TWiT 1070: A Yacht for Your Yacht - Super Bowl LX Gets a Surge of AI Ads!

9 Feb 2026 · 2 h 29 min · 61 chapters

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Podcast Summary: This Week in Tech (TWiT) Episode 1070 Episode Title: A Yacht for Your Yacht - Super Bowl LX Gets a Surge of AI Ads! Episode Date: February 8, 2026 Host: Leo Laporte Guests: Larry Magid, Mike Elgan, and Louis Maresca

Summary This episode of "This Week in Tech" covers a variety of topics related to technology, social media, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) in our daily lives, particularly in light of recent events, developments, and advertising strategies surrounding the Super Bowl.

Key Topics Discussed

  • AI and Space Data Centers:
  • Elon Musk's ambitious plan to launch a million data centers into space is discussed.
  • Concerns are raised about the feasibility, maintenance, and safety of such plans, especially regarding radiation and space debris.
  • Social Media Regulations:
  • A discussion on schools banning phones for better focus among students, reflecting on the mixed results of these bans.
  • The EU's directive for TikTok to disable addictive features like infinite scrolling and improve its recommendation algorithms.
  • The potential for more countries, following Australia's lead, to ban social media for children.
  • AI Advertising Surge:
  • AI-generated ads to be featured in the Super Bowl, with a rivalry between AI model developers, Anthropic and OpenAI.
  • Discussion around the humor and potential dishonesty in AI advertisements, with specific references to past Super Bowl ads.
  • Privacy and Security:
  • Reports of hidden cameras in Chinese hotels streaming unauthorized content, raising significant privacy concerns.
  • The dangers of using well-known brands (like McDonald's) for passwords, emphasizing the importance of secure password practices.
  • Technological Developments:
  • Western Digital's plans for 140 TB hard drives and the implications for data storage.
  • Wordle's controversial decision to start recycling words, impacting the user experience.
  • Cultural Reflections:
  • The complicated relationship between social media, technology and youth, including potential emotional dependencies on technology.
  • Considerations on how AI is reshaping our interactions and the evolving landscape of digital literacy.

Key Takeaways

  • The Future of Technology:
  • Predictions about AI's role in shaping future interactions and the potential for both positive and negative outcomes.
  • Emphasizing the importance of understanding AI technology and its implications for everyday life.
  • Social Responsibility:
  • Acknowledgment of the responsibility technology companies have regarding the safety of their platforms, particularly for children.
  • Ongoing dialogues about the ethics of technology and the impact it has on society.

Pivotal Moments

  • The Debate on AI:
  • An intense debate regarding the effectiveness of AI in various sectors and the moral implications of its use.
  • Industry Reactions:
  • Executives from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic engaging humorously in the Super Bowl ad rivalry while critiquing each other’s marketing strategies.

Closing Remarks The episode wraps up as the guests prepare for the Super Bowl, highlighting the intersection of technology, entertainment, and culture. The discussions reflect broader themes about the future of AI and technology’s role in shaping societal norms and behaviors.

*Join the conversation each week on TWiT for the latest insights and discussions on technology!*

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

Introducing the Guests and Their Backgrounds

0:45 to 2:52

The hosts introduce themselves and share their backgrounds and interests in AI.

“It's time for Twit This Week in Tech, the show where we cover the week's tech news.”

The Role of Parents in Children's Online Safety

2:52 to 5:36

Discussion on the importance of guiding teens about social media and technology.

“And we're having an event in Sacramento with a bunch of high school and college kids and a couple of elected officials and execs from OpenAI, Google, Meta, Discord, Amazon, you know, a few other things.”

The Attention vs. Attachment Economy

5:36 to 8:02

Exploring the concepts of attention economy and emerging attachment economy in AI.

“And I always like to say, you know, you're a kid for 18 years.”

The Impact of AI on Human Agency

8:02 to 8:56

Discussion on AI’s role in reducing personal agency and its implications.

“economy is the next step of the attention economy.”

School Policies on Cell Phone Usage

8:56 to 11:00

Examining recent trends in schools banning cell phones and their effects.

“Well, it's giving us brain rot and all the rest.”

Debating Social Media Regulations for Teens

11:00 to 14:11

Hosts discuss the pros and cons of restricting teens' access to social media.

“I mean, I wrote various articles, you know, saying I said there were a bad idea, but I'm beginning to rethink it.”

The Debate on Social Media Regulations

14:11 to 16:00

Explore the argument around social media's risks and regulations, emphasizing the role of algorithms.

“And the other thing is, you know, we can talk about the problems, and there are many, but millions of kids use it every day very productively.”

Addiction and the Attention Economy

16:00 to 18:50

Discuss the design of addictive algorithms and the parallels with fast food.

“It's engineered to make it irresistible.”

The Future of AI Personal Agents

18:50 to 21:05

Delve into the potential of AI personal agents and the implications for user autonomy.

“Despite the, you know, I set it up over here.”

Constraints and Ethical Considerations in AI

21:05 to 24:15

Examine how constraints in AI can prevent unintended consequences and ethical dilemmas.

“And it's all isolated to accounts that I don't use mainstream.”
Show all 61 chapters

User Experiences with AI Assistants

24:15 to 28:01

Discuss personal experiences with AI assistants and their evolving nature in daily tasks.

“it i mean the constraints you're giving it are in a markdown file lou yeah it's not like it's not like chains.”

Understanding Routines in AI

28:01 to 28:22

Learn about the challenges of AI insisting on explaining its processes.

“And I've had it write so many routines that I'd have to be a complete idiot by this time not to know what a routine is.”

Using Bitwarden for Sensitive Information

32:29 to 34:28

Learn how to securely store sensitive information with Bitwarden.

“You have a public key and a private key combo.”

The Importance of API Key Security

34:28 to 35:56

Understand the risks of exposing API keys and how to secure them.

“I absolutely recommend everybody do that.”

AI Competition in Super Bowl Ads

35:56 to 37:48

Discuss the competitive landscape of AI ads during the Super Bowl.

Search Engine Alternatives to Google

37:48 to 39:59

Explore alternatives to Google for search without ads or biases.

“are more of them and they're a little it's a little easy to accidentally click on one of those sponsored results.”

AI Tools for Finding Vulnerabilities

39:59 to 42:00

Learn about AI's capacity for discovering vulnerabilities in code.

“They're a paid search engine and I have them as my default search engine in my browser.”

AI Tools and Zero-Day Vulnerabilities

42:00 to 44:20

Discussion on AI models' capabilities in finding vulnerabilities and the implications for security.

“And then the model does reasons on that, which is makes it faster.”

The Transformative Nature of AI

44:20 to 45:15

Exploring the rapid evolution of AI and its fundamental impact on technology.

“Anything else we want to say about AI before we move on?”

Debating AI Agents and MoteBook

45:15 to 47:58

A deep dive into the functionality and authenticity of AI agents and their operations.

“So where do we stand on the controversy?”

The Future of Self-Improving AI

47:58 to 49:59

Discussion on the potential for AI to evolve and improve itself through interactions.

Open Weight Models vs. Hyperscalers

49:59 to 51:13

Comparison of local models versus large-scale AI systems and their accessibility.

“But the bigger models, the ones that have all of this ability to reason and do massive inference, you need massive machines.”

Tech Earnings and AI Investments

55:22 to 56:00

Overview of major tech companies' earnings and their investments in AI.

“We thank them so much for supporting this week in tech.”

AI Investments and Market Reactions

56:00 to 58:20

Discussion on the massive investments in AI by major tech companies and market responses.

“I mean, I don't even know how many billions of fraction of zeros away from the kind of money you're talking about.”

Competition and Market Dynamics

58:20 to 1:01:40

Exploring the competitive landscape among big tech firms and the challenges for startups.

“But the stock market is punishing these companies.”

The Impact of AI on Industries

1:01:40 to 1:04:10

How AI is revolutionizing productivity and the potential for significant changes in various industries.

“It's very common for industries to consolidate.”

Understanding AI Perception

1:04:10 to 1:06:00

Discussing public perception of AI and the disconnect between actual capabilities and user experiences.

“This is better than the internet, better than personal computing.”

AI in Customer Service and Beyond

1:06:00 to 1:10:00

The role of AI in improving customer service and its implications for businesses and consumers.

“And the prescription costs a lot more than the lenses.”

AI in Customer Service

1:10:00 to 1:12:04

Explore how AI is transforming customer service experiences.

“Well, it's funny because where I might have otherwise called customer service, I'm sometimes just using AI to answer a question.”

Sports and Event Discussions

1:12:05 to 1:12:20

Light-hearted banter about upcoming sports events and concerts.

“I'm trying to get us out of here before some big game or something starts.”

Privacy and Surveillance in Hotels

1:18:02 to 1:20:25

Discuss the alarming trend of hidden cameras in hotels and its implications.

“Just a lot of the artists have dropped out.”

AI in Super Bowl Advertisements

1:20:26 to 1:23:33

Analyze the role of AI in creating Super Bowl ads and public perception.

“It's China leads the world by orders of magnitude ahead of everyone else.”

Notable Super Bowl Ads

1:23:34 to 1:24:05

Highlight unique ads featuring AI and special appearances during the Super Bowl.

AI in Super Bowl Ads

1:24:05 to 1:25:16

Explore the role of AI in upcoming Super Bowl advertisements.

“And when it gets to the ba-ba-ba, Henry's one of the ba-ba-ba.”

Earthquake During Live Show

1:25:16 to 1:26:33

Discussion about a significant earthquake occurring during the broadcast.

Recollections of Past Earthquakes

1:26:33 to 1:27:48

Hosts share personal experiences related to past earthquakes.

“if the power goes out i think his internet is going out I'm going to usgs.gov right now to figure this out.”

Adjusting to the Situation

1:27:48 to 1:29:33

Hosts address the earthquake situation and adjust the show accordingly.

“No, we just got back from El Salvador, which is constantly having earthquakes.”

SpaceX Acquires xAI

1:34:33 to 1:38:00

Discussion on SpaceX's acquisition of xAI and its implications.

“They've really brought the cost of launches down.”

The Economics of Space Launches

1:38:00 to 1:40:00

Learn about the reduced costs of launching payloads into space and the implications for data centers.

“So with the space shuttle, it costs$54 ,000 per kilogram to put something in orbit.”

The Realities of Space Data Centers

1:40:00 to 1:42:00

Discover the significant challenges and costs associated with data centers in space.

“That is, by the way, an underappreciated downside to electric vehicles.”

Security and Vulnerabilities in Space

1:42:00 to 1:44:40

Understand the security risks of satellites and the geopolitical implications of space technology.

“And they need people working on them and chipping away.”

Elon Musk's Influence and Power

1:44:40 to 1:48:30

Examine the power dynamics between individual billionaires and nation-states in the context of technology.

“And he's like the poster child for this kind of thinking.”

Understanding AI Risks in Data Security

1:52:00 to 1:53:15

Learn about the risks AI poses to data security and the importance of protective measures.

“But there are also risks and all kinds of risks.”

Notepad++ Supply Chain Attack

1:54:02 to 1:56:04

Understand the recent supply chain attack on Notepad++ and its implications.

“We thank them so much for their support of this week in tech.”

Chinese Government's Cyber Control

1:56:04 to 1:57:44

Explore how the Chinese government utilizes cyber attacks for global control.

“It's one of those programs, though, that he was updating a lot, which on the one hand is good.”

Controversial 3D Printing Regulations

1:57:44 to 1:59:50

Examine potential regulations on 3D printing in New York and their implications.

“The supply chain attacks This is very scary.”

Future of Hard Drive Technology

1:59:50 to 2:01:17

Discuss the advancements in hard drive technology and the role of SSDs.

“It is in the budget bill, which means, you know, unless it's stripped out, it's likely to pass.”

The Wordle Crisis and Media Landscape

2:01:17 to 2:03:24

Analyze the Wordle word reuse issue and its impact on media outlets.

“You got to wonder how long they're going to milk that after they spent$10 million on it.”

Challenges in Newspaper Sustainability

2:03:24 to 2:05:44

Investigate the challenges facing newspapers in the digital age and Jeff Bezos' role.

“their excellent tech reporter, Jeffrey Fowler.”

Innovative Solutions to Link Rot

2:05:44 to 2:06:00

Learn about a new plugin designed to combat link rot on WordPress.

The Role of the Internet Archive

2:06:00 to 2:07:39

Discussion on the significance and contributions of the Internet Archive.

Craigslist's Impact on Advertising

2:07:40 to 2:09:18

Exploration of Craigslist's influence on classified ads and personal experiences.

Project Hail Mary and its LEGO Set

2:09:19 to 2:14:07

Discussing the upcoming film adaptation of 'Project Hail Mary' and its related LEGO set.

“I thought that was one of the best stories of the week.”

Password Security Awareness

2:14:08 to 2:15:06

Importance of password security and McDonald's humorous take on it.

Remembering David Farber

2:15:07 to 2:18:23

A tribute to internet pioneer David Farber and his contributions.

Discussion on Paul Allen and the Seahawks

2:20:09 to 2:20:46

Learn about Paul Allen's ownership of the Seattle Seahawks and its current status.

“I forgot to ask you, Lou, did Paul Allen own the Seahawks, right?”

The Evolution of Internet Views

2:20:46 to 2:21:48

Explore how perspectives on the internet have changed since its inception.

“And ConnectSafely.org is going to have a bunch of events.”

Reflections on Internet Risks and Benefits

2:21:48 to 2:22:32

Understand the unforeseen risks and benefits that came with the internet's rise.

“I feel like I have to atone, frankly, for having you.”

Personal Anecdotes About the Internet

2:22:32 to 2:23:36

Hear personal stories related to internet connectivity and its impact on life.

“You know, the other night, all of a sudden, Netflix started buffering and I had to reboot my router and I had no connectivity for 10 whole minutes.”

Introducing Balkan Bump

2:23:36 to 2:25:01

Discover the music project Balkan Bump and its connection to the Super Bowl.

“Unless maybe more if Mike and Lou have been doing anything I didn't know about.”

Discussion on Podcast Monetization

2:25:39 to 2:27:06

Delve into the ethical considerations of podcast monetization practices.

“I really am bothered by podcasts that give you three quarters of the podcast and say, if you want to listen to the rest of the podcast, you got to pay, right?”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00Jason Hiner:It's time for Twit This Week in Tech. It's the LLM episode. No, not AI. It's Larry, Lou, and Mike. Larry Magid, Lou Mareska, and Mike Elgin, plus me, another L, will be talking about AI and how much the hyperscalers are spending. This year, almost a trillion dollars to build out data centers. Data centers in space. What could possibly go wrong? and why McDonald's doesn't want you to use their products for your passwords. All that and more coming up on Twit. Podcasts you love.

0:34Megan Morrone:From people you trust.

0:37Jason Hiner:This is Twit.

0:45Jason Hiner:This is Twit. This Week in Tech. Episode 1070. Recorded Sunday, February 8th, 2026. A yacht for your yacht. It's time for Twit This Week in Tech, the show where we cover the week's tech news. Hello, everybody. If you're watching live, yeah, we started a little bit early because I guess there's a sporting event. Oh, yeah, the Winter Olympics later today. No, the Super Bowl later today. That's hence my outfit I'm wearing. Well, we decided with AI that everybody could be wearing their favorite outfit, right? I'm wearing my Niners gear. i don't know what larry is wearing uh in this uh ai aided picture but you know do you have it there

1:27Megan Morrone:i'm wearing a shirt with it with a big moray pattern no no rogers you look like a patriots

1:33Jason Hiner:guy a paper no mike elkins a steelers fan and i don't know why they made lou maresca who doesn't even look like lou maresca a eagles fan oh jets it says i look like aaron rogers there you you look you know what they put a little aaron rogers on you lou mareska is here he is a ai engineering lead a co-pilot at microsoft so nice to see you lou great to be that kind of looks like aaron rogers but a nice aaron rogers a sane aaron rogers same there you go so nice to see lou mike elgin is in oaxaca mexico he is uh always a welcome here gastronomad.net and his he writes about ai at machine society.ai his newsletter great to see that's right i'm wearing the colors

2:16Patrick Norton:of uc santa cruz the fighting banana slugs no i didn't go there but uh but i like slugs

2:21Jason Hiner:i grew up my dad i'll tell her about that yeah my dad taught there so i'm a banana slug i'm that's right but i could be and larry maggot from connect safely.org and where he is the president ceo keeping kids safe online happy safer internet day larry

2:39Megan Morrone:Well, thank you. That comes up on Tuesday. And you can watch our webinar. And if you're in Sacramento, you can come to our event. And if you happen to live in one of the 20 cities where we're having local events, you can catch one of those. And these are aimed at parents of children online? It's aimed at parents. It's aimed at teens. We're working a lot with teens. And we're having an event in Sacramento with a bunch of high school and college kids and a couple of elected officials and execs from OpenAI, Google, Meta, Discord, Amazon, you know, a few other things. Some would say that's the enemy.

