This Week in Tech 997 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
 

00:00 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Hi, you're watching Twit. I'm Devin Drahardwar. This week I'm joined by Anthony Ha and Padre. We'll be talking about Apple's iPhone 16 event, everything tech-related from the presidential debate and also the crazy high price of the PlayStation 5 Pro Tune in.

00:17 - Leo Laporte (Ad)
Podcasts you love.

00:19 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
From people you trust.

00:21 - Padre (Guest)
This is Twit.

00:45 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
This is in Tech. I'm Devendra Hardwar. I'm the senior editor in Engadget, filling in for Leo Laporte. Got a great crew this week, including Anthony Ha from my sister site. I guess TechCrunch. Hey, anthony.

00:54 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Hey, great to see you, Devendra.

00:56 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Happy to have you here, Love to chat with you, Anthony, because it's like I deeply miss New York, so whenever we talk, I could just envision getting back there somehow. That's the goal at least. And also joining us is Father Robert Ballester. Hey Padre, how's it going?

01:12 - Padre (Guest)
Very well. Thank you very much, Although I am extremely jet lagged at the moment and I'm a little concerned because it seems to have cooled off here way, way earlier than it should have. No, really. I don't know. Yeah, normally it's still, you know, 90 degrees over here, 100 degrees Now it's like 70.

01:28 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
We're seeing things are weird because I feel like right after the heat of summer we got spring. I'm in Atlanta, georgia, and I got spring rains in early August. It's very confusing, and even though we had like 90 degree heat in May or something. So things are pretty wild. I know how is it over in New York, anthony?

01:47 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
It's. We're kind of getting a last gasp of summer. It's like in, I think. I went out for a walk. It was low 80s, Love it, and hopefully it'll cool down a little bit, but it's nice for now.

01:59 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
That's my happy spot, like low 80s, because everybody low 70s. But I know the winter is coming, I know fall's coming Once we dip below 80s it just feels sad to me. We may also have Denise Howell on this episode. We're trying to get her on right now, looking forward to that. But I specifically chose this week because I knew, I just had a feeling that Apple's iPhone event was going to be happening this week and it all kind of like lined up. So I'm the gadget guy you know everybody talks like expects me to talk about all the gadget stuff. I contain multitudes. We'll have a lot of other topics. But I do want to ask you guys we're, you know, almost a week away from the Apple event and everything. I don't think it was a super interesting event on the iPhone side, but are you at all sold or intrigued by the iPhone 16 models or the idea of Apple intelligence in general?

02:53 - Padre (Guest)
I think if I had lower than an Apple iPhone X, I'd be intrigued by the 16, but otherwise not so much. I did like what they did with their watches I thought it was incremental with the earbuds. It's a good event as far as Apple's concerned, but, yeah, I don't see a rush to upgrade, except for the super, super Apple fans.

03:19 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, yeah. Or if you have like a 12, I guess, or 13, like there, I could certainly see reasons Like I. So I upgraded last year and I think part of the reason that got me was like titanium in the pro cases and I didn't think that would be a big difference.

03:32
But uh, I put in an order for a 16 pro and I went to the Apple store. I was like I should probably feel the 16 pro max or the 15 pro max and see what it feels like. It's like a dramatic night and day difference because I've always hated the Max phones before. They always seem too big. So that was a big lift last year for me. This one if you have a pro iPhone 15 Pro you don't even need to upgrade it if you want ample intelligence. So that's the whole thing. Anthony, where are you sitting these days?

03:59 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Well, I was going to say I do have an iPhone 12.

04:02 - Leo Laporte (Ad)
So I've kind of held onto it and held out.

04:05 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
But I mean to be honest, nothing about the announcement made me feel like, yes, I need to upgrade it. It's more like I mean, the only reason, to be honest, is that the battery is kind of on its last legs. So I'm like, well, if I'm going to get a new iPhone, might as well just get the 16. I mean, the camera button sounds cool, but like everything else, it's like sure, Like I'm going to get that one because that's the new iPhone and I need a new iPhone, but I'm not like excited.

04:29
I would say, and and in terms of Apple intelligence, I feel like it is the AI product that I find the least alienating. So I'm like maybe some of this stuff I could imagine using Some of it's good yeah, but I, I, you know, again, it's not like a big selling point. I'm like this is one where I'm open to being convinced, whereas I feel like a lot of other stuff I'm just like ugh, ugh, get that away from me.

04:52 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, I kind of feel the same way about Apple Intelligence. Like I've been covering a lot of the AI stuff so Microsoft Copilot stuff, not as much Google Gemini, but adding Gadget, like we're all talking about it and looking at all the features and everything. I was at WWDC when they talked more about Apple Intelligence and gave the full reveal of it and everything. I've been testing it for the past few months and a lot of those little features like the notification summaries good stuff Email summaries really dig it. There's some enhanced Siri stuff we can test right now.

05:21
I just like the new look of Siri and the ability to send like natural language commands and stuff like that. But I don't know how much of a phone seller it's going to be for anybody, especially since these features are coming down the line. Like the full new Siri. All those capabilities aren't coming until early next year or two, so that seems like a weird spot for Apple right to announce this thing. But hey, we're still doing the homework. We still get to like ship all these products, even though we're gonna be shipping these devices right.

05:46 - Padre (Guest)
I mean, the 16 does have that new CPU, which I do kind of like. I'd love to play with it and to see exactly how well it's optimized for generative AI. So that's I mean, if I was gonna play with it, that's probably what I'd use it for. There doesn't seem to be anything that a normal user would really die for on the 16. But if you wanted to play around with Apple's version of AI, I want to run that hardware.

06:13 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I really do Kind of makes sense. Also, anthony, like just saying Apple called out like iPhone 12 users in particular, like there are probably some good upgrade deals going on. So I feel like if you're in the cusp of that, if you have a 12 or 13, this is probably a good time to just look at what your carrier will offer you for an upgrade, because if you're upgrading from an existing iPhone, there's little chance you'll be paying full price. You know there's a lot of discounts to look into here, so I just want people to do that research and check out what's going on there. I remember when I upgraded last year like they gave Verizon gave a lot for my phone, so I did not expect that stuff.

06:51
Padre, you mentioned that the Apple Watch seemed like a good upgrade this year and I agree To me. I feel like that's the device that kind of stole the show, even though they didn't devote as much time to it. But yeah, apple Watch Series 10, it is bigger screens, thinner design, kind of. It seems like the idea the apple watch is just fully formed, complete right now. That's probably what I'll look to get at some point, right I would really like for them to improve their battery life.

07:16 - Padre (Guest)
That's been a stick because my entire family, except for myself, they're all apple people and they all have apple watches. My father uses it specifically for fall detection but it dies so quickly. I would actually update if they could give me a dedicated all day battery.

07:34 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I feel like that's probably they're working towards it. Do you know which one your dad has now, padre? Oh, I'm not a clue.

07:42 - Padre (Guest)
Honestly, we have such a hodgepodge of Apple devices around the family it's just like, oh, you need something? Well, here I got this in my drawer. Yeah, you get the hand down.

07:51 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I have an Apple Watch Series 4, which still works pretty well, but I'm tempted for that upgrade. Have you gone Apple Watch at all, Anthony?

07:58 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I have not. My wife and my in-laws have it and I think, basically at the point where somebody can convincingly say that I'm old enough that probably I need some of the health monitoring stuff, we're all getting there.

08:13 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
We're all getting there.

08:15 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
People watching the video can see the gray in my hair. But yeah, I'm holding out for another few years. I just I mean partly, I mean related to what Padre was saying, like that I just feel like I don't necessarily need another device to charge right now and I'm like there hasn't been anything that's like totally pushed me to the edge. Like, in general, the Apple Watch I look at it and I'm like this seems cool. If I was going to get a smart watch, this is the one I was going to get, but I'm not convinced that I need it yet.

08:41 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, I totally agree. I feel like when they started adding the features like the crash detection stuff a couple of years ago, me as sort of like paranoid dad was like that would be really great actually If something were to happen and we could get help immediately. Like stuff like that is starting to get in my brain. And then Apple is clearly like all their ads, their early ads, are also really selling that. The whole opening video was like look at how great these devices make our lives. But also saved my life.

09:05 - Padre (Guest)
My apple devices are also so important yeah, on that, um, seven years ago I was I I got a device from ces and I was playing it off as a gag. It was. It's an ultrasound monitor for your bladder for incontinence monitoring and yeah, it's like okay, yeah, maybe use it in a nursing home, and but I don't see this ever taking root. Um, I'd actually like that. Now there's several family members that I would love to give that to them. So, anthony, to your point, it's okay to say we're getting old, we're getting to be old hippie techies. That's just normal, that's how it works.

09:39 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Absolutely, we were expecting our devices to do a lot of cleanup for us. I keep reminded I don't know if anybody remembers this, but there's an anime film called Rogen Z which I think about quite often. It's an 80s movie. It's about basically elderly people who are in these giant robots that are doing all the assisted facility care, and the old people rebel and they take those robots that they're sitting in and basically wreak havoc around the world.

10:04 - Padre (Guest)
But I thought about that a lot, I was like is that us Is that us eventually Is? That all. I probably wasn't the demographic for that film at the time, but I might be now. You said 80s.

10:13 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
This was 80s, it's like an 80s anime movie, oh I love that period of anime, though.

10:17 - Padre (Guest)
Okay, I gotta love it.

10:19 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Rogen Z. I honestly I reference this a lot and I think somebody uploaded to YouTube at some point, so just search it out, people. Classic, classic film, um. But I do think the Apple Watch serves this sort of like. There's an ideal for what you want, for it right, like my. My daughter is in kindergarten now. I'm imagining in a couple years. I'm like I would like her to have some sort of way. I, I would honestly like some sort of location tracking or something I don't want to do, one of the tag things. I do think an Apple watch GPS that is tied to our family accounts and then she could call us if anything happens, like in third or fourth grade, before she would need a phone, like I, I could see the value in that. So I guess, as thing as life gets more complicated, I'm like, oh, this would make life a lot easier, at least alleviate some of that anxiety that I have.

11:06
Anthony, for you, I'm just thinking like yeah if you're on a run in New York, you know and you don't want to bring your phone along like there's a chance, like you could still be in communication with your wife.

11:17 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I think that could be useful. Yeah, yeah, I think, definitely. Actually, probably the use case that's most appealing to me right now is leaving my phone behind when I go hiking or running, and I suspect that will push me over the edge at some point. But right now I'm still doing the awkward armband stuffing the phone into it, which is not ideal.

11:34 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
You're doing the armband. I used to do the running belt. You can stuff it in there and now I'm running in the suburbs. I'm honestly just holding my phone in my hand when I do it.

11:42 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
That is absolute psycho behavior. I do not understand that at all. It's great, it's fine.

11:46 - Padre (Guest)
I'm sorry the two of you keep saying this running thing. What is that?

11:51 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Physical movement outside. Oh, okay, almost touching grass, but not quite.

11:55 - Padre (Guest)
Oh, so like a Peloton, but like in the real world type thing, it's a thing that's good for some parts of your body and then destroys your knees.

12:02 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Is bad for your feet. It's a weird trick we played on ourselves that it's good for us.

12:07 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
You also have to watch out for the giant machines that take over all the roads. Those are all dangerous. Running is a bad idea actually. We should just all be inside all the time. But no, yes, anthony, I am now holding my phone because I feel like the balance of my body actually works a little better when I do that. But I'm not a serious runner. I think you run more than I do, um, but yeah, when I used to wear that belt just did not like the way like leaned my body in one way, but that was the whole thing. Are you guys excited at all about the AirPods stuff? There's new AirPods for. There's AirPods for with ANC, which I'm unconvinced. Without sealing your ears, it would actually work really well.

12:51 - Padre (Guest)
But according to Billy Steele at Engadget, who's our audio guy who did the hands-on for us. He says it does something. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. I guess I had a set of AirPods one generation ago and I actually liked them. They were decent. And then Polly sent me their free 60 plus UC earbuds and I I haven't turned back. Those are. They're more comfortable, they last longer, the case is better. There's more functionality and it's actually cheaper. So so yeah, I mean I'm not an earbud hater, I just I found something that I think for me works a lot better yeah, and that's uh.

13:18 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Poly used to be plantronics, right, correct yeah and then they were bought by hp.

13:22 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Yeah, that's a better name.

13:25 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Poly is always so confusing to me uh, their whole pitch was like uh, we, we, our headsets go to the, go to the moon or our headsets go to space, because they used to produce the stuff that was the astronauts. Oh, that's cool. That was the whole thing. That's a cool company. I hope hp is doing good stuff with that. Um, but yeah, you can get all sorts of good earbuds these days. Anker, you know the cheaper brand that sells stuff on Amazon like is fantastic.

13:49 - Padre (Guest)
All their heads down for great yeah At a great price point.

13:52 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Any. I guess I'm not an audiophile. So I feel like for me, yeah, earbuds are I mean, you know, like Bluetooth, like earbuds are like pretty much a commodity product, and I I do the AirPods because they're easy to use with my Apple devices. But yeah, they're not something I upgrade a lot. It's much more like, okay, when it breaks I'll get a new one, but I don't really care that much about new features. Maybe this is a common theme in me talking about a lot of different gadgets. I will say the cool thing about the cool announcement that was AirPod related, that was I guess I'm going to wait for this. I don't know what's happening.

14:26
Like I started recording and I maybe there's like crimes happening.

14:30 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Who knows, you're also right in front of a window. I know, I know, like your setup you're basically so you're getting you're just getting full pipe of street noise.

14:37 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
This is unusual, like there's sometimes regular car noise, like getting buzzed by a helicopter has never happened before. But well, because the other announcement about the AirPods which isn't like a new device, but was this hearing aid capability which they announced at the event and then a couple days later, I think, the FDA announced that they had approved them for that usage, which I thought was pretty cool For the pros and that's interesting For the.

14:58 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
AirPods. For the AirPods Pros Gen 2. Yeah, some actual medical stuff like, uh, apple said several times, clinical grade, hearing testing, clinical grade, um, basically, uh, allowing to be used as a hearing aid too, and yeah, that approval came. Uh, what do you guys think of that? Because that is an existing device that's been around for I guess a couple years at this point, but it's continually getting upgraded. To me, that is the sort of rare thing that I would love to see more. They're not like just throwing new features there and selling it again at a high price. I'm looking at you AirPods Pro Max, but yeah, the AirPods Pro, I don't know. All these upgrades just seem good to me, seems like a net good for everybody.

15:38 - Padre (Guest)
I mean I like it. I like more features. More features are always better, especially since those are actually decent features, it's not just some glossy extras. However, they run the risk of kind of losing sight of who their audience is. Most of their audience are not looking for hearing aids. Most of their audience don't really care about a hearing test, aside from showing it off. So, hey look, I can do a hearing test on my iPhone here. But I mean I'm not gonna knock them for that, because it was a natural iteration of the product and they are including some additional features and the price point is still pretty stable. So yeah, I mean I've got no problem with it. I don't think that's gonna be used at all.

16:24 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
but it's interesting. I think there's an awareness too from Apple, like a lot of their core audience. The people who follow them for the past 20 years are getting older and a lot of people have deteriorated hearing and just are not aware of it too. So it's a whole thing. It kind of fits into the whole like, oh, if you buy an apple watch, it could save your life. You should probably get an apple watch because it will literally save your life. And I feel like the hearing aid stuff. Um, people, I could see people buying airpod pros for their uh, older you know family members because it could. Maybe they refuse to wear a hearing aid because they hate how clunky they are. I've had family like that, but if you give them here's some cool earbuds but also could do the hearing aid stuff, that could be useful as someone who is taking care of elderly family right now, I would never buy them these, because they would be lost in about 30 minutes.

17:11
Oh, yeah, yeah, that's an interesting point.

17:14 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I hadn't thought about that.

17:15 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, well you know, then you can buy. I've seen these accessories. They're sort of like rope that you tie the earbuds to and you just like put them in, and then people can keep them on their necks. It's amazing innovation.

17:28 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Oh, no, well, because I guess you can put the AirTags on the what do you call it? The capsule. I forget the package but, I, think it's hard to attach them to the actual AirPods if those get dropped somewhere.

17:38 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
They do. There is location stuff, so if you lose one earbud in your home, I've used to like find my app to go around.

17:44
So you get some of that. You do get some of that, but honestly, we make fun, but I miss the old, like the Beats Fit Pro that had the necklace it was sort of like a necklace and then the buds were wireless and doesn't connect to your phone with a cable. But I love just like wearing that thing around my neck because when I was on the subway and stuff I didn't have to worry about, oh, it popped out of my ear and now it's like on the subway floor somewhere. Um, I think that whole as great as wireless uh, you know audio buds are, it's a disaster the minute it falls out of your ear because you don't know what the hell is happening.

