Tech News Weekly 387 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. CNET's Patrick Holland joins us to talk about Android's new design, language and theft detection technology. Then who is Dan Dan Moren? That's the guy who's joining me from Six Colors to talk about the Siri class action lawsuit and the new CarPlay Ultra. Before I round out the show, talking about deepfakes in the workplace, stay tuned for Tech News Weekly deep fakes in the workplace. Stay tuned for Tech News Weekly.

0:00:38 - Mikah Sargent
This is Tech News Weekly, episode 387, with Dan Moren and me, Mikah Sargent, recorded Thursday, may 15th 2025. Android's new design language. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking that tech news. I am your host, Mikah Sargent, and if you're used to us kicking off the show with our stories of the week, well, get used to change, because this week, I'm excited to say, we are joined to kick off the show by the very awesome Patrick Holland of CNET. Welcome back to the show, Patrick.

0:01:15 - Patrick Holland
Hey, thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.

0:01:17 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, pleasure to have you on. So we just recently got a little glimpse right at what Google is bringing to Android, and you had the opportunity to write more about that. Android 16 introduces the new Material 3 expressive design language and, for those who were just catching up, I was hoping you could describe the look and feel of this update, perhaps compared to previous versions of Android, and the changes in the design language in particular.

0:01:50 - Patrick Holland
Yeah, and Material 3 Expressive is just a lovely name for design and when you see it, especially on a phone, the elements have these really nice nuanced animations.

It's very personalized, as much as a phone piece of electronics can be, meaning that it takes up some of the complements of colors and things from your wallpaper and things like that.

But I think what's most impressive is probably some of the interactions. Whether you're swiping away an app to close, whether you are changing the volume on the phone, whether you're just trying to remove a notification, it's kind of like you're taking a stem off a cherry. There's just that little bit of resistance before it lets go. So there's all this nuance and stuff and I think a lot of that comes from the fact that a lot of these Android phones have things like high refresh rate screens, so you can actually see these things and I don't think it's going to be like a radical change or it's going to scare people off. In fact, I think what is interesting is Google and Apple as they do these design overhauls. It's kind of been a little more of an opt-in, like we'll give you a little taste, but if you don't like it you can keep things, kind of the same MARK MAND sense.

0:03:02 - Mikah Sargent
Now you did I love that that cherry stem idea. That's. That was really really well done. You described the volume slider animation, the swipe dismiss motion for notifications. These are kind of subtle but deliberate design touches. If you had to guess, like, why are these kinds of micro interactions getting so much attention from Google?

0:03:23 - Patrick Holland
I think if you've like've ever hopped on TikTok, it asks you your interests. There's one of them, things that are just satisfying. I really think it just comes down to that. I think on a conscious level, most people probably won't notice the cherry stem-like removal of a notification or the volume thing bouncing, but it's just that small detail that you want to feel it. It ties you to your phone more. It's kind of the opposite of that.

For a long time we had that very minimal, that very stark interface. Or, going back to the early days, everything was like skeuomorphism. Remember, I think the YouTube app used to be a TV set back in the day. But so now we're at this place where it's more lively. It's there's I think delightful is the word that comes to mind and it's not going to be like bouncing all over your screen and doing all that.

It's very subtle, it's very nuanced and I think there's just that satisfaction that you get. That same satisfaction you get like with a flip and a full flip phone closed right, like is there something satisfying about? It doesn't change how you close your phone, not necessarily. And I want to be very clear when I say like opting in and stuff, like the animations and stuff. It's going to be there whether you want it or not. But it's not like it's gonna like I can't get rid of my notifications anymore because it has this little sticky feel to it. I think most people might not even notice it and feel to it. I think most people might not even notice it, and those that do will have that appreciation for it.

It's not trolling you. It's not trolling you and it's not like iOS was at seven and where it's going to be like very thin fonts and driver one. You're like.

0:04:57 - Mikah Sargent
I can't even. Just how do I even touch the right? Yeah, Google says the design system is meant to feel more personal and delightful. In your experience with the update, does it live up to that promise? I think in particular the personal aspect of it, and how meaningful do you feel is that kind of UX shift for everyday users?

0:05:17 - Patrick Holland
Yeah, that's interesting. The devices we saw it on were not our own. So the personal side like one of the people showing us off was Rohan and his lock screen was a photo of his dog and then the. It was neat to see how stuff kind of centered or framed his dog on the lock screen Like there's a little pill for that collapses.

Notifications you've read with icons. There's the new, like I'm going to say live updates. I feel like that's the wrong name for it, but essentially it's these updates that come on your phone. People are going to compare it to the iPhone, but so you can track things like an Uber ride or maybe you're getting directions and maps or whatever. So you have all that there and I think for that kind of stuff it's helpful. But until we can actually put it on my phone and see how it interacts with my wallpapers and that, it's hard to say how personal it is. But it seems like that's the way they're going. And, to be very clear, this is going to be coming out in June, so we got a month to wait, not that long.

