This Week in Tech Episode 921 Transcript

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

Mikah Sargent (00:00:00):
Coming up on this week in tech, I am Micah Sergeant subbing in for Leo Laport while he's on vacation, and I have a great show planned for you. We've got the Swifty panel. It's Christina Warren, senior developer advocate at GitHub. Alex Wilhelm, reporter at Tech Brun, and a bra alti video host and producer for cnet. And we've got a lot to talk about. We start off the show running down some April Fool's gags that kind of turns into just a, a desire to have fun back on the internet. Then we hit ai. There's a lot to talk about, including that open letter regarding AI and how it's dangerous. Hmm. Was what they said. True. And were the people who actually signed the letters, truly the people who signed the letters. We also talk about Twitter. Some certain celebrities getting boosted where we might go outside of Twitter, how we wish we could return to how Twitter used to make us feel. And we complain a little about GM deciding that CarPlay and Android Auto are not worth keeping around in future electronic vehicles. It's all that plus so much more coming up on this weekend tech

TWiT Intro (00:01:16):
Podcasts you love

TWiT Opening (00:01:18):
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TWiT Intro (00:01:21):
Is twit.

Mikah Sargent (00:01:28):
This is twit this week in Tech hosted this time by Micah Sergeant, episode 921 Recorded Sunday, April 2nd, 2023. The Swifty Panel. This episode of this week in Tech is brought to you by Lookout. Whether on a device or in the cloud, your business data is always on the move. Minimize risk, increase visibility, and ensure compliance with lookouts Unified platform. Visit lookout.com today and by express VPN Express VPN lets you choose from over 90 different countries. So every time you run outta stuff to watch, you can fire up the app, switch your country, and hit connect. Protect your data for three extra months free with a one year package. Go to express vpn.com/twi.

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Mikah Sargent (00:02:38):
It's time for twit this week in tech. And I am your host this week, Micah Sergeant. That's right. As many of you probably already know because it seems like you've got his calendar in your own phones. Leo Laport is out as he is on vacation and will be for most of this month. We will have several guest hosts of Twit while he is away. And today it just so happens to be me and I'm so excited. This is my first time hosting this week in tech. And I've got a great panel prepared for you. First off, video host and producer for cnet and my fellow Midwesterner, at least original Midwesterner. It's a bra. Alti, welcome.

Abrar Al-heeti (00:03:22):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be on.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:24):
Yeah, it's great to get you back on the show. And I'm looking forward to chatting with you. We are also joined across I dunno, some level of distance by senior developer advocate at GitHub. It's Christina Warren. Hello.

Christina Warren (00:03:39):
Hello. Hello. It's so good to be back. And it's so good to see you like in the big hosting chair. I love this. This is, I love this so much. You and I have known each other for so such a long time, and I feel like this is like, I love this. I just love seeing you in the big hosting chair. It

Mikah Sargent (00:03:53):
Is a milestone. I, I I am like, I'm living it up right now, I gotta tell you. And I am also excited to be joined by a reporter at TechCrunch, but honestly, just an all around swell guy. It's Alex Wilhelm. Welcome back to the show. Alex,

Alex Wilhelm (00:04:10):
Thank you for, for having me. I just wanna say, Micah, you look amazing. The haircut fit overall, you just look like you're glowing. Shut on, man. Oh my goodness,

Mikah Sargent (00:04:17):
Tremend, thank you so much. Wow. It's such a kind panel today. Oh. You, I think it's a kind panel a lot of the time. I wanted to start the show off by I guess it's gonna be a bit of a throwback because I remember a day where I would have to remind myself every night before April 1st rolled around to be very, very careful when I logged onto the internet the next day that I didn't believe anything that was happening because there were April fool's jokes of plenty and lots of different online sites had lots that they wanted to share. And this year in fact this morning, I thought, oh my goodness, did anything happen on April Fool's Day? So I thought I'd ask the panel if any April Fool's pranks from tech companies stuck, stuck out to you. And I think, Alex, you said there was one that that caught your eye.

Alex Wilhelm (00:05:13):
Yeah, it was actually kind of a failed April 1st prank because Elon Musk promised that everyone with a legacy Twitter blue truck mark was going to lose it. And I woke up yesterday morning waiting to see the demise of my verified sadness only to find out that apparently not technically possible. So as of before the show still verified. So I guess Elon Musk pranked himself.

Christina Warren (00:05:34):
<Laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:36):
That's a good one. That's a good one. Yeah. Did anyone else see anything? A, a bra? I I was wondering if you knew if TikTok did anything for April Fool's Day?

Abrar Al-heeti (00:05:47):
Oh, that's a great question. I didn't see anything I would have because I spend on Godly hours on that app <laugh>. But I <laugh>, but I also, Twitter was the main thing for me too. That was like the first thing I did when I woke up also, where I was like, is that Blue Check still there? And it is. And then I was thinking, okay, I guess they said they're going to start taking away the beer. Like it would start on April 1st. So I'm kind of still just watching, but that was really where my attention was. But TikTok, I didn't, I'm kind of disappointed, honestly. Like, I don't know if we're all just, are we all over being pranked? I don't know. I don't know. I'm kind of, that's, I don't know what's going on, but

Mikah Sargent (00:06:23):
I thought I was, but it's, absence makes the heart grow fonder, <laugh> how I'm feeling about it. Right. It's all gone away and I'm going, where, where's the life on the internet? Christina, you've, I mean especially working at one point at Mashable, I'm sure covered lots of April Fools Day pranks. Where did they all go?

Christina Warren (00:06:40):
Yeah, I, I didn't see many either. And I wonder, like, I feel like part of it is that like there was this part where like, it had been this fun sort of activity and you would see companies do really creative things and then as what almost always happens to the brands, like ruin it, they just go too far. Yeah. Yeah. And it just gets, it gets to the point where like, it crosses over from being kind of cute to being cringe. And, and that happened a number of years ago, but I'm, I'm with you now. I'm, I mean, I am disappointed. Like TikTok didn't, didn't do something or, or that, that, you know, talkers didn't try to do something. I did see one video Linus Tech tips, so that, that, that YouTube channel, they made like a funny video about like Linus like basically starting like a, a farm of some sort. And I watched part of the video, I'll be honest, I I was, I was like, not completely paying attention, but it seemed funny. But it was obviously, obviously it was like ob also obvious that it was a joke. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:07:35):
So maybe that's what it you requires is whenever it exists in that middle space where those of us who know sort of are, are steeped in technology where we are going, oh no, the people are going to be fooled by this and it's going to result in us having to sort of explain and remember Volkswagens April Fools Day joke where they like lied to journalists. Yeah, I was thinking about that.

Christina Warren (00:07:58):
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:07:59):
Oh, ooh, that was bad. That was bad. It was Voltz Volkswagen, right?

Alex Wilhelm (00:08:04):
Oh, yeah. Okay. But hear me out though. Okay. I think the internet back in like 2012 or 2013 was fun because it was less high sticks mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, because these companies weren't trillion dollar businesses. Many of them were kind of on the come up. There were fewer total people in tech. It ffe, like, so like a joke had more resonance. And then everything got a little bit branded as you said. But I, I kind of missed the, and I know this is not the right phrasing, but the more innocent era of fun on the internet. Yes. when it was more your friends hanging out and now Twitter is just like a ah, fire

Christina Warren (00:08:33):
<Laugh> completely. Well, well also like when, what, but I was with you Alex, when, when Ilan said that they're, you know, they're getting rid of all the, the check marks, and it would start on April 1st. I was like, have you ever been online ever? Because this is, okay, so the day that you're gonna take away all the verification to say who is, you know, who, like, whatever you wanna say about verification, is it a, you know, obviously it's been a status symbol and it, and it has been, you know, meaningless for a long time, but it also has to a certain extent been like, oh yeah, this person is this person. Okay, so you're gonna get rid of that on like the one day of the year where the internet goes crazy. Anyway. It's like, ha have you ever been online? This, this seems like this is just, you know,

Mikah Sargent (00:09:12):
Was it meta or was it <laugh>? Was it intentional or was it just completely detached and <laugh> misunderstanding entirely? Yeah, I was confusing no matter what. Yeah, I, I, again, I, I do sort of, I'm a little sad, I will say a network that I'm a part of the Relay FM network where I have a podcast called Clockwise, they did, as they do every year, a little April Fool's Day joke where they pretend to launch a couple of shows. And so this year there were a couple of shows that were not actual shows that were going to be launched, including one that was like a nature podcast where you just heard the sounds of nature, which I was like, you know what? I don't think I would hate that. That might be pretty nice. And then good,

Alex Wilhelm (00:09:57):
Just go drive somewhere. Like, literally go to a field, stand

Mikah Sargent (00:09:59):
There. Yeah. That's true there. True. That's, that's the podcast. <Laugh>

Alex Wilhelm (00:10:02):
Fun.

Christina Warren (00:10:03):
I do pro work though.

Alex Wilhelm (00:10:04):
True. But I do appreciate that really. Apparently did an inverse npr, they launched fake shows. NPR Cancel Real ones.

Mikah Sargent (00:10:10):
Aw, Aw. Rest in Peace.

Alex Wilhelm (00:10:13):
Oh,

Mikah Sargent (00:10:14):
Now how many shows did

Alex Wilhelm (00:10:15):
They catch? I didn't have a follow up there. No, that was just me being sad.

Mikah Sargent (00:10:18):
Yeah. I mean, we gotta pour one out. Well, no, I won't pour this out, but I'll pretend to pour it out for the shows. Speaking of, of stuff that I think was a little bizarre, a little hard to understand in fact, there was one site that said we thought it was an April Fools Day joke. Did y'all hear the one about GM deciding that they weren't going to be offering CarPlay and Android Auto? Yes. In future cars? <Laugh> what? Yes. What so quickly. G gm, which of course Chevrolet is one of kind of their main car lines. They have seemed to decide that in the future, their electric vehicles are not going to support third party infotainment systems like CarPlay and like Android Auto. And they're going with sort of a, a more in-house, although it's through Google infotainment system that is built into the car, as opposed to being a projection system where when you plug in your phone, it sends all of that information to your car's system and displays that information.

(00:11:25):
And I have to tell you, when I first heard this, I, I talked a little bit about it this morning on ask the tech guys. I was a little bit beside myself because it seemed like I, I remember seeing a study or a, a survey about people who, when they were making a car decision, along with of course, electric vehicle being part of what they were thinking about it was the car's infotainment system that was super important to them. I'm curious. Yeah. Have any of you bought or thought about buying a car or thinking about buying a car and like, how important is even in your current car, the infotainment system for you?

Alex Wilhelm (00:12:00):
I mean, so we had a dumb car, like a, like equivalent of a dumb phone for a long time. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and then Ladybug, our beloved Volvo S 40 started to shake at like 50 miles an hour. So she had to go and we bought Bob the Subaru. We, we name our cars. I don't know why <laugh> and it has Apple CarPlay. Yep. And it's like magic. It's the best thing ever. I can play Taylor Swift, like max volume in the car and like, it's, it's amazing. Absolutely. And then I read this and I was like, the thing I just discovered has already been phased out. Is this what middle age feels like?

Mikah Sargent (00:12:27):
<Laugh>?

Christina Warren (00:12:28):
No, I mean, so I, I, I don't drive, but if I were to buy a car for someone else to drive me around in it, like it would be an absolute requirement for it to have, you know, car play. The, and, and it's, it's interesting because you, you mentioned that Micah about surveys showing that that's what people look for. This has actually been the case for more than a decade. I remember being on a panel with some people from Ford more than 10 years ago, and back then they had a bunch of futurists that they, you know, employed to kind of look at next trends. And they were already seeing the fact that the average age of, of people getting their driver's license was increasing, which is obviously bad for car companies. But they were looking at, like back then, one of the big, you know, pressing things.

(00:13:11):
This was even before Android Auto and CarPlay was the infotainment system and, and how connected that can be. And there was this big movement, you know, but a, amongst the car companies to actually, many of them had their own systems that were a various levels of smart, and, and they wound up seeding, most of them wound up seeding it to, to Android Auto or, or, or CarPlay, frankly, A cuz it was cheaper and b, because the interface was better and, and people wanted it enough. But I mean, like my mom she has a, a fairly recent Mercedes, but it does not have, for whatever reason, she didn't, when she got it, like didn't have the, the CarPlay option. Wow. My dad's new car does. And she hates it so much. So when she gets a new car like that is, she's like, made it very clear like it has to have CarPlay. So it is so odd to me that they're talking about dropping this for these new EBS like, models that already have them will keep them, but the new ones won't. I'm like, what are you doing? Because even if you make this relatively easy for someone to connect their phone to, if it has a worse user experience, and let's be honest, it will, like how long is this going to go on? I just, just, this, this feels just like such a dumb move.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:22):
Yeah. I And I think that Go ahead, please. Yeah.

Abrar Al-heeti (00:14:25):
Oh, I was just gonna say, I think that's the thing. I think it's like the fact that this is something that is kind of slowly picking up steam, a lot more people are becoming a lot more attached to things like CarPlay and Android Auto and then to, to not allow that to really stick and already be like, oh, we're doing something different now. For me, the last car I had was a 2012 Corolla, so it's been a minute. And I sold that when I moved out to the Bay Area. So I didn't, I did not have any of this, but every time you get in somebody's car, they have one of these systems and it's, you know, integrated with their phones and it makes the process a lot more seamless. They're less likely to kind of, you know, pick up their phone and, and check it if they can kind of see everything that's going on. So, I don't know, this is kind of a strange move.

Mikah Sargent (00:15:03):
Well, and as Christina pointed out, by doing that, they're letting the other company, the car manufacturers, letting the other companies worry about all of that stuff. So if up to this point, you've made so many cars that have this, this functionality built in, which is essentially just a video connection between point A and point B and a little bit of data being sent back and forth. It, it, it's so easy to do that. So to actually now invest the time and money into having a system that's built into the car as opposed to just being projected from the phone is so much more work. But the Verge article points out, the thing that really drives this, drives this home upon is that this is <laugh>. Thank you. This is all about the company's GM specifically getting so much more data on the drivers. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they, if, if, especially if you offer an infotainment system that on top of doing music and, and and and mapping and everything else, it also is looking at your fuel economy. It's looking at how fast you're going, all of that stuff. They suddenly have this data that they can use and make all sorts of opportunities for marketing and everything else. And I think in that way it makes sense. And then there's also the factor of subscriptions. Yeah. If they can still offer

Alex Wilhelm (00:16:23):
Subscriptions, that's it. This is the worst thing for consumers I can possibly imagine. It's gonna be an operating system by GM with Google Parts glued together by people who've never built an OS before, designed to upsell you and sell your data while not connecting to your iPhone. Fantastic, brilliant idea. This is literally driven by people in accounting who want you squeeze 100% margin out of cars. And it makes me want to vomit it into my hands. But before we get onto more serious things Christina doesn't drive, I don't drive a bar, doesn't have a car. This is the least mobile panel I've ever been on.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:58):
<Laugh>,

Alex Wilhelm (00:16:59):
My spouse does. I've driven outta a car once across a parking lot, literally one time and it scared me. So, wow. Go team.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:06):
Interesting. Oh man, I so you, you don't drive now a abroad, but being from the Midwest you drove more from Oh

Abrar Al-heeti (00:17:13):
Gosh, yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:17:14):
It,

Abrar Al-heeti (00:17:14):
Yeah. It was the only way to get around, especially in like a smaller town. Yeah, I feel like moving out to the Bay, it was kind of a no-brainer to not have a car. But now I feel like everyone has a car in the bay now. I don't know. It does

Mikah Sargent (00:17:26):
Seem like that, doesn't it?

Abrar Al-heeti (00:17:27):
Right. Post pandemic, I think something changed. But I'm still, I'm still holding onto the no car lifestyle because I don't wanna deal with the traffic and the parking and the break-ins

Mikah Sargent (00:17:38):
<Laugh> Yeah. Putting signs in that say, please don't take any, there's nothing in here of value. It's

Christina Warren (00:17:42):
Not, yeah. And, and they, they, at least in Seattle, they don't follow that. They don't care. They

Mikah Sargent (00:17:45):
Still, they're still all in it.

Christina Warren (00:17:47):
<Laugh>. Oh, no, no. Oh yeah. No, in, in, in our covered like you know, like building that I live in that, that is like locked and whatnot. Like my, my husband's car has been broken into multiple times mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and he doesn't even have a nice car. They leave the Teslas alone. But they go straight for, you know, the, the 2004 Volvo. 

Mikah Sargent (00:18:07):
Too bad. Yeah. It's

Christina Warren (00:18:08):
Too bad. But no, it, it is. Yeah. Even with the sign, like, please don't do this. But I, I was gonna say what, you're exactly right, Alex. Like this is a subscription play, but what is so dumb about this, and I get them wanting to go all in on subscriptions. There's an argument you could make where you could like lock the access to the CarPlay or the Android Auto behind some sort of GM subscription. It would still be gross, but you could do that. But I, and I would honestly prefer that what this is going to be, which is, as you said, their own like kind of hobbled together operating system from people who've never built an OS. And because they're probably going to wanna have like their own like system on a ship system here because it's not a projection it's not going to get updates and it's going to become obsolete.

