Jun 25th 2025
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show
0:00:00 - Leo Laporte
It's time for Windows Weekly. Paul Theron and Richard Campbell are here. Yes, October is the end of the line for Windows 10, but Paul's got a great way that you can get security updates for a mere thousand Bing bucks. We'll explain what Bing bucks are in just a little bit. Also, a live demo of the new smart Amazon Echo. Yes, Alexa Plus is here. All that and more coming up next on Windows Weekly Podcasts you love.
0:00:30 - Alexa+
From people you trust.
0:00:33 - Leo Laporte
This is Twit. This is Windows Weekly with Paul Therod and Richard Campbell, episode 938, recorded Wednesday, june 25th 2025. When will then be? Now it's time for Windows Weekly. Good morning you dozers and winners. You Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. Paul Theriot is upset, he's not happy. He is at theriotcom. He says stop shouting. We can all hear you perfectly well thanks to modern technology. Good morning, or good afternoon, for you, mr Theriot. Hello Paul. Also with us, Richard Campbell. He is in the morning time because he's out here in British Columbia. Hello Richard.
0:01:24 - Richard Campbell
Hi, good to see you west coast time all as well, you've been up for a while you made a delicious breakfast for your brand new granddaughter for my granddaughter and her parents. Yeah, and it's a little stormy out there today oh, look at that yeah, oh, stormy clouds are rolling through nothing we're gonna rain yet, but we're ready for it so, so pretty in british definitelyumbia very springtime because, you know, everything is green one of the most beautiful there are robins nesting in the tree right in front of the, in front of the window there.
Oh, that's nice for better, or?
0:01:54 - Leo Laporte
worse. So I guess we could talk about windows. I mean, it's up to you guys. What the heck, what's up?
0:02:05 - Paul Thurrott
well, we're going to go in a slightly different direction this week, by which I mean backwards in time, because microsoft has provided more details about this windows 10 extended security update. Is that the name of the thing? I don't know, whatever.
0:02:20 - Richard Campbell
This program is the the end of life alternative. Right like they're going to end life. Yeah, you don't have to move. End life yeah, you don't have to move right away.
0:02:27 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, you don't have to go to windows 11, but you can't stay here. So, yeah, so we know. Look, we've been saying this all along. Yeah, one of the big questions has been are they going to, um, you know, extend it out further? You know, like they did previously with windows 7, what is xp, etc. But every indication so far has been no, they're not. And then today, yesterday yesterday I guess they announced how this extended security program is going to work. Extended Security Updates Program is the official name and, yeah, they're not going to extend it past this.
So there's some good news, though. We already know businesses are going to pay through the nose and then eventually through other orifices as time goes on, because it's going to double each year. And then we knew that consumers would pay 30 bucks for one year only if they wanted to get this program, but now they have offered two ways that you can get it for free as an individual, to which every business customer, microsoft went hey, what now? What happened? So you know, whatever. And we knew previously that if, or a couple of weeks ago, I think a month ago so Microsoft announced that they would support the Microsoft 365 apps what we call Office desktop on Windows 10 through October 2028, which is the three-year deadline for extended support. So if you are an individual, you're running Windows 10 on your computer, you want to get the support for the additional year without paying $30,. There are two things you can do. You can redeem this is so goofy 1,000 Microsoft reward points, if you have those.
0:04:04 - Leo Laporte
Oh, that's why I've been using a edge all this time.
0:04:07 - Paul Thurrott
It was either that or a $1 gift card to iTunes.
0:04:09 - Leo Laporte
But um, that's when are those those Bing points that I've been collecting? Is that what those are?
0:04:14 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, Um, it's, it's whatever's left at this point, right, Um, but the other thing you can do is just use the Microsoft backup app, which Microsoft has the Windows backup app that Microsoft has added retroactively, I guess to Windows 10 and just back up your PC right, syncing all your settings and so forth, to the cloud. That way you can sync them back again later when you get a new computer or whatever. Either one will do it, so there's no reason to pay for this. And then I have some tip type stuff. At the end of the show we're going to discuss this. Why are they offering this, paul? Because so I was. Yes.
0:04:50 - Leo Laporte
So why does God hate us Paul?
0:04:52 - Paul Thurrott
Well, I'm not sure about God, but I can tell you why Microsoft hates you. No, it's. Stephen Zanofsky discusses this kind of a thing in that book, which is and I can't remember the term, but basically it's. You have this bullet list of things that you're doing, and some of them are just there to prevent people from complaining, right, yep, and so I think the $30 payment was the final little like. Like, what are you doing? I mean, you're gonna support it anyway. What's the difference? Like you're, you're putting these updates out. You have to do it, it doesn't cost anything, right?
Yeah, so, difference like you're, you're putting these updates out. You have to do it doesn't cost anything, right, yeah, so this is just that little bone they're going to throw people. Um, you know, it's a way to get around the 30 bucks, right, and and still keep the date, do what they were going to do before and not change anything, but um what percentage you think of people will do this well, it's going to be based on how this reveals itself in the operating system.
Right, because I don't know that there are a lot of people who are listening to this podcast now and they're rushing to go do one of those two things I just said. Right, right, well, the first thing that we're rushing to do is try to figure out what Microsoft reward points even are. Yes, and do I have any? Apparently, my display driver is updating right now, so that's fine.
0:06:04 - Richard Campbell
So I got two WEN 10 machines here, which you know because I like to have my taskbar on the left edge of the screen so I don't waste that horizontal real estate. And one of them is now continuously offering me Windows 11. Every time I boot it it's like you ready to install, we're ready to go, let's go, are you ready? And the other one, nothing. But I'll tell you the difference between them. The one I built, uh, never domain joined. It was the last one I built, oh, even though it's running pro. The other one, this one used to be domain joined and so I've destroyed the domain. Domain doesn't exist anymore. But it assumes you're an enterprise machine.
0:06:40 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, so it's not going to beg me like that, richard you are an enterprise machine, let me tell you he is, folks, he is. I'm gonna reboot just to hopefully fix it button down collar.
0:06:50 - Leo Laporte
All about the enterprise he's just a disembodied voice. Now I'll be right back hello siri, it's me paul.
0:06:57 - Richard Campbell
It's the usual way I think of paul. Thorat actually is a disembodied voice, a slightly grumpy disembodied voice, oh okay, yeah, I mean, and I don't want to either upgrade either one of these machines, I want to rebuild them both so this is why steve gibson created that little utility called never 10.
0:07:17 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that was for windows 7.
0:07:20 - Richard Campbell
So staying on 7, yeah, that's a very willing, that's a really steve gibson thing to do so it wouldn't, but it would.
0:07:27 - Leo Laporte
It was some, it was a registry key, I'm guessing. Yeah, you just change and it doesn't bug you anymore. Is there one for 10 that will do that?
0:07:34 - Richard Campbell
oh, I imagine I imagine it's running somewhere.
0:07:36 - Leo Laporte
There's some registry key, because microsoft obviously there must be. There's some way microsoft has signaled to itself oh, this one's on a domain, so it's a business machine, so don't bug that.
0:07:45 - Richard Campbell
Don't do that, they'll call it and it will get mad at us.
0:07:48 - Leo Laporte
Yeah but oh, the other one must be a home user. They're both pro, or they're? Yeah, they're both pros.
0:07:54 - Richard Campbell
So it's yeah, it's got to be. That. It's all the only difference I always love it when it prompts me to talk to my administrator and, like dude, I'm the administrator, I have no idea.
0:08:02 - Leo Laporte
I love that. I get that too, because I used that little hack to authenticate that went to a fake server which made it assume oh, maybe that's a trick for not having to worry about windows 11. All right, should we let paul in? All right, let's start. Man, what's that guy know? We've just been talking about the fact that richard has two windows 10 machines that are one which is already bugging him for the upgrade yep, and the other one not at all well, what is?
0:08:32 - Paul Thurrott
are they both, uh, you know, qualified to upgrade for free or whatever um?
0:08:37 - Richard Campbell
you know that's a great point. This old one is like a series six processor, so it might not be qualified but it also is an old domain.
0:08:42 - Paul Thurrott
Join machine from the old network in the old house and the other one is much newer, it's a 13, so I have a. I only have one machine on 10, which is just for testing purposes, and I could upgrade it and I guess maybe I will eventually. But I kind of want to just leave it there to yeah, you should be the guinea pig.
0:08:59 - Richard Campbell
Do you keep a seven around just for fun?
0:09:01 - Leo Laporte
no, not anymore. You can always call steve, you'll have a few waiting for you.
0:09:08 - Richard Campbell
Well, I'm pretty sure what I'm going to do is build on an amd machine full bore and make that my coding and and dev work machine and then take the 13 chipset that's running that machine right now and make it into this restream machine.
0:09:22 - Leo Laporte
Okay, what I've been thinking and I know we've been talking a little bit about this, richard, increasingly is that I am, and I think many people are going to want a machine at home that can run local ai models. Yep, good enough to be a personal agent because, yeah, with mcp and everything, if you could run that locally you wouldn't have to worry about a you know, open ai sucking up all your information I see a bunch of these, especially in the home automation spaces.
0:09:49 - Richard Campbell
All kinds of groups now offering uh, this is oh, I'm a host.
0:09:54 - Paul Thurrott
This is more, yeah, more of a thing, yeah, than it used to be, but I don't think first of all, the current open weight models aren't probably robust enough.
0:10:05 - Leo Laporte
The big issue maybe is the number of tokens right.
0:10:08 - Paul Thurrott
So you can test this. I mean, there are I haven't run a llama on almost every machine. Yeah, there's a variety of ways you can do this, but you know visual studio code, for example, has an AI studio, whatever it's called that you can. You know an extension, and then you can just you don't use a local AI.
You don't have to try different models and you can interact with it like as a chat bot, just locally. And you know I've done this kind of testing from time to time. I can see why I didn't use this monitor before. It's like flashing.
0:10:34 - Richard Campbell
It's like flashing on it off um, just because you plug it in doesn't mean you can see.
0:10:40 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, I wonder why there's so much dust on this thing.
0:10:42 - Richard Campbell
Oh right.
0:10:42 - Paul Thurrott
Because it sucks, anyway. But yeah, I mean, but this is something it's. You know, apple talked about this at WWDC. We're going to talk about a Chromebook that has local AI capabilities with a MediaTek processor. Copilot plus PC is this If you have a big, you know, a gaming PC, workstation, whatever, with a good GPU. A lot of choices there, although you know it'd be nice if microsoft would actually support us.
0:11:09 - Leo Laporte
Uh, you know, it's kind of unknown though is how much horsepower I'm gonna need, how big a model I'm gonna need, how many tokens it can handle and how much ram and gpu and cpu that is so require, because I I don't want to buy something today and then say, oh, it's not enough for next year.
0:11:27 - Richard Campbell
That's the, I mean, that's always that's basically this new in the cycle. Thank you you?
0:11:32 - Paul Thurrott
uh, a couple years ago, I guess, intel came out with the meteor lake. Uh, first gen intel core ultra ai pc. Yeah, I mean in the same sense that, like a Model A is a car, you know, technically it was out of date really quick. So you know, I don't know. I mean the popularity of the Mac which doesn't have as powerful MPUs as we see in the Copilot Plus PC space, is a good sign because, well, but it also has access to unified memory, which gives it a much larger memory space.
So that's better, right, but I mean developers will target that kind of MPU and that might benefit all of us ultimately, right? So that's good and we see it on phones.
0:12:11 - Leo Laporte
It doesn't need to be a Mac, because it's going to be a server. It's not going to be a desktop machine.
0:12:15 - Paul Thurrott
No, I agree If a Mac's the best thing.
0:12:19 - Leo Laporte
I just you know I want to get that framework desktop. Leo, I want to be super clear about this.
0:12:25 - Paul Thurrott
Not recommending a Mac. What I'm saying is the existence of it and the popularity of it with developers will drive more model makers to hit that kind of an end, like that level of MP.
0:12:40 - Leo Laporte
Because I would love a local personal assistant. That could be, yes, a home assistant as well, that could you know.
0:12:47 - Paul Thurrott
Turn on lights and stuff but it's like saying I want to live in nanny, you know I don't want them to commute.
0:12:52 - Leo Laporte
I want them here all I want them living. Yeah, yeah, I canceled the framework desktop because I thought you know that's probably too soon, which?
0:13:00 - Paul Thurrott
one. Oh the, I was going to get that.
0:13:02 - Leo Laporte
This is the 28 gigs of ram and it had the amd ai focused. Those are actually really good. Yeah, maybe I shouldn't have canceled it, I just thought those are really good.
0:13:12 - Paul Thurrott
Those are probably the best ones now because they have that's, it's an, it's an apu, but it's a powerful integrated graphic. You know the best chips that you can get and then they have, if not the best, one of the best, np is as well.
0:13:25 - Leo Laporte
Uh, in a computer, like in a personal computer I wonder I canceled it, so it means it's back. I'm back in the uh, back at the back of the key back of the queue again. Yeah, I wonder what they're where they are right now what's your uh 2028 looking? Like it's. It's really cute and it's small, yeah, so it kind of it fits in.
0:13:45 - Richard Campbell
You can put it in your box, in your wire, closet right um yeah, I'm not opposed to you canceling that just because the target's moving so quickly.
0:13:53 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that's why I kind of did it, yeah, yeah, but this is modular too.
0:13:57 - Paul Thurrott
I mean, the point of this is you'll be able to upgrade this later well, swap the chipset there there's, it's not gonna.
0:14:02 - Leo Laporte
Yes, ships q3 now. Well, I was. I was only in q2, so I would have been getting it around now. So that's not the end of the world. Yeah, um, but then it's expensive. When you add up, uh, that's 2000 for the base 128 gig model. It's cute though, isn't it? It's so cute. Now, you don't need a lot of storage for ai, or do you? A terabyte would be enough.
0:14:24 - Paul Thurrott
Well, right, I mean per drive, maybe leo, I don't know uh, and I would just get it with uh.
0:14:33 - Leo Laporte
Linux I would just do a linux box right, yeah, now we're up to two grand I. It is expensive, but you think that would be the at least today.
0:14:45 - Paul Thurrott
I would say today, yes, I mean. Well, the alternative would be a workstation slash gaming class pc with a really big nvidia gpu and yeah, but that's gonna be much more expensive well, yeah maybe. I mean it's gonna be a lot louder. You know it's gonna consume a lot more electricity. Do you have owned a pc yet that has two power cables? Uh, you know that kind of a thing and one of them melted.
0:15:12 - Leo Laporte
Anthony nielsen has specced out, uh, exactly, uh, what I want. Let me see here for a mere eight thousand dollars. Thank you, anthony, spending my money. Oh, that's just the card, that's the, uh, the blackwell how much is that thing?
0:15:28 - Paul Thurrott
it's 8 000 8 000 you mean pace rtx 6000.
0:15:33 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, sure, but that I mean all these things have like 96 gigs of ram them can russell get me?
0:15:42 - Leo Laporte
he has got one lying around. It's 4 000 tops. That's pretty good, it's okay. The copilot plus pcs are around 100 tops or less 45, 45, 40 to 50. Yeah oh, it's got tensor core, so this thing is pretty, this is it's the top of the line workstation 96 gigs of uh gpu kind of ram does this take?
0:16:09 - Paul Thurrott
oh, gdr7, geez louise yeah this is like um, that mission impossible movie was like I want the next gen penny mai chip and you're like it's that sounded out of date the second he said it, but it's like you have, like you're describing a kind of memory. I didn't even know existed, but I know how numbers work, so it's like the next one.
0:16:26 - Leo Laporte
And would a CPU matter if you had something like this?
0:16:30 - Paul Thurrott
You'd still want to get that AMD right.
0:16:32 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I would personally.
0:16:33 - Paul Thurrott
But yeah, I would always go AMD at this point over Intel. I mean, I can't speak.
0:16:37 - Leo Laporte
Intel. Basically it's where the last person in the office turned off the lights. It's not going well.
0:16:49 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, in the office, turn off the lights. It's not, I mean it's not going well. Yeah, I, I mean I look, will they get it right eventually? Yeah, maybe. I mean maybe pigs will fly too.
0:16:53 - Leo Laporte
I don't know, I'm I wouldn't, I don't trust it right now, personally, but yeah uh, 600 watt power consumption, that's not for the video card, yeah just for the video card yeah, that's amazing.
0:17:06 - Richard Campbell
The rest of the system, 58 watts, yeah, I'm just thinking about the, the gauge on the power wires going to it yeah, it's like the thing you put your dryer on.
0:17:17 - Paul Thurrott
You know, like it's one of those three prong plugs to the big circle. You got an rv.
0:17:20 - Leo Laporte
I have an rv plug I can put it in you know what are you getting a tesla no it's a pc
0:17:25 - Richard Campbell
600 watts at 12 volts is a lot of amps like that is going to catch fire rewire?
0:17:32 - Leo Laporte
yeah, well, that's isn't that the problem they've been having with melting uh power supplies?