0:06:21 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, okay. Yeah, that's right around the corner.

0:06:39 - Patrick Holland
Material 3 Expressive also coming to Wear OS Very exciting. What kind of design choices did you see? See it? We didn't see it on an actual device yet. That will probably roll out in August and as someone who very much follows tech, you could probably remember that Google had a small Pixel event in August, so it's not hard to imagine that it'll probably debut on the next Pixel Watch.

But what I like about where excuse me that Material 3 expressive on Wear OS? Again, it has a lot of that same language. But even something like scrolling through the notifications on a circular watch, it just feels more intuitive, it looks more natural. I think that's one that I'm most excited about is there is a video and if you look at the video we did for CNET, it's in there. But kind of imagine if you drew like the letter X across the circular watches screen, so basically kind of in that two o'clock position you could swipe and it would have more info there and so you're able to kind of swipe in and pull this stuff in and out. So it's kind of like having these drawers that are invisible off the sides of your watch that you can swipe in and out without going, because remember swiping down and swiping up already does stuff. So now we're on the X axis, or not the X axis? I love that.

0:07:56 - Mikah Sargent
The diagonal. Yeah, it's sort of a new. Yeah, so it's a new axis there in between the X Y axis. Yeah, that's really cool and it's all sort of conceptual right when you're thinking of, like, oh yeah, there are these other pseudo pockets into which we could put more stuff. That's kind of a delightful experience. Now, this wasn't the only thing that you ended up covering, in fact, the piece that you have on scene. It is titled we Stole a Phone from Google's Samir Samat and Were Dazzled by Android 16. First of all, could you give our listeners a little bit of understanding of why it's titled that, but then maybe you could talk about theft detection lock, what's new about it, how it works in Android 16, and how effective it seems to be in your and I do mean the pun hands-on experience there.

0:08:52 - Patrick Holland
Yeah, okay, so it was.

I love that we got invited by Google to talk with Samir Samat, who's the head of Android, and he was game for showing us demos and doing all these things, but they really wanted to show us theft detection and, if you know, this theft detection came out with Android 15.

And it's not necessarily that there's a new feature to it. I think it's the fact that it's kind of being lumped in with advanced protection. So if you go into that menu, you'll have an option to do that. So remember, if your phone gets stolen stolen a lot of people think about the hardware, but all your data is on there, your apps are open, your password, so being able to lock that down quickly. So they arranged this scenario where, in the android mascot garden, samir samat sat there with a pixel phone and another guy who worked at google named samir, uh, put his hoodie up and stole it and then what was neat is it almost immediately locked the phone down, and I think that's just really impressive. And he not only did that once, he did it four times a couple times for us and a couple times for another site as well.

0:09:58 - Mikah Sargent
So, yeah, oh, wow, that's pretty neat. That's pretty neat. So I think the sort of find experience has been completely renamed and upgraded. Can you talk just a little bit more about the hub and all that experience and what Google is kind of bringing to the table there, particularly as it competes with the likes of Apple and its large network of find my devices competes?

0:10:26 - Patrick Holland
with the likes of Apple and its large network of Find my devices. Yeah, I think from Google's point of view, the Android system has three billion active devices, which is just wild. Obviously, in the US we're very iPhone dependent and in terms of being able to find your phone, find your friends, find your other devices, we have that on Android. They're kind of repackaging it. It's called Find Hub now for Android 16. So you'll still be able to do that, but there's more privacy settings. There's also going to be things like the ability to connect that to satellite, which we did not get to see yet. But that's essentially what's going to happen there.

And, the thing that is interesting, we now have a lot more Android compatible trackers that are out versus last year, and the big one is we have phones that have ultra wideband, not the 5G technology, but that's kind of like the part that we love about AirTags. Right Is just be able to do that in that last five or 10 feet, be able to find an item Probably the most common one would be keys. So we're still waiting for that stuff to be implemented. But, yeah, find Hub. Again, it seems like we talk about Material Expressive, material 3 Expressive being about these personal touches and delightful things. It does seem like on the system side they're kind of combining things together and making things make more sense, like advanced protection, theft detection lock, as well as the Find my Hub.

0:12:00 - Mikah Sargent
Understood Android. Based on what you saw, how well does Gemini handle those kinds of real world tasks that people expect from a voice assistant today the timers and the music and what is the height of this actor that I'm looking at on screen right now versus the stuff that we've seen things like ChatGPT and other AI platforms do? Can it get the basics right?

0:12:27 - Patrick Holland
From what we were shown. Yeah, it does a lot of the basics right. I did ask Samir about you know, obviously the thing that a lot of people think of was the AI overviews last year and telling people, like, make your pizza with glue, and he was really like just genuine in acknowledging that that can still be an issue sometimes. But that's really kind of more tied to search and he was talking about the Google search team not only seeing those things but trying to react to them and get ahead of them. I think there will always be that kind of conversation between users and the companies behind these AI in terms of accuracy and doing that.

