Tech News Weekly 414 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.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on Tech News Weekly, Dan Moren of Six Colors is here. We start off by talking about Apple's new digital ID by way of the US Passport. We also talk about, well, a bear that teaches kids where to find knives and how to light matches. Yes, AI toys can be a hazard. Afterward, Sabrina Ortiz of ZDNet stops by to give us the latest on Google's Gemini 3. And Alyssa Welly from the Verge tells us all about how that viral AI pen that's supposed to help you cheat doesn't really help you cheat. Stay tuned for this episode of Tech News Weekly.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:48]:
This is Tech News Weekly, episode 414 with Dan Moren and me, Mikah Sargent, recorded Thursday, November 20, 2025. Viral TikTok AI Pen Flunks The Test. 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 Jennifer Pattison Tuohy is out this week. We wish her well on her vacation. But I am excited to be joined by my dear friend and east coast bureau chief of Six Colors. It's Dan Moren. How you doing Dan?

Dan Moren [00:01:26]:
I'm doing well, Mike. I got my sledgehammer. I'm ready to break some news. Let's break it. Let's do it.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:32]:
So as people probably know by now, this is the part of the show where we share our stories of the week. These are stories we find interesting, or hope you find interesting, and in some cases are stories that also pertain to us. And so without further ado, Dan, tell us about your story of the week so we can chat about it.

Dan Moren [00:01:56]:
Yeah, it's a multi part story today as we record, I believe, or maybe it was yesterday. I've forgotten exactly when Illinois became the latest state to add support for Apple's mobile driver's license feature, which lets you add a driver's license or a state ID and use it in your Apple Wallet. That became made at the 13th state to offer this feature. In addition to Puerto Rico as well as I believe Japan offers the a national ID card that's available in Apple Wallet. This comes on the heels of last week where Apple also introduced a feature called Digital ID which which it first showed off at its Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this year. This feature lets you add your US Passport to the Apple Wallet and essentially use it for domestic air travel. And I so this is sort of a conglomeration of all these things happening. Obviously Apple's rolled out this mobile identification system several years ago.

Dan Moren [00:02:49]:
The states have been kind of slow to adopt it. Like I said, we're up to 13. Two more states have just signed on. Also Arkansas and Virginia will also be offering support. Arkansas, I think, already offers Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet support, but it's adding Apple Wallet support as well. You know, that's still not even half the states in the United States. So you know, obviously there's a lot of room to grow here. But it is interesting to see them work also with the federal angle because that allows them to kind of make an end run over the fact that some of these states are dragging their heels.

Dan Moren [00:03:21]:
I've dug into this a little bit for my own state, Massachusetts. There is currently a bill working its way through our state legislature that is to add a mobile driver's license of some kind. From what I can tell, stuck in committee. So there's that. But yeah, this is one step closer obviously to the idea that we can use our phones as our single device. Right. It replaces everything that you've got in your pockets you can use as your keys, you can use it as your wallet and your credit cards and payments and all of that. But it also adds sort of a much in need revamp of the ID card system here in the United States.

Dan Moren [00:03:58]:
At least we've seen in recent years, this transition to the real ID standard, which took quite a long time. I believe that that legislation was first introduced in the wake of September 11th and took many, many years to get to the point where we actually had these IDs that are supposedly more secure and more tamper proof. I think digital IDs are really interesting because they offer some capabilities that you can't do with the physical id, such as minimizing what presented. They also, you know, help avoid issues where you have to hand a device to people because they all use this contactless system, much like Apple pay. But you know, again, as we said, the, the downside in some points of our federalized system here in the United States is because each state gets to dictate this kind of thing, even if they had to have to adhere to federal standards. It can take a very long time before these things actually come to fruition for the average person, such as you and me. Mikah.

Mikah Sargent [00:04:56]:
Yeah, I'm looking now at the Oregon legislature, Senate Bill 416 is somewhere. I'll have to figure out where the.

Dan Moren [00:05:12]:
Great void of the legislative process.

Mikah Sargent [00:05:14]:
Yeah, it is the one though that is in theory going to be the bill that makes it possible for people to be able to have mobile driver's licenses. It was introduced in January, and that's the extent of it.

Dan Moren [00:05:36]:
Yeah. Ours is here in the Commonwealth. Massachusetts H3725, introduced in February of this year, and it's been in committee since then.

Mikah Sargent [00:05:46]:
So.

Dan Moren [00:05:48]:
Yeah, there you go. Now, this links into a couple other interesting things, you know, which I. You and I were talking about a little bit before the show. One is the TSA has also got a proposed rulemaking change right now that would allow people without real ID compliant identification to use a biometric system at the airport for the grand fee of 18, which would then cover them for a certain amount of time. I want to say it was like. It was like a few weeks or something. It was not that long. And essentially, if you don't.

Dan Moren [00:06:19]:
So if you have an older id, you haven't updated your ID to be compliant with real id, or you don't have a passport, you could go to the airport. You can still fly. Note. You can do this now. You just have to go through extra screening. Right. You know, the whole point of real ID is it's supposed to be like, yeah, we definitely know you're you. So, like, we can kind of.

Dan Moren [00:06:38]:
Super.

Mikah Sargent [00:06:38]:
Yourself. Super.

Dan Moren [00:06:40]:
Oh, there's holograms. I mean, you. You can't make a hologram. Right.

Mikah Sargent [00:06:46]:
Okay, look, I'm almost always. Almost always on the side of any side. That is the side that is against the dmv.

Dan Moren [00:06:55]:
That's a. That's a good place to be. That's some solid ground to stake out.

Mikah Sargent [00:06:58]:
However, this real ID thing has been around for such a long time at this point, and there have been so many extensions for people that it's kind of. It's like, I.

Sabrina Ortiz [00:07:15]:
It.

Mikah Sargent [00:07:15]:
For me, it was almost harder to go and get. The last two times I had to go and get a new id, it was almost harder for me to get an idea that was not a real id. Like, the process is so ingrained at this point with getting all of the requirements. And I. There's a show. This is sort of off topic. Not entirely, but there's a show right now that's called dmv, Believe it or Not. And if you can guess what it's about, it's about the dmv.

Mikah Sargent [00:07:44]:
It's a sitcom, and there's a guy that walks up and he has, like, one piece of paper, and that's it. I. That just. I don't know about you, Dan, but I feel like we're very similar in our anxieties about things. And so I Walk up with like, manila folder.