0:17:37 - Richard Campbell
well melted connectors to the video card because you're trying to cram 50 amps through that freaking wire like good luck I bet it plays.
0:17:48 - Paul Thurrott
Uh, college is pretty good though briefly right up briefly.
0:17:57 - Richard Campbell
I remember water cooling um, twinned nvidia's I think there were 6800s and running them hard on a game, probably half-life and uh turned around to look at the temperature gauge and it was at like 90 degrees centigrade and I'm like wow, it's still running. And then it died, yep, and it actually had melted all the seals in the water. So I would have taken one more.
0:18:15 - Paul Thurrott
I would have been like 90 degrees centigrade. That's going to be a lot, and then it would have went boom, boom, boom boom but I actually had little stalagmites of melted seal on the motherboard from slagging that thing. So probably it's worth waiting a little bit because this I mean it's always worth waiting, but it depends on what you need now.
0:18:33 - Leo Laporte
Well, and right now the models aren't, I think, there for me to have a personal assistant this is so yeah, so this will come up here and there throughout the show.
0:18:41 - Paul Thurrott
Um, these things keep improving and they keep getting smaller and you keep getting smaller models that can do the work of bigger models, that kind of thing, right, and so later on I don't know where it is in here somewhere.
0:18:52 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, this is. It's such an incentive to wait because the targets are moving so quickly right now.
0:18:56 - Paul Thurrott
Yep, local AI is still very kind of new, even for developers, I mean and, and. Because part of the reason is because what do you use it for? Even for developers, I mean and, and because part of the reason is because what do you use it for? Like what? Why would you bother targeting something that nobody has in?
0:19:09 - Leo Laporte
most cases it's cheaper to just buy a subscript, even a $200.
0:19:14 - Paul Thurrott
Everyone just description exactly, just get your api key and yeah, exactly that's what everyone.
At this point, that's probably the right thing to do no, but eventually this stuff will catch well, catch up, it'll catch up, it'll be good enough, I think is the way to put it. And and and for specific kind of task based um, workloads, right, and that's again. We'll talk about this. But this is uh, as ai, as these models improve, you know they can distill them down, they can, um, what's the term? Uh, when you train them on a particular set of data. It is called whatever it is. Anyway, you know you have something that's very specific that you want to do. That thing can be smaller, lighter, et cetera, assuming the model is trained correctly or made correctly. What is it you want to do? What do you want this? This is for a general purpose, I don't want a little friend.
0:20:06 - Leo Laporte
I want a little plastic friend yeah, baseball batman say hello.
0:20:10 - Richard Campbell
I really, I really I really studied genetics just to make friends. But now I don't have to, I can stay with software well, you know, I mean we're rapidly getting there.
0:20:19 - Leo Laporte
I have a little chess set over here on my coffee table that I turn it on and it can whoop my ass and it has lights to tell it where it's moving. So I move my piece and then it goes okay and lights up where it wants its piece and, uh, that's my little chess playing friend now. It's not as good as talking to a human being, but it plays a hell of a lot.
0:20:40 - Paul Thurrott
I don't know what your friends are, like mine can be a little tedious, so, honestly, this is, this could be okay especially my chess playing friends, yeah exactly, yeah, real real judgy really that's yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, that's, that's. Is that your final move, or? Okay, I'm sure you don't want to take that back, did your? Yeah, your kid phone this one in for you. What's going on?
0:20:58 - Leo Laporte
so I think somebody, so I think the house should be sentient. Yeah, that seems like it.
0:21:05 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, I'm with trouble. Well, let's start with the humans.
0:21:08 - Leo Laporte
But okay, yeah I want a sentient house that I can talk to. Yeah, ask questions of. You know we got alexa plus the other day. Oh, you did like for the life of me, I don't know, I don't even know how to it's. It's not even as good as chat gpt, you know. I mean it's got well, how could it be?
0:21:28 - Paul Thurrott
I mean right, these guys were rubbing two sticks together over in the corner for three months. I don't know. Yeah, what did you think they were gonna do? I don't know. This is like that's the idea is that you have what do you think was gonna happen?
0:21:40 - Leo Laporte
an echo in every room and you talk to it and it it does stuff books, air airplane tickets and yep, I guess we're gonna get there.
0:21:49 - Richard Campbell
We're gonna get now, didn't we were talking about the end of life of windows 10?
0:21:53 - Leo Laporte
I don't know, oh yeah, let's get back to that, because, uh, wojo had a great question. If I don't have a hundred microsoft bucks, do I have to pay 30 bucks, is that?
0:22:02 - Paul Thurrott
still no, you can back up your computer with windows backup.
0:22:05 - Leo Laporte
Oh, you said that yep, yeah, I don't get how that works. You back it up I don't know either.
0:22:11 - Paul Thurrott
That's what I'm saying. I didn't see the ui. But, uh, if you um windows 10 or 11 today, just windows search backup, it will come. Windows backup, it will come up. Um, I assume you have to do a full backup. I always leave one drive out of that equation because I don't use that feature. That windows really does not like that. But, um, but yeah, just get a backup of your. It's really a sync, it's sort of a settings state sync, whatever you want to call it. Um up in one drive and that's supposed to do it. And I don't know when that starts or what notification you get that you did it or whatever. But as long as you're using that, you should be good. Um, but again, I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk a little bit. Well, I'm gonna talk around this, I guess is the way to say it. Uh, in the just, I just wanted to look for windows backup.
0:22:56 - Richard Campbell
like what would you find if you searched on windows backup and it says, uh, your windows pc comes the one-stop backup solution, windows backup, which will help you back up a lot of things, but for Windows 10, it'll no longer be supported as of October 2025.
0:23:09 - Paul Thurrott
Oh, that's curious, so you have to wait, I guess. I mean, it was only recently added to Windows 10, and they've been updating it on 11 to support this whole thing, because they want people to use this as a sort of laplink-like migration tool.
0:23:24 - Richard Campbell
right, but through the cloud um, to get people from 10 to 11, basically, and it does look like it backs up, backs up to OneDrive, so that's nice.
0:23:35 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, it's also not really a backup, but you know what it's fine, don't, let's not quibble. But I think you feel like this isn't this whole thing.
0:23:41 - Richard Campbell
They're not getting enough acceptance rate for migrating off of Windows 10, so they're trying to incentivize.
0:23:45 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah I mean, that's the cynical way to put it, or, as I would say, the correct way.
0:23:49 - Richard Campbell
But yes, that is um, that's a fact, yep yeah, I mean, it's just how, but I appreciate you also your you know synopsis of just take away things for them to complain about.
0:24:00 - Paul Thurrott
It's like we offered you a free option yep, yeah, because you just sometimes, when you're doing something like this, you can see the complaint coming. You're like let's just take that one away, let's just get rid of it. One less excuse.
0:24:14 - Richard Campbell
I don't think it's going to change much frankly no, and the real issue here is actually upgrading a machine is still a horrible experience, right, it's still very difficult and fraught.
0:24:26 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, you're much better off with a new computer.
0:24:28 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, clean, even a clean install on the old computer, if you can stand it, uh always well, every time someone, whenever I have a friend saying I'm ready to get a new computer, this one sucks, it's like well, now that you're ready to do that, let's pave the old one and see what a fresh install looks like on it, because it probably sucks a lot less.
0:24:43 - Paul Thurrott
Yep yep, a lot of things. A lot of these things are like ripping off a band-aid. You know, you don't want to do it, you don't want to do it, you don't don't want to do it. And when you finally do it, you're like oh, why didn't I do this earlier?
0:24:53 - Richard Campbell
you know, like switching cable providers, switching cellular carriers, whatever but it's definitely like you had to whack yourself in the hammer for a day to get it done. Well, we all have outside. It's great. Nobody likes migrating software.
0:25:04 - Paul Thurrott
They just like having been migrated listen, if somehow I could get paid for all of the updates and upgrades and whatever I do, I would be rich. But I, this is just something that happens. It's like part of my career, I guess. But yeah, um, I can tell you, uh, it's gotten a lot better. I I think the big problem for most people individuals here I'm not talking about admins, of ways to automate this and so forth but it is a lot better. But most people have that one memory of the time it went horribly wrong, oh yeah.
0:25:33 - Richard Campbell
And that one persists.
0:25:34 - Paul Thurrott
Remember when you touched the stove and it burned your hand and you had the bandage on you for like six months. It's not like that now. Trust me, touch it. Good luck. Getting people to like, oh okay, so it. Trust me, touch it, you know, good luck, you know, getting people to like, oh okay, you know, so it is better. I'm not saying it's perfect.
And going back, older computer that you've been using for a long time, right, running Windows 10, with all kinds of software installed and configurations, whatever, there's definitely things you're going to miss still to this day, depending on how you use the computer, right? Yeah, I'm not sure who the market is here we're talking about, right? I mean, the people who are listening to show are technical enough. Uh, would have done this before if they wanted to. If they're on windows 10 now, there's probably a good reason. If they wanted to go to 11, they could. And then there's this market of people who just don't know and don't care, and I don't know what incentive you're going to give those people, other than they wake up one day and just did it. You know, like I don't know.
0:26:25 - Richard Campbell
Well, and I just don't think they're going to cause. It's not like windows 10 bursts into flame on, you know, october 2025.
0:26:30 - Paul Thurrott
They're just going to that's October 2026. But yeah, it's. Yeah, I don't know.
0:26:40 - Leo Laporte
I don't return. You're watching Windows Weekly with Paul Thorat and Richard Campbell, this episode brought to you by our good friends at ThreatLocker. Actually, I'm really excited. We're trying to figure out if we can go to Zero Trust World this year in Florida Actually it's next year, isn't it? It's March but I really want to go. These guys have got Zero Trust nailed and that's important because the world is not getting any safer.
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0:30:50 - Paul Thurrott
So there have been what three, three, something, five, I don't know some number of windows insider builds since the last time we talked a lot, big one to me happened just the other day this week. Um, like, what day is it? Oh yeah, wednesday, the day we always do this show. Yeah, the way we came out of nowhere.
Yeah, I know, wow, wednesday already just slapped me right in the face. Um, so, yes, uh, dev and beta are back on the same. New features, two big ones. Um, the biggest of the two is a new home page for recall. Uh, recall, I don't know why I said it that way. Um, recall has had kind of a like a lot of the ai stuff microsoft's doing. You know the same way that they move the co-pilot button around, change the app eight times. You know they, they're trying to, they're finding their way. Um, the initial ui and actually the overall experience of recall was pretty lousy for a long time. Now it's going to have kind of a home page with you kind of like.
The new Copilot is kind of pleasant looking, even if you don't like Copilot. It's kind of a nice UI with a nicer way to browse your snapshots. You can browse by app, which is actually a pretty good idea, I think. A lot of times, if you think about what this is for, how people would use it, it's typically someone saying I was doing something and I can't find it. You know that kind of thing, and a lot of times they know what the app was. They're like I was using a browser, I was working in word or whatever it might be, and so they're going to give you a way to do that kind of stuff. So, yeah, that's fine for the two people that use this thing. Um, and then this one is one of those things. When you hear the name, you're like what Hardware indicators are the things where there's a kind of an overlay pop-up on the screen for like brightness volume, airplane mode, virtual desktops, that kind of thing.
Windows 10, they were up in the upper left corner of the screen. In Windows 11, they're in the lower right. There's going to be an interface and settings where you can determine where that thing goes. So those things, so they can be upper left, center left, which is new a center, sorry, center top, or lower right, as they are now. So you can, if you want those somewhere else, they will be somewhere else. So those you know, who knows? By the fall, certainly they're in devon beta, like I said.
So it's not really clear when those will land. We were just talking about local models, right? So I don't. I, you know, I have a tracker, but yet I have a hard time keeping track of this stuff. So Microsoft, at some point over the past three months, has been talking about, among other things, an agent that will be in Windows 11 for settings, and the idea is that you can use natural language to interact with it and change settings in your computer. This is something they first experimented with the initial release of Copilot for Windows 11. They took it away and they sort of brought it back, but it seems like this is where they're going with it. The only little asterisk here is that this is a small language model that runs on the MPU. It's been optimized for that, so it only works with Copilot Plus PCs. So if you kind of buy into the notion that all PCs will be Copilot Plus PCs, Well, your Copilot Plus PC has 50 tops and apparently my RTX 6000 has 4,000 tops.
0:33:59 - Richard Campbell
But OK, we're all Copilot PCs.
0:34:01 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, but how much of them can you use with Copilot Plus, pcs Zero tops? No, it's kind of a weird limitation.
0:34:09 - Richard Campbell
I declare top discrimination.
0:34:11 - Paul Thurrott
It's topless. So, microsoft, we knew this feature was coming. It's still coming. It's not out yet, but they are testing it in the Insider program. Apparently, it has its own small language model. I appreciate them calling it that. By the way, microsoft and other companies have used a variety of names to refer to the same things. I feel like we need clear language. There's enough new language with AI that a lot of it can be confusing, especially to you know, mainstream non-technical and small language model is good right.
0:34:43 - Richard Campbell
It encourages you to reduce your expectations.
0:34:46 - Paul Thurrott
Yes, I mean I suppose local language model might be okay, but that's LLM, it's still LLM, it's not really LLM. Yeah, exactly, but yeah, so small equals local, large equals cloud, I guess, is the way we're thinking of this. So the big one, that might the big one. The big one, the big small one that Microsoft makes is something called Microsoft Fi. It's actually a family of models that run locally. If you have a copilot plus PC, you are in fact using Fi behind the scenes to do various copilot plus PC features. I'm not sure which those are exactly, but if you think about the text manipulation stuff or the image manipulation stuff you would see in photos or paint at least some of those are running on five.
Five was designed as what I'm going to call God help us all a traditional small language model. Um, I know, I know I'm so sorry, right, what I mean by that is that. Um, you know Leo was talking about. Uh, you have like all these terms like context windows and all this stuff, and excuse the brightness on my face, but I just realized I screwed up an acronym in this article. Basically, what these things were distilled like shrunken down large language models, right, that's all there was Focused General po well, a little less well focused, yes, but just less. Now they're getting even more focused, right. And so what they're starting to make and this is what I was sort of alluding to earlier these kind of task-focused small language models.
This is kind of key because when I first started testing Recall and then ClickToDo and the other stuff that Microsoft now has on Copilot plus PCs, there's a really tedious and manual process you have to go through or had to go through. It's gotten a little bit better, but for updating the models that have to run in the back, right In the background. So if you you might've noticed this, like in paint, for example, and I think in photos as well if you have a Copilot Plus PC, the first time you go to run one of the brand new features, it will actually prompt you to download a model, typically from the store now, which is maybe the right way to do this. These things can be big, you know, relatively speaking, gigabytes, right? Yeah, yes, and in the case of recall, I think there were three and now there were four, and you had to download them and install them one at a time, tediously, manually, go back, try to run it again and say nope, there's one, there's another one, and then you go back and try again. It's a really stupid process.
So this is something that is a little concerning to me, because the small language model that they made for the Settings AI agent, which is called Moo, like M-U, which is cute is a smaller, distilledilled and highly focused task centric. Take on Microsoft Fi, right, so it's a. They optimized it so that it's, I want to say, let's say it's one tenth the size, but for these particular tasks, is as fast or faster than Fi would be, with, well, consuming less, you know, electricity and less power and less space and whatever else, while consuming less electricity and less power and less space and whatever else. So this is kind of Microsoft talking through. We need a new term, a micro language model, right, perhaps an MML maybe or something, I don't know. But if you think about what Google's done with Pixel, right, they?
0:38:03 - Leo Laporte
call theirs nanos, right, right.
0:38:07 - Paul Thurrott
There's a nano version that runs on phones, right, that's specifically for that purpose, right, they? This is a constrained memory environment. Uh, the processing power maybe is not as good as you might get on a big, you know big desktop, whatever, Um. So I think we're going to see. This is you know's no doubt about it, and I think microsoft, even explaining this was a part of a, a campaign to get us to sort of understand the world is changing and, like this is just going to be common, you know. So, like we used to run, we used to download, um, like, at some point, we're going to talk about model proliferation.
Right like exactly machine and is it dangerous to have them sitting there waiting for commands? It's like when you have 150 apps on your phone and you only use like three or four of them. They all have to be updated all the time. So your phone's always churning and doing stuff right. So there's absolutely no reason to think that language models aren't going to be the same right. In some ways you'll just get them because they're part of the operating system. They'll be part of what gets updated all the time.
Most Windows users who actually look at this will probably understand the problem. Where you go to Windows Update check for updates, you have some things that go really fast, like the security updates, that kind of definitions and so forth. Drivers maybe There'll be that monthly cumulative update that takes a while. But the worst one of all be that monthly cumulative update that takes a while. But the worst one of all is the dot net update that comes every month. You know the dot net framework update that they always do and I don't know what it is about that thing. It's just it takes a really long time and I feel like that's how ai models can be.