But in terms of basics, I can talk to Gemini almost like I'm talking to you, hopefully with less stutters and stammers, and it will understand that right, and it will understand follow-ups and some just basic things that you do as a human.

But then on another side of it, gemini has like kind of all these kind of brothers and sisters that are also part of Gemini that you do as a human. But then on another side of it, gemini has like kind of all these kind of brothers and sisters that are also part of Gemini that could do deeper tasks, like the one that I've been really enamored with is Gemini Live and the ability to turn on your camera and ask Gemini or Google in this case more about it. So that is how your Gemini Gemini is now your Google assistant. You can still say the hey G word to activate it, just like you did before, but it sounds compelling. And now that it's going to be, did you pick up that it's also going to be on the watch now and on a TV now, and on your car, so it's wild to see that this is coming everywhere. Obviously, things like the watch will be powered by the cloud and won't be on device like some phone stuff, so yeah, Understood.

0:14:09 - Mikah Sargent
I want to first of all, as always, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today, Patrick. Of course folks can head over to CNET to read that fantastic article where you can learn more about stealing a phone from Google and so much more. If people would like to follow along with your work, where's a great place for them to go to do that?

0:14:31 - Patrick Holland
Yeah, you can find me at directedbyPatrick on like, twitter and Blue Sky, as well as Instagram or Trick Holland on some other sites as well. I have a couple of names.

0:14:41 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome. Thank you so much, Patrick, and I'm sure we'll see you again soon. Take care, Mikah.

0:14:45 - Patrick Holland
Thank you so much, Patrick, and I'm sure we'll see you again soon. Take care, Mikah.

0:14:46 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you All righty folks. Up. Next we will bring on Dan Dan Moren, who will join us for our stories of the week. But first let me take a quick little break to tell you about ZocDoc, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. Excuses, excuses. When was the last time you needed to go to a doctor? But you just pushed it off? You made the excuse you know you're too busy. Yeah, maybe it'll heal on its own, or you don't know which doctor to go to? Well, I think we've all been there. I've certainly been there.

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All right, we are back from the break and now it is time for our stories of the week. Joining me to discuss the wonderful stories is Jeopardy champion Dan the man Dan Moren. How you doing, dan?

0:17:26 - Dan Moren
I'm doing great, Mikah. It's an honor to be here, as always, and thank you for not making me answer any questions or answer in the form of a question.

0:17:34 - Mikah Sargent
You're very welcome. We don't expect that from you here on the show Everybody. I think Tuesday was the day so, yes, two days ago was the day that everybody on the Twit Network who hadn't already found out learned about you having been on Jeopardy and were very excited, and so very happy, to have you here with us today. We aren't talking about Jeopardy, unfortunately. Instead, it is time for a PSA from me, and then we'll hear Dan's story of the week after our break. I wanted to let everybody know if you recently received an email titled Lopez Voice Assistant Class Action Settlement. Don't ignore that email. It could mean you're eligible for part of a $95 million payout from Apple. The settlement stems from a 2019 class action lawsuit alleging that Siri was recording private conversations and sharing them with third party contractors, even when it wasn't supposed to be listening. Apple denies the allegations, but has agreed to settle Now this case.

Lopez v Apple Inc. Accused Apple of violating user privacy by having Siri record conversations that were not initiated with a hey voice assistant prompt and then sending those recordings to contractors for review. If you're wondering if you're eligible, if you owned a Siri enabled device an iPhone, an iPad, an Apple Watch, homepod, mac in the US between September 17th of 2014 to December 31st of 2024, and you experienced Siri activating on its own during a private conversation. You may qualify as far as how much you can get. It's going to depend up to $100 per person, $20 per device, with a maximum of five eligible devices. Of course, it always depends on how many people end up also becoming part of the class action and getting their cut. There is a deadline I believe it's July 2nd of this year to submit your claim and you should be looking for an email from info at lopezvoiceassistance settlementcom that has your name, your claimant's ID and a confirmation code. I know when I first got this email, dan, I thought who is Lopez and Jennifer Lopez would like to send me money.

0:19:57 - Dan Moren
What?

0:19:59 - Mikah Sargent
I wish that's what I thought. But I thought, oh, I thought I'm going to archive this, this doesn't mean anything. And then I opened it. I was like, oh, it's one of those class action things. Now, did you get this email, dan?

0:20:10 - Dan Moren
I did get this email. Yeah, I always wonder how they pull the list for these things. It always makes me scratch my eyebrows a little bit. It's like they have giant lists in everybody. But I did, like you, I think it was spam filtered for me and I check my spam filter every once in a while because sometimes that happens and I saw this and was like this is interesting and read through it. And you know, I did not. I don't.