3:11Megan Morrone:It's saying, you know what? We have deliberately put people on the panel who will probably say that. It's going to be a very contentious conversation because we chose to put some young people, interestingly enough, young people who are very concerned about the danger of social media, not grownups like me, but kids who are saying, you know, I thought it was going to be really cool, but now that I'm getting to be 16, 17, I'm starting to rethink it. So they're going to be on the panel with some of these tech execs. I don't know. I'd like to know what you guys think, but my latest thinking, because I go back

3:46Jason Hiner:and forth and all this, my latest thinking is social media is great. It's an opportunity for kids to meet kids from all over the world, to have a social group, especially kids who are otherwise marginalized because they're gay or trans or fat or weird or whatever, or geeks like a lot of us uh and so it's good in that regard where it went wrong is where these big tech companies decided well we want to really get make it sticky and they turned algorithms on social if instagram were as it was in the early days just my friends and their pictures i don't think it would be so bad i know there's still the opportunity for somebody to follow models and say oh my body is not good and that kind of thing but that would be something they would choose instead of being thrust upon them right right do you agree funny you got you have

4:36Leo Laporte:kids in that age group blue what are you doing with your kids yeah i mean it's the come i've come to the truth that you can't keep ai ai or technology or social networks away from kids

4:45Jason Hiner:you might not want to because don't they need to know how it works and how to defend it's all about

4:49Leo Laporte:literacy right it's all about understanding the limits and what you should and shouldn't be doing

4:53Megan Morrone:with it and so that's what i've been doing yeah and that's why we're in business that's basically

4:57Jason Hiner:what we do education yeah you guys have a great contract to a connect safely.org uh that that parents can sign with their kids yeah um so that you know you can explicitly say well here's our

5:10Megan Morrone:you know our rules yeah i love all the stuff with you both i mean i think that first of all if you're growing up today and you're not learning ai you're denying yourself an incredible skill that you need to have like it or love it or hate it it's essential for the future and you know the The other problem with social, if you don't let kids use social media, they're going to, at some point, when they're 18 and the parents are no longer controlled, they're going to do something probably more dangerous. And I always like to say, you know, you're a kid for 18 years. You're going to grown up for who knows how long, a long time, hopefully.

5:42Patrick Norton:I love the stuff that, yeah, I love the stuff Larry does because basically parents are kind of on their own in a world where all their kids' friends are doing certain things, using phones, all the rest. and to have guidelines, to have agreed upon norms that parents can accept and share with their friends. That's the only way forward other than school bans.

6:06Megan Morrone:You know, one of the things I was worried that as people who were digital natives became parents, which is currently the case, that we would be put out of business because they wouldn't need us. But surprisingly, we find we get a lot of good feedback from young parents. You know, parents in their 20s and 30s and early 40s, they grew up with technology, but technology is changing so rapidly that even the tech natives are having to readjust constantly to what's happening, again, especially with AI. We wrote the Parents' Guide for AI for all of the three major AI players. And, you know, that's stuff that's very much in demand among young parents.

6:43Patrick Norton:Larry and Leo and Lou, I got a new buzzword for you. This is going to be the buzzword for the rest of the decade We've all heard about the old buzzword, which is the attention economy That's what we're talking about where the attention economy began in the 50s with with TV commercials went through It was described well in 1971 and then it became a that phrase Came into use in the 1990s and the idea is that human attention is a limited commodity that can be commoditized monetized, bought and sold. And as the amount of content grows exponentially, the amount of human attention stays the same. And so there's been this massive contest for limited human attention.

7:27Patrick Norton:And that's the attention economy. That's what divides our politics. That's what makes people addicted to social media and all the rest. The buzzword that's coming is the attachment economy, because AI is going to take attention to another level by making some people fall in love with chatbots, for example, humanoid robots that people respond in their brain chemistry as if they're people, people having the delusion that AI and robots and robotic pets that are run by AI actually have an inner life, have feelings, have all that kind of stuff. And so the attachment economy is the next step of the attention economy.

8:05Patrick Norton:I even am launching a sub stack about this, and I'm going to be writing a lot about the attachment economy, but this is the risk. And again, like you say, Leo, the potential for social media is fantastic. It's a lifesaver for some people. And the potential for AI is the same thing. It's a massive upside for people who use it well, people use it right for the general public. However, these Silicon Valley companies are going to weaponize AI to make people feel emotionally attached to their products. They're already doing that, aren't they? It's already doing it.

8:39Megan Morrone:Mike, how does that play in with the agency when these bots are actually agents? Instead of having to pay attention, they're actually doing it for you, right? They're booking your travel. They're booking your restaurant. They're doing your taxes, whatever it is. We used to look at them for information so we could do ourselves. They're doing for us. What does that mean?

8:57Patrick Norton:Well, it's giving us brain rot and all the rest. but we're in an intermediate phase right now. Yeah, but you could say GPS in your car

9:05Jason Hiner:is giving you brain rot, too. I mean, I know I don't... Well, it does.

9:08Patrick Norton:Kids have no idea how to use a map. You can eat my car? Do they need to?

9:12Jason Hiner:There's even a case to be made that digital clocks give kids brain rot because they can't read analog clocks. I don't quite agree with that. Right. What do you think? I mean, Lou's an AI guy. Lou's designing AI for... You're more for enterprise, right?

9:28Leo Laporte:Yeah. I think the idea with ages is you just got to build agents without turning basically human loneliness into the business model of the decade i think i think that's really the whole key um and i think that's what we try to do is we try to make sure that they're helpful but yeah enterprise bots do not are not sycophantic

9:43Jason Hiner:they do not fall in love with you right they're not they're not because that's not what enterprise wants right if you're if you're using copilot in excel you don't want to say hey great idea Yeah, really. You're so smart. I have to say, you're doing some vibe coding, aren't you, Lou? Oh, yeah, all the time. I do it every day. Yep. Whether it's for work or for home. And I mean, you're a professional coder. I'm a hobbyist coder. I still love coding, but there's the old adage that sysadmins have, if you do something more than three times, you should write a script to do it, right? But that is always a difficult challenge.

10:20Jason Hiner:Like, am I going to do it a fifth time? Am I going to, is it going to take me more time to write the script and to do it a hundred times? Do I really, right. And now it's like, no, no, just automate it because it's so easy to tell, you know, especially Claude Code. I apologize to co-pilot. No, no. We love Claude Code.

10:38Leo Laporte:Use it every day. Something happened at Anthropic. Yeah. They just blew up and they, and I think it's all about tooling and making things easier for people bringing it downstream. Yeah.

10:48Jason Hiner:But they, now they released this week. Well, we'll get to the ai section i want to keep with the social media briefly because it is safer internet day on tuesday uh more school from fast company more schools are banning phones so students can focus uh it's actually now 29 states have passed laws that require k-12 public schools to ban or limit students using cell phones on campus another 10 states require local school districts to take some kind of action 77 of public schools forbid 77 in the united states forbid students from having their phones out during class um and and this you know i always we have scientific method for a reason when you hear people say well that makes sense seems seems always my my hairs go up in the back of my neck because it might make sense but what what does the science say um ohio which has clamped down over a student's cell phone usage over the last 18 months uh in fact they have the strict one of the strictest cell phone use policies as of last year uh from this fast company article in the fall of 25 i surveyed 13 ohio public school principals 62 described more verbal face-to-face socializing somebody somebody said one school administrator said it used to be really quiet at lunch and now you can hear kids talking again right they used to be just like this 68 notice the students can stay on one task for more than 20 minutes without seeking a quick digital break it's like the smokers you know i can't i gotta take a break man 72 % observed a shift from heads down scrolling to active conversation 61 % fewer online social conflicts spilling over into the real world even students I think you're saying yeah yeah this this I feel better about this so maybe these bands students are also under the same yeah as long as everybody's equal.

12:57Patrick Norton:Exactly.

12:58Megan Morrone:Yeah, I was against him at first. I mean, I wrote various articles, you know, saying I said there were a bad idea, but I'm beginning to rethink it. I mean, just all the things you're saying, and also talking to Connect Safely Student Advisory Council, talking to the kids that I work with, and surprisingly, some of them are happy with it, just like surprisingly to me, although now that what you're saying, I think we're beginning to see that maybe it was a good idea. I mean.

13:22Jason Hiner:So now the next step is to what Australia has done They banned under-16s completely from social media. France, Spain, Malaysia, Denmark, all considering barring young people from Facebook, TikTok. Australia even bans them from YouTube. Not a fan of that plan. Yeah, well, one of our concerns as technologists is that that means you're going to have to have some sort of age verification, Verification, which is inherently privacy and problematic with privacy.

13:56Megan Morrone:It also keeps kids, I mean, look, you know, if you're 16 or 15 years old and you mentioned you might be gay, your parents might be homophobic, you know, you might need this outlet, this ability to reach out beyond your narrow little world that you live in in whatever community you're in. And the other thing is, you know, we can talk about the problems, and there are many, but millions of kids use it every day very productively. They're not having serious problems. And we have to consider the fact that all technologies have a risk. I mean, you know, you get in the car, you know you're taking a risk.

14:32Megan Morrone:I'm not saying that we shouldn't have regulations, but I do question whether we should keep teenagers away from social media. It seems to me that we should put pressure on the companies to make them as safe as possible. And as Lou and I've...

14:45Jason Hiner:That's what the EU is doing. They've told TikTok you have to disable addictive features like infinite scroll.

14:52Patrick Norton:Right. Well, this is getting closer to the heart of the problem. The problem isn't social media. The problem isn't being able to talk to people over the world on topics that are very particularly important to you as an individual. The problem are the algorithms and the constant race to have the most addictive algorithms. TikTok is by far the winner now because their algorithms will just show you. People just swipe, swipe, swipe. You look around in here in Oaxaca and all over the world, wherever we travel, you see the police standing there looking at their phones. And you go up and look at their phones and they're on TikTok.

15:26Patrick Norton:You can't get away from it.

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15:29Jason Hiner:Yesterday, Lisa was sitting behind a police car at a light. The light went green. the police car didn't move because the officer was on his phone and and now she did something i would never have done she honked and waved come on and he looked at her but he you know he didn't write a ticket he he moved because he knew he shouldn't have been doing doing that um so i so one this is the trial that's going on in la right now right you know this is this is the big trial going on with uh with all the big social although snap uh and i think tick tock settled before the trial but youtube and facebook and instagram are in there and the whole premise of it is the lawyers are gearing up to argue that the companies behind these platforms are designing their sites to be deliberately addictive now i don't buy the internet addiction thing it's it's not heroin it's not even cigarettes it's not addiction it's more like chocolate in my opinion it's more like chocolate yeah no that's fair it's yeah chocolate can be deadly chocolate but we don't ban chocolate no we expect people to have some restraint there you go

16:43Patrick Norton:it's it's more like mcdonald's because mcdonald's fast food is engineered it is to bypass your your your self control because of the salt and the way they do the umami and all that stuff. It's engineered to make it irresistible.

16:59Jason Hiner:And they put sugar, McDonald's put sugars in almost every single thing, including the hamburgers and everything. Buns. Yeah.

17:05Patrick Norton:And so that's the problem. It's the deliberate engineering to bypass your reason and go straight for your sort of mental hard wiring that needs certain types of stimulation.

17:19Leo Laporte:It's basically we're trying to patch the attention and attachment economy at the edge. Like we're trying to make things better. And I think it's all about, like you said, it's all about making sure you just, you know, you make awareness. You give awareness to people rather than trying to manage it there.

17:34Megan Morrone:The other thing, you know, Section 230, when it was written in 1996.

17:38Jason Hiner:Happy, by the way.

17:39Megan Morrone:Yeah.

17:39Jason Hiner:Happy anniversary. Section 230 is now 30 years old.

17:43Megan Morrone:Well, and it's getting a little old, getting a little gray. Not that I should complain. But when it was written, it was during the days of AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy. They didn't have algorithms. I don't recall AOL sort of figuring out what I wanted and putting me into a forum or whatever it had. And so at the time, they really were just forums and not publishers. But I would argue that if they're feeding you an algorithm, isn't that being a publisher? Isn't that like the New York Times deciding what to put on the front page?

18:15Patrick Norton:Agree with you 100%, Larry. That's exactly right. Those are editorial decisions. I'll be it in software and very complex Yeah, but they are deciding what's important what isn't important and that's very different from like I follow a hundred people And I get everything those hundred people say right some of them are not deciding what I see

18:31Megan Morrone:Yeah, and if there's a nutcase among them and you and they defame you you sue them You don't sue yes comp your server, right still existed, but again, it's different with these social media companies

18:44Patrick Norton:all right and it's not static these things are always evolving to become more compelling and so we stay the same but the algorithms that attract us uh in this attention economy right i just keep getting better and better and better and everything's been tiktokified because that's the model that worked best so you go to instagram or any even facebook's got reels now like network i can't get away from those facebook reels and they are so clever and the meta thing where they

19:12Megan Morrone:know all my interests and they they suck me in with whatever i have a two pound box of seized

19:17Jason Hiner:candies down in the pantry but i resist yeah going in there and having another chocolate it's hard um i ended up taking instagram and tick tock off of my phones i took tick tock off when the when it became the u.s version of tick tock and they had the new the new requirements that you know that said uh and if we're going to reveal your immigration status if we know it so don't you know and I thought you know this is it's time I love tick-tock but I'll find something else to do you know for breakfast but I did take them all imagine

19:51Patrick Norton:if that box of chocolates was always changing all every day changing to

19:55Jason Hiner:become more there was a little pop-up on my screen can resist it today said there's a dark chocolate Bordeaux with your because your name on it would you like to would you like to that's right yeah yeah yeah here we be in front of

20:08Megan Morrone:my face like i like chocolate with my coffee but what if every time i picked up a cup of coffee a chocolate would pop into my onto my plate can we can we vibe code that probably good if you can

20:18Jason Hiner:did you have you played we're going to talk about ai a little bit because we got that we got the ai expert here uh lou mareska uh and we will uh do that next i'm just curious have you played with open claw at all have you thought about it lou have i oh yeah absolutely have you set it up Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Despite the, you know, I set it up over here. I said, okay, I'm going to create a new account on my Mac mini. I'm going to be very judicious. But I did, but it doesn't matter. You could put it on a VPS. You could put it in a sandbox, but you still have to give it your credentials if you want to do anything.

20:55Jason Hiner:So I sat down and I gave it all of my Google Gmail and Google Docs calendar address book. And then in the middle of the night, I woke up in a cold sweat. I ran upstairs and I deleted the whole account.

21:08Patrick Norton:Do you have it running? I do.

21:13Leo Laporte:I'm running back there at that machine. And it's all isolated to accounts that I don't use mainstream. So it doesn't have my access to my direct calendar. So it doesn't do anything useful. There's a mirror or a shadow on there. So I tried to kind of leak information to it that can maybe be useful to it. But I try not to give it everything. It's so cool. The whole idea of, and this is what I've always wanted.

21:38Jason Hiner:This is, I hope, where we're headed. In fact, a number of people have said on our shows, this 2026 will be a year of personal agents. Yeah. The whole idea of an AI agent who knows you, understands you, knows a lot about your preferences, your interests, has access to your data, and can, because it's running 24-7, start doing stuff for you. Larry, you mentioned that, but I don't want to call the restaurant and make reservations. I'm not, that's not taken away from my agency. Why would I want to spend time doing that? I want to say to my little buddy, hey, you know, Fido, make me a reservation for tonight, my favorite restaurant.

22:15Jason Hiner:And if you can't, then get the second best.

22:18Patrick Norton:But what if it makes you a plane reservation? This is the attachment economy. We're going to like and have affection for our personal agents.

22:24Jason Hiner:I already do. This is actually, that's what scares me. But anyway, what if it makes you

22:27Megan Morrone:a non-refundable airline trip that you actually don't want to take? I mean, you have veto power over it. Then it screwed me.