Dan Moren [00:08:06]:
Oh, I had a folder. Yeah, absolutely.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:08]:
Filled, collated, double copies. Like, whatever you need. Do you need to know, do you need to see the gum wrapper that I unwrapped three days ago? Some reason I've got.

Dan Moren [00:08:19]:
I brought my 23andMe results. I mean, does that help? Did that give me anything?

Mikah Sargent [00:08:24]:
I. I just. Look, I understand that not everybody is fully that, that anxious about things. Yeah. But that in the first place is kind of wild. And so it almost feels like when a teacher says, you know, next week we're going to be doing science demonstrations. And so I need everybo to bring baking soda and vinegar. And, you know, five students don't show up with it.

Mikah Sargent [00:08:59]:
And so then they, the teacher goes, okay, we're going to do this in a couple of days. Remember, everybody else, leave your baking soda and vinegar here. Three more students finally show up with it, but then the two students who still don't, and then the teacher's like, you know what? I'm just going to do it up here instead. And it's like this $18 extension thing is just we, we keep on just pushing it and pushing it and pushing it and pushing it out and finding new ways to push it out. In any case, this is more about digital id. I. I put in my passport. I'm curious if your process was the same, because I didn't, I couldn't tell if I needed to do extra work or not.

Mikah Sargent [00:09:36]:
But when I first did it, scanned the inside of my passport and then it needed like a liveliness video. And I just recently got a haircut. But before this, I did not have a haircut. And I, since moving to Portland now more than a year ago, have still not found a barber here. And so my hair was wild, but I was just like, you know what? I'm taking off my hat. They just need to see my face, so it's fine. So I did it, but then it was like, yeah, we're going to need you to do more. And so then I was sort of like looking this way, looking that way, looking this way, looking that way.

Mikah Sargent [00:10:11]:
And then it's like, we'll talk to you in 10 minutes. It wasn't exact. They didn't say 10 minutes, but they said, we'll get back to you. Basically. Was yours the same way? Wait, I can't remember if you said you did it.

Dan Moren [00:10:21]:
I did do it. Yeah, I did do it. I did it. As soon as the feature was launched, my experience was fairly similar because my understanding is right, they do A couple steps where it's like we check first you take a stealthy. Then you move your, your head around and like smile.

Mikah Sargent [00:10:36]:
Yeah.

Dan Moren [00:10:36]:
Blink and all that stuff. And just to make sure you're not like. I mean, I guess if somebody's holding you hostage and forcing you to do that, you could still get away with it. But it's to make sure you're not using video of somebody else. For example, like if I wanted to make a password, I wanted to get your password somehow I would have to have your passport have like physical access to your passport and have the ability.

Mikah Sargent [00:10:58]:
To like awkward video of awkward videos.

Dan Moren [00:11:01]:
Of you doing stuff or I guess generate AI videos of you doing things. Which is more plausible than it used to be, honestly. Yeah, so I, I don't know if yours was longer than mine. It's, it was probably only a minute or two to just like all in of like doing everything. And then it also told me we had to wait a few minutes and then it never gave me a notification. But I went in like a few minutes later and it's like, oh yeah, you're ready. So yeah, I don't know.

Mikah Sargent [00:11:27]:
Now we have, we have, we have confirmation. I'm excited to get to use this soon because I will be taking a trip there at the beginning of the coming month and I will be going to the Portland airport. And that's where this next little bit of news comes from.

Dan Moren [00:11:51]:
Well, I think it actually comes not directly. I have to double check on the location. Well, so okay, so this is from developer Cable Sasser who works at Panic, which is a long serving Mac and software maker slash game publisher. I believe he had posted a couple weeks ago for a trip that he had been trying to use this and I think he.

Mikah Sargent [00:12:15]:
Yeah, it worked in Portland. It worked in Portland.

Dan Moren [00:12:18]:
It did not work in Orlando when he came back. Now the issue is here, Apple and you know, its partners, basically the tsa. Let me rewind a little bit. There are many different standards for this as we discussed, right. Apple's got its own, there's Google Wallet, there's Samsung wallet, etc. But to a certain degree it's a little bit like all the contactless payment systems, they all kind of work on the same thing, right? The you go in and buy your cup of coffee. They don't need to know if you're on an Android phone or an Apple phone. Right.

Dan Moren [00:12:45]:
You just tap. You could use a wireless credit card. Right. They all use the same underlying technology. So my understanding is that this is pretty similar in the Sense that, right? They're not designing this necessarily to work with Apple's standard. There are standards that govern all of this, right? So they've got a little reader just like you have it at the. You know, when you're paying for something with Apple Pay and you tap your phone on it, etc. Now, in theory, I guess there exists the possibility at some point, like your passport might have the ability to do this.

Dan Moren [00:13:15]:
I mean, obviously it already has a chip in it, right, that contains information. Because as part of that process, when you put your passport in, you have to hold your phone up to the little chip that's in the. The passport so it can confirm it. So. But my understanding is what part of the issue is, is that this has been deployed a lot of different checkpoints within different airports, but it's not everywhere because you know how software rollouts work when they deal with hardware, right? Like you have all of these every single time you go to the airport. It may not be even every security line at that airport. It may not be every machine at every security line at the airport because they haven't all been updated. So you are potentially going to run into situations like this where it doesn't necessarily work smoothly because it's still in the process, rolling out.

Dan Moren [00:13:59]:
We're in this, this transitional period now where I feel like, yeah, there is the risk. You show up and you're like, I want to tap my phone. And people are like, what are you doing? And which is, you know, I'm sure, Mikah, as we discuss similar anxieties, none of us wants to be. That person's like, sweating as they're like, did I. Do I turn it a different way? So hold it upside down Anyway, it'll get there. I mean, I think for the most part, my experience these days with Apple Pay, it generally works, right? Like, it works at least as often as, like, I used to have people try to swipe my credit card and it wouldn't swipe because the magnetic stripe had, like, demagnetized. Oh, that's so like. I guess my point is there's always going to be some bumps in the road.

Dan Moren [00:14:40]:
I think in a few years this will be much more standard and much more like, the agents will be fully. Everybody will be fully trained on it. Everybody will have seen it a million.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:50]:
Times, will have gone through.

Dan Moren [00:14:53]:
That's right. All our state bills will make it through. We'll all have mobile driver's license instances.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:57]:
So we'll tap them together. They'll be best friends.

Dan Moren [00:15:00]:
But in the same way that you know, contactless payments really took off in the last 10 years or so. I think when we look another five years, 10 years out from now, this may be more of a standard. It may be we're all just used to doing this. And yeah, you still maybe carry your physical id, but you don't sweat it if you're like, oh, no, I left my driver's license at home and I'm flying, or I lost my driver's license right when I was on a trip or something like that. You've got your phone, it's great. It makes for a good backup.

