Tech News Weekly 306 Transcript

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Tech News Weekly. I, Mikah Sargent, am back and Jason Howell is here. First we talk to Mark Spoonauer of Tom's Guide about the Google event. There's the Google Pixel 8, google Pixel Watch 2, and all of the other announcements Google made. There's a great conversation and, well, mark had an opportunity to actually try these gadgets. Then Monica Chin of the Verge stops by to tell us about the Surface Laptop Studio 2 and how it compares to the current Surface lineup that Microsoft has. It's a really in-depth discussion. We get very nerdy and I think it's a great time.

Then our stories of the week. First, jason Howell's story about these sly people who are using credit card point systems to buy tickets and getting more points and spend. It's a mess, but it's a way for more tickets to get taken from the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, so that you have to buy them from a reseller. Oh, it's very frustrating. Then my story of the week, which is all about how Sony is looking at AI bias tests and how they're really not doing it when it comes to skin tone. There's a whole lot more involved than just a simple 10-point scale. Stay tuned for a wonderful episode of Tech News Weekly.

0:01:22 - Jason Howell
This is Tech News Weekly, episode 306, recorded Thursday, October 5th 2023, pixelated first impressions. This episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by Bitwarden. Get the open source password manager that can help you stay safe online. Get started with a free teams or enterprise plan trial, or get started for free across all devices as an individual user at bitwarden.com/twit

0:02:01 - Mikah Sargent
And by Drata. All too often, security professionals are undergoing the tedious and arduous task of manually collecting evidence. With Drata, companies can complete audits, monitor controls and expand security assurance efforts to scale. Say goodbye to manual evidence collection and hello to automation. All done at DrataSpeed. Visit drata.com/twit to get a demo and 10% off implementation. Welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week, we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. I am one of your hosts, Mikah Sargent.

0:03:04 - Jason Howell
And I'm the other guy, jason Howell, from the other studio that is my den and that has a harsh light on it. But that's okay. It separates me from the background. That's less important. What's more important is that you're back, Mikah. It's good to see you again.

0:03:19 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, good to be back here in the Tech News Weekly saddle. It's a nice, fine leather. You know, worn but nice and comfortable. Yeah, it's not leather. This is at a time before our environmental concerns about leather. So you know, this has been in the family for generations. No new cows have died for the creation of this saddle. And I'm done with this metaphor, let's do the show.

0:03:49 - Jason Howell
All right, speaking of leather actually has nothing to do with leather. Google had no about leather or connected leather or AI infused leather Kind of wish they did at this point. But Mark Spoonauer from Tom's Guide was at the Made by Google event. You may have heard of it. We did live coverage of this event yesterday morning. I did that with Wintwit Dao and you know they had a lot of hardware to announce, a lot of artificial intelligence news to announce. Of course, mark was at the event, so he got the first-hand perspective and some hands-on time with the hardware. So let's talk to Mark. It's good to have you back, sir.

0:04:26 - Mark Spoonauer
Thanks for having me.

0:04:28 - Jason Howell
Yeah, great to have you back. So are you back home at this point? Because? Or did you even need to travel in order to get to this event?

0:04:34 - Mark Spoonauer
They actually had the event in New York and our offices are based here, so it was over at Pair 57, which is really nice, Google. I think they opened this building about a year ago and the event space is pretty impressive.

0:04:48 - Jason Howell
Yeah, well, you know it's interesting the event space, because on the stream I get this was a comment that was talked about a little bit yesterday on this Week in Google the event was very like unassuming, a little kind of boring, a little kind of slow, you know slow news sort of thing. The event kind of looked small by comparison with some of the other companies that do these big things that capture your attention. Did you feel like was there a certain energy in the room that we didn't capture on the live stream?

0:05:19 - Mark Spoonauer
No, I don't think you missed anything. I do think that the event was surprisingly small, like when I sat down, I was in the second row and I was like this is awesome, because I had like a front and center for when Rick came on stage. And when they started showing the products, though, and making the announcements, I think you sort of forgot, like, how small the venue was and how many people were there, and you focused more on the news.

0:05:41 - Jason Howell
Absolutely, and that's what we should do right now. So you got to experience firsthand the hardware that Google talked about. Of course, I think the you know the pre the most important hardware that they talk about every year and their October event is usually their smartphone, their Pixel 8 and the 8 Pros. The new smartphone that they announced yesterday, and I mean from a design perspective, I wouldn't say that it looks entirely different. They're really sticking to that kind of that camera bar unique signature that their Pixel phones are now known for. What struck you in your time with the hardware? I know there's a temperature sensor on there. Like what do you feel are, like, the important differentiators, the important reasons why people should pay attention to this versus the previous pixels?

0:06:29 - Mark Spoonauer
I think you're right that the designs are almost, like, eerily similar, with the exception of maybe, the matte back on the Pros, which I actually appreciate, and I think the new colors are nice, especially the blue model. I think when people have their choice of what like review units they want to get, I can almost guarantee you almost everyone went for the blue, but I think we get into the actual changes. I do think that AI has become so much of a buzzword it's overkill. But what they're talking about is like we're making AI phones. They're really backing it up with the types of features that are included.

So what impressed me most during some of the demos was the audio eraser, so the Magic Audio Eraser when you're recording video and you want to sort of just erase the background noise and they had this really compelling example this guy who was playing violin and the street noise behind him, and you could use this slider to just like take the background noise away.

I was blown away with, like, how effective that was, but obviously we have to test it for ourselves. So one of the things that we want to try is like take it on a subway or like right on the platform as the train is arriving, like can we actually get something similar if we try that? So I thought that was cool and then best take. When it comes to like taking photos, we've all had that problem where you're taking a group photo and not everyone looks great and you wish you could like take a face from this picture and like put it into the final product. Well, they're actually letting you do that. It's like during my hands-on time that when it's doing the processing in the background it's not instant and actually you could tell that it's processing all the images that it took, but what it spits out is like a final result where everyone is smiling, hopefully, and facing the camera and if you don't like the results, you can actually pick, like, choose the individual faces and tap on them on the screen, and I thought that was really cool.

0:08:13 - Jason Howell
Wow, that's interesting. So that is I mean, that was one of the easy to point at kind of key moments in the event and the hardware and what it's capable of doing now with the artificial intelligence and the Tensor G3 chip on device. Of course, the question that comes to mind for me, and I'm sure everyone else, is like okay, it's neat that it does that. How often does it give you a usable kind of final output and were you able to play with it enough to kind of like test around with it a little bit? Or they probably gave you kind of demonstration images, I'm guessing, to do that with.