It's always so weird when you talk about legal stuff, right? I always feel like it's such a minefield, and so I generally read these things. I generally do not file claims because I always feel strange. It's about a person who covers Apple to like. I don't want to be involved in settlements with Apple in any way, but it was interesting to see this because this has been progressing for so many years. We've heard these stories for such a long time to see that it actually got to this point and it will be interesting to see, once the settlement actually pays out, how that, how that, shakes out because, as you said, usually these are big classes. Uh, lots of people submit claims and you never know how much individuals end up getting as a result yeah, I um.

0:21:17 - Mikah Sargent
So I have tacked up on my wall uh, on a corkboard on my wall a uh check from the new york times. On a corkboard on my wall a check from the New York Times.

0:21:31 - Dan Moren
And that was because the New York Times got in trouble for renewing paper news newspaper subscriptions.

0:21:34 - Mikah Sargent
I had the yes folks. I did have a physical subscription to the New York Times and because of the auto renewal that I didn't opt into, which actually did become a problem for me, I was not expecting it to auto renew and they ended up taking one instance of me, not because I had. Every time I do one of these kind of auto subscriptions, I will put it on a card that is like essentially a throwaway card, kind of like our previous sponsor, privacycom. But anyway, point is it did not have funds on it to pay for it and this is like what, $27 or something like that at the most. And the New York Times sent that to collections folks. They sent that to collections on me and I thought what in the world? And so then now they are paying me, which was a delightful little bit of schadenfreude, I will say.

But we love our newspapers, we want to keep them around, so I don't like that practice of having sent that to collections, but anyway. So when it comes to this kind of a thing, it is really kind of perplexing the way, because it's essentially mandated by the court that you have to reach out to people and that it has to be done this certain way, but it can look very different. You know, website gets set up and you have to go and you have to type in this information. I think for me, dan, I read through this and I thought, okay, I don't know for sure that I had a device.

0:23:15 - Dan Moren
Oh, you and I, you're very simpatico in that way.

0:23:18 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so I'm like I don't want to do that. I mean, for you know plenty of reasons, but I'm just, but I'd be too concerned, like what if I didn't have any voice that actually activated in this way? Now, what they're talking about, by the way, for people because you might be going, when would a device activate when you didn't intend for it to, Because they could talk about it activating on its own during a private conversation what we're talking about here is any voice assistant that thinks that it hears you saying its wake word or wake phrase and then activating. And Apple, google, amazon, and insert other companies here who might have some sort of voice assistant. What they are looking for in those situations is what was the thing that activated it? And can we improve upon the technology by making sure that it doesn't accidentally activate when you say I don't know, tahiri, instead of the thing that you're actually trying to say? And In that instance, that information was being sent to human beings to listen and, essentially transcribe. So it wasn't for nefarious purposes to figure out what people are saying in their private conversations but instead was about trying to improve upon the technology.

However, it's understandable that people would have a concern that this information is. You know private conversations that are taking place and I always think it's kind of a it's a balancing, not about it's. It's a it's a trade-off right. If you want to have these devices that are activating in your home that can kind of respond to you when you need something, you are going to run the risk of them picking up on things whenever you don't intend for them to, and, to the best of your ability, you can disable a lot of that functionality and, in particular, the privacy part where you say don't keep my recordings, don't do that. Are you pretty good about that, dan? With the stuff that you have, do you say don't hold on to my recordings?

0:25:27 - Dan Moren
When I remember I have a lot of these devices and so sometimes I don't. Do you say, don't hold onto my recordings? When I remember I have a lot of these devices and so sometimes I don't, you know, when I'm setting them up, I'm not thinking about it, or I'm tapping through stuff, and I try to remember, you know, to check off that box, but it can be difficult and you know. You pointed out, like you said. So this is about stuff activating when it shouldn't. It's kind of on the same. You know it's a bell curve, right. Sometimes you try to get the voice assistants activate and they don't activate, which is the flip side.

And the whole thing about this is trying to make sure that that quality assurance is done, to make sure both of those cases aren't true, right, that you're getting activations correctly and that you are getting the activations when you want them to be activated, and so it is interesting, and that you are getting the activations when you want them to be activated, and so it is interesting. And it's also worth reminding people that, as, like a settlement, this is an agreement, right, that Apple has made, where they aren't saying like we are you know, hey, we did a terrible thing and we are copying to that. They are saying we've agreed with the courts that the best way for us to put this matter to bed is to not have it be a legal issue and we will just pay some people as a result of whatever damages they may have incurred. So yeah, it's. Settlements like this are always a little strange. It's like we're not saying it was a problem.

0:26:45 - Mikah Sargent
We're saying we're giving you $20. No-transcript, and you get your payout. Remember to pay that payout or to cash that payout check within a certain period of time. If they do the check method, sometimes they'll do like a debit card sort of situation. But yeah, make sure you cash it because those checks do expire and I may or may not have in the past, come across a check for a not insubstantial amount of money that I realized I never cashed from a settlement like this with another company, a health insurance company, and that's a bummer because I love to twist a little dagger in a health insurance company. Let me tell you what, too soon, anyway. So, yeah, that's that. On that, I think it's time for us to take a little break before we come back with Dan's story of the week.

