Tech News Weekly 370 Transcript

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

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Tech News Weekly. Jennifer Pattison Toohey is here and spent a lot of time at CES, so we spend the first half of the show covering what she saw. Then Kaya Yurieff of the Information joins us to give us an update on where TikTok stands with its shutdown and ban, before Ben Wilson of Windows Central joins us to help everybody calm down about the end of Windows 10, Microsoft 365, support All of that coming up on Tech News Weekly.

This is Tech News Weekly episode 370, with Jennifer Pattison Tuohy and me, Mikah Sargent, recorded Thursday, January 16th 2025. TikTok Might Shut Off Its US App. Hello and 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 your host, Mikah Sargent, and I am joined today by someone who hopefully, in theory, escaped the conference crud. It's Jennifer Pattison Tuohyy of the Verge. Welcome back, Jen.

0:01:15 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Hi, great to be here. It's been a while. Very excited to be here. Yes, healthy so far. Touch wood. Just got back from Vegas on Saturday because my flight got delayed by the big storm. And there's another storm coming in, so it's all stormy on the East Coast.

0:01:33 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, my goodness, yeah, that I hadn't considered. Being at a conference and then having a delay must not be very fun at all.

0:01:42 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
No, I was. My flight got canceled. Actually, I was supposed to leave Friday and then it was canceled, and so I actually got to go spend some more time on the show floor, which was kind of fun, and I actually stumbled across something very cool which I hadn't told you about. So this is going to be a surprise. On my last day, I found this Ha ha, ha ha. This is a keyboard that works with matter. Oh, wow, okay, we're going to talk about that in a minute.

0:02:12 - Mikah Sargent
So, yes, you went to CES formerly the Consumer Electronics Show, now just CES. Artist, formerly known situation and every year there are lots and lots of products that are announced. Some of them are so many gadgets, right, and some of them are lots and lots of products that are announced.

Some of them are so many gadgets, right, and some of them are just spaghetti projects. I may never see the light of day, but it seems like this year we saw a lot in the smart home that actually will be released, but you actually kind of have a theme of 2025. Why don't you tell us about that? Yeah, so yeah, a theme of 2025. Want to tell us about that?

0:02:45 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah, so lots of stuff. Smart Home has become a huge show at CES Over the last three or four years. I would say it's just increasingly got bigger and bigger. In terms of the coverage of the Smart Home, I mean, traditionally CES has been a television audio show. Tvs are still there, although much smaller representation. Auto is a big theme. Lots of cars Again not so many this year and the smart home, gradually, has just been getting bigger and bigger, and so it's a lot of fun for me.

But this year there were two really dominant themes, but the one that I was most excited about was door locks, because I wrote a piece just before CES predicting that 2025 was going to be the year of the smart lock, and I'm right. So that made me happy. There were smart locks everywhere. You couldn't throw a cat without hitting smart locks. Not that I throw cats, but there were so many cat without hitting smart locks not that I throw cats, but there were so many, so many, so many. It's it was it was kind of a little overwhelming.

But this is because and this was one of the reasons that I mentioned this in my piece at the end of the year there is a new standard coming for smart locks, which is going to solve or augment one of the main purposes of smart locks, which which is making it easier to get into your home, not having to use a key. And this new standard is called a Liro and it is basically going to make it so that it's easy to use any smartphone or wearable so like smartwatch from any manufacturer to unlock any smart door that you are authorized to unlock, so you don't have to have an iPhone to use tap to unlock, which is the home key. The current way that a lot of smart locks work, if you buy the correct lock and have the right phone, is you can tap your phone to unlock it. That uses NFC, but that is soon going to be coming to all. Um smart lock, like all smart lock manufacturers, will be able to use nfc to work with any smartphone, not just iPhones. Um, this is hopefully coming this year. Um, it's also including something called UWB  ultra wideband, which is a technology I'm sure people are familiar with which is currently used in locks for cars. So you can if you have a newer car, you may have had this experience um tesla's bmws, where you walk up to your car with your phone and your car will automatically unlock.

Um, and this isn't. This is technology is coming to smart locks. Uh, apple actually announced it would be supporting it at wwC last year, so I've written about it quite a bit, but there hadn't been any locks that supported UWB yet. Uwb is part of Alero. Alero is coming this year. It hasn't arrived yet, but at CES we started to see several locks announce that they will support UWB and eventually Alero when it arrives. And Alero is being developed by the lock manufacturers and the smartphone platforms.

0:05:51 - Mikah Sargent
So that was going to be my question.

0:05:53 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
I know what's coming.

0:05:55 - Mikah Sargent
I freak out when I hear about another standard, because oftentimes it means we will never have one official thing and everybody's kind of competing. And so you hear about oh you know, because we've already got these other standards that have to do with the smart home. So now there's something called a Lero as well. I know one more standard, but it sounds like it is something that is blessed by the big companies that are involved. Is it also blessed by not just the lock manufacturers but the companies making devices, like Apple, like Samsung, like Google? Is it working from that end as well?

0:06:36 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah, so Apple, samsung, google are all involved in developing Alero. Alero has actually been developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance, which is the group behind Matter, so it's the same crew and it's actually very simple. It's not the kind of whole smorgasbord like Matter is. This is a very simple device to device communication standard, just making it clear that your smartphone can unlock your door using NFC, which is tap.

Phone can unlock your door using NFC, which is tap, or your watch, which is tap, or UWB, which is, in theory, completely touchless. So the idea of UWB is you can be walking towards your door and if you're carrying an authorized device, your door will automatically unlock as you approach, and it will do so based on how fast you're moving, so like if you're moving really fast, it'll unlock sooner. If you're just strolling, it'll only unlock at a certain point as you get there. So there's no kind of latency or lag, which is and some people may say well, I already have auto unlock on my smart lock. August locks have supported this for many years and so have several other locks since august came out.