0:08:51 - Mark Spoonauer
It was all canned examples. But you're right, like when Magic Eraser first came out, which I thought was a compelling feature. Also, I tried it on different things, like trying to remove a car or something from the image, and it was hit or miss, like it would remove that product or that object, but what was left was sometimes like messy looking. So one of the things that they said yesterday is that, hey, we're working on this too, and Magic Eraser is getting better. So you're right, you're not going to know how good it is until we actually review them, but that's what we got to do.

0:09:22 - Jason Howell
Did they give you any sort of story around the temperature sensor? That part is a little confusing to me or a little curious. I mean, I think the easy thing to jump to is all right. So COVID was just a couple of years ago, and taking the temperature of people walking into a place was a really hot item. No pun intended for a while and then it kind of suddenly became not that hot and so is this a remnant of COVID era design.

0:09:51 - Mark Spoonauer
Yeah, I feel like someone raised their hand in like a 2020 meeting and this got on the drawing board and they just forgot to take it off. But on the surface it seems like a little bit too gimmicky. It's definitely one of the gimmicky features that I've seen in a phone in a while. It almost seems like no offense. It almost seems like Samsung-esque in terms of, like, just throw it on there and let's see what people use, like how they use it.

Some of the scenarios that they included was like measuring your baby's milk before you give it to them, or if you're taking your dog for a walk, maybe you want to measure the pavement before you, but you can also just like, use your hand. So I think, but to your point, they have submitted paperwork to the FDA to say to potentially use this for body temperature scanning and it could potentially be used for that. But even then, I think it's somewhat of a limited use case. They're going to have to make a business case, I think, for this, but I don't think it's a coincidence. They just threw it in there during the presentation. They didn't spend a lot of time on it.

0:11:01 - Jason Howell
Yeah, and I mean should be noted that the Pixel Watch 2 also has a temperature sensor in there. I could see some sort of coordination between those two things in some way. I don't know what that way would be, but yeah, it really did kind of feel. What it gave me visions of was the solely inclusion of the solely radar on the Pixel 4, where it was like okay, we got this feature and we'll see how useful it is. I mean, the fact that it didn't make it into the Pixel 5 kind of tells you how useful it really was at the end of the day. And I wonder if we're going to see the same thing with that.

0:11:38 - Mark Spoonauer
Yeah, I'll be somewhat surprised if it sticks around for Pixel 9.

0:11:43 - Jason Howell
Yeah, me too, me too but I think what we have no possibility of escaping is the continued kind of integration of Google's efforts around AI artificial intelligence into its products, and I think it was really smart of Google to reinforce, during the event, something that I mean we've been talking about on the network for a while, which is that when we're talking about, you know, ai is not a new thing, even though it feels like it's a now thing.

It is Modern. Ai is very much a now thing, but I mean, google was doing Assistant back in 2016, I think that's when it launched, and that was kind of one of the earlier times that I remember interacting with what I thought of as an AI assistant on my device and it did really cool things, but there were also limits to what I could do, and I always wanted it to be able to do more. Now Google's announced you know, assistant with Bard integration. What are your thoughts on that? I personally, I feel like that could be a really big like a big step forward for Google's kind of the war of AI and dominance for Google is put AI with Bard in the hands of many millions of people who have Android smartphones eventually.

0:12:55 - Mark Spoonauer
Yeah, I think, in a way, it is putting the smart and smartphones and that's what I said during my hands on that, like the Pixel 8 and the Pixel 8 Pro look like the smartest phones yet, and I think that's a compliment, because they are finding ways to integrate AI in ways that make sense.

And there was lots of like use cases that they gave yesterday. So, for example, the recorder app can already like give you a transcription, which is amazing in and of itself in real time, but the fact that it can now like summarize what happened during that call or during that recording is pretty cool. It can also summarize like web pages that you're looking at. But I do I do agree that, like Bard, I think sort of takes it to the next level and Google Assistant working together, and they gave like some like fun examples. So, for example, like make a social caption for this dog and things like that. So, like I think, in a way you're going to have, if this works the way it should, you might have to retrain people and how they think that they can interact with their smartphones, because the possibilities are endless in terms of how they could work together. So I think a lot of it is going to come down to discovery what can I do, or what can I, what can't I do, with Bard and Assistant working together?

0:14:04 - Jason Howell
I think the challenge with Assistant before, the real limiting factor for me, is that while it promised to do a lot, you really did need to know kind of the certain syntax in order to get it to do these things, and you know what companies have built in some sort of integration with it. How do you get there? How do you say the right thing in order to get that integration to kick into gear? And it seems to me that Bard and large language models in general have just become so good at parsing language and I put in air quotes, understanding what people intend when they say something, that this could really kind of take it to another level. I'm super excited to play around with it.

0:14:42 - Mark Spoonauer
Yeah. The other thing that I'm wondering aloud is how long is Google going to keep this an exclusive feature for Pixel phones? Because if it works the way it should, then I think it could be a huge advantage for Android in general, and it puts that much more pressure on Apple to do better with Siri, and you know that they are working on some things behind the scenes, but Apple doesn't even like to use the word AI. They use machine learning, and so it'll be curious to see how they respond, especially with the next WWDC, for example.

0:15:15 - Jason Howell
Yeah, yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. I mean Google's approach on a lot of these things with its Pixel devices and some of those special features is often released it on the Pixel. Get Pixel users using it, iron out the kinks and then eventually broaden that out, because Google has a lot to gain from people. Integrate you know, talking to and feeding information into Bard. Of course Google wants, I have to imagine Google definitely wants long term to have this in the hands of anyone that has an Android smartphone and what that means. So that's the Pixel 8 and the 8 Pro. I know we're kind of running out of time here, but real quick. You also got some hands on time with the Pixel Watch 2. What are your thoughts there? I mean, obviously the design is very similar to the one. The sensor outlay is impressive. I feel like they really did some solid upgrades there.

0:16:08 - Mark Spoonauer
Yeah, I think the multi-path heart rate sensor definitely seems like an improvement. They say it's about 40% more accurate versus the previous version. They now include the stress sensor, which they didn't have before, so it's definitely upping their game when it comes to health and fitness. The design is a little bit too similar, but it is lighter than before. I think the one thing that's missing is a larger size. So with the Galaxy Watch 6 and with the Apple Watch 9, for example, you can get larger sizes than the 41 millimeters, and we also complained last year about the fact that there wasn't the bezel was a little bit too big around the screen, and they really haven't addressed that either. So they haven't necessarily answered our two biggest complaints, but they have made a lot of other improvements that we think could convince some people. In a way, I think it's like the ultimate Fitbit watch, which is what they wanted to do, and I think they've accomplished that. They've doubled down on health and fitness, but I still think there's room for improvement.

