Windows Weekly Episode 820 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

Leo Laporte (00:00:00):
It's time for Windows Weekly PTs here. He's actually in Mexico City. Richard Campbell's in Wales. I'll put on a giant leak hat and we'll talk about Microsoft. Moment two is now official. We've got a great theran, actually, a couple of theran all merged into one. And we'll take a look at the latest chat. G P t, Nuro, Quatro, all that and more. Coming up next, oh, windows Weekly podcasts you love

TWiT Intro (00:00:31):
From people you trust. This is,

Leo Laporte (00:00:41):
This is Windows Weekly with Paul thurrott and Richard Campbell. Episode 820. Recorded Wednesday, March 15th, 2023. Mustard can solve any problem. Windows Weekly is brought to you. Byta. Too often security professionals are undergoing the tedious, arduous task, manually collecting evidence with Drta. Say goodbye to the days of manual evidence collection and hello to Automation. All done at stratta speed. Visit drta.com/twit to get a demo and 10% off implementation. And by Collide, collide is a device trust solution that ensures that if a device isn't secure, it can't access your apps, it's zero trust For Okta. Visit collide.com/ww. Book a demo today. It's time for Windows Weekly. Yay. The show. We cover the latest news from Microsoft Home of Chat, G P T and <laugh>. And now that's a

Paul Thurrott (00:01:46):
Win chat g p t to

Leo Laporte (00:01:47):
You, buddy. I promise they're real, despite all appearances. I bring you our hosts on the left, paul throt thro.com and lean pub.com. Hello, Paul. Hello, Leo. Coming to us from Mexico City. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> coming to us from Wales, from Newport, Wales in the uk. Mr. Richard Campbell of.net Rocks. Hi, Richard.

Rich Campbell (00:02:11):
Hey Leo. We got

Leo Laporte (00:02:12):
Our full international cast aboard here.

Rich Campbell (00:02:14):
Yeah, I did a 12 hour time change. You know what's a big deal?

Leo Laporte (00:02:17):
Oh, that's right, <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:02:19):
That's right. I'd be walking into walls if I was you. Are you? I can't even handle a two hour time

Leo Laporte (00:02:23):
Change. You said you stopped over in Canada though, NBC on the way home. I did.

Rich Campbell (00:02:27):
I, I got, I got 48 hours to say hi to the wife and do some laundry, and then I kept going. Oh.

Leo Laporte (00:02:32):
And what brings you to the beautiful Welsh countryside?

Rich Campbell (00:02:36):
I am here as the host of Runner Radio for the Sequel Bits conference.

Leo Laporte (00:02:41):
Oh, nice. How many conferences a year do you do?

Rich Campbell (00:02:45):
Around 20.

Leo Laporte (00:02:47):
That means twice a month. More almost. Yeah. You go out and see the one more or less. Yeah. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:02:53):
Wow. Sometimes you get three back to back in two weeks, you know, back.

Leo Laporte (00:02:58):
And Paul, how many conferences year do you do

Paul Thurrott (00:03:02):
Lately, it's been a little on the light side. I didn't say zero. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (00:03:06):
<Laugh> and who's happier? I might add. I like not doing conferences. I have to say. I don't miss, you know, the South buys going on. I don't miss being down there. You know, I,

Paul Thurrott (00:03:16):
I I miss it in theory, but the truth is, when the opportunity arises, it's like, ugh. I sometimes you fall outta something for so long, you just don't want to do it anymore.

Leo Laporte (00:03:26):
Yeah. That's what happened with Covid. Right. It spoiled us.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:30):
I definitely don't want to do that anymore.

Leo Laporte (00:03:32):
Yeah. But we also don't want to get dressed anymore. We don't want to go to work anymore. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:03:36):
Oh, listen, I was a pioneer of that stuff. I <laugh> I'm, it's cute to me that the rest of the world is caught up on that. You know, shaving and bathing don't have to be a da daily activity.

Leo Laporte (00:03:46):
I just No, no. Why do it every day? Why? So we're gonna jump right in to Windows because I, I can't wait to talk about ai and so you're gonna just tease me. <Laugh> We'll, we'll, we'll do that. There's a lot of AI news this week, and Microsoft's really at the forefront of this. But before we do, is

Paul Thurrott (00:04:07):
It, is it though? Yeah, I, I, that's actually an interesting discussion in and of itself, but we'll get to that.

Leo Laporte (00:04:12):
Yeah. Okay. We'll

Paul Thurrott (00:04:14):
Get to that.

Leo Laporte (00:04:14):
How provocative mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. But first a word from Windows 11

Paul Thurrott (00:04:20):
<Laugh>. Yep. So chances are, if you're watching this podcast or listening to this podcast, you installed moment two, two weeks ago. Because the preview version came out on February 28th.

Leo Laporte (00:04:30):
Well, I didn't even have the preview. I just installed it. I mean Yeah, it offered it and I took it.

Paul Thurrott (00:04:36):
Yep. There you, that's, well, listen, you're Microsoft's favorite customer. That's

Leo Laporte (00:04:39):
What they want. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:04:41):
Passive. So

Paul Thurrott (00:04:42):
For the rest of the

Leo Laporte (00:04:42):
World, accepting <laugh> submissive. Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:04:46):
Exactly. Accepting. Just open your arms. Embrace the wave, Leo. Yes. So for the rest of the world, it arrived yesterday on Patch Tuesday, March 14th. So that will be an automatic update eventually, right. For people. And so you'll start seeing some of those changes. I the most obvious being that start box, I'm sorry, I keep calling it that. The search box that appears on the start menu. Geez, Louise <laugh>. Two hour time. Two hour time Chase. And I'm completely off my camera. You mean

Leo Laporte (00:05:14):
That pill, that thing at the bottom of of

Paul Thurrott (00:05:16):
The, lemme start. I know something about Windows, I promise. Okay. So the <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (00:05:20):
Okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:21):
I was just discussing this with Richard before the show. When Windows 1122 H two came out last October, it had a start. Oh geez. There I go again. A search icon in the task bar. Yeah. Yeah. One month later or two months later, depending on when you installed the update, it had a search pill, as we call it. Mm-Hmm.

Leo Laporte (00:05:38):
<Affirmative>

Paul Thurrott (00:05:39):
Now, as of today, yesterday, it has a search box. So they have changed that UI three times since

Leo Laporte (00:05:45):
October. It's not rounded corners anymore.

Paul Thurrott (00:05:48):
No, no. They're rounded. But now it's a search box.

Leo Laporte (00:05:50):
Oh, it's

Paul Thurrott (00:05:50):
It, but it's not really a search box. Right. Cuz you can't type in it. <Laugh>. Wait. It's just, it, it's just something that takes up space. Well, actually you are typing it. I'm typing in it. It takes up sp you're typing in it, it, it takes up space in the task bar unnecessarily, in my opinion.

Leo Laporte (00:06:04):
Because huge. Look how big

Paul Thurrott (00:06:05):
It is. Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't do anything that you can't do otherwise. So Yeah. They, they very clearly are trying to drive you to this thing. To me, search is like the start button for Windows 95. They really want you to go there as much as possible.

Leo Laporte (00:06:18):
I no longer have that bing icon though. Is that Cause I turned off

Paul Thurrott (00:06:21):
Because you turned off Search. Search

Leo Laporte (00:06:22):
Highlights. Highlights. Oh, okay.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:24):
Yep, yep. Yeah. This is what drives Microsoft's online services in Windows 11. Doesn't matter. This is the, the point of entry

Leo Laporte (00:06:32):
Highlights. Does not turn that on. <Laugh>, I got bad. Oh no. It, it just came back. It just, it was, it was waiting. It was waiting in the wings. Yeah. And I turned it off. Cuz it doesn't do anything. It just opens edge. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:06:44):
It's just, it the, I mean, among the first things you should change in Windows is dealing with that however you want to. I turn it off completely, but you can access it with a keyboard shortcut. You can access it from search you from start. Here I go again. You don't need to have the box or the icon or

Leo Laporte (00:06:59):
Whatever. Actually, this has changed behavior and I don't know if when I click the Bing thing

Paul Thurrott (00:07:05):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:07:05):
It now opens search. It doesn't, it doesn't go to Edge anymore. It goes

Paul Thurrott (00:07:09):
Right there. It did. Well, no, it will, when you start searching,

Leo Laporte (00:07:12):
Oh, and then when I do this, try to see what the new B can do. Let's write a poem and now mm-hmm. <Affirmative> now it, it it opens it

Paul Thurrott (00:07:20):
And now it will steal a poem that someone else wrote. And then you can claim it as your own <laugh>. That's fun. I think

Leo Laporte (00:07:26):
It, I think this is the first time this poem has ever been seen in, in public anywhere. Because it didn't exactly steal It's the poem. It just poem it stole its ideas or something.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:37):
I don't, I remember if I mentioned this last week, if I didn't, I should correct something I said two weeks ago, which is that when this feature first appeared for me, I would do searches and it would actually open in my browser, not in edge. I

Leo Laporte (00:07:50):
Thought, my god. Yeah, it open brave. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:07:52):
Yeah. So that was in fact something brave was doing. Microsoft is still forcing you to you to use Edge. It's just that brave is temporarily at least counteracting that. Which is why that

Leo Laporte (00:08:02):
And Microsoft, which last week I saw that difference last week. You said Microsoft had counteracted the counteract action.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:08):
Oh, is that what Okay, so I did, we talked about it. Okay. Yeah. So two weeks ago, I could get away with this today. It doesn't matter what I do. It

Leo Laporte (00:08:14):
Still, you're gonna get edge.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:16):
It's just gonna, you know, they just escalate. You're gonna like it

Leo Laporte (00:08:19):
And you're gonna like it. Oh, okay. Okay. As And Control A does open the, no, what is it? It said something. Oh, well I don't remember. And, and then yeah, cuz I like most, I just assumed everybody uses windows. Just hits the Windows key and starts typing.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:41):
Yeah. To me that's a like a long ingrained habit. Right. I don't

Leo Laporte (00:08:45):
Remember Well, but I won't get of that. I won't get bing that way.

Paul Thurrott (00:08:49):
Sure you will. I

Leo Laporte (00:08:50):
Will <laugh> how do I, how do I get Bing chatted that way?

Paul Thurrott (00:08:54):
Oh no, you won't get Bing chat that way. I mean, you have to actually go to get that. But if you did, if you just hit start and, and or the Windows key or whatever and start typing, you do get searchlights. Oh, it's the same thing.

Leo Laporte (00:09:04):
And then you Yeah, it's the

Paul Thurrott (00:09:05):
Same thing. And you can click the chat button, which will load edge, which will go to the Bing chat bot. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:09:11):
Okay. It's it's the same result. Which again, brings up the point why are you taking up all this space on my,

Paul Thurrott (00:09:19):
Because they really want you to go to that thing, don't they? <Laugh>? I mean that's really what it is. It's, it's something Mo it's like, it's mo It's like, Hey, look at me. Look at me.

Leo Laporte (00:09:27):
I can turn it off though, right?

Paul Thurrott (00:09:30):
Yeah. Okay. You can by turning off search highlights.

Leo Laporte (00:09:32):
Okay. No no. But can I turn off the search pill?

Paul Thurrott (00:09:38):
Yes, you can. Okay. So right click the task bar to task bar settings. And now you have a choice of appearances for the search item as I call it. It could be an icon. It can be an icon in a label, which

Leo Laporte (00:09:49):
Is the pill. Oh, okay. That's in, that's in taskbar settings. Got it.

Paul Thurrott (00:09:52):
Yep. Yeah. So that's also new to this moment. To update

Leo Laporte (00:09:56):
Search icon only search icon and label or just hide it. So really's, no complaints. You turn it off.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:04):
Original version of Windows 1122 H two. Moment one, moment two, they finally got back to the way it's always worked in when is 10. So, you know, this is what we call progress. Here in the red in

Rich Campbell (00:10:16):
The land almost back where we began <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:17):
Right. It's like four updates to get us back to the beginning. Do not pass, go. Do not click $200. Credible. Anyway, that's the way it is now is the way it should be. You should have that choice. Yep.

Rich Campbell (00:10:31):
You still can't put it. Pick up the task bar and put it on the left side of the screen.

Paul Thurrott (00:10:35):
Baby steps. We, we, we <laugh> maybe someday

Leo Laporte (00:10:38):
Used to be able to do that.

Rich Campbell (00:10:40):
I wouldn't send, that's where it configure all my machines. You know, I got, I got lots of horizontal width. I only have so much

Paul Thurrott (00:10:45):
Vertical. Exactly. Yeah. So about a year ago they said they were never gonna do make that change in Windows 11 because so few people used it. But recently there have been indications including some code showing that there, it can happen now. So it might be coming back.

Leo Laporte (00:11:01):
Well I think maybe the argument against it would be, cuz I used to get a lot calls on the radio show, I kind miss mm-hmm. <Affirmative> interacting with norms. Normies. Yeah. But I used to get a lot of calls on the radio show from people who said what my test burst on the site. <Laugh>, because you could drag it there. Right.

Rich Campbell (00:11:18):
Good.

Leo Laporte (00:11:19):
It was easy to accidentally click and drag it over there and they couldn't figure out how it happened or how to get back.

Paul Thurrott (00:11:25):
These are people you could fool with a wallpaper that made it look like their screen was cracked. I mean, you know, it's

Rich Campbell (00:11:32):
And the big business of replacing your I eat address bar. Yeah. All kinds of various malwares. Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:11:40):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (00:11:40):
That's true. Those are the days.

Leo Laporte (00:11:42):
That's true. Those are days. But I could see how Microsoft in their, you know, with their telemetry would say, we see a lot of people accidentally dragging their, their task bar into other parts of the screen. Sure. And you know, for Mac use don't,

Paul Thurrott (00:11:54):
There's all kinds of things.

Leo Laporte (00:11:56):
Sorry, it might be nice to have it on the top of the screen or on the left. I you're right because Richard is right. We have a wide, we have wide screens for the most part. There's

Rich Campbell (00:12:06):
Lots more,

Leo Laporte (00:12:06):
There's wide screens. There's lots more room on the left there. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:09):
Well, you should, whatever, you know, you don't have to justify it. We should just have that choice. Right. You know a lot of people will counter that with, I'll say, no one cares what you like. Some people like it. Well just let 'em have the opportunity. You know,

Leo Laporte (00:12:26):
You're so egalitarian. You're practically,

Paul Thurrott (00:12:28):
I I just, it's, it's just, I'm a <laugh>, I'm

Leo Laporte (00:12:32):
Communist.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:33):
I'm a, I'm a fairest <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:12:35):
That's what I'm,

Paul Thurrott (00:12:36):
Is there a political party for that? I guess it's communist. I dunno,

Leo Laporte (00:12:40):
<Laugh>, you're a fairest. <Laugh> fair. I just believe in the equality of all mankind.

Paul Thurrott (00:12:46):
Maybe it's more of a common sense, you know? Yeah. It's just I don't know. I don't want it on the side. I don't want it on the top, but I don't care if other people do. And I think they should have that option.

Rich Campbell (00:12:56):
There are issues of putting the task bar on the side. Like Yeah. Some apps do not respond well to the fact that the left edge of the screen has been taken up by the task bar.

Leo Laporte (00:13:05):
Let's get into, we live in a world, let's get into the real controversy. Do you auto hide? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:13:10):
Never. No.

Leo Laporte (00:13:12):
Why not? I know why I stopped doing it. I like auto hide. I wanna see everything. But I'm just curious why you,

Paul Thurrott (00:13:19):
Because because when you actually go down to select something, there's that extra second with a stupid thing has to animate back onto the screen. But, and I just don't

Leo Laporte (00:13:27):
It's intelligent. It says it's intelligent. Is it?

Paul Thurrott (00:13:30):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:13:30):
I don't feel

Paul Thurrott (00:13:31):
Like that's

Rich Campbell (00:13:31):
Intelligent <laugh> right

Paul Thurrott (00:13:32):
Up. If it was intelligent, it would support a small icons mode. And then you would have, we could have a middle ground between Haida get in the current stupid one inch high task bar. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:13:41):
So yeah, I habitually turn on auto hide, but where it becomes problematic for me is programs that don't recognize that. Yes. And then that becomes problematic. But see, I kinda like having that all that space and that kind of, the

Paul Thurrott (00:13:55):
Issue that Richard raised about having the task bar on the side, the issue you just raised about having a task bar hidden and apps that don't, I I am not a professional developer. I don't know a lot about this stuff, but I can tell you this, I know how to write code that can handle those situations. Yeah. And it's kind of built in. I don't understand wh why any app can't do this. Like, notion is a great example of an app that I maximize it and when I bring it back, it's in the, the size of a maximized window. But it is in fact in every stored floating state, I know exactly how to fix that problem. And it bugs me that this app that I rely on every day does not Yeah. And I, it's, it's strange to me. But yeah, these are basic windowing features of Windows.

Leo Laporte (00:14:39):
It's a hard comparison computer science problem, I'm guessing. You

Paul Thurrott (00:14:42):
Know, honestly, it isn't. And it was solved like 25 years ago.

Leo Laporte (00:14:44):
<Laugh>.

Rich Campbell (00:14:46):
Yeah. It's whatever framework they're using doesn't do it the

Leo Laporte (00:14:48):
Right way. Yeah. Oh, oh.

Paul Thurrott (00:14:50):
Or does it differently or something and they don't know how it works. Yeah, that makes sense. Something something like that. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:14:54):
They're not even dependent on it. It's just now they've committed all this code in this space. Maybe the framework developers still exists. Maybe they don't like they're, you know, it's a nasty little trap.

Leo Laporte (00:15:03):
They don't, so there's not a unified, like everybody must use this framework thing,

Rich Campbell (00:15:09):
You know? Yes, there is. It's an Apple.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:12):
Right. <laugh>

Rich Campbell (00:15:13):
Wanna understand the Apple world. There you go. There's exactly one way. Everything is wrong.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:20):
Are you telling me that there aren't Apple, like Apple made apps in Makos today that have that old time styled metal sheen to them? Like that's what Windows is. It's like a archeological dig of every framework that's ever been created all piled up together.

Leo Laporte (00:15:35):
So that's why it all looks different.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:38):
Yeah. Oh,

Rich Campbell (00:15:39):
Exactly right. They all the visual basic run time that hasn't been significantly updated since 1999 Sure. Shipped with Windows 11. Oh, that's right. My still in there.

Paul Thurrott (00:15:49):
That commitment to backwards compatibility is what makes Windows terrible.