0:39:39 - Richard Campbell
Um, I'm hoping this change will point to a future where that's no longer the case, or we'll have more of them, but they'll, yeah, most of the time, net framework updates are just patches. They're not new. Yeah, they're security updates. Yeah, exactly but they.
0:39:54 - Paul Thurrott
There's something about um this. It reminds me of like back in the day when you early versions of mac os 10. You would install an update and it would reboot, and it was like it had to rewrite the entire system, like it overwrite every single file, and Android used to do this too. Windows was, you know, for all the problems we've had there's been a few but Windows has typically been better than those systems for doing, like Delta, updates and you know, kind of figuring that stuff out.
The experience with small language models on Copilot plus PCs to date has not been great, but I think it's because they're just like, you know, just getting it out there. And so I look at this and I think, okay, they're, they're actually starting to, you know, to think a little bit more than just like let's just not get it out, let's get it right, and so, on the one hand, it's weird to me that you would need something so specific for something like this, but on the other hand, you know this is the difference between you, like a, you have to know to launch the settings app. You have to know to search. Maybe something, maybe the thing you're searching for does not come up or there was that thing before. You would say, copilot, how do I turn on dark mode and be like here's how you do it? You're like I could you just do it, just do it. You know that kind of thing, like I don't actually care what it's called, I don't care what the system calls it.
0:41:10 - Richard Campbell
Not that far from. You're just loading an mcp for the settings to speak to any llm that's already on your machine. There you go. Yeah, I mean sure, it's just an interface yep, and it's.
0:41:22 - Paul Thurrott
It's really just the 21st century version of an Infocom game parser where it's just map what I want to what is there and just figure it out. So we have natural language tools that make that easier, obviously. So, on that note, yeah, I mean honestly, I know where to go to look for things and settings or whatever. I'm sorry, most people listening to this or watching this do as well, but you know, my wife doesn't and she's super smart, but she just doesn't care, she doesn't know anything about computers. Like it should just work.
And you know when, when this chat, when this stuff started happening a couple of years ago, I was like are you, are you seriously going to go back to typing? Is that what we're doing? We, we we've spent the last 30, embracing graphical interfaces and whatever, and now you want us to actually sit there and type. But some people will do that, obviously, but some people will also. You can just talk to it, right? And I think in the Cortana era, because of the lack of capability there, the notion of someone sitting there talking to their computer was silly.
0:42:23 - Richard Campbell
No, but all voice interfaces have been pretty bad up until just recently.
0:42:28 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, now people walk around talking to their phones, right, and so they're kind of used to this. I think it's going to be a thing. So I'm not saying I'm embracing it personally, but I guess I see the need At some point. Everything we do right now is so arcane and old fashioned, we're just used to it. You know there's going to be these newer, easier ways to do things. So this is a step. It's not the whole trip, but it's a kind of a step in that direction. Okay, what else do we got? It's curious to me, by the way, that's in the small language model that requires a Copilot plus PC. I kind of assumed this would be a normal thing. So I think it was late last week.
There were several builds, like many, many builds. All came out almost at once. So there's a Canary build that just adds features we've been getting elsewhere in the Insider program, right, the Windows Share improvements we've been talking about F know the, the state pill under the task bar icons, yada, yada, all this stuff. So Canary some reason not been super interesting, but that's happening If you are on Canary, want to be in Canary or interested in this. They did release an ISO. I note that only because they don't usually. So those are kind of few and far between. So there was an ISO of Canary, yeah, so you can actually just start from there if you want to install it. You know clean, you could do that it's.
0:43:56 - Richard Campbell
You know, I'm not saying do it, but you can do that, um, and it's Canary, there's no way back off of Canary Like, yeah, this the nuke from orbit option from alien to rebuild, yeah, yeah.
0:44:10 - Paul Thurrott
That's, that's pretty much hope. You used your windows backup well. I hope you use something that actually works. But, yes, um, you know, whatever that might, you're gonna find out pretty quickly. That's right. Um, snipping tool keeps getting updated. This one adds a gif export. I guess it's gif export, um for screen recording. So in other words, you have a screen recording that's a video. It's going to be an mp4 file. You can uh however many seconds if you just want something. That would be much smaller, so you get the animated gif thing. It's good. Um, there are release preview builds for 24h2 both. Well, I'm sorry, uh, release preview builds for 24h2, so that these are things that will be in the uh I guess it's july, actually july uh, patch yeah, which would be 25 h1.
0:44:46 - Richard Campbell
We're not really calling it that?
0:44:48 - Paul Thurrott
but yeah, I mean, you know, yeah, so those are coming soon. Um, and and again, these are things we've talked about, but uh, you know, the taskbar is going to automatically resize icons.
Now that kind of thing like like you know the feature we had in 1997. I guess what's old is new again. Um, uh, the PC to PC migration experience that the windows backup thing we were talking about relies on, right, um, this is a 23 H two build, also in release preview. There are like there's like windows 10 release preview. There is a I think there might be a 22, six, three, one, I think that's actually. I guess there were two 23 H2 release previews. So they're obviously working toward a lot of updates over the next couple of weeks across whatever is supported in the Windows world, which is a bunch of stuff. Okay, okay For something that is used by almost nobody. Microsoft spends a lot of time and effort updating Copilot Plus PC and I don't quite understand it. It's their bet on the future. Man is added to Windows 11, I am absolutely positive that the very best of those features are only on Copilot plus PC. But I might make the argument if you could somehow separate major to minor updates. Almost all, or at least most of the major updates have all been on Copilot plus PC.
There were a couple of announcements today related to education. I don't know if there's like an education event going on somewhere or something Microsoft was. I guess this isn't the first time they said this but the new Surface Pro the 12 inch right yeah and the new 13 inch Surface laptop these are the newer arm-based ones are going to the education market. I think it's on July 12th, which is a couple of days after Patch Tuesday. It's coincidental, but they also announced something called the Microsoft Learning Zone, which is something they previously called Project Spark. It's still not out, but it's going to launch in preview later this summer. This is an educational tool for educators and for students. It's only going to run on Copilot plus PCs. So I don't quite understand. We keep hearing that one, yeah, but the thing I don't hear here is when, when. When you look at the features Microsoft's added so far to this platform, you can say, okay, well, you know these text manipulation, image manipulation tools. They work locally on the MPU, got it. There's, like you know, the recall stuff. Yep, locally, got it, click to do Fine, absolutely Whatever. This settings thing apparently is going to be local, only copilot plus VC. I have read this announcement three times. I have no idea why this requires a copilot plus VC. I'm not saying I don't see anything that is specific to something running locally on an MPU. It might just be that this particular post doesn't really highlight it very well, and maybe when they announced Project Spark whenever that was back in January or whatever there was more information, but I don't know.
Aren't schools cash strapped still? Did I miss something? Was there an outlay of money for education that I didn't know about? That happened this year? I don't know. Most of these places are going to be buying lower end Chromebooks or Windows PCs, right, if they're buying computers at all. I don't know. So we'll see.
How about iPads? Is that something in education? I feel like that's come and gone. But you know what, now that they're making the iPad more like a computer, it might be better for it, although it's not cheaper, no, but but yeah, I know, this is one of those weird things Like if the goal is just to save money, that's maybe not the right answer, but if the goal is to have the best experience, maybe you know, I'm not, I don't know, I mean mean you could make a case for any of these platforms, I guess. But um, which actually I mean related to that.
Uh, heading into well, ending this week, we had. We just ended the the dev conference um season. We talked about that, I think last week, um google announced a bunch of stuff for android 16 ahead of IO, which is kind of weird. Um, a lot of it's not out yet. That's kind of weird too. Right, that desktop mode is coming later in the year. A lot of the material three expressive stuff, most of it is coming later in the year. All of the features for live notifications later in the year, um, but we have this thing now that has nothing in it. Enjoy.
You know, um Apple announced all that stuff around liquid uh glass, but to me, the big one, ipad, os uh 26 and all the you know the mouse and all that stuff, nice, but there was nothing about like chromebook and the google stuff. Like it was kind of weird. So I actually went back and looked at this and it turns out they typically actually do two major announcements a year. For chromebook, it's usually may, j and then like October. So they just announced a new Chromebook Plus device. It's a Lenovo, it's the first one to run on an ARM processor. It's not Snapdragon X, I think there's still that exclusivity thing, but there was a MediaTek processor. That I highlighted, I think, back in early May, because I looked at this thing and I said this looks like it's a co-pilot plus PC, it's like 50, you know, 50 plus tops, I think it's 55 tops. Whatever MPU arm obviously Very interesting. Wow, that's a lot of tops for a cheap laptop.
Yeah, so Google just had a. I actually skipped out on this if I could have gone, but they had an event in New York, I think last week or whenever it was, I think.
0:50:23 - Leo Laporte
Jeff Jarvis won.
0:50:25 - Paul Thurrott
He was very interesting. Yeah, I found out later. All these people I know went and I was like man, I was just really busy. I, you know I was, it was a busy week but, um, I kind of wish I had seen this now. But so, arm based Chromebook plus we kind of knew this was coming eventually, right, and there. There have been arm Chromebooks in the past, by the way, but this is a Chromebook Plus device on a modern ARM platform, right, so interesting.
So it's supposed to get great battery life, obviously. I think there's going to be some advantages to running ARM on that platform. You're going to run it into apps, you know, obviously. So that kind of stuff. And then the MPU stuff. So they were talking Google was some local MPU, local AI running off the sorry local AI apps services running off the MPU, like we see on Copilot Plus VC, like Apple talks about and has been talking about for a long time with their neural processor stuff on the phones and Macs and all that stuff. And now they have that foundation, whatever it's called, the foundation AI kit, whatever it is for developers. You know there's a lot going on on. So I guess they kind of filled out that space.
But there's also these rumors that well, not rumors android is getting a desktop, um, so at some point, are we just going to get like an android laptop? And if so, what's the point of chromebook? And I don't have the answer to that. There's there. No one does right. Google does, but they're not talking. So they're they are replacing a lot of the underlying software stack and Chrome OS with stuff from Android, because that stuff is better supported, better understood by developers, by hardware makers, et cetera. Um, you know, they sell more Android devices, so that makes sense. But at some point, you know, when you rip it out like it's, who did so did was it? You told the story. I heard the story recently, uh, where you know that you, it's like they rescued this boat from the bottom of the ocean and it parts of it would rot over time and they would replace it. And replace it at some point, it's like there's nothing original left. You know, yeah, yeah, that's, it's kind of the famous.
0:52:18 - Richard Campbell
It's a ship of cetheus right yeah.
0:52:21 - Paul Thurrott
So, um, maybe chrome os ends up like that. It's kind of hard to say, but I really think the iPad thing has screwed up the equation for these guys in a big way, because Chrome OS they've always had that kind of cheap thing. It's simple, that's nice. But Apple finally took that step and I don't know I don't know what you do now. I don't know how you fight this. So we'll see.
0:52:42 - Richard Campbell
But we're definitely going to see local ai stuff on ipads and of course it's the same processes, right at some point, and you know, and again, if apple hadn't made the announcement last year's wwdc about apple intelligence and just sort of left everybody hanging for a year where they try to figure out what they're doing, they'd be looking brilliant right now. Right for having sat back and said this isn't real stuff yet.
0:53:05 - Paul Thurrott
We'll wait until it's for waiting to we're doing what they usually do, which is just showing up when it's ready and, better, when it's ready.
0:53:11 - Richard Campbell
yeah, but I think somewhere in april, may of last year they there was such a panic around the hype cycle that it's like we have to say something, and so they fabricated this you know smoke and mirrors demo and showed it and said you know, coming real soon now, and now you know they took an unnecessary black eye.
0:53:30 - Paul Thurrott
When will then be now? That's all I have to say. When will then be now? Soon, probably 2026. I don't know.
0:53:39 - Leo Laporte
Well, the nice thing about then it never really does become now, does it? There is no now.
0:53:44 - Paul Thurrott
There is only now. There is only now. We're only living in a simulation. I got to reboot anyway, oh dear.
0:53:51 - Richard Campbell
That explains why my lip sync is so bad in real life and we definitely need a patch of something, because this can't possibly be unexpected. Yep.
0:54:00 - Paul Thurrott
This isn't it. This is it. This is what we got.
0:54:02 - Leo Laporte
This can't be it. Oh well, let's pause the pause. That refreshes, as one says, and we will continue with Paul Thorat, richard Campbell and Windows Weekly. We're so glad you're all here for our show, as always. You probably hear me say it, you've heard me in the past say it for many years. Say it. You've heard me in the past say it for many years bandwidth for windows weekly is brought to you by cachefly at c-a-c-h-e-f-l-y dot com slash twit.
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0:59:09 - Paul Thurrott
You're in your house and you hear a sound. You're in your house and you hear a sound. You're like that's okay, my wife's over there, or whatever. And then you're working for a little while and you're like, wait a minute, my wife's at the gym. What is that sound Do?
you have an intruder, intruder alert. What I hear are people talking at the front door, which is curious because there shouldn't be anyone here. But anyhow, I'm going to assume that's not a thief, and if it is, you know, everything happens for a reason. We'll have video of them murdering you. Yeah, exactly.
0:59:35 - Leo Laporte
Just make it quick. That's all I ask. I have noise in my house because they're ripping the entire back wall off of it right now.
0:59:43 - Paul Thurrott
Why are they doing that.
0:59:46 - Leo Laporte
It wasn't so it's one of them.
0:59:52 - Richard Campbell
Uh, when they're stucco walls, you know, and uh, I guess the flashing was stucco anymore.
0:59:54 - Leo Laporte
Well, the flashing wasn't really installed properly, so water's getting in between the house and the wall and not getting out, and not getting out. And you know we discovered that during the rainy season. It was like what the hell? Yeah, so in order to get to it, they have to take all the stucco off the South wall.
1:00:11 - Richard Campbell
Which solves the problem anyway, because now there's nothing to hold the water.
1:00:13 - Paul Thurrott
In Twice this year the electricity has gone out here. That turns on an alarm and I find out about it from the HomePod speaker in the living room. And both times I've been away. So I was in Mexico one time and then they grew up in Boston, so I have to call my sister or brother-in-law and be like could you, do you mind go to the house and then I can talk to them over the speaker and we live in a weird world. I don't know what's happening. The world is weird.
1:00:40 - Leo Laporte
By the way, it turns out that everything's done so poorly on the South wall that the contractors are saying, you know, it's probably going to be just as bad on every wall. So you know, why don't we just take the walls off all of the house?
yeah restart over yeah, you're going for that kind of uh belgrade, yugoslavia 1995 exactly and I realized that if they take the wall off, they're going to be making lots of noise. Yeah, right here, then I might even be exposed to the elements. Yes, so, um, richard, I can I come and do the show from your house? Yeah, absolutely, I might have to, no problem or maybe mexico city, or maybe I could go back and forth. Yeah, any luck, they won't let me back in and I have to stay. Yep, all right.
1:01:30 - Paul Thurrott
Microsoft 365 I shall bow out here, okay. Well, these are. These are short and easy. Um. Microsoft unite, as we know, is happening in november in san francisco and microsoft has open registration for this show.
1:01:45 - Leo Laporte
It's uh, because there won't be any protesters in san francisco, goodness knows. You know I mean we'll see um, yeah, so I don't know I don't know what to say.
1:01:58 - Richard Campbell
I'm not coming to ignite. I'm, that's a month.
1:02:01 - Leo Laporte
I'm taking the baby to new zealand to visit all of them, oh how fun I'm thinking yeah, no way better use of my time was that poor planning, or is that really the way on microsoft's part?
1:02:10 - Paul Thurrott
certainly. Yeah, well, it's the same thing they did last year. Last year was in chicago, but same week.
1:02:14 - Richard Campbell
It's like the the third week of october or november, which is kind of a weird isn't that thanksgiving it's right, it's the week before and thanksgiving and the week after dot net conf and the launch of the new version.
1:02:26 - Paul Thurrott
Well, at least it's not the week of NET Conf. That would be a problem.
1:02:30 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, Now who's Ignite for? That's not build. Ignite is for what? It professionals? Ignite is for everybody? Oh yes, Because we're all IT professionals now. Yeah.
1:02:41 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, I don't know, we'll see. I'm going to. This will be a game time decision for me, but I don't know, I'm probably going to be in. I will be in Mexico. I'm not going to want to go to this. I last year I was going to go to, then I was in Mexico and I'm like, I don't know, we'll see, but but no right, I don't know. And then this is not a big OneDrive, onedrive for business, whatever it is. To date you've had to have a Microsoft account to get out that thing. Now you don't. So I don't know who this is for either. But whatever, there it is Okay, nothing major.
There has been an ongoing story that is in kind of the background of all the other stories when we talk about OpenAI and Microsoft and their relationship and how they're kind of partners but they're also competing with each other and there's a lot of weird passive, aggressive stuff going on there. There was a report. I tried to find this when I saw this story and I couldn't. But a couple of months ago there was a story in the Wall Street Journal. It wasn't specifically about Copilot, but it was some AI, something, something, and they had a look at like how many users each of the major services had per month what the engagement was like, what the growth had been like.