18:17
Um, most recently I was on a flight. My case, my airpods case, fell. I picked it up while I was going down the runway and then there was an alert. Hey, we found one AirPod on the entry gate or something. So turns out it was mine and I had to wait for them to go get it. So that wouldn't happen if I was wearing a necklace, damn it.

18:39 - Padre (Guest)
Last winter. So at the Coria, here at the Desert Coria, we actually have access to the sub floors and the underground space under our streets. There's one area that has a big grate just outside of St Peter's, and we haven't cleaned that area for years. So we did last winter and I collected probably 30 or 40 earbuds that had fallen down through grades. They had just collected them and other not just Apple products, like every kind of earbud and little techy, kitschy thing that would fall down through a gate, and so I'm wondering those people knew where it was, they had location on, but they just couldn't reach it. So if I powered them up now, would they show up on people's devices?

19:28 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I think so let's do it now.

19:30 - Padre (Guest)
Let's do it live. This will make the show exciting. That could be a whole series.

19:34 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, once AirPods are coming out, we would often see people just like leaning over a grate, being like oh, it was a very common New York site. I'm like is this really progress? Are we really is this actually a good thing for us, Like losing headphone cables? So I was like unconvinced about AirPods for so long and it took like other stuff from like other companies like Jabra, to make buds that sounded better too than the original AirPods. So I don't know.

20:01 - Padre (Guest)
I'm not normally an earbud guy. I don't like earbuds, I like over-the-ear cans. But it's sort of become the de facto for me when I'm traveling. I can't travel with the big ones anymore because I don't have the space. So I see their use and I guess I've just gotten used to it. But I used to hate putting anything in my ear. I hear you With a passion.

20:22 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I hear the passion and I think, if I'm being honest like I mean I do I think there's a lot of pluses and minuses for my AirPods. I mean, generally, they work very seamlessly and they're great and lovely not to worry about the wires. It's a little bit of a pain, you know, when you're using multiple devices and then, like, Apple is trying to figure out which device to play the audio from. But, like I wonder if I would have made the switch if all of my Apple devices still had a headphone jack. If I didn't need an adapter for my wired headphones, I might still have those, I think.

20:54 - Padre (Guest)
Same for me. When I switched to the Pixel Pro 8, I had to go for earbuds, I had to go for something Bluetooth, but before that I was always using wired audio products. I will say this Apple did change the way that I look at audio products, specifically with earbuds, because the Poly, the Poly series, the Free60, the 20, the whole setup that they sent me, those are the first earbuds I've ever used, bluetooth earbuds that I didn't have to constantly repair because Windows and Android have been notorious for just freaking out on the pairing process. And I know that the rest of my family, which has been using Apple products, they never had problems with that, at least not that they told me about. So to have that seamless experience that kind of gave me a glimpse into okay, you know what?

21:45 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
That's actually something I would have switched to, to the Apple ecosystem just to keep from having to repair every two days, and they basically flicks Bluetooth with a lot of their audio chips and I feel like that is. That is the thing. I want to talk more about this, actually, but let's, let's head to Leo for a word from our sponsor.

22:03 - Leo Laporte (Ad)
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24:03 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
All right, Thank you so much, Leo Padraig. You were saying you don't think younger folks would use a lot of these hearing features and I do think the one thing is the automatic noise protection, the loudness protection, that can at least help save people's hearing when they're going to concerts and stuff. Right?

24:22 - Padre (Guest)
I mean, yes, but that technology has been around for a long, long time and they tend to turn it off, which I mean I've needed it for the longest time I've had hearing loss. I know that, but my thing was more or less. It's like when there was a trend a few years back there was an audio file that people would play to test their hearing and it turned out that it was all bunk. It wasn't a real thing. Of course it wasn't a real thing. You can't account for non-medical grade devices being used for a medical test. So that's interesting and I would do it once. But how many times are you going to test your hearing? I mean, are you going to really?

24:58 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
how many times do you need to do that? Not just the testing, but the automatic, like you're at a concert, it's like you have your AirPods in and it lowers levels, like when loud and outside noise is kept. That could be useful, I think.

25:11 - Padre (Guest)
I mean if they're using it. I would not go to a concert and put earbuds in. That would be extremely counterintuitive.

25:20 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I probably should have done that a couple of times, like I saw sleigh bells at south by once and they have like a 10 stack of speakers. I was right up front for an hour probably lost, lost a little bit there's, that's permanent hearing loss.

25:34 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, definitely did you guys see that, um, jack antonoff.

25:37 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I forget where this was, maybe at the vmas he was. People saw in the footage that he was wearing earplugs and people were making fun of him and he was just like yeah, I mean, why not? Like? What are you objecting to? How dare.

25:54 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Well, it's like the way things have gone, like anti-mask too. It's like how dare you protect yourself? I take personal offense to that. I don't know, I have a set of concert earplugs.

26:04 - Padre (Guest)
I mean, they're specifically designed to drop the level that comes into your ear without changing the frequencies that come through. So I mean that's what I use, but those are completely unpowered. Those are all passive, which means that they're also less expensive and I'm not too concerned about losing them. They tend to be more comfortable because they don't weigh that much. So, again, cool feature and I'm sure at some point I would find a way to use it, but I don't see it as like the killer app.

26:32 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I think they mentioned it would be on by default too, so it's one of those things where people didn't even have to be aware. It's like your, your positive, doing that.

26:43 - Padre (Guest)
Actually it would be, it would be useful.

26:44 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
New york where it's so loud normally right.

26:46
Well, I think also the other thing that's interesting is that I I mean my colleague, brian heater you pointed out that I guess there have been other cases where there maybe has been functionality to start out, as accessibility functionality and the apple watch that eventually became a broader feature, and you know you could imagine these kind of ideas of noise profiles and custom noise profiles as being something that could be for anyone using AirPods. And you're walking down the street and say you're listening to a podcast and you don't want total noise cancellation, you want certain things eliminated, but you want to be able to hear people talking. Maybe you don't actually, but I don't know Maybe there's some things you do want to be able to hear people talking. Or you want maybe you don't actually, but I don't know maybe there's some things you do want to be you want to be able to hear, you know, the honking of a car that's about to hit you or something actually if if they had a fast enough response time to be able to be used as ear protection while I'm shooting.

27:35 - Padre (Guest)
That I actually would like, um, but I don't, I, they don't shoot, shooting guns, or shooting shooting.

27:41 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, shooting, so shooting firearms, you need ear protection 100% need ear protection, but you need those like big boy cans when you're you do you need the big boy cans.

27:49 - Padre (Guest)
But if this is ANC and if it is actually occluding your canal, I don't know, maybe this could be a test.

28:00 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
That's one thing I almost wonder, like like Apple probably has never thought about. They're like oh, people go to concerts, you know, people go to stuff Shooting ranges.

28:08 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Shooting ranges, these users. I bet there are Apple executives who go to shooting ranges, I don't know.

28:15 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
That I didn't know about. Who would it be?

28:19 - Padre (Guest)
There is a shooting range right next to the campus in Cupertino. So I mean they should.

28:25 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
They should. I'm outside of Atlanta, georgia, right now, literally. I looked on my map. There's 10 shooting ranges around my city. That's fun.

28:35 - Padre (Guest)
I think they're required by law in Georgia. Yeah, in.

28:37 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Georgia. That's just how it goes. Okay, I hear you, I hear you guys. I feel like my thing in New York was like, as soon as, honestly, like I was chaining like wired earbuds around me forever, but it was always like one earbud in, like that was my thing, so at least like I could hear everything else outside of it. It's cool to see the tech like just progressing and, yeah, accessibility tech becoming regular tech. That's also really, really interesting to see, and also cool that Apple has done a lot of this accessibility work as well. Anything else you guys want to mention from the iPhone event or just anything else, because there's there's a lot of other news. It feels like every week is a month's worth of news these days because also the the presidential debate happened last week, like within the last week, and we have some news around that too. Anything else from Apple you guys want to hit?

29:22 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I mean, I'm curious what you guys just think of the. It seemed like there's. Maybe this happens at any event, where Apple isn't making a big, big announcement, is there? Sometimes this backlash is too strong, but sort of like a little bit of discontent, just this sense of like. Eh, none of this is that exciting why didn't you change my life.

29:41
Yeah, and is it like? To what extent should we just be like? Well, this is what smartphone launches are now Like. There's not, you know, it's kind of an established technology and and it's unlikely there's going to be any radical change anytime soon. And that's fine. That's what we should expect from the end, versus like oh is like. Is that disappointing? Is Apple in trouble? Is Apple out of ideas? Because I think I'm more in the camp of like yeah, it's fine, that's a smartphone launch.

30:05 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Smartphones have gotten boring, like we're almost 20 years from the arrival of the very first iPhone, you know. So we have seen the stuff plateau to the point where they're all kind of boring slabs and then, hey, foldables happened, you know, and like there is still some innovation there, but Apple's not doing that yet. I feel like the Vision Pro last year was the rare thing where Apple could be like here's a whole new thing.

30:25
Look at what we're doing. And also, people didn't really care because it was too expensive. Personally, I think, like the Vision Pro is like a very forward looking thing and like something meant for developers and professionals, I would not judge that whole category dead yet. But yeah, apple didn't have the exciting new devices here, right?

30:43 - Padre (Guest)
I mean, they kind of painted themselves into a corner a little bit, because their releases have been so refined and their strategy has been so good over the last, I'd say, 20 years that if they don't release something that wows people and radically redefines the market, there's automatically the sense of yeah, they failed and they haven't. I mean, the last radical thing they released was the Vision Pro. It was they swung for the fences. They were trying to make a new market and it failed spectacularly. Well, they can't do that every single year. They can't take that kind of hit every single year. Give them time to try to figure out, regroup and see what the next step is. But there was nothing wrong with this. Yes, we got moderately better phones, moderately better watches, moderately better earbuds, but they're still making incredible equipment. So why are we upset?

31:34 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, we always expect life-changing stuff from Apple too, and there has been stuff that has been very important over the last few years. I think the switch from the Intel chips to their own silicon on computers was like a world-changing thing for them and for the world of laptops in general, and it kind of shifted where Intel and others are going. But that's not as exciting as like, hey, this phone looks better than the other phone or something. Do you remember the?

31:56 - Padre (Guest)
doom and gloom crowd when they announced that they were going to shift away from Intel. There were so many people, even hardcore long-term Apple fans, were saying oh, apple's lost the plot and there's no way a cell phone chip is going to work inside of a PC. And you know, they did it. They did it. So why are we believing that they forgot how to do that? They're extremely good in execution, they just need time.

32:20 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, and I'm not saying that. Also, I'm not saying the Vision Pro is a failure either, like I've been playing around with when I reviewed it. What it is is like it is very much the first iPhone, and the first iPhone was a crappy device it was. It was power, what it had, edge cellular right. It didn't have 3G, that's right. It didn't have an app store, because they didn't even fully launch that.

32:41
It was just like an idea of a thing and back then Apple was able to quickly turn around and be like okay, here's the iPhone 3G, now we have 3G. And then the 3GS was the point where I feel like the app store was there. Things started getting really good and it took a while to get going. Vision is what I think, but like having you know, tested that thing and use that thing, I see the vision, whatever, whatever they're gaming for with spatial computing, I could see how that could be something. And also like we are getting very close to a MetaConnect 2024 where Meta is expected to show up there like prototype AR headset and I do feel like that is something a lot of people are spending billions of billions of dollars to get towards, but but we don't. It's hard to see like what that will actually be like.

33:25
I think the vision pro is a I don't know, a realer uh version of what spatial computing could actually look like um than the stuff we've seen from meta so far. How do you like? Are you guys excited at all about the idea of augmented reality glasses?

33:39 - Padre (Guest)
I'm way more excited by AR than by VR. I mean, vr was always a gimmick for me. It was a game that some people couldn't play, like myself, because I would always get dizzy. But AR, going back to HoloLens, going back to even what Google Glass was supposed to be, that did not end up being. That's what I want. If you can give me a device that would overlay useful information on the real world, yes, please. And if you can make that in something that doesn't require me to carry 20 pounds of equipment, fantastic. So I think there's going to be a breakthrough. I don't know what's going to come through. I honestly, this is one of those, those weird times where a small company could redefine the market by coming up with a missing link and we don't even know what the missing link is yet for good.

34:29 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Ar. That's the thing. Just having looked at this industry for so long, there are rare cases of that. The big screen, the folks who developed this app for just watching movies in VR. They released a headset and it's a really, really nice headset with a micro OLED display and everything. But it's also crazy expensive and it is something for a very, very niche group of VR users. But I don't know if I guess we're in a weird spot, right. I don't know if anybody can come in and be like okay, we have a full design, we could get access to the displays and the hardware. Um, that can do better than the big companies. I do feel like the smaller players are completely shut out of this, because meta has already invested tens of billions of dollars in VR before it has, like, fully taken off for them. Um, we also know, like, um, I'm sure, I'm sure vision pro has taken billions of dollars of development for Apple too, so I don't know.

35:25
I don't know where it's all going to be. Ar glasses do you think, like Padre, is it something you want to wear all day? Is that your vision? Or is it just like something you'd want to have around to wear in the office to help you work? By the?

35:39 - Padre (Guest)
time a commercial set of AR glasses are available, I will have to wear glasses, so I would not mind it being in a set of AR glasses. Yeah, I would wear it every single day. I absolutely would wear it every single day, even if it meant I had to be plugged in while I was sitting down to provide power. Maybe a little performance boost, I would do it. I mean, I see so much possibility with smart overlays.

36:07
Now there needs to be breakthroughs in screen resolution and size. There needs to be breakthroughs in power efficiency, there needs to be breakthroughs in battery technology and, honestly, there needs to be breakthroughs with processing power, because the amount of processing you're going to have to do on every single headset is going to be a significant amount and you cannot rely on being connected to the cloud. But that's coming right. I mean, we're seeing that we're seeing an exponential increase in the type of processing that we'll need for AR. We are seeing companies develop really nice micro OLED screens. We're even seeing companies getting really frugal with power usage. So I honestly think it's just a matter of time. Give it 10 years, 10 years, and I think AR would be everywhere.

36:54 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
MARK MIRCHANDANI but you're aligning it to the point where you will be wearing glasses, so you want that timeline to sync up. Would you willingly now start wearing these glasses just for the ar, because I feel like that is a killer problem for this tech. Like it's, I'm very intrigued by them. I also like vr and everything, but the problem with the vision pro and everything it's. It's a thing you have to put on your head and your face and you have to worry about weight and balance and everything. And even if somebody comes up with like a perfect pair of like hipster looking glasses that can do AR stuff, will people actually want to wear glasses just for that?

37:31 - Padre (Guest)
Oh, absolutely yeah, the advantage is too great to not. If you're a professional and your colleagues are wearing AR glasses and they're getting call-outs, just super simple, super simple names of people in the crowd so that as they're doing their meet and greet and they're doing the networking, they have the name, they have a little bit of personal information that they might have on the person in their personal Rolodex and they can do that meet and greet in a better way. That is an incredible advantage over someone who's trying to just use their memory.

38:01
I mean, that's a super simple thing to do, but that is an insurmountable advantage if you're in a competitive market For sure it feels like.

38:10 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I guess that's for a very specific person, right, Like politicians and celebrities will usually have a handler that will be like hey, this is this person, they did this for you. I could see that. I could see that being useful, but I don't know. Anthony, I know you go between wearing glasses and not wearing glasses, so how are you feeling about this?

38:24 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Well, so I'm wearing contacts, right now. Yeah, yeah.

38:28 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
And, yeah, maybe the AR contacts are, people literally will jam things into their eyes to stop wearing glasses. Although, yeah, I mean I should say I have.

38:35 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
my origin story with contacts was that I mean, I was playing basketball wearing glasses and and my glasses got knocked off and I stepped on them and I was like you know what, as we discussed running earlier, you know there are certain activities where it's better not to wear glasses.

38:48 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
It's true.

38:49 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
And that's why I wear contacts.

38:50 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
It's true, I would be more worried about a straight elbow hitting my contact while it's in my eye and getting glass shards in my eye, but that doesn't happen, right happen, right like the contacts are flexible enough that you don't yeah, yeah, that has.

39:03 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I mean they broke. I mean I once in a while they've like torn and then like oh, fun has some issues, but it's not, they're.