Rich Campbell (00:15:55):
<Laugh>. It's also what makes Windows Windows, right? Is that Yes. Yes. Indeed. That old piece of software your ATM still depends on,

Paul Thurrott (00:16:04):
So here again, I'll say, I believe there to be a middle ground between what I see to be an overly aggressive tactic on Apple's part to get rid of old technology. And Microsoft's just seeming unwillingness to get rid of anything <laugh>. You know, like there has to be something in the middle that makes sense. But,

Rich Campbell (00:16:21):
Well, I think you and I have done at least two run ass where we made fun of the fact that they keep trying to make a safe 64 bit version of Windows. Right. Right. And always have to put in an escape hatch to go back to regular windows from that instance of Windows. And Absolutely everybody uses it. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (00:16:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there you go. Trapped by legacy.

Rich Campbell (00:16:45):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> by Legacy that made them lots of money. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:16:49):
Lots. Right?

Leo Laporte (00:16:50):
I think, I mean, that's okay, right? Because business users don't, you know, they want to stay things to say the same. It's not awful, is it?

Rich Campbell (00:17:03):
It suck. I mean,

Paul Thurrott (00:17:05):
There's a ask the guy, the Matrix, what he thinks. I mean, you're getting this, it's not awful sucky food source every day, isn't it? <Laugh>?

Leo Laporte (00:17:11):
It's, but this, I guess what I would say is there are consequences like, you know, kind of weird aesthetic things. Right. But in the long run, everything works pretty well and you get, you don't leave anybody behind. No, no user left behind. That's a good thing.

Rich Campbell (00:17:29):
You all code battle with security problem. Security's not good battle. That's right. Compatibility problem.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:33):
It's not, it's not always good to let you leave all code running <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:17:36):
See, that's right. When is Win 32, I think, I feel like it's a big source of security issues still.

Rich Campbell (00:17:42):
Without a doubt. Yeah, sure. Of course. And the default configuration for Windows is to allow everything to run. And you can as an it, you know, what's the cost of this? You're asking at Leo, it falls on the it Yeah. Yeah. The IT people have to know a lot to be able to secure their machine. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:17:59):
And then they're the ones that receive the fallback from people who can't run things <laugh> and they, and they're the bad guy. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:18:04):
And then, but then at the same time, it's like that's not on the roster that we, like we do breach some of those security rules for the apps. We really need to run your terrible piece of software. You don't run, not gonna run. Right. And that's the, the price. But the problem is outta the box. Everything runs because that's the compatibility mantra. Right. But we're is, go ahead. And this is the same problem. Like we talk about this, it's, it's the Swiss Army knife with every knife and blade pulled out, right? Yeah. Like they're all there. Yeah. And, and

Paul Thurrott (00:18:36):
Nobody, what happens when you trip and land on that thing,

Rich Campbell (00:18:39):
<Laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (00:18:39):
Whatever you

Rich Campbell (00:18:40):
Do,

Paul Thurrott (00:18:40):
Don't put it in your pocket. Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Rich Campbell (00:18:43):
Okay. Okay. And the problem is that nobody needs them all, but everybody needs one of them. Right. And we just don't

Paul Thurrott (00:18:49):
Want, you know what, but here's, here's the problem I have with that today, cuz you're right, a hundred percent. This has always been the argument for Windows that this user base is so large and so diverse that to accommodate all of these people's needs, you have to have all these special cases and whatever it is. And that's, you know, that always made sense. The problem is, in 2023, Android, iOS, the Mac, well Linux to a small degree, the web, whatever, there's all these platforms that have, you know, millions or hundreds of millions of billions of users too. It's not just Windows and some of those platform makers very much do restrict the access to legacy code. So it's possible to do it. In fact we, I think we just held up Apple as an example of maybe the more stringent about this. They have one of the biggest user bases, maybe the biggest, I don't know on Earth one of them anyway. And they, those people seem really accepting of the every change Apple's made. You know, like, nope, we're not, we're not doing code anymore. We're

Rich Campbell (00:19:44):
Watching lots of flack for older devices that just stop working. Right? Like, what, yeah. What does Apple actually do? They maintain a certain number of iOS revs that they're willing to support. Right. And a certain amount of hardware that will run on those iOS revs. So the bottom line is, there are folks that are being left behind with older iPads, with older versions of iOS. They cannot,

Paul Thurrott (00:20:04):
Well they can't, I mean, they may not care about upgrading. I mean, it's kinda hard to say, but

Rich Campbell (00:20:08):
As long as it runs the software you need to run, right? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:10):
That's the important's always the problem.

Rich Campbell (00:20:12):
But iOS also has the lovely advantage of having only existence since 2007. Have the baggage, baggage give it 20 more a year.

Paul Thurrott (00:20:22):
<Laugh>. Well, I, okay. I mean, you're right. A hundred percent. I would say, you know, on some level it dates back to OS 10 from 2001 dates back to next step from 1990, whatever mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. so on

Rich Campbell (00:20:34):
The, on the Mac OS side, right. They did have the opportunity to do the reboot. Yeah. Which Microsoft never did. I mean, they never tried to make win phone live on its own. Right. It started off with an odd little kernel that was really running a variation of silver light in the wind seven days. We don't even talk about ce. That's a whole other can of worm. So they literally had like a generator Ono OS device <laugh>, and then they completely rebooted it three times until they beaten every developer to death.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:02):
Yeah. Yep. Those Yeah, that's true. And unfortunately it took them, those reps to get it where it needed to be from the beginning. <Laugh>, but

Rich Campbell (00:21:11):
The aid had it nailed.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:13):
Yeah, that's Yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:21:14):
But, but the but the need to have one kernel Right. Is what why they rebooted it again at a tenant finally, you know, stamped the last wind phone dev in the head.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:28):
Yes. <laugh>.

Rich Campbell (00:21:29):
I'm not the bitter one here I can call, call up a dozen wind phone dev and you can talk to each one of them. They all will cry. Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:40):
Yep. By the way, silver light death of silver light, you know, who can blame that on Steve Jobs <laugh>?

Rich Campbell (00:21:47):
It's not, you're not wrong. You know, and in Microsoft sins around Silver Light, were not that Steve Jobs killed it, but how they failed to communicate it.

Paul Thurrott (00:21:55):
Right. Right. I believe Bob Mu Muglia lost his job because of this, cuz he blurted out to Mary Jo Foley that they were going in a different direction.

Rich Campbell (00:22:05):
Now, if I could ever finish my book, I would actually write this chapter because I had it cold from Bob Moo. Oh wow. That, that's not why he left. Oh, good. Oh, okay. And all and, and also that he didn't know when he said to mj, well our strategy has shifted that nobody had spoken of it since April. Oh,

Paul Thurrott (00:22:24):
Yeah. Right. The issue was at, at whatever year that was a build that the Silver light was never mentioned after being the highlight of the show the previous two years.

Rich Campbell (00:22:33):
No, no. Is it related to end launched?

Paul Thurrott (00:22:36):
Is it related to the end of Flash

Rich Campbell (00:22:39):
Or No? No. Stephanie, it could have been the replacement for Flash though, right? Well, that's what it was said. Yeah. Because Silver Light is where the word silver light comes from, is the debris that's left from after a flash bulb goes like, it's called Silver Light <laugh>. I didn't know that. What comes after flash. That's great. And that, and so there, there was an intent there, but that was not really, I mean the original thing is it, it was for Netflix, right? It was the Right, that's exactly V speed media player. Yep. Then when they need, then they thought, hey, this is an opportunity to get stuff on more sophisticated web development. And so they dropped net three in there. So V2 got.net V1 was purely JavaScript. And then but you know, the, the painful part about it, and it's a, I think it is a pivotal point in the, the book that I never can seem to finish is in April of 2010 when they launched Studio 2010, and I helped with that launch, I helped run that event. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> you were there. They, silver Light was front and center as the premier approach to enterprise development. And this is, again, we talk about the real

Paul Thurrott (00:23:40):
Estate. No, I, I, I, silver Light is is hon honestly one of the most unheralded at Microsoft because it was basically a, a, a lightweight version of W P F brought cross platform essentially to the web. Right. And should've

Rich Campbell (00:23:53):
Been the way code name was Wpf F everywhere.

Paul Thurrott (00:23:56):
Right? That's right. One of the possibilities for the Windows eight app model was that it could have been server light. That was one of the things that they looked at. And you know, you know, kovski hated net so

Rich Campbell (00:24:10):
Well in his world there was such a thing as a Windows developer. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:24:15):
Well, they was there by that point.

Rich Campbell (00:24:17):
No, I mean, they never existed. People don't develop for platforms. People develop with languages. Right, right. He also believed there was an office developer when he was the office guy. And that didn't exist either. <Laugh>, there are secret developers and there Areba developers. But cause you programing the language, that's your association, not the platform. Right. No,

Paul Thurrott (00:24:39):
This is sad to me. Okay. <laugh>, this is

Rich Campbell (00:24:41):
The saddest thing. I mean, you know, that whole crisis could be is because in April you tell us it's the way. Right. Then thoughts on Flash and internally Microsoft at that moment, they go, okay, well this is doomed. Now we have to do something else. Right. But you're now also dealing with the whole tablet motion. Right. app. I, that thoughts on Flash came out because Flash was murdering the iPad. Right. I mean, that's really what Jobs cared about

Paul Thurrott (00:25:05):
Was Yeah. Battery life and performance. You could

Rich Campbell (00:25:07):
Visit, you're watching strong bad on your iPad and you can watch the battery go down.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:14):
<Laugh>. Oh my God, that was my favorite thing on the web for easily five years straight. This

Rich Campbell (00:25:19):
Is the best thing that ever happened.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:20):
The little Mexican wrestler looking guy with the Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:25:23):
That is the best thing that ever happened.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:25):
I love the strong guy.

Rich Campbell (00:25:26):
And then when, when they said Flash was gonna die, I'm like, not strong, bad. That's unacceptable. Right, right, right.

Paul Thurrott (00:25:32):
That's funny.

Rich Campbell (00:25:33):
But it murdered

Paul Thurrott (00:25:34):
The Leo. What's Leo? Leo's redesigning his studio. What's happening?

Leo Laporte (00:25:37):
Oh, I'm sorry. Don't mind me. I'm

Rich Campbell (00:25:40):
Just No, no. We're no one, we're happily digressing on that. No one

Leo Laporte (00:25:43):
Can see that. I have, I've <laugh> moved things around. It's I did. I

Paul Thurrott (00:25:48):
You come back, it's like, it's a different color. Everything's in a different place. I had a, it's a different microphone.

Leo Laporte (00:25:53):
I had a microphone when I was trying out a a k g p two drum mic. So just a little inside baseball at the beginning of the show for people who were listening. I was using a different microphone. And then when we went back to the, hi, I'm old, I can't tell, but my team tells me that the high ends on the AKG weren't as good as the high ends on

Rich Campbell (00:26:10):
This. You know what the, the hile sounds better now that you've just switched. Yeah. It's like,

Leo Laporte (00:26:14):
It's better, isn't it? Yeah, it's 350 bucks compared to 115. That, so that was our Yeah, it's

Paul Thurrott (00:26:21):
Our travel mic. Well, that's the travel mic.

Leo Laporte (00:26:23):
So that's one of the reasons I'm trying this is trying to figure out what I can carry around when we go on our trip in a

Paul Thurrott (00:26:28):
Couple weeks. I've, I've been, I spent so much time trying to find an excellent travel mic. It's hard.

Leo Laporte (00:26:33):
I think this is a good one. And this is my travel kit, this pelican. And, and so this'll be the, you see how small that is? This'll be the,

Paul Thurrott (00:26:41):
It looks like a, an alien head from it's funny alien.

Leo Laporte (00:26:44):
It's a drum mic, you know, you can tell it's a drum mic, but it does sound quite good.

Rich Campbell (00:26:48):
I'm a big fan of these DPA fines. They pack super small and they sound pretty good.

Leo Laporte (00:26:53):
Yeah. They're fragile though. They're extraordinarily fragile. Well,

Rich Campbell (00:26:58):
They

Paul Thurrott (00:26:58):
Go in a case, you're, you're shipping with a what looks like a shipping crate from the Titanic. I think you could

Leo Laporte (00:27:02):
Protect Well, I'm going on a cruise and I thought I'd have my trunk with me. I have to redo the pick and pull though to fit this new mic. I don't know how that's gonna work.

Rich Campbell (00:27:12):
Anyway, we're, we're whining about, I'm sorry about Silver Light. It could be whining about Word. I mean, we are missing an opportunity. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:19):
Let's wind some more

Leo Laporte (00:27:20):
As, as, as Mr. Mr. Paul Thro calls it the ertification of Windows.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:26):
Yeah. Well, I'm trying to keep it clean here. I know this is a family show, but

Leo Laporte (00:27:28):
Yeah, thank you for doing that. I appreciate that.

Paul Thurrott (00:27:31):
Yeah. I, I never intended to go down this path, but you know, like everybody, I use software every day rely on it. And one of the weird things about the era we're in now is that mature software products are being updated every month for some reason. Like, like they're mobile apps and I don't understand what they're doing. And I, if they're innocuous, I don't care if you can turn it off, I don't care. But, you know, micro, I'm a writer. I, Microsoft Word <laugh> is the, obviously the central tool to my life in many ways. And it has been getting certified for sure <laugh> and in

Leo Laporte (00:28:03):
In what way, Paul? Let's be specific.

Paul Thurrott (00:28:05):
Oh God. In every way. Leo. So, alright, so <laugh>,

(00:28:09):
In what way, in what way is it not being certified? No. So in the good old days, if I wanted to do something like find a, a word in a document, I could hit control F and this little dialogue came up floating over the window and I could find, and I could look and find every instance. And it was really nice. And that thing would never be in the way cuz it was so small. And then sometime ago they turned it into a pain on the left. And now in the latest version of Word, it's a giant pain on the right that takes, that actually blocks the text I'm trying to find it actually gets in the way. So the way the, the workaround I have temporarily until they insurify this part of the product is you can do a Control H, which is for find and replace and is actually still a, a find tab on that thing. And it's a little window and it's still works and that's kind of Okay, that's fine.

Rich Campbell (00:28:55):
But the bigger let to press a replace part where it now replaces it with

Paul Thurrott (00:28:58):
Nothing. Exactly. Right. Right. Although, you know, replace all is a good thing to have if you need it. But it's just, I, I don't like UI that gets in the way. I don't understand this. I brought up this app the other day. The thing that finally prompted me to write this was I brought up the app and it said, Hey, have you heard us OneDrive? You should think about using OneDrive. And I'm like,

Leo Laporte (00:29:16):
You, hey, no app should save. Hey fucking idiot <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:29:19):
I, first of all, this document I'm working on is saved in OneDrive, <laugh>, you need it. Pay for OneDrive through Microsoft 365 family, which you should know. Yeah. Be smart. And by the way, you can't figure this out, but your AI stuff's gonna work fine. What, what are you kidding me? Like I like, to me, this is crazy. But the, the other example, well the other big thing for me is word arbitrarily saves some setting changes that you make to your Microsoft account. You, I, there's no way to find a list of what those things are, but I can tell you it's nothing important. Like, one of the things that it saves is your theme choice. So if you like dark mode, you're gonna have dark mode everywhere you are, no matter what the underlying system is using. Like does it, does

Leo Laporte (00:29:59):
It still use the template file and save that? Yes,

Paul Thurrott (00:30:02):
It does. So a lot of, a

Leo Laporte (00:30:03):
Lot of settings are in there. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:30:06):
Okay. But I'm talking about settings related to the application, not to the document. Right? yes, your normal.dot actually, I believe does, I don't change mine, but I think that does sync to your Microsoft account. That's an interesting point. But so you know, years ago, 2007, Microsoft added the ribbon to the core office apps. The following product was probably 2010. I guess they had kind of added it to the rest. The ribbon was controversial at the time, and this is, although I have to say this is one thing I kind of agreed with because the top eight, 10 of 10 feature requests for office were features that were already in office that nobody could find. Right. <laugh>. So their idea was, well, we're gonna put all the UI out there, this thing with tool bars and menus was too small for all of the features that are in these products.

(00:30:48):
And it was like, okay, you know, I I, on a some level, I'm like, yeah, okay, fine. However, I only use some tiny percentage of features and a lot of things I do with keyboard shortcuts anyway. So the, the the ribbon is kind of a big UI to me and I like to get it out of the way. So you can hide the ribbon, you know, and then Leo will know, cause I talked about the successfully for a couple years, but at some point Microsoft moved to something called the Simplified Ribbon. If you use outlook on the desktop, you'll see that in the Windows version of the product. It's a small version. It, it's toolbar is what it is really. But it's like a, it's a small simplified ribbon. If you use the office products on the web, I know it's in Word and it's probably an Excel in PowerPoint and it's just a, it's a sim you know, it's, it is what I said it was.

(00:31:31):
It's, it's a simplified ribbon. It's nice. They were going to bring this to Word on the desktop and I, I waited two years for that to happen. And instead what they did was they came up with something called a personalized toolbar. The idea here is that you use Word for some amount of time after this feature has been installed and then in the background it examines the, the things you use, like which buttons you click on and everything. And then one day it says, Hey, guess what? We can make a new simplified toolbar for you. Nice. Do you want us to do that? Yeah, absolutely. And it hides the ribbon and it puts up a simplified tool. So it's basically the simplified ribbon, but it's supposedly personalized to you. Nice. That thing doesn't sync. So every time I go to a new computer and I go to a new computer all the time cuz I review computers, I have to use Word for a little while. The weeks will go by and it'll say, Hey, we can make a personalized toolbar. Would you like us to? Yes, I would. And it makes the exact same fricking toolbar that there's no way for me to turn it on manually or say that I always want it on every, I just, it just doesn't sync. I I don't That's exactly the thing that should be synced cuz it's literally based the thing you're it's personalized to you. Exactly. Supposedly. Right. So between these things we need to

Rich Campbell (00:32:43):
Personalize over and over again.

Paul Thurrott (00:32:45):
Yeah. There's a point where a tool that you rely on gets in the way so much that it's no longer helping. It's hindering. Right. And I'm, I'm right on the line with Word. Like I, the things that are good about Word are, are still good. I, for myself, unfortunately, in my particular use case, I have to output most of what I write to WordPress and getting clean code into WordPress is Job one. I can't have formatting codes going on in the background. So when I use something like a notion or typo or my normal markdown editor or word for the, for the web of oddly Google Docs, if I paste anything in from those apps, there's a lot of gobbly HTML code in the background, including in some cases things that impact the font size or weight and Wow. No, I No, no, no, no, no. This has to be super

Rich Campbell (00:33:32):
Clean. It would be vs code for that.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:36):
Yeah. By the way, the S code is absolutely one of the things I've looked at. I don't remember anymore. Cuz you can do markdown, et cetera, et cetera.

Rich Campbell (00:33:42):
You'll do markdown. 