But that technology is uses three different technologies it's wi-fi, bluetooth and geofencing, so gps, and it's very unreliable very, very very like I'll be lying in bed and my door, because my bed is a little bit further outside of my, you know, outside of the range, I mean.

0:08:07 - Kaya Yurieff
I also have bad cellular service.

0:08:09 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
I have bad GPS service in my house. Uwb is device to device communication. Just you have to have the UWB chip in the lock and you have to have the UWB chip in your device your phone or watch and it knows which it's about positioning. It has precise positioning to within, like millimeters, so it knows which it's about positioning. It has precise positioning to within, like millimeters, so it knows which side of the door you're on, so it's not going to unlock as you approach your door from inside. It knows which direction you're moving, so it's not going to unlock when you walk past your door. It's only going to unlock as you walk towards your door.

So, it's addressing a lot of issues with the earlier implementation of this type of technology, and I just think it's going to make smart locks so much simpler for people and much more likely to drive adoption, because right now, I think that something like 10% of US population has smart door locks, and I think smart door locks are fantastic when they work. They can be a little tricky and fiddly, and this is going to hopefully make them a lot easier to use, and hence why I think we're going to see a big uptick in popularity around smart locks, and we saw some great ones. Schlage has a new one that's got UWB, sports Matter Thread NFC, and it looks really cool and Lockly not Lock many, so many smart locks. Utech has released one that also works with UWB, and I think we're going to see it from all the manufacturers in the next few months, so it's exciting times for the front door.

0:09:40 - Mikah Sargent
It absolutely is.

Yeah, I agree with you that once you have one, and once you have one that works reliably, that the technology is very handy, because there will be inevitably situations where you are looking to let someone into your home and you're not there or you know you need to.

I mean, I've had a bunch of different situations like that and being able to just give temporary access or, if I'm going to be away right whenever the person is supposed to be coming, that they can easily get inside. It's just very, very handy. More likely it is that people who otherwise would be opposed because it's simpler and less finicky to use a key in the lock that means that they're more likely to hop on board and that is really what pushes it forward, drives it forward and makes it more common. Now, smart locks definitely the year of the smart lock, as you pointed out, particularly with these newer technologies. But that wasn't all you saw at CES and you know I'm starting to think that we might just spend this first part of the show talking about your CES experience instead of doing my story of the week, because there's a lot.

0:11:00 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
There's a lot, I know, but yours is cool too.

0:11:04 - Mikah Sargent
Maybe we'll do a little brief mention at the end A little bit yeah. Yeah, so in the next four minutes, before we take a little break I guess it's three minutes now tell us a little bit about, because we've got a robot that we're going to talk about and we've got a keyboard that we're going to talk about.

0:11:21 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
You want to hear about the keyboard.

0:11:30 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah well, I think we should save those until after the break. I was hoping in these little few minutes we've got left for you as a smart home person. Was everyone there talking about Matter, and do you feel like we're now officially there when it comes to Matter being a standard? And then I guess my last question for you would be any new announcements on the front of new Matter supported devices that we can look forward to?

0:11:57 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
So there was. So Matter kind of felt like it had moved from being the hot new thing to sort of being just the thing this year. So, like most smart home companies were saying, yeah, well, and this will work with matter, but they weren't like loudly proclaiming it. So it's almost like it's become, it's getting to that point, especially for the CES audience where you know the manufacturers are incorporating it into their devices. I think the area I was most interested in were the new device types that we hadn't seen devices coming from manufacturers. So we've got lights, locks, you know switches galore with Matter. So there were many more of those. But I wanted to see more around, like energy management appliances. You know these are the new device types announced last year that we haven't actually seen products yet. So there was the first Matter smart fridge for the US that I got to go see, which was very exciting.

I do get excited about home appliances, I know. I think they're cool, I think they're really cool.

They are, and we talked about this before. So we'd seen one at IFA that was for Europe and this one is for america, and they're from the same companies, from bosch. Um, well, bsh in north america which manufactures bosch and thermidor, and in europe it's siemens and bosch, but it's the same company that developing. They're really pushing appliances in matter and they say they will have most of their appliances matter compatible in the next year. Um, so not existing ones. Unfortunately it has to be new products, which is a shame, but yeah, so that it was good to see a few things like that. We saw the one of the first home energy management systems that supports MATA from EcoFlow, so that was exciting. So you know that's. You know if you have a home battery backup and smart home panel that will control different devices in your home to manage the energy use so that you can reduce your use when it's expensive, use battery power when, say, your power's gone out, you want to balance your loads and that's part of Matter that can work with your matter platforms. Unfortunately, none of those platforms apple home, google home, alexa really support this yet. So that's that stuff we're still waiting for.

We are still waiting to see more of support from the platforms and we didn't get much news on that front other than amazon is going to support fridges. They did. They did say that was the only sort of small bit of news we got from the platforms, so that was. Yeah, there was some movement around matter, but again it wasn't kind of like the big star of the show because it's become sort of it feels like it's become the norm for a lot of smart home manufacturers and that's a good thing. We did get one other interesting piece of news which might be a bit weedsy but people got excited was that Matter certification for products. Now, yes, and you go through their what they're calling their interoperability lab where they test your device with all the ecosystems. Your device can get automatically certified with Apple Home, google Home, samsung, smartthings not Amazon yet, but hopefully soon so device manufacturers don't have to go to each company to get their certification for their works with Badge, and that should really help speed up development of more products in Matter.

So that was exciting, for manufacturers were excited about that.