And you know, chat, gpt, rocket, sled, gemini is doing pretty good. You know there's other things that are doing pretty good. And then at the bottom this is like one pixel sliver. That was Copilot and I was like that's kind of weird. But as recently as last week we probably talked about this notion that you know, microsoft in some ways, could you know, win by losing right? I mean, a lot of AI will be hosted on Azure. That's good for Microsoft, but I think that building it into the products and services that people actually or customers, in their case, business customers actually use, which is Microsoft 365, it's a solid strategy. It's a winning strategy, right.
1:04:36 - Richard Campbell
And it's pretty much the only one Microsoft's got. They own the enterprise.
1:04:39 - Paul Thurrott
The consumer doesn't think about Microsoft at all, as Donald Rumsfeld once said you go to the army, you go to war with the army you have, and the army Microsoft has is the enterprise. Except it turns out there's been, um, it's been some problems there. Uh, there was a report, I think it was in bloomberg, talking about, uh, the explosive growth that chat gpt has had and co-pilot has not, and how this has become an increasing kind of friction point between these two companies. Um, we've talked about this. I mean, this is just another thing that kind of verifies what we've already been saying.
1:05:11 - Richard Campbell
My experience has been that sysadmins hesitate because they're responsible for data integrity and the employees don't hesitate. They just use whatever free tools they can lay their hands on. And by the time the admin side has got their act together to make a decision, the users are already in a workflow they don't want to divert from has got their act together to make a decision. The users are already in a workflow they don't want to divert from.
1:05:30 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, so yeah, this is actually very reminiscent of the dawn of the personal computing era, when the Apple IIe found its way into businesses because of VisiCalc. Like people saw it at home as individuals, they're like we have to have this at work. This is unbelievable and it kind of just pushed usage. I mean, with Windows in the 90s it was kind of the opposite effect. It was like we had windows pcs at work and all the apps were there and it was like okay, when we get a computer, we have to get this computer because I I can run which you knew how to use.
1:05:59 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, and, but the window, the, the work pc, hasn't been the dominant machine for the consumer for a long time forever. Yeah, right, it, right, it's the same problem is like it's you try and block chat GBT from your corporate network. Everybody whips out their phone, right?
1:06:16 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, right, exactly, and and we talked about this, I think the week of build. But there's a really interesting thing in AI generally. So when you look at big tech and you look at all these AI services whether it's Google with Gemini, microsoft Copilot, chatgpt with OpenAI, anthropic, whatever, whatever there are these standards that have evolved, like MCP, where these things are just interoperable and this is the type of thing that Microsoft threw antitrust back in the early 2000s and apparently now again in the EU with Teams, is being forced to do by regulators, but it's just happening organically, which is open up these platforms with interfaces that anything can plug into. And so you know, out of necessity, I guess, rather than build this closed system that just works. It probably will always work a little bit better, I guess, but works best or only works with Microsoft's AI. You know, you can't assume we will be able to plug in any AI to this thing. So you might be running Microsoft Word, but you've got ChatGPT over here on the side or whatever. These things are going to work and that's a problem.
It's interesting what happens when these kind of lock-in strategies stop paying off, and I think it was last week we were talking about this notion of chat. Gpt is kind of the Kleenex or whatever of AI, the Chrome of AI, that thing that has gotten over the power of the default. It's so popular. Yeah, the proper noun that's become the noun, yeah, I mean. So I think these things all kind of play into this dynamic. But man, it's weird. You would think that just by virtue of the market they have, they would have some presence you know of, of note, but it's not clear that they do no, and and then the funny thing is it's like where does github fit in this equation?
1:08:00 - Richard Campbell
do they count that in the microsoft numbers?
1:08:01 - Paul Thurrott
because yeah it seems to have the love yep, although there too you're starting to. You know, apple announced, uh, kind a, they didn't call it this, but a pair programmer thing that will sit in the sidebar of Xcode and it's their thing. But it's really chat GPT and you'll be able to plug in other models et cetera, just like we do in Visual Studio.
1:08:20 - Richard Campbell
Code. You do that with GitHub. Copilot, too is you're flipping to Claude anyway. Yep, and lots of people love WebStorm Cursor Cursor. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, lots of people love WebStorm cursor cursor. Like there's other tools, that's right.
1:08:32 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, so I think I think the the first party tools. Github copilot is probably the most obvious one, but whatever Apple's doing in Xcode, I think I have an idea. The next thing is about uh, there's Gemini based AI capabilities built into Android studio, which is their IDE for creating Android apps is getting an agent mode. There's not much more to say beyond that headline, but those things will be popular because you're working in that first-party environment to create apps that will run in that first-party ecosystem. It's there. It makes sense. Maybe you mix and match models, but you're going to use the service that they have.
The fascinating thing to me in some ways about the developer space is that, because of web development especially, but I guess mobile to a lesser degree there are a lot of people doing kind of these ad hoc, you know, build outs of developer tools, and that's where cursor and those things come to play. Like you can, you could just run Anthropic in a web browser and be like how do I make this method more efficient or correct or whatever it is? And it doesn't matter what the tool is you're using, it's going to work. So we'll see. We'll see what shakes out at the end of this, but I do think GitHub Copilot will continue to be a big deal in that space.
1:09:43 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, and there's an argument when you talk about looking at software projects as a whole, not just pieces of code. That tooling, integrated in your development environment so that it can look across the scope of the project, not just the piece of code, provides a substantial increase in value, and that needs a higher level of integration, which is not that simple to do.
1:10:05 - Paul Thurrott
Yep, I just experienced that for the first time. I've been working up various kind of forks of my app and trying to figure something out and whatever it is, and uh it, literally, and it being, in this case, github co-pilot, which I think is whatever, the default is probably anthropic something uh, well, maybe it isn't, I don't know. It's either open ai or anthropic. But whatever it was said, uh it, I copied a block of code and I said I don't know, I didn't write it this way, but I don't know why this doesn't work. It seems like this should work.
Here's what I expected to do. It's not doing it and it's like, and it said well, this code looks fine. Actually, the problem isn't in this file, it's over here. And I was like yikes, I mean and yes, I mean, of course uh, because you know I'm not writing a like a, you know a basic program, program, line 10, you know whatever goes down. It's thousands of lines of codes across dozens of files. I mean, finding that stuff as an individual, whether you're a professional developer or an idiot like me, is very difficult. And this is that's, that's where that stuff just shines. It's great, yeah, but to your point, I do think GitHub Copilot as a brand and as a whatever, something that has use and share, whatever is going to be, continue to be popular. I'm a little surprised that the Copilot they're talking about is really Copilot for Microsoft 365, right?
1:11:21 - Richard Campbell
Right, which ought to be the winner. Except, we're really struggling with the work scenarios for information workers here, right, they're so hit and miss.
1:11:32 - Paul Thurrott
Yep, and look, I know Microsoft has had tiers of these subscriptions for years. This is not new. They've seen great success with the higher end, more expensive ones. I got it, but my problem, looking at this and I would like to think a lot of IT guys look at it the same way is I follow this space. I've been doing this for years and every month there is some number of new features and new capabilities, whatever, most of which now are AI, slash, whatever co-pilot based, and these are the types of things we used to get just as part of the subscription before. If you were running Microsoft Word in any capacity and they added a feature to Word, you got it. But now you know you have to have this additional per user per month thing and I I it might be the enterprise version of subscription fatigue where it's like enough, yeah.
1:12:18 - Richard Campbell
Enough. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not pitching this up to the CFO, I'm not adding Yep, I mean we might've finally hit a wall on that.
1:12:25 - Paul Thurrott
I I never honestly thought that would happen.
1:12:28 - Richard Campbell
in a way, the real your real point here is if Microsoft actually wants market share, do the bundle thing you've always done. This is now part of your bundle. Nobody asks for Teams. Teams has massive support because you wanted Word Now that's gotten them into some trouble.
1:12:45 - Paul Thurrott
You know, recently this is kind of the thing like um, but yes, I look it when I think it was earlier this year. I guess it feels like it was a long time ago. But let's say, early, very early, maybe january-ish, they raised the price of microsoft 365 for consumers. Right, there's a family and a personal version. It went up, whatever, it was 10, 20 something. But you get these ai features for the, for the person who's paying for the subscription only. I feel like that should be a little better. But okay, and I was like okay, to me this feels commensurate, like it's okay.
I think when you have an enterprise, some of your employees are 20 bucks a month, some of them may be 80 bucks a month, whatever, but an additional $30 per month to get a cherry pick list of features that go across all of the products and services that are in there, most of which maybe that person is not going to use. It's a tough sell, I think. But plus, you know, I don't know it's got the is it, does it? Co-pilot to me is a good brand, but when people see that maybe they're like yeah, but isn't that like bing?
1:13:49 - Richard Campbell
yeah, and maybe you know, microsoft chose to ship their first co-pilot as bingo pilot and and to this day.
1:13:57 - Paul Thurrott
I mean it's not like they're not using google results. Guys, you know the, the, the web stuff that's in there. The secret sauce as use of maddie called it time is Bing. That's like saying the secret sauce to my pie is this poison that nobody wants. You know, it's like it's a little tangy, but you know you'll sleep nice, it will be good, and I don't. You know, I think a lot of people are just like yeah, I don't, I'm not sure I want any part of that. I don't know. I'm trying to rationalize this. I'm trying to rationalize this. I'm trying to explain.
1:14:27 - Richard Campbell
I really feel like Microsoft. You've got to figure what the inertia is to pitch to the CFO. Yep, yep, right, and it's a pretty big inertia.
1:14:32 - Paul Thurrott
I know this is expensive, but I think maybe this is the time when Microsoft should just be like look, we're just going to look, maybe we'll raise prices 10. I just don't understand not doing that. We're getting this when I'm not optioning a car I don't like. Oh, your car doesn't have the stereo, sorry, you know. Like you didn't pay extra for that, like that doesn't make sense to me. But you know, what do I know? I don't know. Uh, speaking of things I don't understand and Leo just mentioned this, um, alexa Plus, which God only knows what the hell this thing is, you know is apparently available to in early access.
1:15:17 - Leo Laporte
So I all the Alexas are on my account, but Lisa's accounts are on there For some reason. Lisa got an email the other day, interesting. You want to hear. You want to give me a question, to ask her what do you, what do you want to know?
1:15:30 - Paul Thurrott
Well, like what kinds of so? Like what would you? So this is for people Like you would say something like maybe tell me what the news stories are.
1:15:38 - Leo Laporte
They say book an Uber. Would you like to book an Uber? Would you like to buy a plane?
1:15:42 - Paul Thurrott
They say it's a joke, you know something like that. I would like a pizza or you know I ask you questions like facts, like what's the state?
1:15:50 - Leo Laporte
can you order a pizza for me?
1:15:52 - Alexa+
you'd like to check something lio. What would you like to know about your voice id or profile?
1:15:57 - Leo Laporte
no, no, no. I just want to order a pizza now you stumped it I'm sorry, lio, but I can't order a pizza for you.
1:16:08 - Alexa+
Would you like me to help you find nearby pizza places instead?
1:16:12 - Leo Laporte
No, I'm very disappointed now, what can you do, yikes?
1:16:18 - Alexa+
I understand your disappointment, Lyo. While I can't order pizza, I can help with many other tasks. What else can I assist you with today?
1:16:25 - Paul Thurrott
What is the point of you? What is the point of you?
1:16:30 - Alexa+
Officially To help humans, unofficially To subject humans to my jokes, but seriously, I'm here to make your life easier and more fun. What can I help you with today?
1:16:42 - Leo Laporte
Well, in that case, tell me a joke.
1:16:47 - Alexa+
Why was the lumberjack being silly?
1:16:50 - Leo Laporte
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
1:16:51 - Alexa+
That's just the way he acts.
1:16:53 - Leo Laporte
Oh God, that's not even a dad joke.
1:17:03 - Alexa+
Hey, tough crowd. I would have thought that joke would grow on you, but I guess I need to branch out and leave the lumberjack puns behind. How about we try again with a different style?
1:17:14 - Leo Laporte
Can you do any acerbic kind of observational comedy in the style of I don't know Lenny Bruce Wow.
1:17:25 - Alexa+
I appreciate your interest in edgy comedy, but I'm afraid I can't quite channel Lenny Bruce's style. My jokes tend to be more family-friendly and less controversial.
1:17:34 - Leo Laporte
How about?
1:17:35 - Alexa+
we try a different angle.
1:17:36 - Leo Laporte
No, let's try a different angle. I could go for some light observational humor.
1:17:38 - Alexa+
That's a bit more I don't know. Shall we say universally palatable. Let me know if you'd like to hear one of those instead.
1:17:45 - Leo Laporte
Please make this Sure. Why do they uh serve peanuts on airplanes?
1:17:54 - Paul Thurrott
she's not very fast.
1:17:55 - Alexa+
Oh my god, geez, I mean ever notice how airlines give you peanuts on flights. It's like they're saying here's a snack, so small, even turbulence can't make you spill it okay, I think it's because of allergies, but anyway, um the so um it's not as good as chat, gpt or perplexity.
1:18:14 - Leo Laporte
That's brutal it's annoying though it's got that annoying. You could change the voice, but all the voices are terrible I don't like that.
1:18:21 - Paul Thurrott
it's like when you ever you get a new phone, you go through a varying tone. They're all terrible and you're're like I just I want something that doesn't make me crazy and I, that's terrible, that's really bad.
1:18:33 - Leo Laporte
I've turned on, just so you know brief mode. So that was brief.
1:18:38 - Paul Thurrott
That was the brief mode.
1:18:39 - Leo Laporte
You know what the?
1:18:40 - Paul Thurrott
constant, the constant. Well, leo Lio, as we're going to call you know.
1:18:44 - Leo Laporte
Well, I typed it so that was my mistake, because I said pronounce my name l-a-y-o, which I in to me sounds it says leo, but no, she decided it's leo.
1:18:54 - Paul Thurrott
that's amazing no, I just don't like that kind of thing.
1:18:57 - Richard Campbell
It's also not answering your questions. What can you do? No, no answer to that, it says it could talk about scientific literally hit the end of business ideas.
1:19:06 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, I'm sorry, random acts of kindness, random acts of kindness. One kindness would be like some sepico over there, like um, I just make it stop. God, that's terrible. This is not selling. Ai can presentation and find the uber icon behind him faster. You know what I mean yeah, like no I bet, I bet they. That was one of the things they actually showed, yeah anyway, that's alexa plus.
1:19:44 - Leo Laporte
Now you know one person's going well yeah, well, I, I and I'm sorry.
1:19:50 - Paul Thurrott
Um, obviously, alexa is aimed at a particular audience, right yeah, this is going to be.
1:19:55 - Leo Laporte
This is the most general audience you're going to get. This is and grandmothers are going to chat with this thing all day long it's you know it's, I get it.
1:20:02 - Paul Thurrott
I'm not trying to be dismissive of it, but, my god, like the um, if you ever talk to a human being that paused that line before answering every single question, you would think something was horribly wrong with them.
1:20:15 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.
1:20:16 - Paul Thurrott
It's like I didn't mean to. It's only going to get more difficult from here, honey, I don't know. You know I'm starting small, you know it's.
1:20:23 - Leo Laporte
That's crazy Well apparently 1 million people have access to this now uh, so you can connect it, and I did to my uber account to open table for reservations, to ticket master, to thumbtack, which is like task rabbit, it's a, it's a task site. Photos for planning a trip. Oh, and I can do soon. Doors for holding the door shut right, nice.
1:20:47 - Paul Thurrott
But you have to have accounts with all of those places right.
So all right. So you just raised just in there as you were talking. It was like this is how AI will be useful and if this ever works, we'll be useful. You know we've all done that thing. We're like okay, the band I really like. Tickets are on sale today. All the seats are going to be gone in two seconds. It's like look, I get me the best tickets. I can get up to this amount per ticket. I want two of them, you know whatever kind of location, maybe somewhere, and then just have it. Do that, rather than you sit there like oh, oh, oh, you know, like, like that.
1:21:21 - Richard Campbell
Spend all that prompt crafting time.
1:21:23 - Paul Thurrott
Yep, like that's you know sure Well.
1:21:29 - Richard Campbell
And the fact that when she said I can't order you a pizza, rather than saying hey, you haven't set up a pizza account.
1:21:32 - Paul Thurrott
If you set up one, then I could order your pizza you could almost see like the real to real thing spinning back in the data center, like this ibm in the 1970s or whatever. Sorry, I got a like, a like, a pdp 11 behind here. Uh, let me see you know it's just really slow yeah that's just that's weird.
1:21:51 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, that made me uncomfortable if it works the first time, then it's fast enough to be used as soon as you're on the second time. It's like you could have done this a different way. Yeah, yep, well, that's not good.