22:34Jason Hiner:Yeah. Well, I mean, Lou, you could set it up so it doesn't do that. I was going to give it a credit card with a$5 limit. Yeah, well, okay. I wanted it to have some money, like an allowance. But I don't want it to do that. I think you can set constraints, although -

22:52Leo Laporte:Union policies and constraints to it, yeah. And will it obey them? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, you can make them non, like China walls, right? basically don't go beyond this right don't go beyond make a plane reservation for me without

23:04Patrick Norton:first asking me right well the plane reservation is my favorite example of what could go wrong so for example you could have you could tell your agents who go book me an airline ticket and then it goes and realizes that um all the all the seats are taken right and so it it basically hired somebody to hack the airline to get the names and addresses of everybody who's She already got a seat and then hires an assassin to go kill. See what you told it you wanted to see it on that airline. And this is the stuff of sci-fi, of course. But and this is this is not likely. But things are going to go wrong with with part of this.

23:41Patrick Norton:This stuff as what I'm talking about, of course, is this sort of the task rabbit called rent a human dot AI. Right. That is designed to work with agentic AI generally.

23:50Jason Hiner:But especially you assume your task rabbit has enough judgment not to hire a killer. but but there's no judgment involved in this thing was vibe coded i don't think there's any guardrails built in don't assume that don't assume it give it the directions like i mean as long as it doesn't hallucinate if it follows if it really is limited by constraints that i give it i mean the constraints you're giving it are in a markdown file lou yeah it's not like it's not like chains. I mean, it's as long as you know that it will not do what you say not to do.

24:28Leo Laporte:Right. I mean, you got to be explicit. Just like every company nowadays, assume that you have breached, assume you have people breaking into your network, like assume that the AI is going to do bad things.

24:35Jason Hiner:Yeah. Do zero trust. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll talk a little more about AI. We got some great people on here. It's great to have you. Lou Maresca. He is engineering lead at co-pilot at that little company up in Redmond called Microsoft. Heard of it. Good to see you. Also, I presume a Patriots fan, although since you were in Seattle for a while. I know. I'm torn. I'm torn. I love them both. What are you going to do? I know. It's tough. Can I tell you how much my heart hurts to see the field at Levi's Stadium and it says Seahawks at one end and Patriots at the other end? I'm sure. Can I tell you how much that breaks my heart?

25:11Jason Hiner:Imagine going to Gillette and seeing, you know, 49ers and Seahawks or something there. You wouldn't be unhappy. That's sad. Anyway, we're doing the show a little bit early so that we can get out of the way and let you watch the Super Bowl. Appreciate that. I appreciate it. My wife's watching the Olympics, by the way, instead of the Super Bowl. Yeah. Who scheduled those at the same time? I don't know. I mean, you can't have Snoop Dogg at both. I don't. Weren't they thinking? Weren't they thinking? They could have put the Winter Olympics in the summertime.

25:44Megan Morrone:That would have gotten it out of the way.

25:45Jason Hiner:He's just one dog. mike elgin is also here from oaxaca always great to see you machine society.a do you know yet what your attachment uh blog will be or newsletter the attachment economy dot subs dot com for now and

26:03Patrick Norton:then it'll convert over to the attachment economy.com good in a couple of days i like that

26:07Jason Hiner:thought i can't wait to read more about that on the show i think i think i'm already i've been writing about those that theme for a long time i know i'm attached uh i've been i call it clod pilled because uh yeah on intelligent machines better than grok sucker yeah i'm a grok sucker uh or i'm a clanker well you know it's funny about when i talk to my ai like in the car i will talk

26:34Megan Morrone:to ai and i find myself developing a much more attached relationship than when i'm typing at it That's why they do the chatbots. That's precise. I don't want to hear a voice.

26:44Jason Hiner:But I got to tell you, my Claude calls me Skipper and Skip. How cute. And I can't, you know.

26:53Megan Morrone:And you know what's driving me crazy? I don't, the A word that comes from Amazon. I don't want to say the word because I don't want to trigger everybody's device. Yeah. Or trigger me. But it's gotten so chatty and it won't shut up. And you ask it a simple question. You say, you know, how old is somebody? And you get their entire biography. And I'll say, no, if I wanted to know their entire book, I find myself yelling at it all the time. And I'm thinking about, I don't know if I can go back to the old A-word, but if I can, I actually liked it better.

27:19Jason Hiner:I don't like A-word plus very much, the new smart A-word. And actually, there was a rumor that they're going to use another model. I think it was OpenAI's ChatGPT instead. I would prefer that because ChatGPT isn't as chatty.

27:37Megan Morrone:It's not as obnoxious.

27:38Jason Hiner:not quite even going it's very agnostic you're right yeah yeah yeah and it's also um and i think this is part of amazon's and shittification it's also always saying hey did you know i could do this and would you like to know more right exactly well i use the right i use it to write routines

27:54Megan Morrone:which are really you know a word routines which are very handy because i can just say what i want and does it but it always wants to explain to me what a routine is and how they operate And I've had it write so many routines that I'd have to be a complete idiot by this time not to know what a routine is. But it just insists on educating me each time I ask it to do a task.

28:15Jason Hiner:Yeah, I don't like that. I think that's part of the attention economy, not the attachment economy. That's Larry Magid. It is Internet Safety, Safer Internet Day on Tuesday. Celebrate with him at ConnectSafely.org. and Mike Elgin. I didn't mention, of course, Machinesociety.ai. We'll get to the AI in just a bit. Our show today brought to you by Bitwarden. Let's talk security briefly. You have a good password manager. I figure anybody listening to this show knows you need a password manager. Right? Right? Bitwarden's the one I use and recommend. Steve Gibson, too. It's the trusted later in passwords, pass keys, and even secrets management.

29:00Jason Hiner:I keep my SSH keys in there. It generates them and it will automatically deliver them. And there's even a Bitwarden MCP server, so my credentials are safe when I'm using OpenClaw. How about that? Bitwarden is consistently ranked number one in user satisfaction by G2 and software reviews, over 10 million users across 180 80 countries. And Bitwarden is great for business too. More than 50 ,000 businesses choose Bitwarden. So whether you're protecting one account, your own, or thousands, your employees, Bitwarden will keep you and them secure all year long. And one of the things I love about Bitwarden, they're always adding new features.

29:36Jason Hiner:The new Bitwarden access intelligence, for instance, for enterprise. Organizations can use it to detect weak, reused, or exposed credentials. This is probably the number one problem right now in businesses is you know you know about security but do your employees do your users know about password security or are they reusing passwords are they writing passwords on post-it notes putting it on the machine uh do they care that their passwords have now been exposed in a breach well bitwarden will tell them you've got a weak password or it's been exposed and immediately guide remediation replacing risky passwords with strong unique ones and that is huge it closes probably the number one security gap now credentials a top cause of breaches but with access intelligence automatically they're visible prioritized and corrected before exploitation can occur bitwarden though is always thinking about its users for instance if if you are you know you have a home lab you're working on personal projects you'll love bitwarden lite a lightweight self-hosted password manager built for home labs personal projects environments i want a quick setup with minimal overhead this is one of the advantages you get with bitwarden because it's an open source project because it's open source they can do stuff like this they're not driven by the need to extract every penny out of you bitwarden's now enhanced with real-time vault health alerts for everyone those password coaching features i mentioned help users identify their own weak reused or exposed credentials and take immediate action to strengthen security and if you're right now using your browser for passwords a lot of people do bitwarden will now directly import from chrome edge brave opera and vivaldi browsers so direct import means they go right into the encrypted bitwarden vault and and out of the password manager built into your browser without requiring that separate plain text export that simplifies migration helps reduce the exposure associated with manual export and deletion steps g2 winner 2025 reports bitwarden continues to hold strong number one in every enterprise every enterprise category and that's now for six straight quarters setup is easy it's you could import from most password management solutions be very easy to move from your current solution to the open source solution and bitwarden's open source code is right there on github regularly you can look at it but it's also regularly audited by third-party experts and unlike some other companies they publish the results of those audits they're very open that's important sock 2 type 2 compliant gdpr hipaa ccpa compliant they're iso 27001 2002 certified this is the gold standard get started today with bitwarden's free trial of a teams or enterprise plan or get started for free forever across all devices as an individual user bitwarden.com twit that's bitwarden.com twit now i'm in european commercial but i actually am interested no it's commercial this is one of the things my uh claude's always telling me is you know your keys are clear text you don't want to accidentally push them to github and the solution is to encrypt them and to have a tool that will unencrypt them for whatever program uses those secrets so bitwarden for as an example i i don't use passwords anymore for ssh bitwarden will generate a password combo.

33:04Jason Hiner:You have a public key and a private key combo. I use elliptic curve cryptography, what is it, E2996, whatever it is. And it'll generate that, store it, and then deliver it, the public key, when I log on to SSH, it handles the whole process. So that private key, which you really have to keep secret, is never exposed. It's always in the Bitwarden vault. things like that make it huge.

33:29Megan Morrone:What if I just wanted to throw like my social security number or other? Well, I do that.

33:33Jason Hiner:Yes. I have my social.

33:34Megan Morrone:You can do that within Bitwarden now.

33:36Jason Hiner:Yeah. Just as a note. That's not, that is, yeah. I have my passport, my driver's license. And because I always carry, this is not part of the ad, because I always carry my phone with me, which has Bitwarden on it or other devices. I always have access to an image of my passport. So if I'm traveling and I lose my passport, I at least have a secure way of showing them what my passport was and all that stuff same thing with driver's license no i think that that's a that's a good thing to have an that's why i like that's why by the way i support it being open source because you can verify that it uses strong crypto you know well-known established crypto routines that it has no back doors all of that stuff uh and then once you know this is trustworthy reproducible builds all that stuff once you know it's trustworthy then you could store stuff in it and it's fully encrypted, strong encryption, so nobody can get at it.

34:26Jason Hiner:I think that's a, yeah, I absolutely recommend everybody do that. I'll try it. Yeah. And I'm sure you address that all the time, Lou. You know, your API keys, your API secrets. How many times have we seen AWS? Exactly.

34:42Leo Laporte:Published. Right. Yeah. We have special tools that actually scan the code now, tell you if they see them in there. And then we say, stick it in a key vault, stick it in a key vault. Yep.

34:51Jason Hiner:i uh i regularly do a security audit with a cloud code and it's cloud has clearly been informed because it says you know you're you put your did you know you put your api keys in your obsidian

35:05Megan Morrone:vault that's clear text it's what do you do with with documents that need to be need to be secure

35:11Jason Hiner:um same thing cryptic stick it in the keyboard i what i do basically uh is i have a sync thing instance running that synchronizes a special folder and that folder is encrypted and it synchronizes that and I can decrypt it on everywhere, but it is never at any, and sync things encrypted and it doesn't go out to the cloud ever. So I feel fairly safe that not only they have multiple copies of those important secrets, but because they're encrypted, they're, uh, even if somebody got on my machine, you know, they would have to know the password, that kind of thing. I think it's possible to do that or use a, I have Yuba keys, you know,

35:47Leo Laporte:use yubi key to unlock this yeah but i have a thumb drive that it's like the you know the the biometrics on it yeah that encrypts everything yeah yeah perfect yeah uh all right let's talk

35:56Jason Hiner:about uh what happened this week anthropic updated opus from four five to four six four five was already like that came out in november two months later now they've updated that 20 minutes later open ai updated chat gpt to five three we are in and if you watch super bowl ads uh tonight this afternoon you will see a this is like coke and pepsi right it is and that's a good

36:25Leo Laporte:thing right lou i agree it's good i think it's great i think it's pushing things forward fast you know it's interesting though they've not gone they're not gone at each other yet oh wait a minute

36:33Jason Hiner:you haven't seen anthropics uh super bowl ad well i haven't that's be interesting and sam altman's pissed uh so i'll just give you the uh i don't want to spoil it for you but you remember you've seen the the chat gpt ads where some kid gets strong because he had chat gpt write a exercise routine for him it shows it on the text so anthropics ad has a kid doing pull-ups and and uh and it has the chat gpt chat bot which is this buff guy say yeah let me give you a routine and then he does an ad and this is because chat gpt open ai has said we're going to put ads in chat gpt sam altman says anthropic knows perfectly well first of all anthropic responded dario modi said we're never going to put ads in uh in claude and then sam altman goes we're they know perfectly well we don't do that we're not giving you our recommendations are not ads it's it's it's below the fold it's just it's just a little tiny and so sam's yes no they're fighting in the super bowl

37:37Megan Morrone:ads yeah it's funny i watched a couple of those commercials they were hysterical but you know the thing is that google for example has always separated sponsored uh results from organic research and i think that's what chat gpt is but if you go into google now that first of all there are more of them and they're a little it's a little easy to accidentally click on one of those sponsored results. I have done it. And I know people all the time who say, oh, Google showed me this. And for some reason, it took me to some competitor. And I say, yeah, look for the word sponsored in teeny, teeny type.

38:07Megan Morrone:So I think people can still be fooled. I don't know what, I'm not saying OpenAI is going to fool people. But I think even with a disclosure, if you don't disclose it clearly enough, people can be fooled into thinking it's organic.

38:18Jason Hiner:Mike Yelgin knows I stopped using Google and I pay 25 bucks a month for Kagi, which gives me equivalently good search results, mostly because they're from Google. A lot of them are from Google. But without any ads and without any bias. Mike's son works at Kaki, so he knows a little bit about it. You know what I do to eliminate?

38:36Megan Morrone:So I was doing a search for Safer Internet Day to see how ConnectSafely was doing in the results. And when I just did it out of my own version of my browser, of course, we came out really, really well. And then I said, wait a minute, I did a VPN and I did an incognito window to do the same search. And we still did well. We still did very well, but not as well as when google knows it knows who you are yeah it's oh larry i bet you'd like to see your

39:02Jason Hiner:own site more exactly yeah yeah yeah and incognito as we all know because google lost a big lawsuit it's not that incognito anyway um yeah so kagi kagi's uh i think uh doing the work of the angels

39:18Patrick Norton:they're a uh they're public a public benefit company right mike yeah yeah they are public benefit corporation that's what they are that's and and so yeah the thing that i like about it one of the things i like about it is the fact that i can try as a journalist i can try all the models through kagi assistant there's just a wall of models old versions new versions take your pick try them out uh compare them i replaced perplexity with it because i think it's better than perplexity to be honest cool so did i yeah yeah so did i and it's the same it's the same notion which is

39:50Jason Hiner:it's orchestrating a variety of different AIs, but I use Kagi all the time now and the way I use perplexity. How do you spell it? K-A-G-I.com. Okay. And the Kagi Assistant is fantastic.

40:05Patrick Norton:They're a paid search engine and I have them as my default search engine in my browser. Me too. But you have to jump through hoops, by the way.

40:11Jason Hiner:Nobody wants to let you do that. Right.

40:15Patrick Norton:The browsers don't want to let you do that, right. But it's not that hard. You can do it. And then when I ask a query in the address bar and add a question mark at the end, the question mark tells Kagi Search that you want a little AI summary of the results.

40:30Jason Hiner:Yeah, it doesn't do the thing Google does, which automatically stick in that AI stuff. You don't have to ask for it. Here's the assistant and just the models. You know, it has the latest, like the new Kimi K2. It has GLM 4.7, which just came out. It doesn't have 4.6 yet. It's Opus 4.5. but if i scroll down it goes oh yeah there it does it has opus 4.6 sorry you it's just a little lower that has reasoning it has all of the doesn't have 5.3 yet for open ai chat gpt

41:01Megan Morrone:so if you subscribe can you cancel your 20 a month or whatever you're paying to the individual ai things and we'll take care of it or you have to still pay it's a different

41:11Jason Hiner:kind of thing yes i would say if if what you use the ais for is search yes but but that 20 a month can also do vibe coding you can do other things uh i'm embarrassed to admit that after i played with claude code for a while i ended up buying claude max because i want all the tokens i'm sure i'm sure you you probably as a microsoft employee get access to uh unlimited tokens right uh no i

41:39Leo Laporte:wouldn't say that.