0:15:36 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I think that's really cool because it used to be very Time consuming, Difficult and time consuming Expensive and costly. Yeah, to be able to get all of those certifications and I think, for simplicity for the user being able to, because, in fact, just the other day, my significant other was looking for a floor lamp that we wanted to put in our living room space and one that had, you know, different lighting options, and you know he was coming to me does this one work with Apple? Does this one you know what I mean, and trying to figure out what did and what didn't, because, as it stands, many of them are not able to market that it works with Apple?

Home but they are Matter compatible because this is brand new and so soon they'll be able to, and that can be easy to understand. It was a Govee Lite which I knew that through Matter it would work with Apple, work with Apple Home, but without that badge he did not know. So yeah, that can be a little confusing.

0:16:38 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
And it is confusing because in theory, the Matter badge should mean it works with everything, but people aren't used to that. People still. We've trained them for many years to look for that works with Apple, works with Google, works with Alexa badge. So I think those are going to stick around for a while, but this is like the first step towards those going away. I think, because what you know now it should be a lot easier for manufacturers to explain what they work with and eventually you know they'll be able to put the badges on without having to go through all the extra steps.

But eventually I think the consumer consciousness it'll come through that if it has this Matter badge, it works with everything. But it's going to take a while. It'll take a few product cycles probably. But yeah, this was good news for the manufacturers, because I think that's been. It's one thing I've heard a lot from manufacturers is it's expensive to develop a Matter product and the CSA announced a few other things that are going to hopefully make it less expensive and quicker, which should mean we'll see a lot more devices coming out this year, next year that support Matter, because the manufacturers are able to get through the process a lot quicker. So yay.

0:17:52 - Mikah Sargent
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All right, we are back from the break here on Tech News Weekly and I am joined for this. The third week Are we already? No, that can't be right. The second week we are well into January, believe it or not is back from CES and you have some pretty cool things that you saw some terrifying things as well, in my opinion. So you pick. What do you wanna start with the keyboard?

0:20:35 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah, so the robots with arms. Robots with arms buried the lead. I'm more excited about door locks, but everyone else was very excited about robots with arms. Robot vacuums sorry, with arms, yeah true, so yes. Specifically, specifically, robot vacuums with arms. So Roborock released its Saros Z70, or announced its Saros Z70, which it says is coming to market in the next few months. So this is not a concept product which has that's not the life-size version, that's a blown up version.

That was hanging on the CES show floor they had a giant version of this robot vacuum hanging on over their booth. But it's basically a mechanical arm they call it the OmniGrip that will come out from the body of the robot and can pick up things like socks and light, sandals and tissues. And there was something else.

0:21:37 - Mikah Sargent
All things that are on the ground.

0:21:38 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yes, things that you know. Often, actually, if you run robot vacuums in your house, those are the kind of things that quite often it will suck up, even with the like AI obstacle avoidance. Like a tissue is kind of hard for it to see and they get gummed up in the. Anyway, the idea is it's going to clean up for you, which is exciting. Minimal cleanup to start with, very slow, watching it go and pick up the sock and then take it to the basket, but it will put it away for you, so you tell it where to put what it picks up and so it can move all your socks to one spot. And then Dreamy, who's Roborock's main competitor, debuted at the same show.

It's concept vacuum which has an arm and legs Whoa, legs. What does it do with its legs? I know, I know, I mean the legs. Maybe I'm over-egging it a little bit, but they're little kind of levers that it can use to get up over a step and push itself over, so they can climb steps one step at a time. So, yeah, they're basically growing appendages, but all in the quest of being able to better navigate around your home. So if you have a large room transition, you may have found that you haven't been able to get your robot vacuum to clean your whole house. I, for example, have a high transition into one of my bathrooms so the robot could never get in there, and this helps them get over one step or a high transition. And then the arm helps them pick up things. The dreamy arm says it will pick up larger items, so it can pick up even a shoe, which I think would be more useful.

0:23:20 - Mikah Sargent
Useful. But also then I'm worried.

0:23:23 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
I'm going to come home and it's trying to pick up my dog, so it has a camera in it, so the arms have a camera in so they can see what they're trying to pick up, and they're obviously using machine learning to specifically, which always works right, always works. I did ask a number of times I'm like what if it picked up something it shouldn't? And they both companies were very insistent that they're very carefully trained to only pick up what they should and, in fact, so carefully trained that they're more likely to not pick up what they should than they are to pick up what they shouldn't, which is good, that's what I would prefer for sure.

0:24:01 - Mikah Sargent
So if you have slippers that look like cats, it's probably not going to pick up that slipper.

0:24:05 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
It might not pick up that slipper, right exactly, and then the dreamy one. Also. You can designate different areas, so like you can say, okay, if you find shoes, go put them by the front door, if you find cat toys, go put them by the cat bed. So that was kind of fun. And then one thing that I thought might be useful I mean, so this is basically coming to the point where the robot is becoming more than just a vacuum. It's also tidying up for you and you can program or this feature will be coming soon to the Saros Z70, which is a Roborock one You'll be able to program its machine learning so, for example, you can tell it to learn about your favorite, your daughter's favorite teddy bear, or you can learn your purse, or you could learn your wallet, and then you can say robot, where did I leave my teddy bear?

0:24:56 - Mikah Sargent
And it's like well, when I was cleaning up, I saw it under the bed.

0:25:01 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yes, and then eventually, you could see it getting to the point where, when it finds this item, it knows where to go put it away for you, which is, you know. This is Rosie the robot. It is, we are getting there.

0:25:13 - Kaya Yurieff
I had a question about the one with legs.