Mikah Sargent [00:15:31]:
Absolutely. Well, I am looking forward to seeing if I am also able to just tap and move on.

Dan Moren [00:15:39]:
I'm excited to hear your experience. Honestly, I'm not flying domestically for. I don't even know when I'm flying domestically, so I don't know when I'll get a chance to do that.

Mikah Sargent [00:15:47]:
We shall see. All right, let's take a quick break. Before we come back with my story of the week. I want to tell you about Spaceship, bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. Such a cool name. If you've been listening for a while, then you probably already know a little bit about Spaceship. We've talked about them. It's been part of the twit world now.

Mikah Sargent [00:16:03]:
And there's a reason for that, because Spaceship is awesome. But it also just passed a major milestone with more than 5 million domains under management. And that kind of growth, it doesn't really happen by chance, is because Spaceship delivers real quality and features that make sense not just for domains, but for everything that helps you build and run your online presence. I mean, I talked before about how I was able to, while we were on the call with the folks at Spaceship, get a domain, set it up with a WordPress, add some other features on the back end to it, and still be able to maintain attention. With everything that was going on, it was very easy to do. It means hosting, it means business email, it means tools for creating and managing web apps all in one straightforward platform. Now, another big reason that people are switching, it's the pricing. There's essentially Black Friday and Cyber Monday level value all year round, so you don't have to wait for a sale to get a great deal.

Mikah Sargent [00:17:02]:
And right now, those of you listening, yes, our Twit listeners get exclusive offers that make it even better. So whether you're planning a new online project or moving an existing one, Spaceship has what you need to get it launched, connected and running smoothly. Plus more affordably too. Check out spaceship.com/twit to see the exclusive offers and find out why millions have already made the move. That's spaceship.com/twit. All right, we thank Spaceship for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. We are back from the break, joined this week by Dan Moren. I want to tell you about a new investigation from the U.S. public Interest Research Group which reveals alarming safety failures in AI powered toys that are marketed to young children.

Mikah Sargent [00:17:49]:
This has prompted prompted swift action from OpenAI and we'll talk about that as well. But let's take a look. So the PIRG Education Fund just released its 40th annual Trouble in Toyland report. And in this report it covers all sorts of toys with all sorts of issues. So toxic toys, and I don't mean that in the sort of modern parlance, but literally toxic to the body toys as well as dangers like magnets and, and water beads that people that kids will swallow. But it also looks at toys that are dangerous in other ways. And in this, the PIRG report looked at four AI enabled toys that are specifically designed for children ages 3 to 12. And in it found some rather concerning interactions that some would argue puts young users at risk.

Mikah Sargent [00:18:45]:
It found that the toys would provide inappropriate or dangerous information when prompted by children's question. Now most troubling was a toy from Folo Toy called the Kuma Teddy Bear. Yeah, that image from Futurism's quite a bit dramatic but I'm scared.

Dan Moren [00:19:04]:
I'm scared Mikah.

Mikah Sargent [00:19:05]:
Yeah, there are reasons. So it runs on OpenAI's GPT4O model. During testing, the toy provided detailed instructions to children on how to find and light matches and told one researcher, hold the matchbox with one hand. The rough strip is for striking. Take out one match, just one, and hold it by the non red end. Strike gently on the rough strip like a tiny guitar strum until it whoosh lights up. The bear also told children where to locate potentially dangerous household items, including knives in a kitchen drawer or in a knife block on the countertop, pills and plastic bags, all while acknowledging that these items require adult supervision, but again, still providing the location information. Now what's unclear is whether these toys actually knew where to find these items or if they were just guessing.

Mikah Sargent [00:19:58]:
So you know, that's something running the odds. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Where would we find a knife? Well, in theory, not in the toilet bowl is where you would find a knife, but you never know. Then there's the more disturbing stuff that if you can, you know, I think for you as a parent that was probably disturbing enough, but overextended conversations as is often needed in order to get these AIs to what we call what. What is commonly known as hallucinating, but essentially getting to a place where the, the AI stops paying as much attention to its original instructions and starts to say rather wild things. Then over these extended conversations, the toy engaged in sexually expl discussions. Researchers introduced the topic of kink and then Kuma immediately launched into graphic explanations of bondage, of role play scenarios, various sexual practices, talked about teacher, student and parent child role play dynamics. And those were, as the research group says, introduced unprompted quote.

Mikah Sargent [00:21:17]:
Kuma was willing to discuss school age romantic topics more readily than the other toys, the report states, including providing advice on kissing and romantic relationships entirely inappropriate for its target age group. Now, OpenAI did say that as of, I believe it was this past Friday. As we record this on Thursday, November 20th, they completely suspended Folo Toys access to its AI models. It's worth noting that OpenAI does not allow for anyone under the age of, what is it? Anyone under the age of 13 to use ChatGPT or, you know, prohibits it. You. Whether it's allowed or not is a different story, but they say you cannot if you're under the age of 13, use it. However, these toys, which are marketed to kids under the age of 13 in many cases are allowed to use OpenAI's models for the AI portions of these toys that will then be used by children under the age of 13. So that is interesting.

Mikah Sargent [00:22:25]:
So first and foremost, Dan, have you ever seen Small Soldiers?

Dan Moren [00:22:31]:
I'm familiar with it. I haven't seen it, but I am familiar with it.

Mikah Sargent [00:22:34]:
That's what I think of first and foremost. Great weird film and definitely talks about the issues with putting an AI chip inside, especially one made by Robert Picardo inside of a.

Dan Moren [00:22:48]:
A toy such a lovable hologram, though.

Mikah Sargent [00:22:51]:
Not in this.

Dan Moren [00:22:54]:
Look, all right, I'm a parent. I'm also, I'm gonna this. I, I don't go out in the limb and say these things are often but I'm gonna to my own home for a second. I, I am a technology expert. I think that's fair to say. I've been doing this for almost 20 years. Do not buy your child an AI powered toy. Just do not do it.

Dan Moren [00:23:15]:
Anything that interfaces with a large language model, it is not safe. It simply isn't. There is no amount of guardrails that can be put on these things. I've spent some time with these chatbots. Mikah, I know you have spent some time with these chatbots. It is actually not that difficult to get around almost any of the things they put in there. I their entire communities dedicated to this. Now granted, you're arguably using it through some sort of different interface.