Paul Thurrott (00:33:43):
You can do straight a Chael too, I guess if you wanted to. I, but I've

Rich Campbell (00:33:46):
Been telling the joke about Word and all the opposite products. Just like they're so far down the version numbers now they're at the point where they've hit mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, they, they now like the putting in features cuz they get to take 'em back out again so they get <laugh> or get feed. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:33:59):
I just want, if this thing could, like, if there was a way I can, I can work around fine cuz I can do control age. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, if I could save that personalized toolbar, I maybe wouldn't be having this conversation. Maybe if it wouldn't show me ads for things I'm already using and pay for, you know, maybe. But I'm actively seeking to replace this thing that I've relied on for, I don't know, 25 years or more

Rich Campbell (00:34:22):
Because it's annoying you. I mean

Paul Thurrott (00:34:23):
It's incredible.

Rich Campbell (00:34:24):
My general concern is anytime a piece of software is too busy with what it wants to do, then to interfere with what I want to do. Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:34:32):
I think this is the general impression that Windows 11 gives to a lot of, I will call technical people. I think most normal people use it and think nothing. They, I've asked multiple people, I've watched this, friends and family have upgraded and I say, what do you think? You know, and waiting for them to say, Hey what happened to, and they're all like, oh, it's, I don't really even notice it. So, okay. So normal people it's probably fine for the people watching this show you and I us I I there are things where you're like, wait a hold on a second. What's going on here? There are these little workflows that I rely on that you've taken away and every time you know it's back. But when you used to write click on the task bar and not get task manager, it was like you know, you had that one moment of, oh right, I know I have to do this other thing now and

Rich Campbell (00:35:15):
Oh yeah. Right. You're reminding, I mean, routinely reminded you moved my cheese for no apparent reason.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:20):
Yep, yep. So I, so I wrote this article about Word, I was just freaking out about it. I'm like, I, I just can't, I, I just don't understand what they're doing.

Rich Campbell (00:35:30):
Right.

Paul Thurrott (00:35:31):
And the next day I woke up <laugh> and Microsoft updated Microsoft Paint. Now this one is harder for me. He's even harder because Microsoft Paint as goofy as it sounds cuz people are like, you know, paint notepad, what are you talking about? I use these apps every single day. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> every day. I use Microsoft Paint to make my Christmas card, which I included an example of in the article that I wrote about this. I, Microsoft updated win notepad for Windows 11 as part of some whatever update. And it's fine, it's the same app. It looks better, it supports tabs, which I don't care about all the keyboard shortcuts work. It does. Yeah. Dark mode and light mode. No break. It's breaking what you're reading. It's a better version of the app. It's a super set. It's better. Right. Perfect. Then they apparently handed off the paint upgrade to some kid who was here who faked his way through college and doesn't actually know how to do anything.

(00:36:25):
And then they threw that thing into the product like it made any sense. So the updated paint does not support light mode or dark mode. It just is in bright white mode. It looks like a flashlight in your face. That's the old version. It, it always has been. Well the old version used to at least be like kind of tan or off, you know, it was like light colored but it wasn't like a spotlight. Now it's like a spotlight. It doesn't support menu-based keyboard shortcuts. Right. You can't go alt f blah blah, blah, whatever. Those are broken. Those are broken. It was broken to broken. Yep. They used to work. It doesn't support dark mode. Look, you know, it should kind of weird. They would do a notepad Right. And not do paint. Right. Okay. Whatever. Yeah. Okay. But one of the re one of the things I do with paint every single day is I change the, I usually change the height of things.

(00:37:08):
I, the the promo graphics. My CI are in 16 by nine aspect ratio. A lot of screens today are 16 by 10. I gotta do some cropping. I mainly kind of work with that. And then I do the crop and, and the, I just, I use keyboard shortcuts. It's, it's called image properties, but it's control E. And this little dialogue comes up, there's two boxes, width and height. Width is selected. So you can type in your number, whatever you want. You can type in the number, you can tab over to the other one and you hit enter and you're done. And I'm out and I do this every day, all day long. I do this today, I've probably done it five or six times. Right. But then they updated it <laugh>. So latest version of paint, that dialogue has been restyled to look more like a Windows 11 thing.

(00:37:52):
So it's humongous cuz everything has to be huge. Now is huge. The width box is not selected when you, when this thing comes up. So if you start typing, nothing happens. Right. To get to the width box, you have to tab five times five you five that. It's exactly, yeah. Cause I do it every day. <Laugh> to get to height, which is the one I really want, you have to tab six. So you gotta it memorized tab. Tab tabs. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Here's the thing. So I changed the height. So in other words, like I have an image, it's 10 66. By 6 66 it has to be 10 66 by 600. So I, I change, I say I type 600, I hit enter. Nothing happens because now enter doesn't work on anything in that box unless it's the okay button is selected. Bam ba you, we just talked about how things are built into windows and they just work.

(00:38:42):
And you know, you don't have to do anything broke. You have to, you know what it is? I drive around Pennsylvania and people are driving in the rain without their lights on. Or I'm driving at night and they're driving without their lights on. These people are idiots. And you have to do work for that to happen. Your car's lights are on automatically all the time. You had to have looked at it and said Nope. And put it on some other thing cuz you know better than God or something. I don't know. <Laugh>, this is what this is. They're like, these features like auto select the right thing when you go to the dialogue and hit enter anywhere and have it work that's just built in. You have to strip out code to get rid of that.

Rich Campbell (00:39:17):
You,

Paul Thurrott (00:39:17):
You got

Rich Campbell (00:39:19):
Work, but the alt keys don't, like if they were all broken, I'd say, well, it's just, just a bug.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:24):
It's no, it's just they, I what, is there any quality control at this company?

Rich Campbell (00:39:30):
An intern did this for sure.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:32):
Yes, that's exactly, thank you. That was my conclusion as well. Exactly.

Rich Campbell (00:39:35):
And an intern who's never used an alt key in their lie.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:37):
Yes. They're like, I'm confus, I use a Mac. I don't understand keyboard shortcuts. We don't need those.

Rich Campbell (00:39:42):
Yeah. That's not a simple <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:39:45):
All right, let's talk about Microsoft Teams. This is, this is, this is the biggest one for me. Every morning at nine o'clock at ET I get on a call with Brad. We do a little podcast thing when I'm home. It depends on the computer. This is the interesting thing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, when I'm home, I would say at least twice a week, some setting is not correct related to my headphones or the microphone. It's on the rung device or the, even the cameras happen sometimes. It's crazy. So since I've been here in Mexico, every single day we've connected, I can't hear him because it's connected to a headphone jack on this microphone that doesn't have anything in it. It's just sitting here empty and

Rich Campbell (00:40:25):
Never been used. Here.

Paul Thurrott (00:40:26):
Here's here, I'm gonna supply advice to Microsoft cuz I can solve this problem. Right now you have a feature called Preferred Audio Device or Preferred whatever device, preferred Microphone. And the idea is no matter what else is going on in the computer, I don't care what someone's selected out Windows or is using another apps, if this device is here, use

Rich Campbell (00:40:45):
It

Paul Thurrott (00:40:46):
Every freaking time. Like, I don't change things, it should just work every

Rich Campbell (00:40:52):
Time. Windows can detect that there's headphones plugged in or not.

Paul Thurrott (00:40:56):
Yes, it can. It's

Rich Campbell (00:40:57):
Selecting the headphones that Aren. I don't

Paul Thurrott (00:40:58):
Know what it's doing. I don't know why. There's no sense you, there's no point here where I can say, well, I understand what no <laugh>, nothing has changed. No configuration has changed. It's just wrong every day. By the way, we're using a product called Zoom, which you probably have heard of today. Zoom always works fine. Yep. So what I know there are people in the Microsoft space that go zoom you. We should have heard that there should have been Skype or, you know, team should, you know what? Here's the, here's a shocker guys. Zoom works. It works. I connected to this call. I haven't used Zoom in days. No problem. It's on the mic. It's on the right headphone. Everything's working perfect. Finally, we'll send it with the real burger of the story. <Laugh>, Microsoft Edge,

Rich Campbell (00:41:43):
<Laugh>. Oh boy.

Paul Thurrott (00:41:44):
Microsoft Edge was just updated to version 111. And this is the one where just like Windows 11 moment two added the stupid Big Bang icons everywhere. They added a stupid big Bing icon to the fricking toolbar that you cannot get rid of. What

Rich Campbell (00:42:03):
That, that whole right side tab, cuz we needed to use more screen space.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:10):
This thing supports mouseover. So not only, you don't even have to click it, you just go near it now and it's like, hello? Did you wanna chat? I can be creative ballast or precise <laugh>. What is going on?

Rich Campbell (00:42:25):
What,

Paul Thurrott (00:42:27):
Yeah. Dork. Talk to

Rich Campbell (00:42:31):
Somebody. It's, it's a digital landmine feature. <Laugh>. Yes.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:36):
Yes.

Rich Campbell (00:42:37):
It's like, I dare you to drag your mouse anywhere near this.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:40):
Yes, exactly. But I need to click the thing, right? Tip tip. Yeah. Yeah. It it's,

Rich Campbell (00:42:45):
And I'm not 20 anymore. My mouse is not that precise. Exactly.

Paul Thurrott (00:42:49):
56 years old. I'm lucky I can get anywhere near it. You know, it's, I don't, I don't know what's going on. I, I, listen, I I've had a, an entire career of frustration thanks to Microsoft. Like I'm, no, I'm not a stranger to this, but I feel like it's escalated in this what I'll call the Windows 11 era. That there is no quality controller. You know, one of the things that's actually kind of nice about Windows 11 is the look and feel. It's pretty, it's it's elegant looking. It's nice. Not

Rich Campbell (00:43:15):
An aesthetic. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:15):
It's a nice aesthetic. It's it, but it's <laugh>. But the things like, it's not an, I don't want the image properties dialogue to be beautiful. I want it to work <laugh>. You know, like, I can't, we have both. Why can't it be pretty and good? No. All right. I don't wanna say in person, but I, I just, this stuff me, I

Leo Laporte (00:43:33):
Just wanna welcome the old Paul Throt back. We missed you Paul. I just, we missed you <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:40):
I want everything to be sunshine and unicorns. I do <laugh>. I really do. I need it

Rich Campbell (00:43:45):
<Laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (00:43:46):
But it just isn't.

Leo Laporte (00:43:48):
No. And, and I understand. I do.

Paul Thurrott (00:43:50):
This stuff is nonsense. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Yeah. Like I, I, I can, I can appreciate decisions I don't agree with, you know, if it's like, okay, I wouldn't do that, but I, you know, okay, I get it. This stuff is just nonsense. Is

Rich Campbell (00:44:03):
The Bing thing, like a marketing strategy that, because

Paul Thurrott (00:44:06):
You can, oh,

Rich Campbell (00:44:07):
It's not a tool tip. Right. But I, I actually put my mouse over it. It gives me a tool tip called Discover and then also takes over a chunk of the screen.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:16):
Yeah. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:44:17):
So somebody did go to the trouble of still implementing the tool tip, which is all you should do.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:21):
I know. Putting

Rich Campbell (00:44:22):
My mouse over your icon.

Paul Thurrott (00:44:26):
I just don't, I don't know. <Laugh>. I just,

Rich Campbell (00:44:29):
Is there a, is there a flag for D Booby trap <laugh>?

Paul Thurrott (00:44:33):
I

Leo Laporte (00:44:33):
Just wanna give Paula hug at this point. You just,

Paul Thurrott (00:44:36):
I, but it's,

Leo Laporte (00:44:36):
Sorry,

Paul Thurrott (00:44:39):
I should listen. You ever watch let's, you ever watching TV show? You're watching, you're watching a TV show or a movie, right? And it's, maybe it's a, it doesn't matter what's going on. I'll, I'll pause a show and be like, listen, I'm not a law enforcement official, but I understand that what they're doing here is nonsense. Like, this wouldn't happen in the real world and it kind of takes you out of it. Right? So when I use Windows now, I use like word paint or Teams or Edge. I'm like, you know what, I, I'm not a professional developer. I could do this. Right? Like, I don't under like, but you should be able to do better than me if you work there. How,

Rich Campbell (00:45:11):
How did this get out the

Paul Thurrott (00:45:12):
Door? Yes. Like, that makes no sense. That's my point. I guess, you know.

Leo Laporte (00:45:18):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:45:20):
God, what, who's running the show over there? What's going, what, what?

Leo Laporte (00:45:23):
And I suppose it's impossible to find somebody who could respond to that. Right? It's Microsoft's not gonna, not gonna have that conversation. Oh,

Rich Campbell (00:45:32):
It's easy to get a response. That's great feedback.

Leo Laporte (00:45:35):
Yes. That's

Paul Thurrott (00:45:36):
The response. Oh, Paul, did you did you mention this in the feedback hub? Oh, you mean that black hole thing that's in the corner of Windows 11 where you flush ideas down the toilet <laugh>? No, I didn't put it in the feedback hub. I, I want people to actually know about it. So I wrote about it on my site instead. You know, I, if there was any sense that Microsoft gave a crap about this, I would absolutely talk to them directly about it. But I, everything I see suggests otherwise, and it's very frustrating.

Rich Campbell (00:46:06):
Well, windows is not the center of the company anymore. Like,

Paul Thurrott (00:46:09):
Do you think <laugh>? Yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:46:11):
My God,

Paul Thurrott (00:46:11):
It's not even, it's barely in the company from what I can tell now.

Rich Campbell (00:46:15):
Who's the, who's the intern that chooses Windows?

Paul Thurrott (00:46:18):
I know, I know. Well, I don't think interns get a choice. Maybe that's the point.

Rich Campbell (00:46:22):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:46:23):
Right. Who's the, the qualified developer who's looking to advance his career, who's like, you know where I'm gonna make a difference, I'm gonna fix Microsoft Paint. You know, I don't like, I don't, I don't think that's happening.

Leo Laporte (00:46:33):
This is one of the things that is coming up now that companies are laying off tens of thousands of employees. You know, Facebook's doing another 10,000 after 11,000 last fall. Yep. and I, I'm starting to see stories about <laugh> like Facebook collecting developers like Pokemon, like hoarding them, but not using Oh, and I, and yeah. And

Paul Thurrott (00:46:57):
I'd like that job. Can I have that job? And remember

Leo Laporte (00:46:59):
One of the questions Elon asked at when he went to Twitter, which I mocked at the time, but maybe wasn't far off, maybe he kinda understands, this sometimes happens as these big tech companies. He said, how many employees are not doing anything? They're just right. They're just reporting and not doing anything. And then, and then I guess the other question is, how many developers because of lack of oversight or lack of QC or something are, are not, are, are subpar. They're not doing a good job. And it's hard, it's hard to root those out. <Laugh>, one of the things they do is

Paul Thurrott (00:47:32):
Twitter. Well, okay, but let's, they

Leo Laporte (00:47:33):
Ask people who, of, of your subordinates who deserves promotion and then they fire Twitter, the managers, and they ra and <laugh> and they, the people that they picked, the new managers. There's, it's hard, I would imagine in an organization where you have tens of thousands of developers to know.

Paul Thurrott (00:47:51):
I mean, do you think, do you think Twitter had tens of thousands of developers?

Leo Laporte (00:47:54):
No. They, they had 7,500 employees total at their peak. And maybe

Paul Thurrott (00:47:58):
They had a few That's actually more than Microsoft. They needed,

Leo Laporte (00:48:01):
Yeah. Well, and but how many does Microsoft have? Is the This is not, oh my

Paul Thurrott (00:48:04):
God. Yeah. 20, 20 something, thousand, whatever it is. Employees. Right?

Leo Laporte (00:48:08):
But how many are developers? How many are actually writing code? Right?

Paul Thurrott (00:48:11):
Yeah. It's hard to say. It's hard to say. It's a big top heavy company now. I'm sure.

Leo Laporte (00:48:17):
So I think this is the, the symptom of that, which is that you get stuff, well, that's imperfect.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:23):
But the broader issue, and Richard was kind of, I think was talking to this, was when you're advancing your career at Microsoft, you're not working on Windows. You're working, if you're not doing something AI or something, something. So now, right. Well, that's right. All the, the, the strong minds have all moved on. Right. To other parts, strong

Leo Laporte (00:48:40):
Minds. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:48:41):
Well, no, seriously, and, and I mean, who's left, right? I mean, it's, it's not the be it's not the best of the breed. Right. It's, it just isn't. And and, and the thing is they're, but they're updating these products so much frequently now. It's every, all these apps, you know, paint notepad, whatever, they could be updated every single day. They're not, they're not like a part of monolithic Microsoft wor you know, windows never changing. They're, they're, they're changing all the time. It's possible. By the way, the thing I just complained about will be fixed in a future update. My problem is that change went out.

Leo Laporte (00:49:17):
Is it a But it's a management problem ultimately because somebody's gotta look at the stuff and make a decision, oh, that's not good enough. Or, don't ship that. Or Why are we doing that? Famously Steve Jobs was really micromanaging everything that went out the door. That was when Apple was a hell of a lot smaller and still bad stuff crept out, do you think? No. Do you thinks But

Paul Thurrott (00:49:38):
A management issue for the Apple of that day, that was necessary. Right? Everyone enjoys that. Remember their product. Rib has four. We make four products. This is Apple. That, you know, we all sort of want it simple to be like that. Yeah. But then again, we all like AirPods and you know, <laugh>. But

Leo Laporte (00:49:52):
This is what happens. Maybe when you get too complex, too big an organization. It's too difficult to, I wonder, I mean, I don't know.

Paul Thurrott (00:49:59):
I don't know. All I, all I see is the result. I can't explain it. I don't like it.

Leo Laporte (00:50:04):
I I have to say, this is one of the problems in the iPhone ecosystem, which, which is that every app has a unique interface. There's no standardized interface, right? And so using an app on the iPhone because of a lack of affordances is really a process of discovering, well, I don't know. How do I go back a page? How

Paul Thurrott (00:50:22):
Do they this one do

Leo Laporte (00:50:24):
It? Yeah. How does this one

Paul Thurrott (00:50:25):
Do it? Please don't get me started on mobile app ui, cuz that's, if you thought I went to town on Word and paint. I have a lots to say about Facebook and Instagram and whatever else. I mean, the, the, the, the, the apps that make you tap up and down on the screen that as you move forward, I, the, the apps that you, on one screen you can add a post, but when you're another screen, you can only like posts. I I don't when there's plenty of room for both, you know, that kind of thing. Mobile apps are a disaster. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (00:50:53):
And, and then Andrew does away, or Android did away with the, with the the, the go back button. Now you have to swipe the left side of the screen, except some apps count on the left side screen swipe as an actual function of the app. So which one intercepted it? The app or the os? Yep.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:09):
You go Android as the new Windows. I, I welcome <laugh>. Google's involvement in this process. Yeah, it will be hilarious.

