my home and with a co-worker there. So I best describe it, as you know, when you're waking up in the morning, that you're kind of still asleep but still kind of awake. That was the feeling, so like I was very much aware of what was happening around me, but I was in a resting state, yeah, so I only got to use it for 25 minutes. I'm really curious to see how it would perform overnight, having it on for hours and just like in the comfort of my home by myself.

0:59:52 - Mikah Sargent
Without somebody filming you, you hoping, you smell. Yes, exactly Sounds like it would probably work a little bit better in that situation?

0:59:58 - Nasha Addarich Martínez
I think so too.

1:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Now getting into the practical for a device at this price point, potential buyers will want to know about comfort and usability. What was your experience actually wearing it and feeling it? And I think, most importantly because many people have different sleeping positions I'm a side sleeper, for example how do you think it is practical for different sleeping positions?

1:00:21 - Nasha Addarich Martínez
Yeah. So Meredith Perry, who is the co-founder of LM Mind, explained to me that they did many, many studies and trials with people who have different sleeping position preferences. So lots of side sleepers, back sleepers, stomach sleepers wanted to make sure that this headband really suits all sleeper types. I mostly did nap on my back, but I did lay down with it on my side to see if I was able to feel it. Now the headband itself is almost imperceptible, like it is so lightweight. It's made of a stretchy, very light material so you really can't feel the headband. I think what you feel most is the buzzing and the sensor is just kind of playing on your forehead, but it's very, very subtle. If you are someone who likes white noise, I think you would find it really soothing, because I found it soothing. But yeah, I don't think anyone who's a side sleeper or a stomach sleeper is going to feel uncomfortable with it.

1:01:23 - Mikah Sargent
Nice. And then, lastly, I was just curious, given that you are regularly writing about this stuff and talking about this stuff and I'm just somebody who's always curious what's out there what are some other sleep tech that you are regularly writing about this stuff and talking about this stuff, and I'm just someone who's always curious what's out there what are some other sleep tech that you've used this year that you've, you know, edited from other people, that kind of stood out to you?

1:01:42 - Nasha Addarich Martínez
Yeah, um, I would say sleep masks, um, are getting very techie in this space. Um, so we've seen sleep masks that kind of massage your eyes. I also have sound, white noise integrated into it. That's kind of like, on the lower price points, higher price points, I would say something like the eight sleep pod, which is like a sleep tracker but also helps you cool down your bed. So it's very great for those who, um, tend to sleep warm or hot, and then you can customize it by size.

So if you sleep with a partner who isn't necessarily a hot sleeper, you can customize just your side. So it's like really, really smart sleep tech, uh, but very pricey also, um, and I would say just like how smart sleep trackers are getting in general. So I have tested the whoop and the aura, which are not just sleep trackers or fitness trackers but give you a lot of insight and data into your sleeping patterns. So before let's say something like whoop, they would just give you your, your data, right. So, like you spent this time, this much time and REM, you spent this much time in light sleep, but now it's coming with AI coaches, so they it actually analyzes your data and it tells you like, hey, try going to sleep 30 minutes earlier tonight to see if you can spend more time in deep sleep. So it's getting very personalized very quickly.

1:03:11 - Mikah Sargent
Nice. Well, I am looking forward to this coming year in sleep tech and I appreciate you for taking the time to join us today. If people want to follow you online to keep up with what you've got going, where's a good place for them to do that?

1:03:24 - Nasha Addarich Martínez
Yeah, at cnet.com you can just click the sleep or wellness tabs and you'll see everything that my team and I are working on. 

1:03:32 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time and I hope you have a great rest of your year.

1:03:36 - Nasha Addarich Martínez
Thank you, you too Happy holidays.

1:03:38 - Mikah Sargent
Alrighty folks, we have reached the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. All that is left is to say goodbye to all of you. The show publishes every Thursday at twit.tv/tnw. Next week, we'll have our Best-Ofs episode, where you can check out the different interviews and conversations that I had that I thought were worth your time for a second look. And that's where you go to subscribe to the show in audio and video formats.

If you'd like to get all of our shows ad free, well, there's a way to do that. You just head to twit.tv/clubtwit. By the way, we are extending our offer, our limited time offer for free two weeks of club twit. So if you've been hanging out hoping to be part of the club twit experience, now's your time. twit.tv/clubtwit After the fact, $7 a month, that's it, and you gain access to some pretty awesome things.

You get access to the twit plus bonus feed. There's extra content you won't find anywhere else. You get access to the ad-free versions of all of our club, or rather all of our Twitch shows, and access to the video versions of our club Twitch shows like iOS Today, hands on Mac, hands on Windows, et cetera. So it would be great if you joined. Oh, and access to the Discord server, a fun place to go to chat with your fellow club Twit members and those of us here at Twit. We very much look forward to seeing you in the club.

So again, join now, because two weeks free for a limited time. And for those of you who are already members, twit.tv/clubtwit/referral is the place you go so you can get months of Club Twit for free. Thanks so much. And if you'd like to follow me online, I'm at Micah Sargent on many social media network where you can head to chihuahua.coffee that's C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U-A.coffee, where I have links to the places I'm most active online. You can check out my other shows, like Hands on Tech this Sunday and, of course, the shows that publish in the club. Thank you and goodbye. Happy holidays, happy new year, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, etc, etc, etc.