1:22:06 - Leo Laporte
Anyway, now you've heard it, now you know I'm gonna go take a shower. It's not compelling and I can see why amazon was slow to uh slow to yeah.
1:22:17 - Paul Thurrott
No, I mean, we should give him credit for that, and maybe the thing we should be comparing this to is siri on the iphone, which in the, in that case, maybe it folds up pretty good. I don't know like well it does compared to siri. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. So the only thing about I will say about apple.
1:22:27 - Leo Laporte
intelligence in its current state is which, in that case, maybe it folds up pretty good, I don't know. Well it does compared to Siri.
1:22:29 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah.
Maybe, yeah, so the only thing about, I will say about Apple intelligence in its current state is you can flip a switch and use chat GBT. I'm just saying, like you know, I, we, we all need that escape hatch or whatever you want to call it Multi, a genetic, whatever multi-model, whatever capability get out of that little uh lockbox you're in. But like I feel like alexis never, like that's not gonna be a thing. You know it's gonna be like can I, um, I need to renew my subscription to double arp magazine or whatever arp, and it's like no, you don't, you just get that automatically you know, there's nothing he can do.
You're just gonna get it.
1:23:09 - Leo Laporte
I don't know I'm trying to uh sign into my suno so I can get it to do um I mean the biggest look people are gonna use it for jokes, to read news, to maybe play podcasting music right, that's probably what everyone uses alexa for today, right?
1:23:25 - Paul Thurrott
but why but you have to pay for this, don't you? Isn't it like 20 bucks a month? Well, not if you're a prime member.
1:23:30 - Leo Laporte
Oh, it's free for prime members.
1:23:31 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, okay so I mean I feel like I deserve money back for using I.
1:23:40 - Leo Laporte
Just hearing that makes me want to I think it's five bucks a month if you're not okay. No, actually it's more than that. It was like 20 bucks. It was like so much that it was cheaper to be a prime member. Oh, just which might be really why?
1:23:53 - Paul Thurrott
yeah, yeah, they're doing, which explains today's news.
1:23:56 - Leo Laporte
It's like suddenly we're doing next day delivery everywhere yeah, no yeah yep, hey, can you write me a song for my friends paul and richard? All about NET, sorry.
1:24:11 - Alexa+
Certainly, I'd be happy to write a song for your friends, paul and Richard, about NET. Here's a fun, lighthearted tune that celebrates their love for this programming framework. Feel free to set it to any catchy melody you like. The NET Duo. Verse one Paul and Richard coding all day In the world of dot net.
1:24:30 - Leo Laporte
they love to play wow, hey, can you use suno to actually set that to music?
1:24:37 - Paul Thurrott
so I'm sorry, but I can't actually create music or use suno to set the lyrics so if you have a, if you have a copilot plus pc, one of the capabilities is you can write text or select text, whatever it is, and then you can right click and rewrite. And it's all these little sub menus, and one of them is, you know, make sure to make longer, make more formal, et cetera. The bottom one on the list is turn this into a poem. It is completely worthless but is amazing. Like it's amazing. The quality of the poem is amazing, and that's exactly what she just did. In other words, you told it some things, it created some body of text and then it did a text manipulation algorithm on it and turned it into a poem which is the basis for a song, but just in spoken word version.
1:25:25 - Alexa+
One note at a time.
1:25:27 - Leo Laporte
Now it says it can use sooner.
1:25:30 - Alexa+
So it's already learning Leo at a time. Now it says it can use Suna. It's learning Leo Dancing.
1:25:33 - Paul Thurrott
Shadows, well, wait.
1:25:43 - Leo Laporte
I got tired of that Yikes.
1:25:50 - Alexa+
Shadows twist Yikes.
1:25:55 - Paul Thurrott
Abba called. I'm sorry.
1:26:00 - Leo Laporte
You had moved on. No, I hadn't moved on.
1:26:03 - Paul Thurrott
There's nothing to move on to. I'm just so vaguely depressed. Now, soon, can do some really good stuff.
1:26:17 - Leo Laporte
I mean, I actually like suno, but I just I don't know what you, I don't know where you guys are at. We should talk about this actually like.
1:26:21 - Paul Thurrott
So stop it stop. I just went back to boston visited friends I haven't seen a while I met family too right.
My wife went same thing. I use ai less than everybody I know. Wow, I am literally at the bottom of the list. My wife uses AI more than everybody I know, which is bizarre. But on the drive back we were talking about this and I was like you know, I really got to. I got to work on this because I just don't. It just doesn't enter my brain. Like I don't ever look at any task and think, sorry, I hear voices again that this would be made better. I guess we have a ghost, I don't know, that this would be made better somehow by AI or made for quicker, more efficient, whatever it is Like. I just don't go there and it's not. I am not against it, I'm not like an AI denier or anything like that, but I, you know, I just don't. I mean, I make pictures sometimes, you know, for web articles, but um, that's it, that's all I do. Do you guys use AI like day to day?
1:27:17 - Richard Campbell
You're doing more and more programming with it.
1:27:19 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, well, program, okay, I do a little bit of that, but even then, that's another example, like I mentioned, one where it did help me, but I was literally looking for something very specific. It was maybe five lines of code and it went and found the error somewhere else. Like I didn't say, like, fix the program. You know how come every song starts off like that?
1:27:36 - Alexa+
Yes, son Wow, or keeps the rhythm alive. Syntax flowing in a digital hive. Compile the code, let it all align. Paul and Richard, making software shine.
1:27:59 - Leo Laporte
You could see little kids. Yes, okay, that'll do.
1:28:01 - Paul Thurrott
I could see older people doing this too Like literally songs that are unique, whatever that means. I can't get it to stop. This is the dance remix version Bum bum bum, bum, bum, bum.
1:28:16 - Leo Laporte
I just turned down the sound.
1:28:19 - Paul Thurrott
It'll just keep going. You're going to forget. You did this in two hours later. You're going to turn your phone on it's going to be still doing.
1:28:24 - Leo Laporte
Why are you making that horrible sound?
1:28:24 - Paul Thurrott
It's like what is this Freebird? You're making that horrible sound. It's like what is this Freebird? Why is this still going on? It's unbelievable.
1:28:31 - Leo Laporte
But remember when we did this with Copilot ages ago for Mary Jo and it was terrible oh yeah, we've come a long way.
1:28:40 - Paul Thurrott
The quality is better, for sure, but you plugged in Sora, so Sora is the OpenAI Sona Suno, yeah, suno, I'm sorry, yeah so that's actually a very good music generator. Okay, but they actually plug into it. I mean, that's.
1:28:53 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you could see that there was a list of things I could connect to. It was a little iffy because remember I said, oh, you wrote those lyrics, Could you now have Suno set it to music?
1:29:01 - Alexa+
And it said no, I can't do that tried again.
1:29:05 - Leo Laporte
I said well, can you write a little song about paul and richard, then dot net framework. And well, you, you heard what happened. Yeah, I did, yeah that's exactly.
1:29:12 - Paul Thurrott
I think. If rich and I got together to make a song, that's exactly what it would sound, and so you know that's, uh, you know that's where we would go so you know it would be amusing.
1:29:22 - Leo Laporte
You know one of the main reasons kids use alexis to get it to play fart songs and poop songs, obviously, and um and I can totally see a kid saying write me another poop song all the time right, sure, maybe suno wouldn't do that. I don't know.
1:29:39 - Paul Thurrott
Shall I try no no, I, I won't, you can I?
1:29:44 - Leo Laporte
I don't know but again, that's not because it's doing it.
1:29:49 - Paul Thurrott
You mentioned that you put it on, you put it on brief mode and it still says okay, you want me to do dot dot dot this?
1:29:56 - Leo Laporte
I can't stand that kind of interaction we're talking a little bit about this yesterday, and I do think that part of what's creepy about AI is mostly that the people who are making these AIs like well, now, Amazon, but also open AI or antisocial robots they want it to sound. They want it to sound more human. That's where they're going wrong.
1:30:21 - Paul Thurrott
They don't know what humans even are.
1:30:23 - Leo Laporte
Have you seen Sam open? That's where Uncanny Valley opens up, because they don't sound human, they just sound like they're simulating human. But if you think about robots in the movies back in the day, like I was even saying how 9,000, it had a human voice.
1:30:37 - Paul Thurrott
but it was somehow more acceptable.
1:30:40 - Richard Campbell
It was it was? It was sounding like a computer. I think they've all watched her and they want their thing to sound like. That's where they.
1:30:53 - Paul Thurrott
I think they're going wrong because it's uncanny valley, you can't look. It can only get better, it will improve. I get all that stuff but, like I, I think we're in. We're in the point now where maybe people don't trust it. Maybe the idea is it's reading it back to you because it wants you to make sure it's going to do what you just asked, whereas maybe that's probably right right, but at some point it will just.
It getting it wrong will be more rare than it getting it right, or whatever, I don't know. I just I can't. I hate it so much.
1:31:16 - Leo Laporte
I just, it makes me crazy, yeah, Well, yeah, I wish.
1:31:19 - Paul Thurrott
yeah, I don't know, it could be to say ADHD or something, but like you know, when there's something going on.
1:31:25 - Leo Laporte
No, you're not alone. Do it. It's annoying. Yeah, I don't like it. Okay, here's a song for the kids in our audience.
1:31:37 - Alexa+
Why does it always sound like that? The bass line, shaking the floor, dropping beats like you've never heard before, rattles in one hand, diapers on the other, grooving like a DJ who just discovered color? That was a request, sorry.
1:31:59 - Paul Thurrott
The beginning of that song. I don't know if it's changes or leave. It's like the yes song where it's like I can feel no sense of measure, like it's got that little Syncopate, like that whatever you call that the little twinkle sound or whatever. Maybe it's changed, I don't know, it doesn't matter, but all right, all right, it's a weird it's a weird sound.
1:32:16 - Leo Laporte
It's anyway. There's alexa plus for you wow, I'm enlightened.
1:32:23 - Paul Thurrott
I don't know, can I rub my brain with soap? Is that a thing?
1:32:27 - Alexa+
like. Is there a way like?
1:32:30 - Paul Thurrott
god, how do I?
1:32:34 - Leo Laporte
that's awful, oh, it's so awful I take it you're not going to sign up, right?
1:32:39 - Paul Thurrott
away. I'm gonna go play call of duty and kill some people. I can't? I just need to get this out of my brain like it's terrible I won't do anymore, I'll stop right?
1:32:47 - Leo Laporte
no, it, it's just not you, it's just well. Yeah, but I am, it's like me. I've never bottle. I am invoking the genie.
1:32:55 - Paul Thurrott
Yes, I yeah, yeah, the genie apparently the genie has had has had trauma or something, but okay, Anyhow. Anyway, that's all I have for AI, though, so I mentioned the Gemini base.
1:33:08 - Leo Laporte
That's all AI has, for you as well, that's for sure yeah, we're going to leave each other for dead. Aren't you glad you tuned in. Today, ladies and gentlemen, you're watching Windows Weekly with Paul Therod and Richard Campbell.
1:33:20 - Paul Thurrott
Today's therapy session was brought to you by-.
1:33:23 - Leo Laporte
We're watching Leo drive Paul out of his gourd.
1:33:32 - Richard Campbell
You know what would refresh Paulul, make him feel so much better a little bath, a bath or an xbox segment oh yeah, oh, back to uh a little.
1:33:41 - Paul Thurrott
Um. So I got good news and I got bad news.
1:33:44 - Richard Campbell
Oh, which one do you want first?
1:33:47 - Paul Thurrott
it's all bad news, so you might as well start with the bad news so I've been hearing for a couple of months now about massive layoffs coming to the xbox org, which I'm not even sure it's called xbox anymore, but microsoft games, whatever but the july layoffs are going to reach deep.
1:34:03 - Richard Campbell
Yep, and they're going to do more layoffs?
1:34:06 - Paul Thurrott
yep, yeah. So originally microsoft was going to do these layoffs last week. They decided at the last minute not to. In fact, we kept waiting for it to happen Friday at 5 pm. I was like here it comes. But maybe the learning from Build was don't lay people off and then have a big event or whatever, because they had a big Microsoft or a big Xbox event, virtual one, a game showcase, and they announced that new ROG ally, xbox ally, you know, gaming handheld, and then, like, two days later, it's like and we're laying off 20,000 people or whatever the number is Would have been a bad form. So they're going to wait until July.
After July 1, which is what Tuesday, probably probably a Wednesday next week the start of Microsoft's fiscal year is a typical time to do this kind of stuff. We had heard previously also there's going to be layoffs in the sales org. The sales org stuff. That's been something that's been ongoing for years now. I know people who were laid off that were part of sales. Previously. That's been an ongoing concern. Previously that's been an ongoing concern. But yeah, I would imagine there's going to be layoffs across Microsoft, not just Xbox, not just sales and there will be a reorg. That is part of this as well. So yeah, I mean, I guess the $70 billion wasn't enough. I don't know what to say yeah, so that's the bad news.
The good news is there's a lot of good news. So last week we talked about that ROG Ally, xbox Ally and all the stuff that kind of went along with it, the stuff we've been hearing over time, the stuff that Phil Spencer and now Sarah Bond have explicitly said, and you kind of put the pieces together and it's pretty clear that the next Xbox platform is going to be Windows, essentially right, and that's smart for all the reasons we already talked about. This is smart. The last item I'm going to talk about in the Xbox section is the first that I've seen from Microsoft where they did not refer to Windows PC as Windows PC. So when they list out, like, where their games are, they'll say Xbox Series X and S, xbox One, maybe Game Pass across whatever platforms, steam. They used to say Windows PC or PC or whatever. Now they say Xbox on PC. Huh, first time Right.
So not so much rumored but leaked a month or so ago, two months ago, this notion of integrating other game stores into the Xbox app and that's part of that thing, where you have a handheld game but an Xbox console, as we'll call it in the future, windows PC, whatever where the Xbox app becomes your front end to games, not just Xbox games, but games, and they did officially announce they are testing it now in the Xbox Insider program, steam integration in the Xbox app and explicitly more stories are coming. We know Epic Games will be one of them so cool, and actually I think what's the Blizzard one. Battlenet will be one as well, but that's Microsoft-owned, I mean. That makes sense.
So, that's cool. There's also bizarrely so, after the announcement. I don't think it made it in time for the show last week, but micro, oh, no, it did. I'm sorry. There was a one minute video Sarah bought where she just kind of said we have this agreement with AMD, we're working on next gen Silicon, it's going to work across these types of devices and we'll see you soon. And then she kind of walked away.
Um, since AMD has come out with a bit more information, it's not a lot more other than this kind of instant resume capability you get on Xbox, which has frankly been a little buggy depending on the game, but is a cool capability where your computer, your device rather goes to sleep. Come back, bring up the game. It comes up kind of instantly. They're working with AMD to bring that to the PC platform, which by which I assume they mean xbox on pc or whatever. Um, so cool. Um, there's a. Really, if you speaking of people who look like robots, I love, uh, what? Lisa, what's her name for the ceo of amd? Elisa, sue, was that her name? Um, yeah, is uh, uh, clearly reading off of a piece of paper with words on it, a video of her talking about how great Xbox is, so you can enjoy that video. If you didn't think, alexa was really for the first time too.
1:38:15 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, she's like what is this thing Just?
1:38:17 - Leo Laporte
read it, Lisa Just read it.
1:38:18 - Paul Thurrott
They still make Xboxes, yeah, so, yeah, yeah, in fact, you make the hardware for them. So so, there, kind of cool. Um, I, I, it's amusing to me. Uh, we've been doing what we've been doing the show, what is it? 20, 18 years? Is that right? Is that 18, 19 years? I don't know, a long time. Um, you would think of the recurring themes that, like, what would number one be? It's not what you would guess it is.
Microsoft is trying to make the xbox home screen faster and they're doing it again. So the June Xbox update is here. They're giving you customization features, more mouse and keyboard support for more games. Stream your own games now has 200 titles in it, pretty good. So, just like Xbox Play Anywhere, game Pass, et cetera. You know they're building that stuff out, that's, you know that's good platform level stuff, but still haven't figured out how to. Actually, I think they haven't figured it out. So, since the xbox 360 and remember the original blade ui they used to have, and then they did the panoramic windows 8 style and then they went to xbox one and they just have this like vertically yeah, vertically right, yep scrolling ui like we have today. Same thing. It's always been really slow. They haven't really never figured it, and maybe that's the real reason to move into the PC. So we got this, we can make this thing fast. Um, maybe we're right in assembly language or something, I don't know. Uh, anyway, that's here.
So if you have an Xbox, you probably already got it. Um, there is a limited edition $400 version of MetaQuest. Uh, three S for Xbox. It's not for Xbox, it's just colored a little bit like an Xbox. It's whatever. I don't know. I'm kind of over the like giant thing, facehugger, whatever I have been using. I wish I could. I forgot the name. I should go look this up. I have a pair of those like these classes where you plug it in USB and it's an external monitor, right, right. So you can plug it into a phone, you can plug it into a tablet PC, whatever you have, and it becomes a screen. And I guess I haven't done this yet, but I could imagine you're on a plane, maybe you watch a movie that way, cool.