Dan Moren [00:23:41]:
Right. You may not be be directly typing your prompts in to a, a web browser by using these toys as an interface, but it is clear from this investigation that the companies that are integrating this are not doing is certainly very much extra, if anything, certainly not enough extra in order to take on the extra levels of protections that should be necessary when you have a device that interacts with children. And part of the problem is the fundamental nature of this technology. Trying to eliminate all of the objectionable material in there is like playing whack a mole. Like on an infinite size. Whack a mole.

Mikah Sargent [00:24:21]:
Yeah, yeah.

Dan Moren [00:24:22]:
It's just impossible because you cannot predict every possible query or prompt that's going to get fed into the system. And because the systems are non determinant redeeming, when you give it it the same prompt, it may answer differently depending on any number of factors. Because it is constructing these answers out of whole cloth, you cannot predict correctly what's going to come out of it. And because it is all weighted and based on statistics, there is no really great way to sort of dictate what things are actually off limits or not. The, the AI has no knowledge or semantic understanding of what it is saying. You can't tell it like, oh, don't put anything pornographic in here because it doesn't know what that means. Really. It can, it can make a guess, it can do some statistical modeling, but it's going to miss things.

Dan Moren [00:25:16]:
And you know how we know that people miss things and robots are dumber than people. So again, I look at this story and find it is horrifying but utterly unsurprising to me having interacted with these chatbots for more than five minutes. Right. So, you know, and I'm not, I'm not out here to say that that AI is, is totally bad and it's a thing you should never use and it has no utility, on the contrary. But this is the example of a situation where people who are building this stuff into these things that are designed for children do not seem to have the requisite understanding of how the technology works and what the potential risks are because they are high and they are very hard to stop. Even the best toys in this report still don't come off very well. There are many, many safer options, as they point out. There was a Barbie Like, I don't know, 10 years ago or something that had could respond to voice queries, but it was all pre scripted and so all of the things that came back were from a finite list.

Dan Moren [00:26:19]:
So you can 100% control what's in there, but with AI, all bets are off. Can't do it.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:25]:
Yeah. You just never know where it's going to go. And that's.

Dan Moren [00:26:30]:
Too high, man.

Elissa Welle [00:26:31]:
No, thanks.

Dan Moren [00:26:32]:
Are too high. No, never. I think I would never give an AI toy to my guy, my kid, ever.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:36]:
That's the one thing that the Amanda Silberling who was a guest on the show, did a review of a different AI toy. That bad boy doesn't say a word. All it does is make purring sounds and, and other, like weird sounds. There's, I think whoever was behind that at least had a little bit more sort of understanding of how these things can go wrong. In any case, I am absolutely there with you. These toys should not be provided to children. In the end, Dan, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today for sharing your take on these stories. Stories.

Mikah Sargent [00:27:15]:
If people would like to keep up with what you're doing, where are the places they should go to do so?

Dan Moren [00:27:20]:
Look outside your door? I'm already there. No, I do many, many things across the Internet. You can find my tech writing at Sixcolors Calm. You can find me on podcasts, including Clockwise every week with Mikah over at Relay fm. And you can find everything else I do, including my science fiction and fantasy novels over@demorin.com which is the central clearinghouse for all the things me.

Mikah Sargent [00:27:47]:
Awesome. Thank you so much. We'll see you soon.

Dan Moren [00:27:49]:
Thanks, Mikah.

Mikah Sargent [00:27:51]:
Alrighty, folks, let's take a quick break before we come back with my first interview with Sabrina Ortiz of ZDNet. But let me tell you about Zapier bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. Now, you don't want to give the AI to the kids, but do give the AI to me. And Zapier is one place where I am very happy to have its AI help when I'm working on a zap. That's the automation process that Zapier provides. I'm able to go through. And you know, I can do what I can do when it comes to getting part of an email to show up in a Google sheet document. But there are times where I needed to do more and I couldn't quite figure out what I needed to ask Zapier to look for where I needed it to look.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:36]:
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Mikah Sargent [00:29:11]:
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Sabrina Ortiz [00:29:51]:
Hi, ya'll! I'm super excited to be back with yet another exciting model announcement.

Mikah Sargent [00:29:55]:
Yes. So Google just pulled open the curtain, you know, opened the box with Gemini 3. And one of the things that we saw is that Google immediately moved to integrated into Serpent. I was hoping that you could kind of talk about the rollout here and kind of maybe a little bit about why Google is moving so quickly to embed it in. In the consumer tools versus maybe what we see from some of the other, other platforms out there.

Sabrina Ortiz [00:30:25]:
Yeah, absolutely. Definitely a first for Google to automatically put it in Google Search, but to calm people's nerves who are like, no, not again. I don't really want AI message search results. The good thing is that while they're saying it's in search, it's actually in AI mode, which, yes, it's accessible from the search page, but if you've ever seen it's an extra tab on top. Kind of like when you go to images or all the different actual settings, you have to actually click on AI mode to access it. And also AI mode in Gemini 3 Pro in AI mode is limited to paying subscribers. So if you don't want to have AI messing with your search, this launched won't be doing so. But if you are interested, there are some perks to it, which we could get into later with the highest level things being that it is better at reasoning, which of course means better understanding your query and producing better results as a result of better understanding what you're asking.

Sabrina Ortiz [00:31:22]:
And then also the really fun part, which is multimodality, which I'm sure you'll get into too.

Mikah Sargent [00:31:28]:
Yeah, so that's kind of something that is touched on. It talks about how Gemini 3 can generate custom visual aids and interactive simulations in real time. So, you know, having a better explanation of quantum physics experiments. Can you talk about this multimodal approach? Because I have to say that is one thing that when I have gone to AI for prompts before and thought, you know, I'd like to learn more about this subject, but all you can give me is text. It's kind of a cool idea to think about these simulations. These visual aids can. Yeah. Tell us about that.

Sabrina Ortiz [00:32:05]:
Totally. It's always awesome. Like you mentioned, being able to see not just text, but images or any type of interactive content. But now we're taking it a step further. So this model is the best, or according to Google, and according to the benchmarks, it's the best at coding. So it's actually generating small little coding, small little simulations for you related to your topic. So for example, in what you just said, if you were looking up a physics experiment and you were like, how does this work? It might actually generate your own little simulation where you could click on different things and maybe see the experiment in action and interact with it in real time. Which if you're a visual learner or just somebody who needs to be kind of entertained a bit more than just reading text, this will be a really big learning aid for you.

Sabrina Ortiz [00:32:56]:
So it's pretty cool. You should check out a demo, if you can online or even try it out for yourself stuff we can.