0:17:01 - Jason Howell
Yeah, yeah, Well, we'll see about that. I know that the charging puck you know I saw an article no longer has the magnetic snap. It's now the Pogo pins. I don't know, I kind of feel like that's a little bit of a step backwards. I did like the magnetic snap versus the Pogo pin approach, but I don't think that's a deal breaker when you're talking about a smartwatch like this. It's really yeah.

0:17:22 - Mark Spoonauer
And the battery life has improved right. So last year they said 24 hours, but it's actually. You're getting 24 hours now with the always on display. So I think incremental upgrades, but I think they're definitely in the game when it comes to smartwatches.

0:17:34 - Jason Howell
Yeah yeah. And ScooterX and the IRC is actually pointing out the pins instead of the wireless allows for a faster charge. So, at the end of the day, is that what you want? You know, do you want a faster charge coupled with your longer battery life? That's probably more important than the cool factor of it snapping in magnetically to a puck. But why can't we have it all? That's my question. Mark Spoonauer, thank you so much for hopping on and sharing some of your initial thoughts. I know you couldn't show off the hardware. I'd love to see it, but I know that we can't take a look at it right now. I have to imagine you're working on a review, something coming down the pipeline Lincoln people. Well, they should probably just stay tuned, I imagine. Right.

0:18:12 - Mark Spoonauer
Yeah, it'll be soon that we can give you our final rating and review, but one of the big questions that people have is like what's the difference between the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro? We have a story on that, so if you are interested in pre-ordering, we can help you figure that out.

0:18:26 - Jason Howell
Perfect In pre-order. You should, if you want to get these phones, because when you do that soon enough like right now go and do that. You will get either a free Pixel Watch 2 or the Pixel Buds update that we didn't even talk about as a throw-in bonus. So that's something to keep an eye on. Mark Spoonauer. Writing for TomSkydecom. Mark, thank you for carving out time for us today. It was great talking with you.

0:18:49 - Mark Spoonauer
Thanks, and it was great to see you again.

0:18:51 - Jason Howell
All right, we'll talk to you soon. All right, coming up more impressive hardware in the ways of Microsoft's Surface Laptop Studio 2. Could it be even more impressive than it actually is? That's what we're going to get to with Monica Chin from the Verge. That's coming up next. But first, this episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by Bitwarden, the only open-source cross-platform password manager anywhere, anytime. Our own Steve Gibson, with Security, now has switched over. He's all in, so you should be too.

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0:22:36 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, indeed, microsoft recently held an event, and leading up to it, we all were calling at the Surface event, but shortly before it took place, paul Therade of Windows Weekly brought up the fact that it was probably not going to be a Surface event per se. Then, following the event, we did learn that it was not quite a Surface event. Joining us, though, to talk about an actual Surface product from the event is Monica Chin, senior Reviewer at the Verge. Welcome to the show, monica.

0:23:08 - Monica Chin
Hey folks, Nice to be here.

0:23:11 - Mikah Sargent
Glad to have you. So yes, at this event. We know about the whole host of AI updates that took place. That was kind of the overlying conversation, but they did announce some new Surface products. I was hoping you could tell us about what Surface products were announced.

0:23:29 - Monica Chin
Yeah, so the big headliner was called the Surface Laptop Studio 2. If you're familiar with the Surface Laptop Studio 1, it is that. But there you have updated the insides and then made a couple changes to the outside, but largely it is the same as it was before, which is that it is a big convertible laptop that has essentially this big plinth on the bottom, and then on the top there is a screen that you can fold. You can use only a clamshell. You can fold it down to use like a tablet where it lies flat on the plinth, or you can sort of go halfway and put it in tent mode so that it is like a tent over the keyboard but does not go over the touchpad.

And so that was the big one and that has like a GPU inside, that sort of a creator workstation type of vibe, if you're looking for something that's a little bit more like less expensive, less powerful and a lot lighter. They also announced a Surface Laptop Go 3. That is a 12.4 inch touchscreen device that's a lot lighter, it's a lot thinner and it's a lot more towards the affordable side of the price spectrum. So those were the two big computers that were announced. There was also a little little bit of digital cosas. I think you better grab that one idea and try online and you'll be Там Glasses now you like this version and it is like the biggest Mercure arkadaş in the entire world.

0:24:50 - Mikah Sargent
So forМы man, oh, that isLooking great. King cloud makes a Surface Laptop Studio a Surface Laptop Studio. What all goes into kind of getting that branding specifically, particularly with a studio at the end.

0:25:12 - Monica Chin
Yeah, so this is a product that is all. For a while, microsoft Surface line has largely been focused on the portability aspect. You've had the Surface Pro for ages and ages. That's a really like small, convertible device. That's really light. It's something you can put in a handbag sort of that market itself on being thin and light, same with the Surface Laptop, which has also been around for five generations.

Now. That is a very portable laptop that competes with the likes of the Dell XPS 15, the MacBook Air, those kinds of things. Well, they haven't really had in great effect. For a while is something that's more for the power. The quote unquote power user someone who wants to be doing graphically intensive work, someone like a digital artist who is drawing, someone who maybe wants to play games.

I mean, it's not really gaming laptop, but they sort of advertise it as what they called it last generation. They called it the weekend gamer, like someone who wants to play games every so often on the weekend, those types of things. This is sort of the closest laptop they've had to that. So that's sort of what the studio means. They're sort of looking at an artist or art adjacent crowd, like maybe someone who's doing like three, working with 3D, someone who is or doing like simulation or calculations as well like anything that leverages a GPU. That's who really the audience would be for this, as opposed to something like the Surface Laptop or the other one that was announced here, the Surface Laptop Go, which are more for just like someone like me, who is largely just going on Chrome and reading various blogs on it.

0:26:57 - Mikah Sargent
Online? Yeah, understood, so then let's talk about what's new about this specific Surface Laptop Studio 2. What have they added to it to give it? That to Moniker?