(00:18:48):
And people keep their cars for longer than you keep your phone. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So the nice thing about CarPlay and Android Auto and whatnot is yes, at a certain point movie, they will become a little bit too decrepit to like work all the way, but you'll still be able to have basic things where parts of the screen will be able to display, you know, this is the song that's playing or this is, this is the maps thing. Cause it is just a, a display thing and that's going to go away here. And so I I, I'm, I'm, I'm guessing that in another decade we will see all these GM original, you know, os things that didn't work out. They will just, another bean counter will come and go, oh, well it's cost us too much money to try to maintain all these things. So now we're just going to partner up with, with the operating system manufacturers the phones and, and go back to the old way again.

Mikah Sargent (00:19:33):
Yeah. Sweet.

Christina Warren (00:19:34):
It seems so shortsighted.

Mikah Sargent (00:19:35):
I, I just, I, it's, it is kind of frustrating to me thinking about what the next five, 10 years looks like in terms of how many subscription services are gonna be hitting my account every month. But it is the way that the companies are doing things and even companies that are who at one point you, the, the agreement was you buy a thing and you spend a good amount of money on that thing, and then it is your thing and you have it and you can use it to now every little piece and part of it has a subscription that's built into it. I remember, this is a, a little silly, but I was really excited about, they had these little sort of r robot friends and the little robot friend you could get. And it would, it had like a little face and it would respond to you and it had a little home where it would go and charge itself and it could like, show you the weather. And it was a little goofy, but it was kind of a fun little toy. And I, I thought, oh, I might have to get one of those, you know, it's a bit of an investment, but it'll be fun to have and it drives around your house and is cute. And then I saw, oh, on top of buying the device itself, which is already pretty pricey, you have to pay $10 a month to be able to continue to use it and use all the features that it has. It's like, is anything not subscription based?

Alex Wilhelm (00:20:58):
Okay. Can I throw in one car based subscription counter argument to our consensus

Mikah Sargent (00:21:03):
Here, please. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (00:21:04):
Okay. I have to buy a car eventually and actually relearn how to drive at some point in time. Because being a one car family, same with a little human, is, is stretching our ability to not lose our minds. They, there's this like three wheel electric car clean out that's like a, a motorcycle in a case essentially. And it's tiny and it's like a good little one person city car. And that's all I need around Providence, where the streets are really narrow. And you can buy it or you can rent it for like 200 bucks a month later this year. And I'm thinking, Ooh, why not? Like, I don't need an as, I don't wanna buy a depreciating asset anyways, really. So why not just Right. Essentially lease this ecar and I can be the biggest dork in town <laugh> and no one will like pay

Mikah Sargent (00:21:43):
For that privileges.

Alex Wilhelm (00:21:44):
It's fine. Yeah. I mean, I, I I don't leave the house much anyways, so I don't really care. But like, to me, that's kind of cool because I don't wanna go out and spend 25 or 50 K on a car. Cause apparently it got really expensive since I bought my lost one, Lord

Mikah Sargent (00:21:56):
Mercy. 

Alex Wilhelm (00:21:57):
Yeah. So I think maybe for some things they're okay, but if you buy a car, it should be yours. I hate turning everything into an asset that you don't actually own. And even though I get the corporate America perspective, I just think it sucks.

Mikah Sargent (00:22:09):
You've, you, you Yes. Copy and paste Exactly that. I get it. But it's, it, I don't like it. <Laugh>. Yeah. So one o one other thing that kind of exists in this bizarre space where you were kicking the show off with I don't know if you all heard about, I'm sure you did that open letter about AI where the several signatories were saying, Hey, look we think that any AI technology that is more advanced than G P T four, we should whoop, put a pause on that. We should put a pause at least six months on investigating and trying to create AI that's any better than this. And we need to just be more mindful of the fact that there are dangers to this ai. And then of course, as it got shared around look at the people that are on this list.

(00:23:03):
It's Steve Wosniak, it's Elon Musk, it's all of these different AI researchers. It's the, the co-creator or the, the CEO of ftx Sam Bankman Fried. It is all of these different people. It turns out <laugh>, according to Vice, that several of the people on the list who were quote unquote confirmed were not actually the people who were on the list, but instead were fake people who said that they were the people who were on the list and confirmed that they wanted their names signed. And then on top of that, after the letter was released, there were several people who did sign the list or the, the who said, Hey, actually we don't agree with many of the points in the letter <laugh>. So I don't know if they didn't have time to read it and they just decided to sign it or what was going on there.

(00:23:56):
But it, this whole thing is a mess. And this, this vice piece kind of goes into depth about the research that Vice did itself. And then I think overall about a conversation surrounding the potential dangers of ai, but also the conversation around ai. And that I think is the, the bigger deal here. Last Thursday I had I believe it was from the Washington Postal, we had an, an incredible guest on who talked about, who talked about talking about AI and the pitfalls that we often fall into and sort of creating a, we we know about news literacy, but this was about AI literacy and in helping people to understand what AI can and can't do in its current state, what it could possibly do, and helping to deal with the fears surrounding AI and sort of what's manageable and what's not.

(00:24:55):
But I wanted to get the, the panel's take on this open letter, what we're all feeling about generative ai particularly for many of us for many of us as journalists, and then even as developers and developer advocates, and maybe even Christina, what you've heard from developers because I know Microsoft itself is working on even making further improvements to, for example, co-pilot and what the sort of sentiment is about where AI is right now and where it's going. So why don't we start with Christina, and then I'd love to hear from the both of you as well.

Christina Warren (00:25:36):
Yeah. So the, the one I guess kind of disclosure that I will make is that I work at GitHub who has a relationship with, with open ai to, to make a GitHub co-pilot. And o obviously Microsoft is our parent company and they are very involved in this step too. I think that there are definitely reasons to be cautious, and I can understand the point that the letter, putting aside all the mess about who really was signing it and, and, and, and who wasn't aside, I can understand some of the, I guess fear or at least the, the need to wanna maybe take a pause on things. But I, it, it, the letter as I read it, seems to me is, is completely misguided in some ways. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I think in some ways it, it over hypes and over buys into some of the, the realities of where AI is now versus like where it might be in five years, in, in five years maybe these, these spheres would, would be more applicable.

(00:26:34):
But I think right now this is buying into, into a reality that we're just not seeing. And, and I'm gonna be honest, I think some of the people who've signed the letter who have, you know, maintained that they've signed it are coming at this from, like, it, it, it strikes me as a little bit hypocritical mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, because these are people who have already invested their own time and money into AI models that maybe aren't as advanced as some of these things are. And so I have to start a question, are you actually worried about humanity or are you just worried that you are going to be caught flatfooted and that someone else will be able to make more money than you will in the short term? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> like that, that's, that's where the cynic and me is going to go off. I think that we need to have conversations about AI literacy and what it can and can't do. And I think that we need to have conversations about, you know, how we want these models to evolve. But I don't know if this letter, it was a, in good faith or b, is actually representing the future that we're in right now and not you know, frankly a little bit of hype and science fiction of where we might be.

Alex Wilhelm (00:27:31):
Well put. Alex <laugh>, I mean, how can I follow that? Not trying to get Christina in trouble, but one of the things I'm most excited about in the AI world is actually what's going on with co-pilot and co-generation in general Yeah. With these large language models for LLMs. And the reason why is I, I haven't really written code since high school when I was learning c plus plus. I'd have a book that was like this thick. Yeah. And I didn't make it that far because it was boring. But what I would love to do is be able to build things. And I think that once we can get generative co-development from these AI tools into a more workable state, I, Alex I'm gonna be able to build cool things. Yes. And that doesn't seem to be that far away. No. Is that dangerous? N no. It's an extension. I feel Christina, of kind of like what folks can already do.

Christina Warren (00:28:16):
Totally. No, I totally agree with you. And we, we hear a lot of that. I mean, where, where the co-generation is right now is it's not bad. And for some things that would usually come from a book like a, you know, write a write, like you can ask a GitHub co-pilot right now to write you an application that will play rock paper, scissors in Python, and it will do that. But that is something that would be in a very basic kind of like introduction to programming book, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> like, this is a very simple exercise and you can ask you know, chat g p t and co-pilot some other things that will help you maybe generate some code blocks. And, but right now it's still a little bit more piecemeal. You still do need to know what you're doing to a certain extent.

(00:28:51):
So that's why we call it a co-pilot. It's not doing it for you, it's assisting you. But I do think that we will reach a point where you can have someone who has an idea of, this is what I wanna do and I can put together like a minimal viable product that will do this. And some people see this as a threat to their jobs and, and, and to the future. I don't, because I think that you've always, what we've seen with as when coding languages have become easier to use and, and people have been able to build more things, we've just seen the explosion in more people wanting to build applications, not, not fewer. So does that mean that maybe some low level jobs will go away? Potentially. But I would also question whether those, whether people would've been hired to build those apps to begin with. I think that this could just be an o an opportunity for people who would've never paid for it and would've other otherwise never been able to have the skills to build an application, might actually have that opportunity. And that's exciting.

Alex Wilhelm (00:29:43):
Sorry, go on Alex. Yes. And, and I think that when you think about co-pi get hook co-pilot, it's just a one layer higher of abstraction in the code language stack from assembly up through oth other languages, right? And then the next step I think is kind of no code systems paired with prompts that I say mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, please connect this button to that, have it turn purple when I click it. Yeah. And then the code's done in the background, I don't have to deal with it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and then suddenly me, Alex can do so much more. And that's very exciting. A a as a step forward, I think the letter going back to Micah's point i I is is doism from fake optimists who are bummed out that they're behind a k a Elon. So, you know, whatever. But you know, past that, I'm still very excited about all of this and I, I'm gonna shut up now on Let a Bargo, but like, I, I just can't believe that the, the people who claim that everyone else is a bummer about tech are now writing bummer letters about their competitors, like lame

Mikah Sargent (00:30:33):
<Laugh> a bra. What's, what are your thoughts? I,

Abrar Al-heeti (00:30:36):
I, I just wanna say, I think it's kind of like sadly poetic that like even the people who had appear signed the letter didn't like what is real. Like none of it's real

Alex Wilhelm (00:30:44):
<Laugh> like,

Abrar Al-heeti (00:30:45):
Was kinda <laugh>, like, who knows, but <laugh>. But I think I, I agree with both of your points and I think I think the thing that I'm thinking about is that for a lot of us who are in the tech space, we see a lot of the potential here. We see a lot of the dangers here. But I think the scary thing and the point of concern is that this has all just kind of exploded so quickly and from so many angles and from so many companies that I think the fear of misinformation is, is a real one. And I think you know, I think it becomes a matter of making sure I, there's this, like, there's this tendency in tech to just do things because you can, and I, it makes me wonder in what capacity should we be using these technologies and in which way, in what ways can we improve, you know, society and, and different assets of our lives? But but yeah, I think it's, it's also something to think about when you look at the names on here. Okay. Why, why are these people signing this letter? I think it's, it's very valid to kind of be a little skeptical of that. But I think, I think the biggest thing for me is just thinking about how quickly this has all come together and how the everyday person is, is going to perceive this, and if they're gonna be able to tell what's real and what's not. Cause it's getting a lot harder.

Mikah Sargent (00:31:57):
Yes, yes, it's true. The Washington Post piece that I wanna point everyone to it was by Tatum Hunter who joined me on Tech News Weekly to talk about it. And the piece is called Three Things Everyone's Getting Wrong About ai. And although that does have sort of a Buzzfeed style headline that may make you go, I don't want to cl No, you should absolutely check this piece out. Because one of the things that I felt a little attacked by on in this piece because it was like, oh, this is me. I, I wasn't even thinking about this. It was how when, when I would go and I'd talk to chat g p t or type to chat G P T and it would provide an answer that I could confirm was correct, because it was something that I already knew or I was actively kind of looking at, it started to lead me.

(00:32:44):
If I'm seeing it do these things and get it right, then it's starting to put in me this belief that it's going to continue to be correct about things and sort of have this false belief in the system that it's not going to have those issues. Where then the next time I ask, it's something, it's hallucinating an answer as opposed to giving me one. And I think that was one aspect of it in particular that really stuck out to me because while I feel like on from the get-go, because I have some level of understanding of how a large language model works, and because I tend to be skeptical of, of technology in general, at least in the sense of just inquiring about it, I thought, oh, I'm, I'm gonna be okay with this. But then to have that moment and go, oh, I need to maintain a certain skepticism that just because it's giving me this answer and it's gotten so many different things correct, I still should follow through and have some due diligence.

(00:33:45):
 Because if we don't have some level of due diligence, then that is where, and, and that's the thing. It's, it's misinformation not disinformation because it's not that the AI is actively trying to lie to me, but it is just by its nature potentially saying something that is untrue. So yeah, just us being mindful of that, even though we, cuz it's kind of like you see when you see a child start walking for the first time and you're like, oh my goodness, I'm so proud of you. Like you've done this, you don't suddenly think that they can build a car or they can suddenly like change the way that nuclear mechanics works or whatever. But when I saw the AI get this small thing right, then suddenly I'm going, oh my goodness, now I can do all of these things if it's gonna be great at it.

(00:34:36):
And I, you know, potentially you, you could find yourself putting too much faith in it. But as, as in terms of being a an assistant that helps me complete something that I want to do what you were talking about, Alex, I have used this a number of times. I, the, I know just a tiny bit of Python and it's not enough to do some of the things that I've wanted to do. And so being able to go into chat G P T and say, Hey, this is what I want to do to add on to this, or I couldn't figure out what regular expression I needed to create to be able to pick out some specific text from a document using it to do that, that stuff is fantastic. It's really good at that. And that is where it is such a help I think, to humanity and can potentially like just make so much of a difference for people.

Alex Wilhelm (00:35:26):
And, and that's also a sticking point because I read an interesting, I forget if it was a Twitter thread or a post from someone who contributed a lot to Stack Overflow, which is a place where developers come together often to ask questions and and solve things with one another. And they were saying, effectively, I don't want all of my contributions to be hoovered up into the great AI in the sky. And then used in ways that I may not approve of or that may not be fair to me. And, you know, reasonable. It's smacks a little bit to me a people trying to de index from Google if you're a site on the internet. So I'm kind of like, ah, is this ludism or is this a reasonable complaint from a person who contributes to an open forum that I have yet to kind of figure out where I stand? But at the same time, Micah, if you were like, here's the thing, you can use it, I'm gonna click the big green button because I personally want to do more stuff. But I am glad we're at least talking about the ethics behind the source materials mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that are going into these systems. And I think that's where Italy ended up getting kind of peevish about the whole thing.

Mikah Sargent (00:36:23):
Absolutely. One, one last example that I have to give because I think that this is again, one of the rare instances, well not rare instances cuz it's becoming less rare, but one of the very specific instances where something like a large language model can work. I remembered that there was an episode of either or there's either an episode of television or there was some movie where in that episode of television or in that movie, there was a person who was taking antidepressant medications and they were living their life, everything was fine, but at some point, some naturalist had prescribed St. John's wart. And what many of you may know is that if you take St John's Wart, it is one of those rare substances that can actually make your body absorb more of different types of medication. It like makes your body better at absorbing other types of medication.

(00:37:15):
So if you take St John's Wart and an antidepressant at the same time, then you can become at risk for serotonin syndrome where you end up having too much serotonin in your brain and it causes all sorts of issues. So in the show or the movie, the person started to lose their mind and no one knew why it was happening and it lo and behold it was because they were taking St. John's wart. So I typed into Chad g p t, I know there's a movie or a TV show out there where this happens, and then it was able to respond and be like, yeah, that was this episode of Dr. House. 

Alex Wilhelm (00:37:50):
Amazing.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:50):
Oh, and it was, oh, did it also happen in Veep? Oh, see, so I've got Chad g p no, it's, it was Aunt Pruit actually who's like, this happened in Veep. But there was an episode of Dr. Houseworth that had happened and yeah, the whole time it was because of of, of the, the St. John's Ward. Anyway, I just, that is just one of those unique situations where, because it's hoovered up all of that information, I don't have all of that here. And it was kind of a hard thing to Google. I tried that first and it was just more all of these warnings about taking St. John's wart with the medication. So it's like, oh, okay. That was, that was a great,

Alex Wilhelm (00:38:22):
Congratulations. You now invented Google back when it was good.

Mikah Sargent (00:38:26):
<Laugh>. Yeah,

Alex Wilhelm (00:38:26):
Exactly. <Laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, remember when you could type in Google, like, it's that song that goes bam, bam, bam, bam, bum bum bum. And you will be like, oh yes, of course this, this is 1983 rendition of Toto. You're like, oh, fantastic. So if Chad g PT is gonna make Google good again, <laugh> cool. I'm here for, it's Google's trash. Now <laugh>, are we gonna get

Abrar Al-heeti (00:38:42):
Hats that say that make Google great

Mikah Sargent (00:38:44):
Again. <Laugh>. Oh God, that's

Alex Wilhelm (00:38:45):
Great. How long they're not red with white font on the front. Because even as a joke, I think I'll pass on the modern KK k helmet.