Rich Campbell (00:51:16):
A new level of darkness.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:17):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:51:18):
All right. Are you, you, you feel better now? Paul, you got the poison out.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:21):
No, I don't, but I'm ready to move on. Leo. That's

Leo Laporte (00:51:23):
Right. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (00:51:24):
Actually, I would've said I'm, I, listen, I'd like to keep going, but our hour's up maybe we'll pick this up again next week.

Leo Laporte (00:51:30):
Yes, exactly. <Laugh>. Exactly. And if you are having a, a mental health emergency, please call 9 1 1. Good <laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (00:51:40):
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. In a very special episode of

Leo Laporte (00:51:42):
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Rich Campbell (00:56:38):
<Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (00:56:39):
This is, this won't be a, I can't wait to hear literally chat. GBT four came out, what, Tuesday yesterday. And literally the 5,000 companies sprang up. Yeah. And every here's

Paul Thurrott (00:56:53):
What this is. I'm sorry. This is the point I wanted to make, that we were kind of glossed over earlier. When, when Bing, when Microsoft announced the Bing chatbot stuff, everyone's like, oh my God, oh my God, everything's here. The thing that's cool about the Bing chatbot is technology that they don't own, they did give those guys 11 billion, they

Leo Laporte (00:57:12):
They have a 45% stake in open ai. Right? Hmm.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:15):
Okay. But they are not, they didn't make any of it <laugh>. And it's not Microsoft and it's not exclusive to them. And as you just pointed out, that technology is going everywhere now. So if, if everything is ai, is anything ai, you know, at some point AI is just gonna be added to everything. And like you said, just in the past X or 24 hours, whatever, 48 hours, hours, everything's being ai, afi,

Leo Laporte (00:57:41):
We've got it in Google Docs. 

Paul Thurrott (00:57:43):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (00:57:44):
It's theirs. That's, that's I guess their, you know, Lambda or whatever, a bard. But still

Rich Campbell (00:57:49):
These are really just large language models, right? Yeah,

Leo Laporte (00:57:51):
Yeah. They're all lm lm

Rich Campbell (00:57:52):
They, you call artificial intelligence, they don't work. Which is I think why you're still calling them ai, cuz I'm pretty sure they don't work.

Paul Thurrott (00:57:58):
Right. Right.

Rich Campbell (00:57:59):
<Laugh>, but yeah, no, has become hip.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:03):
It, it's funny. There, there, there are places where anything that has to do with writing, like, we know we're gonna see AI there, we get that there are products that we're already using ai, you know, Duolingo or Grammarly is a good example. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so they're adding a more ai and now people are, oh look, they're jumping on the AI bandwagon. Well, you know, actually they were there. I mean, some of them were there all along. I mean Yeah. But

Rich Campbell (00:58:25):
Use that term because it's not a term that means anything.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:29):
That's what I'm saying. I think it's amazing to me that we leapfrogged into this AI era. And then it's almost like it's coming crashing to halt. Not because it's slowing down in any way, because it's just taken over the world. It's just every now it's, it, the term has become

Rich Campbell (00:58:46):
The story where they said, this company called, said we're working on an AI technology. They raised a hundred million dollars no discernible product. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (00:58:55):
Perfect. Perfect. Yep. So anyway, I, I <laugh>, I, I, I, the one thing I feel good about myself is my clearheaded reaction to this Bing thing. And I think that there's gonna be no, I don't think there is an explosion of AI capabilities is happening all over the world. Yeah. bing will be. But one of those things, and if the world has any natural order sense Bing will be exactly what it was before this explosion. It will be bing <laugh> and good, bad, indifferent. That's, I'll leave that up to you guys. But, but clearly

Rich Campbell (00:59:30):
The user count on Bing has gone up dramatically, like,

Paul Thurrott (00:59:32):
By, by the way, by what number? You'll be interested to hear. If you didn't see this a hundred million whoa,

Rich Campbell (00:59:38):
Odd number.

Paul Thurrott (00:59:39):
They literally announced that's a big number. A hundred million new users. It's the exact number that Richard mentioned

Rich Campbell (00:59:45):
About chat

Paul Thurrott (00:59:46):
Weeks ago about chat g pt, same people. Five. The same people

Leo Laporte (00:59:49):
Say

Paul Thurrott (00:59:50):
Sa well, saying Microsoft must have looked at that and said, what are we gonna do to get that? What number? And the answer is, what's the number? Billion dollars? And Yeah. Well, there you

Leo Laporte (01:00:00):
Go. I would disagree with you though. I think Bing cha bing is better because of

Paul Thurrott (01:00:06):
It. Better than what

Rich Campbell (01:00:07):
The old bing

Paul Thurrott (01:00:09):
Oh no, of course. It's my my point is everything will be better than the old thing. And I see then will, in the normal order of things will remain where it, it's

Leo Laporte (01:00:16):
You think Google is gonna be able to, we still haven't seen it. Right? They put it in their search.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:23):
They do talk about it a lot. <Laugh>. Yes. They're

Rich Campbell (01:00:26):
Still talking about employees are the only ones tinker with it. Like, so

Paul Thurrott (01:00:32):
What, what Bazaro world do we live in? Where Google

Rich Campbell (01:00:36):
Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:00:36):
Put the brakes on, out of concerns about this thing. And Microsoft was like, let's go for it.

Rich Campbell (01:00:43):
Gmail was in beta for what? Eight years in public?

Paul Thurrott (01:00:46):
Yeah, that's true.

Rich Campbell (01:00:47):
So like, if you're, why isn't it out there? Like, it's a strange Google, but clearly Microsoft's PR move on this thing has gone so well that they're like, let's give it to everybody. I mean, initially they, they put a barrier there.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:01):
Yes, yes. Since we started recording the show, by the way, Microsoft announced that the Bing chat bot is now just open. So if you want to go to bing.com and use it, you can, you don't have to get on a waiting list. You don't have to. Nice.

Leo Laporte (01:01:14):
I don't pay

Rich Campbell (01:01:15):
The question who's paying, who's paying for this? Right? Like you said, they don't own it. So are they really paying? It's expensive.

Leo Laporte (01:01:23):
Yeah, it's very expensive. Expensive. That's right. I mean, maybe not cuz Microsoft owns Azure, but you saw those stories.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:29):
Well, no, but there's still in hundreds of running millions of, you're still to

Leo Laporte (01:01:32):
Build the models,

Paul Thurrott (01:01:33):
Right? You're still, you're foisting this thing onto the world. You're still paying for, you are paying for Microsoft's paying to keep Azure online. I mean

Rich Campbell (01:01:41):
That is electricity consumed, right?

Paul Thurrott (01:01:42):
Yeah. The, the cost of per query or whatever is dramatically higher with these AI based products than it is for standard

Leo Laporte (01:01:50):
Service. Sam, Sam Alman said it was 10 times higher than a Google 10 times tax tax.

Paul Thurrott (01:01:55):
Yeah. But, but

Rich Campbell (01:01:56):
This new, this new version's using G P T four, which is by all accounts, like three or three to five times more resource offensive than G G P D three. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:06):
Which is, but also, I mean order of magnitude better in some ways, right? This thing 90% of the time it can pass a bar exam. That was one of the quotes there all these

Rich Campbell (01:02:17):
More about an indictment of the exam than it has about the, the brilliance of the glory.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:21):
This is like, it's like you're, you're right. This is like building a processor to beat a benchmark.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:27):
Oh. Yeah. No, you're right.

Leo Laporte (01:02:28):
I say everything we've seen is an indictment of the humans, you know admittedly it's not great writing, it's mediocre writing, but it, his writing better than most humans. It's all, it's really, and we've been putting up with mediocrity Yeah. <Laugh> for a long time. Right? Fair

Paul Thurrott (01:02:45):
Enough. Enough. A lot of stuff is

Leo Laporte (01:02:46):
Mediocre.

Paul Thurrott (01:02:48):
Yep. Yep. This is any

Rich Campbell (01:02:50):
Memorization based problem. This thing will do well with, of course, those exams are about memorizing, right. It just speaks to how poor exams they are as opposed to exams that test comprehension. Right. Because as soon as you challenge any of these large language models for comprehension, they fail.

Leo Laporte (01:03:07):
Did you see though, I mean, people have used chat g b D four to write pong. They wrote a working pong. It did all the coding. Interesting. a working

Rich Campbell (01:03:18):
Snake 1973 all over again. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:03:20):
I mean, I guess somewhere it

Paul Thurrott (01:03:22):
Has this is, this is, well, but this is co-pilot 2.0, right? Yeah, yeah. In other words, the code for Pong is out there.

Leo Laporte (01:03:27):
It's out there. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So somewhere it had it and

Paul Thurrott (01:03:29):
It's not, it didn't invent it whole cloth.

Leo Laporte (01:03:31):
And it does seem to fail, for instance, in more recent stuff post, you know, this year's information side sort of stuff. Right, right.

Rich Campbell (01:03:39):
No, no. I mean, and they missed the real opportunity. It should be writing Eliza, obviously <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:03:47):
Well, that's the singularity, isn't it?

Paul Thurrott (01:03:49):
Yeah. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:03:52):
Once AI is writing itself, then it gets better, faster than a human can keep

Paul Thurrott (01:03:59):
Up with. Sure. I, they, they make movies and books about this topic. They don't end well for us. <Laugh>. I'll just throw that out there.

Rich Campbell (01:04:07):
Yeah. Only cuz you're polluting civilization, right?

Paul Thurrott (01:04:10):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:04:10):
I'm, yeah. There's pollution. It is pollution, isn't it? It's thought pollution. It's, it's,

Paul Thurrott (01:04:14):
We're, we're starting, we're starting to see the cost of this stuff too, in interesting ways. You know, like goo I, I'm sure this is coincidental, but Google announced a bunch of AI features coming to workspace. Google separately announced workspaces getting a price hike, you know? Hmm. dual lingo added two new AI features, which, you know, whatever you would think like a premium version of this service would cost out 10 bucks a month, a hundred bucks a year, that kind of thing. And they do have that service stupidly named Super du Lingo. But Duo Lingo Max, which adds these two new AI features, an additional $30 per month. 30

Rich Campbell (01:04:48):
Now is Max. Is Max also super? So is it Super du lingo Max or

Paul Thurrott (01:04:51):
Max is a super set of super, I don't know why that isn't obvious. <Laugh>,

Rich Campbell (01:04:56):
I probably to see other companies naming products badly. Cuz I thought Microsoft owned that space. No, no, no. So it's

Leo Laporte (01:05:01):
<Laugh> no means, sir.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:03):
I'm positive that Super du Lingo used to be called something else. I've stopped using Duolingo, so I've stopped paying attention. But I, I'm sure at one time it was called Du Lingo Premium or fro or some, you know, typical name,

Rich Campbell (01:05:14):
Community Edition SP two. Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:05:16):
I think one of the things that's interesting about GTT four is it can take an image as

Paul Thurrott (01:05:22):
Input mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:05:24):
Somebody sketched a website and said, make this a website. And it was a, and it did, wrote all the code to make JavaScript and HTML and c s s to make a working website. Not a beautiful one, but it works.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:36):
Sure.

Leo Laporte (01:05:36):
That's impressive. Well,

Paul Thurrott (01:05:37):
That's, that's most of the web <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:05:39):
Yeah. It's a code monkey. But that's a good code monkey, right? Yeah,

Rich Campbell (01:05:43):
Sure. Well, it's, instead of going after professional developers, now you're going after the 12 year old down the street. That's an upgrade.

Paul Thurrott (01:05:48):
It's the new vb.

Rich Campbell (01:05:50):
There you go. <Laugh>. Right.

Leo Laporte (01:05:52):
And study prompt writing, because that's really the skill. Now

Rich Campbell (01:05:57):
The question is, was geo lingual always working on this? And then, and then management realized if we call it ai, we get to charge more for it.

Paul Thurrott (01:06:03):
Yes. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:06:04):
What does it do? What's new? Is it conversational? So one

Paul Thurrott (01:06:07):
Of the features, yeah. So one of the features is it right now it's GL English to Spanish or French only? It's iOS only, which is kind of interesting, I suspect. I wonder if they're using the neural processing stuff there. I don't know. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> it's gonna expand everywhere, obviously. So one of the features is you do something like, you have a conversation with a bot, basically, where you're pretending that you're in a Paris Cafe and you have to order food and interact with people. And it, you know, it does a kind of a realistic conversational type thing. The, the other one is if you've ever used Duolingo you'll run, I've run into this issue where you, you perform some kind of an exercise and one of the questions, you answer the question, it goes, you know, you're wrong. You're like, Nope, I was right. <Laugh>. And over time they added a thing where you could provide feedback and there would be like a conversation that you could see where people were debating the, this particular topic. So it's, it's kind of an advancement of that, where you can learn more about a question or an exercise whether you got it right or wrong. And it's kind of AI based instead of it being what I would call community based, where you, it's more like

Leo Laporte (01:07:09):
A human teacher.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:11):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:07:12):
Really.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:12):
Yeah. No, I, I, I found using Duolingo, I never wanted to know more about anything. I, the only time I ever wanted to <laugh>. Well, no, because I wanted it, I wanted to get every, as much right as I could. And when it was wrong, I was normally, I was wrong. I was, you know, obviously you're learning a language, but every once in a while I would be right. And I was positive, I was right. And what I wanted to do was just go back to them with that feedback and say, no, I'm, I was right. <Laugh>, you know? Yeah. But I got, you know, I got knocked, I got docked at point or whatever it was, you know.

Rich Campbell (01:07:45):
Well, you, and you remember how successful we've been with chat, G p t convincing for new math, right. <Laugh>, right. Six plus five equals 21. And you can talk him into that. So now you can do that with language as well and invent your own version of Spanish.

Paul Thurrott (01:07:58):
Well, we're, my God, we're, reinventing is the wrong word. We're debilitating language as we move forward in time, as it is. I'm sure this is gonna, are you saying accelerate? Are you that

Rich Campbell (01:08:07):
Figuratively or literally

Paul Thurrott (01:08:09):
Both. <Laugh>, I, you know, it's like when, when people reduce words down to some, like a single consonant or a single I'm losing my words. <Laugh>, a single part of the word. A single component of the word. Like in other words, instead of suspicious, you're suss. Right? Right. That's one step away from turning it into an emoji. And if you've ever, you've seen kids emoji kids will literally say emoji things out loud. Like they'll, they'll say, you know, heart emoji or something, and it's like, oh, yes, absolutely. Excuse Louise. What is wrong? Certainly say law, but don't we all stay

Leo Laporte (01:08:46):
Smiley face. R O T F L. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:08:51):
I, I'm, I just,

Leo Laporte (01:08:53):
Yeah, that's the way of all language though. You know, I, in college I was a

Paul Thurrott (01:08:57):
Chinese, by the way. It is. But it's, it's, it's because of technology. It's accelerating. It's hard to live in this era because it

Leo Laporte (01:09:05):
Took 3000

Paul Thurrott (01:09:06):
Years so fast

Leo Laporte (01:09:07):
For Chinese to, to rub off all of the the hard edges, to sand them down. Chinese doesn't have tenses. It <laugh>, it doesn't have genders. It doesn't even really have Yes or no. It's, it's, it's all suss and by Chinese

Paul Thurrott (01:09:23):
Human,

Leo Laporte (01:09:23):
Mandarin. Mandarin, yeah. I was

Paul Thurrott (01:09:25):
Gonna say <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:09:25):
Gender and Chinese, right. Russian on the other hand, is more like Latin, where it's got the clenching and conjugations is very structured. And I, I, it's my impression, I think linguistics agree that the age of the language shows there that the older, the language, the simpler it gets, not the more complicated it gets, which is

Paul Thurrott (01:09:43):
Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:09:43):
Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what you're seeing. That's what you, exactly what you're seeing.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:48):
It's just hard to watch it in real time. Right. <laugh> be in the middle of it. No,

Leo Laporte (01:09:52):
It's tosser. Tosser felt the same way. I wanna assure you.

Paul Thurrott (01:09:55):
Okay. Well, I appreciate it. It's new

Leo Laporte (01:09:56):
English. I just dunno,

Paul Thurrott (01:09:59):
You just reminded me. This is apropo of nothing, but we've all heard the term Shedden Freud. Right. Which German term gaining happiness in the despair of others. You know, do you know what the opposite of Shad and Freud is? Mm,

Leo Laporte (01:10:12):
No.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:13):
It's, it's Freud and Freud and it's, it literally being happy because someone else is doing well or is happy. Right. It's the, the opposite of Shain Freud.

Leo Laporte (01:10:23):
I like that. Anyway, and now I'd like to propose that we say it s Shah and Rah

Paul Thurrott (01:10:29):
<Laugh>. Now I am going to go hang myself. No, I'm sorry. Sorry. We've already had that talk, <laugh>. Sorry. yeah. Oh boy. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:10:39):
It's literal

Paul Thurrott (01:10:40):
Twitter contributes this, right. Twitter. Twitter, this thing where you can only post to certain number of characters is a step in that direction.

Leo Laporte (01:10:45):
Oh yeah. It's, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I, I guess what I'm saying is it's a natural human tendency. Maybe it's accelerated. I wouldn't be surprised.

Paul Thurrott (01:10:52):
I think it is. Yeah. I, I agree with you. I I do. You're right. Of course. And I, but I, I do feel because of technology, it's been accelerated and it's just hard to live at this time, which

Leo Laporte (01:11:00):
Is more efficient. And you're old

Paul Thurrott (01:11:03):
<Laugh>. I love efficiency and I hate this. I, I, I don't know what can I tell you?

Rich Campbell (01:11:13):
The, I mean, when we were first talking about this a few weeks ago, you're just, we were looking at, is this gonna be a dual between tech giants, Microsofting Yes. And Google. And I figured Google would be making the next move.

Leo Laporte (01:11:26):
Isn't it weird? I'm hard.

Rich Campbell (01:11:27):
Yeah. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And they haven't, and here's Microsoft doubling down. Now the chatbot is everywhere and they've officially announced G P T four.

Paul Thurrott (01:11:35):
Like, but then you, you're glossing over the fact that those things that are happening is open ai and it, that it is, it's not really that company. Yeah. Right. It's that company that's disrupting this world. And, and in a way, I I, you have to give my, we talked about, you know apple or Steve Jobs looking at the iPod and saying, look, we gotta do the iPhone cuz someone else will do it if we don't mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And this is in some ways Microsoft's attempt at doing that. Not that they were in the market leading position Exactly. But I instead to kind of get back into the people's consciousness, right. That Microsoft used to dominate personal computing, and now they're like old mobile people don't really think about it anymore. And I give 'em credit for you know, well, I give 'em credit. It's like Windows 11. I give 'em credit on the one hand, but I also have this reservation on the other hand where it's not clear to me what made them do what they did so quickly.