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All righty folks, we are back from the break, joined by SixColors Own dan morin, recent jeopardy champion. Uh, here to talk about what, dan.

0:31:29 - Dan Moren
Well, mike, I cast your mind back. The day of the year was 2022. Lots of things were different. Apple was just unveiling iOS 16. And as part of that, they talked about something called Next Generation CarPlay. Now, if you are a fan, as I am, of current generation CarPlay, which is the system by which you can hook up your iPhone to your compatible car unit and get a great interface on your little infotainment screen that's got icons, like your home screen, you can use it for navigation and music and all that stuff Great.

But what Apple was talking about at the time was we want to take this further. We want CarPlay to be able to run every screen in your car, all the way over to the instrument cluster with the speedometer and all that, and it will do climate control and it will do infotainment and all of the stuff that your car does. You can interact with all of it via this CarPlay system that is your phone that is running. Now they said at the time like well, okay, late next year, which was then 2023, we'll start announcing cars that are supporting thisPlay, to the point even where, earlier this year, there had been a thing on Apple's website saying coming in like late 2024. And in 2025, they edited the website to remove that date. But here we are it's May 2025. And Apple this morning announced the first company to be producing next generation carplay, which they have now rebranded as carplay ultra ultra ultra, so just doing my own today.

Um, and if you were to guess, is it a really expensive car company that doesn't make that many cars you would be correct. Uh, because it's aston martin. Uh, which is, I guess, if you are an Apple follower, the former Apple chief designer, johnny Ives' favorite car company, I believe. But Aston Martin has announced that new vehicle orders in the US and Canada starting today, as well as older models, will support CarPlay Ultra, and they will bring this sort of integrated system throughout the entire car, including the instrument cluster, the infotainment screen, all of that interactions for climate controls, on-screen controls, siri integration, along with some customizability. So why did this take so long to appear? Tell me? So why did this take so long to appear? Well, if there's one thing that you know about Apple, it's that it doesn't always. It struggles sometimes with partners. It has a hard time working with playing nice with other people, some might say, because Apple likes to do things its own way, it likes to have control. It feels very strongly that it wants to be the one to dictate what does a design look like, how does a thing work? And obviously a lot of these car companies have their own vested interest in maintaining not only their own look and feel across all of the models in their lineup, but also the ability to move people towards their own potential products and services. We saw this with GM last year, where they said they would no longer support CarPlay and instead were designing their own system, in large part because they wanted to be able to have people subscribe to certain services and whatever that would work with their GM cars. So it's not a shock that we've seen this push and pull, this struggle between Apple and car makers over who gets to decide, who gets control and who gets to decide how these things work. And Apple says and they put a lot of emphasis on this in their press release we are working individually with all of these car companies so that we can help collaborate on a system that looks consistent with the way the car makers want to present things. But at the same time, again, a lot of these companies just don't want to cede control, right. They want the ability to say this is what the software is running on our cars and we are the ones who decide what services are available there, what things it's in charge of, how our controls work, et cetera. So here's where we are. The Aston Martin, stuff will start rolling out.

Today, as I said, apple, in their press release, cited three additional car makers which it said it would be working with soon no dates given, no models given any of that and those are Hyundai, kia and Genesis, genesis basically being the upscale version of Hyundai. So two car companies really. Now, I mean, those are all good brands and they're all brands that have, like I think, gotten a lot of popularity recently, especially in the EV markets, hyundai and Kia especially. You know they do a lot of electric vehicles and they've been very popular. Now, of course, we are in an uncertain economic environment when it comes to things like cars et cetera, which may provide additional challenges to these things, but it does seem like this is happening, certainly slower, I think, than Apple would like, as well as those people who have been anticipating it. The real question here is whether it will go anywhere, whether it will get enough traction to continue spreading to other vehicles, and I don't know. I mean, I think it's a great goal.

I don't think most people would say I love the software in my car. Right, car makers are fundamentally not software designers, they just aren't. It's not in their wheelhouse. Oh, wow, hey, I know puns, so many puns. I have a Volkswagen from 2012. I put a CarPlay unit in it six years ago or so and I really love it. But it's also a tiny little screen because it's a more than 10-year-old car and CarPlay for me is a big draw. If I were buying a new car today, I would absolutely want it to work with CarPlay and preferably I'd want it to be compatible with the next generation of CarPlay.

But also Apple has a lot of pushback here too, because they are working in competition with Android.