39:07
I mean they're not glass, they're. You know, I don't actually know what the material is, um, but uh, I I think like I like the idea of ar. I mean that is one of those um things that just seems really cool, I it. It feels, like you know, at this point I'm sort of taking it on faith that like there will be interesting use cases, because it feels like everything that we've seen so far, which is, you know, mostly been using phones and there have been like cool examples, I mean you know Pokemon being like kind of the biggest one. Like you know, none of that has like been as engaging to the extent that I would wear it every day, right, but I mean that's that's so different. I think it feels like there's both the hardware challenges and then there's just, you know, what actually does the interaction look like?

39:54
And I mean, obviously a lot of companies are working on this. A lot of companies have different ideas about this, but I mean one of the things I think about was just also the. I mean I think a lot of people think of, were sort of struck by this was like the when, with the Vision Pro, the weird sort of like camera footage of your eyes and just I mean, obviously it's easy to make fun of that, but I think also how that speaks to like this confusion of like. Well, this is a new experience. How do we sort of like do this in a way that feels natural, that it still feels like you're not totally disconnected from the real world, and I think you're going to see a lot of like weird, janky things like that where people try things out and when people are like no, I don't want that. That doesn't seem good, that's not even camera footage of your eyes.

40:36 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
That is a rendering, a 3D rendering of your face.

40:40 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I stand corrected.

40:46 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
It's being projected onto the thing, but still it's weird. It is very weird, but I'll tell you guys this it's like I've tested the Magic Leap AR headset, I've tested HoloLens, and the one that actually has stuff I want to use day to day is still the vision Pro. Like being able to like sit in front of like my MacBook, a computer and turn it into a 200 inch screen. That is like towering in front of me. It's an incredible experience. And also to have that alongside other windows and things happening like the experience they've built software wise and like platform wise is really fascinating. I just couldn't kind of see like Apple eventually moving to something where it looks like a standard pair of glasses and it's not just fake eyes looking at you from a freaking visor. I want to point out the Meta headset that we're expecting. I believe it's called Osiris is the code name. There have been pictures of it. Zuckerberg had it in the background of one of his pictures earlier this year and it looks like a chunky pair of hipster glasses.

41:39 - Padre (Guest)
So I feel like that is what they're going for.

41:48 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, meta is naming their headset after the god of the dead, I think.

41:50 - Padre (Guest)
well, not, that's not the official name, okay yeah, not the official name, it's a code name. Cool, all right, I got it.

41:54 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, I got it I feel, I feel like that's it. Uh, I just literally wrote this thing up in gadgetadget, but it has a code name like that and that's the idea Chunky Hipster Frames yeah, would that be something. Would you guys see yourselves? I've worn thick glasses before.

42:13 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I like wearing chunky glasses. I like thick frames, I think yeah, chunky glasses are okay.

42:18 - Padre (Guest)
I have no problem with the vision pro. I tried it. It's actually interesting, but that implementation would never work for me. The the huge headset with the attached battery pack. Again, you know, you give me a pair of chunky ray bands and, yeah, I'll wear it all day. Uh, here's, we're not there.

42:37 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
We're just not there, right now the headset, by the way, is called orion orion orion okay, that's so much better, better, hey, listen osiris could be really a really interesting view of uh of other things that we don't see in the real world um orion glasses.

42:53
Uh, there have been a couple, so zuckerberg had it in like a you know, in his background background MetaConnect in 2022, he also showed off this like wrist-based device for controlling the AR glasses and the AR experience. So there's a lot of speculation that these things will go together, that you'll be wearing the glasses and do something with your wrist to get this control. Apple's also doing hand gesture control with the Vision Pro, so I feel like that could all fit together. Yeah, which?

43:24 - Padre (Guest)
way would you want to go? Would you want to go with physical controls or physical bands or camera identified motions?

43:31 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I think it's going to have to be both. One thing we have realized in looking at the Vision Pros there was that thing, the Marvel experience, which was kind of cool. But you realize, playing a game or something like a game with the Vision Pro is really clunky because the hand gesture recognition is really slow. So if I'm holding, like, Captain America's shield on a Quest or a VR headset, it feels instant because it can track exactly where that controller is. The Vision Pro does not do that, so it feels really really clunky and slow. So I could see the advantages of having both maybe sell the headset and then have the controller separate for the people who need the additional interaction stuff. You know, Okay, that's fair, that's fair Anything. Okay. So that was Apple and we're going to have a lot of thoughts. I'm sure people will be talking about it on Twitter. For a while. We did mention the presidential debate I'm sure people will be talking about on Twitter. For a while. We did mention the presidential debate and a couple of things came out of that.

44:25
Right after the Harris the Harris Trump debates, Taylor Swift officially endorsed the Harris-Wallace campaign and also mentioned that AI imagery that was used by the Trump campaign was one thing that pushed her towards being very, very open about her, towards being very, um, very open about her choice and her, her commitment to like as a specific candidate. I just found that kind of interesting. This is certainly not the first time, um, you know, an artist has responded to like AI versions of themselves, but this is like a very um I guess the term is F around and find out, right, Like the Trump campaign did this thing and used this image without her approval and did it just to show like hey look, this image says Taylor supports us. That's good, right, and the immediate repercussion there is that she's like no, no, thank you, and also screw AI. And I'm very clear about who I am supporting. Thoughts on this.

45:29 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I mean I wouldn't necessarily. I mean I can't claim to know what's going on in Taylor Swift's mind, but I mean you know she did endorse Biden in 2020. And I think there was an assumption that she was going to endorse Biden slash Harris at some point during this campaign, and she presumably timed it for the debate already. So I think also, what the AI thing did was also give her some cover, because I think there's often this question of like oh, artists, why don't you just shut up about politics? Who cares? Just let us have our own opinions. And so by saying, well, because of this AI stuff, I need to step out, not because I, you know, so excited to hear my opinion, but because there's been this misrepresentation. So it's not me telling you how to vote, I'm just telling, correcting the BS that's already out there. I'm not, I'm not saying that that's not true.

46:13 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
It's good cover.

46:14 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, but it also gives yeah cover, essentially too.

46:17 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I agree. I agree it's good cover and also I'm not a big Taylor Swift fan. Whatever her fans can love her, I can understand why she is super popular. But one thing about not really coming out and supporting a specific candidate in 2020 did rub me the wrong way, especially when it's like we kind of saw how things went with the other guy. No, no, she did. She supported Biden in 2020.

46:38 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
But see, this is also the interesting thing she endorsed Biden. It was closer to the election and I think the other thing was that in 2020, Taylor Swift was an incredibly popular artist. I think in 2024, she's the most famous artist in the world. Person in the world? Yeah, For a variety. You know, I think because of like Eros tour, because of like the Travis Kelsey relationship, I think there has been this fixation on whether or not she was going to endorse Biden in a way that didn't really exist in 2020.

47:08
Because when that speculation started. I was like, wait, did she endorse Biden in 2020? I had to go back and look oh, I guess she did. I don't know if that ever really registered.

47:15 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
It came really late, because I remember the run up to it being like what are a lot of the major artists thinking? And she was not saying anything for a long while. So there's that. I agree with you, it's cover. But also it does seem like I'm sure she's pissed. I'm sure she's pissed about having her in there. Yeah, I wouldn't be happy about it either.

47:32 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, there's an angle to the story, which is, I mean, she's a very savvy person, so of course, she's known about the development of AI. She's seen a lot of the fakes. I'm sure that her people are keeping her abreast of that, but it seems like the thing that really ticked her off was that there was no official announcement from the Trump campaign of this is AI. Please stop doing that. We don't need more disinformation. I think if they had done that, she would have stayed quiet. She would have done the same thing that she did in 2020, which is wait until right before the election so that it couldn't be seen that she's swaying. This was you know. Yeah, this is FAFO.

48:10 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
This is an incredibly popular woman. But, also specifically the Trump campaign, like using it too. It was like you couldn't even wait for them to deny it because they were like they saw this thing happen and like, just posted it.

48:23 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
So yeah, so I get that. And you saw what Trump posted on Truth Social today, right, yeah, he did All caps. I hate Taylor Swift.

48:32 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
He's not mad.

48:33 - Padre (Guest)
Don't tell everyone, I'm mad online At least he's not threatening to impregnate her and take care of her cats. So I mean, I guess, that's a plus.

48:44 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Is the right wing okay? I don't know about any of this. Also, out of this too, immediately after the debate, there were a lot of immediate conspiracies that Kamala Harris was wearing an earpiece disguised as earrings, and this was really fascinating to see too, because it's funny to see, like a, I guess, something like this just like come out of thin air, you know, and just form. It became a thing like a lot of people were talking about by the morning. The debate ended at like 10.30 pm Eastern. By the morning. This became a very regular thing a lot of people were talking about. It was specifically people thought they were using Nova's H1 audio earrings and we covered this in Gadget and it's like these devices don't even exist.

49:31
They're not similar, but also they don't exist. This company doesn't seem like has actually ever shipped these headsets. Their Kickstarter page seems like it's just dead. Yeah, she's just using expensive nice Tiffany earrings, but nothing like an earpiece. Just fascinating. We also pointed out this has happened for pretty much every Democratic debate. Going back to Obama, there was rumors that Obama was wearing an earpiece, that Biden was wearing an earpiece, that something was happening, that it could not be, that the Republican candidate was losing against this person. So I just find that kind of funny.

50:05 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I don't know, yeah, this is less tech related, but I mean, the other rumor right was that she'd gotten the questions ahead of time which were, like, what secret was hidden in those? Yes, you will be asked about the economy. Yes, you will be asked about immigration, like you know, I think not to like give me getting a little bit into a tangent, but just the. I think, yeah, the earpiece thing has less to do with tech and more, just like you know, frankly, like somebody had a really bad debate and people were desperate to come up with excuses.

50:36 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
How dare somebody be prepared for a debate with very, very obvious questions that would be asked to them at that debate? Let's wash our hands of this a little bit and let's go to Leo for another word from our sponsor.

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52:33 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Okay, enough of politics, let's get back to something we can all agree on. The PlayStation 5 Pro is $700, and I think that's insane. That's just wild to me. Yeah, padre, thoughts on this thing.

52:47 - Padre (Guest)
Okay, so yes, it's a lot of money, it really is a lot of money, so much money.

52:52
Yeah, it is so much money. However, I am of the PC Master Race generation and I will spend three times as much as that to build my perfect rig. So I mean, I'm not going to hate on it. I will say that between the $700 PS5 and the sub $700 top-of-the-line Steam Deck, I'm taking the Steam Deck every single time. Sure, I mean, yeah, you can say, well, but Sony's got the games. Well, if you've got the games and you've got the regular PS5, you don't need this. They keep talking about how they're going to add textures. Textures haven't really changed in the last five years. The quality of the game and how it looks and plays hasn't really changed in the last five years. So this seems to be a refresh that is only appealing to the people who want bragging rights, which I hate. Only appealing to the people who want bragging rights, which I hate. Brag, brag, brag, brag, brag.

53:41 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
BRAG, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag that whole generation. Like everybody's saying, we'll have 4K quality graphics, we will have things like ray tracing, we will have 60 FPS. The problem is you can't get it all at the same time. Right, the first run of Xbox Series X titles and PlayStation 5 titles all have the performance versus quality choice. You could have the quality setting.

54:19
When I played Spider-Man, miles Morales like, you can have nice ray tracing um, better lighting, better textures and stuff. 4k rendering um, it wasn't always 4k, but you could have the ray tracing 30 fps. But if you get rid of the ray tracing, if you get rid of the large graphical load stuff, you can play a much smoother 60 fps version of the game. And it makes a huge difference for spider-man, where you're swinging around the city and you want to, like, you want to move quickly, you want to move smoothly, like. I felt the difference there and I think that was one of the first things that really cooled me on this entire generation.

54:53
It's like we were supposed to get 4k gaming with a 60 fps. I never thought that was totally possible. Uh, I'm more of a PC gamer, but I'm like a practical PC gamer, like I'm. Don't need me some 4K, just give me 1440p good 1440p, but a good frame rate, a good, solid frame rate, and also get me the graphical stuff that you can fit in alongside that. Anthony, is this all Greek to you? Do you understand why? Like what do you even like?

55:18 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I mean the only part, the. I mean the only thing with numbers that I understood was $700, which is, you know, not, I don't know. I mean it's less than an iPhone. I will say, since Padre brought up a Steam Deck, I will say, the other times I've been on Twit and console gaming has come up. I've just been like embarrassed that I have nothing and now I can say that I do have a Steam deck, yeah, and I'm very happy about that. Wait, did you get one of the discounted units? No, I did not. No, I got. Uh, it was what was. I can't even remember what. The upgraded the, the, not the new generation, but slightly better the old.

55:56 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, because they've got the, the 500 gig gigabyte decent model for like $350. Now that's insane.

56:04 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
That's crazy. Yeah, with the old LCD screen, with the old correct, that's still a good screen, still pretty. I think that was an IPS screen, still good stuff. But yeah, my thinking is like this PlayStation 5 Pro it's not for everybody, it's certainly for a very niche type of PlayStation player, but also, it's been four years since the PlayStation 5 launch and it just feels like I don't know. Okay, you get a better GPU. I'm also surprised they didn't. Really it is mainly a GPU upgrade. In many ways I don't believe it's a CPU upgrade. So you're running a better GPU on essentially the same CPU. Seems weird to have that essentially four years later.

56:44
A couple of other things Doesn't have a disk drive, so I feel like you can buy it separately. Yeah, you can buy it separately for a lot of money, but the pro level player who would go for something like this would probably also want a disk drive too. So this is not really a $700 device. This is that money plus the cost of the disk drive. I have to look that up again, but it's it's more than I'd want to pay for standalone disk drive.

57:07 - Padre (Guest)
Um and keith's 512 in the uh in the discord room is saying that it's still not 4k, it's upscaled. So they're just using the gpu power to upscale. Exactly so, and actually I remember at the very beginning when, when the rumors of this version was coming out, there was a whole group saying that, oh, it's going to support 8K, native 8K. I'm thinking that's there's no possible way. Are you out of your minds?

57:32 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
It's a. I mean it's a they. They did say it would support 8K in some instances. I remember 8K was a thing that was on the box. The test pattern.

57:39
It will support an 8k. It will support a test pad once we start talking about super high resolutions. Yeah, yes, folks, it is clear. Uh, yes, this is not native 4k rendering. This is. There's no rtx 4090 in this system, is? It sounds like it's a higher level um amd gpu. That's happening now like a newer, newer version of amd's hardware. But also you know what amd's hardware has been really bad at Stuff like ray tracing, stuff, like playing in 4K natively too. So just kind of rough. I mean it's the best console experience somebody can buy. So I can understand that. I see a lot of people saying, oh yeah, you could build a gaming PC for close to that. Not really, not really, because the GPUs you really want to buy are like $500 to $600 a month.

58:26 - Leo Laporte (Ad)
Yeah, exactly.

58:27 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
So that's $500 to $600 for a GPU, $300 to $400 for the CPU plus everything else. So you're spending $1,500 to $2,000 for a good, good gaming computer. Basically, and I can see the appeal here. It does make me wonder do you guys think like the PlayStation 6, whenever that appears, I guess this almost sets a new baseline price. Like I would not be surprised if PlayStation 6 was just like hey, $600. That's what we're doing now at the very least. Right, they've done it before to. It didn't work out well for them before, but you know.

58:59 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Well, I have a sort of a basic question, which is has there been sort of that Pro kind of tier or model for previous and has that price difference been roughly the same?

59:09 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
There was a PlayStation 4 Pro and there were also, like the newer, the Xboxes as well.

59:13 - Padre (Guest)
The Xbox One X correct the Xbox One.

59:15 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
X? Oh, right, of course, yeah.

59:16 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
So that did happen. They did have a slight premium, but they were. The pro was like 400 bucks, right like it was not, we did not get past 500. So yeah, yeah, this is, uh, this is a whole new territory. It reminds me of, like I don't know, the 3do era. I remember that thing. That thing was 700 in the 90s awesome?

59:34 - Padre (Guest)
yeah, I don't know, if awesome is the word I'd use, but I remember I mean 700 in the night, awesome in the sense that they were literally taking the hardware out of arcade machines and dropping it into your living room. It wasn't an emulation, it was no. That's the hardware, Just put it in there. That's why it was so expensive.

59:48 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Just put it in there. I mean, yeah, neo Geo was that for me, like I could see why Neo Geo was expensive.

59:53 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, I think whether or not this becomes the new price point is going to depend on how Microsoft and, more likely, Nintendo respond. If they look at this and they say, hey, if people are willing to spend 700 plus on a top tier PS5, then the next Nintendo Switch, Uber, Duber, whatever they're going to call it is going to go for 600. And Microsoft releases their next Xbox and it sells for a thousand.

01:00:23 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
So that will that will will determine whether or not this pricing point is sustainable.