Leo Laporte (01:12:26):
Well, what's also interesting is that OpenAI has really changed its charter because it was founded, you may remember by Elon Musk, Microsoft, and others, because they didn't want all, all this AI development to occur in secret with Google or China or Facebook or whoever. It

Rich Campbell (01:12:44):
Would really Google Larry were going for Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:12:46):
Yeah. But they wanted to do it in the open, open ai. Yeah. The most recent agreement with Chat GBT four is we're not gonna tell you how it works because of the competitive environment. They say, because of the competitive environment, we're not gonna tell you what we trained on. Sure. And I think that's interesting. I mean, I, it's just

Paul Thurrott (01:13:04):
Pray they don't alter the terms further. <Laugh>, you know, I mean, it's,

Rich Campbell (01:13:10):
Well, they can, we've left off the story here where Microsoft just let their entire ethical AI team go. Yes,

Leo Laporte (01:13:15):
That's right.

Paul Thurrott (01:13:16):
Irony alert

Leo Laporte (01:13:17):
As Google had done earlier with Tim, Nick Gabriel and Margaret Mitchell, and Yeah. Because they said things that Google didn't like. So here's the real deal. Here's the real deal. If you ask me if I may chart, okay. If I'm a please. Yeah. Channel President Biden, here's the deal. <Laugh>.

Rich Campbell (01:13:35):
Okay.

Leo Laporte (01:13:35):
It's really not,

Rich Campbell (01:13:36):
It's not malar, it's

Leo Laporte (01:13:37):
Not open, it's not malarkey, it's not open ai. And Microsoft, Googles, where am I? Google got people, Facebook has people, Google's head of ai, John Gire went to Apple. Apple's got people, in fact, M or Facebook's large language model leaked to Fortune Chan. And people are already using it to do very similar things. And I gotta think China's got people doing this as effectively. So the fact is, or

Paul Thurrott (01:14:05):
They're, or they, they could be quite far behind, which would be kind of interesting

Leo Laporte (01:14:08):
Too, or quite far ahead. We, the whole thing is we don't know. Right. Okay. Yeah. they have some advantage in things like text to speech because they have a language that's very hard to type. Right. So they have some advantages, and they may have been working on this longer than we have, who knows? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, we just don't know. Right. And so, so just because Microsoft and Open AI have come forward, I, I expect, and I don't think anybody's in a huge rush because it is a competitive environment. Open AI admitted it. Yeah. I ex I think you're gonna see Siri, Amazon Echo, Google Assistant suddenly come alive. They're gonna be much more like her. They're gonna have conversations with you. And I think it's not just gonna be chat G P T, they're the leader in the race. Not always the best to be first. Oh, no,

Paul Thurrott (01:14:55):
No. I, no, I, I actually, I think that's kind of the central point of the conversation about AI today, is it's just gonna be everywhere. Yeah, absolutely.

Leo Laporte (01:15:02):
And from everybody. I, I think, yeah. None of this is secret technology. It's all very public, right? Yeah. Right. The way it works, everybody knows

Rich Campbell (01:15:12):
The Chinese have been blocking chat, G P T and people have been getting in troubles for circumventing those blocks. Sure. But they just recently announced that they were going to roll out their own version of chat G p T and had reached into the bads and all of the major Chinese companies saying, you will be using this interesting

Leo Laporte (01:15:29):
<Laugh>. Sure. See, if I were them strategically, I might not want anybody to know what we've got, what we've got.

Rich Campbell (01:15:34):
Yeah. I don't think the problem is that they're not, this is not a country good at innovation. Is the country good at commoditization?

Paul Thurrott (01:15:42):
I thought you were gonna say stealing, but okay. Yeah. Yep. That too <laugh>.

Rich Campbell (01:15:46):
That's, you know in intellectual theft is also a kind of commoditization <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:15:51):
Yep.

Rich Campbell (01:15:52):
So I, you know, remember how strongly they reacted to, to alpha go and this whole, now you've taken our game and made a player for it. Like, we're gonna go do that better than anyone. And we're still waiting for the big AI moves. I mean,

Paul Thurrott (01:16:05):
Well, China, China's also big enough that they don't have to serve the world <laugh>. Right. They serve

Rich Campbell (01:16:11):
Their

Paul Thurrott (01:16:11):
Own market. That's what's kind of interesting. I mean, they, they can be very insular and still be Yeah. Very successful.

Rich Campbell (01:16:17):
And, and you really can't keep what they're using in their own market secret because it's a billion and a half Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:16:21):
User. Yeah. It's not secret. Yeah. But also I think they want ec what has changed a little bit, unlike Russia, which wants military power and territory and of course China does that too, but I think they're really more interested in economic power and soft power and yeah. And so maybe this is the kind of thing where you go to India or Africa and say, Hey, these, these guys at Microsoft and Google are eating your lunch. Look what we got.

Paul Thurrott (01:16:50):
This is actually, I before Covid and I was traveling to Europe a lot, and this is something Richard probably still experiences, and I see this a little bit in Mexico too with Huawei, is you get outside the US bubble in my case, and you realize that there's Chinese companies all over the place that you're just not really aware of, you know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> they have me stores here. What's that little what's that company? Is it Shami that does the ME stuff?

Leo Laporte (01:17:12):
Shami is in fantastic stuff, by the way. Those

Paul Thurrott (01:17:15):
Are, yeah. So they, they, they have stores in Mexico City. Huawei products are big in Mexico. But when you go to Europe, I would, I would, you would just drive around and be walking around and you would see billboards and signs and, and it's like this, these are companies that don't even register right. To this typical American. Yeah. So I I, I sort of said insular, but honestly, like, as you're suggesting, I guess, I mean, they're, they're in these markets. They're in, they're basically just not in the United States. <Laugh> is what it is. And so, so they're, they're in fact out there.

Rich Campbell (01:17:44):
And if, if they're gonna compete in the space, they need a chatbot. Obviously this seems to be the hotness. Like, I I keep wondering if we're gonna go into winter on this too. Like eventually the, the, this enthusiasm wanes as the profit disillusion into peers. Right. It turns out not good.

Paul Thurrott (01:18:00):
That's right. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:18:02):
That's the question I keep asking. Legacy,

Paul Thurrott (01:18:04):
Legacy is gonna be the poorly written essays of a six grade students will now be written by ai. 

Rich Campbell (01:18:11):
We had just spent two years working, you know, doing school from home and is struggling. And so,

Leo Laporte (01:18:15):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how often have we seen technologies highly touted fail or just not delivered?

Paul Thurrott (01:18:21):
Listen, that, that kid who never learned anything because of Covid and is gonna graduate, has a rich career ahead of himself at Microsoft working on notepad in paint, <laugh>,

Leo Laporte (01:18:32):
Somebody to keep

Paul Thurrott (01:18:32):
Your, everyone's every, it's all coming full circle. It's gonna be fine. Am I worried about, I dunno why I complained.

Leo Laporte (01:18:39):
I might explain it.

Rich Campbell (01:18:40):
We're in the,

Paul Thurrott (01:18:41):
I can't wait.

Leo Laporte (01:18:42):
My daughter, who's 30, has developed a real revulsion for what is the, what is it? Gen, what is the latest generation? Gen

Paul Thurrott (01:18:52):
Z. Gen Z, or

Leo Laporte (01:18:54):
She says they're on their phones all the time. She just went to a writing conference. Wow. And all the people under, you know, saying,

Paul Thurrott (01:19:01):
Oh my God, she's turned into an old person.

Leo Laporte (01:19:02):
I know she's only 30, but, but she missed. No,

Paul Thurrott (01:19:06):
But that's crazy. Her

Leo Laporte (01:19:07):
Generation missed it a little bit. And your kids are the generation where they live on their

Paul Thurrott (01:19:12):
Phone. Oh, their little electrical leeches. They're highly, I saw the phrase,

Leo Laporte (01:19:17):
She saw a one and a half year old kid going through withdrawal because mommy didn't let him have the phone. He was, she said he was, oh, please don't play. He had the shakes. He was literally going through withdrawal symptoms.

Paul Thurrott (01:19:30):
We had to resist having words with friends of ours who have a young child who played with the phone the entire time during a dinner that was supposed to be only for adults anyway. But like, just watching this horror show of non parenting, and it's difficult. It's

Leo Laporte (01:19:43):
Universal. It's everywhere.

Paul Thurrott (01:19:46):
I I just saw the phrase very

Rich Campbell (01:19:48):
Before the phones were there. You used to stick 'em in front of Sesame Street. I mean, that's what it was for, right? Like we used No,

Paul Thurrott (01:19:53):
That's true. But you know, by the way, at least Sesame Street was educational. I mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I can assure you, whatever they're doing on the phone is not educational. They're watching YouTube videos, actually, in her case I saw the phrase millennial middle-aged crisis today.

Leo Laporte (01:20:10):
Wow.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:11):
Yikes.

Leo Laporte (01:20:12):
That's my daughter, <laugh>. Yeah. He's going through a midlife

Paul Thurrott (01:20:16):
Crisis, millennial middle crisis. And the for millennials is, they don't have any money, so they can't buy a Porsche. Right. So they're gonna have problems. You know,

Leo Laporte (01:20:28):
It's really true. But I would submit if I mean, first of all, you have to be familiar with these technologies, but I think you'd have a leg up if you weren't addicted to them. Maybe not. Yeah. I mean, maybe that's how this whole generation's gonna be. I don't know.

Paul Thurrott (01:20:44):
This is it's like a video game. You know, if this, if, if you're good at this, you'll be good at programming <laugh>. You know,

Leo Laporte (01:20:52):
I, I don't think that's true, by the way,

Paul Thurrott (01:20:55):
I don't think it. No, I don't either. No,

Leo Laporte (01:20:56):
I don't either. Better

Paul Thurrott (01:20:57):
You,

Leo Laporte (01:20:58):
You know, go to math. This is how

Paul Thurrott (01:21:00):
When I, when I was coming of age, when I was learn, I wanted to learn to be a programmer, you had to buy a book's. So you did, you went to a bookstore, you looked, there's no way you couldn't look up if they were good at bad or different. You flipped through 'em. You're like, this one looks good. You brought it home. You read it Today. People watch YouTube videos that can do anything. We can learn how to fix the sink, you know? Yeah. But even that's too lazy. That even that's not lazy enough for people Now that's gonna go to AI and be like, Hey, how do I fix this thing?

Leo Laporte (01:21:24):
It's really true. You

Paul Thurrott (01:21:25):
Know, re Right. But it will work

Leo Laporte (01:21:27):
Because it'll

Paul Thurrott (01:21:28):
Tell You could get lazer than YouTube, but in a flash, they've proven us wrong again. Yeah. Okay. Find another level. It's only a matter of time before, it's that Isaac has a off story where there's only five people per planet. They're also fat. They have to like, float around on things. That's Wally. They're looking at each other on view screens. No, this is Isaac Asma before Wally. Way before Wally. No, this is one of the robot books. And I, it just, geez.

Leo Laporte (01:21:57):
But okay, I'll tell you the same thing I told my daughter.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:01):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:22:01):
This is what old people say. This is how it's always been. I know. I

Paul Thurrott (01:22:04):
Don't <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:22:05):
It's always been this way. Stop playing that rock and roll music. Cut your hair.

Paul Thurrott (01:22:12):
This is an existential crisis. I don't know what to do.

Leo Laporte (01:22:15):
I have many questions. In fact, most, mostly, it's really interesting cuz as I have, you know, we've been doing this now for quite a few decades. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, mostly what has happened, instead of, in the old days, I'd been informing and talking about and saying, this is the way to, to do it. And now it's all, what's this? What is, what's going on? <Laugh>? I know. What, is this real <laugh> or is this real life? What is the impact? Is this be, is a good idea? Is this a a good idea? There's a and and I don't know the answer. I'm not, well, I'm not playing devil's advocate or anything. I genuinely wanna know when I come to people like Richard and Paul, I, I, is this really ai or is it a parlor trick or what?

Paul Thurrott (01:22:57):
We're going, we're gonna get to this later in the show, but there, there's, there's an interesting point where you're, you're heavily involved in an industry like we are. And someone will mention the name of a product, a company, a service, whatever it is. And then you have this weird moment where you say, I've, I've never even heard of that. <Laugh>. You know, how, how is that possible? I I, I spend almost every waking minute only thinking about this thing. And now you're telling me that there's a company <laugh> that I've never heard of making a product. I don't understand. Like, it just feels weird

Leo Laporte (01:23:36):
Though. Yeah. When you go to Mexico, do you feel like you're a little bit going back in time?

Paul Thurrott (01:23:43):
Yeah, there's a couple of whammies here. I mean, one, it's a city, right? So I live in a really rural That's true area. True. It's a very early, this is a, first of all, it's a, it's a big loud Yeah. You know, this is stuff and there's, there's that, there's the language aspect to it too, right. But yeah, there, there's

Leo Laporte (01:24:00):
It's a little more old, but people obsession,

Paul Thurrott (01:24:01):
People here have smartphone, right? Everyone. Yeah. And they were all Android phones. <Laugh> for one thing. Almost universally, the people who live here except they're rich people, I guess. I, I, yeah. I mean it is.

Leo Laporte (01:24:16):
How about Wales or New Zealand? Well,

Paul Thurrott (01:24:20):
Wales or New Zealand?

Leo Laporte (01:24:21):
Wait, who, who said this?

Paul Thurrott (01:24:23):
We thought Wales in

Leo Laporte (01:24:23):
It. Who said this? 

Paul Thurrott (01:24:25):
Sorry, you said Wales and I thought of Wales,

Leo Laporte (01:24:26):
Like not giant whales. No, the country. Country. Sorry. Sorry. <laugh>. No,

Paul Thurrott (01:24:29):
That now, now that makes

Leo Laporte (01:24:30):
Sense. Land Oles. Yes. Who said this? The fu the fu Was it Heline? Was it Stevenson? The future's already here. It's just not evenly distributed.

Rich Campbell (01:24:42):
That's William Gibson.

Leo Laporte (01:24:43):
Gibson.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:44):
Yeah. I was gonna say it's not Stevenson. Gibson. Yeah. Okay. Gibson. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (01:24:47):
No, that's how you'd be a, an effective futurist. Right. It's just go find the corners where the future is. Yeah. And then explain him to

Leo Laporte (01:24:52):
Other people. That's what Amy Webb says. She went to Japan.

Paul Thurrott (01:24:55):
William Gibson is like the Alan K up authors. Yeah. That's

Leo Laporte (01:24:59):
Great. It's fully, fully integrated guy who

Rich Campbell (01:25:01):
Wrote this word cyberspace for the very first time. Mm-Hmm. But he wrote it on Edgewood typewriter. That's beautiful.

Leo Laporte (01:25:07):
I kinda

Paul Thurrott (01:25:07):
Blame him that, that's bonafides right there. <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:25:11):
I kind of blame him for that. Cybernetic Yep. Is not the internet. Cybernetic is something else. Well,

Paul Thurrott (01:25:17):
Talk to Neil Stevenson and ask him how Mr. And ar is going <laugh>. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:25:23):
Yeah. It's not exactly correct. So he predicted Yeah. No. Or neuro answer where they jacked in Right. Neuro

Paul Thurrott (01:25:29):
Answer, which is William Gibson, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>

Rich Campbell (01:25:31):
Numan. That's William Gibson. But but he, even then he was talking about, you know, keyboards with no text on them, and Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure. Admiring write very much a second life description of things.

Leo Laporte (01:25:43):
One of the things I remember vividly from Neuro Maner was he had a beat up laptop that had the entire knowledge of the human race on it. Yes. And we're very, my, my

Paul Thurrott (01:25:54):
Close to that, my son is my son who was, had to been five years old. He was a ti just a tiny kid said to me one day, they should invent a thing that answer any question. Uhhuh

Leo Laporte (01:26:04):
<Affirmative>.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:05):
I said, mark, you were growing up in a world of wonder because nothing exists and

Leo Laporte (01:26:08):
They invented it. And its name is chat

Paul Thurrott (01:26:11):
Pt. I did not, I, well, it was Google at the time, but I, I didn't have that when I was a kid, for sure. No. I had a crusty 1972 edition of Encyclopedia Brittan I could leave for.

Leo Laporte (01:26:21):
I had the World Book and the library. Right. And if

Paul Thurrott (01:26:25):
Exactly we've had even older encyclopedia is, in my case,

Leo Laporte (01:26:28):
If you wanna know how old Gina Lola Brigida was when she died, where are you gonna find that? You're not gonna find in the World Book. You're gonna go to the library. I don't know. I guess we don't ask those questions anymore. I know. We didn't

Paul Thurrott (01:26:39):
Do that. If anything, we have too much information. What the hell are we talking about anyway? Too

Leo Laporte (01:26:43):
Much. Way too much

Paul Thurrott (01:26:45):
<Laugh>. Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:26:47):
All right.

Rich Campbell (01:26:48):
We have access to a lot of stuff. We don't know how much of its actually information.

Paul Thurrott (01:26:51):
There you

Leo Laporte (01:26:52):
Go. And this is always the problem, right? When you have access to a lot of stuff. What's, what's the value of this

Paul Thurrott (01:26:56):
Is why no one can sleep at night. There's too much information. Yeah. You know, how much better off would you be knowing, not knowing some of the terrible things that are going on in the world,

Leo Laporte (01:27:04):
You know, the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Rich Campbell (01:27:08):
Well, we, we we're also making fun of the people who don't know so

Leo Laporte (01:27:13):
Well. Yeah, of course. Them <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:27:15):
I, yes. But a, a, a simple person. A person who was uneducated is a person who'd never watched the news, didn't care, lived their little life. You have to think they probably are pretty content <laugh>. You know,

Leo Laporte (01:27:28):
We were in Oaxaca, we watched large Zpa Teca enclave. That's one of the native was it a Race? Peoples of Mexico? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. They,

Paul Thurrott (01:27:40):
Yeah. Like an indigenous they're

Leo Laporte (01:27:41):
Indigenous. And they didn't have covid problems or restrictions because it was all sealed up. They never got it. They didn't, they had, you know, wood burning stoves agriculture, you know, they might have some cars and stuff, but they really lived a simple life and they were very, they seemed very happy. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:02):
Let me ask you a question about Call of Duty penetration in this place.

Leo Laporte (01:28:05):
<Laugh>? No. Zero except. Okay. I saw the teenage daughter who would normally be going the hell with you. Mom. I'm going downtown. Right. Building a, a fire so they could cook dinner.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:18):
Oh, that's an excellent. Oh, so you asked me if I going back in time. So one thing we've noticed twice now, here on Sunday, Sunday's Family Day. Yep. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So when you go out to eat, it's, it's like a, a grandmother. So all dressed up and the the kids bring them out to dinner and you see 'em walking down the street and they're holding onto their arm, or they, it's amazing.

Leo Laporte (01:28:38):
Isn't you

Paul Thurrott (01:28:38):
Seen them, it's, it's crazy. And it's, it's nice. Right. Obviously

Leo Laporte (01:28:42):
It feels wholesome.