0:25:16 - Mikah Sargent
Can it use the arm in concert with the legs? No, it's just the legs, Because the transitions are still not. It's not I'm thinking about in my house, where there's a side door and when you walk into the side door it's up some stairs. You walk into the side door a little bit and there's a landing and then you walk up a step and up a step to get into the kitchen area, which is kind of raised, and the rest of the house is on that level, and so when the robot vacuum that's on the main floor goes around, it sweeps everything except for that entryway, and that entryway is a place where the most dust and stuff collects, and so I thought about it going down the stairs, but I don't think it would be able to with just its little lever legs, because the stairs aren't long enough they don't stick out far enough.

0:26:10 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
It would need to be the length at least of the robot for it to yeah, yeah, maybe if it was a little mini robot then it could stick out far enough.

0:26:14 - Mikah Sargent
It would need to be the length at least of the robot for it to yeah. Yeah, maybe if it was a little mini robot then it could. I've seen a few companies with those little tiny really small ones.

0:26:20 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah, Switchbot has that. They have a tiny one and they actually came out with basically like a Rosie the robot, like a modular robot vacuum platform that you can put different appliances on. You can actually even 3D print different attachments so you could put whatever you want on this platform that it could then move around your house for you and bring to you whenever you want and it's got power and data.

0:26:41 - Mikah Sargent
Or at Halloween, you can put a ghost on it.

0:26:44 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah, and then they said that one's going to have an arm soon too. So it was all about the robot vacuums with arms. It was definitely a big part of the show and this stuff is coming. Like you said at the beginning of the show, this is all product that is coming this year.

0:27:03 - Mikah Sargent
So, we're definitely going to be seeing this.

0:27:05 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
And then speaking of legitimate, not vaporware, because I did tease this and I should tell everyone about my keyboard really quickly.

0:27:12 - Mikah Sargent
Which lights up. By the way, for the listeners who aren't seeing yes, it's got color RGB.

0:27:17 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
It's the whole gamer keyboard thing, but it's a Matter button. I mean it's ingenious. It was ingenious. It's by a company called Third Reality and they were showing at the booth. They do all sorts of things sensors they mainly work with ZigBee and Thread, but the booth. They do all sorts of things, sensors they mainly work with ZigBee and Thread. But this has a Matter Wi-Fi chip built in so it doesn't actually even have to be connected to a computer, it just has to have power and the function keys are each individual Matter buttons, which means you could program them to control anything in your smart home. So that was Matter related. So a scene like you're sitting down at your desk and you want to start your office scene where you turn on your lights or maybe start your coffee maker or get the AC going or open the blinds, you could just hit function F1 and run your scene.

0:28:04 - Mikah Sargent
I love it.

0:28:04 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
It's like was it the steam, the stream, the stream deck? But yeah, but for smart home.

0:28:10 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, into the, because that's what. Right now I have this little Waymo.

0:28:18 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Oh, right, the little button yeah.

0:28:20 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and so I use that to turn on and off my studio lights. Technically, what I actually have is just not set up right now, because I just recently did a paint job. Here is a, that looks very nice, thank you Is an Aqara presence sensor that uses the like radar. That looks very nice. Thank you Is a CARA presence sensor that uses the like radar, and that thing is amazing. I love that thing so much. It works so well.

0:28:41 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Or the millimeter wave sensor.

0:28:43 - Mikah Sargent
And they just came out with a new one that's battery powered.

0:28:46 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Oh, it's battery.

0:28:47 - Mikah Sargent
I did not realize it was battery powered, that's cool too, because yeah, the long wire is kind of annoying, but yeah, I, these these different methods of being able to, you know, sort of tell your home to do different things is really nice, but it's like I have to remember whenever I'm using the physical stuff to sort of build it into my muscle memory. And I'm so used to using my keyboard that I could really see my keyboard being that tool yeah, more than anything else?

yeah, because there's so many other ways to do it, right? So then, in the moment I'm going now, do I want to open up the home app on my mac? Do I want to hit this button? Do I want you know what I mean? And so if it was on my keyboard, that makes the most sense to me. So I think that's a pretty cool device. Uh, do we expect to see more of these just matter controllers? And I think this will have to be our last question.

0:29:36 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah, oh, because there's a lot of those. There were a lot at CES that was. The other big trend was I was expecting to see more than I did, but Akara and Shelly both came out with new control panels touchscreen control panels that you can wire into like an existing switch, so like Brilliant used to do if you remember the Brilliant control panels touchscreen control panels that you can wire into like an existing switch, so like Brilliant used to do, if you remember the Brilliant control panels, oh, rest in peace.

0:30:01 - Mikah Sargent
Well, they're still around.

0:30:02 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
They're sort of around yeah, more commercial right, but touchscreen interaction for controlling smart home devices.

They mainly work at launch with Aqara or Shelly devices, but they do have matter compatibility for buttons. So if you, you can program anything to work that works through matter, to work with the button on the control panels. But they also work as intercom for, say, like a video doorbell, like if you have an Acara video doorbell, it will pull up and show you who's at your door and you can talk to them. So, and because of matter, you can expand an interface like this, which is useful because otherwise you're limited to your ecosystem that you bought it in. But Matter is helping make it so that you can bring in more devices, which is what both Acara and, I believe, shelly are going to do. The products are coming out later this year Europe and the US and this kind of interface is key, I think, in the smart home because it's much more intuitive for people who aren't. You know, a button like you have on your desk is great, but if someone walks up to your desk they're like I don't know how.

0:31:05 - Mikah Sargent
How do I do? What's it going?

0:31:06 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
to do, whereas a touchscreen control panel with a little shade oh well, this must open the shades. Or with a little shade oh well, this must open the shades. It makes it so much more intuitive. So I'm excited that we're seeing more of these interfaces, which is largely because of the interoperability that Matter is bringing. So it's real.