01:00:25 - Padre (Guest)
I don't want to. I don't want to be there. Exactly, we are definitely creeping and I don't want to dump all over the console heads. If, if you play PS five games and you love PS five games, this will be a better experience. And if you've got the cash, it will be. But I the cash, it will be, but I mean as a casual gamer, there's no, no well as a casual gamer.

01:00:44 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
You have so many other better options now too, like if you want to dabble in pc gaming, get a steam deck.

01:00:48
You can hook that up to tv, dock it to tv and still have a pretty good experience. Um, you mentioned a couple things, a couple of things there, padre, like uh, there is a new xbox series x which is six hundred dollars. Uh, has a two terabyte drive, but also is is just an Xbox series X in a slightly sparklier color. I believe is the thing. I don't think Nintendo will ever do this. I think Nintendo is a company where I'm looking like I could see a hard line for them 400 bucks maybe, like maybe creeping up to that point. But the PS5 pro is not going to be a system for everybody. I don't think anything past 600 is going to be for everybody. And nintendo's whole pitch is like you know we're, we make a thing that everybody yeah it's family gaming, everybody can buy it.

01:01:28
I still I bought the oled switch like an idiot because I wanted the best looking switch games that I how do you like it?

01:01:34 - Padre (Guest)
how do I?

01:01:35 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
was thinking about it. I love it. I love it. Listen it's. It's way too expensive and also, we are going to learn more about a new Switch, hopefully soon, but playing, you know, tears of the Kingdom on an OLED screen. Playing like any of those games where there's so much bold color and everything Like. I'm an OLED fanatic, so if you put OLED in something, I will probably like lean towards getting it.

01:02:00
OLED just looks better. But yeah, I could see Nintendo going to 400, but never cause they're not chasing the same hardware, they're chasing a whole different vibe of like we want portable gaming meets, meets actual console gaming. I could see Nintendo doing some weird stuff, maybe being like okay, it's 400 now, but also the dock adds a little more graphical power, or something.

01:02:20 - Padre (Guest)
the dock adds a little more graphical power or something.

01:02:22 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
That's the show. Title Put an.

01:02:24
OLED in it. Put an OLED in it, baby, sold, sold. But I do feel like for the Xbox and for PlayStation, yeah, $600 doesn't seem like it's that out of the question. It should be, though it really should. We got to stop, stop, stop. Gpus are expensive. Like stop. Gpus are expensive. Like you know, gpus are expensive. You know hardware has gotten more expensive the processing, the actual ability to even create these tools. You know this hardware. It's harder now, like it's harder to ship this stuff. They're aiming for finer nanometers now, like the actual design process of these chips is tougher. Now, the actual design process of these chips is tougher. So I guess, realistically, I buy that more than games creeping up to like $70, $80.

01:03:14 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
It also just makes me wonder if that as prices creep upwards you start to see more tiering as well and you get more basic console pro and then maybe there's an additional level above that to get the really high like big spenders. I can see that we kind of have that I mean.

01:03:27 - Padre (Guest)
There's the mobile gamers, so the people who only game on their phones. There's the people who are using Steam to play games, like me, which is casual, casual FPS, mostly strategy and RTS type games. And then there's the sort of the Twitch players, of the real first person shooter players, who are going to go for the consoles. So yeah, I mean we. I know where my, my comfort point is. I know the type of machine and the type of hardware I need and I do not need top of the line. It's fun when I get to review a top of the line and I get to see how, see what all the candy looks like when I turn it on. But that's not my gaming experience. So and I know that about myself I don't need top tier graphics, I don't need a crazy frame refresh rate, I just need a game that's going to engage me for 20 hours.

01:04:12 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
And in that case Steam Deck works perfectly Like Steam Deck's hardware is again AMD hardware too, I believe. Right, so it is. It plays most of the games um anthony. I'd recommend to you, uh, tactical breach wizards as a great game to look into wizards it's a great fiction game. It's a world where magic is like real, and also they use it for military stuff. And it's a tactics game too. So that's my shout out for the week what kind of games?

01:04:37 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
do you like? Um, I mean mostly old adventure and rpg games. I mean I've I've spent like 150 hours now in balder's gate 3. That that's been. What kind of games do you like? I mean mostly old adventure and RPG games. I mean I've spent like 150 hours now on Baldur's Gate 3.

01:04:47 - Padre (Guest)
That's been my gaming this year. Are you like a Sim SimCity type person?

01:04:51 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I'm Civilization more than Sims.

01:04:53 - Padre (Guest)
Okay, if you like Civ, look up a game called Oxygen, not Included by KLEI K-L-E -I, it's always on sale. Just try it. Play it for 10 hours and see if it catches Just an easy 10 hours, just play for 10 hours.

01:05:12 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
10 hours is like one day I'm very happy with my Steam Deck. I will say that now I am starting to be like maybe I should get a console, because you know now that people are like I know, devinder, you never gave up on Blu-rays. But now I'm like, oh, shoot, yeah, I guess I should have like Blu-rays and I don't want to just buy a separate Blu-ray player. Maybe I should just get a PlayStation.

01:05:31 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Maybe I mean they're going to get cheaper. Well, actually no, they raised the prices. So, uh, shout out also, anthony, like shout out to disco Elysium. I feel like that's a game I've probably recommended to you.

01:05:51
That is up your alley, like old school adventure games with great writing and stuff. Um, just just good stuff. Uh, let's see here. There was also a story which I feel like has not been reported that much, but Facebook admitted to scraping every Australian adult's public photos and global privacy director Melinda Claybaugh, if this was a thing, they had to press them and they eventually admitted like yes, yes, in fact we are doing this, and also because Australia is not tied to like the EU's privacy rules, they didn't have to offer an opt out option. Thoughts on this, guys.

01:06:48 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
It just seems like this is everything we hate about, like AI creation and I'm pretty sure that says Australian adult in that headline because it's the, you know, a story from ABC Australia. But I think, you know, most American adults are included in that group too and I think, basically, just except for, like, people in the EU who opted out, it basically includes you and I mean, in some ways, this was something that it wasn't exactly a surprise in the sense that Meta had already basically set forth scraping all your public content, but I think this was the most explicit they'd been about kind of just how extensive that was. I mean, I'm not 100% sure that they've actually. Well, I mean, I guess there's no reason they wouldn't have. I mean, it seemed like to a certain extent, they were saying like yes, we believe we have the permission to do all of that and we're going to do all of that. I don't know how much of that has actually happened already.

01:07:44 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, I feel like a lot of these companies too. Like everyone's talking to Google, like, hey, what is how much of YouTube? Are you training Gemini on folks? And there's a lot of controversy around open AI. You know training things around YouTubers as well, the excuse we hear from all these companies like hey, hey, we can't build these AIs if we're not just taking your content right. We really need to build these AIs and I'm thinking no, no, actually you should at least be paying somebody.

01:08:13 - Leo Laporte (Ad)
Worst excuse ever.

01:08:14 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
We're open to this. Yeah, Thoughts on this Padre.

01:08:18 - Padre (Guest)
Look, I'm in the EU and basically we all opted out. That's why Meta has not deployed any of its AI scraping in the EU, because they know that it's a legal minefield. I have stopped posting anything to any Facebook property Instagram, facebook, whatsapp, all of it For what? I think it's going on 10 years, 11 years now, and it's precisely for this reason Because I know, no matter what they say, no matter how many times they say they're going to respect our privacy that at some point, they're just going to do what they want to do, and it's too late. Post facto, I cannot stop them from training a model on my data, so they don't get my data, and I think that's really the only thing we can do.

01:09:06
There's going to be congressional hearings about this at some point. They're going to get dragged through the mud, their PR department is going to have to work overtime and it's going to go back to normal. The only way it's going to change is if people us, the users stop giving them what they want, which is our content, and at some point, all social media users are going to have to do this with all social media services. It's like we want you to be in business. We know that you have a business model that requires you to sell our content to advertisers. However, there's a red line that you cannot cross or you will pay and right now there is no or you will pay. It's if you cross this red line.

01:09:43 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Well, we're going to make you stop for six months I agree, although I would push back slightly and say I mean the fact that the example you used about the eu does suggest that. You know, I know there's a lot of different opinions about how effective a lot of this privacy regulation is in the eu and what the unintended consequences are, but it has caused Facebook to change its behavior, at least in that region, and so I think that some level of government regulation I think you know in other countries, in the US, I think is appropriate. Even if we don't necessarily have a lot of faith in the people who might write that legislation, it's a start. I think the other challenge is that, as every company, every major tech company, wants to become an AI company, there's this question of well, ok, where do you draw the line? And you said you haven't posted to any Facebook property in a while, and I think that's laudable.

01:10:38
But then there's the question of well, ok, we're going to post this video to YouTube. Like, is Google going to train? Laudable, um. And then, but then there's a question like well, okay, well, you know, we're gonna post this video to youtube. Like is google, is google gonna train? You know, and I don't you know, as a somebody who's in the content business. So, like, I don't like that, but, like you know, does that mean we can't post to youtube and you know, ad infinitum? I think I think it's good for people to be conscious of where they post and to, you know, not support uh platforms that they think are doing shady stuff. But I think also, like, if you want to be online, like on some level, you're probably going to be posting somewhere that is probably going to be fed into an AI training machine, and that doesn't mean we can't be mad about it. That doesn't mean we can't try to do something about it, but I think it's tough to figure out exactly where to draw the line.

01:11:20 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
It's a sad reality, I guess, of where we are right now, Just like the countries were not fully prepared with privacy legislation for this stuff too, Like the EU has been doing a lot of this work for a while now. But related to this, Ed and Gadget also covered the story about Australia's prime minister basically following the idea that they want to ban social media for children. Facebook and a lot of other sites are already. You have to be 13 or older to use them, but I think the thinking here is like for also for kids between 14 and 16, like perhaps there should be a way to institute that as well. Do you guys think that is a potential, or at least a potential thing to help kids from I don't know the worst of these social media sites? Or is it just kind of useless because everyone's going to be all their friends are going to be using them anyway?

01:12:04 - Padre (Guest)
You know there is. I am very, very concerned about any issues that are around childhood development Because we all know we know for a fact that those early years are extremely important for the skills and the social relatability that individuals will develop into their adulthood. And we already know that the screen generation, I won't say have been harmed. I will say that they react very differently and they interact very differently. So this is okay for me. I don't think we know enough to say which way it has to go.

01:12:40
I would bring in someone like Larry Magid know enough to say which way it has to go. I would bring in someone like Larry Magid, who has been working on safe children environments on the internet for what? Two decades now. You need people like that who actually understand the issues that are at play. Should children restrict their use of the internet? Yes, they should. Should adults be involved with what their children see and don't see on the internet? Yes, they should. Should governments be involved in making sure that parents have the tools to be able to do that? Yes, they should, but right now nobody has a solution that you can look at and say, oh, that's the way. I do laud the Australian government for getting at it. But right now, this whole thing because I've been following this pretty closely this seems more like this is something that people will like, so I'm going to say it. It doesn't seem like it's something that I'm doing, because I've got a good plan to deal with it.

01:13:32 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Yeah, Not too, surprising there. The other thing I do wonder about and this gets into areas where, just because I'm not a social scientist or a psychologist, it sort of can be hard to kind of pull things apart. But I am wary of I think sometimes there can be this tendency just to blame social media for everything, and so I think it's trying to hold these truths of. Yeah, it does seem like there's evidence that social media can be very harmful, particularly to kids, who are emotionally vulnerable already. But at the same time, all this stuff happens in a context, and I think to part of the point Padre was making. Is this just saying that you wanna kind of blaming social media because that's something that you can either A this will never get passed, or it gets passed because it's easier to solve that than maybe some of the broader societal issues that are also, you know, creating emotional distress in children?

01:14:33 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a convenient thing to say just ban social media. But also I'm thinking like I have family members who are teenagers now and high school is tough. High school, middle school, is tough. I cannot imagine going through that and also having to deal with the hell of Instagram and everything. Very happy. I went through a lot of that in the mid-90s as the internet was budding up and also social media was not even a thing. But even then they were always furious about the internet and meeting not even a thing. Um, but even then, like there were always fears about the internet and meeting people on the internet and oh, it's so terrifying and scary and I think a lot of those fears were always a little over oversold too. But we also know that social media, especially like a company like Meta that knows like Instagram, is harming teenagers and didn't very little to stop that. Um, yeah, just does not make me feel very good about it in general.

01:15:24 - Padre (Guest)
I will say that I have taken to regularly taking weeks off of social media and I know that hurts my following, I know that hurts how much engagement I get, but I feel so much better after I do that Seriously. At first it was one of these things like, okay, I'll try it for a week, I'll try it for a month, and now it's oh, you know what. I'm going to spend the entire summer offline and I've had some of the best times in the last two decades because I've done that. So if I, an adult who kind of understands how the internet's working and where the toxic stuff is, can benefit from taking a break every once in a while, how much more could a young person who's still trying to figure those things out benefit from taking a social media or internet holiday every once in a while?

01:16:14 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
For sure. I guess we can think about it like letting kids drive, letting kids drink, almost like letting them willingly do something that could harm them. It's funny. It's funny how that even works.

01:16:25
I'm thinking just about the idea of news in general too, like the news that kids are exposed to these days. My five-year-old daughter was just getting ready for school one day and she heard the line they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats. She heard that and I don't listen to news around my kids too much because the world is on fire and also they will just hear how bad everything is, you know. But she heard that one specific line. She was like what, what, what is that? And she was like who's that guy? She immediately said that guy should be banned. I think she got that word from Minecraft videos because she's a big Minecraft head. Right now we're like no, no, no, sophia, she, he's running for president, so he cannot be banned. And she just said to me, five-year-old, she's like I don't think he should be president. That's the only exposure she's had to him, so but anyway, it's. It's weird how media works for kids. It's weird how social media works too, um, when it comes to the ai stuff, by the way, let's let's take a step back to here.

01:17:22
I want to point to an article that I really enjoyed from Christopher Mims over at the Wall Street Journal. He wrote about what is AI best at now improving products you already own. I'm interested how are you folks actually using AI these days and AI tools? We're still waiting for stuff like Apple Intelligence, but Copilot has been around for a while. I know a lot of specific programs have AI, you know, powered features. Is there anything either of you guys actually like to use that is AI powered, or are we just like waiting for it to get better?

01:17:54 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I don't, and I mean I mean Apple intelligence was the first one where I felt like, oh, maybe and again it's what Mims is talking about is like, do you go somewhere else or do you just? Does it just make the experience of a product that you actually use better? I think that you know I played around with ChatGPT. You know my favorite thing is always just like typing my name into it and seeing what it says about me. What does it say? I mean it just pulls some Google results, but it's usually pretty flattering, so I like that. But I think it never. I mean because it seems like a lot of times the most common example I see for ChatGP is people using it as Google, which is again, I just think it's absolute psycho behavior.

01:18:41 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
That is not what it's absolute psycho behavior yeah, that is.

01:18:49 - Padre (Guest)
I hate that bing. When I use bing, if I accidentally scroll up too much, it automatically goes into co-pilot. I'm like, oh stop, I don't want that. Okay, so I actually do. Have you use cases. Okay, we have been using a generative ai on on the uh, the AV side to create copyright safe images that we can use on some of the articles that we publish. Okay, especially when we're dealing with art and religious art.

01:19:11 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
That we need to post about. When you're saying we, you mean the Vatican.

01:19:15 - Padre (Guest)
Yes, yes, vatican and the Desert Courier. I've also been part of a small team that is looking at ways of safeguarding academic integrity in our institutions of higher education specifically our universities.

01:19:30
I've been working with a professor over at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles to develop curriculum that is AI resistant, because they're all very worried about students just using generative AI to write essays and submit work. So we came up with a couple of different strategies that actually seem to be working, specifically asking students to use generative AI to write about the subject, the topic, the thesis that they're working on, and then they personally have to go back and they have to critique what that generative AI has written about the subject, using what they actually know about the subject and the sources. What we found was that while AI is very good at generating stuff, it's not very good at critiquing that stuff, so they can't use a different AI to then write the stuff that they need to write in the critique of the original AI. So those have been things that we've been doing. We've been using AI and we've also been working on ways to defeat the use of AI, and I think that pretty much sums up the Catholic Church.

01:20:37 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, I want to hear more about this and also tell you guys what I'm doing these days. But let's head back to Leo for a word from our sponsor.