I mean not only Android Auto, which is sort of the Android version of CarPlay, but I believe it's called Android Automotive, which is Android basically working with car makers at a very low level to help design the software from the ground up, which is not a thing. Carplay is kind of the next generation. Carplay is kind of like that, but an Android Autom Android automotive that's running generally separately from a phone. It's running on the car hardware itself and Apple doesn't really do that. In all of these cases it's still kind of dependent on you bringing your iPhone with you. But hey, it's your iPhone, you probably have it with you anytime you're getting in a car and it's nice to be able to move back and forth between different cars and have a consistent interface right Like I've read some cars in other states and whatever, and been like hey, I just plug in my iphone, I know where everything is, I know how the navigation works, I don't have to figure out a new system.

That is great. So car companies are just loath to give up. You know that sort of but it's our car and we made the software, don't you like our software. No, we don't like your software.

0:38:28 - Mikah Sargent
I'm sorry, it makes me wonder if the um in-house developers kind of quake in their boots at, uh, at the thought of of you know, getting kicked out for the the introduction.

0:38:42 - Dan Moren
I'm sure, if I were them I would get a little miffed, let's say, at the idea like, are you coming in here and just taking over all the stuff we do? But I also think that fundamentally, while technology has become more and more a part of car platforms, obviously it's still kind of not the core competency and I think in some ways you should welcome people to bring their own devices and have the experience they want. They're still going to pay for your car either way, right?

0:39:07 - Mikah Sargent
Exactly yes, they still have to buy your car which is expensive.

Yeah, it's fine. Yeah, you're getting. You're getting your thing. Let them have their thing.

I found it quite interesting that this goes back all the way to an iPhone 12.

So if you have an iPhone 12 or later, that's running iOS 18.5 or later. If you have an iPhone 12 or later that's running iOS 18.5 or later, you will be able to use CarPlay Ultra. As Dan pointed out and mentioned, this is a projection system where it is coming from the phone, you know, being blasted into your car in the different screens. I've been playing around with the CarPlay simulator that comes with developer access and having it have the two screens, and in its current iteration it doesn't have CarPlay Ultra, of course, but I'm curious to see if Apple will update that soon so that people can start to develop for this.

I also have an aftermarket installation of my car and feel the same way that you know if I were to be going for a newer car. That's one of the things that is important to me, because I like the car play situation that I have right now and, yeah, it's nice to just go bring this with me. I can do what I need to do. It's got my music that I will, and it's not like a whole different system. I have to learn for figuring out how to navigate.

0:40:38 - Dan Moren
I will add one of the real benefits of CarPlay and I can speak to this personally is the fact that Apple does tend to update its software on a regular basis.

0:40:47 - Leo Laporte
When.

0:40:47 - Dan Moren
I bought my car, there was a software bug in it.

It would play, I could.

It had a Bluetooth connection for audio and when I tried to play Bluetooth audio it had essentially duplicated the one channel on both sides, so it was playing like left channel audio through both the left and right speakers, which was really weird, because there are some, if you have some songs, like some older, you know, rock songs from the 60s or so, where sometimes it has very distinct things happening in left and right, you would not hear part of the audio.

And trying to explain this to somebody in a dealership and then having to essentially go to a dealership to get a software update was very frustrating at the time and the idea is like, well, if it was just on my phone, my phone gets updated and I've got new software right, I don't have to bring it to a dealer. I know there's more stuff with over-the-air updates and stuff now than there was maybe 10 years ago when I bought my car, but still it is nice to have the responsiveness of a platform that is being constantly updated, as opposed to what it feels like oftentimes is. We sold you the car good riddance and good luck.

0:41:47 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and I will also say too that one of the things we cannot forget is the egregious data mining that we've seen from different car companies in the past several years.

It was the Mozilla Foundation who did a great rundown research piece on the different car companies and what data is being collected, and I like that. I know Apple's privacy policy and sort of, even if I don't I don't, obviously don't know the privacy policy through and through, but I know it's policy on privacy, I guess, is what I mean. And so, knowing that, I feel more comfortable having all of that data filtered through CarPlay instead of being filtered through the built-in system that a car might come with, where we've got those different connections that are sending data here and there and everywhere, so, yeah, that's a big aspect for me as well. That, I think, is not something probably that everybody is thinking about first and foremost, but ends up being sort of a side benefit to come along with it. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing how other companies go oh, actually, us too, we're doing the CarPlay Ultra, or they say we're not and here's why and then having to answer for that.

0:43:19 - Dan Moren
Yeah, I think that's true. Well, it'll be interesting to see how that plays out now that we actually have cars that are starting to ship with it, and I think we'll start finding out pretty soon, is my guess.

0:43:28 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely Well. Dan Dan Moren, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us this week to talk about Lopez Voice Assistant and also CarPlay Ultra. Of course folks can head to sixcolorscom to check out your work. Where are the other places they should go to keep up with what you're doing?

0:43:53 - Dan Moren
am doing, and it's many, many things go to dmorincom, which is my website. There you'll find a link to my writing about tech, the many podcasts I do, including Clockwise every Wednesday with Mikah Sargent, and my many books in science fiction and fantasy which you can check out dmorincom.

