Tech News Weekly 463 Transcript

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

Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on Tech News Weekly this week, Jake Ward is here, and of course we talk about NVIDIA and Jensen Huang. There's still news breaking as we're doing this. We also talk about a really incredible report from Science that touches on wearable devices meant to scan your brain and how many of those companies are training AI models with that data. Kyle Kucharski of ZDNet also joins us because he went literally hands-on with Apple's new MacBook Pro and gives us his conclusions. conclusions after spending some time with the device. All of that coming up on Tech News Weekly.

Mikah Sargent [00:00:48]:
This is Tech News Weekly, episode 463, with Jake Ward and me, Mikah Sargent. Recorded Thursday, November 12th, 2026. Spies, affairs, Jensen Huang's Nvidia exit. 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 this week by the man about town. It's Jake Ward. Hello.

Jacob Ward [00:01:18]:
Hello, Mikah. How's it going? Thanks for your patience. I, uh, you've been— I'm— I— you would not believe the ridiculous setup that I have currently. There is a, a, uh, an ironing board folded up and upright And you are magnetically attached to the— because it's the only ferrous metal in this frickin' hotel room that my little magnetic thing will stick to. And so, yeah, it looks fine from here, and it's chaos on the other side of this device.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:45]:
Well, as I look at my desk right outside of the camera, I could also say the same. It looks fine from here, but it's chaos.

Jacob Ward [00:01:51]:
Yeah, totally. Totally.

Mikah Sargent [00:01:53]:
But we appreciate you being here with us from your undisclosed location. No, let's talk about what's going on, because it's still going on, and you have spent some time talking about it. And it is— it's a rare moment where we get to— I know this to be the case. There's a lot of pushback that we get from folks on the show about too much coverage of AI. And, you know, can we just hear about— this is one of those rare instances where somehow it is about AI, but it's also not. Yeah. And I think that everybody's interested. So, if someone is unaware of everything I'm hinting at right now, tell us what's been going on.

Jacob Ward [00:02:39]:
Yeah, lucky you people if you haven't been paying attention to this and if you've been going about your normal week. So yeah, as of Sunday this past weekend, Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, has been CEO there since 1993, announced to his staff that he had been, quote, unfaithful to my wife, and that he'd had an affair And the board announced it was forming an independent investigation around this. Now, normally when CEOs are admitting affairs after the fact, it's bad news for their tenure because by and large, it's not so much the affair that gets CEOs fired, it's having lied to the board about it or in any way concealed it that gets them into some trouble. And so that's been true of the CEOs of McDonald's, Nestlé, Intel. They all lose their jobs. The president of CNN where I work, they all lose their jobs when they have an affair with somebody or an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate and then can conceal it from the board. So right from the outset, everyone's kind of, that's already stacked against Jensen Huang in that sense. But based on really amazing reporting from a variety of outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, we also know that the woman with whom he was having an affair, a woman named Alice Huang, no relation.

Jacob Ward [00:04:04]:
She is an executive at a company called Megaspeed. That's a Singaporean data center company. She's a big customer of Nvidia. They bought just shy of $5 billion of chips from them. And she's been having an affair with this guy, it turns out. And the bombshell is that according to an intelligence memo that's been going around in the United States intelligence community for at least a year, she is suspected of being a Chinese spy, basically an asset approached by the Chinese Ministry of State Security because of her existing relationship with him. So this is not— I think the honeypot thing that everyone likes to bring up is, it's kind of gross. It also doesn't quite apply here because honeypot is where you place someone and then the affair starts.

Jacob Ward [00:04:52]:
In this case, it seems that she was already having an affair with him and then the Chinese Ministry of State Security came to her. But whatever, doesn't matter. He's been having an affair with a possible Chinese spy. And that matters because not only because he's the linchpin of the company that's the linchpin of the AI industry, which is the linchpin of the American economy at the moment. It also matters because he's been the public face of our China policy around AI. He's been pushing to open our relations with China so that China can have all the chips that they've been denied under our export controls. And he's Trump's bestie on the whole subject, got to go with Trump to Beijing. is at the highest levels of policymaking in the United States around this stuff.

Jacob Ward [00:05:32]:
So he is exactly who the Chinese would wanna get next to and influence if they can. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that this is a colossal failure of judgment on the part of Jensen Huang, who is otherwise really revered. I mean, he's almost kind of a cult leader inside his organization for having made one of the most, if not at one point, the most valuable company in the world. So Yeah. That's our summary.

Mikah Sargent [00:05:58]:
That is. And that's a—

Jacob Ward [00:05:59]:
And that's our show.

Mikah Sargent [00:06:01]:
Yeah, exactly. And that wraps it. Hey,

Jacob Ward [00:06:02]:
good night.