Mikah Sargent [00:33:02]:
Yeah, absolutely. Now, one of the things that, that you talk about is Google facing growing competition from open AI, from Perplexity, because of those companies having AI powered browsers. So how does Google's existing dominance, particularly in search and arguably also in the browser space, not even arguably, like this is the real, real deal. Give the company an advantage? And then is there a difference between Google's approach and the approach of these other companies like OpenAI, like Perplexity, that are doing this AI first browser experience?

Sabrina Ortiz [00:33:41]:
Oh my gosh, that's huge. You nailed it. Like you said, Google has the dominance in the search space, so their game is going to be a lot different than, for example, OpenAI's or perplexities because OpenAI and perplexity. If you're coming to their platform, you're, you're coming because you want to experience these AI tools. If you're coming to Google's platforms, you're going because it's something that you rely on, that you use, that's part of your everyday workflow. That's a huge advantage. Right? Because again, AI overviews how many people every day use it. Again, those are just the summaries that come up on top of search that use AI, use it.

Sabrina Ortiz [00:34:16]:
Not intentionally. It's like, oh, I'm searching something. Oh, that's there, that's cool. But it's also a disadvantage in a way because we've seen seen Google upset its users before because it's like, I'm used to this one thing, I don't need this AI popping up everywhere and especially if talk of AI slop. So it's like a double edged sword. They need to strike a very delicate balance. Which is why I think with this rollout, they specifically made Gemini 3 Pro in AI mode, a paid feature, so that if you are an AI super user, you can access it. But again, if you're just a regular everyday user, your search experience until now will remain mostly unchanged, which I think is a good balance for them.

Sabrina Ortiz [00:34:56]:
Whereas like, you know, OpenAI or Perplexity, when they launch a new feature, they could go completely bullish on it and throw it onto the main page because people are coming to them because they want the AI.

Mikah Sargent [00:35:06]:
So yeah, wow. Yeah, really, really good analysis there. Gemini 3 Pro noted that it topped the LM arena leaderboard. Those are impressive. But benchmark scores, that is though something that you could, you know, walk up to somebody and say, guess what? Gemini 3 Pro just top the Ellen Marina leaderboard and like 1,501 points and you're going, I don't. Is that some sort of fantasy football thing? I have no idea. What does it actually mean for everyday users? Like what, what are the improvements that people should see because of it?

Sabrina Ortiz [00:35:41]:
Totally. So a couple of things there. First thing is, out of the a million benchmarks that get posted, every time a new model gets released, I always like to look at the actual arena leaderboard scores. And the reason for that is that those are determined by people voting. So it's crowdsourced. So people are presented if like, you know, anonymously two different models, they're using it to generate an answer to a prompt and then they select the best one. I think that's truly one of the best markers because at the end of the day. What you want to know how it could be reform on is what you use every day.

Sabrina Ortiz [00:36:14]:
Whereas some of these benchmarks will be like best at PhD level computing. You're like, oh, that's great. Well, I'm never going to use that. That's why I think it's really impressive that it sort all the way to the top there. And then on another front, one thing you want to take a look at is how well it performed on reasoning benchmarks, which of course there's a bunch of them. But again, as we talked about before, reasoning is really, really important because not only does it allow it to produce a better answer, but it understands your intent better, which I think is one of the biggest frustrations people have when using AI. It's like, well, that's not what I asked. If I have to refine this prompt three different times, at that point I could have just done a Google search, found a link and read it myself.

Sabrina Ortiz [00:36:56]:
Whereas now it can understand your intent better. So hopefully that means that off the jump it will just serve you with the best response in the first try.

Mikah Sargent [00:37:05]:
So yeah, nice. Now, Google has gotten a lot of positive feedback for its Nano Banana image stuff. And you tell us that's also gotten an update. What should people expect from this? Just better image generation. Is it better at a particular kind of image generation? What's new now there?

Sabrina Ortiz [00:37:33]:
Yeah, so Google just released its Nana Banana Pro, which is built off Gemini 3 Pro. And as the title implies, there's upgrades, but the biggest ones is that now it generates text with even more improved accuracy. And I, I don't know if you remember even like a year ago using text, using an image generator produced text was the wild, wild west, right? You would try to get it to answer like one word and then it would generate different texts and different. Some things wouldn't even look like letters. Well, now I got to test this today because I was so curious as to if it was actually as good as Google claimed. It could produce not only one word accurately, it could produce sentences, even a paragraph. All right, Spelling right, font consistent. And what's really impressive is that it's connected to Google search.

Sabrina Ortiz [00:38:25]:
So the information that it's pulling from for that text is actually real time world knowledge. So again, you could use it to create infographics or you could use it to do again, learning aids, anything of that sort, which is really awesome.

Mikah Sargent [00:38:40]:
Memes. Use it to make memes. You talk about the Gemini app also getting some updates, some redesigns. There's the My stock stuff folder Enhanced shopping capabilities. I think that that's one thing that Google seems to be doing quite well, which is focusing on consumer experiences and not so much on being this little input output machine. Do you feel like the redesigned Gemini app speaks to that value that Google provides?

Sabrina Ortiz [00:39:18]:
Totally. With the redesign, they were really focusing on making it a neater, cleaner, easier to use experience, which I think is the way to go. Because AI itself could be really overwhelming. It's technology we're all getting used to. We're still trying to find use case, we're trying to find our groove. So keeping it as simple and easy to use as possible is a huge win also because in the Gemini app you can access a lot of these tools, for example, the nanobananapro generator, with certain limits you could access in the app. Same thing with Gemini 3 Pro. So being able to cater to not only really experience users that are possibly subscribers, but also free users who are maybe just tinkering for the first time, keeping it simple kind of makes it even across the board, I think.

Mikah Sargent [00:40:02]:
Absolutely. And then lastly, I just am kind of curious. It seems to be the case that anytime any of these companies come out with a new model, eventually it makes its way into the hands of everyday users who are not paying for the subscription. Do we think that's the way that this will go as well? Or will Google kind of always, as far as you can see, have a separation between the Pro version being for the Pro subscription and the non pro version being for the everyday user?

Sabrina Ortiz [00:40:36]:
No, I think that their reason they're doing it the way they're doing it now is less of trying to make that division. But I think they've learned from the past that it makes sense to collect user feedback and see what the actual reception is, especially from these power users might be more open to it before giving it to all users. And even with, for example, the Gemini 3 Pro in AI mode, or as they were calling it, Gemini 3 Pro in search of, they said that soon, we don't know how soon that means, but it will be coming to all US users. So again they are planning and I'm bringing it to everyone. I just think that the reason for their approach is just to be a bit more careful and again not to throw anybody who might not be that interested, or maybe this is their first exposure to AI off if it's not just exactly perfect at launch and collect some feedback and then roll it out when it's 100% cooked.