Mikah Sargent (00:38:53):
We'll have Chad g p t design them make these the least offensive thing they can possibly be with this tagline. We'll see what it

Alex Wilhelm (00:39:00):
Comes up with. It's got like a Pikachu hat or something. <Laugh> something that everyone looks

Mikah Sargent (00:39:04):
Alright. I wanna take a quick break before we come back with lots more. I've got a great panel. Christina Warren, Alex Wilhelm, and a Bra alti are all here today for this episode of this Week in Tech which is brought to you today by Lookout as we've been talking about on the show. And I think as many of you know, business has changed forever because we've seen a change in the boundaries of where we work or even how we work. All those boundaries have kind of disappeared. That means your data, it's always on the move, whether on a device or in the cloud, across networks at the local coffee shop. And that's great for your workforce because it means you can have people who are working from different places and are able to get their work done no matter what is going on.

(00:39:53):
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You've gotta do this in order to, that just gets in the way of getting work done. So Lookout makes that simpler, it makes it security so much easier working with multiple point solutions and legacy tools in today's environment. It's too complex. So with its single unified platform, lookout reduces it complexity, giving you more time to focus on whatever else comes your way. Good. I love this. Good data protection isn't a cage, it's a springboard letting you and your organization bound toward a future of your making. So visit lookout.com today. Super easy to remember right lookout.com today to learn more on how to safeguard your data, how to secure your hybrid work and how to reduce it complexity. That's lookout.com. Thank you lookout for sponsoring this week's episode of this Week in Tech. All right, back from the break, and I think it's time to talk about a big tech company with a big old conference coming up in June, apple has announced its worldwide Developer conference for 2023, a mostly online event with a small sort of special event that's taking place in person.

(00:41:53):
 But along with that announcement, of course comes the slate of rumors that goes along with any Apple announcement. And I think with this one of course the way that the Worldwide Developers Conference happens every year is it kicks off with a keynote. And at that keynote, apple announces the new features, updates, changes that are taking place for all of its software platforms, Mac os TV os watch, os, home Pod os, iPad os, iOS, et cetera. And so we will always see software announcements at the event, and then developers spend the rest of the week learning how to make use of these new tools or how to make use of the updates to the existing tools. But there are some rumors, Christina, that Apple is slated to announce maybe it's ar vr r headset. Is it time for Apple to dip its toe into a R vr r

Christina Warren (00:42:55):
I mean, I think it would've been better if they did it a couple years ago.

Mikah Sargent (00:42:59):
<Laugh> <laugh>

Christina Warren (00:43:02):
Before, you know, the the, the tides kind of shifted, but hey, when it's ready, it's ready. I mean, I definitely wanna see what the, with, with this very long rumored headset looks like. And it certainly seems like from the the design of the invitation that we might finally be be looking at this. So

Mikah Sargent (00:43:25):
Who

Christina Warren (00:43:25):
Knows? I, I guess it's time. I don't know, does this feels like other than the Apple, the long rumored Apple car, this seems like the most, like the, the least slam dunk least makes sense. You know, kind of like big swing, you know, new category Apple thing that I can recall in a really long time, like, like, like the watch was kind of weird, especially when it was first positioned to be this fashion object. They very quickly pivoted that to fitness and it, it completely was, was a massive success. Obviously phones and, and, and tablets make sense. I feel like we're still waiting for whatever the, the killer app will be. If any company is going to give us a killer app for ar vr, it will be Apple. But yeah. May maybe now it's finally time and, and it would be sort of ironic if they were showing it off in this sort of weird hybrid virtual but also in person world, right? Like

Mikah Sargent (00:44:23):
Yeah. Because how do you do that, right? And especially yeah, with a, a product that is so focused on sort of the visual aspect of it, <laugh>, do you have people on stage who are very good at describing what they're seeing <laugh>, right? Because you can never trust like the virtual demonstrations of these products because it's not the same as being able to see it quite literally with your eyes, right? It it right. Always is going to be is this completely computer generated? Is this what I'm actually seeing? This is a hard product, I think just in general to launch and to have people trusted enough to where they're willing to spend the money. Because that's what we're hearing too, is that this is gonna be a pretty pricey object. And Alex, I saw you really rolling that arm in there, so you must have been agreed. Sorry,

Alex Wilhelm (00:45:09):
I, I, I, what I've learned to do in my maturity is not interrupt people, but then I have to not talk <laugh> and it's very hard when I have many things that I want to say, but I need to be polite and leave room for others. So anyways, <laugh> I just wanna say that Christina said something very interesting that there's gonna be a keynote, I believe, or maybe that was you, Micah. Yeah. But anyways, they're not keynotes, to your point, they're actually just infomercials. True. In the old days you had to have a device on stage, use it and have it work. Now everything's so pre-produced. It's like listening to like a really bad pop single when all the personal has been stripped out of it by producers and mixers and masters, <laugh>, the point to which there's not really much soul left. And so if Apple pulls this off, haa, I'll buy it because, you know, I, I buy everything that Apple makes eventually.

(00:45:49):
 I am skeptical, but I do help that like if they do have something, it's not just what they usually do, which is a lot of glitzy stats on a screen, find some dude in a, in a laboratory with a coat on. You know, like I hope it's a bit more touch and feel. And to that point, when Microsoft first started off the HoloLens nerd helmet I got to use it that day. They got, they put me in a room with it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I got to put it on, I got to play with it. It's awesome. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> didn't work out commercially, but the technology was freaking fantastic. So I think you need to have that tactile reel. No bs no pre chew. Let me touch it. Let me turn it on. Otherwise I just don't care.

Mikah Sargent (00:46:22):
Yeah. Yeah. Cuz again, what is real <laugh> was saying earlier. I'm curious for you Abra, have you you know, used any VR devices and what's your kind of take on vr, ar as it currently stands and where it could go?

Abrar Al-heeti (00:46:40):
It's been years since I last put on what was in Oculus and, and and it's going, I think this is really the ultimate test to see the power of Apple because so many companies have been trying so hard to make us want to put a headset on for vr, ar and this is gonna be the ultimate test, not just because of the technology, but also because of the prices you've mentioned. There are rumors this would cost somewhere around $3,000. That's, that's a lot of money. And so you know, it's an Apple product, you're gonna pay for it. And it's, I think it's, it's just going to be really interesting to see what the tech looks like and what the adoption looks like. And you think about other things too, like foldable phones. Okay, that's kind of been a slow takeoff.

(00:47:24):
If Apple rolls a lot of foldable phone will that happen? So there are a couple, couple areas here where there are rumors that Apple is, is working to create a product. And I, I am just really curious to see if people are going to be willing to do it, and I think they are, I think they're going to be more likely to put on an Apple headset versus you know, a Quest Pro. I think there's a lot of skepticism and scrutiny around companies like Meta and I think also Meta hasn't necessarily p sold it very well. Like why? I still don't understand why you would need or want you know, that headset, but Apple will find a way to try to convince you to want it. Absolutely.

Alex Wilhelm (00:48:01):
Yeah. I I mean, to your point about that, if you go back in time before iPhones got larger screens, iPhone users mocked Android users for having s <laugh>, right? Own tablets. Oh my gosh. Your're screen so big. What is that in that fake iPad? And then Apple screens got bigger and everyone was like, this is the best <laugh>. And you kind of sit back and you're like, how did they do that? Yeah, that's the magic. Yeah. so Bar I'm with you. Even if it's three K, I'm pretty sure I'll find some way to talk myself into buying one. Absolutely. Just like I bought an iPad Pro that I don't use. Shout out Apples gross margins. I bought an Apple pencil that I lost. Shout out Apples. Gross margins, <laugh>. You're

Abrar Al-heeti (00:48:34):
The reason they're

Mikah Sargent (00:48:35):
Valued so highly. Exactly. Personally,

Alex Wilhelm (00:48:38):
Yeah. I, I mean I, I'm an American with a credit card and I work near technology. It's gonna happen <laugh>. My question is what do we want to use these four mm right? Because I struggle a bit and I, you know, I've, in my little office pod here, I've got three different computers. I've got work, Mac personal iMac, and a gaming pc. I even got like a, I have a gaming sim driving rig in the closet over there. I have a reasonable gaming budget and I just don't have VR yet. Cause I just don't, you know? Right. So my question is, if a bar's right, that they will have the killer app, cool. But, but what is, what's it gonna be? That's what I can't put my finger on.

Mikah Sargent (00:49:12):
I can't either. That's the thing is I, so the, I get starry-eyed sometimes about vr. I've got the Oculus quest too. I bought it before they use the price. And I used it for a while and thought, oh yeah, this is so great. I'm gonna especially do the virtual workstation where I can have a big screen here and two little ones here and have my virt. And I just, I don't, I mean, I don't wanna mess up my hair. I don't want to be sitting in this space where it's like hot and there's just this device on my face. Like, there's so many reasons why it's un uncomfortable, it's unwieldy, it's awkward. It's all of these things that I don't know how they get past that. And I really, like, I have to say, and I, I, I feel like I have said this for years and I, I still believe it.

(00:50:03):
I am just, I feel like all of this is just stop gap to the eventual ar future where I can hold out my hand and it is a phone screen, you know what I mean? Or just in front of me. I can have my notifications pop up or anytime I look at a wall and there's a rectangle that's available that can suddenly become a screen or the, I mean, we've already got HUDs cars in some cases, and I know none of you're mobile. Sorry. but it's that, that is what I think we're waiting on because that is the time where it is not this unwieldy ski goggles we're strapping to our face. Right.

Christina Warren (00:50:43):
No, the ski goggles we're strapping to our face that, look, I know that Apples will, I'm sure be the best design of all of them. Like you, I also got a quest too, right before the price went up because I was like, well, I'm not gonna pay more for this old bank <laugh>. Exactly. you know, so, so that was, that was my way of, of getting on, on and, and, and it's fun. I think there's some decent kind of gaming things like you, Alex, I also have a gaming pc and I have all the consoles and I don't play games all that much, but I have all of the gaming things. And so I'm still trying to figure out like, what is the experience that would bring me into this? And, and I, I do think that there are some gaming scenarios where I could be like, oh, if I could have like a, like, like Starfield, that actually strikes me as, as, as a game that if that was able to be like a, like a VR sort of experience. And I know it's not going to be, but that seems like the sort of thing that I could be like, okay, this, this could be incredible. Right.

Alex Wilhelm (00:51:34):
And Starkville is the new space-based r p g that's coming from the famous company that's done the stuff. Bethesda?

Mikah Sargent (00:51:39):
Yes.

Christina Warren (00:51:40):
Bethe.

Mikah Sargent (00:51:40):
I'm not supposed to say it. Okay. It's like,

Christina Warren (00:51:42):
No,

Alex Wilhelm (00:51:43):
No, you're, no, I forgot they made Skyrim. Right.

Christina Warren (00:51:46):
No, they make a fallout.

Alex Wilhelm (00:51:48):
Oh. Cuz Sky Room's terrible. But I haven't played Fallout yet. I'll give that a try.

Christina Warren (00:51:51):
Okay. Okay. Fallout's amazing. And so th that would be like, I, I could see that kind of being cool, but Yeah. But you, you kind of look, I think the word all sort of looking for like, okay, well what is the experience? What is the thing that would take this the next level? Because even something like, like saying like, okay, I can now have great FaceTime conversations where I can see the person I'm talking to. Okay. But am I going to see them like with their mimo? Right. Am I going to see actual them? In which case are they gonna see me? And my, my stupid goggles <laugh>, there's also this whole thing of being like that apparently, you know, the, the rumors are that to get the battery thing working, it'll be a clip on battery pack. Ugh. Which on the one hand, I'm like, okay, that's better than having the, the headset be really heavy. But on the other hand, I'm like, you're gonna make me clip on a battery pack? Haven't

Mikah Sargent (00:52:37):
Had to do that since what in <laugh> the early

Christina Warren (00:52:39):
Exactly. It's gonna, it's gonna remind me of like, I was gonna say, yeah, that's gonna remind me of like, when I used to have my game boy, like, like battery pack thing. Yes. You know you know it, it as, as a kid or, you know, fortunately we don't have to do this as frequently, but when you, everybody used to have to carry around like a, a, a battery pack for their phone. Right. Like everybody would just carry like a huge, like, this was like five years ago now because we all have s <laugh>,

Mikah Sargent (00:53:02):
There's plenty of battery built in. Yeah, exactly.

Christina Warren (00:53:04):
Plenty of battery built in. But like, that's, that's the sort of thing. It's like, okay, so what is the experience going to be and how is it going to be better than what we've already got? And on top of that, how is it going to be worth $3,000? Which, if that is true, I'm still skeptical about that because even for Apple, that seems an absurd price point to come in at.

Alex Wilhelm (00:53:24):
Yeah. And I, I, I have a larger technology budget than I probably should because I'm a little bit obsessed and still having, you know, my entire life. Yeah. And three K is I have to go talk to my spouse and be like, I would like to waste $3,000. Right. And then she'll gimme a look like, or you could not <laugh> not to like make a case and then it was 500. I could be like, honey, by the way, I wasted fire hundred dollars. Absolutely. And then I'll get my ear load in Flicked, but it's fine.

Christina Warren (00:53:46):
<Laugh>, you know, five, 500, a thousand even 1500 for me, like my budget, like, it's not even, it's not even gonna be a conversation. 3000. I have to think about it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yes. And, and especially, and I'm thinking like three thousand's, like that's three, that's three MacBook errors really,

Mikah Sargent (00:53:59):
You know that

Alex Wilhelm (00:54:00):
No unit of technology price now

Christina Warren (00:54:02):
<Laugh>. I mean that's, that's what I, that's what it should be. Right. But like that's three back buggars

Alex Wilhelm (00:54:07):
Borrow. How many back Bogar was your couch back there?

Mikah Sargent (00:54:09):
Sorry. I'm just, it is a nice, it's a really nice couch. Yeah,

Alex Wilhelm (00:54:12):
It is.

Abrar Al-heeti (00:54:13):
Thank you so much. It's a great backdrop.

Alex Wilhelm (00:54:15):
Yeah, it is. Actually, it's funny how, how the three of us on the panel have such different vibes in our backgrounds. <Laugh>

Abrar Al-heeti (00:54:24):
Minus is extra. So I hope you,

Alex Wilhelm (00:54:27):
I mean you look like put together. Like I wanna have, like I wanna have like a dinner party at your house. Cause I know the food gonna be like on point. And we, well point out

Abrar Al-heeti (00:54:35):
I have tea parties if anyone's interested, it's like my thing,

Mikah Sargent (00:54:39):
Wait, once we all get these Apple headsets, we can virtually have it in your house.

Alex Wilhelm (00:54:45):
Go.

Abrar Al-heeti (00:54:45):
That's what I want a headset for. Okay. So everyone can be Tea party together.

Christina Warren (00:54:49):
Yeah. And that I would love, but I also wanna like be there in person. See this <laugh>.

Abrar Al-heeti (00:54:53):
Absolutely. Let's do both. Let's be there in person. Tickets,

Mikah Sargent (00:54:57):
Headset are less money than the headset will be. So Yeah. Oh man. That's okay. Oh no. So I have to

Alex Wilhelm (00:55:03):
Ask this Apple errors.

Mikah Sargent (00:55:04):
So let's think then let's go back to when the Apple Watch was first announced. Mm-Hmm. Because mm-hmm. I think when before we knew exactly what that was going to be, and even after Apple first announced it as the most personal device you'll ever own, it was not something that we thought was going to be a thing that we needed. And now this is an incredibly popular wearable device Yeah. That a lot of people use for health and fitness and notifications on their wrist. And it's almost become a proprietary Epi m where, you know, it's Kleenex and you've got an Apple watch on your wrist, even if it's a Fitbit. But what, I mean, do we think that this, what is it that makes us feel? Cuz it does sound like we're saying that this is different from something like the Apple Watch where it doesn't seem, seem like it's gonna fall into that boat of like, it, it, it makes sense for them to have and for us to have and for us to want.

Christina Warren (00:56:02):
Well, let me make one point about the Apple Watch, because you're right that it has become ubiquitous and it is a bonafide hit. But as I mentioned, it was originally sold as this weird like fashion thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> like that was where all the marketing and, and all the conversations and interviews that I did with people at Apple was really focused on the design and, and, and talking about it as like a fashion accessory, but obviously would then have, and and part of that was because they didn't have a lot of apps at launch. It was kind of a glorified kinda like notification screen. And, you know, it took some time for them to have the actual, you know watch os s d K to really let people build interesting things that could run standalone. But they, but they dropped the price and they dropped the price a lot.

(00:56:42):
They got rid of the, you know, gold Edition, the $16,000, you know, watch. They thought that that China was gonna go crazy for, but that China didn't go crazy for. And, and, and it became this thing that was like, you know, I think like, I always get the stainless steel model in part because I've used like my companies like fitness budget as like they would let me buy an Apple watch, but then I'm like, well, that's what I'll buy. But like most people get, you know, like the aluminum sport edition and you buy it every couple of years and it's great. It's just kind of a, a general, it it's an upgrade from a Fitbit. Right. But it is sort of this thing, so the price dropped and then they, they focused in on the health benefits. This is the sort of thing where, for me, it's hard to see how does this become that if you're starting at $3,000?

Mikah Sargent (00:57:27):
<Laugh>. Yeah's very quiet. No, I mean it's good though cause we're trying to think about it. Right. but go ahead, Abra.