01:20:43 - Leo Laporte (Ad)
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01:22:16
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01:23:28
Experts exchange is a place where experts go because they have a need of a desire to help you. It's a place you can go to get that help back. Experts deserve a place where they can confidently share their knowledge without worrying about a corporation stealing it to ensure shareholder value and humanity deserves a safe haven from ai experts exchange. Join it today. They're so confident you're going to love it that they're going to give you three months free, no credit card required. That's right 90 days free. Visit e-ecom slash twit to learn more. E-ecom slash twit to learn more. Experts Exchange. They never left and they want you back. 90 days free, no credit card required. Left and they want you back 90 days free, no credit card required. E-ecom slash twit. Leave the ai guys behind. Get some real help from real people. Experts exchange now. Speaking of real people, I believe we have an entirely real panel today on twit devendra thank you, leo.

01:24:29 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
um, I want to show you something I've been using that I have found like to be surprisingly helpful, and that's Descript, which is the podcast editing platform.

01:24:39
Oh yeah, and it's one of those things where I started using it. I've seen a lot of people talk about it. I'm perfectly fine editing audio on my end. It's something I've done for a long time. It can be tedious, it could be annoying. I'm not an audio engineer. For the Engadget podcast we have a real producer who does a lot of the real audio engineering work, but sometimes just got to get audio out there and I want to sound good and I found Descript to be really like the stuff it does. We once recorded an episode and somebody literally had a jackhammer going on outside their window and we all thought like this is unusable, we're not going to be able to do anything here. We put the source audio through Descript and it has a studio filter that does a good job of making even crappy mics sound better, but it also has really good noise reduction capabilities and it essentially just like muted that out. Wow, like well, or could you pretty well like you could tell there wasn't really clipping.

01:25:42
You could tell there was occasional distortion of like it doing some leveling work, but it's listenable in a way that I thought it was like stuff I had to just throw out immediately before. So I think that was the thing that immediately sold me on that platform. And also the transcription is pretty good too. I used to use Rev for hiring human translators or transcribers, but I also read a lot about how badly that company treated its human workers. How badly that company treated its human workers and a lot of us stopped supporting them after that. I think Descript and also Rev is using AI transcription now too, but the idea that Descript is just running this audio through its AI engine and getting pretty usable text. I still go in and do some quick edits, but that saved me literally hours of my life. So it's allowed me to get transcriptions up for episodes. It's helped me with interviews, stuff like that. That's how I found to be useful. So for the people who haven't used the script before.

01:26:43 - Padre (Guest)
I tested it. It actually looked promising, but I saw an early version that I didn't think was ready for use. It basically turns a video into like a Word document, so you've got the transcription and then you can cut and paste and move things around and it will do all of the video editing. I did not know about the audio improvement it does that for audio too.

01:27:02 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
So essentially audio projects can be done in the same way. You can edit a timeline if you want to, but you are basically just editing like text. So it makes non-audio engineer. It makes it easy for non-audio engineers to essentially make stuff too.

01:27:17 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, that's very cool, very cool.

01:27:19 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, I don't want to sound like an ad for them. There are occasions where sometimes the tools just crash and things don't always work out so well, but I've been able to like go to an event, record stuff with the voice memos, to be honest, run it through Descript so it sounds like halfway decent and publish it.

01:27:34
Publish that interview within an hour of doing the interview. So it's sort of empowering in a way, and I think that's what Microsoft and Apple want to think about when they're talking about AI-powered programs. But stuff like ChatGPT, stuff like the Copilot Search which is powered by ChatGPT I just don't see to me. That seems far less useful and the idea that you can't really trust it just seems like a pretty search engine that you can't trust. That is less useful to me. Ai imagery I could see using it for blogs and things like that, if you just need to put content out there. But I do think that stuff is still we're still trying to figure that out too right. It's giving you copyright free images, right, like images where you don't have to worry about it. But also they built their entire platform on like existing copyright that they're not paying for. So it's.

01:28:22 - Padre (Guest)
It's one of those weird things right now I mean if they could build in a generative ai tool that would allow me to fix things that I messed up in recording and like, have me saying things that I didn't actually say, but I could type it that I 100% would use, rather than having to reshoot when I mess up. Okay, I'm sold.

01:28:42 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
That's tough for video. Um, yeah, I mean, I don't know like one thing, uh, I was able to like uh descript as like AI voice generation. So there's a point where I like had to. I wanted to retake a word and I just like I trained the little voice model on myself and it did the ai voice and it sounds like decent. This is like one word that I sort of garbled and it sort of fixed it and made it work well. So it's not a perfect platform. I'm sure there are others out there. That's just the one that's kind of worked for me and as a as somebody who's been working in audio and knows how hellish and how hard it is to edit audio and to make audio sound good, to have a thing where I could just throw it into this mysterious AI engine and have it just work. It's kind of miraculous, okay.

01:29:23 - Padre (Guest)
Devendra and Anthony, I want to ask both of you this We've all done our own editing. We've all kind of obsessed over our final product editing. We've all kind of obsessed over our final product. Early on, when you were doing voiceover recordings, would you go through in your, your, your software of choice and remove all your breath noises and like remove pauses. Would you, would you like spend an extraordinary amount of time just kind of perfecting stuff that people wouldn't be able to hear in the final product anyway?

01:29:51 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I used to, but then I realized it actually makes it sound worse, it makes it sound inhuman in a way. Yeah, yeah, if you did that, too perfect. It's too sterile, too perfect.

01:29:59 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Yeah, I usually remove the filler words which I'm sure that people have been listening to.

01:30:05 - Leo Laporte (Ad)
I use a lot of ums and ums and ums, but I don't.

01:30:09 - Padre (Guest)
there you go, but I don't normally remove breathing sounds, unless it's really loud or if I'm coughing. I was so, so self-conscious about breathing sounds and you're editing with cans on and so you can hear all those things and I'm like, oh my god, I sound horrible. And the funny thing is that the people who would listen to it both versions they say we can't tell, we don't hear that Because we're not listening on headphones, we're listening on speakers. It doesn't make a difference. Oh, sorry, that was a tangent.

01:30:37 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
No, no, I mean, I totally agree and that's something you learn as a human right, like oh, you think the perfect is removing all the extra stuff, but it turns out our ears in many ways. I've heard from people that they actually prefer it when they hear the breath and they hear the full, the full, like you know you actually constructing words and things like it feels a little more natural to them and I get that.

01:31:01 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, Now you know it's a human, because there's so many videos out there that are using AI voices or computer voices that you know, until they start adding breath noises into those AI productions. That's kind of our key.

01:31:15 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Great, now you're giving them ideas. Exactly this is their next upgrade.

01:31:22 - Padre (Guest)
Generative breath sounds.

01:31:24 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
It's. Listen, I'm not going to say it again, but there's a bunch of stuff that the script does and you can literally choose the length of the pause between a word that you edit out. Does the automatic like, um, you know junk word stuff too, so I would recommend taking a look at it. I don't know how it works for video stuff, um, but for text or for just plain audio is good. It even did a good job of, like, putting show notes together. Um, I just like it can do that. Um, I like writing my own stuff, but it did a pretty decent job of doing timestamps and show notes of stuff too. So, yeah, how?

01:31:57 - Padre (Guest)
good is it at transcription of other languages.

01:32:02 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
That I don't know Because I do so much of that.

01:32:04 - Padre (Guest)
That's like half my day.

01:32:06 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
And that's another thing where AI could be useful too, because it is running through translation engines and stuff too. I'll try that. Thank you, try it. I've not done. I've not done much like translation stuff through that. Uh, in other news, uh, we also saw the first successful commercial spacewalk, private spacewalk by Polaris Dawn um, using SpaceX's new EVA suits Um a billionaire new EVA suits. A billionaire Jared Isaacman and a few SpaceX engineers went up and were able to perform that walk earlier this week. And also we saw this morning they landed safely back on Earth. I wasn't following the story too closely, but just seeing the video and seeing the fact that they are also using cool-ass sci-fi spacesuits, it's one of those things that makes me think sometimes an Elon Musk project can be good. It's not him directly involved in SpaceX, but it is his money, unfortunately, yeah.

01:33:04 - Padre (Guest)
I am more interested in the spacesuits because that has been a sticking point for space exploration for the longest time. It's difficult to create a suit that will both protect the astronaut and allow them enough mobility to be able to do fine motor work. So if he's created something that has that extra flexibility, fantastic. Right now the gold standard for EVA suits belongs to Russia, because they use a different system. They use a chrysalis system, where you don't put on the spacesuit, you kind of get into it.

01:33:36
It's basically a miniature spacecraft and they close the hatch on you, and I love those because they're so easy to get into and out of compared to a NASA or a SpaceX suit. But I mean this is one of those places where more innovation is better. Hopefully they can steal ideas from one another and no one's going patent crazy. Because, yeah, unless we've got a good way to get in and out of spacecraft between spacecraft and do repairs outside of spacecraft, we're still orbit bound.

01:34:05 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, yeah, most definitely. I think, from what I've read, these suits have to be. You know, they're tied essentially to life support stuff, so they're not like fully self-sustaining suits. Um, still pretty good. It's still pretty good. It's like an old style of way of the way we used to do space suits. Um, but still like these, these folks, this billionaire, they did manage to go further than any human has. In what, 50 years away?

01:34:28 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
from basically, except for the moon missions, right yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:34:31 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
So that's pretty wild Thoughts, anthony, because I know you're a sci-fi guy, you're a sci-fi author. I am. What are?

01:34:36 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
you thinking here? I mean, I always feel a little bit mixed about this because I do think that science fiction this is one of the areas where science fiction has sort of a mixed maybe to a certain extent has something to answer this sort of fantasy of the kind of heroic, you know, ceo, who's going to lead us into space. And on the one hand, I, you know, generally I think the work that SpaceX has done is good and I'm excited for what they're doing. But I think that this idea that you know, all the excitement in space exploration is in the private sector, the idea that, like Elon Musk is some kind of hero, I definitely don't subscribe to. I don't, you know.

01:35:15
There's something about the idea that, well, the fact that you know Isaacman was able to do the space work because he's rich, that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But you know, at the same time it's really great that after 50 years we're back out there and we're able to do this. And I also don't want to minimize his accomplishment that I mean, he did his spacewalk. That's really cool, and even if he sort of paid to do that, that's still cool. So, yeah, I feel conflicted. I mean, ultimately, I think on its own it's good. It's like a very exciting thing, especially after you know with the Boeing stuff that there's kind of a setback on space exploration, so it's great to see things working. I don't necessarily think of it as much as like a SpaceX versus Boeing thing.

01:36:08 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Although obviously SpaceX at this point has the better record, those poor Boeing astronauts are still stuck up there.

01:36:12 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Yeah, but it's cool, I mean, it's exciting. I mean I think to me my hope is obviously like that we have, you know, probably public programs that are really pushing and going out to these sort of new frontiers, and then presumably, yeah, it'll be private enterprise. That kind of comes in and, you know, turns it into something every day of comes in and, you know, turns it into something every day.

01:36:38 - Padre (Guest)
He did do something that I am so happy happened, um, and that is because it went 1400 kilometers away from earth, almost 900 miles. It did pass through the van allen radiation belt, and for years the conspiracy theorists have been saying the moon missions must have been fake, because you can't get through the van allen belt without killing your astronauts. And so now it's like, okay, well, here you go, here's one more checkbox you can take away I mean I'm sure those folks will be like, oh, this is all staged to come on like there's, there's no way.

01:37:05
There's no way arguing with them.

01:37:07 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, it's just all it's all, it's all gonna happen. I mean, I I still think like, uh, we've seen like several um nasa missions that they're planning for mars too, like they're more robot focused, they're more focused on, you know, rovers and other things like that too. And the older I get, I'm like it does seem crazy to be sending humans to space. To be honest, like I do think we can accomplish more sending robots, but uh, I don't, I don't want to kill the dream, I don't want to be the bad guy in interstellar I'll kill it like yeah, mars is stupid mars is such nobody wants to be a martin, listen if elon musk wants to go to mars, because he really seems to be, please you can go, he can go, show us, pave the way, show us how mars is they have?

01:37:46 - Padre (Guest)
all these scenarios? Oh, they're going to terraform the planet. It's like okay, look, yeah, terraforming. Sure you want to send a bunch of nukes to melt ice? Okay, that's fine, but remember, the planet has no magnetic field, which means any atmosphere that you make is going to slowly bleed away.

01:37:59 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
And you'd have to live underground.

01:38:01 - Padre (Guest)
You'd have to live in underground to avoid the radiation, because there is no magnetic field that's going to deflect high energy particles away from the surface. The surface itself right now is so permeated with poisonous crystals that when they melt you're going to die, unless you have a completely isolated life support system. It's far enough away from the sun that you're not going to get enough power through solar cells typical solar cells to do daily operations. So anyone you send is going to die almost immediately. But other than that, I'm sure it'll be fun.

01:38:31 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, mars sucks, mars sucks. Fully agree.

01:38:34 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
There was a great piece in Defector I think it was this past week. That was basically just like we're never going to colonize Mars, and I still hold onto the dream, not out of anything rational, but just I think it would be great if we did. Probably not, definitely not in our lifetimes, but I do think that fundamentally. Yeah, I think the future of space flight is going to be much more robotics driven than it is going to be by humans.

01:38:57 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Like robots, may colonize Mars within a couple I don't know hundreds of years. It's going to take a chunk of time, but maybe that could happen. But yeah, sending people there seems like suicide missions because we can't get them back. The moon makes much more sense.

01:39:09 - Padre (Guest)
The moon makes much, much more sense, and that actually could happen before.

01:39:17 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I die. Yeah, maybe it'd be something like maybe we will eventually get commercial flights that people can actually afford. I don't know, that would be kind of cool. Anything else on Polaris Don guys, it's cool.

01:39:30 - Padre (Guest)
I love the mission. Good styling, good styling. The suits do look good. I love the mission Good styling, good styling.

01:39:33 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
The suits do look good. I can't I cannot deny that the suits look like what I had imagined, like anime spacesuits would look like, uh, as I had imagined them as a kid. So sure, yeah, I'll give him that.

01:39:44 - Padre (Guest)
I kind of want to make my own Polaris Don spacesuit. Uh, for the next, next DEF, next Defcon. It looks pretty cool, I mean.

01:39:50 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Halloween is right around the corner, so I don't know.

01:39:53 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
How are we going to test it out?

01:39:55 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
How are we going to test out?

01:39:55 - Padre (Guest)
That's a good question, just walk through Rome because the air here is it smells so bad You're going to want your own life support.

01:40:03 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Why is that?

01:40:04 - Padre (Guest)
It's just from from the weather at this point, when you have a city that's this old, with a significant homeless population things don't smell great in the summer.

01:40:16 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
It's a New Yorker, I can relate.

01:40:18 - Padre (Guest)
Actually.

01:40:18 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
New York. You're from New York, you know this it doesn't smell great. Summer in New York does not smell great.

01:40:23 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
There's a reason a lot of people leave New York, but you know what? I still miss all those things. We have a fun section that's going to come up towards the end of this. Uh, I would love some pop culture stories from you guys, but, uh, thank you both for dropping some stories in our doc here too. And, anthony, you put in something that I thought was really cool when I read it from 404 media. It's about right to repair for your body. It's called um the rise of diy pirated medicine. This is a story all about four Thieves Vinegar Collective, this sort of hacker group that is hacking medicine at the basic level. They've come up with software that can sort of copy the chemical pathways that official drugs can, but also have the tools to make things themselves. This is fascinating, and I do feel like more so than like transhumanist stuff where people are like going to be becoming part robot. I feel like this is the thing that could potentially save lives, but it's also kind of dangerous too. How are you thinking about this, anthony?

01:41:27 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I think Padre actually put this in Okay, go ahead.

01:41:31 - Padre (Guest)
No, I mean, I was just talking about I was. I went through a phase where I was absolutely fascinated by everything. Crispr, you know, the genetic editing tool. As you should be, and then I was fascinated by that Chinese doctor who actually used CRISPR on a baby to make them resistant to HIV and was thrown in jail for many years. So it and he's out of jail now and he wants to continue his work.

01:41:56 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
And he says he doesn't regret it. He says he doesn't regret anything he did, doesn't regret it at all.

01:42:00 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I'm with you. Steampunk, sci-fi we've all got the whole cyborg fixation because it makes sense. It's kind of something that we think we can obtain right now with the technology that we have. But editing the body or provoking particular responses when we want them, that is amazing to me. That's the stuff of sci-fi that we can actually do now.

01:42:27
The fact that I can selectively turn on and off genes within my own biological makeup, I love that. I understand why we have a lot of caution built into that industry. I understand why we do things like tell doctors that they cannot continue with research because there is such a huge potential of turning stuff on that will have extremely negative effects, of turning stuff on that will have extremely negative effects. But but yeah, I think as technologies like CRISPR become accessible to honestly regular Joe's just right with even a modicum of knowledge of how to use it, it's gonna happen. It's. It's not a question of if it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. It is becoming so easy to modify genetic makeup that within the next generation you're going to have people who are going to be as interested in hacking the human genome as they are in hacking consoles 10 years ago.