Paul Thurrott (01:28:44):
I would probably push my mother in front of a bus at this point. <Laugh>. But, but you know, it's a different, different situations, but it's

Leo Laporte (01:28:49):
Different. And you used to it, you know? Yeah. You probably also know that everybody's a little dysfunctional and you just go, you know, that's granny And you, I don't

Paul Thurrott (01:28:59):
See, I don't see a lot of family, honestly. I see. We see multi-generation Yeah. All the time. Not just Sunday, but, but especially Sunday. My God, especially Sunday. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And we were the place, we went to this very inexpensive place on Sunday, and it was very clearly the highlight of this not multiple grandmothers like the da, like this was the biggest thing of the week. There's no doubt about it. And and it was just time with family, you know? Yeah. It's nice.

Rich Campbell (01:29:25):
Yeah. It's good. It's a good cultural element.

Leo Laporte (01:29:27):
Yeah. There is some nostalgia for that. I might, I might add in, in the Gen Z. You know, they play board games. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> some of them. And there's definitely some nostalgia for that. And they want that back. And they're family. Well,

Paul Thurrott (01:29:38):
Nostalgia. That's nostalgia for something they never nostalgia

Leo Laporte (01:29:40):
Experienced. Yeah. It's nostalgia.

Paul Thurrott (01:29:41):
That's, that's my definition of a hipster is someone who's nostalgic for a, a, a thing. They did not experience <laugh>. You know, it's like,

Leo Laporte (01:29:49):
I don't like

Paul Thurrott (01:29:50):
Vinyl records and <laugh>. Yeah,

Leo Laporte (01:29:52):
That's

Paul Thurrott (01:29:52):
A good point. Whatever. Like, what are you talking about? You, you grew up in the age of iTunes,

Leo Laporte (01:29:55):
The Nokia 33 10. Yeah, yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:29:57):
Yeah.

Rich Campbell (01:29:58):
Making your own pickles. Make

Leo Laporte (01:29:59):
It. Hey.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:01):
Which is always good, actually.

Leo Laporte (01:30:02):
Can I just tell you that whole, there's be a whole

Rich Campbell (01:30:04):
Chapter century too

Leo Laporte (01:30:06):
Long. Yeah. Right. There's gonna be a whole chapter in Henry's cookbook is first about making pickles, making your own pickles. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:12):
Pickle. Lots of things to be pickled and pickle pickled. Anything is good.

Leo Laporte (01:30:16):
It's one of his pickle specialty taste.

Rich Campbell (01:30:20):
I'm in Wales. It's corn beef country for grand. Oh, yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:30:23):
Pickle. Are they, do they celebrate St. Patrick's Day? I know they're not Irish, but

Rich Campbell (01:30:28):
Yeah, it's an Irish thing. Any, the Irish don't say

Leo Laporte (01:30:31):
They don't. It's Irish America. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:30:35):
It'll also be quick to tell you. It's St. Patty's Day. St.

Leo Laporte (01:30:38):
Patty's Day <laugh>. Well, they, they, they, our local market got a barrel, fiddled it up and made their own corn beef, and we're all going down, dammit. And we're going down to see, it's not the most attractive site in your butcher's cabinet, the corn beef, but it's there, big hunks of it. And and it's

Paul Thurrott (01:30:58):
A problem that mustard can solve.

Leo Laporte (01:31:01):
<Laugh> mustard can solve any problem. Are you kidding me? <Laugh>. Let's talk about Microsoft 365. Really too little things about Word, right? Yes.

Paul Thurrott (01:31:11):
I, I, I complained a lot about word upfront. Actually, this is a complaint too. Word is getting two sets of keyboard shortcuts that you would've thought it had 25 years ago. But it, it doesn't. The first one is paste as text, which by the way should be an OS level shortcut. But

Leo Laporte (01:31:26):
Yeah. Hello?

Paul Thurrott (01:31:27):
I know, I know, I know. I don't, I don't know. You

Rich Campbell (01:31:30):
Know, and the shortcut key varies from app to app, like,

Paul Thurrott (01:31:33):
Which makes me at all, it makes me crazy. So the way I get, I use, I, I want everything that comes into word from outside of word to be text. Yeah. There's a setting in word that does that, which doesn't sync by the way that I was talking about earlier. I would, so if you go file Options Advanced, you'll see four paste options. One of them is what to do when you, when something gets pasted in from outside of word paste as text is how I do that. So I I I get around problem. But yes, control shift V should always be Paste as text period. It's not, I don't know. The other one is Zoom, right? So Word has Zoom built in, obviously. But it's, it's non-standard Zoom. It, you can use a little slider at the bottom. We now know from web browsers the right way to do Zoom. The right way is Control plus Control minus Control zero. Yes. Yes. So Word is going to get that feature and enter the 21st century,

Rich Campbell (01:32:30):
But still implemented in the app, not in the operating system. Yes. Somewhere in the operating system. We implemented, when I'm pasting a link, you paste the title of the link. Not stop. Fricking link.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:40):
Here's, I, I think this is right. I'm not a, I'm not a Chromebook user. I occasionally use Chromebooks just to kind of keep up on them. I believe in Chrome, in a Chromebook, you can do a Control Plus and the whole UI will scale.

Rich Campbell (01:32:52):
Nice.

Paul Thurrott (01:32:54):
I mean, yes. Right? Yeah. What's happening to Leo? What's happening?

Rich Campbell (01:32:59):
I don't know. We're in, we're in great transition for a moment there. What, what

Paul Thurrott (01:33:04):
Are you,

Leo Laporte (01:33:05):
I'm getting ready for St. David's

Paul Thurrott (01:33:06):
Day. You're like a, a like a bearded radish. What is happening? <Laugh>.

Leo Laporte (01:33:10):
This is somebody from Wales gave me this leak hat.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:14):
Oh, a leak, okay. A, a leak

Rich Campbell (01:33:16):
Because it's the

Leo Laporte (01:33:17):
Official vegetable of whales, I guess. And it's got a little Welsh beard. And apparently as you wear this I, I did March 1st, which is St. David's Day in in Wales. So next time you're there, Richard <laugh>,

Rich Campbell (01:33:34):
I missed two <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:39):
That's amazing.

Leo Laporte (01:33:39):
You could, you can borrow, you can

Rich Campbell (01:33:41):
Borrow, this is what happened. When you, when you don't trim your green onions, this is where

Paul Thurrott (01:33:44):
You bearded leak.

Leo Laporte (01:33:46):
I'm a bearded leak. I think it has something to do with Shakespeare. Spear

Rich Campbell (01:33:52):
The leaks. That's true.

Paul Thurrott (01:33:53):
Right.

Leo Laporte (01:33:54):
But anyway would you like to talk about developers, developers, developers way? Will I peel my leak off my hand?

Rich Campbell (01:34:05):
Your leaks?

Leo Laporte (01:34:05):
Yes.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:08):
Just two small things. Microsoft went public with build for this year. It's May 23rd to the 25th. It's gonna be live hybrid. Really. Right. So they'll be live and remote. You know, build should always be that way anyway. In Seattle, I assume it's at the convention center.

Rich Campbell (01:34:25):
Yeah,

Paul Thurrott (01:34:26):
Yeah. Conference center. So, yeah. I don't, that's all I know about it. So this is a gut check moment for me, because this will be my first opportunity to possibly travel to a Microsoft event since the pandemic.

Rich Campbell (01:34:41):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, if you gotta ever spend $2,200 on a conference, they're a way to go.

Paul Thurrott (01:34:46):
I'm not gonna do that <laugh>, but, but maybe travel to Seattle.

Rich Campbell (01:34:50):
Is there a press initiative? Like you think there'd be trespasses?

Paul Thurrott (01:34:54):
Oh, yeah. I know I do. I, I, I, well, oh, you know what? That's a good question. I hope so. Actually, I don't know for sure. 

Rich Campbell (01:35:00):
Yeah, that, I mean, I really get a sense that Microsoft is relearning how to make conferences, and so like, I don't know that that was part of the conversation yet.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:08):
Okay. Actually, now that you say that, that wouldn't surprise me. Okay. So we'll see that. Like, they want developers there. Okay. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (01:35:13):
Yeah. Everything, every, all of my experiences around the event so far, it's like we are, it is conference 1 0 1. We are learning from scratch

Paul Thurrott (01:35:21):
Again. Wow. Okay. Well, I that would give me a nice out, I guess. So we'll see. <Laugh>, I can still see. I know, I know. You're, I assume you're gonna be there. You're

Rich Campbell (01:35:29):
Going right? I have nothing set yet, so, okay. Oh, wow. Okay. I, I canceled events in Europe to be available for that week when they mentioned that this is likely the week was gonna be, and in, in the past. Gotcha. I have been heavily involved, but nothing's happened. Oh, oh, wow. When I, and rather than be upset about this, what I said is I have two choices. One where I drive to Seattle and work, and one where I stay home. Yep. These are not bad choices. No.

Paul Thurrott (01:35:51):
Right, right,

Leo Laporte (01:35:53):
Right. If there's you know, if you guys end up there, we could do the shows from there. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, what is May 23rd?

Paul Thurrott (01:35:59):
We'd almost have to, I think one of those days is a Wednesday's.

Rich Campbell (01:36:02):
A Wednesday. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:03):
Cause I looked, that's the first thing I looked at. <Laugh>. Good. The 24th is a Wednesday and

Rich Campbell (01:36:07):
Years past, I was running a broadcast space, which I

Paul Thurrott (01:36:11):
Used actually for Windows Weekly, if I'm mistaken.

Leo Laporte (01:36:13):
Remember it? Yes. Yes.

Rich Campbell (01:36:15):
That all that seems to still be up in the air. So I do. Otherwise I would be arranging it.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:21):
All right. Let's talk. Well, let's keep me in, keep in touch <laugh> on this topic. We'll see what

Rich Campbell (01:36:25):
Happens. Yeah. I knew where you were. Oh, wait, that's me. I don't know where I am. That's right.

Leo Laporte (01:36:31):
<Laugh>. The leak is a symbol of St. David's Day, which was March 1st. There you go. 

Paul Thurrott (01:36:40):
Is it a symbol of infertility? <Laugh>? No.

Leo Laporte (01:36:42):
What is it's, no, there's actually interesting story. St. David's suggested wealth shoulders wear, sh soldiers wear a leak attached to their helmets to distinguish them from the invading Saxon Horde. Let's talk about GitHub.

Paul Thurrott (01:36:56):
Yeah. So, so GitHub, I don't last year announced that by the end of 2023, they're gonna require anyone who contributes code to GitHub to use two f a. Right. the two factor authentication they're starting to roll that out now, meaning that they're starting to contact people, they're starting with smaller teams. So if you're in a small team, or I, I'm an individual, I guess, so I, they haven't contacted me yet, but this is the first wave of that. And they'll start saying, Hey, you're gonna have to do this. And, you know, hopefully most people do it right up front. You'll have some mon number of months to do it. If you don't, you'll, you'll start losing access to certain things. You're not gonna lose any ear code or anything like that, but you know, they want to get GitHub secure. So

Rich Campbell (01:37:36):
Application of GitHub accounts is an issue. Right. Like you imagine successfully hacking a, an account for someone who's got poll requesting for a major pro, a major, it's a big deal. Well,

Leo Laporte (01:37:48):
And that's right. A big deal. So you can use get without two fa, you just, if you're a contributor, you have to have two.

Rich Campbell (01:37:55):
Yeah. That's the main thing. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:37:56):
And I turned it. I use a, I use, I mean,

Paul Thurrott (01:37:59):
Yeah. General advice, you should turn it on for everything, right. That you can

Rich Campbell (01:38:03):
Yeah. I've had, and they've had a good UBI ation for years. I use a UQ with them. Yep. Yeah. It work, it works well. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,

Paul Thurrott (01:38:12):
I will say that my authenticator app, authenticator, sorry, app over the past year has gotten big <laugh> easier. You know, where you like, it will say, Hey, you gotta, it'll be one of those situations where you want to type in a code and you go to look at it, you're like, oh, it's below the fold. <Laugh>. Yeah. When, you know, and yeah, it's kind

Rich Campbell (01:38:32):
Interesting. I'm on, I'm on to a few pages now. It's getting to be mm-hmm.

Paul Thurrott (01:38:35):
<Affirmative>. Yeah. It's kinda, it's, it, it's an interesting problem. Yeah. but yeah, that, that's something that's happened over the past year for sure.

Rich Campbell (01:38:43):
Yeah. Now I'm, and, and now there's enough different m FFA options that it's like, well, which one does this application?

Paul Thurrott (01:38:51):
I know that's actually a huge problem. Yeah. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (01:38:54):
I mean, I'm, I'm trying to move, use the UV key as much as possible. Mm-Hmm. But sometimes use request, use authenticator. You never want to use sms,

Paul Thurrott (01:39:01):
And yet sometimes you have to.

Rich Campbell (01:39:04):
Sometimes that's all they have.

Paul Thurrott (01:39:05):
Yeah. I know. It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. That's an issue.

Rich Campbell (01:39:10):
Yeah. Fair

Leo Laporte (01:39:11):
Enough. I would like to point out, I know it's not really germane anything, but if you look at the stock market today,

Paul Thurrott (01:39:20):
Please be, please be good news. Please be good news. Please be good

Leo Laporte (01:39:23):
News. Well lot of, lot of red, especially in software except for Microsoft, which is green, and Google, which is green. And I suspect interesting. This has something to do with ai, I would guess. Yeah. With all that red Amazon, Google,

Paul Thurrott (01:39:39):
By which you mean AI is playing the market now, <laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:39:42):
And betting on itself. Maybe that might be it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But no, I think it, Microsoft has benefited mightily from this, from being the first,

Paul Thurrott (01:39:51):
Listen, they were struggling so badly before this. I mean, now it's like they're the second biggest company in the world.

Rich Campbell (01:39:56):
<Laugh>. It's so strange.

Leo Laporte (01:39:58):
Okay. Fine.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:00):
<Laugh>. No, no. You're, no, no. I'm not discounting what you said. I just no,

Rich Campbell (01:40:04):
I shouldn't say not. We're not used to Microsoft being in innovator social installed. Right,

Paul Thurrott (01:40:10):
Yeah. Right. Like people have, people are talking about Microsoft. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (01:40:13):
Yeah. Which is weird.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:14):
Yeah. The last time we did this, like Bill Gates was sitting in a deposition chair looking like a jerk.

Leo Laporte (01:40:18):
Actually, I think that's probably,

Paul Thurrott (01:40:20):
It's been a

Leo Laporte (01:40:20):
While, isn't it? It's, I mean, initially I would've said being an edge adoption, but really the good, the, the, the zeitgeist. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:29):
I think it's time for them to update their logo again. <Laugh>, you know? 

Leo Laporte (01:40:33):
A little, a little.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:34):
You're

Rich Campbell (01:40:35):
Right on it. Is that what you're thinking? Right? Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:37):
<Laugh>. Yep. Microsoft.Ai. Just saying,

Leo Laporte (01:40:41):
I actually, I had something a little more Hal 9,000 in mind.

Rich Campbell (01:40:45):
Just a big red. It's a big

Leo Laporte (01:40:46):
Red. A big red eye. Microsoft.

Paul Thurrott (01:40:50):
That's a, that's a big fall from Grace. They used to be the death star, you know, <laugh>.

Rich Campbell (01:40:55):
Well, there, there was the Borg period. It was always a picture of

Paul Thurrott (01:40:59):
Bill Gates with the Borg Gates with

Rich Campbell (01:41:00):
The laser on it side of his head. We right,

Leo Laporte (01:41:03):
We here for you. <Laugh>. Hello? Hello. Richard. <Laugh>.

Rich Campbell (01:41:12):
Sorry, Leo. Sorry, I can't

Leo Laporte (01:41:13):
Do that. Sorry. Leo. Paul, I think you better do the Xbox segment.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:20):
This will be curiously quick. Although Microsoft just announced two 10 year cloud gaming deals.

Leo Laporte (01:41:27):
Woo.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:27):
With companies you've never heard of, which is what I was referring to earlier. Booster and UUs. What

Leo Laporte (01:41:34):
Sounds made up. It definitely sounds know either like a new pharma, you know, new

Paul Thurrott (01:41:39):
Oid I think is something to remove hemorrhoids. Yeah, exactly. I don't

Leo Laporte (01:41:42):
Uus don't use booster If you've had any allergy.

Paul Thurrott (01:41:45):
Yeah, exactly. <Laugh>, right?

Leo Laporte (01:41:49):
Uus. So Yu where, where

Paul Thurrott (01:41:52):
Do they find these companies? Ubis

Leo Laporte (01:41:53):
Like what,

Paul Thurrott (01:41:54):
What is

Leo Laporte (01:41:54):
This? But this is all for Europe, right? This is all to reassure, oh, actually the US given up reassure the FTC and the DOJ

Paul Thurrott (01:42:02):
Reassure any regulator. Like, Hey look, we're doing these deal. We want to do this deal with Sony. Sony just won't even talk to

Leo Laporte (01:42:07):
Us. You know, tu is, Japanese

Paul Thurrott (01:42:10):
Is wearing diapers, kicking its legs in the corner cuz it's cracker just snapped in half <laugh> and it doesn't know what's going on.

Rich Campbell (01:42:18):
He's the one who snapped him in the first place.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:20):
Yeah. Ex they did it themselves. Yeah, exactly. They're just so petulant

Rich Campbell (01:42:28):
<Laugh> and I

Paul Thurrott (01:42:30):
Just don't wanna, you know, it's, it's that dumb and that simple.

Leo Laporte (01:42:34):
Yeah. Such a good word. Petulant.

Paul Thurrott (01:42:37):
Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:42:38):
You should say it with English accent Petulant epic James Epic Games. What's new there?

Paul Thurrott (01:42:47):
Yeah, so Epic Games is kind of interesting because they have the store and the pc, it's one of several options there, right? They have over 1500 games there now. 626, I think new titles came to the store last year. They often have free games, which I think is probably a big part of their appeal. They only take a 12% cut on games compared to 30% on Valve with steam rather and 30% obviously on mobile. Typically. but they're going to do this thing that Microsoft was talking about a couple years ago, and I'm not sure I've seen a bunch of this happening, but they're gonna basically allow store within the store and you, if you want to have as a third party want to go through the Epic game store and use your own payment systems and blah, blah, blah, they're gonna let you do it. And this makes sense. I think coming from these guys Tim Sweeney's always been kind of pushing against the big well, they're literally in lawsuits. <Laugh>, you know, against Google in and

Rich Campbell (01:43:42):
Apple. These, these are the Fortnite guys Yes. Who got in trouble with Apple when they tried to certify the store. Yeah. And, and they're now also, I mean, he's great. They're up to 1500 games. What's Steam at 50,000? I

Paul Thurrott (01:43:53):
Was gonna say. Yeah. Actually I some order a magnet. Yeah,

Rich Campbell (01:43:56):
Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:43:57):
This is still, but you know, we're, you're in the pc. It's not like Xbox, like you buy a console, you have to go through Xbox. Yeah. When you're in the pc, you can pick and choose, you know, I get stuff from here and there. You still

Rich Campbell (01:44:06):
Buy a DVD if you try hard enough. I don't know where you, you can

Paul Thurrott (01:44:08):
Absolutely

Rich Campbell (01:44:09):
Put it on your computer, but you could do it.