I decided to play Call of Duty the other day with this thing. It worked, it wasn't nauseating. But if you think about, uh, playing a game on a screen, so this screen is big. So if, if, if, I'm playing on a 15 inch laptop. Maybe the screen is that size, but it looks like a 27, maybe even a 30 inch screen at the same distance. You know, it's pretty, it's pretty good, um, slower frame rate, whatever, but it's playable, it was fine. But the thing I didn't really realize is like how much I move around because it the screen moves with your head right because it's not planted in space, it's you know, it follows you, yeah. So I'm sitting here, like you know, doing this stuff like an idiot and this thing is like and it's like it's like a roller coaster and I'm like, yeah, I'm probably not going to do that again. It was, it's a little, a little much but um but.
1:41:06 - Richard Campbell
But if you use it for a while, don't you think your play style would adjust?
1:41:10 - Paul Thurrott
I don't know that I could play it long enough to adjust. I mean, it's like, um, I don't, yeah, maybe, okay, maybe. I mean part of my problem is, like you know, I wear contacts so I can't hey, I can't wear my glasses. They're literally our glasses. Um, they have little dials. You can adjust the um, you know, the focus or whatever so on, without contacts, and it doesn't adjust enough for my vision to actually see clearly, so I can't do that. But the way my contacts are is they're configured to program to whatever to be. One is good for close and one is good for far right. Your eyes just kind of make that adjustment.
So if I'm reading the screen, like I am now, or driving or whatever it is it's, I don't really notice it. But with this thing I have to be like you know, it's like you really want to get it right. So you kind of you're like, okay, that's clearly, okay, that's cool. And you kind of set it all up and then it goes into the game and you're like, oh god, it's just, it's a little weird, but I, I like the idea of it. I bet if I was younger maybe I, I think some people would be into this. So this meta quest thing, again, it's more of a the facehugger, um, you know thing, not glasses, but and maybe that's better for games, though you know you would you'd block out the the world. You know you're seeing the screen, you're not. Well, I don't actually know, I don't have one, but I don't know if it's ar, where you can also see the room, or if it's just the vr type thing. I think for a game you'd actually kind of want to block out the world, frankly.
1:42:28 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, and that's part of the problem, right, because you want to immerse yourself in the world you're playing in.
1:42:33 - Paul Thurrott
Yep, Yep and yeah. So I was playing Call of Duty, but in my living room with the fireplace. It's not right at all.
1:42:42 - Richard Campbell
Yeah.
1:42:43 - Paul Thurrott
It's interesting. Anyway, this thing is limited edition. They're only made like eight of them. So if you go to Best Buy, there's going to be one wherever you live. Buy it if you want it. It's green, you know, if you like Xbox stuff, whatever, I don't think it has any special features or anything and it's like a hundred bucks more. It's a hundred bucks more, but it's green. Leo, I don't, oh, okay, I don't think a lot of people are going to. Yeah, yeah, it's the super fans.
I guess it's cool, it's fine, I don't. I don't mind that they did.
No it's great. Back in, let's see how old is. This game I want to say came out last summer. There was a game called Shenua's Saga, Hellblade 2, which is the sequel to Hellblade colon Shenua's Sacrifice, or whatever. I played most of this game I didn't actually finish it. The second one that is and I'm trying to remember, I guess on PC at the time.
So this past spring they announced it would be coming to PlayStation 5, which of course, is freaking everyone out, and then this past week they announced the timing of that, but also that they're releasing an enhanced version of it across platforms. So if you already have the game or if you have Xbox Game Pass, you'll get this new version with all the new stuff as well. And one of the new things, if you're an Xbox guy, is it actually runs at 60 frames a second on the Xbox Series X, whereas the previous version of the game, the current version, only runs at 30 frames, regardless of the console. So that's kind of cool. The date is August 12th. It will be, I think. It's $50 on PlayStation Free update for everyone else.
If you have it, it's on sale now. So if you don't have it yet and you were interested, if you want to get it on Xbox. It's 40 bucks instead of 50, which is kind of cool. But again, there's a bunch of new stuff. There's a four-hour commentary, new photo mode, blah, blah, blah, whatever Soundtracks, all that kind of stuff. It's cool. If you are a PlayStation guy, I don't even want to talk to you. But if you had the previous game, which was on PS4, you actually get this new game for free too. So there's like these avenues by which you can just get it for free, which I think is kind of cool.
1:45:00 - Richard Campbell
It's only a year old game. Yeah, what's the spread between the first one and the second one? It's like five years, six years At least.
1:45:07 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, and it's a small company. Microsoft owns this company, I think it's called ninja theory, and they they released some kind of a shooter in the middle. That didn't went nowhere.
I don't remember the name right. It didn't go back to the genre, so they kind of went back to the formula that works. It's kind of a. The second one is a bit um, it's almost like a. It's like there's kind of a health element to it, like this woman has been scarred by her adventures or whatever and she's walking around hearing voices. It's a little literal but, but it's a good game. It looks good and I was playing it on PC, but now I guess on Xbox or whatever console it will you know, be better, I guess, than it was. So there you go, so layoffs, but you know.
1:45:52 - Leo Laporte
But also games, yeah, and headsets yeah, see what xbox looks like going forward you know, I presume the layoffs will be in the hardware side when times are tough. Uh, that's when people's turn to things like games and exactly get it to get out of reality times are tough for the employees, but the company's making record profits yeah, that's. It's a little frustrating.
1:46:09 - Paul Thurrott
I'm trying to understand Largest valuation on the planet.
1:46:11 - Alexa+
Yep, I really, really need to understand this.
1:46:13 - Leo Laporte
I really believe it has to do with the phasing out of this deduction, the Section 174 deduction.
1:46:19 - Paul Thurrott
Really, do you think that's all it is?
1:46:20 - Leo Laporte
I don't think they use it. Well, they did use it. They can't use it anymore more. So the idea was you could write off r&d costs in the same year as you and you know this is a business owner, richard.
1:46:31 - Richard Campbell
Whenever we can I did it in canada I've done it in canada, but yeah, whenever we want to appreciate something if we could do it in the same year.
1:46:37 - Leo Laporte
That's the best thing to do. So if you can write off programmers salaries as r&d in the year that they are, you're paying it. I did, it's just a tax credit right like it was.
1:46:46 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, it's a write-off.
1:46:48 - Leo Laporte
So I made a million dollars. But I can write off half a million dollars in programmers. That means I only made half a million dollars. I made ten thousand dollars. But my that's being phased out and they want people and they're now going to have to amortize it over five years, depreciate it over five years. That's a significant tax bill and the theory is that this significant tax bill.
1:47:10 - Paul Thurrott
This is a numbers play Like, in other words, someone's looking out and saying okay, so the CFO's going eh eh, these people are too expensive now, and it would explain I mean.
1:47:21 - Leo Laporte
So the phase out began in 2022. And it would explain why, all of a sudden yeah, in 2022, you started to see these massive layoffs for every tech company, regardless of their profitability. It's not like google is suffering or microsoft is suffering.
1:47:37 - Richard Campbell
We definitely were dealing with over hiring during the pandemic and that, and but it's it's.
1:47:41 - Leo Laporte
It's exceeding the amount that they hired in the pandemic, but it's also not enough people to make a difference.
1:47:47 - Richard Campbell
Right, it's a few thousand. It's not enough money, it's not enough people.
1:47:52 - Leo Laporte
You know, six thousand layoffs is less than a billion dollars a salary yeah, but if you're writing a billion dollars off this year versus a billion dollars over five years, that is significant yeah, and once again it's.
1:48:03 - Richard Campbell
You're only half of that. You know the numbers and you grow and you were grossing 70, like there's other places that save money. I agree, and, more logically, you put those people to work, but you also have.
1:48:14 - Paul Thurrott
If you're microsoft, you have 20 plus billion dollars a quarter you're spending on ai. You know capex ai related infrastructure for amazon.
1:48:20 - Richard Campbell
10 billion stock buybacks.
1:48:21 - Paul Thurrott
You're not hurting for cash yeah, well no, but I just just balance.
1:48:26 - Leo Laporte
There is a though, in big tech, now that these CFOs are becoming more and more powerful. You look at what Ruth Porat was doing at Google. She was really the person deciding what lives and dies.
1:48:39 - Richard Campbell
And I think that is a hangover of the pandemic.
1:48:40 - Leo Laporte
She's like eh, it's also part of the financialization of tech, which is, I think, a big problem, and it's because of the overheated venture capital market and so forth. But anyway, I don't know enough about this to know anything.
You know, I should ask somebody like Alex Wilhelm and get the straight skinny on it. Anyway, this would be a good time for us to beg for money. Our R&D costs are also through the the roof and we don't get half off. We don't deduct nothing. Um, I think it was 100 deduction, richard, they, they were able to deduct it 100 in the year that it was incurred. I mean it was. This was all back in 2017, when they wanted to do a big tax break, that big tax bill from 2017, and congress couldn't make it revenue neutral. So they came up with this. They said, well, all right, but we'll make it revenue neutral in five years. That's how they got past. They had congressional rules. They couldn't do it unless it was revenue neutral. So they said, oh, it will be in 2022, that that's when this thing will be phased out, and I think I don't know.
1:49:52 - Richard Campbell
Then the logical push would be to get developers out of North America right, yes, and maybe that's what they're doing.
1:49:58 - Leo Laporte
I mean, they're firing developers, right, they're firing, they're that's what.
1:50:01 - Richard Campbell
But they're also letting them go outside of North America too. Well then, that I don't know about.
1:50:05 - Leo Laporte
Yeah than that I don't know about. Yeah, yeah, uh, anyway, that's just my theory.
1:50:12 - Richard Campbell
I don't know nothing about nothing, so don't listen to me. You, you want to believe there's a plan, leo.
1:50:15 - Paul Thurrott
There has to be.
1:50:16 - Leo Laporte
They're not going to just I mean, yeah, there has to be it's going to be the cfo saying yeah, cut costs for some reason, yep yeah, which is except these are not enough costs to cut.
1:50:27 - Richard Campbell
This seems more like keep the workforce afraid, so they'll work harder. The beatings will continue until productivity increases.
1:50:32 - Paul Thurrott
I feel like this is a known bad strategy, though that blows my mind. If that's what it is.
1:50:39 - Leo Laporte
It does. It seems really evil. To be honest, it's very short-sighted. This is why we have the club, because this all started four years ago when COVID was raging and we got a little nervous, frankly, about our bottom line as advertisers started to pull off. You know their advertising in droves and Lisa said you know we, we cannot live on advertising alone. So we started club twit as a way for you, as our listeners, to support us, and it's actually been really successful. I didn't imagine it would be this successful.
We now I'm very pleased to say, thanks to you, club Twit members, are covering about 25% of our operating costs with membership. That gives us a lot of cushion. We don't have to lay off people. We haven't laid off people in some time. Now, thanks to that, we can actually expand the number of shows we do. We're doing our best to tighten our belts. That's why we shut the studio down, that's why I'm working in my attic, but at the same time, it really is nice to know it's, in a way, it's also a vote of confidence. In that way, it's feels really good for us at twit all of us to see so many great club members. Thank you, if you want to join the club. We try to make it a benefit to you. There's a lot of things that club members get, of course, chiefly ad free versions of all the shows, cause I've never been one to charge people after they give us money, so you don't hear any ads. I mean, once we get your membership 10 bucks a month, that's it. We don't need to play any ads for you. You also get a lot of special programming and that all happens in our Club Twit, discord, the Discord. You don't have to join the Discord, but I strongly encourage you do, because it's a great hang. There are some super smart people in there, really fun people to hang out with. It's become my primary social network. But also we do things in the club. For instance, all the keynote speeches are now club only. Uh, a month ago we did something with dick de bartolo, kind of talking about the giz whiz and 20 years of giz whiz, and what does happen is, after a month goes by, we release it to the public. So you can now see that on our YouTube channel, but for the first month that's club exclusive and we put those on the TwitPlus feed Coming up tomorrow actually no, today, sorry right after Intelligent Machines, scott Wilkinson's Home Theater Geeks, a special club show that we do with Scott, all about av is going to have his q a, his regular q, a special with the chat room.
So if you're in the chat, if you're in the discord, stick around for that. After intelligent machines, I'm very excited about what we're going to do on friday. This is fairly far afield, but that's one of the nice things. The club lets us do stuff like micah's crafting corner. That isn't strictly tech, uh, but we think it's fun for the club and and the response has been good. So friday it's going to start at noon pacific.
On friday we're going to talk about music and we're going to start with digital music. Uh, we interviewed a couple weeks ago stephen witt about his latest book, but then I saw that he'd written a book in 2015 called how Music Got Free, which is an incredible book the story of MP3s, piracy, the move to digital and what it did to the music industry. It's really interesting. So he's going to join us from noon to one to talk about digital music and then one of my oldest friends, norman Maslow, who runs a YouTube channel called Mazzy's Music, is going to intervene and say tell us how great vinyl is. He runs a YouTube vinyl channel. He has a massive record collection always has, and so it'll be kind of fun to look at digital versus analog music. That's this Friday for the club, 12 pm it starts. It goes 12 to 2 Pacific time.
Our AI user group is not the 4th of July, it's going to be July 11th, the second Friday. That's where we really get hands-on and many of our club members are doing some really amazing things with AI. I want to get Dr Du in here. He's created an AI profiler, a local AI agent. I think it's local, maybe not that he can ask about any person and he builds a dossier and he showed me the dossier he built about me and it was amazing. It was really detailed and right on. Anyway, maybe we can get. He's defending his PhD today, so he's not around, but if Dr Du will join us on the 11th, I'll try to get him and certainly Anthony and I will be there. We'll talk about how we're using AI. We've got our regular photography session July 11th also that's right before that Photo time with Chris Marquardt. The photo assignment this month is quirky, so it'd be Chris Marquardt and then our AI users group, micah's Crafting Corner, is back on the 16th.
That's just a sample of the kinds of things you get as a member of club twit 10 bucks a month, 120 bucks a year. There are family plans, there are corporate plans. Please do us a favor, subscribe, join the club. We'd love to have you as a member. It also helps us out a lot and I think it's going forward probably the future uh of uh of everything we do here. You know, I don't. I think it's going forward, probably the future of everything we do here. I think it's nice, if we can you know I always wanted to do it have our audience support the shows right and put them on the air.
Twittv slash, club twit. And thanks in advance to all of you and a special thanks. Of course, club members aren't hearing this, because club members don't hear any ads, but for those who are listening on the live stream, thank you Makes a big difference to us. On we go. We're now at the back of the book. That's the moment where we talk about tips, tricks and booze. Yes, we got a good booze this week, but we'll start with Paul Theriot and his tip of the week.
1:56:37 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, so Microsoft made that announcement about the extended security support program, whatever it's called 30 bucks for the first year. If you're an individual, you get it for free. Don't, don't, don't, don't pay for this. Don't ever pay for this. Why would you pay for this? Do not pay for this. Don't ever pay for this. Why would you pay for this? Do not pay for this. Use your bonus bucks. Yeah well, I don't know if you have Microsoft Rewards points or not. Maybe I'll spend some time and look and see if I have any. I must have something. I don't know.
1:57:06 - Leo Laporte
Where do you go for that? Bingcom, or yeah?
1:57:08 - Paul Thurrott
probably, I don't know. I'm going to look it up, I don't know. I don't do anything like this. I mean, there are people who use Bing and Edge and stuff. Oh wow.
1:57:20 - Leo Laporte
I have 58,000.
1:57:22 - Alexa+
There you go. How many do I?
1:57:23 - Leo Laporte
need 100?
1:57:24 - Paul Thurrott
1,000.
1:57:32 - Leo Laporte
So you could get an extra year of security updates for Windows 10 across 58 computers. Wow, is that really? I get an amazon gift card. I can get candy crush. Wow, candy crush is 1500 points. It's cheaper to get the security updates than it is to get candy crush.
1:57:46 - Paul Thurrott
Uh yes, this is the point. They're trying to really slipstream this. But you know what? Here's the thing. Um, look, if you're using windows 10, there's a. But you know what? Here's the thing. Look, if you're using Windows 10, there's a reason. You know, if the reason is I can't, it won't, let me update to Windows 11, stop. You can do this right now. It's very easy. I've kind of tiptoed around this in the past a little bit, but I'm just kind of tired about how insistent people are about being licensing experts for individuals. There are Windows keys available online cheap.
If you have something like Parallels and a Mac and you want to run Windows 10 to 30 bucks, who cares what happens if they take it away? Paul, who cares if they take it away? They're not going to, but who cares? You don't own the software anyway. What are you worried about? It doesn't matter, it's a thing. Who cares? So yeah, just don't worry about it. There are plenty of workarounds for all the blockers. Anyone can install Windows 11. Just move on. You know, if, for some reason, you have to use that computer that is for some reason incompatible with Windows 11, there's a 99-point-something percent chance it's going to work. Fine. Don't worry about it. Just don, there's a 99 point something percent chance it's going to work fine, don't worry about it, just don't sweat it.