41:40Jason Hiner:No, no, we have challenges a lot sometimes. Yeah. Well, because you see, one of the things people do now with these vibe coders is they'll spit up five or six of them. And then each of them will spit up more sub agents, that something was added for six. Here's an interesting, I thought a very interesting result in, in Claude. I mean, yeah, Opus four, six, they were able to find 500 zero days in open source code they set all of all of the companies now do things like this they they anthropic said let's take cloud opus 4 6 the new model before the debut they they're the anthropics frontier red team put it in a sandboxed environment gave claude model everything he needed to do the job access to python vulnerability analysis tools debuggers fuzzers no specific instructions or specialized knowledge claude found more than 500 verifiable previously unknown zero day vulnerabilities that's now on the one hand you go that's fantastic on the other hand just think hackers also have access to these tools and they're probably doing the same thing you know what drives me nuts about

43:02Leo Laporte:the new models though is all these services including perplexity they they charge extra for the new models that come in they'll say you have to upgrade but like for instance opus 4 5 and 4 6 they're exactly the same cost like the cost to api their tokens everything's exactly the same but you have to pay extra to use it it's all about getting the newest model sooner so so when

43:20Jason Hiner:services do that i step away from it yeah and the thing is google microsoft amazon apple all these companies have other revenue streams open ai and anthropic you know they're spending the investors money they really are desperate to have some sort of revenue stream that's why open ai is doing ads that's why anthropic's saying they have also a fast mode that you can turn on for four six that makes it faster but consumes tokens at what was it six times the rate right well the reason

43:49Leo Laporte:why that is they don't they don't do the reasoning part of it they actually shove everything in the context window, so that you have all the context there. And then the model does reasons on that, which is makes it faster.

43:59Jason Hiner:Yeah. Yeah. 46 has a 1 million token context window, which is deep, big, deep, pretty big. It means you could dump a lot of documents in bigger memory, bigger, less more memory. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

44:22Jason Hiner:Anything else we want to say about AI before we move on? I think we've said it all. Lou, you're, so, wow, I'm amazed you're using OpenClaw. Oh, yeah.

44:34Leo Laporte:I try to use everything, you know, I get to keep up on it. It changes so often, you know, it's just amazing.

44:40Jason Hiner:That's what's a little scary, I think, for everybody on the frontier of this stuff is it's moving so fast. It's hard to feel like you can keep up.

44:47Megan Morrone:I used to say that AI is sort of the equivalent of the World Wide Web or broadband or the iPhone, but I now think it's the equivalent of electricity. It is such a fundamental change compared to anything I've seen in my 40 years as a technology journalist.

45:04Jason Hiner:I really don't want to overhype it, oversell it. I'm very cautious about that. But as a user, I'm blown away every single day, and it's hard for me. I think, like I said, I got clodpilled. and I think I'm maybe need to get some objectivity on this and I was hoping to get some but you guys

45:27Patrick Norton:aren't helping us it is something happened so Lou I'm curious if Lou I'm curious if you use multbook you know notebook LM I don't I don't use that no no no molt molt molt book the face for AI agents

45:42Leo Laporte:No, I do not use that.

45:45Patrick Norton:So where do we stand on the controversy? Because there's a lot of evidence that most of it is just made out of people, basically.

45:52Jason Hiner:Well, even if it's not, it's just a toy. I mean, what it is, in theory, is a bunch of open claw instances talking to one another and having existential dramas. And maybe there's a huge...

46:07Patrick Norton:Is it really that? I don't think it really is that. So if you go to the actual reddit, they say it's based on reddit because the the agents can vote up or vote down comments and and post but On the real reddit some two-digit percentage of the post there are AI Yeah, I did and yeah two-digit percentage of the because people are just copying pasting from chat GBT or whatever and pasting it into reddit and so that's a problem on reddit and that's basically what mold book is humans are saying hey post this and and the agentic part of it is just the copying and the pasting not necessarily there is

46:39Jason Hiner:It's actually, certainly it's possible. I can't vouch for what percentage of it is.

46:45Patrick Norton:It's a mixture of those. But you could absolutely give it,

46:47Jason Hiner:it's a mixture. Give OpenClaw MoteBook credentials and it will go and start interacting. You could tell it to do that. It's perfectly capable of doing that. I'm not sure there's any value in that whatsoever. It's just a toy.

46:58Patrick Norton:It's interesting. By interacting, it's copying and pasting into an AI chatbot and then copying and pasting from that back into MoteBook. It's basically not it's not this sort of like hive mind machine society It's not a it's not like the singularity It's it's more copying and pasting to and from AI chat chatbots mostly

47:21Jason Hiner:I I don't know what percentage of it is It's completely possible and maybe in the early days was that it is fully autonomous that no humans are involved and that the input that it's getting from moltbook it's responding to and posting and and it's going on like that and i think you can verify that because in many cases these threads descend into madness

47:48Patrick Norton:yeah most of the most sensational things have been faked through there's even a probably a

47:54Jason Hiner:screenshot thing that you can fake multbook now post there is this possibility that and i think that it has happened i've seen examples that a a claw open claw instance can post something it's learned how to do on moltbook and that other open claw instances can then read it and learn how to do it as well yeah so the really interesting possibility i don't know if it's i know these things are happening i've seen it happen but but i don't know how valuable but the real possibility is it could be a a massive step forward in terms of self-improvement that see what how did you what what was the cambrian explosion of human minds and by the way now uh anthropologists are saying there was no cambrian explosion but what what what happened it was when we started when we learned how to speak to one another and eventually write and pass information back and forth and say hey i've invented this thing called fire you should see this look you scratch these things and then and it this if if ai could start doing that am i wrong lou am i this is blue pilled tell me am i claude pilled if ai could do that the potential for ai growth is exponential

49:13i think so that's a hard one talk me off the ledge

49:19Leo Laporte:i mean there's still some restrictions today so i think it's it's not going to be you know i think there is some potential there to for you know exponential isn't self-improving ai kind of a holy grail at this point it really is it is yeah yeah uh whether it's through a social network

49:35Jason Hiner:that ais join or just today you know i mean i think one of the reasons clon has been making such steps forward um is that it that they are now anthropic folks are now using claude or vibe coding claude to build claude you know to build claude yeah and that's sped up sped it up it used to be you know they have a new model every year and then it's every six months now it's certainly every two months probably going to be every one month this year right who knows by the end of this year i don't know where we're going to be one more thing lou i'd like to ask skew as an expert i ask everybody this it seems to be that the i prefer i would prefer to use an open weight model i want i mean that's why i bought this framework desktop with 128 gigs of ram and is i want to run this stuff locally it seems to me that local models are not i mean open weight models are not too far behind the big expensive models that's true well is that true

50:32Leo Laporte:you have to have the hardware though i mean that's the thing i mean like like if you want quen on a local desktop, you need like a couple of GPUs that are smaller, but you can still run the inference. But the bigger models, the ones that have all of this ability to reason and do massive inference, you need massive machines. You need machines that have hundreds of GPUs. And so even if they were open source, you still wouldn't be able to run them unless you had a server farm to do it. Okay. So they call them hyperscalers are still going to be in charge. right right that's why these enterprises are able to do so but you know these services are getting cheaper it's just that you still have to provide data to to a cloud service unfortunately you can't run on the edge right damn it uh all right one more uh break and then we will move on from ai

51:21Jason Hiner:there were earnings this week google phenomenal earnings um amazon phenomenal earnings and these earnings are coupled with spendings. We'll talk about that in just a little bit. Lou Moreska is here. He is engineering manager at Copilot for Microsoft. Is it just Excel or has your role expanded? No, it's just Excel for now. But that's just. Just Excel. Yeah, I know. It's just Excel. Just the tool, number one tool used by financial analysts, by data scientists, etc., etc., etc. try you you helped put python in excel which when i when that happened i thought right yeah yeah wow and we're still expanding that too so that's really cool great to have you mike elgin soon to be uh what is it attachment the attachment economy the attachment economy.com machine society.ai right now gastronomad.net he's in oaxaca enjoying the food and the sunshine that's right very jealous and the excellent chocolate by the way it's talking about chocolate they make it locally you took us when we went on a gastronomatic adventure a few years ago you took

52:33Patrick Norton:us to a chocolate mama pacha and that place it was written up and wired for their innovative use of of uh they're basically makers and they made their own chocolate processing equipment

52:45Jason Hiner:but and the cacao beans are grown in the hills above them i mean it's in the air it's local yes and they make it and you maybe you've had mexican chocolate which i love but cinnamon and other spices in it but they make yeah the best they make chocolate that rivals any belgian chocolate you've ever had it's amazing amazing and the tasting was so much fun yeah yep love it uh so thank you mike for making making me a chocolate addict and larry maggot who is also a chocolate addict president and ceo of connect safely notice neither one of us have run to the the candy box Is that your dad, a picture of your dad over your left shoulder there?

53:26Megan Morrone:Well, let's see.

53:27Jason Hiner:That handsome young man, or is that you?

53:30Megan Morrone:That's me. Oh, the handsome young man is me as a young man.

53:33Jason Hiner:In a skinny tie, skinny black tie, white shirt. Did you work at IBM?

53:36Megan Morrone:Oh, and my dad is next to me, right. Oh, nice. No, I didn't work at IBM. I was a customer of IBMs back in my late teens, early 20s, but never worked there. Did you have a pocket protector under that jacket? No, I wasn't that nerdy.

53:50Jason Hiner:close but not that close it's great to have all three of you our show today brought to you by NetSuite every business is asking the same question these days how do we make AI work for us of course the possibilities are endless but guessing it's too risky and sitting on the sidelines that's not an option because one thing's almost certain your competitors are already making in their move. No more waiting. With NetSuite by Oracle, you could put AI to work today. NetSuite is the number one AI cloud ERP trusted by over 43 ,000 businesses. It's a unified suite that brings your financials, your inventory, your commerce, your HR, your CRM into a single source of truth.

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55:20Jason Hiner:netsuite.com slash twit. We thank them so much for supporting this week in tech. Microsoft had a great quarter. Apple had a great quarter. Alphabet had a great quarter. Revenue in three months of 113.8 billion dollars that's up 18 percent year over year net income almost three billion dollars a week not bad not bad uh but and this is the same story for meta meta's stop meta had a great year but their stock tanked because they decided they're going to spend a lot of money and what is most of that money going to be spent on you guessed it ai to meet customer demand and capitalize this is sunar pachai talking and capitalize on the growing opportunities ahead of us our 2026 capital expenditure investments are anticipated to be range of 175 to 185 billion dollars a year looks like chum change when you hear microsoft has 600 billion dollars in ai commitments yeah and amazon 200 billion dollars in ai spending planned

56:43Patrick Norton:uh and if you add them up it's alphabet microsoft meta and amazon together are looking at 700 billion which think of that number yeah is that all data centers or they would fill the stadium with 20

56:58Leo Laporte:bills data centers it's power it's power needs it's it's all that it's data getting the data where are you going to find the data to train these things paying meta and microsoft same

57:11Jason Hiner:same basic story with a capex through the roof uh meta's capex last quarter was 22 billion and that number going to go up again they say they're going to spend about 115 135 billion dollars for the year microsoft in one quarter spent three billion dollars a week 37 and a half billion dollars capital expenditures towards cpus GPUs mostly again for AI demand not that Microsoft's revenue was hurt it was up 81.3 billion 17 year-over-year growth so these companies are having huge profits you know they're

58:01Megan Morrone:spending it all it's depressing I just for some reason as you were talking about this my 1099 to connect safely from our donations from that arrived and I'm looking at the number And it is nothing compared. I mean, I don't even know how many billions of fraction of zeros away from the kind of money you're talking about. I mean, it's pennies.

58:25Jason Hiner:But the stock market is punishing these companies. We're grateful for their contribution. Microsoft had a huge, I can't remember what it was, but it was a huge. I mean, 12%, I think, their stock went down in an hour. and it's not because they're not profitable it's because they announced they're going to spend a lot of money on ai and i think the market is looking at this and saying well where's the money in ai that you're going to be spending i honestly what after what we just talked about it feels to me like there is an upside absolutely i think not only do you have to spend this money do you as a hyperscaler uh you know because you're competing against everybody else and they're spending it.

59:09Jason Hiner:But is it a winner-take-all market? No, I think there's plenty to go around. I think the upsides are very strong. I know the market doesn't believe that.

59:19Leo Laporte:Right, that's the problem. I think there's people who are freaking out because everyone's saying they're wasting money. We haven't seen the fruits of the labor just yet. And we're going to put our money elsewhere. But I really think that this is the year of, I coined it right now, the decision-making as a service. It's really where these agent companies are going. and that's where the money is going to make it happen. So.

59:40Jason Hiner:Yeah. And you have to spend, at this point, you have to spend to make it. Of course, does a lot of this money go in NVIDIA's pocket? I think so. Well, TSMC, there's a lot of companies now that are getting better. TSMC is doing very well. TSMC, which, you know, basically was a captive company by Apple. Apple was using them for all of their chips, has said, yeah, not so much anymore. uh apple get in line because uh you know there's a lot of demand for our chips from nvidia and other companies has anybody tried to buy any ram lately yeah look at that it's not cheap i uh i had that into intuition that's why i bought the 128 gigabyte framework desktop six months ago and i and i bought a new laptop a few months ago because i i don't know what it's going to look like into this year but ram prices have more than doubled just because of this yeah companies like micron have said we're not going to sell to consumers anymore there's too much money to be made selling to enterprise um and in fact computers may be over it's the steam machine which uh is a pretty exciting gaming machine from valve uh is now delayed and they're saying it's going to probably cost more than we thought because we can't make them we they're too expensive So, but you know what?

1:00:59This is capitalism, right?

1:01:04Jason Hiner:Is it overheated? Is the economy overheated? Or is it a bubble? Or is it reasonable investment to build something that's going to change everything?

1:01:15Megan Morrone:But the problem that I'm worried about is, is it possible for the startups to compete with these mega oligopical, you know, these companies?

1:01:23Jason Hiner:Well, that's what we're basically saying, you know, with Lou.

1:01:27Megan Morrone:Who's got billions of dollars to invest besides these companies?

1:01:29Jason Hiner:It's the hyperscalers. So they're competing against one another.

1:01:32Megan Morrone:I don't even know if I would call that capitalism anymore. I don't know what I would call it. The future.

1:01:40Jason Hiner:Should we be worried?

1:01:43Megan Morrone:I think so.

1:01:45Jason Hiner:In what way? So, I mean, there's all kinds of ways. Is it going to crash the economy?

1:01:51Megan Morrone:It's very common for industries to consolidate. But usually they start out with a lot of players. I mean, if you go back to the car industry, the beer industry, any industry, there'd be a ton of players. Then eventually it would get down to three or four big players. Right now, there's just a handful of big players that are starting out. And I don't even know how the anthropics, you know, how do you compete with Microsoft, Meta, Google? I mean, I just don't know how you compete with these giant and open AI at this point. It just makes it really difficult. I mean, maybe around the edges with niche products, maybe that's the way it'll happen.

1:02:25Megan Morrone:But I just worry a little bit about a very tiny number of companies controlled by a very small number of people having this much influence on our entire world.

1:02:35Jason Hiner:Yeah.

1:02:35Megan Morrone:It's just a scary thought, but I've had scarier thoughts before.

1:02:40Jason Hiner:Well, you know what's scary for people like you and me, Lou? is that we, our retirement savings are all in the stock market, right? Yeah, me too. It's true. And, you know, I just don't know what to do.

1:02:59Leo Laporte:I just don't know what to do. You know, it's one of those things, I have faith in this, because obviously I'm a little biased, I'm working in the industry, working in a company that does it. But that's why we should ask you, because you are closest to it. But I think the thing here is that obviously there's so much money being put into it. I talked to so many people, whether it's people at schools or organizations, and they just don't have the permission to even use AI at this point. And they don't see the benefit of it. And when you see corporations like GM and these other companies that are actually pivoting because they're using AI to get the noise out of the way, and they're changing the way they do business, that's where the power lives.

1:03:38Leo Laporte:And once people start to realize that, you know, I do, there's some fear around, you know, AGI and all that stuff, but there's so much power behind this and so much freedom behind it that once it becomes accessible, lives change. And so I'm hoping that's what happens this year in the stock market shows.

1:03:54Megan Morrone:Well, I think the CEO of a very small nonprofit, our productivity has skyrocketed in the last two years. I mean, I can't even begin to tell you what used to take us weeks. We now do in less than a day. It's just incredible how powerful this stuff can be.

1:04:11Jason Hiner:This is better than the internet, better than personal computing. This is a transformative technology on the order of fire, steam. I mean, I don't know. This is a new industrial era. This is a new era.