0:44:08 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome. Thanks so much, dan. We appreciate it. Thanks, Mikah. All righty folks, we're going to take another break before we come back with one more story of the week, just from yours truly.

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All right, we are back from the break and I've got one more story of the week for you here. In an era of remote work, ai-generated video and high-stakes impersonation scams, trust has become a liability. Professionals now double-check not just emails but faces and voices on video calls. Welcome to what Wired calls the age of paranoia, where people are testing accents, checking timestamps and even using code words to verify that the person on the other end is who they say they are. Yes, this wired piece is something else we are looking at from Lauren Good, a piece about how now, with the age of AI deepfakes, how people are attempting to verify that they're truly talking to a human being on the other end of a phone call, a voice call, whatever it happens to be. And that's in large part because scams have escalated and therefore so have the stakes. Ai is fueling a surge in job-related and impersonation scams. In fact, according to the FTC reported, job scams tripled between 2020 and 2024, with losses jumping from $90 million to $500 million. So it's big.

Right now, there have been a few instances of kind of discussing the paranoia of the situation. Discussing the paranoia of the situation. One person who was interviewed for this piece. Nicole Yelland says that now I do the whole verification rigmarole anytime someone reaches out to me. Another person said everyone is on edge and wary of each other now. And Daniel Goldman, who is a blockchain engineer, says it put the fear of God in me on learning that a colleague had been deep faked. So it's pretty big right now.

It is something that people are having to really watch out for. Nicole Yelland, who we quoted there just a moment ago, thought she was interviewing for a legitimate job, complete with a polished slide deck, a familiar company name, but when the interviewer refused to turn on their camera and asked for her driver's license number, she realized it was a scam. So now when Yelland, you know, hears from a recruiter, she does this whole process of making sure that you are the person on the other end, of course, is a real person. So we're kind of looking now at the impact right of of what this looks like if someone is trying to verify that you are indeed a real person, and some of the common verification tactics that they're seeing is forcing a video call with cameras on. So where in the past we may have been able to just do an audio call, I don't have to have my video on. You know, it's me, it's fine.

Now there are platforms that can take just a small portion of a voice clip and create a whole synthetic voice that sounds like me, and then you pair that with a tool that is able to generate responses on the fly that are, you know, ostensibly human sounding, and suddenly you have a situation where you might not realize that you're just talking to an AI. There are times where we're doing sort of live captures, so asking location based questions what's your favorite coffee shop in town? To see if the person is is where they say they are requiring email confirmations during live calls, so maybe we can leave the video off, but I want you to email me right now to say, yes, I am indeed on the call with you at this moment. Asking for this is the wild one. Remember the newspaper photo? Yeah, asking for timestamped selfies or real-time screen mirroring so that you can say I truly am a human being, so that you can say I truly am a human being. And then AI startups are actually kind of trying to figure this out as well. So we've got AI attempting to apply to fix an issue that AI is causing Companies like Get Real Labs and Reality Defender claim to detect deepfakes, while Sam Altman's Tools for Humanity is building iris scanning hardware tied to blockchain-based identity. So suddenly we're using our eyeball to make sure. Oh yeah, I'm actually talking to a real human here and, honestly, what this has resulted in is a lot of exhausted professionals.

Jessica Ice, I believe is a researcher at Indiana University said that her team now runs fraud checks before admitting participants to online surveys. So they check email patterns, they check time zones, they check odd demographic data before they allow them to participate in these online surveys that they're using for real research studies. So making sure that this isn't an AI that is coming in and filling out these surveys is not as simple as just doing a CAPTCHA to prove that you're you. We were just talking about this the other day in our editorial meeting, as we were kind of comparing CAPTCHA stories and some of the weird stuff that I think TikTok, in particular, has tried to do. You know what is something you would put on your head and there are like six different types of hats, but only one is turned the right way and they just seem to get vaguer and vaguer and more and more strange.

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When we were talking to the team at Storyblok, they talk about this API-first approach. It means you can get into the nitty gritty as a developer and do it so easily. With that API-first approach, your content loads fast anywhere in the world. That means better UX, higher engagement and improved SEO. With the real-time visual editor, marketers see exactly what their content will look like before publishing. So there's no more endless back and forth over minor tweaks. Well, the Cibi colit is there, but it's just a little bit off and I need to move it over to no. They can take care of it so that you can focus on the big stuff that you're trying to work on. The devs get fewer interruptions. Marketers get more autonomy. It's a win-win If you're an agency, by the way, Storyblok offers multi-client workspaces, flexible permissions and seamless collaboration tools so you can manage multiple projects without disrupting development workflows. So, whether you're a startup, an enterprise or an agency juggling multiple clients, Storyblok gives you the power and flexibility you need.