01:43:26 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
It's fascinating. The potential is fascinating too, but I think if anybody has ever seen the anime series Fullmetal Alchemist, uh, things can go bad real bad you know, okay, yeah, little little chimera here and there.

01:43:40
Um, I do. I do think this opens up entirely new like pathways and things that are dangerous. But this specific story is cool because they're just like pharmaceutical companies are charging way too much for things that are really really cheap to make. And what if we just literally open sourced the code and gave you the way to build these tools, things that could save your life? There's drugs for hepatitis C, I think they were talking about, which costs thousands of dollars to take per day, and if you just get it done cheaply, the idea Anyone having a glandular problem.

01:44:09 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, that's something you could turn on and off. Imagine, okay, this is my dream scenario. Someone develops a CRISPR technique that allows me to swap the taste of sugar for the taste of celery, so now I think celery tastes sweet. I mean, my goodness, I'd be healthy in a year.

01:44:30 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Well, I mean, isn't that essentially what the stuff like WeGoVee and the new weight loss drugs essentially? Just reduce your appetite, reduce your ability or your desire to want things, and that's immediately led to you know it leads to weight loss. It leads to better health effects. I know there are potential side effects that people are worried about and we need to see the long-term effects of these things. But also, like, those drugs feel like miracle drugs. And also, you know what doesn't support them in America Most health insurance companies, you know. So you can go to a lot of sites and pay hundreds of dollars or buy them, you know, at full price. But for the people, like for people who do not have access to those things or who can't afford it, like these miracle tools are, are just right there within their reach and they're just so expensive. I see the potential here. Anthony, as a sci-fi person, is this something you've ever thought of, this sort of idea of biohacking?

01:45:22 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Of course. Yeah, I've thought about it. I think I mean two things come to mind. One is definitely, in general, we're just often very, very bad at predicting effect on complex systems, and one of those complex systems is the Earth's environment and the other is the human body, and so I would definitely do not want to be at the cutting edge of any of this stuff. I can be way behind. But obviously, yeah, the you know the medication examples that you talk about seem really compelling. I also think about, like you know, when AIDS was first, during the AIDS epidemic, you know, I think there were a lot of people who were sick, who were very much like fighting so that they could be trying all these experimental drugs in order, and they were like, listen, I don't, you know, like, I understand that there's a huge risks here, but like, what have I got to lose? And so I think, specifically in those situations where you know the other outcome is probably death, like by all means, like, yeah, like go to town to get access to everything that you can, why not?

01:46:24 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
That's when people right now are like, very much like, if you're facing some sort of terminal illness and there is a trial drug, a lot of people are desperate to access those trials and potentially see if it helps, because what could you lose at that point? So, truly fascinating. This is a great piece and do you want to shout it out because I think 404 also 404 media has been doing great work. You know they're a uh, yeah, a co-op media site. Uh, run entirely on subscriptions and just really dig their stuff, and this is a great follow-up to like the sort of work those folks were doing over at motherboard the yeah, the vice site. So it's cool. We've got a lot more news to dive into, but let's head back to Leo for another word from our sponsor hey guys, just want to interrupt a little bit to tell you about one of my favorite sponsors, mint mobile.

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01:49:30 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Devendra. All right, thanks so much. Leo Anthony and Padre, you both put in a lot of great stories for us to discuss in this episode. I'd love for you guys to shout out like what are the ones that are most interesting to you right now?

01:49:42 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I think for me the Flappy Bird controversy.

01:49:46 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Flappy Bird guy yeah.

01:49:47 - Padre (Guest)
That's a good hit. Yeah, that's a good hit. That's a good hit.

01:49:50 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Yeah, that's a good hit.

01:49:54
So this is a situation where there was this group calling itself the Flappy Bird Foundation that announced there's a new version of Flappy Bird coming soon, but they were a little bit mysterious about who they were and, to be fair, they never claimed that the original developer of Flappy Bird was involved, but just this morning then then he posted and he said I have nothing to do with this, I'm not involved, I didn't sell anything, because apparently what had happened was he trademarked Flappy Bird but then some other company, basically a couple years ago, filed to have his trademark terminated because he hadn't done anything with it for almost a decade.

01:50:31
Wow, and so the people that he, when the Flappy Bird Foundation says, hey, we, we bought the trademark to Flappy Bird, that what they mean is that they bought it from this random other company that took it from him. And and he also said I hate crypto because they're sort of, if you dig around, not the public part, not the publicly linked to parts of the websites, but parts of the website you can find on Google there's definitely pages that reference crypto. So he said, oh, also, I hate crypto. And so I think it's very clear that he is not happy about this and I think that partly because obviously there's so many Flappy Bird clones that came out when he took the game down. So really, the idea that this is the official Flappy Bird game, it really just means that they bought the trademark, that's all it means I do like.

01:51:20 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
The ultimate thing we've learned here is that the Flappy Bird creator remains cool as hell not supporting crypto, so that's cool that he took a step back because the internet just got so bad. That's just wild, though, because I saw the trailer for this thing. The announcement seemed really polished, like hey, we've got Flappy Bird's back, we've got new characters, we've got all these modes, we've got all these different things. It seems like a really polished and well put together game. So I do wonder yeah, I don't know, have we heard anything else about, like, what is up with this, the company or this version?

01:51:50 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I mean they have, they may have money.

01:51:51 - Padre (Guest)
It doesn't mean they don't have money, yeah they just don't have the original developer involved, which I mean there is something so meta about a story about a developer who created a legendary game that overnight became a phenomenon and sparked almost its own genre now, not almost sparked its own genre within gaming who removed it because he realized that what it had become in a capitalist system online was the worst and he didn't want to expose the world to that. Who then, years later, sees that this business online and a capitalist system is the worst, and it just sort of reinforces the reason why he took the game down in the first place. I want this guy to have all the monies. I really really do Like you said. He's cool as hell and he did it for the right reason, and this cash grab, just it. I think anyone who knows, who realizes this is what's happening, would just hate this company into the ground so I do wonder yeah, are people just going to fully reject this?

01:52:57 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I don't know, like, how? How evil is this company if they just bought the trademark? We don't know. There's a lot of things we don't know. Um, I in general also don't like supporting crypto things. But, yeah, dong wen, good luck to this guy, like I hope he. We have not heard from him in a very, very long time too. For the first time since 2017 was his tweet responding to this whole controversy. So I'm sure he made some money, you know, from the original Flappy Bird, but from what I remember too, like the sort of abuse he got from people after the game became so successful, like people were really snarky and negative to him and he just didn't want to be a part of that at all. That was part of the reason he just kind of left. So, okay, we'll be keeping an eye on Flappy Berg. Padre, any of your stories you want to really shut out here?

01:53:40 - Padre (Guest)
kind of what. The Microsoft story, just just because this is something that we spoke about a lot after the whole crowd struck thing happened. So you had Microsoft who, back when that first happened, was reminded the world that in 2009, the EU made them grant low level OS access to security vendors. Basically, saying anything that a Microsoft product would have access to, a third party needs to have access to, that directly allowed this to happen. So when CrowdStrike sent the bad update to Falcon, it was because it had access to a very low level of the operating system that it allowed them to brick so many systems around the world. So what Microsoft was trying to do was to say let's remove that, let's remove that. And there was an immediate backlash both from the security community on the internet and even from Twit listeners who were saying no, no, no. Any third-party vendor needs to have this access, it doesn't matter if this happened. This once, this was a fluke, et cetera, et cetera.

01:54:40
Microsoft seems to now be sort of striking a conciliatory note here. They're saying we want to remove low-level access. However, we're going to design security sensors, hooks into the OS so that third party security vendors can still scan what's happening with the OS. They can still prevent things from being changed that shouldn't be changed. However, they will never again be allowed to do what CrowdStrike did. This is still very early days and this is a very early proposal. They kind of have an idea of how they're going to make this work, but this is something I've been wanting for the longest time, because Apple has done this with their operating system for generations. Now, right, and it makes sense, with an operating system that is run on so many computers around the world, to do this. Am I crazy here?

01:55:33 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
No, I totally agree. I mean, I can understand why developers would want to continue to have access to this, but CrowdStrike was a disaster, like one of those things that's like, oh man, the internet, like our entire infrastructure right now, is just like really hanging on a couple companies Like my local Starbucks like like couldn't take credit cards, like a bunch of businesses walking around my town. It's like, oh, infrastructure is just dead because of this one company had a one hack and it affects a lot of things. So I'm sure Microsoft is pissed. I saw that this news came out of a no press allowed security summit that was held this week that I have not heard much about too. So now, that's interesting.

01:56:16
I do want to hear more about what happened there. I think, like we joke about how bug filled and how open and how like insecure Windows is. Like it. To me, taking away this access just makes sense. Maybe give people hooks to have more control there, but I'm not a developer, certainly not a security engineer too, so I don't see the upside to allowing that. Padre, like any thoughts? Or, anthony, like is there anything you've heard from your travels why Microsoft would want to allow this?

01:56:48 - Padre (Guest)
I mean, I guess.

01:56:49 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
That was great. Sorry, I was going to say I mean I'm also not a developer or security professional.

01:56:54 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Seems bad. Seems bad to give developers this access.

01:56:57 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I understand that, you know, I mean just in general, right, the philosophically that's that they've wanted to just get, you know, be the more open platform in a lot of ways. And so if, traditionally, this is just something they've provided access to and they're like, oh, this is just something they've provided access to and they're like, oh yeah, maybe not, like, maybe they're more, we realize now there are more downsides than there are upsides. That totally makes sense to me, that maybe they yeah, it made sense before, maybe it doesn't. It's become clear that it doesn't really make sense anymore.

01:57:26 - Padre (Guest)
I can play devil's advocate to my own position. Sure, because as a developer, I would also say wait a minute, you're making me trust that Microsoft is going to give me enough hooks into the system so that I can do what what I need to do to develop my XYZ product. That could be a very uncomfortable position for a security vendor, especially since Microsoft also makes security products. So they could argue wait a minute. Microsoft's giving their own products more access than we have. Therefore their functionality is greater.

01:57:57
I get that, I totally get that, and I understand that that's a concern. And I get the fact that a lot of people don't trust Microsoft Totally. I'm on board, but to leave it open like this, it has always struck me as something insane. None of our systems here at the Korea and at the Vatican were affected because we don't run third party software. We actually trust Microsoft systems. Plus, we've got security gateways around our networks. That's the way that we've decided to do that, because we don't like any software using those low-level hooks. I mean, nothing uses that on our network because we see it as such a massive security hole. But if I was a developer and Microsoft said trust me, we will always allow you to develop your software, I probably wouldn't trust them.

01:58:52 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
That's true. I'm sure, like security software, people are just a little worried about that.

01:58:58 - Padre (Guest)
And I get that.

01:58:58 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
So if you didn't, trust them, what would you?

01:58:59 - Padre (Guest)
do about it. So if I didn't trust Microsoft, what I would say is look, the reason why we developed from Microsoft in the first place is because it's historically been an open platform. That's the reason why we didn't go for the Apple. That's the reason why we don't develop for Linux for other reasons. So if you're going to take that away from us and if you're going to make us just another app developer on Windows 11, 12, whatever it's going to be in the future, then we're not going to put our resources into this, because we will never be able to develop products that, should Microsoft decide to enter the same market, we will never be able to compete with them. So I see that Again, that's a real concern.

01:59:38 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, it's fair, and Apple has been certainly been guilty of that too. Like, look at mobile browsers on iOS and iPadOS. Like that's all, you can only run the Safari engine. Nobody, no other real browser can truly exist and everything is slower than Safari Safari to like the native Safari. So, yeah, I see that argument too. This is a sticky, sticky place for Microsoft, but also man. I can imagine they're pissed because CrowdStrike is basically that. That is a black eye. Microsoft did not need right now, when they're dealing with so many other things.

02:00:07
Um, yeah.

02:00:14 - Padre (Guest)
And the way that it was it was being pushed around the EU is that this is a Microsoft outage and it's like no. Microsoft has done some horrible, horrible stuff and they've released some incredibly buggy software. This was not them. This was a third party that had abused their low-level access to the operating system to brick millions of computers around the world.

02:00:31 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Anthony, you put in a story too. That was really interesting, because we've all seen Mark Zuckerberg's glow up over the last year His free-flowing hair, his gold chain. I feel like this guy has turned 40, basically, and has all of a sudden gotten a personality, or at least learned how to have a personality, and most recently, in a very, very long podcast long podcast uh, he was on. Let me see what was the show acquired acquired? There's a show. Also, a lot of these podcasts are coming out of nowhere. I'm like I, I okay, apparently this is a very big podcast I don't really listen to very much, um, but he said he's done apologizing, and he also expressed regret for apologizing for Facebook's mistakes over the last few years too, and this to me does not seem like the life lesson that we really want Mark Zuckerberg to take right now. But that is it. That's what we're hearing.

02:01:24 - Padre (Guest)
It's because he's become a real boy. Yeah, he's a real boy now.

02:01:29 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I mean, yeah, I feel like there's so much to say about just like what is going on with Mark Zuckerberg.

02:01:35 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I think he's a really good life coach, but also a lot of people who are just telling him don't worry, man, don't worry about all the damage you've done to democracy and everything else, the billions you've wasted on the metaverse and the thousands of jobs that your companies have to let go because of your decisions. Like, don't worry about it, man, be cool.

02:01:54 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
So here's the charitable version or the best version of, I think, what he's saying, which is that, essentially, that it's not to say that he hasn't screwed up or that Facebook slash meta hasn't screwed up. I mean, I would argue that becoming meta was a mistake itself, but what he's particularly talking about, I think, is like that kind of performative apology that people just always want you to apologize, and it doesn't necessarily have to do with, like, whether you're doing something wrong or something right, but just there are certain times when everyone's just sort of mad at you because it's easy to blame Facebook when things go wrong. I think, obviously, that a lot of that is tied to the 2016 election, in the sense that Facebook you know, misinformation on Facebook contributed to Trump's victory there. I think, you know there's still a lot of debate of like clearly there was misinformation, like is it fair to say like that was that Donald Trump became president because of Facebook? I would argue probably not.

02:02:52
But so he's saying, like, listen, and then, when you apologize, that all you're doing is encouraging people to demand more apologies from you, and I don't think any of that is wrong. I think coming out and saying that you're not going to apologize again, particularly at this time when you know I think there's so much concern about technology and I think a lot of very justifiable concern about the effect of technology, seems a little tone deaf. I think that, yeah, I don't think this is a great PR move, except for with really hardcore tech bro types like the all-in podcast fans like people who are just like screw the woke, everything's too woke.

02:03:38
Like yes, this is great sort of like red meat for them, but otherwise, like, if you really feel this way, maybe just apologize less, but I don't know why you have to make a big deal out of it. And in general, I think that it's probably a good thing if facebook feels like it has to be accountable to the broader public maybe stop doing the things that make you feel that you need to deliver those apologies in the first place it sounds like someone close to to zuckerberg has been saying oh, you've been, you've been apologizing, you've been apologizing, you look weak.

02:04:10 - Padre (Guest)
People want and, and they don't, they don't care, they're not listening. And it's like look, look, I understand that you have a few money, mark, but people haven't wanted apologies from you. People were never asking for apologies from you. People were asking you to listen to them. So've. You've damaged democracy, you've damaged privacy. You've wasted a lot of money on unprofitable venues out of ego. Don't apologize for it, just listen. You've got you've got a lot of smart people around you. You've got people who know the industry. Just take a clue every once in a while and everything will be fine. But yeah, it's this weird echo chamber I think he's in that. People are saying you got to let you be you, and none of us are not saying that. None of us are saying that he can't be him. None of us are saying that he can't wear hoodies and be who he is, but we are saying you are affecting the society and the world in which we live. We would love for you to maybe listen to a little bit of how you could do things differently.

02:05:14 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, I don't know, read some books beyond, like what the I guess, yeah, the Silicon Valley bros are dealing with right now too. It's also funny, too, because this follows, like him essentially apologizing for all the apologizing he did, you know around like the censoring, covid, misinformation and stuff, and like I don don't, does this really fit your new goal? You're? You're once again apologizing and also you're apologizing for something that probably was actually pretty helpful back when, um, there was a lot of misinformation going around, something that potentially saved lives. Um, yeah, this whole idea of neutrality, these, uh, it's so mealy-mouthed and so I don't know, spin spineless. The guy. I'm sure he has a great life coach now, probably a great therapist, and who's just helped him be free of all his pain and all his anxiety, and that's what we're seeing now. He's living his best life and also F us.