0:27:11 - Monica Chin
Yeah. So the big thing is that they've changed the chips. So these have Intel's 13th generation chips, which are the most recent generation of mobile chips that are currently on the market. Nvidia's RTX 4050 and RTX 4060 GPUs are available in it as well. It has the Intel Neural Processing Unit, or NPU, which is gonna lead to some AI use cases down the road. We're not seeing a ton of those yet, but that is sort of something to look forward to if you're buying this laptop now, so that you know they say it's the most powerful services ever been built. That's because these are so far the most powerful chips you can put in a computer like this, although that is likely to change soon as the Intel product cycle continues.

The other big thing is that there are some new connectivity options. So they've added a micro SD card reader. There's an additional USB A port, so there's a little more. There are a few more options for people who, you know, wanna plug stuff in without a ton of dongles. Although I would not say that there is a ton of connectivity, there's more than there was before. And then the other big thing is the touchpad. There's a new adaptive touch mode on the touchpad that is customized for someone who might be missing fingers or might need to navigate with something other than, like one finger, which is what many people are using. So that's sort of more of an accessibility move for folks with disabilities and I think that that is really great and that requires a haptic touchpad. So at the moment it's only on the service laptop studio too, in terms of the service line, but you know, hopefully later we'll see that on other Microsoft products as well.

0:29:05 - Mikah Sargent
Nice. Yeah, I appreciate Microsoft's continued focus, particularly with their peripherals, on accessibility and inclusion. Something that you talked about in your review is how quickly the laptop's chip is going to be out of date. Can you talk about that, and is this typical for Microsoft?

0:29:26 - Monica Chin
Yeah, so Intel has announced its next generation, so to name it Meteor Lake. That is going to be laptops with those chips in them are going to be coming out in December, so they are not out yet. They are coming out soon. One of the big things with those chips is that Intel is claiming that the battery life is a lot better and that it's made improvements to the efficiency of the chips. So one of the things that frustrates me is that if they had waited and put Meteor Lake chips in these computers instead of going with the current generation, we could see a lot more efficiency in addition to more power for the people who will be buying this computer.

Now, that is always the case, I think. Yes, it's always the case that every time you release a laptop, there is another chip on the horizon that might be better, and there is an argument that generally, we should just release laptops that have the chips they have. But I really do think in this case, this laptop has some particular issues that could very well be solved by the next generation of Intel, and if they had just waited to put those chips in, it's possible this would be a much better product than it currently is. So I think when December comes around to answer your original question this will be essentially a generation behind, and Microsoft very often releases stuff in October, so this is not an uncommon thing to see from the surface line, but it is just something worth keeping in mind. If you buy this now, it's possible that Meteor Lake stuff could come out in December and it'll make this purchase seem like it wasn't the best idea, but that's not necessarily the case. It could also be you need something now and you buy something now.

0:31:27 - Mikah Sargent
Now, john, that's our technical director. If you could scroll down in Monica's review to the chips section, you'll see two photos that I believe we can zoom in on. I was hoping we could show these on screen while I talk about this next question. Something that stuck out to me when looking at your review is the unique design of the Surface Laptop Studio. Has the chassis always looked like it does now and does it feel as thick? And scroll up from there, it's right after the headline, the chips. I think it's like the first thing, the first sort of subsection. Keep going, there we go, those two photos. This is a really interesting design where we've got this like ledge underneath almost, and it makes sense from a cooling perspective. But how is this to hold in hand? What does it? What does it feel like? And do you feel like it's unwieldy or that you know anybody would have trouble kind of using this?

0:32:31 - Monica Chin
It is a little thick for my taste. It is 0.86 inches high and that is pretty thick for a 14 inch laptop. In terms of weight, if you get an Nvidia one, it's just over four and a half pounds. It's 4.37. Again, that's. That's a little heavier than I like to just be carrying around. It's certainly heavier than if you get something like Surface Laptop Go or the Surface Laptop or the Surface Pro.

It feels like you're carrying around something that's chunkier. It definitely doesn't feel I wouldn't see. It feels unwieldy.

You know it's a sturdy chassis and that's one of the things I'm actually really great at is they're really good at building these kind of beautiful machines that are, you know, they feel like you're just using something luxurious and they feel like something that you know if you it's not just going to like, get scratched up or, you know, dented if you're carrying it around. It feels like it is very sturdy and it's really well built and I trust we, I think we can all trust Microsoft to be able to do that stuff, because they've been that's sort of in the hallmark of the Surface line for all these years that they've been making it. But it is, you know, especially with that we call it the plinth on the bottom, the little sort of raised platform upon which the rest of it sits, that it is a little bit hefty and it is. I wouldn't buy this necessarily, wouldn't you? I? First choice, if you know, I'm like a student who has a thousand other books in my bag. Right, you know it's going to struggle to fit this into something small.

0:34:00 - Mikah Sargent
Speaking of which you did touch on it briefly earlier, but based on not just what Microsoft is saying, although I want to hear that too. Who do you think this? So, maybe, what does Microsoft have to say about who this laptop is for? And then, who do you think this laptop is for?

0:34:21 - Monica Chin
Yeah, so I think the pitch from Microsoft is really that this is for it's for sort of the digital creator and it's for someone who, you know, might go through a work day where they're, you know, sometimes they're sitting down and they have to be rendering or exporting or whatever, and sometimes they might have to draw. So they can reach over, grab their pen here, flip the screen around, drawing here and then maybe later they have to be in a meeting or they take some notes so they can, you know, switch over to their notes app and be writing here and then maybe at night they want a game, so they put it back in the clamshell mode and they plug in all their RGB mouse pad and whatever and they game at night. I think that what they have in mind is sort of it is someone who is, you know, is doing creative work, is drawing, but is also, you know, is looking for something a little more powerful than what the traditional convertible, you know, something like your Samsung Galaxy book 360 or your HP Spectre x 360 is looking for, a step above those kinds of things in power and maybe a little something is a little easier to flip around than like a traditional two in one form factor is and I would say that is that is a pretty reasonable. That's who I think the audience probably is. But I would add that I think I also think a good chunk of the audience is surface fans, you know, is people who really just love the surface form factor, love the surface build.

I think, I do think that a good chunk of the appeal of the device like this is not necessarily that it adds, you know, a ton, a ton of functionality over over something like a you know another convertible with a convertible Windows device with a GPU in it, but that it is kind of from this reliable brand, this huge brand that everyone knows and this brand that you know lots of people have come to expect will put out devices that work really well and last really long time.