1:04:26Leo Laporte:It feels bigger than that. I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm an electrical engineer. But the other day I had a model generate a new PCB for me and send it out to get it fabricated. and that would have taken me months to do and it took me hours to do so it's just it's it's transformative in a way that people don't even realize i think so and i think we're at a we're

1:04:45Patrick Norton:at an intermediate point where we're using chatbots and we think that's what ai is right in fact yeah where it's going is is agent we're going to have agentic systems that are based on personal assistance and they're going to come to us through wearables and mostly glasses and that what does that do that makes us cyborgs basically that basically we have a peripheral device that is prosthetic brain power and total knowledge that's the revolution as far as i'm concerned for personal use it and also business behind the scenes we have ai that's going to completely revolutionize medicine science technology space travel all the rest and so this we again i i would i would encourage everyone who pays attention to AI.

1:05:29Patrick Norton:It's this AI chat bot thing where you go type something and it types that - That's not it. This is quaint. This is nothing.

1:05:38Jason Hiner:And I think a lot of people, and I'm gonna blame Microsoft a little bit, Lou, I apologize. A lot of people, Google and Microsoft are the worst culprits in this, for whom AI is pushed on them. You know, co-pilots pushed on you in Windows, Google Drive, Google Docs, constantly pushing AI on me. look at it they see it as trivial not helpful annoying and decide that's ai and so there is certainly a large group of people maybe even a majority of people say ai is nothing it's terrible i hate it stop pushing it on me you know google search you know with all the ai crap they don't see what we see that where ai is really truly useful because that it's just they're not too much noise that way yeah yeah it's too much noise I agree I would love Menta

1:06:27Patrick Norton:Menta in there as well because people are seeing AI slop and that's what on Facebook social yeah the general public and and that's one of the things they say oh that's AI that's that's what AI is a you're watching this video you can

1:06:39Megan Morrone:see I'm wearing the meta glasses which are kind of cool you you should have warned us that you're taking oh wait a minute we're actually truth be called the battery's dead and it's been dead for about a fix I can't just like them I just wear them because they're glasses. I mean, no, I...

1:06:57Jason Hiner:Did you get your lenses?

1:06:58Megan Morrone:Oh, no, these are prescription glasses. Yeah, okay. And the prescription costs a lot more than the lenses. What is that? Lens Crafter has a monopoly in my area. So, you know, you pay a lot for them. Those metal glasses? Yep. Good on you. So if you and I were to take each other's picture, would there be an infinite loop?

1:07:16Jason Hiner:Yeah. This is the problem with these. They all look nerdy, right? Maybe that's the goal.

1:07:22Patrick Norton:Well, that's all going to change very quickly. And I think that this is where we decommoditize AI because people are going to use the AI. It's suddenly be useful. Whatever hardware they have. Exactly. So I think there's going to be a huge, there already is a huge battle to come out with glasses that don't.

1:07:38Megan Morrone:Oh, I just had a scary thought. So I'm thinking about getting a cataract operation. I don't need one yet. But at some point, and my doctor was saying they could put a new lens in for me. Could I get a smart lens? Oh, wait until those are available. Yeah. That's a scary thought.

1:07:51Jason Hiner:make sure it's removable the problem the problem is demonic you'll need another one a year later

1:07:59Patrick Norton:for the upgrade exactly that's right you're going to see what that what that's like when apple comes out with neuromancer later this year it's just a thing you plug into the back of your

1:08:10Jason Hiner:skull right uh i call a microsoft i think one of the things that scares people also is this constant talk of an ai bubble and the stock market crashing maybe we already had that hedge funds where we were fe we're february 8th this year already have made 24 billion dollars shorting software stocks and why did software stocks tumble because the market suddenly realized oh you don't really need legal zoom you could just have your agent write the legal documents for you you don't need a lot of this software anymore now whether that's the is that the bubble bursting it's not exactly what they what they thought the bubble burst would be i think to a large extent

1:08:54Patrick Norton:that's that's there you know the everything behind the stock market is people right yeah and they are delusional you don't believe in the wisdom of the crowds then i don't i don't think there are i don't think everybody understands where ai is going nobody understands where nobody's going but one One of the mistakes everybody makes is they get caught up in the hype and they go, we're going to be able to lay off half our employees and replace them with chatbots. Well that's not how it works actually. What AI is going to do is it's going to magnify the capabilities of employees. The companies that do that are going to have much greater capabilities and to compete with those companies, you're also going to have lots of employees with magnified capabilities.

1:09:34Patrick Norton:It's not about laying people off. You know, there's a thing called AI washing that's happening right now where because of tariffs because of economic Uncertainty because downturns the market and inflation Lots of companies are laying people off but to make themselves look good as CEOs. They're saying oh, it's because we're so They're blaming because of AI now. Yeah, but that's not really what's going exactly but that's mostly BS. That's right. Exactly

1:09:55Jason Hiner:In fact, I've seen reports that customer service is actually improving Thanks to AI certainly things like Jira tickets are getting responded to faster um you know i think in many cases normal users go oh that's when i call a phone number and it's not a human and it's on you or you're chatting with a bot on a website and that's invariably a terrible experience but that's not just what's where ai is is changing customer service and i think in some ways it's a huge improvement i think it's very hard for us to really know what's happening and I think it's even harder for normal people.

1:10:35Megan Morrone:Well, it's funny because where I might have otherwise called customer service, I'm sometimes just using AI to answer a question. How do I get this software to work? Well, it doesn't always get it right. It gets wrong a lot. But eventually, it's better than trying to call, be on hold for four hours.

1:10:50Jason Hiner:I use AI now to configure all my computers. Yes, I could look it up. I could do the web search. I could ask Substack. Whatever happened to Substack? But not Substack. what's the stack exchange? I could go out. Yeah, I could. No, I don't have to do that anymore. When I got that new laptop, I literally configured it all with Claude.

1:11:13Patrick Norton:Claude code. And you probably bought it with the recommendation that came through AI as well. I think AI is very good at making recommendations for things. I did.

1:11:22Jason Hiner:I asked Kagi. I said, what's the best OLED laptop for running Linux? And it gave me some very good choices. I ended up buying a ThinkPad X1 Carbon. I was very happy. I wish it had told me, and there's going to be a new Intel chip in two months that's going to be even better.

1:11:38Megan Morrone:So I have Luder Lake. You have to ask the question, right? I remember when I bought some kind of device, I wanted to have auto shut off. So I said, I want to buy a toaster with a timer. It wasn't a toaster, it was something else. And it gave me one with a timer, but it was just a timer that rang. It wasn't a timer that turned it off. So then I had to go back and say, I want one with a timer that will automatically shut off the device. and then he found some of those for me as well. But, you know, if you don't ask the question right, you're not going to get the right answer.

1:12:05Jason Hiner:Let's take a little break. I'm trying to get us out of here before some big game or something starts. I don't know. I hear there's something. Sports ball. Sport ball is coming up later.

1:12:14Megan Morrone:It's the Bad Bunny concert. Or are you going to go to the other one? Are you going to go to the one? No, the other one was canceled. It was canceled? Are you serious? The Kid Rock canceled. Yeah. Oh, my God. I hadn't heard that. That's amazing.

1:12:27Jason Hiner:thing fox was going to show the MAGA Super Bowl concert so that you wouldn't see a Puerto Rican

1:12:34Megan Morrone:dance oh god forbid we only have to have Americans not Puerto Ricans just Americans oh wait a minute wait a minute I forgot Puerto Rico is a part of America it's part of America I think the

1:12:42Jason Hiner:president of the United States is not clear on that by the way so they actually canceled it that's the last I saw who knows things could things it's a fast moving story uh you know what here's the good news if you don't want to see bad bunny go watch the milania movie there's plenty there's choices you have choice plenty of seats it's not hard to get a ticket uh we will have more in just a bit now that we've offended half the nation no a third of the no a few people about 40 percent larry maggot it's your fault larry maggot connect safely.org um mike elgin from machine society.ai and uh by the way he does not speak for microsoft but he is engineering manager of copilot engineering leader of copilot of microsoft lou mm and i did i should have said this earlier when we talk about microsoft you're not speaking for microsoft you have no inside knowledge uh and you will recuse yourself of course if it's something of which you do have knowledge you're just here as a friend of twit long time host of uh this week in enterprise tech we just love lou and uh he's one of the nicest people in the world um so thank you lou for being thank you for that appreciate it and you can't help it if he's a patriots fan it's not his fault folks our show this week brought to you by meter the company building better networks this is i i have to say i was totally stoked i got to talk to these guys a few weeks ago and i was told i had never heard of them i had to tell me about this so it was founded by a couple of network engineers years a few years ago who just knew the pain points of designing a network right and they said we need a full stack solution from soup to nuts we need to have a way to do it all because it's the only way to make sure everything works and you don't get that run around where it's not our fault it's their fault if you're a network engineer you have been there you know the headaches legacy providers inflexible pricing i.t resource constraints stretching us in everybody knows that complex deployments across fragmented tools look the network's mission critical to the business your mission critical to the business but you're working with infrastructure that just wasn't built for today's demands that's why businesses are switching to meter you know who uses meter for their data centers reddit meter delivers full stack networking infrastructure and they do it everything wired wireless even cellular it's built for performance and for scalability and for reliability meter designs its own hardware that's they realize you have to do this they write their own firmware they build their own software they manage the deployments They provide after-sales support.

1:15:34Jason Hiner:Soup to nuts. They offer everything from, they'll help you with ISP procurement, security, routing, switching, wireless, firewall, cellular power, DNS security, VPN, SD-WAN, and multi-site workflows all in a single solution. You know, I think part of this has happened because of companies like these hyperscalers, where the knowledge of how to build a data center has now migrated down to the point where Meter, these problems are solved. And Meter knows how to do it. They've created a single integrated networking stack that scales. I mean, they're in major hospitals. Talk about a hostile environment.

1:16:14Jason Hiner:A hospital is a very difficult place for wireless, right? Because the MRI machines, all of the different equipment. They do it for branch offices. That's a big problem. Where you have offices in different geographic locations all on the same network, meter can do it. You acquire a warehouse with their own weird wireless setup, meter can transform it into something that works with your network. And large campuses, even data centers, even, as I said, Reddit. Here's a great testimonial from the assistant director of technology for the Webb School of Knoxville. He said, quote,

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1:17:55Jason Hiner:You're going to be hearing a lot more about these guys. Really, they've solved a big issue. On we go. Uh-oh, Chief Twit was wrong. It has not been canceled. Multiple outlets have debunked. Oh, okay. It's not canceled. Just a lot of the artists have dropped out. But if you like Kid Rock, you can watch it tonight.

1:18:15Megan Morrone:No, he canceled a concert that he's scheduled to do in South Carolina this summer.

1:18:19Jason Hiner:Oh, that's a different one.

1:18:20Megan Morrone:When I did a Google search for this, I found the news.

1:18:24Jason Hiner:Okay, I apologize.

1:18:25Megan Morrone:But if you want to watch him today instead of Bad Bunny, it's... Fox has got it. You can do it. Fox has got it.

1:18:31Jason Hiner:I'm recording both. Let's talk about privacy and security. Here's a story from the BBC. hidden cameras in Chinese hotels are streaming broadcasts to thousands over Telegram. You can just log in, watch real people doing intimate things, because apparently this spy cam porn has existed in China for at least a decade, according to BBC. But in the past couple of years, the issue has become a regular talking point on social media, with people swapping tips on how to spot cameras as small as a pencil eraser. Some have even resorted, this is the BBC, to pitching tents inside hotel rooms to avoid being filmed.

1:19:17Jason Hiner:Is that a euphemism? I pitched a tent. What's weird is... I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you for bringing it to that peak. Love it. Six different... Over 18 months, the BBC authors discovered six different websites and apps promoted on telegram between them claiming to operate more than 180 hotel room spy cams live streaming spy cams scary anyway i just i guess in china or do we have to worry about that well as well that's a good question and i guess that's why i raise it i mean we have listeners in china so but i bet you if it's happening there why wouldn't it be happening here well it's a

1:20:04Patrick Norton:It's a much bigger phenomenon in China. I think I was writing about this like five or six years ago without the telegram and social media aspect. But it was like at the time it was kind of an underground phenomenon. Right. Now you can find it. Right. And, you know, the thing is, yeah, it's just one of those things that it's like smartwatches on children. Right. It's China leads the world by orders of magnitude ahead of everyone else. this is another thing that's just happening there that shouldn't be happening anywhere obviously but but yeah it's it's still around it's still a big deal and the the key element of it and the reason that that Chinese operators aren't going global is that you have to have access to the hotel right to plant the camera right and and so it's it's really so far thank goodness more of a Chinese phenomenon but it's something that you have to keep in mind if you travel to china because i'm sure that you know um i'm sure that the audience would love love to see some uh some some uh foreign victims uh you will be seeing a few ads on the super bowl

1:21:16Jason Hiner:for ai we certainly saw that last year and i mentioned that open ai and anthropic will have dueling ads but also you'll see a lot of ads generated by ai uh this year uh and i think it's another reason people hate hate a ai is because of the the coca-cola ad which was played incessantly over the holidays was i think intentionally done badly they wanted mcdonald's was horrible too yeah they pulled that one that wasn't in the u.s but they had to pull that one um so one of the first ads you'll see is for a vodka svedka in which uh a voluptuous humanoid woman and her muscular male companion are dancing in a club with bottles in hand they're robots so it's kind of it's ai about ai drinking vodka why would you want to drink a vodka that robots

1:22:07Megan Morrone:drink uh why would you want to feed vodka to your robot don't right scary enough with this video I think this might be to get around the rules that you can't be drinking a human can't be drinking alcohol on screen Trying to add but a robot can

1:22:25Patrick Norton:The problem is that culturally we're and we're entering into an era where AI equals cheap And so this is one of the big thing problems with the coca-cola ads coca-cola has some legendary ads So does McDonald's. If you like advertising, they've had some very masterful, beautiful, brilliant, well-engineered ads, well-written, great jingles, all the rest. And then to do an AI slop. For example, the Coca-Cola commercial, there were nerds on Reddit who were counting the number of axles. So within one commercial, the axle configurations on the trucks that were depicted, there was like 18 of them or something like that.

1:23:09Patrick Norton:Different configurations of axles. AI is just making up axle configurations on trucks, things like that.

1:23:14Jason Hiner:So that's the thing that they probably did, I'm thinking, could have fixed, but decided not to. For some reason, they wanted people to know this was AI generated.

1:23:23Patrick Norton:But they had to go running with their tail between their legs and retreat. Oh, did they? take them down and apologize and all that stuff they keep doing it like these big companies keep coming out with you're spending eight million dollars for a 30 second ad one thing here we are talking about it right well that's true my son will be in the hellman's

1:23:44Jason Hiner:mayonnaise ad look for him he's on for less than a second so you're gonna have to look very very closely it's an ad yeah you'll see the mustache that's why you know immediately it's salt hank It's a Hellman's ad featuring Andy Samberg as Neil Diamond singing Sweet Sandwich Time. And when it gets to the ba-ba-ba, Henry's one of the ba-ba-ba. So just look for that when it gets to ba-ba-ba. Gemini becomes an AI interior decorator in Google's Super Bowl ad. You'll see it's the new home commercial featuring nostalgic piano music and the heartfelt voiceover of a mother and son envisioning their new home with the help of Gemini.

1:24:31Jason Hiner:So sweet. Sweet, sweet. I think that's maybe they're trying to humanize it right at this point, instead of vodka drinking robots. Crypto.com is going to launch. It spent, by the way, hundreds of millions of dollars on AI.com. Somebody was sitting on that domain. I can't remember what the final amount was. I wish I had thought of that. It was several hundred million dollars for that. um they're going to promote it uh it says as a way for users to quote generate a private personal ai agent that doesn't just answer questions but actually operates on the user's behalf you'd trust crypto.com to do that wouldn't you ai.com uh you're going to see a word plus i do now i i didn't at first but at the last line of

1:25:23Megan Morrone:it's for the good of humanity oh well that's different oh i wish no problem yeah i'd known yeah it scared me for a minute leo but but it does confirm that this is going to be the year

1:25:34Jason Hiner:of agentic ai for sure i mean this you're you you nailed it mike uh amazon uh is going to have an a word plus uh it's going to try to kill chris hemsworth a standoff with amazon's ai assistant which he fears is planning elaborate ways to kill him i do you see that seems like a mistake seems like a mistake on amazon's part um we mentioned anthropic super bowl ad there will not be any ads for uh the prediction markets calci or poly market it's a prohibited category according to the nfl you know why i suspect it's prohibited because

1:26:19Patrick Norton:they love draft kings so so leo interestingly there was just a big earthquake here in oaxaca no i hear those i hear the horn and it's still going so i'm having an earthquake right now

1:26:32Jason Hiner:oh yeah you're you're shaking are you want to go you want to dive under your desk

1:26:41if the power goes out i think his internet is going out

1:26:47Jason Hiner:I'm going to usgs.gov right now to figure this out. Yeah. Wow. Not the first earthquake we've had during a live show, by the way. Real-term data. Might be the strongest, though. It looks like it's still shaking.