0:31:22 - Mikah Sargent
It's finally here. I remember talking about it so long ago like it's going to change things. It will actually, and it's coming through. It's getting there.

0:31:31 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah, exactly, we're getting there and the very last thing, because I know I've taken way too much time, but Google Home is now fully Matter supported through the Home Hubs, so you're going to have local control from your Google Home Hubs, which is something that I think a lot of people have been looking forward to. So, yeah, that should make things faster and much less latency and more responsive in your home. So that's matter too. So yay matter.

0:32:00 - Mikah Sargent
Yay matter. Jennifer Patterson. Toohey, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today post CES. It's always a pleasure to have you on the show and get to nerd out about smart home stuff when we do. If people are looking to follow what you do online, where should they go to do so?

0:32:16 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
theverge.com is the best place to find me. I have my author page there with all my articles and links to everything that I do on the web. So, yeah, check me out there at smarthomemama, at threads too.

0:32:28 - Mikah Sargent
Beautiful. Thanks so much and we'll see you soon. Bye, Thanks, All righty folks. We're going to take a quick break before we come back with my first interview. I want to tell you a little bit about Veeam, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly.

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All right, we are back from the break and I am excited to talk to our next guest, who is here to give us an update on where things stand when it comes to TikTok. From the information, it's Kaya Yurieff. Welcome to the show, Kaya.

0:34:00 - Kaya Yurieff
Thank you so much for having me.

0:34:02 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you here. I was hoping that you could kind of start by giving the listeners a bit of a refresher on the current state of the TikTok ban. You know why is the app facing a ban in the US and for how long has this?

0:34:17 - Kaya Yurieff
whole thing been underway. Yes, I mean, it's crazy. I've been covering this story for four years, so this is really the crunch time of the story. But the app is facing a ban due to national security concerns. So the worry from lawmakers is that TikTok and its Chinese parent company, bytedance, could put sensitive user data into the hands of the Chinese government. So location data you know information about American users and there's also concern that China could use TikTok to spread misinformation or manipulate American users. I think what the magic of TikTok has been is that you open the app and it just serves you a feed of videos that it thinks you will like, and it's really a passive experience where you're not really following creators. So there is this concern that, because of the way TikTok is structured, it would be very easy to manipulate the recommendations. Tiktok has long denied allegations that China can access the data or that it's ever used TikTok in this manner, but the concern is there and the potential for that is there.

So this all really goes back to 2020, when Donald Trump was in his first presidency and he kicked all this off by trying to ban it through an executive order in 2020. Then you fast forward. It goes sort of through the courts. Biden gets elected, he revokes that executive order, but he signs a new order requiring the Commerce Department to review foreign-owned apps that pose security risks. So even with the presidential transition, TikTok was always, you know, this threat was always hanging over them. But then you fast forward to March of this year and there is a very popular bill that basically requires TikTok to divest from ByteDance or face a ban, and that passes, you know, with widespread bipartisan support and Biden signed it into law in April and the deadline is Sunday. Now.

0:36:00 - Mikah Sargent
Wow See, thank you so much for that because it is. It was a multi year, multi presidency situation, and the way that it changed from piece to piece, from starting out as an executive order to going to the Commerce Department looking into it, there's been a lot and there's been a lot of conversation around sort of the reasons behind why it's taking place and the national security concerns. So it's really good, I think, to have that Now. Part of this, of course, was the opportunity for TikTok to divest its US portion of the company. I know that this wasn't part of the original question, but I guess I'm just kind of did TikTok give that the old college try? Did it try? Did ByteDance look at all into selling it? Was that any part of this process over the last four or five years?

0:37:00 - Kaya Yurieff
So ByteDance has been very resistant to sell and throughout this process they publicly said that they are not interested in selling TikTok. China has very strict export laws which would require Beijing to sign off on any sort of acquisition because of TikTok's powerful recommendation algorithm, so it's always felt like a sale has been sort of a non-starter. Even in 2020, we saw, you know, oracle, walmart, all these companies try to make an investment in TikTok to sort of change the ownership structure. We try, you know Walmart was going to acquire them at one point in 2020. But you really have not heard much about a sale at all throughout this process. So it hasn't seemed like it's been on the table at all or something by chance is considered.

0:37:43 - Mikah Sargent
Got it. Now you have reported that TikTok is looking at planning to shut down the app. I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about that and how that differs from what the law technically requires and the implication for existing users who already have the app installed on their device.

0:38:06 - Kaya Yurieff
Yes, I think the assumption everyone had was that existing users would still be able to access TikTok after the deadline and that slowly, basically, TikTok would be prevented from shipping updates, security features and that eventually the app would sort of be rendered useless.

But what we reported on Tuesday is that TikTok is actually planning to shut off the app. So the plan is on Sunday you know, barring any sort of government intervention from the Supreme Court or Biden, which is looking very unlikely at this point existing users will open TikTok's app and see a pop-up that will direct them to a website with information about the ban. So they will not actually be able to scroll TikTok, they will not be able to see their profile, they will not be able to watch videos. So that's very different from what people were expecting. But the law actually requires TikTok service providers to cut off service. So that doesn't just include the app stores but also cloud providers like Oracle. So my understanding is that TikTok is deciding to shut down to protect those service providers from legal liability. But it will also have the immediate effect of angering TikTok's user base all at once and really bringing the reality of the ban home, instead of this sort of slow burn of the app becoming non-functional over time.

0:39:22 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely. What steps do we know has TikTok taken to prepare for the shutdown? And I think, more importantly, it's got US employees. It's got US users. Importantly, it's got US employees. It's got US users. I remember when the company put out a notification letting people know that the shutdown was imminent and it really seemed to spark some activity on the platform. Are we looking at the same situation this time, and maybe you could talk a little bit about the way that the platform itself, the people on the platform, have looked at alternatives to TikTok should the ban come through?