02:06:06 - Padre (Guest)
Well, I mean it's also Triangle and a drum circle and all of that kind of stuff.

02:06:13 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Yeah, it's also interesting. This comes, you know, like a week after that blog post that went viral that Paul Graham did yes, paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator about founder mode, which you know, kind of like AI, sort of like founder mode means whatever you want it to mean, but I think was generally about this idea of founders should not, even when you are like running a giant public company sorry about my AirPods, but even when you're running a giant public company, you don't necessarily need to be listening to all these people you should like be in founder mode, which again, the charitable interpretation is like don't just bring in a bunch of like MBAs and people who've run you know Fortune 500 companies. Like listen to also like the lower level people at your company, listen to a variety of sources, which I think again, there's a good version of the argument, but also it seems like how it really gets interpreted is just be unapologetic, don't listen to anyone, do whatever you want, because you're the founder, and if anyone has a problem with it, f them.

02:07:11 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
It's basically, it's not apologizing for the early Facebook philosophy of move fast and break things. Basically, right, there's like. It's like after acknowledging that maybe Facebook broke a few things for a while and he's like no, no, I'm not gonna say sorry for that Made me billions of dollars. It was great. It was great. Yeah, no clue. No clue what was happening there with him. Any other of these stories you guys really want to talk about?

02:07:37 - Padre (Guest)
Just one, because I think it'll be fun for a group discussion, and that's the hypermiling record.

02:07:42 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
That is a big number.

02:07:43 - Padre (Guest)
yeah, so a guy by the name of Wayne Gerdes. He had a brand new 2024 Prius LE the cool looking Prius.

02:07:55 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
The one that looks like a cool car now.

02:07:57 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, he went Los Angeles to New York City. That's 3,217 miles, and he had an average fuel efficiency of 93 miles per gallon. Now it sounds cool. Sounds cool, except for the fact that I dug down a little bit and I found some of the details of his trip. He drove the 40, which is the one that I just did. This summer, I just drove 3,000 miles on the 40 to do my retreat and camping, and on the 40, he was doing 60 or 55 in a place where people are typically driving between 80 and 85.

02:08:33 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Sure, he was a hazard to other drivers in that.

02:08:36 - Padre (Guest)
Super hazard to other drivers. In fact, I probably passed him at some point because we were driving that road at the same time. So cool. I am all about hypermiling. I love it's like a game to me to see how high.

02:08:49
I can get that meter. I have a 2015 Prius and I get that thing. When I go between San Francisco and Las Vegas, I do about 50 to 51 miles per gallon Nice, but I'm driving safe. I'm actually going quickly. It's just I'm not using the brakes. I'm always making sure that I'm accelerating slowly. Do any of you drive fuel-efficient vehicles or do you find it fascinating to try to get that higher number? I?

02:09:16 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I do find fascinating. I don't have an ev, I have a, sadly. I have a normal gas guzzler, but when I do try out evs. It's like I do want to see, like I do want to like let the brakes ride for a while, regenerate some power. I see the game in it and I can't wait till I make that upgrade um upgrade. I like the idea of it for sure.

02:09:35 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I haven't owned a car for many decades. Again, I live in New York City.

02:09:40
But I had a Prius, the last car I had was a Prius and, yeah, I mean, usually the best I could do was 40, but this was like in 2007, 2008. Definitely now when I rent a hybrid, I definitely start paying attention to that efficiency and being like, oh yeah, let's see what I can do. I mean, I'd never heard the term hypermiling before today, but it does feel like to me. Part of the takeaway is just like wow, you can really gamify anything. Yes, yes, but if you're going to gamify, that's cool, because I definitely have many, many, many, many years ago gotten into very minor accidents because I was paying a little too much attention to what was going on on my dashboard rather than what was actually in front of me, and so that's also a risk. But you know what this is cool? I think this is a cool thing.

02:10:27 - Padre (Guest)
Some of it is fun. So when I'm hypermiling I'm turning off the AC in the heater. So I normally try to do this in the winter because I love cold but I can't stand heat. Things like again when I drive between San Francisco and New York. Unless I'm getting off the freeway, I never use the brakes, I'm always using the regenerative. I plan my acceleration so that I drain the battery as I'm coming uphill, so that I have battery capacity to fill it back up with a regen on the way down. But then there's crazy hyper milers who will get within like three feet of a tractor trailer in front of them to take advantage of the draft. I'm not. It's not a good way to drive you should not.

02:11:05 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
You know, drive responsibly, folks. You could drive efficiently, but also drive responsibly like uh yeah, this guy going really, really slow on a fast highway is not, no, not the best thing again.

02:11:14 - Padre (Guest)
I was on that highway and I was doing 85 and I was slow. What is the speed limit on that highway? Uh, the speed limit is 75, so 10 over. Okay, until you get to oakland.

02:11:24 - Leo Laporte (Ad)
That's cool that's cool.

02:11:25 - Padre (Guest)
In oklahoma they're serious 75 means 75. If you go over 75 they will ticket you.

02:11:29 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
But 75, they will ticket you but.

02:11:37 - Padre (Guest)
But when I was doing 85 for that thousand mile stretch um, I was getting probably 44 45 miles per gallon, so it wasn't that much off. I can't imagine doing that stretch at 55. Not only would it take longer, but you would piss everybody off uh I would love that footage of all that.

02:11:52 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yes, just the in-car footage. The semi-trucks are doing 75, so you're causing a serious problem if you're doing 55. That's not slow enough to be ticketed right. If you're going like 45, you'd be like, yeah, okay, you're really disrupting traffic In.

02:12:10 - Padre (Guest)
Texas you have to do 60. If you're not doing at least 60, they'll ticket you Okay, but Oklahoma and Arizona, you can go down to 55.

02:12:19 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
That makes sense. That makes sense. Well, yeah, thank you for sharing the story. Let's hear back from Leo for a final word from our sponsors.

02:12:27 - Leo Laporte (Ad)
Hey Dravendra, this is my last chance to say thank you so much for filling in for me. Thank you to Ian Thompson for last week and good news for me, I will be back next week, jet blue permitting. As long as I get back on time. I will be back for next week's Twit, but thank you so much for filling in for me. I do want to mention that this episode of this Week in Tech is brought to you by Lookout.

02:12:51
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02:14:02
Lookoutcom Remember that name and check them out. We thank Lookout so much for supporting this Week in Tech. We thank you for supporting this Week in Tech by visiting lookoutcom. That way, they know hey, these ads work, they work, they really do. Hey, thank you for watching. Thank you, devendra. See you next week.

02:14:22 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Padre, the story about a fake retro video game ring sounds absolutely wild. Can you help us break it down? And it's my neck of the woods, it's in Italy.

02:14:31 - Padre (Guest)
Yeah, so there's been a big craze for retro video games. This has been around for a while, in fact. On KnowHow, we made a DIY arcade cabinet with a retro pie in it Very cool stuff. However, it's also big money, and anyone who has done the RetroPie project knows that game developers really don't like it when you steal their ROMs just to put on your own devices.

02:14:56
So just a while ago, there was a group of Italian retro video game pirates that were caught here in Italy. They had 12,000 consoles that were all manufactured in China. They had 47 million pirated games in ROMs and all told, it was worth about 47 and 1 half million euros. Wow. Now, yeah, none of them, none of the devices, met any tech or safety specs. In fact, I saw a couple and they looked like they were just begging to set fires in houses. So that was pretty fun, but it shows that there's a market here. There is a real market for retro video games. So I'm wondering is it my generation now that's in the driving seat of collectibles? Have we gone from stamps to recovering our childhood with some really bad 8-bit games?

02:15:52 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, I totally think. So. I mean, listen, I have a CRT sitting in my basement that I cannot wait to set up my old systems to. But also I think the younger generation of gamers are interested in going back to this stuff and we can. We can make them accessible. You know, like as a kid growing up in the 90s, in the late 80s, I was never interested in going back to the heyday of atari or anything. But now you can draw a clear yeah, well, now I can.

02:16:21
But also now I think kids can also draw a clearer line between the heyday of like 8-bit and 16-bit gaming to a lot of stuff that we're seeing right now. You know, if you love Hideo Kojima's games, you probably want to go back and play some of those early Metal Gear games too. So like there is more of a need to go back and revisit those things because our culture moves so quickly right now too.

02:16:42 - Padre (Guest)
Also it's a simpler generation. I think it really does bring back that nostalgia that I can play Mario Brothers, I can play Donkey Kong, I can play Dig Dug Galaga and I can get the same kind of experience I had when I was a child. There's no big plot, there's no cinematics, there's no cut screens, it's just me moving a joystick and trying to do something for the next five minutes. It kind of is it. Is it nostalgia or is that actually fun? Okay?

02:17:12 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
actually that's. That's a good question. Yeah, it can't be both, I think.

02:17:14 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Yeah, go ahead, anthony well, I was going to say I guess part of the question one of the tells would be is it is all of the sales of you know classic, you know the classic nintendo consoles and things like that. Or or the looper, who are, I guess, victims of this uh, ring, um the. Are they all like our, you know our, age? Or are there younger people, um, and, and yeah, I don't know? I mean, I will definitely say that I'm susceptible to that too. I I one of the first things I.

02:17:41
The other reason I got my steam deck, besides playing balder's gate 3, was also because there are all these old sierra games that I can't play on any of my Apple devices but I can play it on a Steam Deck, and so I did that and it was really fun. I will say that those are definitely games that I have a hard time imagining a modern gamer really getting much out of, and I also remember with the Super Nintendo Classic. I love Mario Kart it's maybe my favorite game of all time and getting to play the original Super Mario Kart. I booted it up and I was like, oh, I went back too far. This is real primitive.

02:18:14 - Padre (Guest)
MARK MANDELMANN JR. It's rough. I've done that too. I've loaded up an old ROM. I'm like, oh gosh, I remember this from when I was a kid and I'm this this is a really bad game, or it was good for its time, like the original mario I spent.

02:18:26 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I played so much of that too, like on the super nintendo. It's hard to go back to now. But also you look at the mario kart that's on switch now, like it still plays very similarly. You know it's still the same basic concepts. They added more items and stuff, but like the concepts of what made hit games just really locked in back then. Uh, this good, the photo in the story for this. Uh, for this thing she was free fighter 2. I distinctly remember that moment where I that was like an 80 90 game in the 90s. Um, I had to wait a while before my parents could get me that game. But playing that which looked and felt arcade, perfect, like that, was like life-changing. And you look to fighting games today like, okay, they're not all 2d, but it's a very similar formula to what street fighter, immortal combat laid down back then. So I'm just saying most like a very important generation of games, 8-bit and 16-bit. 16-bit in particular, I think more so than the Atari stuff. But I don't know, padre, do you disagree?

02:19:35 - Padre (Guest)
I want a ROM of ET for the Atari 2600.

02:19:36
I've never been able to find that, because I'm pretty sure that game is as bad as I remember. Do you remember Bus Simulator? It was literally a bus going from San Francisco to Las Vegas, so it was eight hours of literally a bus going from San Francisco to Las Vegas, so it was eight hours of driving a bus on a straight road. I kind of want to find that, just because I want to see how complicated the programming was. But I get your point. Yes, that was an important generation of games. It was foundational to a lot of people who went on to create wonderful games, masterpieces. And again, that was in a time before games were expected to be narrative masterpieces. So yeah, I guess it's important. I will say that I know a couple of the guys at the Italian version of the Customs and Border Patrol and I was wondering. I'm like so are you guys destroying all of these systems or where are you keeping them.

02:20:30 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
You don't want to burn down the Vatican with one of these systems, I think.

02:20:32 - Padre (Guest)
No, I really don't. You don't want to do that, but I would love to get some of those ROMs. 47 million.

02:20:38 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I'm sure the ROMs will be easily found. Do not condone piracy, but also, you know, sometimes, sometimes you got to do what you got to do 16-bit games. Come on, there were some great storytelling there too. I just recently replayed Chrono Trigger with my daughter and she loved it. She loved it, and that was like her introduction to RPGs and now we're like playing very similar things too. So like, yeah, that whole generation laid out a whole you know know, basically so many things that we're still living.

02:21:05 - Padre (Guest)
I liked the turbo graphics because it was both a console and there was a portable and you could swap the games between the two. That was kind of cool. I remember the Dreamcast.

02:21:14 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
The second Dreamcast was actually exceptional so actually and we are was it as of Monday? Monday was like the 25th anniversary of the Dreamcast launch.

02:21:24
It was nine, nine, ninety, um, yeah, I mean listen though crazy taxi which now our vice president is, a pair or a potential vice president is, uh is something that uh, tim waltz also really enjoyed too. But that talk about like that was the transition to like where things were going next, uh, shout out to the dreamcast. That was the first console I could buy with my own money. It will always have a place in my heart. Um, yeah yeah, fancy start online. Did you guys ever play that fancy? I've heard of it. I don't think I ever played that. It was. You were playing a multiplayer. You know cool anime rpg over like a 33.6 k modem. You know it seemed impossible in the late 90s. How did the dreamcast do that? Playstation 2 did not have great networking stuff until very, very late. You know it really took until the xbox 360 arrived to do really good networked uh gaming again. So I don't know, I missed the dreamcast all right.

02:22:20 - Padre (Guest)
I remember setting up um really low level pcs to play Wolfenstein networked the land game and the first time we did that that was just amazing. We'd never done anything like that. We're like oh gosh, this is what all gaming should be like.

02:22:34 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
And 30 years later we got there eventually Just like that yeah. When I was in college, between 01 and 05, so this is pre-Xbox 360, but the original Xbox was there. It had an ethernet port and we all quickly learned if you plug that thing into the school network, um, they all show up as if they're on the same land. So we were able to play like original halo dorm to dorm and like would have like epic shootouts and campaigns and stuff too, and I like that.

02:23:00 - Padre (Guest)
That sold the concept to me as well, that was back when network security was a strongly worded letter from the resident assistant. It's like don't do that.

02:23:07 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Don't do that, don't do that. We all came up with ways to get around the IT departments BitTorrent blocking, and what was it back then? Audio Galaxy, all those things.

02:23:19 - Padre (Guest)
We didn't have BitTorrent. When I was in college, we had the UUNet, so you'd have to use Gopher to get files that had been encoded into ASCII files and turn them back into binaries. So, yeah, it was different. We didn't have the World Wide Web. That did not exist. It was harder, that was harder. It was fun, though. When you got it to work, that was so much more fun.

02:23:41 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Oh man, oh man. All right, I think it's a good time to jump into our pop culture corner. I want to shout out something that I have been watching, that I did not expect to even enjoy, but my daughter we were bouncing around Disney Plus and my daughter saw this. I don't know the cover, the cover art for Lego Star Wars Rebuild the Galaxy.

02:24:01 - Padre (Guest)
I have seen that for weeks. Is it any good? Should I watch it?

02:24:05 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
It's a lot of fun. I think it's more fun if you have a kid that you're watching it with too Like I think all the Lego Star Wars stuff has been like generally enjoyable. This one is kind of interesting because, first of all, they have confirmed Disney has confirmed that this is the first official story after the end of the Rey storyline.

02:24:22 - Padre (Guest)
So this is canon.

02:24:24 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
This is canon, it is canon, this is canon, it is canon, but it's also like it's a lego thing. So they also do a thing that I don't think the live action movies can ever do, which is completely rework the universe. So within the first episode, the all the characters we know, the entire history of star wars is completely flipped on its head in really fun ways. Um, the image that they show a lot, uh, there is a darth jar jar. A lot of the good characters are bad guys in really fun ways to like. Darth jar jar is not a very successful sith, um, but he does exist.

02:24:56 - Padre (Guest)
My daughter thinks darth jar jar is hilarious, so you know you know, darth jar jar actually goes back to the release of the of the prequel. Yes, like that was an actual theory, that, oh yeah, it was a real power behind it all it.

02:25:10 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Uh, this series does do. It does like bring in a lot of that like deep lore to like. First of all, it completely recaps the original trilogy, the prequels and the sequel trilogy in like one minute. It's like others is Anakin Skywalker, yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you are worried about your kid, if you want your kid to be pure and not know the whole Darth Vader story, I'm sorry that's going to be a hard thing to do. Also, I don't know when I can show my daughter original Star Wars, because that is as much as I love that movie, it's a slow movie. It is so slow compared to things that kids are used to today.

02:25:44 - Padre (Guest)
But anyway, I did a rewatch of the original series and the prequel and then the sequel trilogy and I noticed that that I was more engaged with the original series because both the prequel and the sequel they're in the modern storytelling format, which is very quick cuts, lots of different characters, lots of different scenes.