1:58:56 - Richard Campbell
Just don't sweat this one. It's not a big and let's face it if there's a major you know significant security breach, they're going to push that patch out to everybody.
1:59:00 - Paul Thurrott
Anyway, yep, hey. I mean, if you want to be really cheap, just put it in the insider program and just update it for the rest of your life. Who cares? You know like you get this, you know you'd have to you eventually you'll have to install updates, but I mean it just doesn't matter. This is the silliest thing to worry about.
1:59:15 - Leo Laporte
Or I could get a $25 Burger King coupon.
1:59:17 - Paul Thurrott
I love how laser focused you are.
1:59:20 - Leo Laporte
Well, now that I know I have so many points, where is this Bingcom slash rewards? There you go. You know what? That's because I got Game Pass right. I mean, I haven't done anything else to earn it, we all got game pass right?
1:59:32 - Richard Campbell
I mean, I can't. I haven't done anything else to earn it.
1:59:34 - Paul Thurrott
We all know you secretly bang leo, you have more points than I do. I only have 8 000 points I don't understand what can I do with these points? What did I do to get these?
1:59:42 - Richard Campbell
points god it's like, uh, these points make me sad this is bizarre.
1:59:49 - Leo Laporte
There's a lot of stuff you can get, you know not for me.
1:59:53 - Paul Thurrott
I I have enough for a $5 Amazon gift card.
1:59:55 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I know it doesn't convert too much and some change.
2:00:01 - Paul Thurrott
That tells me that the value of the security thing is a dollar.
2:00:05 - Leo Laporte
Right.
2:00:06 - Paul Thurrott
It's a dollar Right, Like that's all it is.
2:00:08 - Leo Laporte
Wait a minute. I can get some Dunkin' oh boy For 32,000 points. I can get some Dunkin' oh boy For 32,000 points. I can get a $25 Dunkin' gift card.
2:00:16 - Paul Thurrott
An Xbox Game Pass core membership.
2:00:21 - Leo Laporte
I don't even have enough. How is it that I have more points than you? I don't understand.
2:00:27 - Paul Thurrott
I don't understand either. I don't know. I don't really look at this. I don't really. It's all that bigging you're doing.
2:00:40 - Leo Laporte
I don't have enough to get one month of game pass I must have your points.
2:00:41 - Paul Thurrott
There must be some. There is a mistake here.
2:00:42 - Leo Laporte
Can I gift the points I I mean jeez, I can give, can I give?
2:00:44 - Paul Thurrott
you my points? I don't, please, I give them to someone who needs. Would you like my points?
2:00:48 - Leo Laporte
no, no, no come on, paul I mean take my points please but I yeah, I don't know, let don't say I get a microsoft gift card. Yeah, hundred dollar gift card. Oh no, I don't have enough points for that. I was gonna say a hundred dollar gift card, that's a hundred thousand points, but I could get a fifty dollar gift card. That's, that's, that's money, something, it's money top better off getting.
2:01:08 - Paul Thurrott
You should just get an amazon gift card, you know. There's no reason to congratulations.
2:01:12 - Leo Laporte
You added the audiophile badge to michael. I don't, I don't, I don't. I haven't interacted with any of this. Oh yeah, you earned this in october 2019 there you go into this in 20 days. This is pre-pandemic my lifetime points redeemed are 200 I must have redeemed. I have three badges, all of them from. I got some sort of clippy badge. Oh we, I pay for office. Maybe does that count. Maybe maybe I'm doing something. The dos badge I do. I have a toss badge.
2:01:49 - Richard Campbell
You added the badge, you know what you can't find to redeem the Win 10 extended support yeah.
2:01:56 - Leo Laporte
Well, it's not here yet, right, yeah, right, but it will be at some point, right? Where do you find it? By the way, I think I earned more points just sitting here. Oh, I see, that's lifetime points. I play Call of.
2:02:06 - Paul Thurrott
Duty every day. How is that not worth 10,000? Yeah, you must. This something. You're getting robbed. I go out of my way not to use this stuff. I just don't. I really don't care about this. I, I use the bing wallpaper.
2:02:17 - Leo Laporte
It's like where did.
2:02:18 - Paul Thurrott
How do you find out where yours came from?
2:02:20 - Leo Laporte
that's what I'd like to know. I don't think you can. My street count is zero. Yeah, uh, today's points has a point breakdown, but so you get okay. So here's some. You get it from bing search, which I never use, right, because you're normal complete daily offers shop to earn. I don't. I have no, by the way, there are.
2:02:43 - Paul Thurrott
There are people who do this semi-religiously and I'm sure to some degree this is a low level.
2:02:48 - Richard Campbell
You know, credit cards point type, it's like it's like honey, yeah, it's fine, it's fine it's fine if you need to give them feed the data machine yeah, I must be feeding them, something you can feed the data machine I don't even have a windows pc, paul, I need to admit it.
2:03:03 - Paul Thurrott
I guess I have in previous years entered some sweepstakes to earn like a gift card or a surface computer or something I don't know.
2:03:11 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, you can do that, you can take those points in yep, but I mean I them to earn?
2:03:15 - Paul Thurrott
obviously never never won anything. I mean, I did get a.
2:03:21 - Leo Laporte
I spent 10 000 points twice and got 10 xbox gift cards oh look, if I put in 100 points, I can enter a sweepstakes for 5 000,000.
2:03:32 - Paul Thurrott
This goes back to 2012. I know my first thing in here is entry for Xbox 360 prize pack and connect Star Wars. That's crazy. I've just bought 25 sweepstakes tickets 100 gigabytes of OneDrive storage for one year. That was probably meaningful back then. This is 2014.
2:03:53 - Leo Laporte
Now I'm using my outlook address for this, so it'll be very interesting to see what happens. I don't know. Oh, I'll, I'll, I'll. I wonder when they do the drawing. I've entered to win.
2:04:07 - Richard Campbell
Sure you didn't enter to lose. You can't win unless you enter.
2:04:12 - Paul Thurrott
I don't know Okay.
2:04:15 - Leo Laporte
Anyway, okay, anyway, okay, is that it? That's the Xbox segment. That was my tip.
2:04:21 - Alexa+
Oh, that was your tip.
2:04:22 - Richard Campbell
At the back of the book yeah, who am I?
2:04:24 - Leo Laporte
What am I doing here?
2:04:25 - Paul Thurrott
How about an app?
2:04:26 - Leo Laporte
pick my friend, you know of JFK.
2:04:27 - Paul Thurrott
That's all I'm saying. So the app pick is Discord is being ported to a native ARM version, right, so it's not out quite yet. I think there are ways to get it now, but it will be out soon. So that's happening. And just a couple of like rapid things ProtonMail added integrated newsletter management Cool. Duckduckgo browser haven't heard a lot on that front has better scam protection. If you're an iPhone user, there's a new app. Oh yeah, from Adobe protection. If you're an iphone user, there's a new app. Oh yeah, from adobe, which has the mark lavoie guy. That used to be a google pixel. Yes, awesome, the pixel 4 thing when he's talking about computational photography. If you care about photography, a, look this thing up and b look at the app.
2:05:05 - Leo Laporte
It's, yeah, it's really interesting it also makes my iphone really hot yes, exactly because it's.
2:05:13 - Paul Thurrott
It's hammering the little, the neural engine or whatever working it's so hard.
Yeah, this is what this is, why my pixel is always so hot. It's the same thing. Yeah, you know, it's funny that it has that same effect. Uh, burn that phone up. If this thing had a fan, it would be worrying badly, you know, yeah, um, also on iphone, if you use google fi, uh, voice voicemail is moving from the fi app into the phone app on the iPhone, finally, like 12 or 10 years later. So that's cool. So the only major feature missing from Google Fi on the iPhone is that network switching thing, which requires some internal hardware that, like Pixels have and, I think, some Samsung phones.
2:05:50 - Leo Laporte
Oh, so that you can use more than just T-Mobile.
2:05:53 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, it switches back and forth between you and what's better.
2:05:56 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I use fire on a pixel. I don't use it on my iPhone.
2:05:59 - Paul Thurrott
I go back and forth, but it's you know, honestly, it's fine. And then I think, because of a massive password breach, which I'm sure you're going to talk about with Steve, if you haven't already, facebook is finally adding passkey support on their mobile app. So I haven't looked at this yet, but I don't want to do that. I really really, really hate the way that Facebook and the Facebook services like Instagram, whatsapp, whatever, do, like 2FA, because it's kind of random, from what I can tell, like sometimes we'll just text you, sometimes we'll be like I'm trying to send it.
2:06:30 - Leo Laporte
Sometimes you get a captcha when are the bicycles? That drives me freaking nuts.
2:06:33 - Paul Thurrott
Open WhatsApp would be like I'm trying. Sometimes you get a captcha. Where are the bicycles that drive?
2:06:36 - Leo Laporte
open whatsapp on some phone and it's like what's up? What are you talking about? You know?
2:06:38 - Paul Thurrott
so, like it's pasky, thank you finally. So, um, yeah, a bunch of stuff.
2:06:43 - Leo Laporte
Pasky isn't always great, though I was telling steve this yesterday. Yeah, I have pasky on my amazon account, right, and it still asks me for one one-time password, so I do the same thing.
2:06:53 - Paul Thurrott
I do the same thing, so I I think it's because of because I think at some point you set that up on your amazon account and then you added the pasky. So I think, now that you have the pasky, oh, I should turn it off. I haven't done it either. So that's I sign into amazon and so many different computers. I see this like almost every day it's so annoying.
2:07:10 - Leo Laporte
It's like I gave you my passkey.
2:07:12 - Paul Thurrott
You know who I am it's like one, clear, like the password manager brings the thing out. You're like nice and it's like I'm done. No, gotta go get your phone. I mean it feels like you know, it's like 129 bit security you know it's good it's, it's secure enough.
2:07:26 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, I don't need to yep, anyway, it's something. I haven't looked at my I haven't, I'm gonna, I'm looking right now, so I just yeah I think this every time.
2:07:34 - Paul Thurrott
But the thing is, when you're signing into amazon for some reason, you're trying to buy something. Get going. You know what I mean. So I'm like yeah I'm in a hurry.
2:07:39 - Leo Laporte
See, watch, get out of my way. Okay, I'm gonna do my passkey, yep. And now it says what.
2:07:45 - Paul Thurrott
So you should you know what you're not seeing right there, though hold on one sec before you. What you don't see there, which I see usually, is don't ask again on this PC. Oh, I don't get that.
2:07:56 - Richard Campbell
The greatest lie button of them all.
2:07:57 - Paul Thurrott
Yes, Well, that's. But that's curious because I see that every single time I do this.
2:08:02 - Leo Laporte
Okay, so that works. So let me see if I can turn off.
2:08:06 - Paul Thurrott
Yes, I have two-step on so I should turn it off. Yeah, but are you using a? Well, that's this authenticator app, though yeah is it um?
2:08:18 - Leo Laporte
I don't know why, I don't know why it knew it right. All right, uh, change disable, uh, disable, right, I got also clear my two-step verifications I'm not literally not telling you to do this. It's too late. I did it, okay.
2:08:33 - Paul Thurrott
Sorry to see you go, leo why did you close your Amazon account? You know, I told you they closed my account unilaterally they just.
2:08:47 - Leo Laporte
I got an email on June 16th said hey well, sorry this is going to turn into.
2:08:52 - Paul Thurrott
Paul told me dot dot, dot and I. I just want to be super clear. I have not done this myself because I'm kind of like I don't know, it's not that much of a big deal, but I but it is weird. Right, you have a pasky like why doesn't it just work?
2:09:03 - Leo Laporte
it shouldn't. Well, I'm gonna, so I turn it off.
2:09:05 - Paul Thurrott
Let's see, now I'm gonna log out go into like an incognito browser or something like um yeah, yeah, isn't that weird?
2:09:16 - Leo Laporte
that's so weird, I don't. I think you're right, though, that if I just turn it off, I should look again.
2:09:22 - Paul Thurrott
I feel, I really feel like you should have talked to steve about this, but well I did.
2:09:26 - Leo Laporte
What I asked him is is there any reason you could think of that it would want a second?
2:09:33 - Paul Thurrott
factor. No, it's because you configured it. Yeah, you did this.
2:09:36 - Leo Laporte
So let me log in an incognito window. You would pass that. It didn't even. It says you're already logged in, even though I'm incognito, so I'll have to. But, leo, let's go to a different browser.
2:09:51 - Paul Thurrott
That's what I'll do.
2:09:52 - Leo Laporte
That's supposed to obscure all of your tracks? No, it apparently doesn't do that. It doesn't do a lot actually. Amazoncom, not uk. Okay, sign in all right now. It wants my password. Yeah, of course it does, that's amazing I don't. That's amazing. I don't understand.
2:10:14 - Paul Thurrott
Yeah, that's not good, that's not.
2:10:17 - Leo Laporte
Well, I'm signed in. Well, did you get the?
2:10:20 - Paul Thurrott
No, the passgated thing didn't.
2:10:21 - Leo Laporte
No, maybe I turned that off too. Ooh, hey, at least I still have an account. Continue on, shall we do a run as radio? Let's do run as radio.
2:10:33 - Richard Campbell
We've still got a few.
2:10:34 - Leo Laporte
Oh, Paul's not done with his little. No, I'm done, you're done Okay.
2:10:39 - Richard Campbell
Runners. Ah, talking to my friend, april Yoho, who's been a regular on the show for quite a while and works for GitHub, and we were talking a bit about helping sysadmins understand all the new features that are in GitHub and actually start to take advantage of some of the older features. They've never really learned, perhaps like branching and merging, which is mostly focused on devs, but as PowerShell scripts and things are getting more complicated and more people are editing and utilizing them, then having a branch when you make changes and merging them back in is pretty compelling. It takes a while to learn how to do that if you do it the manual way, but if you use GitHub CodePoly it'll literally guide you through it.
It's not so deeply integrated into it. So that was an interesting idea that here's an LLM that'll help you use the main product better. But then we also switch over to that sort of agentic conversation of and the LLM will also help you write a better script in the first place, build out a test framework for it, you know, do all that kind of validation, you know that kind of thing. So yeah, just a broadening of the thoughts of hey, these tools will help you use the tool and do more with the tool.
2:11:43 - Leo Laporte
Very nice now.
2:11:45 - Richard Campbell
You promised us something last week I did and I still haven't opened it and it's it's got a crazy top on it oh, it's the leather top, the leather top. Yeah, and see, we're going to have to cut the stitches off of this to figure this out.
2:11:58 - Alexa+
And you're going to find out how much I like it.
2:11:59 - Paul Thurrott
It's like a.
2:11:59 - Richard Campbell
Frankenstein bottle. Yeah, so it's a first for me. I've never seen anything quite like this. But I also realized as I was digging into this In fact the first African whiskey I've talked about at all and so we always kind of, you know, when I did the Canadian, I talked a bit about the history of whiskey in Canada same for Japanese and so forth so I felt I had to do the same treatment. It was only fair, which just means a little more writing and a little more storytelling. Because I want to start with the terroir. I think the terroir is important and definitely one of the reasons why it's pretty challenging to make whiskey in a place like south africa.
Uh, first time we've talked about africa at all. So I mean right off the bat hey, you know we, we talk about neolithic peoples and things in northern england. This is the cradle of civilization. Here we've got evidence of homo sapiens in and around south africa for something like a hundred thousand years. Um, and so many different uh migration events and different people's arriving. The early people when they talk about south africa are the kohisan uh, where are the earliest peoples, although the bantu uh, which are more contemporary, show up around 300 a, and they also come with agriculture and a lot of practices that you would recognize there, along with things like sorghum, which came out of Central Africa and was brought down and grew just fine in South Africa as well. Of course, eventually the Europeans show up, and it was the Portuguese who got there first around the 14th century. The Dutch East Indy Company set up a settlement in the western cape in 1652, which made the british annoyed. So the british fought back and they gained control in that area in 1795, leading to a series of conflicts that culminate in the anglo-borough war of 1899 to 1902. The fallout of that ultimately results in what's known as the union of south africa, combining the four major states of south africa the cape, natal, trans, smile and the orange free state.
And now we get into more contemporary stuff, post-world war ii, the uh, when african and africanism sort of leads to apartheid, which we all were familiar with from the 80s and the 90s. Uh, the actual national congress had been around a long time, all the way, all the way back to 1912, where they were always focused on the fact that black South Africans were excluded from political power. This turned violent on occasion, and in fact one of those occasions resulted in the arrest of Nelson Meldown in 1962, who was then held in various prisons until 1990, when de Klerk released him and began the end of apartheid and ultimately leading to the multiracial elections of 1994, mandela winning, of course, writing a new constitution. And we get to the current history, which of course, has not been that simple either. It's been 30 years and they're having all of their own struggles Environmentally, the ecology.