0:40:02 - Kaya Yurieff
Yeah, so before the bill passed they really tried to energize the user base. They sent push notifications to TikTok users actually in very specific parts of the country to try to flip senators and House members. So that was before the bill even passed. But it's been really interesting because we've been reporting on this story for months and it's been fascinating to see TikTok actually just totally operate business as usual. They have been very focused on the legal fight and challenging the law and they've said you know that they feel very confident. They know this will go to the Supreme Court. You know, now that the Supreme Court oral arguments happened, you're not hearing as much kind of confidence from TikTok.

But you know, as recently as earlier this month, you know, TikTok sent executives to CES, the major tech conference in Las Vegas. They gave a panel on 2025 trends. They were talking about the impact of TikTok. So you wouldn't, if you were sitting in that room, you would not think the app is getting banned. So they have really been pushing ahead. They've been shipping features. They were pushing TikTok shop during the holiday season. So they really have almost been like ignoring the reality of the ban.

I mean, obviously their legal team is working on it, but for the rank and file employees. I mean, they were still, you know, forging ahead on their goals and shipping features. But this week employees finally heard internally from the company. They sent a memo to staff indicating that their jobs would be safe. The law doesn't require the company to shut its offices in the US. So they said, you know, they indicated their jobs would be safe. But at the same time you know, longer term you could expect layoffs. But I think they are still hoping that they could broker some sort of deal with the Trump administration. But for now they sort of reassured employees that there would be no change to their benefits and roles and their offices would continue operating next week.

0:41:47 - Mikah Sargent
Interesting. Now you talked a little bit about kind of the history of things and how TikTok has, and ByteDance have, moved through this process. What did the company argue at the recent Supreme Court hearing and why is it that the company believes this ban violates the First Amendment? I know this is a really complicated question and so I'm telling everyone out there we're not going to go into the pedantry area, listeners, thank you. You're giving us a brief kind of broad overview of their argument, of its argument, and not, of course, personal opinions being involved here. So those grounds.

0:42:31 - Kaya Yurieff
I'm not a lawyer Also I will preface that. But I have spent a lot of time over the past few months speaking to lawyers and legal experts. I was actually at the Supreme Court. I was in the room for the oral arguments so I got to hear them live. I was there.

But you know and I was at the oral arguments in the appeals court as well they lost in the appeals court and it was a very similar message from TikTok's lawyers. They have a parallel suit actually from both TikTok and creators of TikTok. So they have, you know, those two suits that have a very similar message of. You know, TikTok is a US company operating in the US, so it should have First Amendment protections. And for the TikTok creator suit, they're saying that creators should have the right to publish on the platform of their choice. And they tried to make this argument of, like Spotify is a Swedish company but artists who are American can publish on that platform.

It was interesting in the previous oral arguments with the appeals court, the judges were really not having that argument and were like, yeah, but Sweden is not an adversary of the US in the same way that China is Right. So they didn't really like that Spotify comparison, you didn't hear that level of skepticism from the Supreme Court justices. But there was a lot of skepticism about the freedom of speech piece because the justices were sort of signaling yes, but you have an option to keep TikTok alive, you're just choosing not, not to sell it. So that's sort of where the just is. You could see there was some skepticism there, but they emphasize TikTok has 170 million US users. You're stifling their freedom of expression Other platforms are not the same as TikTok and basically saying that American users and creators and businesses should have the right to post on TikTok.

0:44:12 - Mikah Sargent
Understood. Now I was hoping that, to kind of round things out, you could help outline the potential paths forward for TikTok, including the possibility of a sale or other ways that the company could comply with the law, or maybe the law could be affected itself.

0:44:34 - Kaya Yurieff
Yes. So you know, like I said, I think a sale is very unlikely. You know, bytedance has really said that throughout this process, that they're not going to sell. You know there is the question of Trump right. He will take office a day after the deadline. There was reporting yesterday from the Washington Post that he is mulling.

You know options to save the app, including an executive order once he's president that would suspend the enforcement of the ban for 60 to 90 days. I mean, that is, I think, quite unlikely. I mean the precedent that would set is that any president can come in and just knock out any law they don't agree with Right, so it's not likely to pass. Muster is sort of what legal experts have said. But you know there's also this possibility that Trump could, you know, tell his new attorney general to not enforce the law. But that really is up to the service providers. Are Apple, google and Oracle going to risk these hefty, hefty fines? Like? What assurances are they going to need from the Trump administration to feel comfortable doing that? Because they're still breaking a law? It is a law. There could be concerns from their general counsel that they could retroactively be fined. I mean these are enormous, enormous fines for anyone downloading TikTok that the companies have to incur. Again, TikTok is not incurring this, it's their service providers.

So I think the piece of the bill that gives the most wiggle room is actually the piece on the qualified divestiture. So everyone has been focusing sort of on this 90-day extension which the president has the ability to give. But what's interesting is the 90 day extension actually has much stricter language that they have to really prove that a divestiture is in progress, and that includes legal, binding legal documents like and again like a sale. There's no evidence that there's any sort of sale happening and for that to happen, you know, between now and Sunday just seems crazy. But so an extension actually has a very big barrier for a president unless there's actually a sale happening. But the piece on the actual qualified divestiture actually gives a lot more wiggle room to the president, which at the time will be Trump now to sort of give the president a lot of discretion to prove something like that has occurred. So there is some gray area in the law that perhaps Trump and TikTok will be able to broker some sort of agreement. But you know it's interesting that even Trump is trying to mull what he can do because he's indicated that he wants to save the app.