Paul Thurrott (01:44:11):
Yep,

Rich Campbell (01:44:11):
Yep. It, I'm not unhappy that Steam has even a minor competitor because it is a remarkably, by the way, entirely privately held. Yes. Al.

Paul Thurrott (01:44:23):
Yep.

Rich Campbell (01:44:24):
Right. Gabe is the multi-billionaire. Right. And there's,

Paul Thurrott (01:44:28):
So was Tim Sweeney <laugh>. But,

Rich Campbell (01:44:31):
But, and they've never there because there's never been more than a few hundred shareholders at Val. They're gonna get up public. They don't have any reasons I am aware of. You

Paul Thurrott (01:44:41):
Can tell no one. You can tell there's no oversight there cuz they haven't made Halflife three yet for Crown Out Loud is going on. Like, talk about Steam

Leo Laporte (01:44:47):
Is a massive success in all honesty. I mean, epic would love to be that big. Steam is the default way you play games on a pc. Sure.

Rich Campbell (01:44:56):
Without a doubt. And Val will never make a single player game ever again. They make multi-player games. Right. They didn't work on Halflife three, they worked on Doda and they make more money on Dota per year. Okay. Than they make on Crap Life

Paul Thurrott (01:45:09):
Title. I believe there's a original Halflife Ray tracing Mo that's up now. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, that looks beautiful. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, there's obviously the

Rich Campbell (01:45:15):
I got the portal implementation of that and it's gorgeous.

Paul Thurrott (01:45:17):
Okay. There's a, there's also a, what's the, it's called, is it not Project Mesa? Black Mesa, I think it's is called Black Mason. So after the place in the game which is a remake of the Original Half-Life with Modern Graphics. Gorgeous. You know, this stuff like that. But guys, come on. I mean, <laugh>, it's just, I mean, this would sell itself.

Rich Campbell (01:45:37):
Yeah. But it would never make enough money.

Paul Thurrott (01:45:40):
Yeah. That's probably, sadly, probably true. Then let the community do it. You know?

Rich Campbell (01:45:44):
I don't know. It's an inter it's an interesting point. I mean, he, he did go back and revisit the Halflife world to experiment with vr. Yep. With Alex.

Paul Thurrott (01:45:50):
Alex, yeah.

Rich Campbell (01:45:51):
Yep. But and then had its own set of problems. But

Paul Thurrott (01:45:55):
The portal is tied into that world. Right. I mean, the two portal games block.

Rich Campbell (01:45:59):
Yep.

Leo Laporte (01:46:00):
I love Portal.

Paul Thurrott (01:46:01):
Yeah, I do too. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (01:46:03):
It's very clever. They're very

Paul Thurrott (01:46:04):
Clever. That song is fantastic.

Leo Laporte (01:46:07):
<Laugh>,

Paul Thurrott (01:46:08):
What is it? Still

Leo Laporte (01:46:09):
Alive, Jonathan. This was a Triumph. I'm making a note here. Big Census. Jonathan, Jonathan Colton. It's still

Paul Thurrott (01:46:19):
Allowed. Colton, thank you. Yes, yes, yes.

Leo Laporte (01:46:23):
The device has been modified, I'm told, I'm not sure what that means, but I'm worried now.

Paul Thurrott (01:46:29):
<Laugh>. Okay. <Laugh>. And like, were you supposed to march on the government or something? What

Leo Laporte (01:46:34):
Was, I don't know. The AI is talking to me. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:46:38):
Was told us. It's from Portals told us. It's from Portal.

Leo Laporte (01:46:39):
Yeah. Oh, I see, I see. It's the, it's portal two must be the portal two Victory theme. The device is modified. Ah, still alive was from portal one. Yeah, I gotcha. Okay. let us take a break and the back of the book is coming up. We're gonna have some brown liquors, some more lessons in whiskey coming up. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> along with tips. It's Mash Day. It's Mash Day. Nice. But first a word from our sponsor, collide. K O L I D e. Collide is the way, the way to implement a zero Trust architecture. I'll tell you why.

(01:47:18):
One of the major holes in Zero Trust architectures is device compliance. Right. Collide is a device trust solution that ensures unsecured devices can't access your apps. And we have a great, by the way, lesson in this. If you listen to Steve yesterday on security. Now remember the last Pass hack, we've learned that the DevOps guy, there were four DevOps guys who had keys to the S3 buckets. One of them was working at home on his laptop, which had a three year old unpatched version of Plex on it. Now, had they been using Collide, they could have set it up so this guy could not log in, could not get into the network, could not, but they didn't. And well, you know, the, what, what happened? Collide has some big news for you. Okta users collide could get your entire fleet to 100% compliance.

(01:48:20):
And this is the problem. Your identity provider like Okta, only lets known devices log into apps. But just because a device is known, oh yeah, sure. They knew that DevOps guy, just because a device is known doesn't mean it's in a secure state. In fact, plenty of the devices in your fleet right now probably shouldn't be trusted. Maybe they're running out of date OS versions or maybe they've got unencrypted credentials lying around. Their browsers aren't up to date. They've got a three-year-old version of Plex. If a device isn't compliant or isn't running the Collide agent, which is what ensures compliance, IT can access your SAS apps or other resources, it just can't get in the device. User cannot log into your company's cloud absent until they f fix the problem on their end. It's that simple. If if, let's say as an example, your, your device doesn't have an up-to-date browser employees using laptop, using an old version of Chrome, what collide does, the agent notes that and then gets the end user to remediate it so they can log in.

(01:49:26):
You. And this is fantastic because using end user remediation drives your fleet to a hundred percent compliance, but it does not overwhelm your IT team. And now the users are on that team. They're there to help. They're not the enemy. They're your allies. Without Collide IT teams, it have a real challenge to solve these compliance issues or stop insecure devices from logging in. With Collide, you can set and enforce compliance across your entire fleet. And that's one of the great things about Collide completely cross-platform, Mac, Linux, and PC Collide is unique in that it makes device compliance part of the authentication process. So the user fires up Okta ready to log in, collide, then alerts them, says, wait, whoa, hold on there buddy. Bucko, <laugh>, there's a compliance issue. You can't log in until you fix this and it gets fixed and it's secure and you, the IT guys are security didn't have to get involved.

(01:50:23):
It's security you can feel good about because Collide puts transparency and respect for the user at the center of their product. And honestly, it really, really works to sum it up. Collide Method means fewer support tickets, less frustration, more importantly, a hundred percent fleet compliance. Use an Octa, you need to visit collide.com/ww to learn more. Book a demo and maybe you want to use Okta just so you can use Collide. Right. K o l i d e collide.com/ww. Brilliant idea. We thank you Collide for supporting Windows Weekly. You support Windows Weekly when you use that special address, get that demo, find out more K O L I D e.com/ww. Thank you. Collide. And I bet you right about now, last pass Wish is Ann Collide back in the day, you see, I mean that can be a huge cost to a company, right? I mean reputational business wise

Rich Campbell (01:51:23):
I I I don't know the leadership had cl had had last passed or all that concerned, it changed hands how many times in Oh yeah. In

Leo Laporte (01:51:30):
Two years when they were advertising with us, they were a owned by LogMeIn. They were a standalone company. Logmein Bottom. Yeah. Yeah. Logmein sold to private equity then now the private ex, which is always That's a good sign. That's when it went right. That was after they stopped advertising. I think it was probably why. Cuz Private Equity's all about cutting costs. Cut, you know, and and by the way, the program, they, they, they clearly focused on UI cuz it last pass looks great, works nicely.

Rich Campbell (01:52:00):
Software was fine. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:52:01):
They they worked on the, they worked on the front end. Yeah. And they apparently neglected a little bit of, a little bit in the back end, actually, I feel for them because what's become more and more apparent is that they were the focus of a very targeted attack. They, you know, the bad guys got in in the summer. They got a lot of information about the company. Then they targeted the four DevOps guys who had those keys, you know, specifically. They found that Plex Hole got in through that and, and were able to get into the ES three buckets. They knew, they kind of knew exactly what they wanted to do. Right. Which is a little scary. 

Rich Campbell (01:52:41):
Oh, it's, it's always a challenge to be targeted. Yeah. As opposed to it's hard

Leo Laporte (01:52:45):
By Yeah. It's really hard. And so I don't, in some ways I don't feel, I, I feel a little sorry for them. Somebody I can't remember who on our Sunday show was saying, you know, it could have been a competitor. I don't think it was a competitor. Geez. It sure. I mean, I don't think it was a competitor. I think it was much more likely. In fact, now Steve said maybe North Korea is is implicated. So Yeah. It could have been a nation. There

Rich Campbell (01:53:07):
May well be a ransomware attack going onsite in this. They've just never

Leo Laporte (01:53:11):
Revealed it. That's right. We don't know.

Paul Thurrott (01:53:13):
I mean, their disclosures have not been great.

Leo Laporte (01:53:15):
Right.

Paul Thurrott (01:53:16):
<Laugh>, let's put it that way. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:53:18):
All right. Back in the book. Let's start off, Paul, you got you got something for us? A little tip of the week.

Paul Thurrott (01:53:24):
Yeah. So if you are a YouTube Premium subscriber, and we're actually gonna get to that in the out pick of the week as well, <laugh>. You can, well I should say asterisk asterisks. If you're in the United States and you have never signed up for this service before, you can get three months of PC Game Pass, which is Microsoft's PC based Xbox Game Pass service for free. So you should definitely try this. I've been using PC Game Pass since I've been here in Mexico. I don't usually use it, but I had to write about the Xbox app for the book and I was signed up and it's, it's honestly even on a kind of pedestrian laptop, it's not bad. So there's that. Excuse me. 

Leo Laporte (01:54:05):
No, it's pretty impressive actually. Yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:54:08):
Yeah. Not bad. And it's one of those many options. Like we, we were talking about steam and Epic games and, you know, good old games and whatever else is available. It's lots of stuff, so, yeah. Yeah. that's one of, one of the choices. So I don't know if you've been following the news about Spotify <laugh>, Spotify apparently decided that what people want is TikTok. So they've turned Spotify into TikTok. Have you looked

Leo Laporte (01:54:31):
At this thing, what Instagram did too? It's drives me nuts.

Paul Thurrott (01:54:33):
It's awful. It's awful. And I don't use Spotify, but everyone else in my family does. So I have Spotify. So I looked at it and I, I, I cannot believe what they did to this app. It's crazy. And the only good news is that by def, so what happens is every, there's a feed basically on the homepage, you can say, I just want music. You know, instead of podcasts and whatever else. And if you select just music, it's just music videos and they play on a loop and you go down and instead of like playlist names, it's like a playlist or an album, and there's a music, like a segment of a music video playing. It's, it's the most, it's like attention span lack of attention span theater. It's crazy. And if you're playing music, you go back out to the home feed, it will actually stop playing the mu it will play the music that's in the feed.

(01:55:20):
Not, I, I've never seen anything like this. Anyway, my point is not to talk about Spotify, but to say, by the way, YouTube music doesn't do that yet. Probably. YouTube music has a lot of advantages over all the other music services, but for me, the big one is any video that's on YouTube can be added to a playlist in the YouTube music. Now, you're not gonna add videos where someone talking like us, but there are live performances. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, there are different versions of songs that are only on YouTube and it's just part of the subscription. You also get YouTube premium Yes. As part of your YouTube music Yes. Subscription. And that's no ads on YouTube. It's a no-brainer. Yeah.

Leo Laporte (01:55:56):
I

Paul Thurrott (01:55:57):
So it's like that one two punch. I

Leo Laporte (01:55:58):
Tried to, cuz I have Apple Music, I had Spotify, I've, you know, quite a few. And I said, oh, I should get rid of YouTube music. And the minute I did, I lost YouTube premium. And it was like, ah,

Paul Thurrott (01:56:08):
No, no, no, no. You ever tried YouTube? I know God unusable help you try to, I I can't believe people watch YouTube, but no

Leo Laporte (01:56:15):
Unusable. I don't get it.

Paul Thurrott (01:56:16):
So, yeah. What, years ago when Google had something called Google Play Music, which is a very kind of a traditional music app and they were switching to YouTube music, a lot of people freaked out, and I'm sure a lot of people left, but even like the earliest versions, I was like, I don't know, this is fine. Like, I, I use this thing every day and I, we, you know, you, you've seen our u Music Night photos and things like that. But like I use YouTube music all the time. It's fantastic. Yeah. So I don't, I don't,

Leo Laporte (01:56:42):
Whenever I'm with

Paul Thurrott (01:56:43):
You anyway. Yeah. It's got enough going on for it for sure. And it doesn't have a stupid TikTok feed on the front of it. <Laugh>,

Rich Campbell (01:56:50):
Which every social media is afraid. They're all, every piece of software wants me social media, and they're all want to be TikTok. They're

Leo Laporte (01:56:56):
All running scared. It's crazy. It's

Paul Thurrott (01:56:57):
Just, it has nothing to do with that market. It's just so Yeah. It's like, it's just

Leo Laporte (01:57:03):
Sad. Well, and I was a big Amazon music. What about fan? Yeah. But now they're just promoting podcasts. Every other line is a podcast. I, well,

Paul Thurrott (01:57:11):
That's not, this is the problem with, and by the way, Spotify, same thing. I, I actually, I've, I've resisted writing an article called podcast or not music. I do not like the integration of podcast into music apps. That, not that, to me, those are two things. Yeah, they're audio <laugh>, you know. Yes. I listen

Rich Campbell (01:57:30):
To them. My, my listeners on run ads demanded, I put on, I was on Spotify. Really? Really? And it's like 3% of my downloads now come through

Paul Thurrott (01:57:37):
Spotify. Okay. I don't like when I, well, I don't use Spotify, but before the remake this past week, you know, going to the homepage of an app and seeing podcasts mixed in with music, it's like, what?

Rich Campbell (01:57:49):
Yeah. No, they should be kept separate, but I think Yes.

Leo Laporte (01:57:51):
Yeah. We're people, like, we've always been on Spotify, but we don't. In fact, when Spotify launched, back in the day, we were on the, you know, on the stage there was a TWIT with logo with all

Paul Thurrott (01:58:01):
Oh, nice. That's

Leo Laporte (01:58:02):
Cool. When they launched their podcast thing. But sure. We'd never be exclusive unless they gave me $500 million, in which case, oh my God.

Paul Thurrott (01:58:09):
Spotify, I would, I would stop complaining. I could, a small percentage of that, I would change my tune immediately.

Leo Laporte (01:58:15):
<Laugh> love those guys. Yeah. But that didn't happen. I'll tell you. Here's my, here's my vote of confidence for YouTube music. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I have my funeral playlist there. So you know, this is, this is what I want you to play. Just

Paul Thurrott (01:58:32):
Paint it black the first time.

Leo Laporte (01:58:33):
Yeah. I see a red door and I, no, I think it's, it's, it starts sad and it then it gets uplifting and they, they'll no, they'll walk out. Dancing is my plan.

Paul Thurrott (01:58:42):
It's a celebration of life. It's a

Leo Laporte (01:58:44):
<Laugh>. I want a big picture of me on an easel and then the little one Oh,

Paul Thurrott (01:58:49):
You literally, this is for your funeral. Oh,

Leo Laporte (01:58:51):
Yeah. Well, whose funeral you think I'd be? Thank?

Paul Thurrott (01:58:53):
I don't know. Maybe you just bring it along. Like, I have a mixtape if you guys want to throw something on

Leo Laporte (01:58:57):
This is, it even says this title is, or whoever songs to play at my memorial service. <Laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:59:04):
That's amazing. Oh, I need it. Are you tell me you're sharing this with the world?

Leo Laporte (01:59:09):
I don't know. I think it, I don't know. Is it, how do you

Paul Thurrott (01:59:11):
Share it? You can, you can make it pu you can make it public. Is

Leo Laporte (01:59:13):
It public? Let me see. Should be public. I don't know why it wouldn't be.

Paul Thurrott (01:59:18):
Well,

Leo Laporte (01:59:19):
It's a work in progress. My, as my case, most

Paul Thurrott (01:59:21):
Of my, most of my playlists are private,

Leo Laporte (01:59:22):
But yeah.

Paul Thurrott (01:59:25):
Nobody needs to know about my wham fixation. You know,

Leo Laporte (01:59:27):
It's, this is just <laugh> that would actually let me add that. Wake me up before you go. Go <laugh>.

Paul Thurrott (01:59:34):
Wake me up. That should be the one that could be the last song. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (01:59:38):
Totally

Paul Thurrott (01:59:39):
Without Me.

Leo Laporte (01:59:41):
<Laugh>. You know what? I'm gonna put that in the last song. It'll leave, it'll, it'll, people will

Paul Thurrott (01:59:47):
Leave. It's so horribly out of place. Get

Leo Laporte (01:59:48):
A smile and

Paul Thurrott (01:59:49):
Face. Just people nervously looking at each other. Like, what is going on?

Rich Campbell (01:59:52):
Are we supposed to wake him up? Is that gonna work?

Leo Laporte (01:59:57):
You shake him? No,

Rich Campbell (01:59:58):
You shake

Leo Laporte (01:59:58):
Him. Stick up Ben in his toe. Let's talk about run as radio. I bet you have a, you've got such good episodes. What's coming up? Ah,

Rich Campbell (02:00:07):
This week's show I did with Heah Fish, I should recorded it back at n c in London, which was the last time I was in the uk. And healer is in Israel, works for wic. And she ran, she works in the incident management side. And so we were talking about her approach to incident management, mostly from the point of view of yes, we have incidents and our main job is not ne not just to fix it, but to make sure it doesn't happen again. And so being thoughtful about your reactions are important because off our urge, get backup online destroys the evidence we need to make sure it doesn't happen again. And so as that sort of thoughtful moment of do we understand what's going on? Have we snapshotted everything? Do we know the state of affairs before we go ahead and start working on a recovery approach?

(02:00:56):
I think the instinct, a lot of it people, when there's an outage for whatever reason, is reboot everything. Yeah. And often that's gonna destroy an awful lot of information you needed to, to do root cause analysis. So we went and had a great, you know, very serious conversation about impact on customer first. Like, is this a visible problem? Is it affecting customers? Is that, puts a more pressure on the time and what level of exploration you're willing to do. Doing some snapshotting for recreation. Just being, you know, being really thoughtful about how you do the retrospective parts so that you, that particular issue never happens twice.