Abrar Al-heeti (00:57:33):
Oh no, I was just gonna say, I think, you know, especially with, if we're talking about he health features on, on the Apple Watch, they really, really focused on giving you something with the watch that you're not gonna get with your phone. Cause it's like, okay, I can count my steps on the watch. Okay. But I can also count my steps on the phone. Right. And then they added more health features to the watch mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that would, you know, entice you to buy that so that you're adding to what you can already do. So what can they add to the headset that you can't already do on your phone? Okay. So maybe you're thinking you know, getting that heads up display as you're navigating or as you're walking around, is, is that something that you really need? Can they convince you that's something that you really need? Maybe using maps or something. I don't know. But I think, yeah, I think answering that question, what can I get through that that will allow me to step outside of my home, maybe even leave my phone behind, I don't know, something along those lines just to really convince you that this is, this is gonna be worth my money.

Alex Wilhelm (00:58:18):
Do you think Apple, you know, though, go

Mikah Sargent (00:58:20):
Ahead. Go ahead

Alex Wilhelm (00:58:20):
Alex. Oh, I was just gonna say, if we combine the HUD idea of every rectangle being a screen and AAR's point about, you know, having to be something that you can kind of use day to day. What if instead of having a nerd helmet that encases your face, we had a small screen that was attached to the side of your glasses, in front of your glasses, <laugh>. Oh yeah. I've been thinking about that this whole time. And then what you could do is you could see and also get notifications, and I just wanna say that Google Glass though, we all giggle <laugh> and who used it and who got beaten up wearing it. Yes. the one time I got to wear a Google Glass, I saw the translation app where it would take a sign in language and replace the text with your language. Brilliant. One of the few times in tech when I was like, hot. Dang, that's really different. That is amazing.

Christina Warren (00:59:02):
I, I totally agree. I think that like, there was a, there was a concept video that they made for Google Glass, which was not what the actual experience was. To go back to what you were saying earlier, Micah, about how, how are they gonna show this off at ww d c the concept video for Google Glass a decade plus later, I still think is one of the most a I will never forget Google Glass being at IO and seeing Sergey like jump out of the, the plane. Oh yeah. And then, and then, and then walk up on stage. That was, that's that to this day is still like one of the most impressive keynote feeds that I, I don't think will ever be beaten. But that concept video, which, which was not what the actual experience was, where you could be like, oh, this will be the so early of maps and this is how you can walk.

(00:59:44):
Or the translating, you know, the words which, which was a real thing. And, and the even the idea of like, oh, you could take photos, you know, with, with kind of, with with your eyes really compelling. Google Glass didn't work for a lot of reasons the earliest adopters or definitely hindrance to that, but I think you're right. Like that is the sort of thing maybe, and, and maybe that is, I think that gets to Micah's point. Maybe that is the problem. Like we're all kind of waiting for that next level where we can have these things merged, you know, and, and kind of be a little bit like Minority Report. But do we have to have this first step first? Yeah. And, and I guess, and I guess the question is, because a lot of people have been trying these things with these headsets for, you know eight years now. I guess going back to the first Oculus is are, are we willing to wait through kind of the drudgery and like kind of the acceptance that this is the rear projection TV era before we get to like our, our, you know, our our our L e D and and L c d, you know, flat panel TVs. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (01:00:44):
Do you think that the biggest problem with Google Glass was that it wasn't Apple glass?

Christina Warren (01:00:49):
Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (01:00:51):
Sadly that just changed the branding. Have Apple sell it? I bet it would've sold what, a hundred times as many units?

Mikah Sargent (01:00:55):
I think it was two. I think it was absolutely, that was one of the main issues. But I think that unfortunately the group of people who first got their hands correct on Google Glass made it incredibly unfashionable and what's the word? Gosh, is that the word? Oh

Christina Warren (01:01:11):
Yeah. Well their glass holes was, was the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah.

Mikah Sargent (01:01:14):
And they really like, they embodied it. So

Christina Warren (01:01:16):
They did. No, and I, but, but I think that goes along with like, if, if it had been an Apple versus Google, I think that Apple would've been much better about seating that early adopter thing more

Mikah Sargent (01:01:27):
Yeah. The group. Yeah. Yeah,

Christina Warren (01:01:28):
Yeah. But, but I do wonder though. Like, but but, but you know, also I will say too, Google Ask was just a little too far ahead of its time. The vision of where it was, it wasn't able to do it. Like it could translate those words for you and it was magical, but it also took a long time. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you need it to be instantaneous for that sort of thing to really work, which is ironically, it's sort of what we're seeing with, with generative AI now. Whereas when you look at AI assistance from, you know, a decade ago, it promises this stuff, but it wasn't there. Yeah. Now we can, a I think the reason why people get so excited about chat, G B T, even when it hallucinates even when it's wrong, is that you can ask these questions and it will tell you the name of the TV show Yes. And the episode that you were talking about. And it will, it, it will give you this information like immediately. And it's not taking forever. It's giving it to you instantly. And, and that's, that's what we need for, for these things, I think, to work.

Mikah Sargent (01:02:16):
I agree. Absolutely. And the fact that it, cause this is what I think is going to be so magnificent about what Microsoft is doing with Office, when you can let that assistant, because, so it's, it's multiple points here. One, I don't have to speak to it in its specific syntax and diction. I can say what I want. Right. And it is already using that large language model processing to figure out what I'm actually asking. And then what it can do from there is go out to different aspects of, in the case of office, these different tools and pull all of that together. So when I say take this presentation and turn it into a document for a summary, I didn't have to say, Hey Boo Boo, please do this and this and this <laugh>, and then I have to wait for it to do that.

(01:03:05):
And then I have to ask the next thing, and then the next thing and the next thing. It just can take all of what I'm saying and then it properly translates it into the language of the computer system and then goes out to those three or four different aspects. And the fact that it can do all of that together, because it has the ability to translate what we as humans are actually asking into something that the computer can understand. I think that's what makes it next level. I, I do want to ask though, too, because I do think that you know, the AR thing is a more long term. We've heard that this could be a mixed reality headset, but a lot of times with vr, the sup supposedly compelling and killer apps are games. Does Apple's lack of chops in gaming, oh, is that going to be harmful to the company's ability to push a product that very likely is going to be heavily focused, at least in its first iterations mm-hmm.

(01:04:05):
<Affirmative> on that gaming ecosystem? And then furthermore, given what we've seen about Apple inviting special press members to the game to talk about the gaming stuff that they're doing, and then talking a lot about gaming on Mac Os, and I think there was a, a, a game that launched on Mac os not too terribly long ago. Resident Evil or something like that, I, I don't recall. Is is this gonna be trouble for, for Apple to be able to say, Hey, we've got a device and you can game on it and you want a game with us, as opposed to Microsoft's Xbox or the PlayStation?

Alex Wilhelm (01:04:43):
Hmm. Is, so Christina, you don't game much a bra, do you game? No, I, I

Christina Warren (01:04:48):
Mean, I game, but I, but I just, I don't, I I, I gained a smaller proportion of, of what I spend on gaming.

Alex Wilhelm (01:04:55):
Okay. No, I I, I have an Xbox sitting on my desk that I've used twice.

Mikah Sargent (01:04:59):
Oh, so none of us are gamers?

Alex Wilhelm (01:05:01):
No, I'm a PC gamer.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:02):
Oh, so you do PC

Alex Wilhelm (01:05:03):
Game though? I'm a I'm an actual gamer. I'm not on

Mikah Sargent (01:05:05):
One of me. No. Get him off. Get him off of here. Bye.

Alex Wilhelm (01:05:08):
This is one of my longest. Okay. Okay. Calm down <laugh>. It's a really, it's a really good point about Apple and gaming because I love my Max. I do mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, they're great. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But if I ever wanna play anything that's interactive, I fire up the pc, I fire up steam. It is, it is easier. It is faster. Things are better. It's bettered, they're more optimized. And frankly, I'm trying to think of a single game I've, I've seen on I iOS app store mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that I, I've looked at on iPads and iPhones for years that I would be excited about playing N a VR R context. And the, and the answer is none. None. I think. Yeah. So given that either they're gonna have no games that make it exciting and therefore it's kind of put out the gate, or they're working with major game developers already on this, but I feel like we've heard nothing Yeah. About that. Don't think we would. So it, apple can't keep it secrets anymore since it's too big.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:57):
It almost is a detriment to the company. I think that Minecraft is owned by a certain big company. Cuz I think that's a killer ar experience being

Christina Warren (01:06:06):
A little dead Minecraft. I've had the, I had, it's, it's so funny. I, I had the same conversation with somebody the other day where I said exactly that where I was like, Minecraft it was, it was actually, and in my work Slack, I was like, Minecraft ironically would be like the perfect killer thing for this. And and I know they tried to show that off in, in one of the early HoloLens demos, which was amazing. But like, you're like, okay, but now you could actually bring it there. And, and not that I, I think that, you know I think that they would be very happy to have Minecraft on, on stage instead of Roblox. Yeah. You know showing that off, right. But, but those are the two things where you think about, you're like, okay, that, but Minecraft really would be like a perfect, like

Mikah Sargent (01:06:46):
I would love to build, like to turn my living to turn a bras sofa into a Minecraft mine, <laugh>, dig down inside Green and find like gold, or I don't even know how Minecraft works too. <Laugh>, it would be so fun.

Alex Wilhelm (01:07:00):
But Christina's point about the early HoloLens stuff is dead on because that was the demo that really made me feel amazing. I pushed a block off a thing and it like went, threw a hole at a table, but the table was real there, but I couldn't see the table cause I was wearing HoloLens. And it was like, it, it, it did feel like a step forward, turned out to nowhere, but maybe someone will get it right down the road and if someone is gonna get it right late, a bit like smartphones and the iPhone, perhaps it's gonna be Apple. So I, I'm like skeptical, but always willing to give them benefit of the doubt. Same because I've been wrong in the past. So I don't wanna say no. I'm gonna say, eh, probably not. But

Christina Warren (01:07:32):
Yeah, I, that, that's how I feel. I'm like, I will never bet against Apple. But I'm also a, I'm skeptical, but some of the rumors about the price and some of those things, cuz I'm like, oh, that just doesn't feel right at all. And I try to remind myself, oh, well remember how much they said the iPad was gonna cost and the iPad was only $500. That's true. And, and you know, so, so maybe they'll they'll be wrong on that. But you do wonder, you're like, you need that killer app and, and to rare scoring, like I think that for the Apple Watch, it really was like the heart, the, the health stuff, like heart rate, like when you could start doing the, the heart monitoring and, and starting like the fall detection and things like that, that's when it went from being like, okay, well this is a glorified Fitbit to, well, oh, this is also this thing I can get my parents or, you know, that, that, you know, somebody else, you know, might, might be useful for. I mean, like the Apple Watch I had some sort of weird heart thing where my, my hooray was like, I was just standing there was like 140 and for just resting heart rate and, and it, it notified me of that, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, like, but there have been other AFib situations. I I wasn't an AFib mm-hmm. <Affirmative> fortunately where that's a real killer feature. And so I I I don't know what the corollary there is in this world, but if anybody can get it, it's probably them. Yeah. But

Alex Wilhelm (01:08:49):
The, the, the watch though, like sits for me like very much on top of my iPhone and how I think about their Totally. You know? Yes. And so I'm very curious, does, does the ar vr thing from Apple, does that sit on top of my Mac or is it independent or Yeah. What does it kind of lean on for leverage to get a toehold into the market if it's not existing applications or an obvious easy price point, you're running low on options

Christina Warren (01:09:13):
There. Yeah, that's a good point. No, that's a good point. I mean, it would be interesting if they had it sit on top of the Mac. Cuz in that case I'd be like, well, okay, maybe instead of buying two Apple, you know, studio displays, I'd just buy one of these things and then I have, you know, like all the screens <laugh>. That would be a way for me to talk myself into buying one. I'm not gonna lie. But it probably will be building off of the iPhone, which is, you know, has had AR kit for a long time and that they will, you know, be building those experiences on. But then, yeah, you have to wonder, but can this, can this operate independently?

Mikah Sargent (01:09:48):
That's, do

Alex Wilhelm (01:09:48):
You use

Mikah Sargent (01:09:48):
AR kit question?

Alex Wilhelm (01:09:50):
Does anyone here use AR on their iPhone?

Mikah Sargent (01:09:52):
So the thing is, many of us who are using our iPhones for cameras are using AR kit, whether we know it or not, because there are, there's some of the camera functionality that makes use of some of the tools in AR kit to do proper focusing and proper depth of field effects if you're using it. I don't really use the portrait effects very often. But in terms of sort of apps that make use of ar, I can't remember the last time I did it outside of just purposely doing a gimmick. Where it was kind of like I reme, I, I designed

Christina Warren (01:10:27):
The measurement app.

Mikah Sargent (01:10:28):
Yeah. Yeah. The measurement app. That's a good one. That's a, that's, that's actually a good recommendation for people to get a chance to see ar kit in action in a way that's somewhat beneficial because you can measure like a whole wall using ar, which is kind of nice.

Christina Warren (01:10:42):
It's actually very useful.

Mikah Sargent (01:10:44):
Yeah. What about any, any other uses for that? Is anyone playing any games with ar? No. No. I

Alex Wilhelm (01:10:51):
Don't commute.

Mikah Sargent (01:10:52):
No. No.

Alex Wilhelm (01:10:53):
AR why do I need an iPhone game?

Mikah Sargent (01:10:55):
<Laugh>. Okay. Fair enough. I do wanna talk about something that is, okay. So Apple just recently announced a new service called Apple Pay later. And this is a way for people to make a purchase that is split up over payments. And so in some cases can be allowed to or can help you make a bigger purchase. So you, you know, $300 split into four payments, no fees no interest. And many people I think are familiar with the different services that are out there that offer similar features. So you can, there's some where they do charge a fee, but they spread it out over a longer period of time. There are some that work just like this. There are some that are built into kind of like those payment apps that already exist. And then some companies I've actually made use of Amazon, I don't know if they still do this cause I haven't seen it in a long time, but when I first moved here and bought some furniture for my living room, I actually made use of Amazon's payment system where it split up the sofa.

(01:12:05):
That is not a school as a bras into four payments <laugh>. And I was able to get that furniture. But I wanna talk first about the service in general, but then I want to get into a little bit of a discussion about where people are in terms of the responsibility of this technology because I, I, what I find interesting about this is how different people from different financial backgrounds in particular have different thoughts about this. So first and foremost if it's something that you care to share have you ever made use of sort of buy now pay later system and, you know, has it been beneficial to you? And then if you have used Apple Pay, are you looking forward to apple adding this functionality? And it's up to you who wants to start <laugh>? We'll go with, we'll go with a bra. Okay. <laugh>.

Abrar Al-heeti (01:12:57):
Okay. <laugh> amazing. I have not used a buy now pay later system before. I think one of the things that some financial experts have been cautioning with this and with other systems is just not putting too much on your plate, right? So making sure that you're, it's great that these platforms exist and I think there are lots of good, good uses for them, but I think you know, one of the points is to just remember that it, you know, just to keep in mind your, your financial limits and, and you know, maybe not necessarily be enticed by how convenient this may seem, but this, but I do think that this is a really great convenient feature to just be baked into Apple Pay. Cuz I use Apple Pay as if it's Apple paying for my stuff <laugh>. Like, it's

Mikah Sargent (01:13:40):
Just

Abrar Al-heeti (01:13:40):
That like

Mikah Sargent (01:13:41):
Apple, apple Pay. Yeah. <laugh>, I

Abrar Al-heeti (01:13:43):
Like that. Yeah. So <laugh>, I think it's it's, it's super interesting to see this kind of stuff just become a lot more seamless and, and built into our devices. But but yeah, I think just, I, I'm always overly cautious about these things and I just try to hold myself back if it's not something that I think is, is right for me to be purchasing at, at a specific point in time.

Mikah Sargent (01:14:06):
Nice. Alex.

Alex Wilhelm (01:14:07):
So, so I'm kind of, I'm kind of similar. I don't, I haven't used any p services that I'm aware of. I see them online wherever I go. They're like, do you wanna split your sandwich into four payments? Right? Yep. And I, I have to admit that I don't because that's ridiculous. I also don't really use Apple Pay. I just use, we just have one credit card. We just have an auto pay just to get miles for Southwest. So I just use that. I feel kind of like a Luddite now because I feel like I should be using Apple Pay more often. But to me, Apple's move into FinTech in general seems like a search for growth and a bit of a strange place for the company to be in. So I'm a little bit skeptical of it. I didn't like the Apple card, the Goldman Sachs partnership because it didn't seem to be at all useful unless you bought tons of Apple products, which seem to be just self-serving in a way that was kind of gross.

(01:14:54):
 So to me, when they announced this, the reason why I cared about the BN PLL announcement from Apple was that the stocks of public B N P L companies got whacked. Cause everyone was thinking that Apple was gonna come in like a 10 ton gorilla or whatever the phrase is and smash everybody. And then it just didn't come out until, you know, now talking about it again. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I feel like the moment since then has passed, like the days when Clarine and I was worth like 60 billion and square bought after pay for like 25 billion and all of this the valuation of FinTech companies has gone down by like an enormous factor because this stuff isn't as valuable as a business as people hoped it was. Mm. So Apple doing this feels a little bit late. It feels a little bit modest, and frankly, I don't think I care <laugh> very well. Christina <laugh>.