And you know, I think I think there are very few brands that kind of have the power to be able to do that. You know, lenovo has like its think pads. Obviously Apple is a company that lots of people just buy from presents Apple and I do think that there are a lot of. I do hear from a lot of people who are, just like, really huge fans of surface, you know everything, have surface everything and are so excited for this because this is kind of the first time the surface line has had a GPU machine in quite some time, or you know that has a GPU of this amount of power in it. They've done like weaker GPU machines before, so I think that I would say that that's another component of the audience too.

0:37:06 - Mikah Sargent
Now it was clear to me that you feel a certain type of way about the surface book, so I want to give you a moment to be able to talk about the surface book and the comparisons that you drew between these devices.

0:37:19 - Monica Chin
Yeah, so I'm on the record as a big surface book fan. I liked the surface book. Obviously I know not everyone liked the surface book and I'm not trying to attack you if you didn't like it. You know we all very much respect your opinion and I understand that there were issues that lots of people had with the surface book.

But what I liked about it was that you know, the surface book for those unfamiliar was a laptop where you could pop the screen off and use the screen as a tablet and you could also you could put it on the keyboard backwards, so it could also function in like a tent mode in that way. But it was a fully functional Windows tablet. When you popped it off, you popped it back on and it was a clamshell computer. It could have a GPU in it, it could. It had excellent battery life. I mean it had two batteries, essentially like there was a battery in the screen and there's battery in the base, and I would regularly get like over 10 hours out of that, like I never had to charge that thing.

0:38:20 - Mark Spoonauer
Wow, that's awesome.

0:38:22 - Monica Chin
It had. It had one of my favorite keyboards, one of my favorite touchboards I had I still use my old one because I haven't really found one that I love as much. It had one of my favorite screens. It was three by two screen, just like most of the rest of the surface line, just a really really powerful, nice device of one of.

A lot of people complained that it was thick and like because. But like, the thickness is a little deceiving because it kind of just had a big gap between the top and the bottom when you closed it. But that was like not an issue in day-to-day life in my experience. So what I like to other, and so the reason this comparison is happening is that the surface book has like basically stopped coming out after the third one, after the service book three, and it seemed like the surface studio was like the de facto replacement for the surface book, because this is another machine that has a discrete NVIDIA GPU inside and is a convertible and is this touch screen and is sort of being catered to this creative power user weekend gamer. Quote, unquote segment of shopper. And I just don't to me it does not, it, I don't think that it says unique as the surface book in terms of like what it offers, and I don't think it is quite there in terms of how good the rest of the laptop is like. I think I liked the surface books keyboard more, I liked it touchpad more, although I agree the accessibility that the studio offers is obviously really, really great and I'd love to continue to see more of that throughout the line.

But I think that the I thought the pop off screen functionality really solved the need, like I have many times throughout my daily life where it's really great to just be able to pop the screen off the laptop and walk around with it and, you know, use it as a piano or you know, use it when I'm going up to give a talk or I'm in a meeting, I need to take notes and I don't find that a screen that you can just fold down but like it's still attached to this four pound chassis, like is as useful. Like that's not something I'm going to carry, that's not something I can just like put up somewhere to reference and it just it is. It's also just a lot less unique. Like there are all kinds of convertible laptops that can already essentially do the same thing. Like it can. You can flip the screen over or you can put it as a tent or you can use it to clamshell, like basically any original convertible Windows laptop can do that.

So I thought that they took something that was really unique and really filled a niche but also was a really excellent computer, even aside from sort of the non-trivial form factor that it had, and they made it into something that was a little bit less unique and also, as a computer, was just a little bit less compelling in other areas, like I think the touchpad, just from a usability, like from a click perspective, is not quite as reliable. The keyboard doesn't feel quite as good to me and the battery life I found to be a lot worse. With all that said, I know that there are lots of people for whom this is like a perfect device and they love it and that that's totally great. I recognize that. You know this is just my opinion and plenty of people disagree and I do not mean that to demean anyone who loves a service laptop studio like that is awesome and I'm glad that you know it's a laptop that works for you.

0:41:49 - Mikah Sargent
Everyone's gonna have my own preferences it is very clear that you have spent time on the internet as you preempt people out there who are trying to say I do mean it, you know, I am but one one opinion and I never.

0:42:03 - Monica Chin
I never want anyone to feel like I'm insulting them because I don't like a device that they, they use or they like. You know, I'm only talking about my opinion about the device here, not about its users or any of that.

0:42:16 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely. Lastly, I was just hoping you could tell us about price and availability for the Surface Laptop Studio 2. Can folks get their hands on this now and how much does it cost?

0:42:25 - Monica Chin
Yeah, so you can pre-order it now. They're already live. It's shipping. It's it's coming, it's shipping the prices start at. So the cheapest one is $19.99. It's $2,000. Essentially, that is sort of the base model that has. It does not have the Nvidia GPU, it just has integrated graphics and then it's 16 gigabytes of RAM, 512 gigabytes of storage. If you want an Nvidia GPU, you're gonna be paying like over 2,000, I think it's. Yeah, you're gonna be paying $23.99. That's for the RTX 4050 and then it's gonna go way up to over 3,000 if you want, in our RTX 4060.

0:43:04 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, so most of that is going to that chip, rather than improvements necessarily to the rest of the machine.

0:43:12 - Monica Chin
Yeah, so that's pretty much. That's the only thing that's going to be different the chips. The chip is going to be much more powerful, and then the end video ones are a little bit heavier. That's the other thing to keep in mind. It's going to be different.

0:43:24 - Mikah Sargent
All right. Well, Monica, I want to thank you so much for your time today for telling us about this. Of course folks can head over to thevergecom, but is there anywhere they can go to keep up with what you're doing?

0:43:36 - Monica Chin
Yeah, so I'm on threads at Monica W Chinn and I'm on X at MC squared 96.

0:43:44 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time.

0:43:47 - Monica Chin
Thank you very much.

0:43:49 - Mikah Sargent
Alrighty folks, up next we have our first story of the week from Jason Howell, but first let me tell you about our next sponsor. It's Drata who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. Question is your organization finding it difficult to collect manual evidence and achieve continuous compliance as it grows and scales? Well, as a leader in cloud compliance software by G2, drata Streamlines your SOC2, your ISO 27001, your PCI DSS, your GDPR, your HIPAA and all many of the other compliance frameworks, providing 24 hour continuous control monitoring so you can focus on scaling securely. With a suite of more than 75 integrations, drata easily integrates through applications such as AWS, azure, github, okta and Cloud Flare. Countless security professionals from companies, including Lemone Notion and Bamboo HR, have shared how crucial it has been to have Drata as a trusted partner in the compliance process. With Drata, you can expand security assurance efforts using the platform, which allow companies to see all of their controls and easily map them to compliance frameworks to gain immediate insight into framework overlap. Drata's automated dynamic policy templates support companies new to compliance using integrated security awareness training programs and automated reminders that ensure smooth employee onboarding.