Leo Laporte (02:01:36):
Very good. I must listen. And I like your name. Hela Fish.

Rich Campbell (02:01:41):
That's a good name. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Yeah. Really smart. Like enjoyable to chat with her. She was, she had a good time. And you know, it's, these are the sort of folks doing this hard work that don't always have those conversations very often. She was excited to talk about it too, which comes across and like Nice in the show.

Leo Laporte (02:01:57):
I have added Wake Me Up before You Go Go as the last song. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (02:02:01):
That's what that was. What we're all supposed to dance out on. Right. <laugh>. So

Paul Thurrott (02:02:04):
I see you Have In My Life by the Beatles.

Leo Laporte (02:02:06):
Yeah. That's the classic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Mad World. Right. Walk into Memphis.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:12):
You know what though? There's a Mad World, which there's a should get the slow version recorded.

Leo Laporte (02:02:16):
This is the slow version. Gary Jules. Yeah. Nice. Yes.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:18):
There you go. That's the one. Yep.

Leo Laporte (02:02:20):
Michael Andrews. Oh, it's so beautiful. Yeah. Not the, not the Tears for Fears,

Paul Thurrott (02:02:24):
Right? No. Well, no, but that one's good too. But the but the slow version is amazing. I just added that to a playlist.

Leo Laporte (02:02:30):
I, it's good. We'll leave people laughing. They'll be listening all this teary music, crying, crying, crying cuz I died so young. Sure.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:37):
And then you should also add the slow live version of Gone Away by offspring is fantastic and in the same league as Madden World.

Leo Laporte (02:02:45):
I'm

Paul Thurrott (02:02:46):
Look for that.

Leo Laporte (02:02:46):
I don't know it, but I'm gonna listen and if it fits, I'm putting it in.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:50):
Oh, it's, you put it right next to that song. They go together. It's perfect.

Leo Laporte (02:02:52):
Well, I want people to be like too devastated.

Paul Thurrott (02:02:55):
No, it's a good one.

Leo Laporte (02:02:56):
Mad World is from the, that's the Donny Darco theme.

Paul Thurrott (02:03:00):
It was also used in the first ad for gears for

Leo Laporte (02:03:03):
War. That's right. But just the, just the instrumental at the beginning, right? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's talk mash baby.

Rich Campbell (02:03:12):
It's swell. We've, we've, we've gone through the process of growing barley and harvesting it, getting it to malt to actually cause it to grow, to turn green. Then drying it and then grinding it to grist, which is that mixture of hull and and the, the hearts and as well as the flour. So now you have your grist and you've gotta now extract the sugar from it. And so this is mashing. And so it's moved over to a mash ton and a mash ton. Traditional ones are cast iron, sometimes they have copper tops. The modern ones are all corsol stainless steel, and they have a false bottom on the on them that has a me a layer of mesh so that water can drain through it and, and out through a drain. And the grist is spread very evenly across the bottom of the mesh ton.

(02:04:06):
And then it, you soak water through it to get the sugars out. But it's, it's a bit more complicated than that because, you know, malting has converted some of the sugars in the seed. Some of those carbohydrates into sugar, but not all of them. There, there are many more long chain carbohydrates. It can be converted into sugar. And that general, that process is, is done with one of the very first enzymes we ever understood to exist. Diet taste, huh? Amylase, specifically with barley is the type of diet taste that hydrolyzes hy carbohydrates in sugars.

Leo Laporte (02:04:39):
Ah.

Rich Campbell (02:04:41):
And barley happens to have amylase in it. I mean, amylase is also in your mouth, but I,

Leo Laporte (02:04:47):
I thought the sugars came from bacteria.

Rich Campbell (02:04:51):
Well, it, these are the enzymes that break down the carbohydrates that are in the, in the grid. So it's

Leo Laporte (02:04:56):
Not, it's not cuz cuz I know they, I guess that's for fermentation. But I thought back. Yeah. So

Rich Campbell (02:05:04):
We're gonna get into the yeast part

Leo Laporte (02:05:05):
Of this later. Yeah. But I thought bacteria made the sugar. So it is actually an enzyme. And where does the enzyme come from?

Rich Campbell (02:05:11):
The enzyme amylase actually exists in the barley already, already in the normal process of a germination of a seed. Oh, of course. Used to grate down the sugars to grow the plant.

Leo Laporte (02:05:22):
Right. That's why we, we sprout. We sprout seeds. So they're more nutritious. Yeah,

Rich Campbell (02:05:27):
That's right. Yeah. Because we simplify the sugars. Yeah. So now we're gonna go further down the path in mashing. So we've ground into grist that, that malt and now we're going to introduce water to it. And we, and they typically bring water to it at about 62 to 65 degrees. Centigrades about a 143 to 149 degrees in the measurements of the oppressors. And that water is hot enough to activate the enzyme without actually killing it. Ah. So you maximize the enzymatic reaction to break down those carbohydrates. The rate you put the water in is played with a different, or different distilleries care about how fast they add the water. Only go to extract a certain amount of sugar initial pass. So often on the, what they call the first water, they'll cycle that water back into the mesh to again, to increase the sugar concentrations. And after it's gone through a a bit, they, they, and they put that water in very carefully. You don't want to create gaps in the, in the mesh. You want the keep the grist evenly spread across that whole grinding part of the grist. You don't want too much flour cuz it kind of turns into porridge and blocks up the the mesh. And so eventually that, that, as that water's moving through, they'll, they'll put it in a holding tank. I thing called the, the the sorry, the undertone.

Leo Laporte (02:06:49):
You got your mash tongue and your under tongue and then

Rich Campbell (02:06:52):
Your under. That's right. And so then they'll do a second water and a second water. They raise temperature, but now it's about 75 degrees around hundred 67 or so. And that gets more sugar out at the expensive damage in the the enzymes. That's all right. The enzymes have kind of done their thing in the initial extraction. Mm. And so actually it's called the under back tank. So there's two wa typically you do two washes with some recirculation to extract that sugary water as much as possible. And this is the stuff they call wart

Leo Laporte (02:07:22):
Wart. W o yeah. R t

Rich Campbell (02:07:25):
W o r t. At every step we've done so far with the barley and the malting and so forth is exactly the same as making beer. So beer and whiskey, they, whiskey is just what beer wants to be when it grows up in the past. <Laugh> nice, you know, you've gotten to the wart phase and you store that in the under back tank cuz it's a bit too hot to be moved over to fermentation yeast like about 30 degrees centigrade. And this stuff's 60 plus. So you wanna hold it for the, for those first two waterings. But you're not done back on the mash to, you've now filled the, the under back. That's the stuff that's going to go on to be war. And the now you'll do sparging and sparging. They raise the temperature even higher in the water. So now you're gonna get a 75, 85, 90 degree points.

(02:08:12):
They'll do three or a sec, a third and a fourth wash. Those sugars are not gonna go into the under back. That water is then reserved for the next batch that's gonna go into the mash tons. So when they start the water, the water's already a bit sugared from that initial passes and the mash that's left behind now, they actually turn into feed cattle feed called giraffe. They'll dry it and pack it and it's nutritious for animals. Some places even will pack it down and burn it to be used as sort of energy as well. The mash cut itself is, I mean these are really big now when we talk about modern whiskey making, which goes back to the middle 18 hundreds, really the Victorian age, they were, they were mostly you'd use cast iron tanks for this. They also stir the mash while they're passing the water through it because they want to maximize extraction, but they didn't wanna stir too much as a whole game with different histories.

(02:09:12):
Or how would you stir? Cuz some places are very concerned about having clear wart, just clear sugary water and something you want some of that material in the wart as well. It, they, they talk about how serially you want your ward, it has more, the grain flavors will be carried into the whiskey as opposed to getting very clear sugar. It's gonna make a very smooth or a lighter whiskey. So different distillers have different rules around all of these things. The the old Victorian machinery is beautiful to look at. I've been to a bunch of distillers that have them, they call them rakes, but they're basically arms that reach into the barrel and rotate and stir the, the, the grist up and make, keep the mash mixing to increase sugar extraction. The modern technique called the louder technique is very German against from beer making. It's all stainless steel. And they use louder, which are rods that extend down into the mash and they have rotating blades on them and they control the mixing very precisely. So you get exactly the cloudiness of the word that you want.

Paul Thurrott (02:10:16):
I always have the same reaction to this though. How did I, I I fascinated by the history of this. Like how did they figure this out? They were motivated.

Rich Campbell (02:10:24):
<Laugh>. Yeah. It's

Paul Thurrott (02:10:26):
All times on their hands. Were highly motivated.

Rich Campbell (02:10:29):
<Laugh>, can you talk about very traditional whiskey making going to the 17 hundreds, right? Like you could trace whiskey back for several hundred years because the batches were so much smaller. A lot of this stuff are just on by hand. So you basically have a person with a paddle stirring the water as they're extracting the sugars. But as the tanks get too big to reasonably do that by hand. Again, this is very much the industrial age, right? Victorian age with the first industrial machines. The earliest versions of these were running off of water mills and, and turned on belts to crank the gears. Right? They, they, they were all pretty mechanical. They've just been modernized from there. But that's, you know, trying to make consistent whiskey. And the particular whiskey I've picked this time, I, I'd always pick it cuz it's a relation to this.

(02:11:19):
It's a whiskey from, it's called Spring Bank, the distillery. And it's in Campbellton now. Most folks don't know Campbellton. When you think about, there's a, we talk about six whiskey regions. So, and this are the ones everybody knows the highlands, the space side, the lowlands, Ile is its own thing. And there's a group that called the islands. So that's j and a and and spa the who's where is Tallk on sky up in the or knee, so forth. That's sort of the collectively on the islands isle also an island, but so significant in the space. It basically considered his own category. But near is, and some of the islands is a peninsula in the southern part of Scotland called Campbellton. It's actually the, the southern edge of Hamilton is the closest approach to, to Ireland. You can get. And it once was a very major whiskey producing area with over 30 distilleries.

(02:12:16):
At the moment it has three and one of them in the, by arguably the most popular one is Spring Bank. The other two are are Glen Glen and, and Glen Scotia, both of which I've had an opportunity to sample. What's interesting about Spring Bank is that it, they a, they use a completely original mash done. So it is literally a cast iron Victoria era tank with no top. They, they don't worry about the heat loss and that they don't, haven't dressed it up and so forth. It's very fundamental and they're really, they're spring bank they make every year. And it's, it's a 10 year old. It's, it's really basic whiskey, no chit filtration, no color manipulation. They do a light ping. So when they're, when they're drying their malt, they'll do six hours of the drying with peat and then another 24 with just hot air. Lord, it adds a little bit of the pee flavor, but not too much. The traditional, the, their usual 10, they tend to age in bourbon barrels cause they're inexpensive, although they occasionally will use something else. So there has been cherry cast used. There were also cherry cast used. The, the 2020 edition of this spring bank won a ton of awards and at the time it was about $50. It was a bargain for what it was. The earned edition, if you can find it, it's over a hundred dollars.

Leo Laporte (02:13:33):
I think Paul would like this because yes, Sherry and bourbon, but also salted caramel and toy.

Rich Campbell (02:13:40):
Yeah. I'm a little concerned about the Pete, but it sounds like it's not too much. It's a very mild piece. It sounds very

Leo Laporte (02:13:45):
Sweet too. Yeah. Which is

Rich Campbell (02:13:47):
Interesting. It's a very, and it, yeah, it's a pretty approachable whiskey. But for the effort you'll take to find it and, and it's not inexpensive, it's almost worth the effort. Yeah. Right. Except if you're, again, if you're a whiskey aficionado, there are not a lot of Hamilton's. And so if you're gonna try the different regions, like if you tell me, well, which Campbell should I get? I'd say get the Spring Bank 10 because it, while it's still difficult to find, it's only a hundred dollars about many of the other, how about the cash

Leo Laporte (02:14:14):
Strength 12? That might be <laugh>, that

Rich Campbell (02:14:17):
Might be more, but I'm sure Yeah. That I, I think that'd be a ton of fun. Right. It's a straight bourbon, like Yeah. Yeah. Right. If we could, again, we'd have to hunt it down easier to find in Scotland than it is to find elsewhere. Yeah. but they do, they, there's always a lot of conversation when Spring Bank is running a batch. Cuz they, they don't run round the clock. Like we, you know, when I was talking about the mash tunnel and how they'll take the sparge from the previous batch and they'll go right in the next batch. Because many of these distilleries now are 24 hour day operations where they are always working grist constantly. Right. Spring Bank is not that kind of distillery. They make smaller quantities and they, they don't do near as much. That 30 year, that 30 year old spring bank there you're looking at, that's probably a $2,000 bottle of risk.

Leo Laporte (02:15:02):
Oh my.

Rich Campbell (02:15:04):
You only make 1400 bottles of it. Right. So that is a pretty narrow run. Wow. And they're just scarce. Anyway. It's a very fun version of the of, of whiskey. It's an unusual, like, very small region today that has its own style. But it does speak to this particular set of effort and at this point we've now made wart, so we can now go off with some hops and a little bit of work and make our, we'll do some fermentation and make some beer or we can go make whiskey with it. And so the next conversation's gonna be about fermentation.

Leo Laporte (02:15:39):
Wow. This is really cool. I want to go on the, on the distillery tour.

Rich Campbell (02:15:45):
Mm-Hmm.

Leo Laporte (02:15:45):
<Affirmative>. That would be so cool. I take it you've done that. Yeah.

Rich Campbell (02:15:48):
Yeah. I've done a bunch of them. They're not, they remember there's 60 plus distillery still on operation in Scotland. Most do not have tours. Yeah. the, the ones that do, they're well worth going to, but you can only do two or three of them in a day before you get burned out. Yeah. All or

Leo Laporte (02:16:06):
Or drunk off your ass.

Rich Campbell (02:16:09):
Well, more you can't feel your vape <laugh>.

Leo Laporte (02:16:12):
Right. Oh man, I wanna try this. It looks really good. 

Rich Campbell (02:16:16):
It's a fun whiskey. Yeah, it

Leo Laporte (02:16:18):
Looks really good. Richard Campbell has done it again. Run as radio.com for run as radio and net rocks. He's in Wales. Be back in town next week back in bc Coquitlam. Thank you Richard.

Rich Campbell (02:16:35):
My pleasure. Great

Leo Laporte (02:16:36):
Stuff. I get thirsty every time I do this show.

Rich Campbell (02:16:40):
<Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:16:41):
Mis Yeah.

Rich Campbell (02:16:41):
We'll have to put together a collection of all the whiskeys we've pulled. Right. And we could

Leo Laporte (02:16:45):
Sell it, you know, and, you know, just a 20% markup. We've made millions

Paul Thurrott (02:16:49):
Since we're doing this. Oh, I should mention that there is a corn-based alcohol here in Mexico called nta, which oh man, as you can see, comes in a corn shaped bottle.

Leo Laporte (02:16:59):
Isn't that cute? <Laugh>? Isn't that cute? It

Paul Thurrott (02:17:01):
Has, it has a distinct corn taste, which is

Leo Laporte (02:17:04):
Good. No, it sounds

Paul Thurrott (02:17:05):
Good. It's fun. And it's fun and convers. I like

Leo Laporte (02:17:07):
It. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you happen to have it right to hand, which is interesting. <Laugh>. It's

Paul Thurrott (02:17:11):
Weird that it happens to be one right here.

Rich Campbell (02:17:13):
You keep it close. <Laugh>

Leo Laporte (02:17:15):
In his desk. Cro.

Paul Thurrott (02:17:17):
I didn't think it was gonna be that close.

Leo Laporte (02:17:18):
That's Paul

Rich Campbell (02:17:19):
The evening here in in Wales. So I will be down to the sequel, the, the littleBits reception from

Leo Laporte (02:17:26):
Here. I hope there's a big stone fireplace with wooden tables that have been there a hundred years and there's a nice glass of something sitting on.

Paul Thurrott (02:17:36):
So it must be, what is it? What time is it there? 9 45 ish.

Rich Campbell (02:17:39):
It's not quite that late. Yeah. 8 8 45.

Paul Thurrott (02:17:41):
8 45. Alright. Cause UK Yeah. Yeah. Five hours.

Rich Campbell (02:17:44):
Yeah. But we, we are staying at a place called the Manor.

Leo Laporte (02:17:47):
Oh, I

Rich Campbell (02:17:47):
Love it. As you thought the big stone fireplace before. You love

Paul Thurrott (02:17:51):
It. Love it.

Leo Laporte (02:17:51):
I'm so jealous. Paul Throt. He lives@throt.com posts all the time. Become a premium member. Get a extra good dose of Paul Throt, t h u r r o tt.com. His book, the Field Guide to Windows 11, including the Field Guide to Windows 10. Available@Leanpub.Com. Thank you gentlemen. We do this show Thank you on Wednesdays 11:00 AM Pacific, 2:00 PM Eastern Time. 1900 utc I'm sorry, 1800 UTC. Now we have sprung forward 1800 utc. You can watch us do it live at live, do twit tv chat, live at irc TWIT tv or in the club Twit Discord. Always good fun in there. I see Paul was interacting a little bit in the discord. Richard, if I've never sent you a complimentary club. No,

Rich Campbell (02:18:39):
I'm, I'm there as well.

Leo Laporte (02:18:40):
Oh good. Oh good. I'll make sure

Rich Campbell (02:18:42):
You just,

Leo Laporte (02:18:43):
Yeah, no, you're, you're doing a show. I don't expect you to hop Knob with a Hoy Pelo or anything, but you know, it's nice to have you in there once in a while. The club is $7 a month gets you ad free versions of this show and all the shows. Plus shows that are club only like Paul's hands on Windows, hands on McIntosh with Micah Sergeant, the Untitled Lennox Joke, Stacy's book club, the GIZ fizz. All the events we do in the club. You get access to the Discord, which itself is a clubhouse. This so great. So much fun. You also get the TWIT plus feed with additional material not heard anywhere else. Took that TV slash club twit. If you're not yet a member, it would be great to have you in there. Actually, I know you're not a member cuz if you remember you wouldn't hearing me talk about it.

(02:19:28):
<Laugh>. Yep. We tweet this out too. Yeah. Twit tv slash club twit after the fact. Copies of this show are available@twit.tv slash ww for Windows Weekly. There's a YouTube channel dedicated to Windows Weekly and of course you can subscribe it. We're at in every podcast player, including Spotify. Just search for Windows Weekly, subscribe that way you'll get it automatically the minute it's available. Thanks everybody. Now back back to your places. Go get a, a dram of something because Windows gonna have some nta. Have some nta, have some corn liquor <laugh>.