Christina Warren (01:15:36):
Yeah. So I have, it's weird because I do feel like exactly like Alex said, I think he's dead on that the, the moment when, when Klarna and Afterpay and, and, and, and firm in all these companies where these mass evaluations that's over. And part of that is sim is strictly like financial stuff, right? Like in an era when interest rates were zero, then that those services made complete sense because you could, you could take on some of the risk even if you know that a, a certain portion of people are, are going to, you know wind up not not paying you. You can take on some, some of that and you can have lower, lower or even zero interest in, in some of those cases, you know, offers. But interest rates are not zero anymore. And so and, and you know lending has become a a lot more stringent.

(01:16:20):
So the timing does feel off, but it also feels like maybe they have to launch it just because it's done finally. And, and they have obligations to their friends at Goldman Sachs or whoever they've partnered with on this to do it or not. I tend to not use buy now, pay late pay later services. I have a few times if it was literally a 0% interest and they were like, for six months you can do this. And I'm like, well, if you're not going to charge me, I can make more money having my, having my money in other places, then thin pain at all at once, right? So I'm not opposed to that. But in general, I don't like them. I find them predatory, yes, if I'm being completely honest. They're, there's very much of a payday loan type type of smell with this stuff.

(01:17:01):
I don't like it when, when Microsoft, my former employer is putting these things into Microsoft Edge. I don't like it when Apple is getting into this area. It, it feels, it feels gross. That said, you know, if people can genuinely find benefit out of it and, and if people who might have otherwise difficult time getting access to, to credit and some other things maybe. But, but in general I'm not a huge fan of these services and, and I, I tend to think that they can get people in a lot of trouble really quickly because people don't understand how compound interest works and they understand what the terms that they're necessarily signing up for are. And yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:17:41):
I think that's you, the way that you have put that is, is you put it very well, I think with the 0% interest and with the no fees. And as long as that remains true I feel a little bit better about those systems because, so I come from a from a pretty poor growing up family and even to this day a lot of financial struggles in my family. And so I have seen for a few family members who were in situations where you know, they had someone pass away or something like that and they needed to go to a funeral that was in, you know, a few states over they didn't have the money on hand to be able to afford the plane ticket. And so being able to use one of these kinds of services was the difference between being able to go there or not.

(01:18:36):
And because it was zero interest and yada yada yada, then it was something that was doable for them where they were basically just paying back the plane ticket over time where they could afford that more. And in those specific instances, or like when I first moved here and was adjusting to California rent versus Missouri rent and everything that was involved with that and like having to just spend money to move halfway across the country mm-hmm. <Affirmative> it was beneficial f to me as a 0% interest and no fees situation to be able to sort of spread that out. And so I'm always mindful of that in the back of my head in the same place where I've got the other side that's going. Also, don't let this become predatory because I don't ever want it to be the sort of elitist perspective.

(01:19:20):
Cuz there's sometimes where it almost feels like when someone gets upset that like a person who doesn't make very much money, who maybe needs financial help from the government. So food stamps for example, or E B T I guess they call it they have E B T and then you learn, oh, but you like pay a monthly subscription for Netflix. If you right are on E B T, then you shouldn't have Netflix. Like, you know, I don't ever want it to feel like that. That's sort of elitist person who doesn't make enough money, can't ever have anything that is a comfort item or can't, you know, make them happier something that they need. It is, as long as it remains in that place, then I think that it is a benefit overall, especially as things keep getting more and more expensive.

(01:20:03):
But as everyone's saying here, I think the word that everybody's using that, that the term is when it becomes predatory. And you know, I have seen a family member who went down the route. I mean, there was, I couldn't even, I didn't even know this existed, but they had found an app that was practically like you were saying, Christina, a payday loan app, and it had just ridiculous interest rates, but they weren't thinking about that when they did it. And it, you know, ended up costing them so much money. So when it's that, that is very, very, very, very, very bad as a means of maybe democratizing access in a non predatory way that is where I feel like I'm trying to be more open-minded to it. So yeah, I don't know. I'm keeping an eye on things though because I don't know what it looks like if a person doesn't end up paying for one month, do then, does interest then kick in and fees kick in? Is it only fee free and interest free as long as you're making the payments? I mean, those different services all have different terms. So yeah. Something yes to keep an eye on. Go ahead

Alex Wilhelm (01:21:09):
Alex. I think all that was incredibly well put. And when I said that, that I don't care about it, I was more trying to reference the, the passing moment versus it not being an important part of the conversation. So I just wanna clear up that I was being dismissive of the timing versus the conversation that we're having about keeping things on the up and up, but to put in perspective about how much time is fast. And this was, I think kind of on the center on the on the come up if you will. I bought a Peloton during the pandemic because apparently that's how life goes, <laugh>. And I, I paid for it when I bought it and everyone kind of was made fun of me on Twitter for this. They're like, oh, you should have just put it on a firm cuz then you could get 0% interest for X number of months. Right? And I was just like, I don't want to, I don't wanna have an firm account. I don't wanna deal with that. I just would like, I wanted to, I wanted to buy a Peloton. So I did, right. It was weird. Everyone was almost like, like, like money shaming me about how I didn't collect no interest on that money. Weird.

Christina Warren (01:21:59):
What's, what's so funny is, is the whole reason I have an firm account, which I didn't use, is I was going to get my parents a Peloton. Oh. And, and I signed up just to see, well, what, what, what would they cover it? And they were like, yeah, we'll cover the whole thing interest free. And then my mom told me under like, no, no expression, she was like, we do not want a Peloton. Please don't send that to our house, please. She was like, we do. She was like, we do not want a Peloton. She was like, I have to have a certain type of bike for my knees and the Peloton that's not that type of bike. And so do not, do not do do, do not buy us a Peloton. So I was like, all right, well I'm not getting a Peloton, I don't have room for Peloton and I won't use it. So I have an Affirm account that I've never used anything on, but I do still get their emails you know, from from from that. That's, that's, that's funny.

Mikah Sargent (01:22:39):
That is interesting.

Alex Wilhelm (01:22:41):
I will say that the era in which a firm was, was growing before it went public. When Peloton is blowing up and they were the hottest thing in the world that now feels like 74 years ago.

Christina Warren (01:22:49):
It it really does. It really does. And it, and it was right because it was, it was pre pandemic, it was, you know, and then pandemic a little bit too, but the interest rates were, were zero and, and, you know, money was, was just free flying and that is not the case anymore. And so, yeah, to, to your point, like, I don't know what the rules are if you don't make a payment, I mean, I think usually the principal is due, but I don't know if interest starts or what the circumstances are, and I don't know the size of the loans, but I do become concerned because I want these options to be available to people. Because like, like you were saying, Micah, like if it's the difference between someone being able to go to a funeral or not mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, then that should exist.

(01:23:26):
And, and I, and I definitely don't wanna shame anybody for, I don't care what c what your circumstances are, you still deserve to have Netflix or anything else. But I do worry, it's like these things can become incredibly predatory and in the way that they make it look, you know, we see it the same way that you see within that purchase stuff where they would show you like the, oh, it's only gonna cost this much a week and you don't see the weak part maybe your mind. Yeah. It's like dark patterns. It's totally dark patterns. And so I I, I become really concerned with this and I've become concerned with this from many company that is looking at this as a revenue stream and as a growth engine. And and I, you know, I I expressed those concerns to you know, the integration Microsoft Edge when I was at Microsoft. And I feel the same way about this stuff at Apple. I I, I'm, I'm not, I'm not in general, I'm not a big fan, but I also do appreciate why these systems exist because not everyone wants a credit card or can't have a credit card or, or you know, whatever their circumstances are. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (01:24:21):
Yes. But if you are annoyed at the cost of Apple's ar vr Dew Hickey costing $3,000 <laugh> man, apple has a brand new B N P L system, one plus one equals

Mikah Sargent (01:24:33):
Three <laugh>.

Christina Warren (01:24:34):
Oh my god. No, you're exactly right though because I do use, that's the one thing I use my Apple card for is primarily just for Apple purchases because I can get like the interest free and in my mind I'm like, well yeah, I could pay for this immediately, but why not put it over 24 months? Why not?

Alex Wilhelm (01:24:49):
Yeah. Now the money has an actual value to it, but then your money market account at 4% and you'll make 73 cents. Good job.

Mikah Sargent (01:24:56):
That 73 cents I can spend on a gumball <laugh>. Maybe. Yeah, exactly. Who knows? Ugh. Alright, let's take a quick break before we come back with loads more. I've got a great panel today, Abra Alti from cnet. I've got Alex Wilhelm from TechCrunch and Christina Warren, aka a film girl senior developer advocate at GitHub this weekend. Tech is brought to you by Express V P N, which is genuinely the VPN n I use and have used for years. You probably already know about Express VPN because we've talked a lot about it on this show. And because many of you are probably have used it or are using it and that's cuz it's so great. It's so important that you are protecting yourself online and, and there are a number of ways to do so, but I think sometimes we might forget about the ways we need to protect ourselves in terms of our browsing online and the protection that we need to have from our ISPs in some cases your internet service provider and even you know, companies like big tech companies.

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And then I kid you not on February 14th, on Valentine's Day at 5:00 PM they're licensed to, I'm gonna get mad, they're licensed to stream. It ran out. And instead of letting me literally finish the finale episode of the show, they just stopped letting me watch it three quarters of the way through the episode. So I fired up Express VPN n I hopped on over to 10 play and suddenly I was able to finish the episode and continue the wonderful experience that is Australian survivor. I'm not kidding if any of you like Survivor, you've got to see Australian survivor, it's so much better. Express VPN is rated number one by cnet. You may have heard of them, wired Tech Radar and countless other services. And you know what, it's rated number one by me. I use Express VPN on all of my devices and as much as you know, they are a sponsor of the network.

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But the thing that I feel sets express p n apart is sometimes people tell you they went through privacy policies, they went through the terms of service and maybe they skimmed it. No, I wanted to be sure that what I once believed about Express VPN to be true was still true. And so I I did so much research making sure that, you know, cuz Express VPN was acquired by a company and there was some like, oh, you know what's going on? I looked through privacy policies, I read independent reports. In fact, one of the cool things about Express vpn there was one period of time where there was a government who went and tried to seize express VPN's assets and their servers and everything. But because Express VPN runs all of these servers on on, on flash memory, instead of running it on hard drives, then it's volatile memory.

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Alex Wilhelm (01:31:20):
All right, better question. E three is canceled sad and somehow c e s is still not

Mikah Sargent (01:31:26):
Yeah,

Alex Wilhelm (01:31:26):
Right. What's up with that?

Mikah Sargent (01:31:28):
Well,

Christina Warren (01:31:29):
Well one of them is way better at selling booths than the other.

Mikah Sargent (01:31:32):
Oh. Oh, so you think this is like a marketing sort of business development issue rather than just the, the big companies not willing to participate?

Christina Warren (01:31:42):
Well that's, that's, I mean that's, that's the same thing.

Mikah Sargent (01:31:45):
Fair enough, fair enough. <Laugh>. Yeah, that's

Christina Warren (01:31:46):
True. Right, right. Like, like, like cuz c e s has seen the same thing where like a lot of the big companies have pulled out, right? Like like Microsoft used to always have a big booth there and, and Intel and some of the other things have their, their eating keynotes and you still have some of that. But most of the, the biggest tech companies don't have the big keynotes. They used to, but they were been able to effectively then they went to car companies because car tech is a big part of it. And so they're able to get all the car manufacturers there, turn it into a car show, they're able to go to a lot of the Chinese manufacturers and other parts of Asia and bring them in. So I think they were still able to sell booth sales, whereas E three, if you don't have Microsoft, you don't have Sony, you don't have Nintendo, there's very little reason for a lot of the studios and publishers to show up. Especially when you also have the fan conferences that have been incredibly successful where they can get more hands-on you know, do more of that, that that, you know, that level of marketing push than, than the what they used to get from E three.

Alex Wilhelm (01:32:51):
It's that, that strikes me as correct. But also, you know, when they think about game distribution and where you get your gaming information, I mean steam recently had an event called city Builder Fast or something like that. And I love city building video games and I was like, oh my gosh, there's literally a tailored event just for me. Exactly. And they worked with any developers to put out demos or early access for certain games, and even some really small devs got to partake in this thing that at 83 they would've been absolutely marginalized. Exactly. Because it was tailored and online it could, was possible. Another example paradox, which makes Crusader Kings and EU and all those kind of gram strategy games, they just have Paradox Con or something like that. It's their own thing. They don't need to come to E three. It's a good how the Grammys don't matter anymore, sorry,

Christina Warren (01:33:34):
Kind of. Yeah, no, it was No, you're, you're dead on. But then you have things like pax, right, which can be more generalists and you have things like TwitchCon, which frankly is a little bit like E three in some senses, cuz you will have publishers there and you have the personalities who are behind the stuff that people wanna do. So, and, but I mean, I think it, it, it started with the, the big tech tech companies, you know, apples never done c e s but you know, they would have their own direct events and but when they left Macel McElroy's, right? Like they, like they used to have their keynotes part of Macel and when Apple was like, we're not gonna be part of Macel world anymore, we're just gonna go direct and, and then, you know, the Nintendo direct is, is a thing and, and Sony and, and Microsoft you know, Xbox have their things. There's not a reason to have everybody at this one industry conference, especially if you can have the either online or in person indie ones like you're talking about around a certain genre or, you know, people find other ways to get their information. It, it's sad, but I'm also, it's kind of one of those things I'm like, well, this has been coming for a really long time, and

Mikah Sargent (01:34:35):
What do we think is sort of the, the, is it that there are fewer people going? Is it that you get more control if you do it yourself? Is it that it costs less money if you, I mean, I'm sure it's a, it's an amalgamation, but what sort of started the trend of just getting companies, do we think of just getting companies to sort of go, we'll just do the, we don't, I don't need you E three.

Christina Warren (01:34:59):
Yeah, I think, I think it was the control aspect. I think it went from like, okay, why do I have to deal with this third party to have to talk about what does my, like what, what is my time slot and what is, you know, how, how big is, is is my, you know, booth or, or other areas going to be, or what can I show or what can I not, and who can I allow here? I I have to think that they just kind of realize, well we have, you know, trust that we have the direct to audience experience. I think social media was honest, honestly also changed it too, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> because it was one thing when, like when I was growing up in the nineties and, and reading about E three and like dreaming of going, you would read about it like in the magazines like a month after it happened and, and then, you know, you had websites like IGN and some others that that started up.

(01:35:43):
 And they would maybe give you information like the next day or, or the following week. But now it's at the point, you know, where you can literally watch the presentations. Even when it was happening at 83, you could watch it as it happened. It's happening on Twitter, it's happening on, on other forms of social media. So you no longer have that, that weight. And so at that point, I think the companies realized, oh, we actually have these audiences that are just tuned in to us. We don't have to have the benefit of the trade organization. And, and then the press that would all come to that thing to write about it. Like we can literally just go directly to our, our gamers. And so I think that's a social media thing

Alex Wilhelm (01:36:22):
It used. Yeah. Democratization, right? I used to hide copies of PC gamer in my bedroom cause I was banned from playing video games as a kid. Cause my parents were more conservatively religious perhaps than I've ended up. And I would read about Doom three in these games that I couldn't wait to play later on when I was, you know, on my own. And I cared about their review because they were the industry source. Now what do I care about? Not reviews, really. I just go to Steam and look at the recent review rating. Is it overwhelmingly positive? Is it very positive? Is it mixed? And frankly, I know I can go read those reviews, figure out if they apply to me or not. And very quickly, I don't need the gatekeepers. And this is why the Grammys, the Emmys, the blah blah, blah, and the other two hickeys and the awards stuff that people will still pretend to care about are losing their relevance because they just don't have the grip on the culture that they used to. And this is why I think Taylor Swift can put out her own music and have a good number one around the world overnight. She doesn't need a gatekeeper. And E three c e s and et cetera are essentially byproducts of a bygone more centralized information era. The internet killed them slowly.

Mikah Sargent (01:37:27):
Wow. So Alex, I absolutely love that you've mentioned Taylor Swift twice. I was gonna say me, you,

Christina Warren (01:37:31):
Me too. I was like,

Mikah Sargent (01:37:33):
<Laugh>, this is, this is a panel. I, I don't quite include myself in that, so I'm just gonna like pull back. This is the Swifty panel and I'm realizing now I put together the Swifty panel and I did not realize that's what happened. I'm so proud. <Laugh>,

Christina Warren (01:37:45):
I'm so proud of all

Alex Wilhelm (01:37:46):
Of us. I, I, I, I I've been on with Christina before a couple times and I've just known Christina for a long time. But Abra I went to your Twitter profile before and I saw you had Chair Swift mentioned there and I was like, excellent because I think anti-hero acoustic version is a high piece of modern art. Yes. And absolutely. My, my baby loves it because often she won't sleep. And so what she gets is that on repeat with me trying to harmonize. So it's been a smash hit at our

Mikah Sargent (01:38:13):
House. Oh,

Abrar Al-heeti (01:38:14):
I love that. I'm so happy to be on this panel with you guys. Good, good choice, Micah. You great.

Mikah Sargent (01:38:19):
<Laugh>. I gotta, I have to say, oh my God. John in our studio just held up a sign that said they're the problem. <Laugh>

Alex Wilhelm (01:38:27):
<Laugh>.