02:26:07 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I don't know if there's anything modern we can say about phantom menace. I did recently re-watch that in theaters and I wrote about that in gadget and I think I have more respect for that movie than I ever did, certainly after like the onslaught of really crappy mcu stuff we've gotten lately. So I think I have a lot of respect for that movie, for the craft of it and and for the design in that movie. But yeah, the original films are just like that's early, that's 70s filmmaking, that is, people took their time. It's very deliberate pacing. Things are not like that anymore. So anyway, this kids show introduces new characters. In fact there is a new Sith Lord called Dev. So I appreciate, I love that. That's kind of fun. Um, dev, dev, just like, just like the beginning of my name, basically.

02:26:51
But there are a lot of like deep cuts here too, like that guy in uh, in the last jedi who like licks the dirt in in the salt world. Actually, I think who would do?

02:27:02
that he's back but there's a cut to you in this reconfigured universe. He licks it pepper. Funny and only only like star wars nerds who are like, oh, I remember that guy who would lick the dirt and then okay, it's a funny joke. I think it's funny. I think like it is a very good traditional star wars show and my daughter was totally into it. I tried to get her into the various clone wars shows and she just would not have it and those things are really plot heavy, like they're not really fun. It takes a while for those shows to get really good, whereas this is like instantly entertaining. There are a lot of fun characters and it does things I don't think the live-action Star Wars will ever be brave enough to do. It would just be like, well, the universe is flipped now and we're never going back to the old way flipped now and we're never going back to the old way.

02:27:49
So I think, as long as it has salacious crumb I'm in.

02:27:50 - Padre (Guest)
I believe it does have salacious crumb.

02:27:51 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
A lot of listen. Darth vader is, uh is part of the rebels. Now you know, palpatine is part of the rebels.

02:27:56 - Padre (Guest)
Darth vader is in white in the series there's a lot of fun.

02:27:59 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
yeah, they do a lot of fun reworkings. There's a darth rey, there's a dart like. A lot of the good guys are bad, a lot of the good guys are bad, a lot of the bad guys are good. It's fun, especially if you have kids and you just want to introduce them into Star Wars and you don't want to be very precious about the plot and everything, because the kids will know who Darth Vader is. They talk to each other at school. My son he went to daycare when he was one and a half and by the age of two knew.

02:28:24
he knew the naruto run I never show him kids just know the naruto run because they all see each other doing it. And that's how culture gets uh.

02:28:32
You know, gets uh, wait, wait wait the young kids are doing that and they don't know what it's from. They don't know what's from well. Maybe maybe they saw their older like maybe they're watching naruto, but I don't know what who's watching naruto at one and a half. But they probably see their older siblings do it and it's like a thing that has recurred through time. So the Naruto ninja run is a thing my son does. Now I've never confronted him with Naruto. I've never given him Naruto. Anyway, anthony, does this sound like a show you'd be into checking out?

02:29:00 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
It sounds like a show that I'm glad exists and will probably never watch. I just don't need that much more Star Wars content in my life. I mean, I'm waiting for Andor, I'm excited for that, but other than that I think I'm good. If I ever have kids, I'll keep that in the back pocket for if I have kids, or if you have I mean if you have, you know, nieces and nephews and whatnot. That's true.

02:29:32 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I do have a nieceful diplomatic answer. That's a way. That's a way to do it. Are you guys pro?

02:29:34 - Padre (Guest)
or um against uh acolyte, because I love the acolyte and I think what happened with the reviews for that were just kind of wild to me. I have not watched it at all. It's really good, not not because I don't like it, but because I'm waiting to be. I need a chunk of time where I can watch the whole thing I think that's probably the way to do it.

02:29:45 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I think I was lucky enough to see the screener so I saw the whole thing. I saw the first four episodes and by the time I was done with that I was like, oh my god, this is the best Star Wars we've gotten in a very long time, because it's essentially Star Wars through the lens of Crouching Tiger, hidden Dragon, which are things I love.

02:30:02
I, I love, I love crouching, like literally direct references to crouching tiger, hidden dragon. So that, yes, sign me up for all of that and I kind of love where it goes with the villain and with the, you know, just with the adventure of it all, um. But yeah, the reviews and the actual response from a lot of people were just like people really picking holes in the plot. I'm like that's not, that's not why I'm watching that show really, but also also that's the toxic Star Wars fandom.

02:30:28
It was partially that and there are good-natured reviewers who are doing it too, and I was just like I don't necessarily need everything to click together, but that's just me. I highly recommend Star Wars Acolyte. I'm sure people listening to this strongly disagree, but I think Acolyte kicked ass, anthony. Did you see that?

02:30:44 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
yet. So I wanted to like it because I very much was like wow, it seems like the worst people in the world hate this show and I also just love the work of Leslie Hedlund and I watched the first episode, that opening action scene really good. The rest of it was kind of boring. And it wasn't that I made an active decision to stop watching. It's just every time I was like, oh, maybe I'll watch another episode of the acolyte.

02:31:10 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
There was something that seemed more pressing and more interesting and suddenly I was like, oh, I guess I'm probably not finishing the acolyte it's constructed like a murder mystery and if you don't, if you are not interested in like the core thing that's trying to to deal with, like I can can understand that, but I'd recommend watching, especially for fans of the Good Place. I think there are many things to enjoy watching the Acolyte.

02:31:31 - Padre (Guest)
I stepped away from the mega studios for a bit. So the Disney stuff from the Marvel stuff because I kind of wanted to see some original IP. And the one I've picked up on now is called Mr Inbetween. It's an Australian series that's available on Hulu and therefore on Disney. It's phenomenal. It's probably the tightest crime, slash, drama, slash, black comedy series I've ever seen, Nice and incredibly well put together. Another one that I saw was have you ever seen Letterkenny? Yep, Letterkenny. And so now I'm watching Shorzy, which is the spinoff from letter Kenny. Uh, again, these are original IPS. I think they're incredibly well-written, incredibly well, especially letter Kenny. The the writing, uh the dialogue is just hilarious.

02:32:21 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
So like super fast humor and letter Kenny, like just like joke per minute in that show was amazing. Yeah, right, right, anything you want to shout out this week, anthony.

02:32:32 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Well, I was gonna say that you know, I think a lot of the AMC shows got added to Netflix in the last month or so. I mean, I think mostly just the first season. So I finally saw the first season of the terror and that is. I am the best things I've ever seen the terror.

02:32:46 - Padre (Guest)
A T-r-R-R-O-R I've never even heard of that word.

02:32:48 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
It's a hard word to pronounce, but so it's like, I think, what has become sort of like a historical horror anthology show, but the first season it's based on a Dan Simmons novel and the concept is I mean, there were this real expedition to find the uh, the northwest passage in the first half of the 1800s, and there are two ships, the terror and the arabus. I don't know why you'd call your ship why would you call yourself a terror?

02:33:14 - Padre (Guest)
what are you expecting?

02:33:15 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
and they basically went and they and they disappeared, and so this is a fictional attempt to explain what happened to them. And it is an incredibly bleak show because mean you kind of know that almost everyone is going to die, but it's also, like, just really beautiful and moving. If you just want really really bleak, well-done horror, it's great it has Jared Harris, who's one of my favorite actors, and he's incredible in it.

02:33:39
Tobias Menzies is in it and, yeah, I think like the production. You know, I feel like they had the money they needed. You can sometimes tell that they're filming on a set, not actually out there, but overall it's one of my favorite things I've seen, Highly highly recommend.

02:33:59 - Padre (Guest)
I typically subscribe to Netflix one month out of the year and then watch everything and then stop for the next 11 months. Month out of the year and then watch everything and then stop for the next 11 months. One that I really wanted to watch on Netflix, because I love the book, is the Three-Body Problem. Any of you watched that? I saw it. Yeah, that's okay.

02:34:15 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Was it a decent adaptation? I was not a huge fan, but I know people who do like the show.

02:34:20 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I think it got off to a rough start because it's just trying to introduce so many different characters, um, which I mean it's funny, because if you go back to game of thrones, like that first episode I think is also pretty rough, because you're just like here's, here's a person, here's a person here's, where you're like what?

02:34:34 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
what, what, and I was fully engaged with that first episode.

02:34:37 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Like that felt like, oh, I wasn't changing to me, yeah, okay it took me a while to get into that show too, um, but did you?

02:34:43 - Leo Laporte (Ad)
I mean, I think that I think the premier of.

02:34:45 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Three-Body is even rougher. But what, sorry, did you read the book before you watched it? I read, yeah, I read the books, although I read the first book when it came out and then I didn't read the sequels until like several, many years later, when people were like, no, no, you got to read the whole series, which, if you haven't read the books, read the whole series, don't just read the first one. But like, uh, the the thing was I remembered everything that happened in books two and three. I didn't remember book one that well, except for like the really big stuff. So there's things that I was like wow, they introduced this into the show and then it turned out no, actually that's from the book.

02:35:17 - Padre (Guest)
I just forgotten that happened in the book and also one scene that I saw on youtube. Um, and the people who have watched it or listened to the book know what I'm talking about. I'm not gonna spoil it for anybody else, but is it particularly violent and gruesome? Involving extremely violent and gruesome one in the book. It is not violent and gruesome, it just explains what happens on the outside of yeah, because you don't see what happens on the inside you don't see what happens in this side and I know that in the in the series they did and I I actually think that was way better.

02:35:49
It was way better than what I read I think it's more.

02:35:53 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I saw half of the netflix series and it's more. I think it really um breaks the characters down a lot like it changes a lot of characters. Also adds up basically a group of young, pretty people to take the place of, like a lot of the main characters, rather than oh I see it's just like a mid-40s business guy right for a lot of the chunk of the first book too. So like, yeah, he's not super interesting, but also it's. It didn't quite work for me.

02:36:17 - Padre (Guest)
I saw that benedict wong was a member of the cast.

02:36:19 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
He's got to be the chinese policeman right he does you wish he had a personality and he's very good he's. He's when I read that book he's the.

02:36:28 - Padre (Guest)
He's the person I had in mind. I'm like, oh, that's true, that's benedict long yeah it is.

02:36:32 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
It just it felt it all felt forced me, but I know people who like the show, so there's that it just didn't quite work for me. Do you guys want to talk at all? There was one story somebody put in about hot ones coming to netflix. Kind of fits within the pop culture section.

02:36:45 - Padre (Guest)
I love Hot Ones. I love Hot Ones. That's a great format really.

02:36:49 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I think Sean Evans is a great interviewer too, yeah.

02:36:53 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
It's such an unlikely story where you're like that when someone describes it to you, well, obviously this is a gimmick and but then it like, by the way, I only linked to my own story just because the Bloomberg which broke it.

02:37:04 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
You don't need to apologize. I just want people to know I would not normally do this. We're all going to sell our stuff.

02:37:11 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
But yeah, I think Hot Ones is great. I think the other thing that's interesting about it, I mean from a Netflix perspective, is obviously they've tried on and off to crack the talk show format and I mean I love the John Mulaney, everybody's in LA show, but who knows if that's coming back. So like this could be another way to try to approach that. And then you know, from the poor suckers in the media business perspective, like it's interesting to see like how Hot Ones is kind of like the most valuable thing that BuzzFeed has at this point and it's this weird sort of like tail wagging the dog where I think they have a lot of debt and so they're just trying to like monitor, like I think they were trying to sell off hot ones in the hopes that that could basically pay off their debt for a little while.

02:37:53
And now I think they're probably just like well, how, how can we monetize this thing, cause, like other stuff, is not going so great.

02:38:00 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Right yeah.

02:38:01 - Padre (Guest)
I mean, it was organic content that. Honestly, when I first heard about the concept I thought that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Why would you give your guests hot sauce? They're going to be uncomfortable, they're not going to be able to answer. And then my sister was the one who said no, watch three episodes with me. So I was with her at the home in Fremont, we watched three episodes and I said I get it.

02:38:24 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Yeah, this is kind of cool, this is it breaks through the traditional like uh media interview format where, like people are very rehearsed and everything, and like just these things.

02:38:35 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
He actually asked good questions he's a good interviewer, this right so because I think you and I have both have been on like those, like junkets, with like, uh, you know, film actors and you know, through no one's fault, I think, like a lot of the times it's just very rehearsed. They've like been asked a similar question.

02:38:52 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Uh, you know oftentimes they hate being there too.

02:38:54 - Padre (Guest)
So right, that's always fun, yeah right, you get five minutes and then, and then they're out, so yeah, and it's just, it's like, it's so, you know, yeah, like even.

02:39:03 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
And the thing is like I think the only thing worse than asking the obvious question is like trying to be creative and you ask something like crazy and they're just like this is a stupid question, like what are you doing? And then people play games.

02:39:12 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
People play like games with the talent too, like in their press questions, and that is cringe on another level too. But yeah, Hot Ones is like yeah, against all odds, very good.

02:39:30 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
So the story is like potentially, potentially, netflix is considering some sort of like hot, um, some sort of live show with them. Yeah, they would basically be like, especially like this wouldn't necessarily affect the youtube show, because, you know, obviously we've seen that when people try to take youtube content, put it behind a paywall, like their existing fans are not very happy. But this is like special live episodes also hosted by sean evans on net.

02:39:44 - Padre (Guest)
I would pay money for the next well, next presidential debate. If they were both on Hot Ones and he was the moderator, 100% I would pay so much money for that.

02:39:56 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
You're just trying to kill somebody here, but I do think like outside of that, outside of the debate panel idea, kamala Harris should absolutely do Hot Ones, kamala Harris with Tim Watts should just Kamala Harris with him.

02:40:08 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Spicy food. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know that she can handle spicy food better than oh, we know no question yeah see, we're coming up with all these great ideas, actually.

02:40:18 - Padre (Guest)
Okay, my favorite episode of hot ones, though, was the one with Gordon Ramsay.

02:40:22 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Really that was spectacular, that was good stuff, but I think the best one was like you gotta leave it up to Conan O'Brien, who in the midst. That was spectacular.

02:40:26
That was good stuff, but I think, uh, the best one was like you got to leave it up to conan and brian who in the midst of launching his new travel show yeah, he is such a genius at this because he basically deconstructed the hot ones formula, because he's so smart at this he just knows he knows the spectacle he wants to make and like makes it his own thing. And like I love conan so much, I love that like, despite not having a late night anymore, like he is just doing his own thing doing podcasts, but also doing travel shows, and like just being as brilliant as he was when I fell in love with him watching the Simpsons. So, yeah, love that guy so much. Awesome. Well, I think that's a wrap for this episode. Guys, where can we find you on the internet these days?

02:41:04 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
So I'm the weekend editor at TechCrunch, so just techcrunchcom. If you're on there on Saturday or Sunday, you'll probably see something I've written. I'm also at Anthony Ha across many social networks. I'm probably most active on Instagram and Blue Sky.

02:41:17 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
And you're doing a podcast too right, oh, that's right.

02:41:20 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
I also have a podcast called an extremely irregular podcast called Original Content, where we review new streaming shows and movies.

02:41:25 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Love it.

02:41:26 - Padre (Guest)
Padre, so you can find me here and the work that I do in Rome, probably on my Twitter feed, would be the best bet, which is still at Padre SJ. I promised Leo I would ride Twitter into the ground, or I think we're very close. But the project that I'm working right now is called the Jesuit Pilgrimage app and it's in my lower third. Uh, basically, it's just something that we we developed in our spare time and it's actually turning into something pretty decent. Uh, originally was just supposed to describe the pilgrimage of saint ignatius to rome, but now we're sort of including things from around the world. Uh, I've also, over the summer, because I got bored, I published two books. Oh, wow, I'm not going to give you the title or the nom de plume that I used Two different nom de plumes. They're both sci-fi and if you find it on Amazon, you will know it's me, because there are references to Twit in both of them.

02:42:25 - Anthony Ha (Guest)
Are there any other clues to help people find it?

02:42:27 - Padre (Guest)
wow, oh, one involves space travel, one involves time travel.

02:42:34 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
Fun, fun let us know when you get your netflix deal. Love it. Let us know when you get your netflix deal.

02:42:41 - Leo Laporte (Ad)
Padre, like we'd love to see that absolutely and you guys can find me.

02:42:44 - Devindra Hardawar (Host)
I'm at the vendor on twitter, blue sky mastodon all the fun places. I'm on threads stupid, don't pick me on threads please. Uh, I write about tech and in gadget I podcast about movies at um, the film cast at the filmcastcom. I also do the gadget podcast, so take a listen to that and thank you both so much for joining us. I'm sorry we couldn't get denise howell in for this week, but hopefully, and that's it, folks. Another twit is in the can.