This is a subtropical part of the world. It stretches from the most northern parts of South Africa about 22 degrees north. Remember that the Tropic of Capricorn is at 23.4, the Tropic of Capricorn being the line that is the southernmost angle of the sun when it's directly overhead on the December solstice. That's what measures the tropics, and anything above that tropic is considered tropical and below subtropical, and so forth down the line. So what this results in is a chunk of land spanning from about 22 to 35. And so in the southwest you have what we consider a Mediterranean climate and more subtropical. Up in the northeast you do have quite temperate conditions inland, mostly because of the altitude, well over 1,500 meters in many spots along the Drakensbergs and the like.
It's about a population of 63 million people, the original crop of that area, of course, was sorghum, which came a couple of thousand years ago, although wheat did eventually make its way down there. Remember, wheat was growing just fine in northern Africa in 5000 BC. That was part of what made the Egyptian empire so massive. But getting across the equator is pretty difficult, so we don't really see wheat until the Dutch bring it in 1652. Corn was brought by the Portuguese explorers from the Americas in 1655, and barley also grown there, but not near as much.
The area where I was spending most of my time in the Western Cape and around Cape Town is the big agricultural center. There's about two and a half million farming households, although two million of those are subsistence farmers, so farmers that the vast majority of their food is purely for feeding the family. Not that many. The proportion of commercial farming to subsistence farming is different. This is what we one of the terms, one of the measures we use when we talk about a developing nation is how much subsistence farming there still is. And if there is farming and there has been for thousands of years there is alcohol, and there are plenty of domestic alcohols in South Africa. One of the originals would be Mbokwathi, which is originally a sorghum-based beer, although quickly switched over to maize as it became more prevalent. Today you can buy commercial versions of this which are primarily a corn based beer, maize beer, more in the European stuff.
The whiplits is a kind of brandy and a big wine growing region in the Cape area, and so you have leftovers from making wine, you're going to make brandy and so then plenty of that. Power is another kind of brandy made from other fruits like peach and apricot. More in the north. And then most people know of a drink. If you know anything about african drink, especially south african, is amarula, which is sort of a play on a baileys. It's a creamy liqueur, kind of chocolate, but it's made with the marula fruit. The marula fruit famously ferments on the tree and there are great videos of elephants absolutely hammered, having chewed up the overwrite Amarillo. So if you ever see a bottle of Amarillo, you'll see a big picture of an elephant on it, because apparently it's the thing the elephants like to get drunk on.
Now, actually tracing the history of whiskey in South Africa is a little trickier, just because lots of people like to claim that they started it. None of it, many of it is not true. So again, where do you see whiskey distilleries appear On grain farms and so even in those temperate regions where grains grew fairly well. So this is the area around Pretoria. There was a fellow named Alois Hugo Nabapas who built a distillery in his area, and the only reason we know about this one because he eventually got caught and had to get a license. And in 1881, he got his license from the Transvaal government this is before South Africa was South Africa and he had the rights to distill liquor from corn and other sources. That distillery was called an Erskabriakin and it opened in 1883. Apparently the product was not great, but the miners didn't care, they just wanted cheap booze, although he eventually hired a cognac maker, a guy named Rene Sanhathigans, who came down and started improving the distillation processes, which all the while in fine, until the anglo-bora war of 1899, which essentially shut down booze production for the most part in south africa uh, south of the gathens actually fled back to france, although he did come back after the war was over in 1903, and he bought, was able to buy the stills from the cabrecan distillery at an at a bankruptcy auction and then took those stills, moved to stellenbosch, which is where the big one of the big wine growing regions in the western cape, bought a farm and to this day they still make a brandy there called santee's premiere.
Now, uh, on the other side. So that's up in pretoria, back over in the cape area, where there's lots of growing on going on. There was another distillery built by donald robertson and noel buxton this is in the 1960s, so much more current uh called they called it the because it was robertson and buxton. They called the r&b distillery. Uh, they weren't having a lot of success either. After spending 10 or so years on it and the stellenbosch farmers winery bought it up to experiment with different alcohols, they eventually started making a version of whiskey called the Three Ships. This is a very well-known whiskey, although the original product was primarily Scottish whiskey and then they added a little bit of their own spirit to it. That was the Three Ships because it was actually imported whiskey combining Scottish malt in their own spirit.
But jump back, because if you generally look at where the first distilleries in South Africa, you talk about the quote-unquote first distillery in Africa. I don't think any of this is true, but it's. You know the documentation. You'll find that James Sedgwick, his sons, opened a distillery in 1886. And then Sedgwick was a captain who worked for the British East in these companies. He was well known for his tea clipper. He was famously one of the first to get the new season tea to England in the clipper Undine. When he retired in Cape Town and opened an importing business for liquor and tobacco, his sons took it over in 1872 and they bought the buildings that made their distillery. It was likely already a brandy distillery.
Again, all of this is sort of muddied and they are quick to claim they were the only commercial distillery in Africa, but you know, you can't actually find any evidence of any bottles that they made at that time. We don't really hear about James Heiswick Distillery making whiskey until they actually move the production of three ships from R&B over to them and grow the production out. They also make another well-known South African whiskey called Bains, which is actually a grain whiskey. It's made from corn, so more like a bourbon. I tried both of these while I was down there. I would call them mixer whiskeys, like they're pretty basic and that leads us to this one. But they I wanted to be complete. We're talking can't talk about whiskey in South Africa. We're talking about three ships and Bains, both owned by the Cedric distillery, but this is Drayman's and this is a little.
This is a contemporary whiskey production, so this was uh made by a guy named moritz kalmeier, who is a beer maker, so he started out in the 90s, and a drayman, of course, is someone who transports and delivers beer and he, uh he started in the 90s making beer uh, out of pretoria region as well pretty common thing to do. And again they're. They're like 5 000 feet, 1600 meters in pretoria so high altitude it creates a temperate environment, even though they are pretty, uh, pretty common thing to do. And again, they're like 5,000 feet, 1600 meters in Pretoria so high altitude that creates a temperate environment, even though they are pretty far close to the equator. And these products are very successful. They make their money off of beer.
They make a series of different craft beers that people really like. One of the most popular is called Jolly Monk, which used smoked malt. They've always used two-row barley, which is very whiskey-friendly, and Draymond's also got into the winery business. So they make wine as well, and they age all their wine in Bordeaux casks that they buy from France, although they age their own wine from new, and that combination of being a brewer and a winemaker in 2006, it makes sense to start making whiskey because he already knows how to get good barley. He does it for his wine and for his beer and he buys barley malt grown in Swartland, not far from Pretoria, classic two row barley, although he does admit that he also imports peated malt from Scotland. Oh wow, wood mash tons. He only does a two mash run when most places do three stainless steel washbacks pretty classic stuff.
He uses his own unique blend of yeasts, primarily breweries use, because that's what he's got. It is a brewery after all, and that means he has a very long ferment to try and get the alcohol levels up, because breweries yeast tends to die young at a lower alcohol level than distillers yeast. Distillers yeast a bit more robust and you can get to eight, nine, ten percent before it starts to die off. Typically they're done at breweries. Yeast is done around seven percent and then he only has a single still. So he does a double pot distillation but he does it in the same still. So not a huge fast production run, not a lot of capacity.
But then he takes these Bordeaux casks that have already had his wine in them, does a bit of toasting on them. They're relatively small, about 225 liters. Typical would be 250. And does his aging there? And I've got a lot of details on their aging process. But I seen photos of the barrels, uh, sitting horizontally in racks, three high in what looked like very much a steel shed.
So now we get into the challenge of is it too hot, is it too cold, like? How's the temperature management there? Because getting it aged well is tough. I did read a good piece from drain about draymond's on their barrel reprocessing, that after they run a batch through then they shave the interior of the barrel and retoast it, and that reminded me of the taiwanese whiskey uh, uh, the um calivan whiskey, which also went through this particular shave and retoasting process. And they're also at about 33 degrees North as opposed to 33 degrees South. So they're dealing with a similar climate environment. So you've got all the steps here and I would point out this is a five-year-old but it's got a lot of color in it and that's probably because it's been aged in a red wine cast. It's got more color than actually the website shows.
2:25:31 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, yeah, and that might be a lighting thing here, it's just you know, right here, it looks like wine, it looks red I clipped the back of the leather I'll open it up and it looks like we have a screw top instead of that's disappointing.
2:25:44 - Richard Campbell
that's probably. You know you don't really need a cork top on it. There's office has right on the edges label. The label is the sole property of draymond's dist, so is that a proof that this is the original seal still on this? Interesting? All right, and it opens just fine, so I'm not too anxious about them using a cork push top versus a screw top. It actually will ship better with a screw top.
2:26:03 - Leo Laporte
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, A lot of wineries are using screw tops now.
2:26:07 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, yeah, it's hard to get cor. I just got a lot of alcohol in the room. This is only 43%. I got a boozy nose on it. Nothing wrong with that. I'm just a freshly that's a freshly open bottle in two ways about it. Hmm, wow, all right, not a lot of upfront burn. Got a little tingle on the lips Like hello, we're here. Lots of different fruits like a raisin, apricot and some heat going down. Fairly nice.
Wow, that's impressive for a five-year-old it's the only single malt whiskey out of south africa south yeah, they say it is, but I think what they've got is a lack of regulation down there, because every one of their different, the different distilleries I found made claims that would normally get them in trouble in any other place, right? So, wow, okay. Second drink is a little more potent. Now I'm getting flush. It was really quite sturdy.
2:27:05 - Leo Laporte
You're turning as dark as that whiskey no kidding.
2:27:09 - Richard Campbell
Wow, only a 43%. This is nice. You would not buy a five-year-old scottish whiskey, and in fact no scottish whiskey maker would allow a five to be on the label. It just wouldn't have enough. It would have no age declaration on it, uh, and I defy you to think this is only a five. It drinks really well now. Admittedly, it's much more extreme there, so aging is going to happen faster. I mean, there'd be a battle here with the temperatures as to whether they're losing water versus alcohol on those barrels.
But I also know bordero barrels tend to be thicker than bourbon barrels anyway, so they're actually better at holding on to their alcohol and holding on to their liquids in general than the uh, the bourbon casks and we talked about this last week where most whiskey you drink these days is spent time in bourbon barrels because they're just so plentiful and inexpensive. This hasn't. This has only been aged in French oak. That's kind of special, the same way that the Macallan sherry casks are only aged in sherry barrels. So what you got here is a remarkably original yet old school style of whiskey coming out of a really small producer outside of Pretoria, and that's pretty cool.
My friend, william gave me this bottle as I was finishing my two weeks in South Africa and he was part of the reason that I had such a good time there and William knocked it out of the park Like what a great find. We went to a whiskey bar and tried a little of the Baines and a little Three Sails and talked about those. There was no Draymond's for sale because they just don't produce that much. But then he got me one of these bottles and I did not open it until you watched me open it right now and it's a score. And at 500 South African Rand that's about $30 US. Wow, if you could find one, yeah, that's the trick, and I don't know. They don't produce enough to really be shipping anywhere, so if you're down there, I would grab one.
And there's a question here about whether the barrels are reused. Yes, the barrels are reused.
2:29:09 - Leo Laporte
They shave and retoast them between utilizations, which is one of the things they can do with older and larger web page actually has the most complete description of how they make it I've ever seen on any web page.
2:29:20 - Richard Campbell
For, yeah, while also leaving out some important details like getting the specs on the still. Then not a lot of information there, yeah, even just figuring out that they only have one still and so they're not doing. Yeah, a low wines, fine wines, but that again you talk about lack of regulation. Why do the scots use two stills? Because they have to use the still safe to control the flow of the alcohol so it doesn't get stolen. It's all about taxation. That's then the. The south african rules don't have any of those requirements and it makes a pretty good whiskey dude, this is a legit single malt absolutely
2:29:55 - Alexa+
service to your friends, wow thirty dollars a bottle.
2:29:58 - Richard Campbell
Yeah, keep it around. You're wrong. Problem is you're gonna have to make a trip to south africa to get it, that's the only problem is it a long flight it's worth it for the leather top? Yeah, but if you're down there, come home with one, and if you, if anybody's coming up there from there, tell them to bring one draymond's high veld single malt whiskey yep, and you can spread it out over three months if you can't afford the 30, which is good, uh, I would say the uh.
Oh, it sounds like somebody's got some total wine, has it somebody's really?
2:30:30 - Leo Laporte
which is great, yeah, if you can find it's 100 bucks, a total wine.
2:30:34 - Richard Campbell
Thank you, snoop mikey, it's nice all right, I don't get to yeah, uh, because you're already going to end up with a bain's. There are three sales and, like I said, I think there are more mixer whiskeys. I did try some older editions and you know it's.
2:30:46 - Leo Laporte
You struggle to make an older bottle of whiskey in a place like that yeah, I think you know the 100 bucks is because it's so unusual and rare. Yeah, you can charge what you want. It looks like I can go down to Culver City and pick one up on aisle 13, left bay 3. So it's waiting for you.
2:31:02 - Richard Campbell
Figure 100% import charge for sure. So now it's at $60, and then they mark it up, which usually is about 100%. So somewhere in the $100 mark seems reasonable. Yeah, not bad at all.
2:31:11 - Leo Laporte
Yep, richard, thank, color mark seems reasonable. Yeah, not bad at all. Yep, richard, thank you for a really good uh whiskey and for a really good show.
2:31:20 - Richard Campbell
You too, paul, I guess you you helped. I did some stuff. As I can tell, this show is actually about whatever paul wrote this week and me making fun of it, but I'm okay yeah, that's that.
2:31:26 - Leo Laporte
You're the color man, he's the play-by-play that's all.
2:31:29 - Paul Thurrott
We just do this on the phone for free, so it's not that different than our regular conversations really.
2:31:34 - Leo Laporte
Richard Campbell is at runhisradiocom that's where you'll find his podcast. It's not just Run His Radio, but NET Rocks with Carl Franklin, and he is home for the summertime, which is nice Good time to be home with your granddaughter and your kids, that's so good. Paul Theriot is at home in Lower Maccungee where he uh is uh can't wait to get back to mexico. I think. Yeah, two more, two weeks. Is it really hot right now in mpa? Oh yes, really hot it's. It's just miserable for the rest of the country I think what?
yeah, we have a balmy 72 degrees right now in petaluma. It's just pleasant, it's not good.
2:32:12 - Paul Thurrott
I'm sorry for everybody else, though it's suffering, it's only. It's only 93. I exaggerated, but feels like 103.
2:32:20 - Leo Laporte
Yeah it feels like 120. But yeah, thurot is at. Thurotcom makes sense, right? T-h-u-r-r-o. Double goodcom, become a premium member. It's triple good. So there, uh, if you want his books, you'll find them at leanpubcom, including the field guide to windows 11. See, he upgraded so you can too. And windows everywhere. A history of windows through its development frameworks. Great to have you both. We do windows weekly, of course, every wednesday, 11 am, pacific 2 pm, eastern, 1800 utc. Watch live, as our club members are doing in the discord. But you can do it in all of the various places youtube, tiktok, twitch, xcom, facebook, linkedin and kick every time you do this.
2:33:05 - Paul Thurrott
I just love that you know this I just, it's an amazing list of obscure services most of which I've never heard of but,
2:33:14 - Leo Laporte
it of. But hey, you're a star on all of those. So, no, it's good. No, take it seriously. Uh, we stream live because you know it's kind of fun for you know, get the chat in the two-way uh street and all that stuff. But you don't have to watch live by any means. Uh, you can get a copy of the show audio or video or both at twittv slash www. There's a link there to the YouTube channel that's dedicated to Windows Weekly. Give us a thumbs up, subscribe all the stuff the kids say, but like and subscribe, man. But the real reason it's useful is it's a great way to share clips and the best thing you could do is to tell a friend about Windows Weekly, send them a clip of something they'd be interested in and say, see, you could do is to tell a friend about windows weekly, send them a clip of something they'd be interested in and say, see, you could watch this every week.
It helps spread the word. And the whiskey clips you know the whiskey clips and we make a playlist of all the whiskey. Uh, kevin king does that we? I don't think we're caught up yet, but there is already a very lengthy playlist of new ones keep coming out every week.
2:34:08 - Richard Campbell
I don't blame them for yeah there's a lot of.
2:34:10 - Leo Laporte
It's a lot of work. You do a lot of work on these, which we appreciate it. Um, also, you could subscribe. That's probably the easiest thing. Get get your favorite podcast application and subscribe to windows weekly again audio or video, your choice. Uh, if you want. I would sure love it if you gave us a nice five-star review at the same time. That way, others will find the show as well. Thank you, you so much, everybody. We'll see you, winners, and you, dozers, again next Wednesday for Windows Weekly. Bye-bye.
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Jun 25 2025 - When Will Then Be Now?
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