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0:46:57 - Jason Howell
Sure is, and I have to thank Burke at the studio who linked to this in our company, slack, and I just found it really interesting If you've ever wondered how ticket resailers get around ticket masters' controls to kind of keep people from running away with all the tickets so that you can't get the ticket for your favorite show. There's a new article on 404mediaco. Jason Kebler, who's been on this show before as well as twit, talks about at least one of the ways that this can happen, and really the article shines a light on. Well, it really focuses on a particular group called PFS Buyer Club and what this group does is it kind of leverages this idea of credit card churning.

This is kind of something that people have learned to do. It's a way of maximizing credit card points, the gathering of credit card points. Right, you've got a credit card. It offers you points depending on how much money you spend on that credit card. Those points can be used for any number of things. Right, we've got in our house. We actually have a Southwest credit card, so the more money we spend on our credit card, the more points we earn for Southwest travel. We've been doing this for years, so it's actually we do a version of this, which is a legitimate thing to do. We spend the majority of our cash, spend per month the things that we would normally be spending cash on. We run it through the credit card, we charge it on the credit card, we save that cash and then, at the end of the month, before you know, once the payment is due, that full amount of cash is paid to the credit card and you know they're happy because you're using the credit card and everything. We're happy because we end up getting those points and over time, that means free travel, essentially taking the money that we would have been spending over, you know, as cash. Instead, it has its own risks, right, like you have to be sure that you have the money to cover it, which we do, but if you're doing it that way, it can be a real benefit.

Well, in the case of this, in the case of PFS buyer club, they're doing something that's arguably pretty shady. They're taking advantage of what they call manufactured spend opportunities. I'll put that in air quotes manufactured spending opportunities, and they can target any number of things. It could be iPhones, it could be PS5s, playstation 5s. In this case, it could be popular concert tickets. You know, anyone kind of following the current concert trends and things that are happening. You know there's Taylor Swift. Just has in the midst of a pretty monumental tour with high, high demand Olivia Rodrigo just started selling tickets. Some of you might not even know who Olivia Rodrigo is, but she's a relatively new artist but she's a very popular and very like. I think she just released her second album. So, like, my girls are huge fans of Olivia Rodrigo and so there's a high demand for going to her concert and that's really what this manufactured spend opportunity thing focuses on really high demand things. So it could be concert tickets, it could also be technology or whatever else is high demand.

So a person joins this group and then they're notified via email about these opportunities that come up through the group that they can take part in. So essentially, what they're doing here is they're trading temporary funds on their credit card for the points that they earn. In the end they can also earn some commissions. So, say, olivia Rodrigo tickets are going on sale like they are. Pfs buyer club sends out an email to find out all the people who you know are part of the club who want to participate. Participants are given very explicit instructions on how to purchase the tickets and when. Like you need to go here on this date with your account, with your ticketmaster account, right? They're leveraging the fact, in this case, that ticketmaster won't let one account buy more than X number of tickets. They're saying we've got this vast number of people who want all of you to go to ticketmaster on this date if you want to participate and log in and buy.

And in some cases the purchases are actually made by the people running the group, which is really crazy because that involves trusting them to sign into the participants ticketmaster account using their credentials. And I think I read even in some cases. You know, ticketmaster has protections that require you to change the source email or the account email to. They would have to essentially log in to the participants account, change that email so that it points to them in order to complete it, which I mean you're really given over your keys to the car at that point. But what they get in exchange? They receive a per order commission and they receive reimbursement of the ticket price and, of course, those very valuable credit card points, and so the you know essentially I mean obviously there's risk here Do you trust PFS buyer club to actually pay you the reimbursement for the ticket price. Do you trust them with your login if you need to give that to them? But a lot of people apparently do and, if you know, buyer club essentially pays them. They because they get access to thousands of tickets that they then resell for a profit. And so you end up seeing that in the reseller sites and I don't know, it's just.

It was a fascinating read, sorry. That's worth checking out because it goes into further detail about some other aspects of this, not just, you know, the Olivia Rodrigo example, but other ways in which this happens. And it just kind of goes to show. Like you know, you could be setting up systems to crack down on the bots and everything. But, as Jason writes, these groups are essentially creating a human botnet for ticket resellers, or I guess it would just be a human net because there are no bots.

The human is the bot for ticket resellers and they're just. You know, it's this large network of people that log in by the tickets and then hand over the keys to them and they get a commission and they get points on their credit card and they're happy and the resellers are happy because they can then jack up the price. I mean, some of these tickets are insane what they're going for in the resellers market, talking like three, four, five times what they were bought for, because enough of these have been, you know, bought, I'm assuming and then you know it's kind of like you control the pricing of these things at that point. So it's fascinating read, worth worth checking out if you're ever interested in like at least one aspect. I'm sure this isn't entirely why the reseller market and like buying tickets for high demand shows is so difficult. This is certainly one component you have to imagine. There are probably a lot of other coordinated ways that we don't know about that these things happen behind the scenes that prevent you from being able to go see Taylor Swift.

0:54:08 - Mikah Sargent
This I.

0:54:10 - Jason Howell
they're so clever they're so clever it is so clever.

0:54:16 - Mikah Sargent
It's frustrating how clever they are.

0:54:20 - Jason Howell
And I mean you know, of course there's the appeal for the person who really all they had to do was log into Ticketmaster and wait in line for 10 minutes and hopefully, you know if they get, if they get that opportunity like that 10 minutes, and the trust of handing over the keys, you know, trusting that they're going to be reimbursed.

I imagine if they do it once and they get reimbursed, that trust rises like okay, this is legitimate or whatever, but that that's an entire, that's a huge enticement for someone to be like, well, I mean, you know the day I just had to wait, you know 1020 minutes with the link and I ended up getting I don't know what the dollar amount would be, you know 100, 100 bucks for doing that as the commission plus whatever the points are. It's just really fascinating. I think you're right. It's clever that people come up with this stuff. I think the downside that people who participate in this, you know, refuse to acknowledge is that it really makes this entire experience so much more painful for everybody else, for people who just buy a ticket to their favorite show and they can't because people are gaming the system. Yep, I agree.