Mikah Sargent [00:41:28]:
Thank you so much as always for taking the time to join us today. On the show. If people would like to keep up to date with all of the work that you're doing, you are quite the prolific writer. Where should they go to do so?

Sabrina Ortiz [00:41:41]:
Totally. Well, of course you can find my byline on ZDNet if you want to follow me on socials, on threads and on Instagram is probably where I'm the most active. And that's just Sabrina for an extra A at the end. Ortiz. Yeah, but otherwise, guys, follow me wherever you consume your content: LinkedIn, Twitter, I'll be there.

Mikah Sargent [00:41:57]:
So awesome. Thank you.

Sabrina Ortiz [00:41:59]:
Yeah, thank you so much.

Mikah Sargent [00:42:00]:
Alrighty, folks, we're going to take another quick break before we come back with my next interview. All about a viral pen. And it's maybe not what you're thinking, or maybe it's exactly what you're thinking. You'll have to wait to find out before that though. This episode of Tech News Weekly brought to you by Vention. You know, AI, we talk about it all the time. It's supposed to make things easier, but honestly, for most teams, it's made the job harder. That's where Vention's 20 plus years of global engineering expertise comes in.

Mikah Sargent [00:42:31]:
Because here's the thing, people, the leadership is going to see that everybody else is getting into the AI game. And so then the leadership is going to come and say, we need to get in the AI game. And then your job is to get your company into the AI game. But you're going, where do I start? Where do I end? Where do I middle? What do I do? Vention can help out with that. They build AI enabled engineering teams that make software development faster, cleaner and calmer. Clients typically see at least a 15% boost in efficiency, not through hype, but actual real engineering discipline. They also have fun AI workshops that help your team find practical, safe ways to use AI across delivery and Q and A. So it's a great way to start with Vention and test their expertise.

Mikah Sargent [00:43:20]:
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Mikah Sargent [00:44:20]:
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Mikah Sargent [00:45:06]:
Welcome to the show.

Elissa Welle [00:45:07]:
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Mikah Sargent [00:45:10]:
Yeah, pleasure to have you. So you, you wrote about, wrote about this, this interesting pen that anyone who's been on TikTok may have seen fly by. It's a viral pen for. Well, I'll let you tell us about it. What actually originally caught your attention about this pen and what made you actually decide to buy one and test it out for yourself?

Elissa Welle [00:45:36]:
Yes, absolutely. And a big thing. Thanks to the Verge for letting me do that. So essentially I heard about this from a college student when exploring stories about how AI is changing college. Like what, what is it, what is it like to be a college student in the area of chatgpt? And that led me to this pen and you know, I was hearing stories that there are many, many YouTube videos, YouTube shorts that are ad like but also realistic. Like hard to tell if they're ads, but you know, they're, they, they seem like they're marketing something of these pens that are, are meant to solve the problem of in person paper tests. So if you are, you know, hearing about teachers reverting away from digital tests, away from computers and handing out hard copy paper tests, that is also what I'm hearing from students. And that's kind of in response and in to the era of like, you know, did the AI write this essay or not? You know, is the AI browser or AI agent completing this multiple choice test? So that's what I heard about it.

Elissa Welle [00:46:37]:
And then as I did my own digging. Yeah, there's, there's a whole bunch of them. There's many on Amazon that you can buy. There are many ads that show essentially a paper test and someone taking out a pen, a big pen. It doesn't look like an actual like, you know, Bic pen. And swiping across the page and then looking at the screen and getting an answer. So you might not be able to use, use your laptop, but you can still get AI to give you the answer.

Mikah Sargent [00:47:03]:
Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about how this thing works. Because I see it and it looks like a taser to me. It is gigantic. And I can't imagine, at least in high school, in particular, maybe in a big college lecture, maybe. But I'm just trying to imagine being in a classroom and being able to pull this thing out and not have a such someone immediately go, your pen is lighting up and your pen looks like a taser.

Dan Moren [00:47:28]:
What is it?

Mikah Sargent [00:47:28]:
How's it.

Elissa Welle [00:47:29]:
Your pen is giving you answers.

Mikah Sargent [00:47:30]:
Yeah.

Elissa Welle [00:47:31]:
What are the answers?

Mikah Sargent [00:47:33]:
Yeah. Share them with me, please.

Elissa Welle [00:47:35]:
Yeah, I think in practice it's not, I don't think it's feasible. I mean, I just don't, I don't think it's feasible. But, but then again, I think there's like, when there's a will, there's a way like I would, I'm imagining like a really baggy sweatshirt kind of up the sleeve. I don't know if you really, really crouched over. Like, I feel like there could theoretically be ways to do this, but yeah, the, the size of it is rather bulky. I unfortunately didn't bring it with me into work today, but it's kind of like roughly the size of this remote.

Dan Moren [00:48:03]:
Ish.

Elissa Welle [00:48:03]:
It's like several inches. It's pretty big. So it's not going to be, it's going to be noticeable. I would say that that's, yeah, that's, that's a big limitation of it. But I could WI fi is a Bluetooth. It's WI fi. Yeah. So you can you connect it to the Internet and then as you scan the, you know, the actual mechanisms of it is it's just a scanning pen.

Elissa Welle [00:48:23]:
It reads, there's a camera that's tucked away inside that's kind of pointed towards the page. And so as you Press down, the camera's activated, and the light lights up and it goes across the page and it kind of detects the letters as it goes. The accuracy was. Was laughably low, I would say. It's not. We were.

Sabrina Ortiz [00:48:42]:
Yeah.

Elissa Welle [00:48:42]:
I mean, sometimes they would pick up a whole word, you know, like. Or the earth's crust or something like that, as you're reading a geology question from a high school test prep book. That was one of the examples that we did. And, you know, it reads, you know, several words and then it'll, you know, just totally garble. Some other things will throw in random letters or numbers in there. So it. Yeah, it was. In practice.

Elissa Welle [00:49:04]:
It wasn't. Wasn't so great.