Christina Warren (01:38:28):
Yes.

Alex Wilhelm (01:38:29):
Oh, hi John. That was

Mikah Sargent (01:38:31):
Very good, very culturally mindful. I did have a question though. It used to be that, cuz I, you know, I had gone to, I've gone to CES like three times over. I don't know the past. I don't Oh boy. A lot of years. And I, I forgot that I am also getting older anyway. And in going to CES those times hate it. Obviously don't have any interest in going, but one of the things that you hear whenever people talk about going to that or going to any of these sort of big in-person events is like, yeah, you know, the, it doesn't seem super useful except for the opportunity to socialize except for the opportunity to get together with people in the industry you haven't seen before. Are we getting to a place where that doesn't even matter anymore?

Christina Warren (01:39:19):
Well, again, though, I think it depends because it's an industry conference. So there are other ones that are, you know, you have things like G E C which are more focused, you know, on, on, on the game developers and you have some other maybe more focused conferences that, that are around that. For things like c e s you know, there might be other, you know, industry symposiums people could go to to kind of meet up with one another. But for many, many years, you know, like the, the normal person going to the trade show aspect has been, has been gone. Like I remember with E three, cuz it, it was in Atlanta in, in the nineties number of times. I remember like taking like a business card from like the local electronics boutique and like passing it off me.

(01:40:02):
Like, even though I'm not old enough to work at EB games, like I, I have a business card and this is me and I let me have access to go, you know, through the, through the trade show floor and, and, and see all the stuff. But that's most of the best stuff is, is not even on the floor now. So again, it's those things like packs and, and you know, BlizzCon and things like that that I think have more of the, the social aspect where people wanna meet up and do that. Like, I think that it, it's, it's weird. I almost feel like there is still that aspect, but those things that happened with, with maybe smaller or more focused conferences rather than like the big omni conference. I do feel like for some companies, the reason they go to CES to your point is probably we know that there will be a ton of manufacturers and a ton of partners and a ton of potentially money people that we can get time with, but they're doing those meetings while they're in Las Vegas. It's not necessarily like happening on the floor of cs.

Alex Wilhelm (01:40:57):
Yeah. So I ran into the c e O of Microsoft in the bowels of some Vegas hotel at one CES after I was told that he was not going to <laugh>. And what they meant by that was he's not going to talk to you <laugh>. Right? But he was going to do, and this is to be clear, I'm not annoyed. He was going there to talk to partners, vendors who were all in town and, you know, reasonable enough, but that's behind closed doors out of the public eye. And that does not make the actual event anymore particularly relevant to us. And I just, one more thing. I think as the gaming companies have become increasingly blobs, you might say like one or two major blobs, I think that they just don't wanna share. Whereas in the old days, so there's 15 leading companies, then you might all wanna get together, collect viewership, and try to outshine, but if there's only three companies, you're gonna end up with them all going their own way. So Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to buy Activision is what I'm saying. <Laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (01:41:52):
Wow.

Christina Warren (01:41:53):
There it is. You really, really wanna make our, our, our our favorite Marine angry,

Alex Wilhelm (01:41:58):
Don't she? I I'm sorry. It's anti-competitive. Like I, I, okay. Like of course it is. Of course. Adobe buying Figma is anti-competitive. Businesses don't buy stuff to increase competition.

Mikah Sargent (01:42:10):
So all acquisitions are anti-competitive is what you're saying.

Alex Wilhelm (01:42:15):
I'm not gonna go that far <laugh>, but I think the ones that we're discussing, let's see. Microsoft owns a gaming platform that I wants to compete against PlayStation with, what do they use to compete gaming exclusives and sure they're gonna pledge 10 years of playing. Nice. Great. I'll be 43 then when they stopped doing that, <laugh> companies like to win

Mikah Sargent (01:42:37):
This, the

Alex Wilhelm (01:42:38):
Capitalism, I just don't believe they're gonna suddenly put on kid gloves and become all hunky dory.

Mikah Sargent (01:42:43):
Well, I don't know if anyone on the <laugh>

Alex Wilhelm (01:42:45):
On the, sorry, I didn't mean to go. Just that's a thing. That's

Mikah Sargent (01:42:49):
A, sorry. I think now is actually a good time to take a quick break for a message from Leo.

TWiT Intro (01:42:57):
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Advertisers like it Pro TV and Audible that have been with us for more than 10 years, they stick around because their ads work. And honestly, isn't that why you're buying advertising? You get a lot with twit. We have a very full service attitude. We almost think of it as kind of artisanal advertising, boutique advertising. You'll get a full service continuity team, people who are on the phone with you, who are in touch with you, who support you from, with everything from copywriting to graphic design. So you are not alone in this. We embed our ads into the shows. They're not, they're not added later. They're part of the shows. In fact, often they're such a part of our shows that are other hosts will chime in on the ad saying, yeah, I love that. Or just the other day, <laugh>, one of our hosts said, man, I really gotta buy that <laugh>.

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That's an additional benefit to you because you're hearing people, our audience trusts saying, yeah, that sounds great. We deliver always overdeliver on impressions. So you know, you're gonna get the impressions you expect. The ads are unique every time. We don't pre-record them and roll them in. We are genuinely doing those ads in the middle of the show. We'll give you great onboarding services, ad tech with pod sites that's free for direct clients. Gives you a lot of reporting, gives you a great idea of how well your ads are working. You'll get courtesy commercials. You actually can take our ads and share them across social media and landing pages. That really extends the reach. There are other free goodies too, including mentions in our weekly newsletter that sent the thousands of fans, engaged fans who really wanna see this stuff. We give you bonus ads and social media promotion too.

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So if you want to be a long-term partner, introduce your product to a savvy engaged tech audience, visit twit.tv/advertise. Check out those testimonials. Mark McCreary is the c e o of authentic. You probably know him one of the biggest original podcast advertising companies. We've been with him for 16 years. Mark said the feedback from many advertisers over 16 years across a range of product categories, everything from razors to computers, is that if ads and podcasts are gonna work for a brand, they're gonna work on Twitch shows. I'm very proud of what we do because it's honest. It's got integrity, it's authentic, and it really is a great introduction to our audience of your brand. Our listeners are smart, they're engaged, they're tech savvy. They're dedicated to our network. And that's one of the reasons we only work with high integrity partners that we've personally and thoroughly vetted. I have absolute approval on everybody. If you've got a great product, I want to hear from you. Elevate your brand by reaching out today@advertiseattwit.tv. Break out of the advertising norm. Grow your brand with host Red ads on twit.tv. Visit twit.tv/advertise for more details. Or you can email us, advertise@twit.tv if you're ready to launch your campaign now. I can't wait to see your product, so give us a ring. All

Mikah Sargent (01:47:58):
Right, thanks Leo for that short little message. We are back and we have a great panel. Christina Warren, senior developer advocate at GitHub, Alex Willhelm of TechCrunch and a bra alti of CNET video host and producer all here with us. And I'm just scrolling through my list here. I did want to talk about something and Christina, I don't know you know, if you've, if you feel like this is something that you aren't able to discuss or you are of course, I totally understand cuz this is about security co-pilot. Microsoft is working on sort of a G P T four powered assistant for cybersecurity. And I thought this was cool given Microsoft seems to be in the same way. I, I think, of course, first and foremost of Apple because I cover that company more than any other in a given week.

(01:48:51):
And one of the things that I've seen Apple do, and Amazon has done this in a big way too, is sort of brand their artificial intelligence stuff, right? And so Siri is not just the virtual assistant at Apple, it is also the sort of AI mind that is paying attention to your behavior and then serving up different suggestions. They call those Siri suggestions. And we've seen now Microsoft where at one point I think Cortana was seeming to be the big sort of overall umbrella brand for all of the different kinds of AI active suggestions it was making. Now it seems like co-pilot is the brand. And so we've seen co-pilot in in GitHub, we've seen co-pilot making its way into office and now there's a security co-pilot. And this is specifically for security professionals. And I think once again, this is kind of a fascinating concept, this idea that you will have a little angel sitting on your shoulder that is helping you as you're moving along and you are working on things to provide some assistance to provide even because of the fact that this, this virtual assistant or this virtual experience can kind of look at all aspects of your security posture.

(01:50:20):
And to be able to look at all of those signals and pull that together and say, Hey, it's looking like someone's trying to breach your system. Here's what you need to know about this. Once again Alex, this is that augmentation of a human's ability that I think is a very valuable, a potentially very valuable tool where the human ultimately has to make the choice of how to approach the issue. But to be able to have something that can take all that data and sort of put it down into something that makes sense and look at potential trends for that data, I think is a really cool idea. And I like Christina that Microsoft does seem to be going, we have this, this partnership in place and we have, we have the technology and then they're going where all can we stick it <laugh> it's kind of spaghetti project, but it seems to be working in a very positive way so far.

Christina Warren (01:51:18):
Yeah, no, I I I think you're right. I mean, and, and definitely does seem to be like, I think that that is like the, the brand that we're we're going for for a lot of things is definitely a co-pilot. And, and you know, I work at GitHub. We, we were the ones who that, that was, you know, how that was chosen. But the Microsoft has started to use it. Microsoft 365 co-pilot and, and security co-pilot and, and dynamics co-pilot. And so x co-pilot, which is, which is great, and it follows the Microsoft tradition of taking a common word like word and terminated into, you know a product name. So I, I do, I do like that. But no, and I, and I, but I think that this is the sort of area where when you have something that could be really complicated to explain things like security topics or to synthesize a lot of different information, I think this could be a really good use of ai. The one thing I would say is that, as with anything else, you know, don't become just reliant on this particular thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> you know, like I would never say to anybody, make this be the only thing you rely on for, for your security stuff. But I do feel like this could be a good way of helping synthesize a lot of information and point things out that people might otherwise miss.

Alex Wilhelm (01:52:30):
Yeah, I think the branding points is, is very good because Microsoft has taken common words and turned them into brand names. It's also taken people's names and used them quite sensibly as well. For example, the last CEO of Microsoft, big friends fan Chandler, Bing, <laugh>, bang search. Well known fact. And by the way, I'm kidding. Just to be clear, <laugh> I, I I think the branding point's actually good here because if you go back in time to Microsoft consumer products, remember SkyDrive? Yeah. Before it was OneDrive because of a coffee ride issue.

Christina Warren (01:52:58):
Before it was live drive.

Alex Wilhelm (01:53:00):
Oh, live drive didn't last. That was terrible. It was, it was

Christina Warren (01:53:03):
Skydrive live drive. Onedrive. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (01:53:05):
Yeah. And then everyone forgot cause OneDrive was blah, but I thought the Cortana name was super hype because it was a cool use of IP from the gaming world and bringing it into a consumer productivity Yeah. Perspective. However, co-pilot to the point about it being AI helping you as your buddy mm-hmm. <Affirmative> actually, which is what Cortana was doing, but no one knew that in the video game franchise world. I think CO's fricking brilliant, I think it's really good. And this particular example I think is how AI is going to show up everywhere relatively quickly. And I think it's, it's, it's super cool. I obviously am not a cyber security professional. I don't have any perspective on using this, but in terms of where I think we're going to see this stuff show up here, it's a great example of it and may make us all more secure because God knows we could use it.

Mikah Sargent (01:53:48):
I am going to ask all I want. Oh no, please, Abra. And then I have a question for all of you. I

Abrar Al-heeti (01:53:52):
Was gonna say, all I want is for Outlook to be more usable and so can we add, can I just search my email and find it? Like that's all I want

Alex Wilhelm (01:54:02):
For real,

Abrar Al-heeti (01:54:02):
Right? That's my only suggestion. Yeah.

Christina Warren (01:54:04):
Yeah.

Abrar Al-heeti (01:54:05):
<Laugh>

Mikah Sargent (01:54:07):
Outlook bad for you too. Yeah. so the question that I have for everyone and prepare yourselves, everybody, but I'll start with a bra. What co-pilot do you wish you had right now? So I I in, in a world where you get to have someone make you a tech co-pilot where, and it it can be for anything, where do you wish you had this ai co-pilot helping you out day to day? Oh wow.

Abrar Al-heeti (01:54:34):
Oh, that's a really good question. Day to day. Well, I'll, I'll give a well that's kind of boring <laugh> <laugh>. It's okay. I was gonna say for like work, like if it was for work, I would love to just like, like I would love to brainstorm story ideas with Ooh.

Mikah Sargent (01:54:54):
Yeah.

Abrar Al-heeti (01:54:54):
Like, wouldn't that be fun? Just

Mikah Sargent (01:54:56):
Kinda have like a and just like

Abrar Al-heeti (01:54:57):
Angles.

Mikah Sargent (01:54:58):
Yeah. A little rubber ducky. What is that? I, that's not the word. There's,

Alex Wilhelm (01:55:01):
It's a developer

Mikah Sargent (01:55:02):
Thing. A sounding board that's a thing, right? Take the term I'm looking for. Yeah, right. Just, Hey, this is an idea that I have. And then it's like, oh, that's a great idea, but have you thought about this? And it just sort of tweaks the idea a little bit. Yeah. That's a good co that

Abrar Al-heeti (01:55:15):
Would be

Mikah Sargent (01:55:15):
Helpful story co-pilot. Christina, what's your co-pilot?

Christina Warren (01:55:20):
Okay, so I mean I do actually use GitHub co-pilot all the time. That is a plug, but it's also, it's really good. And I do use that with work a lot and it's, and, and we don't advertise that it works for pros, but it actually does work pretty well for pros. Although I mostly use it for creating demos I I would love a cleaning co-pilot.

Mikah Sargent (01:55:40):
Oh, so is it like, oh no, I just got I ju I just I I squeezed a turnip and the juice landed on my pants and I well know how to, well,

Christina Warren (01:55:52):
It could be that bit more, but it would more be like, okay, I'm going to see the state of what rooms are right now and I'm going to help you prioritize like, an actual plan to get the most out of, out, out, out of doing like your cleaning and like your laundry and other stuff. Like, honestly, like I need like a, a clean, I need like a, like a, you know, a Marie Condo, like sort of like co-pilot.

Mikah Sargent (01:56:10):
Oh my God, yes. An organizational cleaning space. Oh my God, yes. Let's get on that for sure. And Alex, what's your co-pilot?

Alex Wilhelm (01:56:20):
I'm just blown away by how good the first two are. Cause I would absolutely use both of them. <Laugh>. for me though, the thing that I've, I've really long wanted and I'm hoping is going to be now possible is an OS level buddy. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. I want to be writing and then look at 18 tabs that I pulled up in my extra, extra chrome window to read later and just be like, OS can you just put those away into a file for me? And I'm gonna ask them for them back a little bit later on, but they're killing my ram. And it would go, sure Alex. And here's why I think this is not gonna be possible because Chad g p t can in ingest natural language mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and it can, and do stuff <laugh> and it can make code.

(01:57:00):
So why can't it take my words and then use Zapier or whatever and plug into applications, right? Yeah. And then just write code or send little magic bits through the tubes and then do stuff for me. And then it's smart enough that it should work most of the time. Cause my stuff that I need isn't complex, it's mostly just very basic stuff, but I'm very busy and I'm in a hurry. So that's what I want. But I I, if I can't have that, I will take cleaning bot or a story bot to be clear, because those would be awesome.

Mikah Sargent (01:57:25):
Those are

Christina Warren (01:57:26):
Both No, no, I love that Alex. And honestly, like, you could, like, you could also like plug that into like obsidian or another one of those like second grain apps and be like, okay, put all the stuff here and, but, but bring up that document that I was looking at last week that was talking about this. Yeah. I love that. Be And it could do it. You're exactly right. The the, the technology is there. We just need to be able to have like maybe a localized trained models of like, just train it on everything that's on my computer.

Alex Wilhelm (01:57:51):
Yes. Yes. I mean, like, like recently and I, this works sometimes, but it didn't work this time. I looked at my phone and I hit the little power button to get Siri to pull up mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and I was like, Siri, please play X by artist Y on Spotify. And it went working on it, working on it, working on it and failed. Right. And I'm like, Lord, above, I remember when you bought Siri like 15 years ago and it still can't play a song. Right. So all that technology is trash. Just throw it away. Yep. And then just use GT's ability to ingest and kick out text and have that double As code and then do stuff. Why not? Yeah. And also network now

Christina Warren (01:58:24):
And also be able to play our, our our, our our our Taylor Tunes playlist on Apple Music, <laugh>, which is my Apple Music playlist of every single Taylor Swift like song and single from everything. So yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (01:58:35):
Can, can I just say to the Swifties here? I love it when I pull up Spotify now and I'm playing the new album and it says at the bottom, copyright not Republic, not rca, not Capital Records. It says copyright Taylor Swift, our queen. He does. It's

Mikah Sargent (01:58:51):
Queen. I am so happy for all of you earned it <laugh>. And I'm so happy for these ideas. My, my bot would be basically the wire cutter, but as an AI chat bot. So anytime I have a problem and I'm thinking about buying something, I ask it and it's like, here is the one that you should probably get because it's good for your budget, but is also good enough to do this. And also has these two extra, like it will take what the wire cutter knows, but also all the thousands of other sites out there and use all of that together to recommend me the best thing for me specifically. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (01:59:28):
What what it would say is the best thing for your needs is X, but I checked your Citibank account and you can have Y <laugh>. Yes, exactly.