So you know there are some paths. I mean the easiest one is for them to sell. You know high level. But the lawyer during the oral arguments explained how complicated that is because it's ByteDance technology. They have global engineers. It's very hard to just cut TikTok off from the rest of their global operations. So he was saying the complexity of the sale is very complicated but high level. If you think about it, they could sell and avoid a ban. But that's not the likely path.

0:47:25 - Mikah Sargent
Wow, there's so much that's involved with this and we're going to continue, of course, seeing how this all plays out. I'm sure you have been keeping an eye on everything, as you're pulling everything apart and understanding it. I want to thank you so much for taking time to join us today to give us this overview. If people would like to follow along with the work that you're doing in regard to this and other things, where is a good place for them to go to do that?

0:47:50 - Kaya Yurieff
Yes, they can follow me on X, on LinkedIn, and I have a newsletter as well, called Creator Economy, which is available on theinformation.com.

0:48:00 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome.

0:48:00 - Kaya Yurieff
Thank you so much for taking the time today to join us. We really appreciate it.

0:48:03 - Mikah Sargent
Thanks for having me. All righty folks, we're going to take another quick break before we come back with our final interview of the show. I want to tell you about Zscaler, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. Zscaler is the leader in cloud security who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. Zscaler is the leader in cloud security.

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That's zscaler.com security, and we are back from the break, which means it's time for our next topic, and this one is a really important one, because the moment I heard about this news, I thought of all of the people out there who would start going. Oh no, for some reason, we always use dentist's office as the sort of area where they don't update to the latest versions of operating systems, and so I guess I was thinking about all of the dental health professionals out there when I reached out to windowscentral.com and the delightful Ben Wilson decided to join us today. Welcome to the show, ben. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me Absolutely so to get into it, Microsoft recently announced it will no longer support Office apps on Windows 10 after October 14th of this year. Can you kind of walk us through the key details of this decision and what it actually means for users?

0:51:01 - Ben Wilson
Yeah, sure, it was particularly intense news for some people when it first broke. Like you say, doctor's office is a nice connection, because it seemed to imply that, on the day of Windows 10's death, that Microsoft 365, if you have a subscription will just stop working, then that's it. But Microsoft did follow up with some notes after they were pushed by a lot more than one publication put it that way to clarify that it's not exactly the case and that support will end as part of its modern lifecycle policy. So essentially, there's no more book patches, no more security fixes for exploits now or anything like that. So you can, in theory, keep using the app, but it will be on an unsupported Windows 10.

0:51:47 - Mikah Sargent
Understood. That is good clarity and the little sound bite we definitely need to help people not panic. This announcement does coincide with the end of support for Windows 10 itself. How are the two connected, and why is Microsoft pushing users to upgrade to Windows 11 if they feel like Windows 10 is just fine?

0:52:10 - Ben Wilson
Yeah, sure. So once we're past that end of life state for Windows 10, there will still be Microsoft 365 developers on the team right Adding new features and functions and tools just everything to the suite over time. So realistically, I don't think they'll be able, or maybe they won't be allowed, to prioritize testing on both versions of Windows. To be honest, which feels potentially like it might be one of the biggest driving factors for Microsoft to just cut down on what they might consider unnecessary efforts and maintaining stability on what it will consider a dead operating system. There's a lot of cost-cutting measures and things like that. It just can't run both at the same time, though I understand it from the perspective, like you say, some people that panicked as somebody, if I'm honest, who skipped Vista and skipped 8. No shade to Vista and 8 fans, but I get it that there has often been a jump of two Windows at a time and that's just not the case this time.

0:53:12 - Mikah Sargent
Understood Now. As you mentioned, Microsoft went on to clarify that Office apps will continue to function on Windows 10 after support. Mark MANDELMANN, understood NOW. As YOU MENTIONED, Microsoft WENT ON TO CLARIFY THAT OFFICE APPS WILL CONTINUE TO FUNCTION ON WINDOWS 10 AFTER SUPPORT ENDS, but WARNED ABOUT POTENTIAL PERFORMANCE AND RELIABILITY ISSUES. Can YOU TALK ABOUT WHAT THIS ACTUALLY MEANS FOR USERS WHO CHOOSE NOT TO UPGRADE? What ARE THE P?

0:53:31 - Ben Wilson
maliciously vague quote right performance and reliability issues.

That's just what you tell anybody. Oh, you don't want to keep this computer, the performance might fail, like why so? If somebody chose not to upgrade and maybe they paid, there's a fee for extended support if they stayed in a secure environment as far as the operating system, as far as windows 10 is concerned. But they were only sticking around for this unsupported build, this now unsupported build of Microsoft 365. There might be system updates from Windows 10 protecting them against malicious code and things like that, but there won't be any guarantee that a serious exploit in Microsoft 365 would ever be fixed and it would probably just stay that way.

Unless there was a serious I'm talking CrowdStrike level fuss, they just wouldn't fix it. It's, it's too bad. But on the other hand, if somebody stays on Windows 10, and doesn't pay anything and just gives up on updates entirely, it is just going to become increasingly risky, especially if you're using Office for anything with remotely sensitive information. For me, it's more about the risk of security than it is. The app might crash. Apps crash anyway, but it's a security thing to me.

0:54:50 - Mikah Sargent
MARK MIRCHANDANI Understood. Now here's the rub, so to speak, with this transition from Windows 10 to Windows 11. It's not just a button I can press on my machine to update to Windows 11. In every case, strict hardware requirements are involved that people argue are involved with the limited roll up to Windows 11. Involved with the limited roll up to Windows 11. Does the company have any plans to address these barriers for users who have older machines that run Windows 10 but won't run Windows 11? Or is it just kind of like a shruggy emoticon and just you know? Good luck.