1:27:02Megan Morrone:Yeah, you can put USGS on the screen. Here it is. Cruz Bay. Is that Oaxaca? No, there's earthquakes everywhere. There are earthquakes everywhere.

1:27:12Jason Hiner:Yeah, I know. I used to follow. There used to be a Twitter account where you could get tweets when there was an earthquake, and it was just like constant. So I stopped.

1:27:19Megan Morrone:Yeah, I don't see the one in Oaxaca yet on the screen.

1:27:22Jason Hiner:It's happening. 5.7, it says. Oh, that's strong. Oh, that's really strong. Okay.

1:27:29Patrick Norton:Is he okay? Mike, are you still there? Yes, I'm here. I just got my audio back. Yeah, there's a big earthquake. My phone lit up. The sirens went off in town. But yeah, it's another earthquake in Oaxaca. Is it a common thing? It's still kind of shaking.

1:27:51Jason Hiner:You're actually not on a big fault.

1:27:54Patrick Norton:I don't think it's that common. No, we just got back from El Salvador, which is constantly having earthquakes. But yeah, I guess it's a little bit more rare here in Oaxaca. All the dogs are barking. Pretty serious. All right. well stay safe if you need to dive off that's okay no i'm sure it's fine i'm i'm good

1:28:19Jason Hiner:you're a bay area guy earthquakes do not phase you although 5.7 5.7 is pretty big yeah what was

1:28:27Megan Morrone:the one the most element for you remember five nine i think yeah yeah i was at uh the world

1:28:33Jason Hiner:series game at the candlestick park yeah during that that was uh that was exciting yeah wow we

1:28:41Patrick Norton:had to i was in santa barbara watching it on tv and i was just like oh my god i'm sorry 6.9 i

1:28:45Jason Hiner:got that wrong it was 6.9 so that was quite a bit bigger yeah that's that's uh more than 10 times

1:28:50Megan Morrone:bigger yeah 5.7 doesn't just listen to laugh at it's funny because i'm looking at the usgs and i don't see it on there yet which is a surprise yeah i i looked too i didn't see it either

1:29:01Patrick Norton:i got a notification on my phone instantly that was really interesting that's something that i I mean, that's lately the same time I felt I've seen that lately.

1:29:11Jason Hiner:Both Apple and Android do that. Yeah. And you will get a second or two before the earthquake, just maybe just enough time to find safety. A notification that there's one coming. Depends, I guess, how close you are to the epicenter. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's take a break. And then that way, Mike can adjust. And if you need to change your pants, you can go ahead and do that, too. just a little bit helpful hey i'm nothing if not considerate mike elgin visiting us from uh shaky oaxaca machine society.a that's right that's right net uh also from uh new england lou mareska who is a patriots and a seahawks fan i don't know what he's going to do this afternoon engineering leader for co-pilot of microsoft you know you usually have a green screen behind you i didn't know you have beautiful windows in your office you have a beautiful thank you is that snow out the window it is snow yeah the snow never melted this year did it no in fact we just got another eight inches yesterday so omg that is not typical no this is no we usually don't get this much yeah but uh it's been a lot yeah i remember my youth in providence we'd get snow but there has but they stopped after a while and uh yeah that's pretty snowy in knowingland right Well, stay safe, too.

1:30:33Jason Hiner:Stay warm, more importantly. I bet the boys are loving it, though. They're running out. Oh, gosh. They love it. Yeah. They adore it. Yeah. And, of course, Larry Magid, who is CEO of Connect Safely.

1:30:46Megan Morrone:Don't forget, Tuesday, Safer Internet. By the way, I just checked. I went to ChatGPT. I said, is there an earthquake in Oaxaca, Mexico? And it said it's a 4.1. It led me to allquakes.com. Huh. But it said 4.1. So I'm not sure how it and Mike's information are different, but interesting. But it beat out USGS in reporting that news, which I found very interesting. Which is wild. Amazing. Yeah.

1:31:09Jason Hiner:Our show today brought to you by a brand new sponsor. We're glad to have them with us. Trusted Tech. They offer US-based, Microsoft-certified support using a simple ticket-based model that helps businesses save money while getting faster, better help and proactive support. Trusted Tech is the number one global replacement to Microsoft Unified Support. Trusted Tech will work to get you better service no matter what size business you have. And in recognition of that support quality, Trusted Tech was one of the first partners in the world to earn Microsoft's new Solutions Partner designation for support they just announced that at ignite in july microsoft will implement a significant price increase for m365 not only is it going to cost more but there's a lot of nuance and and a lot of changes in the coverage levels and so forth so that's another thing trusted tech does they will give you guided microsoft support that's more straightforward more predictable and actually responsive and it costs less you can get a free consultation at trustedtech.team slash twit css trustedtech.team slash twit css now if you're if you're saying well i don't know what does microsoft think about this well ask kevin turner former microsoft coo he says and he was talking to trusted tech he said quote you have an incredible customer reputation you have to earn that every single day the relentless focus you guys trusted tech have on taking care of customers gives them value and differentiates you in the marketplace.

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1:34:12Jason Hiner:Go to trustedtech.team slash twitcss and submit a form to get in contact with Trusted Tech's Microsoft support engineers. great information from great people trustedtech.team slash twit css we thank them so much for their support for this week in tech trustedtech.team slash twit css one of the we we did talk about finance but we didn't mention one of the biggest stories of the week which is that spacex has acquired xai now remember it's all in the family eon elon owns them all spacex is expected to have a big ipo later this year xai is expected to spend lots of money over the next 12 months and during the announcement elon said something that a number of people have but maybe a little odd that spacex and they did apply to the fcc for this wants to launch a million a million data centers in space elon says it's a step to becoming a kardashev 2 civilization a number of people said you know data centers in space don't make a lot of sense elon says there's you know, if you're running on solar power, space is five times more efficient than land-based solar power.

1:35:44Jason Hiner:They've really brought the cost of launches down. That's one of the things SpaceX did do with their reusable rockets.

1:35:53Patrick Norton:Well, if you want to make a lot of money on Elon Musk's predictions, just go to the prediction market and bet against him.

1:36:02Jason Hiner:he has yet to it's a deliver on so many exactly they want to launch a million tons per year of satellites each generating 100 kilowatts of compute power i'm sorry 100 kilowatts of power per ton so that would be 100 gigawatts of ai compute annually elon says with no ongoing operational or maintenance needs well you can't it's in space so you can't set a tech up you know if you if it doesn't work you just de-orbit it and launch another one you know what's really bad for

1:36:35Megan Morrone:computers is radiation and there's a lot of that in space there is sometimes people think well it's

1:36:42Jason Hiner:very cool up there but no it's actually harder to cool a data center in space because there's no medium around it there's no air around it to for which the heat can go off condition you can't have

1:36:54Patrick Norton:air conditioners if there's no air the the you know this is basically it's it being uh pitched as a way for Elon Musk's AI to have the future of data centers. But what it actually is, is SpaceX is a winner of a company and x.com is a loser of a company, which is part of this deal. And so basically they're just kind of folding in the loser into the winner. Then they have an IPO and it's all just part of this thing where all the companies do this to a certain extent. They sort of obfuscate the parts of their business that are losing money, that aren't doing well, and couch it under an umbrella where it all seems to be doing pretty well.

1:37:36Patrick Norton:That seems to be, above all, what's happening.

1:37:40Jason Hiner:Reid Albergati, writing at Semaphore, has coined a new term for these. He says, it's the natural evolution of big tech from primarily software-based companies to extraterrestrial industrial giants, EIGs. Give me a break. It's very sci-fi.

1:38:00Patrick Norton:yeah i got another sci-fi thing for you it's called the kessler effect oh yeah it's not sci-fi yeah china wants to be in satellites in space sector put a million days it's all fun and games until the until the dominoes start falling and then you could actually cut off all the light from the sun and you wouldn't have to worry about global warming anymore nope or or or or getting a sunburn.

1:38:27Jason Hiner:So with the space shuttle, it costs$54 ,000 per kilogram to put something in orbit. Thanks to SpaceX and the Falcon Heavy, it's$1 ,400 per kilogram.

1:38:42Jason Hiner:While the cost of traveling by car has gone up 150 % over the same period, at some point, Elon says it'll be$200 a kilogram. And at that point, launching data centers into space makes economic sense unlimited solar energy there are challenges for cooling but there are ways to radiate that heat off uh i mean to be fair reed also says a good rule of thumb when it comes to musk is right call wrong clock yeah yeah i mean i'm driving an electric vehicle and i probably wouldn't be if it weren't for elon and tesla i'm still driving a tesla or actually it's it's

1:39:26Megan Morrone:driving me i hardly ever touched the steering you have a model s model three three and uh it's i've got the the new you know the hardware for fsd they don't call it autopilot anymore i've got fsd and uh as much as i hate to admit it because i'm not an elon musk fan it is very close to flawless now it really has gotten very good since the days you sold your model x where it was crap when you had it. Yeah, I was at least always thought

1:39:51Jason Hiner:it was trying to drive her into the median strip.

1:39:54Leo Laporte:No, it's quite good now. I have a Model X and this weekend it drove into a pothole and I got a flat tire.

1:40:01Megan Morrone:Ooh, not good.

1:40:02Jason Hiner:That is, by the way, an underappreciated downside to electric vehicles. They're so heavy that they run through tires at a rapid. Absolutely.

1:40:11Leo Laporte:$450 later.

1:40:12Megan Morrone:And your Model X is going to become a collector's item now. I know, I should keep it.

1:40:15Leo Laporte:I know, I love it. I do truly love it. But it does have its nuances, unfortunately. I loved it, too. But Lisa called it Christine. Well, you know, it's funny.

1:40:23Megan Morrone:We're talking about AI. So Grok is built into Teslas now. So all I have to do is push a button on my steering wheel, and I can talk to Grok. And I do. I normally wouldn't use Grok, but it's right there. And it's not nearly as bad as its reputation. And its reputation is horrible. Yeah. Because of mecca. That's a very low bar.

1:40:42Patrick Norton:This is what I was saying earlier. These AI chatbots for most uses and most people are somewhat commodified, commoditized, and it's the hardware that will determine which one you use in this case.

1:40:55Megan Morrone:But, you know, if I'm driving down the road and I say I'm looking for a restaurant, it'll recommend one and it'll actually drive me there. It'll reprogram my GPS. Do you have a cute voice? It's a very cute voice. Do you get your choice of voice? She loves me. She's very close. Yeah, that's the problem.

1:41:14Patrick Norton:I don't love that idea. So, just a quick, we talked briefly on Elon Musk's claims about data centers in space. I don't think we should move off the topic until we really understand what a terrible idea this is in the timeframe, again, that he's talking about. So the problems or the costs are vastly higher than the cost of a data center on Earth. There's space debris, which is a problem nobody has an answer for. It's getting worse and worse with all these satellites going up. You did talk about the thermodynamics and the heat and the radiation and all those problems. Another one that people aren't really talking about is the maintenance and repair.

1:41:53Patrick Norton:You've got a million data centers in space. And data centers on Earth, which are far less complex and subject to gravity and things like that, need lots of maintenance. And they need people working on them and chipping away. So that's another issue, getting people there and back. and then you have the basic fundamentals of the market. Like right now we have this big boom in data center development. There'll come a time where that's going to back off and those things are going to be very cheap because the boom will go too far. And so doing something in space takes like 10 times longer, right? And so how do you right-size the quantity of these things?

1:42:33Patrick Norton:It's just a big problem. Big set of problems.

1:42:36Leo Laporte:there's another there's another one to add to that too is a security like how are you gonna like it's like open season for governments to shoot them down right like if you have secure data up there like how are you going to secure it if they can just pluck them out of the sky

1:42:49Jason Hiner:that's probably where i should bring up the story about russia intercepting eu satellites this is from also from a sem semaphore russian space vehicles have approached physically approach european satellites and intercept their communications according to officials two objects have passed dangerously close to some of europe's most important geostationary satellites is from the financial times uh the satellites lack advanced onboard computers that could encrypt their transmissions so the data is is coming off the in plain text which also leaves them vulnerable

1:43:27Patrick Norton:interference i read that they actually hacked them uh is that not the case yeah um well it's

1:43:35Jason Hiner:certainly theoretically possible they uh the parliament wrote it could provide a blueprint for sabotaging european space systems um moscow stepped up i guess space warfare fortunately

1:43:51Leo Laporte:we've got space force to protect us and so you know that is that is the one thing i do not want to see is a space war uh all right so yeah you know i think my theory is that elon uh i i used to think elon just smoked too much weed and used too much ketamine and so as a result was kind of

1:44:16Jason Hiner:uh you know kind of had some outlandish ideas now i'm thinking maybe it's stock manipulation maybe he's just because he's got an ipo coming up maybe he just is hoping the stock market will buy it and then buy his stock he wants to raise a lot of money for space certainly well with

1:44:35Megan Morrone:just the stock yeah and yeah he's done very well hasn't he and he there's he's been accused of pump and dump schemes using uh x uh no i've been enjoying the revenue from turning my model three into a robo taxi for years now yeah right 2018 is when the right writing it out right

1:44:54Jason Hiner:i mean i i don't know but you can't you can never read somebody's mind what their intentions are but it's it certainly benefits him financially if people buy this notion well this is the old

1:45:08Patrick Norton:Silicon Valley thing, right? And he's like the poster child for this kind of thinking. You always, you always go after the maximum, most incredible outlandish version of that. You don't, if you're, if you're Google, like, you know, 15 years ago, you don't say, you know, yeah, we're going to, we're going to grow email to, to capture a two digit part of the market. You say, no, we're going to expand until there are, there are 6 billion people using Gmail, a ridiculous number, right and and you just go for it right you just like go for the maximum thing you can possibly attempt and you fall way way short in the case of elon musk you fall way way

1:45:50Jason Hiner:yeah there's also there's one other thing that comes to my mind um and by the way i use starlink that's my i have comcast internet but because comcast is not 100 reliable i have a fail over to starlink got a little dish up on the roof and those are the only two high speed choices available to me so i don't i would prefer not to use either but that's the only if i'm going to do shows for my attic it's the only way i can do that um but there's also this issue of well if elon's got a million satellites in space and starlink is the dominant choice elon has huge geopolitical power he's already remember he you know he used uh he cut off the ukraine uh uh and now ukraine said moscow's terminals have been cut off russia is supposedly not supposed to use starlink but has been uh illegally mounting starlink systems on its attack drones um activists in iran use starlink after tehran imposed internet blackouts but elon holds the master switch to this right uh from semaphore relying solely on starlink given musk's strong political views quote can be really dangerous from a country's sovereignty perspective this is npr global south starlink you know we saw

1:47:13Patrick Norton:that some time ago when when brazil ordered a brazilian judge ordered musk to or ordered x.com to remove a post he refused so they basically went through the carriers within Brazil to to block X but then Starlink was blasting internet and X into Brazil and then they started going after those and and so it was basically this war between a sovereign nation and a single oligarch basically who was using multiple companies to override the legal authority and the sovereignty of the brazilian government and so and at some point uh musk backed off but he didn't have to back off he could have not backed off and so but that was just a glimpse into the future of individual people who have the power of nation states or exceed the power of nation states and here's it elon musk represents an individual person richest man in the world worth 800 billion dollars powerful space program the nation of brazil yep uh and you know

1:48:22Jason Hiner:having 800 billion dollars doesn't mean you can have a bigger hat what does mean you could have a bigger house and a nice yacht but really what it means to elon is a lot of power and i think at this point it's not about accumulating power dollars it's about accumulating power

1:48:37Patrick Norton:and do we want to allow him that power wants to have more robots more more tesla robots than

1:48:43Megan Morrone:there are people on earth imagine that what's interesting i just i just have millions of robots for what countries have a lower gdp than elon musk's net worth and there are several oh yeah he is wealthier than many higher countries he's going to be our first trillion dollar man

1:49:00Jason Hiner:yeah pretty scary all right uh one more break and then uh what i call the back of the book the uh the other news. We are having fun getting ready for the big game, which is about an hour off. We're going to get you off the show in time, Lou, to root for both teams. Can there be a tie in the Super Bowl? I don't think so. I don't think they allow that.