Mikah Sargent (01:59:34):
Yeah. It's like this would be, you wish you could have this <laugh> <laugh>.

Alex Wilhelm (01:59:37):
Exactly. I'm a failure. I'm just gonna shame you a lot and be like, if you considered increasing your income to afford better shoes, <laugh>,

Mikah Sargent (01:59:45):
But it, it would literally go, what

Alex Wilhelm (01:59:47):
Are

Mikah Sargent (01:59:47):
Those? I thank you for those of you who got that. I do. Oh fine. I do wish that I could increase or decrease the like, personality of my AI in the same way that I can with carrot weather. So for those of you who have not used the carrot weather app, it's this weather app for the for iPhone and their devices. And you can kind of, it has these little responses that it gives and you can make it more or less snarky. And I do like when it sort of says mean things, <laugh>, okay, this is getting weird, but I like what it says mean things to me. And I kind of wish that I could get my AI bot to have a little bit more of a personality as well. So then in that case it would say, don't buy those shoes. You don't need them.

Alex Wilhelm (02:00:33):
You ever accidentally tell more about your personality than you've been to in the middle of a podcast? Yeah, just

Mikah Sargent (02:00:37):
Like, just then I wish I had an AI bot that was like, whoa, slow down. Micah, what you're about to say is not for anyone to hear

Alex Wilhelm (02:00:44):
<Laugh>. It's like when you try to send a tweet with profanity and Twitter's like, people don't like these tweets that use these words. <Laugh>.

Mikah Sargent (02:00:50):
Yeah. Please don't say this, it's just going to embarrass everyone. But especially you.

Alex Wilhelm (02:00:56):
Can I just say though that all of this that we're talking about, I don't see why it isn't impossible in the next five years, Christina would need cameras in her rooms to have yep, that's it. Ingest images and stuff. But the story bot would just want to read your past covers and say, well, you all talked about this, you know, six months ago. Does that have any permanence? Right. And I'll, I'll just call Micah and tell him, no <laugh>, that would be good enough. So

Mikah Sargent (02:01:19):
I was gonna say, mine would be possible with I think the only thing that it'd need to have is just more a more recent database than September, 2021. So if it had a more recent database than September, 2021, I've pretty much already got mine other than it doesn't have access to my banking information. But I honestly feel okay with that. So I would would, right. I wouldn't want, I would want it to do it based on everything but financial means. Cause I wanna keep that to myself. So I think mine's possible in its current state. Alex, is yours possible?

Alex Wilhelm (02:01:52):
So yeah, I don't know why it isn't, because if it was, people would build it, I think. Right.

Christina Warren (02:01:58):
No, I mean, I think the good idea is I think you probably have to do it at the OS level, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But I definitely do. I definitely think there's, I mean, I presumably somebody could build like a, a an application that had full access to everything to do it. But I think, I think you could, but I think it would be one of those things like, cuz basically we're just talking about, like on the Mac for instance, we would just be kind of talking about like automator voice, right? Like mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, like something that, that they could, you know, use natural language to pull up, you know, the sorts of search things or, or to, you know run macros, you know, that, that you're trying to accomplish. It definitely. Like it should be possible.

Alex Wilhelm (02:02:35):
Yeah. But just add a little hooks in every app Yeah. To, to talk and pull and put things back

Christina Warren (02:02:40):
Into That's I'm saying which AppleScript basically already has. Oh, it's on a Mac. That's what I'm saying. So basically it would just be kind of a way of like, you know, making like Apples script, you know,

Mikah Sargent (02:02:49):
On the fly le

Christina Warren (02:02:50):
On the fly with, with your voice. And

Mikah Sargent (02:02:52):
That's what I mean when I, I'm talking about those large language models, is it's not just ingest, it's, well, I don't wanna talk about what that out jest. We'll go with that. It's egress, egress, thank, egress egress. It is, it is taking the translation of what you're saying in, and then it's also able to then go from that and also tell the other thing. It talks in their languages too. That's what I think makes the this so incredible and why what you're talking about seems entirely possible. Because as long as it has the context of this is how I have to talk to the machine, luckily with, oh, with Mac Os, we do have a lot of those hooks already built in. It's just no one is able to write every single kind of program they need to do to use the system. But if the, if the the AI could do that on the fly, then that would work. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (02:03:46):
Did you guys read the the iOS 16.4 story that was on the prep, the prep sheet for today's show? And did you fall asleep reading it because it was so fantastically boring? No, my gosh. New emojis, blah. Oh, mobiles have been figured out to the current level of technology, and frankly, every time I update my Mac to a new whatever, it feels the exact same. And Windows 11 is Windows tent with the button moved to the middle. Okay. Whatever the first OS that gets what we're describing correct and functional is going to win. And

Christina Warren (02:04:19):
We are, I think you're dead on

Alex Wilhelm (02:04:20):
For something new and this is it. And I just, I'm curious to know when it comes and how good is it in the first iteration and does it steal Micah's credit card information? Apparently <laugh> I just, I think we're going there and I think it's gonna be awesome, especially for people who have low visibility mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, limited hearing mm-hmm. <Affirmative> or speak a language that most computer programs are written in. It's gonna be huge for accessibility and I think it's gonna open up computing to a lot more folks and it's gonna make our lives better. So I'm pretty hype,

Mikah Sargent (02:04:46):
Hype as can be. You know what else I'm hype about? It's Club Twit. You out there can join the club at twit tv slash club twit. And when you do, you are going to get a lot of great things. Our club is available for starting at $7 a month or $84 a year. And joining the club gets you access to add free episodes of every single Twitch show, which is awesome. It's just all the content, none of the extra stuff, because you, in effect, are the sponsor, you are supporting the show. And so in doing so, we say, Hey, these are the ad-free episodes of all of the Twitch shows. You also get access to the twit plus bonus feed that has extra content. You won't find it anywhere else behind the scenes before the show, after the show. The events we hold in the club are often published there.

(02:05:43):
 It's a great feed of so much extra stuff that, you know, when you join, you get to look back through and find the things that you want. You also get access to the members only Discord server. That is a place where you can go to chat with your fellow club TWIT members. But also those of us here at twit, it is constantly popping. As they say. There's a lot going on in there. There's so many different channels where you can chat about different subjects. Many of us here, many of the hosts here are regularly there. My co-host for iOS today, her name's Rosemary Orchard, and she is regularly answering questions in the club as well. So that's a great place. If you, you know, you're wanting to develop a shortcut and you are trying to figure out how to make it work Rosemary Orchard is often there answering those questions.

(02:06:28):
And you may have heard me say, starting at $7 a month, that's because some folks they were like, Hey, you know, honestly, you keep adding more stuff to the club and we feel like we would like to pay more than $7 a month to, because there's more value here than that. So we flipped the right switch. And you can choose starting at $7 to sort of make your subscription what you want. So if you want to give $8 a month or nine or whatever you're able to do that. And I think part of the reason why that's the case is because as we've continued with the club, we've added more and more to it and we'll continue to do so. So there's the Untitled Linux Show, that's club Twit exclusive. It is a show all about Linux.

(02:07:12):
We've also got hands on Windows, which is a great program from Paul Throt that is tips and tricks all about Windows. You've got my show Hands on Mac, another club Twitter exclusive short format show, meaning, you know, 10, 15, 20 minutes episodes that are covering tips and tricks for not just the Mac, but also iOS and iPad os as well as Scott Wilkinson's Home Theater Geeks, which is relaunched by way of the club. So if you have home theater stuff that you are curious about or, you know, you're thinking about your next purchase there, then Home Theater Geeks is a great place to go and learn more about that. So if that sounds good to you, please head to twit.tv/club twit and join the club and thank you. Thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart and all of us here at TWIT for choosing to be subscribers. You help keep this thing rolling along, you can keep the AC running so I don't die of heat stroke here in the studio. So thank you for that all of you. And yeah, after you join the club please let us know how you like it. And aunt Pruitt the community manager is always on the lookout, making sure that we're providing the best experience possible. And with that, I think it's time to see what took place on TWIT this week. This

TWiT Intro (02:08:41):
Is a good answer. I asked it, who said mistakes were made? The phrase mistakes were made is often used in politics and business to acknowledge that something went wrong without taking responsibility for it. Honest to God, it's like what it says here, are you

Speaker 7 (02:08:53):
Open yet? It's like, well, we usually open at nine 30, but to listen, it was a yes or no question. Honey, are you, are you open <laugh>? Just this, let me just ask it. I just wanna get to

TWiT Intro (02:09:01):
The point why is Paul Smith thero so angry? <Laugh>? Jesus, I do not have enough information at that light person. The help with your request

Speaker 8 (02:09:10):
Previously on TWIT all about Android.

Speaker 9 (02:09:14):
The, the headline of my latest Samsung Galaxy S 23 review is Samsung's Galaxy S 23 is one of the best small Android phones you can buy right now. The camera algorithms on the S 23 are so much better than they were on the last generation S 22.

Speaker 8 (02:09:34):
This weekend, chase,

Speaker 10 (02:09:36):
We're joined by Colonel Eileen Collins of the US Air Force, the first woman to pilot and command a space shuttle.

Speaker 11 (02:09:42):
Think about the stars, set yourself like exciting goals, something that is possible, but set high goals and try to make a path to get there.

Speaker 8 (02:09:54):
Security. Now

Speaker 12 (02:09:56):
Microsoft has started testing a cryptocurrency wallet, which they're planning to build into their edge browser.

TWiT Intro (02:10:05):
Wow.

Speaker 12 (02:10:07):
And an assets tab who lets you stare lovingly at your NFTs

TWiT Intro (02:10:13):
Twit, which is all you can do with them. So, good, God. Good. I'm glad. Exactly. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (02:10:21):
You know, I keep like five to 10 NFTs here in my jacket. If anybody would like one I can pass those out after the show. They'll disappear before they make it to you. They're actually self-destructing, NFTs. But you know, oh man,

(02:10:34):
<laugh> best kind by their very nature. I thought we could end the show by talking about everybody's least favorite social media platform. It's Twitter <laugh>. So there's been a lot kind of coming out since the the open sourcing of Twitter's code, or at least parts of its code. And al also the sort of changes that have and in some cases have not taken place when it comes to Twitter Blue. There were some specific Twitter accounts that had kind of their own little portion in Twitter code. So depending on which author it was, it could mean that their their tweets were getting boosted and shown to more people than others. A platformer has a list of Twitter VIPs that were getting boosted over everyone else, including NBA All-Star, LeBron James Ben Shapiro <laugh> Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or a o c and President Joe Biden, as well as conservative commentator, KA Tur two. I have, I I'm, am I out of the loop? I didn't know there was someone named Cat Turd two who was needing to be boosted to lots of people.

Alex Wilhelm (02:11:59):
Well then you don't follow Donald Trump's tweet truths. Sorry. From Truth Social, or he's been citing a recent, and I hate to say this out loud, if there are kids in the room, cat Turd Paul, in which he, he won over Ron DeSantis and he's been quoting it and it is surreal

Christina Warren (02:12:15):
<Laugh>. This is, this is, this is where we really are. That, that, that, that, that Kat Turd choose polling is, is being cited by, by presidential candidates on their Twitter alternative social networks because they were banned from Twitter for two years. They're allowed back now, but they don't wanna be back.

Alex Wilhelm (02:12:31):
Right. Because truth is part of Truth Social, which is part of the Trump median technology group, which was gonna merge with another company in a s spat combination. But now that's under investigation for Shenanigans. Right? Right. 2023. I hope your bingo card's full.

Mikah Sargent (02:12:46):
I feel like someone just took a, a printed on a webpage from TechCrunch, cut it up into little pieces, and then added in like a a Mad Libs. And we're just pulling these little words out of a hat and just putting them together because I'm so lost here.

Alex Wilhelm (02:13:01):
Don't, don't mock my writing process.

Christina Warren (02:13:03):
<Laugh> <laugh>. Well, also, I was gonna say, Ann added some chat G p t to it so that that and that that <laugh>

Mikah Sargent (02:13:09):
Yeah, that's going on too. I mean, so I don't know this, when I saw this and I saw similar little, I remember seeing something specifically where it was showing parts of the code and it had author is duh

Christina Warren (02:13:22):
Duh duh. Well, no, cuz cuz the recommendation algorithm or whatever is now on GitHub and and, and not, I'm not talking about the leaked one. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> <laugh>. I'm, I'm talking about the other one. That, that was, that, that, that was the thing from last week where there was a D M c A takedown notice. I, I, I, I, I don't know. I'm I'm talking about like the actual thing. Like, Twitter has uploaded stuff, it's on GitHub, and then people were going through the code in real time or were like, Hey Ilan, how come you're getting boosted so much more? Why are you here? And he is like, I don't know, this is a complete shock to me. <Laugh> you know, cuts to stories I think also from platformer several weeks ago where like engineers were basically instructed, make sure Ilan is coming. His engagement is high because he's looking at, at his numbers very closely. And if they fall, he doesn't wanna hear that. So they're like, all right, well I guess we better put 'em on Everybody's for you page cuz we gotta give him, you know, all, all, all the feels.

Alex Wilhelm (02:14:15):
What's, you know, what I hate is the TikTok application of every single service. I don't want a for you page. My Twitter feed is selected by me. I don't want Spotify to become TikTok, but we need to go, we need to go back. A bar. Can you say the name of Twitter's owner out loud for

Mikah Sargent (02:14:30):
Us, please? Yes, thank you. Let's go on the list.

Alex Wilhelm (02:14:33):
Elon Musk, <laugh>. Okay, so I, I go with the Elon mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and then Christina, can you say it again,

Christina Warren (02:14:38):
Elon? I say, I say it the the wrong way. Yeah,

Alex Wilhelm (02:14:40):
But that's a French sport. E l a n with a little kick over the A means, I mean, entirely different. This is like, I call my company Yahoo and no one appreciates it. Interesting. Yeah, I've never heard that.

Mikah Sargent (02:14:51):
It's fascinating. I once again is now we've switched to like some sort of blog about languages <laugh>, and we're cutting out words from it, <laugh>. I did wanna, but to go back to this, was any, were any of you surprised by this? I don't think, like, this just seemed obvious to me that some Twitter accounts were like in the algorithm part of things. Of course, if I had learned that in my, somehow in my my, my timeline that was just reverse chronological, they were somehow boosting things. That's a different story. But the algorithm, is it, did anyone believe that it was anything other than it's most popular and also just those that they choose to be most popular? Or were we really hoping and believing in thinking that this was just completely, these are the most engaged tweets on the platform? A surprise to anybody?

Christina Warren (02:15:45):
No, but, but I think that the, the, like the Bre Inness in which this was like, and I, and I, and, and to be clear, I'm not at all suggesting that this started with, with Elon. See, I'll, I'll I'll say it. Say it the way that, that everyone else says it that way. I'm not, I'm not at all trying to suggest that it started with Elon, but I Elon, whatever, I

Mikah Sargent (02:16:02):
I love it. No, say it your way. Say it your way. I like it.

Christina Warren (02:16:05):
All right. All right. I Ilan I'm not saying that it started with him, but I am there clearly have been changes and, and you can see it, it's funny in where they literally have it, the, the, the project title is the algorithm, <laugh> <laugh>, that's, that's, that's what it's called in, in, in, in in the Twitter the organization on GitHub. But just to see some, the brazenness about some of this, to just see like, yes, this, this, these people and, and especially this small man does have to be boosted. Like, that's just really funny to me.

Abrar Al-heeti (02:16:37):
It feels different than like talk's algorithm, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> so does like's algorithm. You see something and you're like, this was meant to reach me. Like Correct. You know, and you feel good about it and you feel like, you know, all the stars have aligned. And with Twitter, I scroll through the for you page and I'm like, why? Like, sometimes I'm like, okay, great. But but I feel like it feels a lot more forced. And especially reading this, seeing how forced it really is. It, it feels inauthentic and and it just makes being on Twitter that much more miserable. I feel

Mikah Sargent (02:17:09):
Like. Yeah, you look at it and it's like, you don't understand me. And if you're trying to say you do, then you're making me feel bad about myself if this is the person that I am coming across as, whereas TikTok, it's like, oh man, you just get me, don't you? I just feel

Christina Warren (02:17:26):
Right. No, I was gonna say, I don't, I, I'm, I'm with Alex. I don't like the TikTok ation or everything, but that's mostly because these other places can't do it as well as TikTok does. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just like a, it's just a bad version, right? So I'm like, well no, TikTok actually does get me and it freaks me out sometimes, but I love it. Whereas like this, no, this is your idea of what you think based on something. Even the YouTube algorithm gets me pretty well. Like, and, and and, and I like it cuz it changes a lot cuz I'll get into other things and it'll be like, oh, remember this thing from six months ago? But it'll be like a one-off. It'll, it'll know not to show me stuff that I was really into two years ago, but Yeah, you're exactly right. The Twitter thing, it's just, yeah, it just doesn't work.