0:55:28 - Mikah Sargent
It's, that's, it's, it's sly. That's the word that I want to use. It's sly yeah.

0:55:36 - Jason Howell
Yeah, yeah. So go to 404 mediaco. That is a paid site. It's an excellent site. They're doing excellent coverage. We had we've had some folks from 404 media on the Twitter network over the past couple of months since they launched the site. These are the people who came over from Vice after the Vice news news site shut down, and so they're doing great work over there. It is a paid site, but some of their articles are outside of the paywall. This is one of them. You can read it and see for yourself what it's. What's going on behind the scenes is crazy stuff. All right, so we're going to have your story of the week coming up in a second.

0:56:21 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so it's time for my story of the week. This is a story I saw over on the verge. It's actually a study done by Sony AI and Sony, which is well known for its imaging abilities. It has kind of looked into the the whole conversation surrounding skin tone. You may remember Google doing a whole part of the presentation that they did about the pixel cameras, where they discussed how they needed to better, better understand skin tones so that more people were represented properly in photos. That resulted in the introduction of the monk skin tone scale, which was a 10 point scale to measure skin tone, as opposed to the Fitzpatrick scale, which I believe is a six point scale. So we just introduced a few more color options in the scale to better encapsulate the, the color of someone's skin tone and using that, it hoped to better tune its image signal processor and its other AI tools to properly, you know, add filters and make adjustments to exposure and this and that To make a good photo regardless of the color of the skin of the person. But the problem, according to this study, is that the whether it's six skin tone options or 10 skin tone, skin tone options or 25 skin tone options, that is still a scale that is based on sort of manual assignment to a skin tone. Right, I as an individual look at the Fitzpatrick scale and then go for people who are listening. I'm looking at my arm and then looking away, and then looking at my arm and then looking away, I think I'm a four, or, in the case of the other one, I think I'm a, you know, seven to six, I don't know, and it's a range of light to dark or from dark to light, and there's more to skin tone than just the lightness or the darkness.

Sony's research revealed that these AI bias tests, the tests that are looking to see if AI has a specific bias, which we've seen in the past, where it will, it will like. An example of this is there was a sort of portrait generator application and people who were not completely black, who were, you know, in the dark tone or or darker than white, when they would post their photos, the AI would tend to make them white in the final generation and that's been improved upon and the way that they're trying to improve upon that are with these AI bias tests. But what the Sony research found is that those tests are not paying enough attention to skin tone in a multi dimensional aspect, and so it's still resulting in bias that they're not picking up on. One example of this is that AI systems would mistakenly classify people with red or skin hue as more smiley. For some reason, twitter's image cropper and some other image generating algorithms they just favored redder skin in general, and there are other color mixes that result in skin tone. So an example of this and I'm quoting quote East Asian, south Asians, hispanics, middle Eastern individuals and others who might not neatly fit along the light to dark spectrum were some that the current scales don't really take into account.

So they have proposed that, instead of doing the Fitzpatrick scale, you use a color standard, because there's no manual categorization. Instead, with this, it's this what is to see international commission on illumination scale, which is just a sort of standardized color metric measurement system. Then it can give a number for any color or a three dimensional space, read out for any color and provide a standardized system. So it's multi dimensional, which is what we need when it comes to skin tone, because anyone who's ever like, anyone who's ever done any reading on makeup or any kind of like, I can't even think, even if you're just sort of trying to determine what colors might look good with your skin. They talk about these you have cool undertones, or you have warm undertones, or you have yellow undertones. They're, they're all of these layers to our skin, because our skin is multi layered and light is going to reflect off of it in different ways, and so just saying I look like I'm about a four is not enough information to properly account for all of the different types of skin out there and to sort of avoid bias that might take place in these systems. So, yeah, sony has said look, let's just use the. I think it's CIE lab color standard. It's just all one one word C, I, e, l, a, b, but I think it's CIE lab, and that sort of standardized color measurement, which is already in use in so many other places, is something that could be used in this case, because you can have a sort of clear reading.

Now the other scales that are out there are out there for the purpose of specifically trying to limit the, the number of options for skin tone. It's a simplicity thing, and if any of you are indecisive or no people who are indecisive then you're familiar with someone who, when presented with 10 choices, will spend all day trying to decide between 10. And if you're going to imagine having 15, 2025, that becomes a cognitive load. That is just too much for some people. And so that's why there's the six and the 10 point scales, because it's a little bit easier for that manual categorization.

But this is a potentially better opportunity where, when it's not about what I am calling myself or what another person is calling themselves, but that an AI system, computer vision system, can look at and categorize skin tone based on a standard. I think that makes sense because the cognitive load there is not a cognitive load, it's a processing load. And given that I can run like 15 other applications and then bring up the color meter app within Mac OS and click on the screen somewhere and get a read out of the color and not have any you know the rest of what I'm doing it's a, it's. It's not an incredibly difficult thing for a computer to be able to do, to properly kind of look at that. So I think if we offload this on the computer and you know, suddenly I've got an app and I go what's my CIE lab color standard based on my you know my skin tone? Good, we've got that, it's figured out Then I think that that's a that's a good thing overall, so I kind of loved hearing that.

You know, there was a lot of celebration and and and applause and and thought about the stuff that Google was talking about at the time and continued focus.

I would say we've continued to see companies talk about how they are paying more attention to how their photographs cover, cut capture people of different skin tones, but it was a again a celebratory moment for me that we're still looking into it and making sure that it is what it needs to be and where there are improvements to be made, those improvements are being encouraged.

So, yeah, this this made me happy to read about and certainly something that I think on the AI side. You know, when Twitter you post a photo on which sorry X, formerly known as Twitter, the auto crop thing you would post a photo and it would crop it down to what it saw as the subject of the photograph so that it fit within the tweet card, and then you tap on it. You get to see the whole photo, but sometimes people would be not within the photograph, even though they were the subject, because Twitter's algorithm was not properly cropping it to the person. So there are all of these tools and you know, different companies can just build in tools that are out there, in open source, tools that do this stuff, and if they're all using a system with with some level of skin tone bias, well, there you go. You want to improve upon that?

1:06:25 - Jason Howell
Yeah, interesting, I think.