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All right, let's finish up that story on deepfakes, scams and the age of paranoia. And frankly, I think the big thing is the scams do seem to be getting bolder. Some impersonation attempts offer jobs with too-good-to-be-true perks, unlimited PTO, high salaries, full benefits. You go in to interview and they ask you for your oh well, we need your driver's license, your social security number, of course, because you've got the job and we've got to get you set up with our HR. And it turns out they're just trying to get your personal information so that they can use that. So it's kind of. So it's kind of.

We're at a little bit of a what a stepping off point. We're at a crossroads, so to speak, although I don't think that there's really not a cross in the road. We got one way to go, and that's probably entering an era where every interaction we have online is going to require some sort of trust protocol. Am I actually responding to a human on the other end of this chat, on the other end of this social media post? Is this a real person on Instagram or is it a bot? Will biometric verification be the way that we figure this out? Is that going to be involved whenever?

I mean, as we see an increase in remote work in particular and more people working from home, is that going to play a role in sort of speeding along more biometric authentication to say, okay, you are a human being and you are this human being on the other end of the call that you say you are, or even if you're not on the other end of the call, just wherever you are in the world? I've worked at a company called Mobile Nations, and it was called that because all of us worked all around the world, truly all around the world. And what if one of the writers was not really interested in doing their work, so they just used AI to do most of their work, being able to have that biometric verification that could play a role in it, and then, of course, trying to balance digital security with that you know human connection of. Am I able to just have this conversation and trust that the person on the other end of the line is who I think they are, or am I going to have to do what is arguably a little awkward and say, look, I think you're human, but I'm not 100%. So I really do need you to fill out this series of CAPTCHAs in order for me to kind of move along with this conversation. Kind of move along with this conversation.

In certain areas, in certain professional settings, there's, you know, conversation about everybody being on edge, being wary of each other, and it's a problem when it comes to trying to figure out these verification tactics. So one individual whose job it was to vet Spanish-speaking contacts think about this You've got someone who's pretending to be able to speak Spanish and they're using a translator to do that an online translator Yelland talks about says in a quote I'll casually test their ability to understand and translate trickier phrases, so having to figure out ways to test this that we haven't had up to this point. One person says that some colleagues were even creating code words that in person, they shared with each other, so that if you all are in a call together and somebody's asking for the ability to, or asking for a request to, send money over, you go OK, but what's the code that we came up with? And being able to do that? Sometimes it does take that low tech approach in order to sort of balance the high tech instances of false AI individuals. Now, of course, it's all about, you know, working toward proving personhood, and the biggest increase that they've seen in AI being used for this fraud is with job scams. You know they're refusing to turn their camera on. That's something to be on alert for. They make unusual requests, for requests rather for detailed personal information and also just knowing that we have an issue. Where, if you, if it seems too good to be true, where, if it seems too good to be true, maybe you want to double down and figure out that, oh, it's not, it's not real, it's not what I expected. Lastly, I'll just say it does seem like these folks are having to spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out if people are real, and that has an impact. So will AI be the solution to this? More AI determining if it's a deepfake or not. I don't know. It sounds like these low-tech methods are what really is working. So be sure to check out that Wired piece really good piece, thorough, in-depth and lots of great quotes over there Deepfakes, scams and the age of paranoia, as Wired calls it. Folks, that is going to bring us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly.

The show publishes every Thursday at twit.tv/tnw. That is where you can go to subscribe to the show in audio and video formats, as we always do. I want to mention and remind you all about Club Twit, twit.tv/clubtwit. When you join the club for our monthly plan or our yearly plan, you out there get some awesome benefits. Every single one of our shows ad free, so it's just the content and none of the ads. You gain access to the Twit Plus bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else before the show. After the show, special Club Twit events get published there and access to the members only Discord server a fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and those of us here at Twit.

I just had Mikah's Crafting Corner last night. We had a great time. John Ashley joined me for building Lucky Bamboo. Leo Laporte was there as well, hanging out in the chat we were chatting about. This is the thing we talk about all sorts of stuff. We're talking about milk and bags. We were talking about focaccia. We were talking about bagels. Somebody was making blueberry scones. It was a great time and that is something that you can check out every month as part of a member of Club TWIT, and the club exclusive part is being part of the chat conversation and being able to share the stuff that you're working on as well.

So, if that sounds good to you, plus access, I know this coming week we've got a few shows that are Club Twit exclusive the news coverage of some of the tech press events this coming week. That is all only available to you as a member of Club Twit. So head there, sign up and I look forward to welcoming you to the experience. If you'd like to follow me online, I'm at Mikah Sargent on many a social media network, or you can head to chihuahua.coffee. That's C-H-I-H-U-A, h-u-a.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Check out my other shows, including Hands on Mac, hands on Tech and iOS Today and I will be back next week. Actually, I'll be back in two weeks. It's a special episode next week as I am out of the office, so tune in to be joined by Emily Forlini and Jennifer Patterson Toohey, who will be hosting the show next week, with some, I'm sure, great interviews as well in the second half. Thanks so much for tuning in and I'll see you again soon. Bye!

1:02:41 - Leo Laporte
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