Mikah Sargent (02:18:06):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, oh, they've done, they've done a bad job and they should, they should feel bad. Exactly. Speaking of of that, the another thing I think they've done a bad job with is the sort of changes in Twitter Blue. And we have seen not only several news organizations and other publications try to, or not try to, but actually say, there's no way we're gonna be paying for this special type of check mark on the platform. But we've also seen several celebrities who are saying too, no, we won't be doing that. And I wonder because we talked you know, when we, we talk about sort of the, the moves that a company is making, a lot of the time you see a company once they've announced that decision, they really do move forward with it. But because of the fragility of the of Elmo, then you have a situation where it's incredibly mercurial, incredibly volatile, and who knows what'll happen. So I'm curious, do you think there's gonna be another, another change for Twitter Blue if all of the people that they would hope would be part of this thousand dollars or however much it is, it might even be more than that subscription service. How are they gonna, this doesn't seem to be a way that they're gonna make a lot of money if all of the news organizations are going, nah, not for us.

Alex Wilhelm (02:19:29):
Are you trying to say that someone who's very good at one thing may not be good at another thing?

Mikah Sargent (02:19:34):
I may be saying that Yeah. If I put that together. Yeah. One plus one equals three. Yeah.

Alex Wilhelm (02:19:39):
There's a, there's a, I think it's a, it's a Charlie Munger or Warren Buffet quote, but they said, and I'm gonna paraphrase here. When someone who has a reputation for being good at business goes into an industry that has a reputation for being a bad place to do business, the reputation of the business itself usually is the one that wins out. Mm-Hmm. And social media's a hard place to be. Twitter's always been the kind of like sickly child of the major social media platforms. It was doing medium before he bought it and loaded it up with debt and now it's struggling. And I, I think this is just, this is death flails from someone trying to figure out how to pay off 14 billion without selling off their Tesla stock. But I mean, I paid it for Twitter Blue originally because I wanted to support my home on internet. Same like, you know, when Reddit launched gold, I I contributed the, when, when it came out. Cause I used Reddit, you know? Yeah. And so I was here for it. But when Elon made it a, a referendum on your approval of his personality, I was out. Yeah. And same, I think that a lot of folks, much like how I probably wouldn't buy a Tesla now because I don't want to be conflated with an Elon Stan. You know, I think he's seen the, the other side of the cult of personality here.

Mikah Sargent (02:20:46):
Can I tell you, I quite literally had that. So this is, this was how much it was affecting me in in that moment. What you're talking about, not being conflated with an Elon Stan. I had met some new friends and a lot of the people that I spend time around don't have Twitter. And so on the rare occasion when in there is someone who does have Twitter, I'm always very excited. And I want to follow them and, you know, make that. And so I found out that my friend had Twitter and I was about to follow 'em on Twitter. And then I had this realization they're gonna see this blue check and they're going to think I'm an El Elon supporter <laugh>, and that I'm like paying for this service. And so I was like, you know what? I'm just going to write, I'm gonna feel like a an idiot doing so, but I'm gonna write like a paragraph going, so listen, I really wanna follow you.

(02:21:40):
But then I had this moment where I thought, if I follow you, you're gonna da da da. And so I did and I sent it to them and they thought it was hilarious and they're like, oh no, you know, I wasn't worried about that or whatever. And it's fine. But yeah, I didn't want to be conflated with that. And so that was kind of the, the anti branding that was in place there. And now it's all up in the air anyway. In terms of will this st will these blue check marks stay or will they go and will any of it <laugh>, will any of it matter going forth? Because it sounds like every time we're all logging onto the platform, a lot of times it just makes us not feel very good and I don't find myself check. I I still have it and I still occasionally open the app, but I don't find myself tweeting all that often. I don't find myself checking into the app all that often. And I don't know have any of you, cuz I think Christina, I have not seen you do much on like Mastodon. Are you using any of their platforms?

Christina Warren (02:22:38):
No, I'm on Mastodon. Okay. And, and, and I, I'm on MAs on fairly frequently, but it's, it's a weird thing. It's like when I had to step off from Twitter a little bit just because frankly a, the algorithm got worse. Like, so even the suggested things and the stuff that I would see got demonstrably worse. So it was like, it's not bad enough that they're trying to copy TikTok, but they're doing a worse job than they even used to do when they were copying Instagram. So, you know, an engagement and other stuff is, is messed up and then like a certain chunk of your social graph goes away and you're like, where are they now? And, and so kind of it's a consequence to all of that is that I'm, I'm not like as engaged with all those things. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's weird cuz I can still be on MAs on for all of like my tech stuff and that's great and there's a great community there, but none of my memes are there.

(02:23:23):
None of my pop cultures there. Yeah. None. My swifties are there. And, and so I, I can't, I can't get into like the, just the ridiculous stuff that, that, that happens. And so you still kind of have to be there, but it does feel like my home is, has died. Or at least it's been blown up and we're now like, you know, in, in rebuilding, but we don't really like the the new dictator. And like you, I like, like Alex, like I used to pay for Twitter blue because mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I wanted to support my home and I've been verified for a very long time and it had nothing to do with that. I was like, no, I actually, I had a lot of friends who worked at Twitter and I knew people who were working on things. It was like, I wanna support, like, people have always said, you know, if you, if you like something, pay for it.

(02:24:00):
I wanna actually put my, you know money or my mouth is mm-hmm <affirmative> and I did it happily and now like he's even ruined that because you don't wanna, you know, this this thing that was, it's so funny. This thing that was a status symbol for a lot of people is no longer a status symbol. It's an antis status symbol. And then this plan to get people to pay for accounts. You know, you have people who are some of your biggest users who are like absolutely not. Although what is interesting and some of my own reporting had had born this out too, was that there were a number of, of publications who were getting and, and other big companies who were getting they got emails, you know, like last month or something basically being like, Hey, we will give you your free gold verified handle and you can have up to five affiliated accounts, but if you wanna have more than that, then you're gonna have to pay a thousand dollars a month and $50 per affiliate. So they were already kind of seeding to, I'm assuming their biggest advertisers to try to keep them involved. But, but it is very interesting to see all these celebrities and like big publishers being like, no, we're not gonna pay now a number of them, I'm sure were already getting them for free cuz they were advertisers. But it, it, it is seeing how like you're really are ki cutting off your nose, spite your face to get that $96 a year. It's, and it's, it's going great

Abrar Al-heeti (02:25:16):
On top of the verified check marks. Kind of losing all meaning. I remember when we were all notified that we could only have two fa if we were Twitter blue subscribers. Yes. I was like, okay, so I'm risking my online security because I'm not paying $8 a month for Twitter Blue. Like, it's just like, it's been going downhill for a while and I don't know how sustainable it all is really.

Mikah Sargent (02:25:37):
Yeah. We had someone call earlier into ask the tech guys, and this person had a Twitter handle that was a pretty common one. And so she would regularly get the emails that said, you know, your Twitter account is trying, is we're tr you're trying to reset your Twitter account. Here's the, you know, use this to change your password or whatever. And so because of that, she had concerns that someone would attempt to hack her Twitter account just in general. So she had two factor authentication turned on. So then when Twitter made this change, she was getting a notification that was saying, Hey we're sending you your two factor authentication code. She would type it in, but then as soon as she went in, it would not let her use her account until she turned off two factor authentication. But because she had a very common Twitter handle, she was worried that in that period of time where she went to make the change from using a phone number to using the code, that someone would somehow gain access to her account and be, you know, take, take control of it. And so I like had this moment of just, you know, sadness, thinking about someone who is, you know, so concerned and wants to be as protected as they possibly can be online, who then has this, this moment of going, what do I do in this situation? And it just, it adds unnecessary fear and fud as, as it were, that I don't think needs to be there and all because of, you know, looking for more ways to bring in money that hasn't happened for, for the company, frankly, yet. Yeah, go ahead.

Abrar Al-heeti (02:27:13):
I think it'll be, sorry. I also just think it'll be interesting to compare this to Meta verified and I'm surprised that another company kind of borrowed that model, but like, you know, they're not taking away people's legacy check marks. Yeah. But I think com I think it'll be really interesting to see how they kind of navigate that and how they take that business model and compare that to what ends up happening with Twitter.

Christina Warren (02:27:33):
Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's a great point. And the interesting thing about Meta Verified, a, I think that on the one hand, like it is just an easier way for people who really wanna have that verified Instagram or Facebook thing to do it. But b, they are essentially offering a little bit of like a value add by BA basically saying, we will have, you will have better customer service and we'll respond to you more. And so if you were a business or someone, you could kind of see that as being worth paying for. I worry that it feels a little bit kind of like a bait and switch thing where they're gonna be like, Hey, verified people will show up more in your feed. And so isn't this a great way for your business to be more visible on Facebook or whatever mm-hmm. <Affirmative> mm-hmm.

(02:28:10):
<Affirmative>. But I mean, whatever it, it, that, that is what it is, but it, it it, the way they're doing it seems to be make much more sense than whatever this, this Twitter thing is. And the, the latest, and I don't know how true any of this is, I've asked some of my friends who used to work in Twitter engineering and have not been able to confirm this, but the rumor is that the reason that they can't just like run like a mass like script to Deify everyone is that that would break a bunch of other things. So it has to be a manual process. Oh my goodness. And, and so you, you, you can imagine like the pa and, and who knows how many places it has to be changed. So you can imagine the amount of work that that would entail that is probably gonna be left to one engineer who has 16 other jobs because most of the engineering staff is gone. So who even knows how long it will be before we lose our blue checks? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> you know, if that even happens at all,

Mikah Sargent (02:29:03):
What a night. And I thought about this too. The other thing is like, I hope that somewhere there are backups of all of this, because what happens in the future when the, if the company ends up surviving its current state and is in the hands of someone who's trying to keep it going and bring it to a place that it once was at its heyday or what have you, and then all of that information that came along with those verifications and, and everything that was involved with that, that legacy data, I guess is just gone because there's so much that's been messed about as things have changed. Just in general, that sort of loss of a, of, of a timeline of information is kind of sad to me. I understand the internet is volatile, but it's in some ways it is a history of humanity from the point of the internet on. And so yeah. That, that kind of is upsetting. 

Alex Wilhelm (02:29:56):
Yeah, I mean, I, I've been on Twitter since 2008, I think. You know, that was in when my n my age started with a one, which was a now pretty far, you know, in the past. So I, my whole adult life, you know, I've, I've been on Twitter, same, I've sent out hundreds of thousands of tweets. I had deleted my tweets a couple times and they were always in the six figures, which is embarrassing, but there's nothing else still. I mean, I mean, I, I love y'all maroon's trash. I, I don't wanna use it. It's too hard. I couldn't figure it out. It was too different. I just want tweets. Yeah. I just want Twitter. It's all I want. It works for me. It works for my brain, my workflow. I don't read email. I read tweets. Like I, that's what I have up on my screen. And just losing, like recently my Twitter client tweeting, stop working. I have to use this crappy web tweet deck thing. It's just getting worse and worse and worse. And there's going to come a day when I realize that it is no longer for me and my brain worth it, and then I'm just gonna have a ck which is fine, right? But like,

Christina Warren (02:30:57):
But it's, but we've lost our home. No, I mean, cuz mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it, it's, it's similar thing. Like I I, I've been on Twitter for 16 years and you know, like I'm, there're some of the Macon apps are better. Like a elk zone is a very, very good web interface.

Alex Wilhelm (02:31:12):
Elk zone, what am I going buck hunting

Christina Warren (02:31:15):
<Laugh> basically. But, but, but, but what's great about it is basically they've recreated the Twitter interface back before the Twitter interface became bad. So that's really good. There's a, there's ivory, which is Tweet bought, but in for, for Macedon. So there are some things that are better, but I'm not gonna at all try to Yeah. Argue with you that it is better. I mean, and your, you, you're Alex you're part of like the, the first name club, you know, so your account, I'm sure you've been trying to get like, hacked, you know, many, many times over the years, all, all those emails go to a

Mikah Sargent (02:31:45):
Gmail account. I don't check nice stuff.

Christina Warren (02:31:47):
Exactly. I I had the opportunity to be at Christina, but I didn't wanna like pull clout and, and make them give it to me. And I should have, and I still regret this like, like 14 years later. But yeah it, it, there is nothing else, which we're just all kind of going to all these other diasporas

Mikah Sargent (02:32:07):
Yeah. And trying them. I, I, that's what I keep doing is trying to see if anything else matches what my experience has been on, on Twitter. I think I joined in November of 2008. And yeah, it has been my home. It's where I've had, you know, the, the, it's my biggest following it is where I have made a lot of the contacts that resulted in my current, you know what I do now. And it Yep. Like I love, I love Twitter and what has provided, I think I've just kind of gone, I've, I've crawled away from the internet in general in terms of sort of sharing and consuming. And so that's why I don't find myself on it or other platforms. And I just I I'm in all the different places, but I'm just not using any of them. And I want, I wish that I had that original experience that I had with Twitter back. I did want to ask if anyone has joined or attempted to join t2, which is made by some former Twitter news, former more Twitter people.

Christina Warren (02:33:10):
Yeah. I signed up yesterday because I heard they were giving free blue checks, all of the Legacy Blue Checks <laugh>. That's what I did

Mikah Sargent (02:33:15):
Too, just

Christina Warren (02:33:16):
For that reason. So I, so, so I, I, I did send off a thing to bat, but I, I don't know, I haven't checked my email to see if I got

Mikah Sargent (02:33:23):
Anything@T2.Social for folks who are listening is the name of it. And yes, if you have a legacy verified account, then you basically can have that like confirmed. I think you send them a direct message with a specific word or whatever, and then it'll kind of bring it over. So I joined the platform because I saw that, and it, they have basically in the interviews that they've taken, they've said kind of like what Instagram did whenever they were talking about how they copied Snapchat stories where they're just like, yeah, we're, we're copying Snapchat. T2 has kinda said the same thing. Yeah. It's pretty much just a wholesale copy of Twitter in its original state. So that part sounded promising. But I don't know, I just, it doesn't seem like any of these are catching on a, as a whole and of it feels like Twitter once did, ultimately.

Alex Wilhelm (02:34:20):
All right. I joined the wait list. Amen. Nice. I'm not in yet, but I'll be there and maybe this will be the one, maybe

Mikah Sargent (02:34:26):
<Laugh>, maybe, who knows?

Alex Wilhelm (02:34:27):
Remember Friend Feeded. That was fun. 

Christina Warren (02:34:30):
Friend Feeded was great and I mean, yeah, that was, Hey look, that's what got Brett Taylor to, to, to Facebook. I, I know, I know. You know, I was gonna say if everybody, anybody on this thing, you know, I was gonna say if anybody does, but, but if Fred Feeded was great,

Alex Wilhelm (02:34:42):
Hmm. I shouldn't be dismissive about ar arcane facts that normal people don't have in their brain. Cuz they weren't covering social media back in the dark ages. I make a very good point.

Mikah Sargent (02:34:52):
Yes, it is. It is a very good point. I think I think we've done it. We have given Alex enough time to not have to let the baby go to sleep, hopefully. Oh,

Alex Wilhelm (02:35:05):
There's no way she's down. She won't be down until nine 30. I'm, I'm just joining the war on the second act.

Mikah Sargent (02:35:11):
<Laugh> Well that means there'll be lots of music to listen to, right? Lots of Taylor Swift, so that's good. At least

Christina Warren (02:35:17):
There's a new acoustic version of Lavender Hayes. So I

Alex Wilhelm (02:35:20):
Heard, I haven't had gotten to hear it yet,

Mikah Sargent (02:35:22):
But I'm so excited. <Laugh>. Well, there you go. That's something you can look forward to. Ah, well, Christina Warren, senior developer advocate at GitHub, thank you so much for your time.

Christina Warren (02:35:32):
Thank you for having me. It's so good to be on. So good to be with you on your first show. Yo, it's hosting big, big, big chair. I

Mikah Sargent (02:35:37):
Love it. <Laugh>, thank you so much. Thank you. And Alex Wilhelm, reporter at TechCrunch who has a much longer title that he didn't wanna share with us today. Haver of a great bookcase and listener of many a swift song. Thank you for your time.

Alex Wilhelm (02:35:56):
All that's lovely. I just wanna say doubling what Christina just said, you did a lovely job. It's a big chair to sit in. We all know exactly how Leo sounds and how he goes through things, so just, I mean, I've been on your other show on, on the Network, but I think you did a fantastic job today. So thanks for having me and let's do it again.

Mikah Sargent (02:36:13):
Awesome. Thanks so much Alex. And last, but certainly not least, video host and producer for cnet. I I just think you're great Abra Aldi, thank you so much for joining me.

Abrar Al-heeti (02:36:23):
Thank you so much. I wanna echo what they both said. You are such an incredible host and it's such an honor to be on your first show doing this. So thank you for having us.

Mikah Sargent (02:36:32):
Thanks everybody. Gonna have me all tearing up here at the end. I appreciate it and sincerely appreciate your time. I know this can be a real long show and so yeah on a Sunday, it, it means a lot that you're here to join me to talk tech. This has been this week in tech. We'll have another of course this week in Tech next week with another host while Leo is out. But thank you all out there for joining us for this episode and I hope you have a great geek week. Yeah, I'm saying the thing that Leo usually says at the end of, ask the tech guys at the end of this week in tech, cuz I didn't get to say it earlier. So goodbye everybody. Thank you for joining us.

Alex Wilhelm (02:37:15):
You didn't say, and that's another twit. Oh, another twit is in the cam. There you go!