Well, two things come to mind as one one you were just talking about kind of Google's efforts in this in the last couple of years and actually it's very kind of now because yesterday's event they talked about this again but in the realm of video, and I think their efforts previously with True Tone I think that's what they call the True Tone had to do with the camera or like the still images taken with pixel phones and and applying that scale to have a more kind of equitable representation of skin color in pictures with video. Now, with the use of artificial intelligence on device artificial intelligence, there is an ability to do this in real time. On on the video front, it looked like Google really is has stepped up its game as far as improving the video camera aspect of the pixel devices. So I'm super curious to hear how people test that and to see, because what they showed was like a single video out in bright sunlight, all you know, all different skin colors, kind of dancing in front of the camera and then and then out and how you know, one camera would get this poorly, but this camera was able to get each one of them perfectly and I'm super curious. You know, it's just another one of those features like okay, great promo video. I love the effort, I love that their minds are there. I want to see that in action and see how people put that to the test.

The other thing that comes to mind is, when we're talking about these scales, it really it's. I mean, unless I'm wrong, unless I'm misunderstanding, it stresses the importance of having some sort of calibrated camera, some sort of system where these cameras have some sort of calibration or standard by which they are created so that they can actually make that determination. Because if the cameras you know, white balance is thrown off or whatever the case may be, there could be a number of ways in which it's state, it's stable state is, you know, is doesn't line up with reality and therefore it makes incorrect and term determinations because of that. So I wonder how that factors in as well, how much, how much work has to be done with these cameras to know that they are already kind of like in line in some sort of like standard place by which to make those determinations, you know, be able to feed that information to the AI and know that the AI has what it needs to make that determination accurately. So, yeah, those couple of things that came up.

I love, though, that this is a conversation that's continuing, that it wasn't, and I wondered about it a couple of years ago, when Google first announced. The true tone, at an event, I think two years ago is like, okay, are they doing this to score points or is this like a commitment that they're making and, year after year, they're continuing to improve on it, they're continuing to dedicate to it, and it's great to see other companies you know doing that as well. Obviously, it's incredibly important, so, yeah, yeah, I am again.

1:09:39 - Mikah Sargent
I was happy to see that too, that there's more, more going on, there's more attention being paid. Indeed.

1:09:46 - Jason Howell
All right. Well, we've reached the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. We record the show every Thursday at around 11 AM Pacific. If you want to watch live, you can do that. We definitely have people watching live twit.tv/live. But I'd say the most important thing is to subscribe. Subscribing is it's essential for what we do in the world of podcasts. So go to twit.tv/tnw. Subscribe so you get our episodes each and every week delivered to you like magic audio and video formats. It's all done behind the scenes and it's just. It's helpful for you and it's helpful for us. So please do that.

1:10:24 - Mikah Sargent
Indeed. Something else that's helpful for us is you joining Club TWiT. twit.tv/clubtwit. If you would like to get all of our shows ad free. Joining Club TWiT is how you do that. For $7 a month or $84 a year, you out there can join the club and you'll get your own personal feeds of every single Twitch show that we piped to you with no ads. You'll also get access to the twit plus bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show.

After the show, special club twit events get posted there, as well as access to the members only discord server, a fun place to go to chat with your fellow club members and also those of us here at twit. We've got some great events coming up, including a oh, that's AI inside, including on October 26th, where we will be doing an escape room, so you'll get to see some of the twit hosts and office crew trying to solve an escape room. That is available to you as a club twit member. twit.tv/clubtwit. A fireside chat with Renee Richie is also coming up this year, and the quote old farts fireside chat featuring Jeff Jarvis, doc Searls and Leo Laporte, where they will be conversing. I don't know about things. Old farts converse about what is that? Cigars and the war, I guess. So you could check all of that out. I think the escape room sounds especially exciting. Again, it's with that TV slash club Twitter. Along with that, you gain access to some special club twit exclusive shows the untitled Linux show, which is a show all about Linux. Hands on Windows, which is a show from Paul Therroth that covers Windows tips and tricks. Hands on Mac, which is a show from yours truly that covers Apple tips and tricks. And home theater geeks, which is a show from Scott Wilkinson all about home theater interviews, reviews, questions answered so much fun. And, of course, ai inside is in the club as well, featuring Jason Howell, and is all about that artificial intelligence. So please join the club. twit.tv/clubtwit $7 a month, $84 a year. It is an incredible value and you also get that warm fuzzy feeling knowing that you are helping us to continue to bring these shows to you.

If you'd like to follow me online, I'm at Mikah Sargent on many a social media network where you can head to chi wah wah dot coffee that's C H, I, h, u A H coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Check out hands on Mac later today. If you're a club member, it always publishes. On Thursday in the afternoon you can check out. Ask the tech guys with Leo Laporte and yours truly, where we take your questions live on air and answer them. And on Tuesdays, you can watch iOS today with Rosemary Orchard and again yours truly, where we talk all things iOS, ipad, os, all of the iOS that Apple has. That's all for me, jason. How about you?

1:13:35 - Jason Howell
Yeah, well, you know, I'm of course, in the club doing AI. Inside we do have a live recording of that for anyone. So whether you're inside the club or not, you can watch Jeff Jarvis and I do that show every Thursday at 1pm Pacific, 4pm, eastern twittv slash live and then, of course, if you're in the club, just subscribe to it and you'll continue to get it where I'm really happy with the direction things are going. It's feeling like a show at this point. So it's good stuff. You can find me. Really. Just go to any social network. Do a search for Jason now you'll find me. I have different user names depending on how early I got in there. It's just, you know, I've got a more. I've got a commonly used name, I suppose. So it's not as easy for me. But big thanks to everyone at the studio for helping us do this show each and every week. Everyone behind the scenes Burke, I think is is John behind the board. I'm not really quite sure if it's John Ashley, John A.

1:14:33 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, John A is there.

1:14:35 - Jason Howell
John is there, everyone. Honestly, not being at the studio, I can't look at them and go oh, you're here to helping, but everybody who helps us do the show each and every week, Thank you, and thanks to you for watching and listening. We'll see you next time on Tech News Weekly. Bye bye.

1:14:48 - Jonathan Bennett
Hey, we should talk Linux. It's the operating system that runs the internet, but your game consoles, cell phones and maybe even the machine on your desk. You already knew all that. What you may not know is that TWIT now is a show dedicated to the untitled Linux show. Whether you're a Linux pro, a burgeoning sysad man or just curious what the big deal is, you should join us on the club twit discord every Saturday afternoon for news analysis and tips to sharpen your Linux skills. And then make sure you subscribe to the club twit exclusive untitled Linux show. Wait, you're not a club twit member yet. We'll go to the twit.tv/clubtwit and sign up. Hope to see you there.