0:55:31 - Ben Wilson
Yeah, that's the big one and it's fair to a degree with the TPM requirement, like I get it. So Office is, and has been for a long time, available through a browser just any browser and most of the apps work practically the same way, with a few exceptions, right, like, maybe, like the complete tool set isn't on the web, but I think generally, the primary recommendation for regular people from Microsoft is going to be to use the browser, and that might not apply to enterprise. A lot of people forget how incredibly massive enterprises they think it's my PC and it's my thing. But enterprise is one of probably one of the biggest Windows 10 users, right, who have very old hardware. But if you have a hardware that's so old that it doesn't have a tpm chip, then you've probably passed your cycle anyway.

So it's, it's a. It's a tough one, but there is a gray area where you can bypass tpm. But to me, that does encroach on that same thing of are you just putting security at risk? And just because you can doesn't mean I'm going to say you should, I'd send you down a different route. But yeah, it's going to be office through the browser. That's where they'll send people If you stay on Windows 10 and you pay for the extended support, they'll just send you to the browser.

0:56:58 - Mikah Sargent
It's good to know that the browser is an option in that case. Microsoft mentioned extended security updates for Windows 10 at a cost. If someone were to hear about that and be interested, can you talk about how those updates work and who might actually benefit from that specific?

0:57:13 - Ben Wilson
option. Yeah, from that specific option. Yeah, so it's a $30 fee for one more year. Essentially, for a consumer machine, it's one extra year and it's extended support for Windows 10 as an operating system, like I said. So that will be the absolute dead end, though, for its plans. Once you get to the end of that year, it's over. So that year would basically be used to prep whatever you haven't been prepping for already.

So even if you did stick with 365 on a browser, or if you, maybe you went to an open source alternative because there are alternatives to office, obviously but you'll still be running the risk of an unsupported operating system that will just get worse over time. So, yeah, it'd be likely somebody who was sticking around because maybe they have an app that's stable on windows 10 but not on 11, which isn't impossible, like a lot of users will hear that and go. It's essentially the same operating system. You don't get different exes, you don't get different installers, like no, but they are slightly different, and while you'll have a compatibility mode on windows 11, like we have had for every operating system from from Microsoft, basically forever, it doesn't guarantee that it's going to work. So you're kind of buying yourself about 12 months to either figure out a compatibility solution or a replacement.

So long-term, long-term service builds have been around for a while and they're for dentist offices. That's what that's for. That's why you'll see them. They'll be extended. I think they're extended for five years, but that is because it runs the dentist app and that's it. It doesn't have paint or anything to the end of it. So that's kind of a separate thing. But I can't imagine a scenario, even in those weird, even really small, maybe charity fed businesses that really rely on this, they're going to have to get to the end of that cycle and replace it because it's beyond a 10 year cycle plus a five year cycle. It's mostly people that are holding out for maybe an obscure app that's just not functional, which I can understand. I haven't heard of a lot of examples, but I know they're out there.

0:59:23 - Mikah Sargent
Lastly, a question for Microsoft. Broadly, Microsoft's use of MIDI dubbed 2025 the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh. So what strategies is Microsoft using to encourage users to upgrade? And yeah, how effective do you think they are or will be?

0:59:47 - Ben Wilson
One strategy is killing Windows 10. But you know that's a strategy, but I mean it's impossible to ignite. I don't have to tell anybody here how much Microsoft is all in on artificial intelligence, right on ai. Ai is synonymous with everything they're doing, um, particularly Microsoft 365, actually, um today or yesterday. Microsoft 365 with copilot is an excellent brand, but it it's Copilot and everything there's Copilot, plus PCs, the range of laptops that are AI certified, and even at Windows Central, most of us like to speculate about Windows 12, right, even though Windows 10 was supposed to be the last version of Windows, there's now maybe going to be Windows 12 that will be heavily integrated with AI and using things like the NPUs, the neural processing units for local AI stuff. It's all about AI. Basically, it's all going to be AI.

You'll have seen it, we've all seen it, and I think that's probably what's bothering a lot of Windows 10 holdouts at least if you go on social media and read the comments, they just don't want AI in the OS. I see one comment. I see a lot is the OS should stay out of my way, but AI is not going to go away. But there's a lot of misconceptions about AI. There's a lot more that it can do behind the scenes. It's not all image generation with extra fingers.

There's a lot more to it than that, but yeah, I get it. As somebody that doesn't like change on the best of times I joke with myself that I'd still use Windows XP if I could. But no, no, I wouldn't. If you install Windows XP on my PC, I'd be sick of it in 30 minutes.

You know, it's all going to go AI and these older machines. They're just not going to have the hardware to do it. It's going to kind of be. I mean, a 10 year cycle is pretty fair and it's going to get beyond that.

1:01:45 - Mikah Sargent
I agree, I agree. I think that is a pretty fair cycle. Ben, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today to calm everyone's nerves a little bit and help everybody can understand where things stand and where they're going. Of course people can head to windowscentralcom to check out the work you're doing. Is there anywhere else they should go to follow along with what you're up to.

1:02:04 - Ben Wilson
Ooh, that's an interesting subject. At the moment, social media is kind of up in arms. I wouldn't say follow me on TikTok, put it that way. Pretty much at the minute I'm only using Blue sky and that's about it. There's not a lot else. That's kind of catching my eye. They're not very appealing right now, but Windows Central, go to Windows Central. That's doing everything. That's good.

1:02:28 - Mikah Sargent
Thank you so much for your time.

1:02:30 - Ben Wilson
All right, thanks for having me See you later. Bye, bye.

1:02:33 - Mikah Sargent
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