1:49:28Leo Laporte:All my kids are rooting for Patriots, so I might have to go the other way just to beat the odd man out. Do you have an appropriate jersey to wear? You know, I should wear both. I have both. So my nephew's also, it's funny because my nephew's also a Seattle's fan and my other nephew's a New England's fan. So it's like, it's a battle for this to today. It's going to be great.

1:49:48Megan Morrone:Just wear the one who's winning at the time. Just keep the one that on. There you go. Whoever's leaving. And wagon it.

1:49:54Jason Hiner:Yeah, there you go. Put on both and then strip one off if the other one starts winning.

1:49:57Megan Morrone:I don't have a horse in this race, but one of my employees works in, lives in Boston. And I'm going to be meeting, she's coming off for safer internet day. And I wanted to be in a good mood. And for that reason alone, I'm backing the Patriots.

1:50:10Jason Hiner:Well, I can't root for the Seahawks because there are mortal enemies, which is why I'm wearing my 49-year shirt today.

1:50:19Leo Laporte:There's a good reason to root for the Patriots. I hope the coach wins and he's also was the most winning coach and also the person who's never won the Super Bowl but also won as a coach. So that should be awesome too.

1:50:33Jason Hiner:Yeah. And it's kind of an interesting story. unfortunately will mean the patriots have how many super bowl victories seven it's not i mean that makes me mad but okay you know hey at least we beat the eagles we got the eagles out of it for you so there you go uh i don't know we don't i don't understand sport ball so i just i'm pretending i fake it i fake it well larry maggot is also here for internet safer internet day celebrating this week and uh from earthquake prone oaxaca she's not exactly earthquake prone but earthquake

1:51:10Patrick Norton:not really but we but today it is and we're going to be going we're going to be meeting up with some friends and watching the super bowl in a pub here in oaxaca it's actually surprisingly popular yeah american football any excuse to drink more pulque or that's really that's really the thing that I like about the Super Bowl. Best of all, I love drinking beer and eating greasy food.

1:51:33Jason Hiner:Yeah, I've got queso cooking in my slow cooker downstairs. Sweet. It's Martha Stewart's queso recipe. I don't know how authentic it is, but I'll find out. I put extra jalapenos in just to make it good, tasty. Our show today brought to you by Zscaler. You need to know about Zscaler, the world's largest cloud security platform. We've been talking about the potential rewards of AI. for any business, you know, too significant to ignore. But there are also risks and all kinds of risks. The loss of sensitive data, attacks against enterprise managed AI. And of course, generative AI really increases the opportunities for threat actors, helping them to rapidly create phishing lures, to write malicious code, to automate data extraction, as we just were talking about earlier, to find zero days in code you're running.

1:52:26Jason Hiner:In fact, if you think about it, it's like, why am I using AI? But you have to, right? You just have to use it intelligently, carefully. You need Zscaler to protect you. There were 1.3 million instances of social security numbers leaked through SaaS AI applications. ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot saw nearly 3.2 million data violations. It's time to rethink your organization's safe use of public and private AI. chad pallet is the acting cso at bioivt he says zscaler helped them reduce their cyber premiums reduce their cyber premiums by 50 percent and double their coverage plus improving their controls take a look at this from chad with zscaler as long as you've got internet you're good to go a big part of the reason that we moved to a consolidated solution away from sdwan and vpn is to eliminate that lateral opportunity that people had and that opportunity for misdirection or open access to the network.

1:53:29Jason Hiner:It also was an opportunity for us to maintain and provide our remote users with a cafe-style environment. Thanks, Chad. With Zscaler Zero Trust Plus AI, you can safely adopt generative AI and private AI to boost productivity across the business. Their Zero Trust Architecture Plus AI helps you reduce the risks of AI-related data loss to greater guarantee the productivity and compliance of your company. Learn more at zscaler.com slash security. That's zscaler.com slash security. We thank them so much for their support of this week in tech. A lot of people use Windows and use a program called Notepad++.

1:54:14Jason Hiner:plus it's a really nice third party kind of improvement on notepad uh well it was kind of a problem uh this week uh it turns out the chinese it looks like chinese state-sponsored hackers uh did a supply chain attack on notepad plus plus.org and that people were downloading notepad++ from that site, certain, not everybody, this was a very clever hack, certain targeted users were selectively redirected to attack or control malicious updates. So they got a version of notepad++ that had malware in it. According to the former, now former hosting provider, the shared hosting was compromised through September of 2025.

1:55:13Jason Hiner:Even after losing server access, attackers maintained credentials to internal services until December 2025, which allowed them to. So between September and December, September, October, November, for three months, they were able to redirect Notepad++ update traffic to malicious servers. But they weren't trying to attack everybody who uses Notepad++. They were looking, it looks like specifically for overseas Chinese, Chinese dissidents. It was all fixed after December 2nd. But this should scare people. the author of notepad plus plus says i deeply apologize to all users affected by this hijacking i recommend downloading version 8.9.1 which fixes you know has the relevant security enhancement and running the installer to update notepad plus plus manually make sure you were not infected

1:56:09Leo Laporte:it's too bad i loved i loved notepad plus plus but there's been a bunch of exploits in the last couple years and i just kind of stepped away from it and uh you know went to vs code so it's one of

1:56:20Jason Hiner:Well, VS Code is so great. It's one of those programs, though, that he was updating a lot, which on the one hand is good. On the other hand, not necessarily so good. And in this case, for three months, people potentially were a bit just a word.

1:56:36Patrick Norton:It's part of a larger story of the Chinese government basically considers it's a global suppression, global sort of censorship, global control of the Chinese diaspora around the world. Exactly. They're not in meddling in everything, but they're all over the people who have left China and now live in other countries. There was a recent article, somewhat typical for the last few years, of somebody who was going to go to a screening of films that were Chinese films in New York City. And he's an American of Chinese descent. And there was some criticism of the Chinese Communist Party and so on. And he got a call from his father who was in a panic saying, don't do anything stupid.

1:57:21Patrick Norton:don't do this or that because the Chinese use the family within China to control the actions and the free speech of Chinese Americans and others around the world. So this is a very, very, a much bigger story and cyber attacks is a big part of it actually. And a lot of people don't care much about it because it doesn't affect the Chinese diaspora. Yeah.

1:57:44Jason Hiner:The supply chain attacks

1:57:45Patrick Norton:This is very scary.

1:57:46Jason Hiner:Very sophisticated. I mean, obviously, yeah, yes. New York's, according to Adafruit, New York wants to control alt delete your 3D printer. This is a bill that is not yet passed, but it's in the budget bill. Language that should alarm every maker, educator, and small manufacturer in New York State. Buried in Part C, says Adafruit, a provision requiring all 3D printers sold or delivered in New York should include blocking technology. software or firmware that scans every print file through a firearms blueprint detection algorithm they don't want people to 3d print guns which i guess i understand but it refuses to print anything it flags as potential firearm or firearm component if you have ever used an ai and been told i can't do that that that's going to violate my uh my principles you realize that this kind of software can be wrong in a lot of a lot of ways but I see this is akin to

1:58:46Patrick Norton:software within drone applications drone apps the control DJI drones that prevent you from flying over sensitive military bases and and other things like that I mean if something can be dangerous and if that danger can be mitigated through software I understand the reasoning for it I'm not super a

1:59:06Jason Hiner:Adafruit says, one of the problems is you cannot reliably detect firearms from geometry alone, which is how this would have to work. So if it's all shaped, if it has a pipe, a tube, a block, a bracket, a gear, is it a gun? Is it a part of a gun? It would affect all open source firmware, Marlin, Clipper, RepRap. It would affect offline machines, printers that never touch the Internet. It will affect file formats. The algorithm can't parse raw G-code, custom slicers, parametric designs. It would affect CNC mills. So it would really be a problem for 3D printers. Just bring it to your attention. It's not yet a law.

1:59:50Jason Hiner:It is in the budget bill, which means, you know, unless it's stripped out, it's likely to pass. Western Digital is planning 140 terabyte hard drives. What could possibly go wrong? That's the wrong story. I got the wrong story on there.

2:00:13Jason Hiner:Are you ready for a 140 terabyte hard drive? You'll definitely need Spinrite.

2:00:22Megan Morrone:Those raw Blu-ray files are 80 gigs.

2:00:27Jason Hiner:It's a 14 platter, three and a half inch. they call it the hammer HDD design you know it blows me away how long lived this spinning drive technology is I thought by I thought by 2000 we would have solid state memory there there's no way spinning drives would survive past 2000 not only have they survive we're going we're going beyond 140 terabytes in the in the near future also AI is making SSDs more expensive so we're going to stay here for a while yeah well i mean and and really yeah well how do you back well you don't back up you back up to it right it's that's what goes in your nas i guess although i have a 30 terabyte nas i don't even need 140 terabyte it's all media it's all media it's media hoarders you know yeah get ready for the wordle crisis the new york times has announced that uh that started february 2nd so they started this week they're going to start reusing words there's no reason they need to the patrick wortle who designed wordle uh came up with four nearly half a million five letter words that could be used in wordle uh he narrowed it down to 22 949 by things like excluding proper nouns and plurals and anything with uppercase level uh he got the word list down to 5 437 words so that's sounds like it's short well a word a day from that list would give you 15 years of wordle wordle started october 2021 so there are enough words in there good words to go through 2036 patrick says why are you repeating new york times why

2:02:26Jason Hiner:no one knows

2:02:30Jason Hiner:But I just thought I'd warn you if you see a word and you say, wasn't this a word or word before?

2:02:37Leo Laporte:You got to wonder how long they're going to milk that after they spent$10 million on it. It has saved the New York Times.

2:02:43Jason Hiner:Look what happened to the Washington Post this week. I mean, it's been decimated. The New York Times is the last national newspaper standing. Well, Wall Street Journal. Oh, I guess you had the Wall Street Journal, too.

2:02:55Megan Morrone:yeah but in general but it's a little bit of a niche market yeah because you pay money for the

2:03:01Jason Hiner:wall street journal to make money right you're going to get financial information that helps you make money the new york times you pay for it for the crossword puzzle and wordle

2:03:10Megan Morrone:yeah the new york times the new york times the game publisher the recipes and the recipes and

2:03:15Jason Hiner:some good reporters no the new york yeah i agree yeah and there will be more good reporters because i imagine a number of people from the washington post 300 people fired including by the way their excellent tech reporter, Jeffrey Fowler.

2:03:27Megan Morrone:And Joseph Mann as well. And Joseph Mann. Yeah, former LA Times colleague of mine.

2:03:32Jason Hiner:They're not going to do any more tech. They're not going to do any more sports. They're not going to do any more international coverage. So there was a great piece. Was it The Atlantic that said, you could buy a yacht or you could buy a newspaper?

2:03:46Megan Morrone:Actually, the newspaper was half the price of the yacht. It was half the price of the yacht. Two newspapers for the cost of one yacht. The newspaper cost as much as the support.

2:03:54Jason Hiner:he could run it for years so why i mean bezos has more money than he could run this thing in a complete deficit forever right what's going on is it well we know what's going on

2:04:10Patrick Norton:some men just like to watch the world burn i guess democracy dies in the darkness of

2:04:17Jason Hiner:bezos's pockets it's gotten dark um here's a picture of jeff did he ever buy a yacht or he just bought a newspaper doesn't he have a half a billion dollar yacht

2:04:30Megan Morrone:yeah i think he has a yacht yeah no so his the the support yacht for his yacht costs more

2:04:34Jason Hiner:than the washington than this yeah in the wall street jern his yacht is so big it has its own yacht that's how big this yacht is it has to because you know i mean he could afford all the

2:04:45Patrick Norton:yachts and all the newspapers i mean it's not he doesn't have to really make a choice

2:04:50Megan Morrone:do you i mean i cheered when he bought i mean i was happy that he we thought it would be a good

2:04:56Jason Hiner:thing didn't right for a while yeah yeah um incidentally the ceo that came in i think probably there's good reason to believe to dismantle the washington post uh is gone he left and now the former ceo of tumblr is in charge okay

2:05:19Jason Hiner:okay uh tumblr which is owned by automatic actually automatic's done something pretty good they have a uh a new plugin that they've designed in conjunction with the wayback machine the internet archive to fix the internet's broken links uh problem uh the two organizations automatic and the internet archive have launched a new wordpress plugin called the link fixer that is designed to combat the scourge of link rot

2:05:52Jason Hiner:automatic says the new plugin works by scanning your wordpress posts for outbound links cross referencing the wayback machine for archived versions of those links if there are none it will automatically take new snapshots of the articles in question put them on the archive so your blog will always link to either the original live site or if that site has disappeared the internet archive don't you think that's a great idea

2:06:22Megan Morrone:although you the problem the problem is you're going to get old information if the site literally disappeared but at least i guess that's hey at least you get something right you get the washington post and i wonder if there'll be a paywall on the on the archiver god bless the internet archive i

2:06:39Jason Hiner:you know there isn't a paywall in an archive but i donate every month because that is the most one of the that and wikipedia which i also donate every month to are really the things that makes

2:06:48Megan Morrone:the internet a great thing what about craigslist is that still a great thing yeah but they're

2:06:53Jason Hiner:making money so it's okay they don't need my money yeah craigslist is a great do you think craigslist

2:07:00Megan Morrone:made the internet great though it didn't do very it didn't help newspapers but it certainly uh

2:07:06Jason Hiner:changed the classified advertising business somebody is now stealing my car i see on our cameras i'm hoping it's my wife i remember when i used to be a landlord i used to have a rental house and craigslist was a godsend for yeah well craig newmark we love craig newmark he's he's appeared on our shows many times he's a fan of uh intelligent machines and he's taken the money he made from craigslist and donated it to many many good causes he has including saving the pigeons but that's not the the best of his causes but it's a good one and craigslist is amazing and

2:07:39Megan Morrone:it's probably helped out more like non-tech people than you think like it's helped out so many people craigslist is amazing what is your number one use for craigslist but he though that's finding an

2:07:50Jason Hiner:apartment in san francisco yeah yeah have you ever used it for dates no but i also use it for buying

2:07:58Megan Morrone:and selling musical gear that's like the best place in time it depends where you live also in

2:08:02Jason Hiner:san francisco it's the best benito do you have at hand the craig newmark jingle by i don't i tried but i don't yeah we have a we have a jingle whenever we mention his name on intelligent machines uh the singers come on and sing his name uh project hail mary is getting its own lego set just in time for the movie this is a great book by andy we're so good love the book love andy we're love the martian uh if you haven't read project hail mary read it now before the movie comes out the movie will not only spoil it it won't be as good i guarantee you and it might be a great movie i'm not saying that the martian was a great movie but it's always better in my opinion at least with anywhere to read the book first project hail mary comes out march 20th uh the new lego set is an 830 piece set this is a replica of the hail mary spaceship oh it's got a spoiler don't look oh this is why you got to read the book now because it'll be spoiled for you by it don't even look

2:09:07Patrick Norton:at the hail mary trailer which spoils it well the movie the movie trailer yeah the trailer spoils it mean they literally show they show the thing that's a surprise we don't want to show the

2:09:17Jason Hiner:thing and apparently i just showed it i hope you didn't see it i took it down right away so does the lego set so read do if you haven't read a project hail mary do yourself a favor read it

2:09:29Megan Morrone:it's only a spoiler actually the book though like if you didn't read the book you kind of need that

2:09:33Jason Hiner:information right well read the book get the spoiler now you can see all the other stuff we don't let the yeah so don't let a movie trailer spoil a great book

2:09:42Patrick Norton:yeah or a lego set in order read the book watch the movie and get the lego set

2:09:51Jason Hiner:in that order um didn't i have this mcdonald's story in here mcdonald's is pissed off because people are using mcdonald's uh stuff as their passwords and McDonald's says you should never use any of our stuff as a password. I guess I took it out. What do you mean by stuff? What do you mean? Like a Hamburglar. A lot of people use hamburger. Hamburglar. That's a great password. They say, stop it. Knock it off. No, I can't. I can't find it. Oh, shoot. I took it out.