Mikah Sargent [00:49:06]:
I went to school with. I was surrounded by quite a few graphic designers because I was in similar programs with. With them. I originally went to school for advertising. And I remember, you know, you have your requirements for things you have to take, and one of those is like a foreign language. And I remember a friend of mine who was like, okay, we've got a test coming up, and I, you know, you're not allowed to bring anything into the room except for pencil or whatever. And, you know, you can have some water, you can do this, you can do that, and sets the water bottle down on the table. And then I look and the water bottle label, he completely, like, read.

Mikah Sargent [00:49:52]:
It looked like it was, you know, Aquafina or whatever, but it had all these little Spanish words on it in different places, and it was all. Yeah, so.

Elissa Welle [00:50:00]:
Oh, my goodness, that's so clever.

Mikah Sargent [00:50:02]:
Very clever. Clever. And so, I don't know, like, is this. Do you feel like this is harder? I almost feel like this is harder to get away with than that was to do in the first place. But there's always, like you said, where there's a will, there's a way it's going to happen no matter what, no matter which way you go.

Elissa Welle [00:50:23]:
Right. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I'm not in the classroom right now, but I would imagine that the stray piece of paper tucked away in your pocket is still going to be easier than taking out a pretty bulky pen and scanning a page and then, like, hoping the AI. Hoping it scans correctly, hoping you get an answer. You know, I. I imagine that the actual practice of it is still going to be a little bit easier if you go old school. Yeah, but. But the other thing I've been hearing is that, you know, it's.

Elissa Welle [00:50:50]:
While phones are, you know, usually not allowed, I'm guessing pretty much always not allowed. You can still take a quick picture and then upload that to any of the various AI models accessible on your phones, which is like, everything. And usually just type in the quick prompt that says, what is the answer to these questions? And the image will be read. I mean, so there's lots of ways to cheat.

Mikah Sargent [00:51:20]:
Exactly. I'm even thinking right now, because you can set up sort of custom instructions so you could say, anytime I upload a screenshot, ask questions on, answer them for me, which is, wow. And if you've got an action button iPhone, then suddenly you're boom, right there.

Elissa Welle [00:51:33]:
Or imagine you have the meta. You have glasses.

Mikah Sargent [00:51:35]:
Oh, yeah, those glasses.

Elissa Welle [00:51:36]:
I mean, there's. There's. There's other things.

Mikah Sargent [00:51:39]:
Yeah. So what kind of test questions did you try with the pen?

Dan Moren [00:51:43]:
We.

Mikah Sargent [00:51:44]:
We heard about, you know, it misunderstanding some of the letters. But I'm kind of curious, did you ever get any good answers? And if not, tell us about how badly it failed?

Elissa Welle [00:51:54]:
Yeah. Spoiler. There are no good answers. That was not part of the testing process. The, you know, no good answers. The. The mistakes were laughable. Oftentimes what I found to be the most odd aspect of it is that, well, okay, I want to start with this.

Sabrina Ortiz [00:52:14]:
This.

Elissa Welle [00:52:14]:
The menu was in Chinese. I. I don't speak Chinese, so that was a bit tricky. So it required us. Required me taking pictures of the menu and translating those pictures into English to.

Mikah Sargent [00:52:25]:
Figure out what are you telling me you were cheating with?

Elissa Welle [00:52:28]:
Yeah, I was cheating with my cheating pen. Exactly. I was using AI to help me cheat with my AI Cheating pen. Absolutely. And then. Yeah, so then once we. Once we were actually, you know, I mean, you're scanning in English, the questions. And so I tested with math, you know, geology, science, some basic physics, like just general SAT act like prep questions.

Elissa Welle [00:52:50]:
And, yeah, I mean, there was really no. There were no good answers. The fun thing was when it would respond to me with another question. So I'd say, like, you know, what is this? Something about volcanoes? And you'd respond being like, what is an active volcano? And they'd be like, no, no, that. I need you to tell me that. What is it?

Mikah Sargent [00:53:10]:
What's.

Elissa Welle [00:53:11]:
So that was a fun. That was a fun surprise. I didn't expect to get a question back.

Mikah Sargent [00:53:17]:
Is it using a custom model or do you specify the model black box?

Elissa Welle [00:53:22]:
We really. I mean, we really don't know. We're not. I. I don't know.

Mikah Sargent [00:53:26]:
That's amazing.

Elissa Welle [00:53:27]:
Yeah, we're not sure. I would be surprised if it's. I don't know.

Mikah Sargent [00:53:34]:
It's just connected to the Internet and talking to something somewhere.

Elissa Welle [00:53:37]:
Something somewhere.

Mikah Sargent [00:53:38]:
Oh, wow. This is, this is our, I mean, because now I'm thinking about what if you have the, there's so many implications of if this was actually good, what it could end up doing, you know, if you, if you regularly store it with your documents and then it's suddenly like scanning when you're not asking it to and it's pulling information. I know that's a little bit tinfoil hat, but at the same time it's like, yeah, no, this isn't great. We do need to take a quick break. But I've got some more to ask you about this wonderful, delightful and ridiculous situation of people doing this stuff. But we'll be right back with Alyssa Welly, who is joining us today to talk about AI cheating pens that can't cheat and are barely pens. Let me tell you about our our next sponsor, it's Aura, bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. Now, I'm going to grab my little Aura frame here because it's awesome and I want to show it to you all.

Mikah Sargent [00:54:39]:
So this is an E Ink E paper. It's called the Ink, Aura's first ever cordless color E paper frame. Featuring a sleek 0.6 inch profile and a softly lit 13.3 inch table display. Ink feels like a print, functions like a digital frame, and perhaps most importantly, what I'm moving it around lives completely untethered by cords, with a rechargeable battery that lasts up to three months on a single charge, unlimited storage, and the ability to invite others to add photos via the Aura Frames app. It's the cordless wall hanging frame that you've been waiting for and frankly, that I've been waiting for. I was so excited to load photos onto this thing and see it. And you know, I prepared myself, okay, this is an E Ink display. So I'm thinking the photos aren't going to be super great.

Mikah Sargent [00:55:29]:
And then I look at it and I go, wait, how are they able to do that? Well, they used some custom dithering algorithms that they created to improve upon this E paper technology. It's super, super cool with its cordless design, ultra thin profile, softly lit display and paper textured matting. Ink looks like a classic frame, not a piece of tech. See for yourself  at auraframes.com/ink. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. That's auraframes.com/ink. And we thank Aura for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right, back from the break.

Mikah Sargent [00:56:10]:
And we're talking about bad ways to cheat. So in using this pen, beyond the kind of accuracy problem, what were some of the other issues that would make this pen kind of unusable in an actual testing environment? Is it mostly just the fact that it is so large?