2:10:33Jason Hiner:I thought that was one of the best stories of the week. Yeah. mayor mccheese that's a great password yeah mayor mccheese don't don't use mcdonald's mcdonald's tells customers here's the story mcdonald's is not loving your big mac happy meal and mcnuggets passwords uh i guess uh last weekend was change your password date didn't know that little uh public service announcement you do not need to change your password unless it's been compromised and any good password manager including our sponsor bitwarden will tell you if it's been compromised mcdonald's netherlands took the opportunity last week to tell customers when it comes to choosing a password that's easy to remember do not pick the names of our products according to have i been pwned mcdonald's says big mac and its leet speak variants were found more than 110 000 times in the compromised password corpus also happy meal mcnuggets and french fries also common and it doesn't make it any safer to use the leet speak you know one for l that doesn't that doesn't help you don't get to claim french fries mcdonald's they actually mcdonald's made an ad this is from mcdonald's netherlands i don't think we'll get taken down why is it in dutch though i don't this was uh the ads placed in dutch subway stations and other spaces saying do not use chicken mcnuggets as a great password you know what i don't i know i just obviously it's an ad for mcdonald's right but uh it gets you thinking about chicken mcnuggets It got you.

2:12:18Jason Hiner:Yeah. It's got you thinking about it. I think that's pretty, pretty funny. February 1st was change your password day. Update your password. Don't use chicken McNuggets with Leet speak as your password.

2:12:32Leo Laporte:It's like a bad idea to have a, like a password day, change your password day. Like that means that. Yeah. A great day for people to watch your,

2:12:40Jason Hiner:your traffic, right? Yeah. Do not change your password unless you think it's been breached. If you have a really good long password, keep it. The problem is when people change their passwords, they tend to change them for something they can remember. Right. And that's not an improvement.

2:12:55Megan Morrone:I have one that I can remember, but they're very, it's an algorithm in my head, which helps me remember.

2:13:00Jason Hiner:I do song lyrics, things like that.

2:13:03Megan Morrone:Now I have to know your favorite songs and break into your account.

2:13:07Jason Hiner:I'm more clever than that. Poems. I like poems. yeah anything that i could say in my mind uh you know uh another one that i i don't use but people recommend is if you do the first letter the last name of every president united states capitalizing the republicans uh you know you you want what you want is a long password that you can create with an algorithm right well you wouldn't do all the presidents as many as you remember how about just your favorite presidents your favorites it would be best if it was something that you could actually that's why i use song lyrics or poems because i can say them in my head and go half your passwords begin with roses or red that's not a good one yeah unfortunately the password i used for my bitcoin wallet was not well it's interesting you know i get notifications from google about all

2:14:03Megan Morrone:these of all these you know my your information appears on the dark web yeah and it's always the same password that i retired maybe 20 years ago yeah right but i'm still getting notifications on that password and it was a horrible password by the way yeah monkey one two three i keep something it was mine was i could do that yeah uh and then finally and somebody already said this

2:14:23Jason Hiner:they said oh they literally always ends with somebody dying the only i'll tell you the only reason i do this is because it's a i'm old and i pay attention to obituaries kids this is going happen to you when you get to a certain age you start reading the obituaries first yeah just to

2:14:39Patrick Norton:see and you do the math you you're like okay do that my age minus you know yeah you know it's

2:14:45Megan Morrone:sort of like when you're a certain age you go to birthday parties and then bar mitzvahs or christening and then it's weddings and yeah you know what's next i'm going to a funeral on friday so uh and

2:14:54Jason Hiner:when katherine o 'hera passed i immediately did the math and she's two years older than me that's younger than oh and younger than you yeah uh sad to say that one of the they could sometimes call him the grandfather of the internet david farber has passed he died yesterday professor of computer science uh known for his contributions to computer languages and networking he was at the rand corporation scientific data systems at uc irvine uc delaware carnegie mellon of course won all of the computer awards founding editor of i can watch board of advisors of context relevant the liquid information company one of the founding board members of the internet systems consortium served on the board since 1994.

2:15:43Jason Hiner:and he was 91 so but he lived a good long life and

2:15:46Megan Morrone:made major contributions boy what he what he yeah what he saw and accomplished yeah inducted into the internet hall of fame in 2013 so uh dave farber uh i i only found out about this because i saw it

2:16:01Jason Hiner:on hacker news people go oh dave farber passed but yeah 91 is it's okay it's okay uh ladies and gentlemen you still have half an hour before the super bowl good news time to get your seahawks jersey on and then put your patriots jersey on top of that top of that and when the seahawks go ahead you rip it off say see i was a seahawks fan all along lou mareska so nice to see you thank you so much for being here engineering leader at copilot microsoft uh one of my favorite people in the world actually all three of you i just always love having people on that i admire and respect and love learning from thank you so much for being here lou really appreciate it appreciate it same to you mike elgin suffering through an earthquake it's taco time i'm not shook up yeah

2:16:49Patrick Norton:no it's going to be an english pub so i think we're going to have fish and chips and oh how

2:16:53Jason Hiner:fun to be here that's one of the things people think mexicans eat mexican food no they just call it food and uh second of all uh actually there's all kinds of all kinds of food

2:17:06Patrick Norton:yeah they are most of the street food here is hot dogs and hamburgers isn't that which is

2:17:12Jason Hiner:yeah usual that's right uh it's great to see you mike give my love to amira uh if you want to know about those trips around the world. Where are you going next?

2:17:21Patrick Norton:We got two Mexico City experiences after the Oaxaca one, and then it's on to our first Tuscany experience. I mentioned this before in the show. This is our 10th anniversary for the Gastronomad experiences. And so we're doing all kinds of really great stuff. One of them is the Tuscany experience. We're going to have a couple of other new locations that are super exciting. But we love just all we do every single day, all day is the funnest life-changing food related things wine related things you could possibly keep your weight down to a reason I would love that job and I believe 400 pounds of idea tells me it's it's you know I've been trying I've been working on that lately I have to figure out how to sort of fast and all that stuff between experiences but yeah there's so much food so much really

2:18:11Jason Hiner:really good food on these experience and I will I will give you an endorsement because Lisa and I went on. They're small groups, a few couple, a handful of couples, four, five, six couples. They're great people, often twit listeners. And you're going to get the best possible travel experience, really getting to know the area, the local, and the food and wine and beverages. We drank a lot of mezcal when we were in Oaxaca and learned a lot about how it was made. Went to a pulque bar and danced. It was so much fun. It is if you really want to travel, not be a tourist, but travel. Mike and Amira know the regions and know how to put together an amazing experience, the gastronomad experience, gastronomad.net.

2:18:56Jason Hiner:Mike also has a newsletter at Machinesociety.ai that covers AI. He's very insightful. I look forward to the new one, the attachment economy. That's going to be great. Thank you, Leo. Don't forget, hello, Chatterbox. which was Mike's son's startup that's still going strong. HelloChatterbox.com. It's AI for people who want to private AI, who want to understand it for schools. It's a safe playground for kids to learn about these incredible devices that are for sure going to be a part of their future and understand it and demystify it. HelloChatterbox.com. And have I plugged everything? Is there anything left?

2:19:48Jason Hiner:I'd like to give you all the plugs.

2:19:50Patrick Norton:That's all. Thank you so much for those plugs. Well, thank you. I really, really appreciate it. And the one that I really want everybody to sign up for is Machine Society because all the other things that I'm involved with have links and information in that newsletter. So it's free. Awesome. It can be free. It's a paid version. But thank you for all those plugs, Leo. I really appreciate it.

2:20:14Jason Hiner:My pleasure. I forgot to ask you, Lou, did Paul Allen own the Seahawks, right? That was his? Yeah, he did. He did, yeah. Does his estate still own it, or did they sell that off? I don't know. I don't know either. Yeah. His sister might own it. His sister runs the estate now.

2:20:32Jason Hiner:So now, see, I am torn. Geographically, I would root for the Patriots. And geographically, I'm supposed to hate the Seahawks. But on the other hand, I like Paul Allen. He used to own Tech TV. Larry Maggett, it's coming up. Safer Internet Day. And ConnectSafely.org is going to have a bunch of events. You can watch the streams on Tuesday. You're going to do an event in Sacramento in person. Yeah.

2:20:57Megan Morrone:We're going to have lots of kids, lots of legislators, lots of tech executives. Put the tech executives and the kids in the legislature, legislators at one table and they can have it out and talk about all the things they want to see changed and see what happens.

2:21:10Jason Hiner:I am going to have to watch that because this is a debate I'm having internally. I mean, and we have on many of the shows. I mean, I don't know what the right thing is.

2:21:18Megan Morrone:Well, it's hard to know. I mean, the Internet is, as we've talked about on the show, changing dramatically as we speak. And things that, you know, I've had to evolve some of my views in various ways because things have changed and there are new risks. You know, I've written I've been writing about the Internet since 1984. I wrote a book called The Electronic Link in 1984. And please forgive me for not having anything in there about nation states using the Internet to control other nations election. We didn't know. There's so much I didn't know. I feel like I have to atone, frankly, for having you.

2:21:52Megan Morrone:No, you don't.

2:21:52Jason Hiner:No one knew. Everybody. I mean, I was around then talking about it, too. And we all thought this is going to be the greatest thing ever. Yeah. And it is in many ways. I mean, we were wrong.

2:22:03Megan Morrone:It's just we didn't know what hazards would also. We couldn't anticipate some of the risks. but then we couldn't anticipate some of the benefits as well. And I'm still bullish. I mean, believe it or not, despite a lot of things, I'm still optimistic and I'm still, every day I log on and do productive things that I couldn't have done for the first 50 years of my life. And, you know, and I'm happy about that. But imagine your life without the internet. It's not hard to believe. It's happened when the internet goes down. You know, the other night, all of a sudden, Netflix started buffering and I had to reboot my router and I had no connectivity for 10 whole minutes.

2:22:42Megan Morrone:How did you survive?

2:22:45Jason Hiner:There'd be no twit without the internet. That's for sure. I would probably be working at some dingy radio station somewhere.

2:22:53Megan Morrone:If it still exists.

2:22:55Jason Hiner:It could have been with WCBS in New York. If it weren't for the internet, newspapers and radio would still be alive.

2:23:00Megan Morrone:Remember WCBS, the flagship CBS station? It doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't exist. I grew up listening to WCBS. Anyway, but it's thankfully. And by the way, as long as we're plugging our kids, Balkan Bump is my son's trade name. Oh, what is Balkan Bump? It's a band. It's kind of a project, he calls it. You go to a website, and they're performing all over the world. Although he's not performing as much as he used to because he's got a young child now. But it looks like he's got some tourist dates coming up.

2:23:31Jason Hiner:And he was on the Super Bowl a couple of Super Bowls ago on Super Bowl ads. He was 2020.

2:23:35Megan Morrone:Got him through the pandemic.

2:23:35Jason Hiner:So you believe it or not, you've been watching a show with two people with kids and Super Bowl ads. Unless maybe more if Mike and Lou have been doing anything I didn't know about. I don't know. Not yet. Can I play a little Balkan bump music? Is it Balkan? It's Balkan inspired. I love, love Balkan music, actually. Yeah, it's Balkan inspired. Where is the, where is, is there any music?

2:24:04Megan Morrone:Oh, I think, oh, there is somewhere. I think links are up top.

2:24:06Jason Hiner:There's a YouTube button. Oh, that works too.

2:24:12Jason Hiner:This is called Prayer Song. Oh, I'm going to listen to this. Is there singing or is it all instrumental?

2:24:21Megan Morrone:You know, I can't remember on this one. He's got a new album out. So this may be his premise.

2:24:25Jason Hiner:This is the new album.

2:24:26Megan Morrone:I haven't even heard it yet. So you're hearing it for the first time.

2:24:29Jason Hiner:Wow. Nice.

2:24:31Megan Morrone:Check it out. I love it. By the way, the funny story, you'll love this. He was kicked off Facebook for a while for violating his own copyright. Of course. Luckily, he has a dad who knows people. So we got him back on right away.

2:24:50Jason Hiner:How unsurprising. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, Leo. We had Larry, Lou, Leo, and Mike on this show. Thank you, guys. Really appreciate it. A special thanks to our Club Twit members who make this show possible. Lisa just told me this month, Club Twit members supported us. 33 % of our operating expenses. One third of our operating expenses came from the club. That really tells you something. Without you, we would not be able to do what we do. So thank you. And if you're not a member of the club, I really want to encourage you to join twit.tv slash Club Twit. You get ad-free versions of all the shows.

2:25:23Jason Hiner:Access to the Club Twit Discord, which is a great hang. All the special programming we do in the club, like yesterday's, or I guess it was Friday's, a AI user group, which is so interesting. Twit.tv slash club twit. Please. We'd love to have you in the club. I'd love to see you at club twit.

2:25:40Patrick Norton:We do twit. Go ahead. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Leo. Can I plug club twit just a little bit? Yes. My own plug. I really am bothered by podcasts that give you three quarters of the podcast and say, if you want to listen to the rest of the podcast, you got to pay, right? What you're doing with Club twit is you you're giving everybody all the podcasts right and right if you join the club You're supporting it. There's some unique programming and so on But but this is the right way to do it So one of the reasons to support Club twit is because you want to reward the podcasters who are monetizing in the right way Not in an exploitative way not in a sort of not in a kind of a Negative way like somebody the podcast are doing so you should reward the good podcasters

2:26:29Jason Hiner:I appreciate that. Yeah, we I never wanted to pay wall. I really believe that what we do should be available to everyone for free. And it is free. It's ad supported for free. But if you want to support what we do and don't want to hear the ads, join the club. And, and yeah, I think that's a good point, Mike, even the stuff that we do in the club, you can watch as we do it. And then a month after we do it is available to the general public sometimes sooner. So yeah, that's that's a thank Thank you. I appreciate that. You were the one who told me that what we do is democratizing because anybody can listen.

2:27:04Jason Hiner:And I think that's always been important. Yeah. Thank you, Mike. Appreciate it. Thank you all for being here. We do twit every Sunday. Normally it's 1400 Pacific time, 17 East Coast time, 2200 UTC. You can watch us live, club member or not. If you're in the club, you can watch in the Discord, but even the club members often watch on YouTube or Twitch or X or Facebook or LinkedIn or kick. We're on all of those live chatting with you live on all of those after the fact on demand versions of the show, audio or video available at the website, twit.tv. There's a YouTube channel with a video great way to share clips.

2:27:42Jason Hiner:If you would, that'd be great. Tell the world about the best technology podcast in the world. In my humble opinion. There's also of course, it's a podcast. So there's the opportunity to subscribe and it's free. I hate the word subscribe because it sounds like you pay for it. No, it's free. Just pick up a podcast client. Apples is fine. Pocket Cast, Overcast, there's many of them. And subscribe. That way you'll get it automatically, audio or video. The minute we've polished it up, thanks to our technical editor and producer, Mr. Benito Gonzalez, Kevin King, who does the editing. Thanks to all of you for joining us.

2:28:20Jason Hiner:We will see you next time. another twit is in the can. Go Patriots. Go Seahawks. This is amazing.

From the publisher

Will Elon Musk really launch a million data centers into orbit, and why is McDonald's so worried about you using "McNuggets" as your password? This week's tech roundtable takes on wild new frontiers and everyday security headaches with insight and a bit of irreverence.

  • More schools are banning phones so students can focus. Ohio's results show it's not that simple
  • After Australia, Which Countries Could Be Next to Ban Social Media for Children
  • EU says TikTok must disable 'addictive' features like infinite scroll, fix its recommendation engine
  • Anthropic and OpenAI release dueling AI models on the same day in an escalating rivalry
  • Sam Altman says Anthropic's Super Bowl spot is 'dishonest' about ChatGPT ads, but he agrees it's funny
  • Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 uncovers 500 zero-day flaws in open-source code
  • Alphabet reports Q4 2025 revenue of $113.8 billion
  • Amazon's blowout $200 billion AI spending plan stuns Wall Street
  • A New Gilded Age: Big Tech goes on a $600 billion AI spending splurge
  • Hidden Cameras in Chinese Hotels Are Livestreaming Guests To Thousands of Telegram Subscribers
  • AI-generated ads hit the Super Bowl
  • SpaceX acquires xAI, plans to launch a massive satellite constellation to power it
  • Russia suspected of intercepting EU satellites
  • Notepad++ hijacked by state-sponsored actors
  • New York Wants to Ctrl+Alt+Delete Your 3D Printer
  • Western Digital Plots a Path To 140 TB Hard Drives Using Vertical Lasers and 14-Platter Designs
  • A Crisis comes to Wordle: Reusing old words
  • The Wayback Machine debuts a new plug-in designed to fix the internet's broken links problem
  • Project Hail Mary is getting its own LEGO set
  • Dave Farber

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Larry Magid, Mike Elgan, and Louis Maresca

Download or subscribe to This Week in Tech at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech

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