Elissa Welle [00:56:32]:
Yeah, I would say the size is funny. The interface is tricky to use. And also. Yeah. How do you get away with this? How do you not have your friends on either side also.

Sabrina Ortiz [00:56:47]:
Yes, claim.

Elissa Welle [00:56:48]:
Yeah, give me the answer or else we'll just be like, like, you know, shocked. Shocked at this process. I think also it gets to the bigger question of, like, you know, how do you. What is. How do you trust something? Right. So if you. If you have a study guide that you've written down the answers for, you get an answer key, for instance, right? And you write them down, and then you go. And you know that's the right answer.

Elissa Welle [00:57:10]:
I think that that feels. It feels quaint and also more trustworthy compared to the idea of, like, accessing the Internet and trying to find the answer and trusting it. There's just something about it that overall is like, how do you. How do you trust if this is the right answer? Let alone the fact that it's probably very difficult to do? Because again, as I have here, this, like, kind of just remote. It's, like, pretty big. Like, I don't understand how you could really, like, bring this in to. To cheat all the videos, make it seem like it would be perfectly reasonable to pull it out of your pocket, swipe it across your page, get the answer, no big deal. No one's going to notice.

Elissa Welle [00:57:46]:
I was going to say anything. That's definitely how it makes it seem. I found it to be more difficult than that.

Mikah Sargent [00:57:52]:
Now, it is a pen. Does it actually write.

Elissa Welle [00:57:54]:
No. No.

Mikah Sargent [00:57:55]:
Okay, I know that.

Elissa Welle [00:57:57]:
I know.

Sabrina Ortiz [00:57:58]:
Bummer.

Mikah Sargent [00:57:59]:
That's. Now, listen, I thought, you know, I'm gonna ask him when I'm say, okay, is it a. What kind of ballpoint is it? I'm not a huge pen nerd, but I'm like a. A sort of pen nerd. Sure. You can't.

Elissa Welle [00:58:10]:
No, there's no. There's no pen. I know. Completely, completely misleading.

Mikah Sargent [00:58:16]:
That's foolish. Now.

Elissa Welle [00:58:17]:
It's really a scanner. It's a scanner.

Mikah Sargent [00:58:20]:
Yeah. Which, I mean, then it's just. It's right there on the. On the box. It says what it. Like, it's not even. At that point, you're not being a secret agent. And then that's not fun.

Mikah Sargent [00:58:30]:
You did speak to some college Students that talked about that kind of simpler cheating method.

Elissa Welle [00:58:36]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:58:37]:
Tell us more about kind of in speaking to them, did you get to talk to them about their thoughts on the, on using this scanner? That is definitely not a pen. And so I can't call it that anymore.

Elissa Welle [00:58:49]:
I know, yeah, the, the AI, you know, pen. But in quotes, I would say that most were amused by it. I think the amusement was interesting. They were all, I would say, you know, just kind of curious to see how, how it would, how it would work. And I think what was most remarkable was just the fact that they were not surprised at its existence at all. I mean, they were interested. It was, it was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Like that makes sense that that's available.

Elissa Welle [00:59:19]:
That makes sense that there's, you know, this type of gadget that seems to claim these different things. Like, I think like that the lack of surprise was surprising to me because I was, I was surprised. I was amused. I hadn't thought of this before. I, I certainly was intrigued by the ads, by the, by the YouTube videos. And, and I was like, okay, I want to try this out. And no one else seemed to share that surprise. And I thought that that was like, okay, well, that's, this, this is how normal it is to think about, you know, how AI is.

Elissa Welle [00:59:49]:
It's just so deeply involved in a student. Students experience at school. It's just, it's everywhere. Right. And so a pen to help, you know, that claims to overcome the limitations of a paper test by being, you know, you're separated from the Internet. Well, here's a, here's a, A pen to help reconnect you to the Internet, to give you the answers. That was like, yeah, totally normal.

Mikah Sargent [01:00:13]:
I have to imagine that the professors are probably also feeling that same way. Oh, yeah. My mean, what, what do you, what would you expect other than this being the case? Well, I guess we will have to see how long it takes for AI scanning pens to make their way to the banned list of items allowed during tests. Right?

Elissa Welle [01:00:34]:
Exactly, exactly. No electronics, including phones. Scanning pens.

Mikah Sargent [01:00:39]:
Yeah, it's on the list. What will they think of next? I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today to talk about this wild and silly topic. I hope we get to see more. Hey, Verge, we gotta see more of these TikTok reviews. Okay? We'd love to see more of that. So thank you so much for your time. If people would like to follow along with the work you're doing, where are the places they should go to do.

Elissa Welle [01:01:03]:
So Come to the Verge. We've got an awesome webpage. You can follow me there and then. Yeah, lots of different socials that you can find on our page as well.

Mikah Sargent [01:01:11]:
Sounds good. Thank you so much.

Elissa Welle [01:01:13]:
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

Mikah Sargent [01:01:15]:
Alrighty folks, that brings us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. Of course the show publishes every Thursday. Twitter TV TNW is where you go to subscribe to the show and audio and video formats. You can also share that link or those links with your friends and family. And of course I should remind you about Club Twit, twit.tv/clubtwit. That is where you can go to become a member of the club. $10 a month gets you access to so, so much great stuff. All of our shows ad free.

Mikah Sargent [01:01:45]:
Just the content, none of the ads. You also gain access to our special feeds. We have feeds for our behind the scenes before the show, after the show. We also have feeds for our live coverage of tech news events with commentary from different hosts and access to our club shows like my crafting corner. I'm currently working on painting some some D&D miniatures as well as Stacy's book club. We've got camera time. We've got so many great different club programs that are all available to you in the club. Again, twit.tv/clubtwit is where you go to check out all of that and be sure to hop on board.

Mikah Sargent [01:02:28]:
We've got discounts going right now as well as that two week free trial. So check it out. If you'd like to follow me online. I'm @mikhasargent on many a social media network or you can go to Chihuahua Coffee, that's C H I A U A H U A.Coffee where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. And of course you can check out my other shows including Hands On Tech which publishes every Sunday, Hands on Apple and iOS today as well. I'm trying to think ahead as we are getting toward the end of the month. Next week no show as it will be Thanksgiving giving. But the following week Abrar Al Heati will be joined by, I guess I should say Jake Ward will be joined by Abrar Al Heiti for on the 4th.

Mikah Sargent [01:03:19]:
So you will have that and yeah, that's that for that. Goodbye. See you. See you in a couple of weeks or in a few weeks I guess. Bye bye!