Mikah Sargent [00:06:03]:
There are a couple of things that you pointed out that I think bear repeating because they help to shape the truth of the situation versus the thing that you hear at first. One of those is what you said about the— because, of course, a lot of this is all still reportedly, allegedly, reportedly this, et cetera. When it comes to that, one of the things that you pointed out is, if we look at the timeline and we look at what we have— what has been said, it would appear as though the affair started before the spy asset aspect got attached to it. And the second thing that you said, and I'm hoping you can provide some more clarity for those who might not know this part, because it was the other part that made me go, what in the world? Mm-hmm. You said, I believe, believe that we knew about this for a year. What do you mean when you say we knew about this for a year?

Jacob Ward [00:07:07]:
Totally. So evidently President Trump was briefed on this a year ago, was told, hey, your buddy Jensen Huang, who is your top voice on AI and whose company represents 8% of the S&P 500. So literally, like, the economy, or at least the stock market, rests on this guy, basically, is we think having an affair, Mr. President, with a possible Chinese spy. And Trump, according to the New York Times, said, I don't know if he said, but he didn't do anything about it, declined to do anything about it. Not only that, I don't know if you recall, but there was a, I think we even covered this on the show around that time. I think this was October of last year. Trump went and met with Xi Jinping.

Jacob Ward [00:07:55]:
in China and brought with him what somebody at the time was calling his emotional support CEOs. He brought Tim Cook, he brought all these different tech CEOs with him to Beijing for that conversation, for this meeting with Xi. And I wrote a piece at the time about what a death trip that was for those people. They got nothing and what a horrible experience that must have been for those tech CEOs. Excluded from the guest list at the time was— Jensen Huang. He was not part of that trip. And I don't know why. It has been intimated by many sources that it's probably because this intelligence memo had been going around, that he was considered a liability to China by American intelligence.

Jacob Ward [00:08:41]:
But then Trump supposedly said to his people, it wouldn't be good, it would be bad publicity to have Jensen not be on this trip. We should go get him. And Jensen, of course, wanted to go. And so they went to Alaska and got him specially. Air Force One took a detour to Alaska, grabbed Jensen Huang from some fishing trip he was on, and took him with to Beijing.

Mikah Sargent [00:09:00]:
I don't remember this. This is wild.

Jacob Ward [00:09:03]:
Yeah, dude. So the complicity of the Trump administration in, at the very least, ignoring this situation is crazy. Trump is now like, sort of kind of saying, yeah, I read about that. And reporters have been saying, but Mr. President, you were briefed a year ago. What do you say about that? He's like, I don't know. He's not really answering any questions about that. He continues to say that he sort of supports Jensen Huang, that he considers him great and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Jacob Ward [00:09:31]:
But we haven't even gotten to the part of this where we understand the levels of complicity. Here's a crazy piece of complicity that just came out this morning. So according to Paul, what's his name? He's a really good tech reporter based abroad. He's based in Taipei.

Mikah Sargent [00:09:48]:
Mazur?

Jacob Ward [00:09:49]:
Yeah, Mazur for the New York Times. He's a very enterprising guy, goes out and talks to Singapore. So it turns out the Singaporean authorities have been trying to get Alice Huang for quite a while. At one point they took away her passport, kept her in Singapore for a time because they suspected that she was smuggling chips into China, which they're not supposed to have and which people US allies don't want them to have in theory. So supposedly they eventually had to let her go and they basically banished her from Singapore. She's not allowed to be in there anymore. But at the time, according to Paul Mazur's reporting, they went to the American authorities and said, hey, we're trying to get this other American company, and I gotta look up the name of it, but another big chip company.

Mikah Sargent [00:10:33]:
Mm-hm.

Jacob Ward [00:10:34]:
To cooperate in our investigation because it seems that they may have been a sort of through put for these chips, or like they may have been complicit in some way. They went to the Justice Department and said, can you please help us get cooperation from this company that's not cooperating with? And the Justice Department said no, or at least ignored their requests. So not only do we have the president briefed a year prior about this, it turns out that the American Justice Department may have said, may have known there was something afoot here and just decided not to do anything about it, or for whatever reason, just sort of like did not get involved. So I just, there's a great reporter, sorry, there's a lot of briefings floating around right now by these analysts who we could talk about in a second, are like the only people who get a say in anything is the investment community. But one of them, Bernstein, downgraded in their note downgrading Nvidia as an investment opportunity, said, quote, our gut tells us that we probably haven't yet fully probed the depths of what might be found here. We've had enough and prefer to watch from the sidelines. And I think that's how a lot of people close to Nvidia are feeling about this at the moment.

Mikah Sargent [00:11:51]:
Yeah, I think it continues. We've seen now it continue to shake out for sure. When one of the sort of business side aspects of this, of course, is that given the fact that he was such a— is, was such an industry darling and was this kind of a CEO without, without like what, the friendly CEO or something. There's sort of a— he's a darling and was a darling. And that I think gave him some room when it came to the fact that Nvidia did not have a very clear succession plan in place.

Jacob Ward [00:12:37]:
Yeah, right.

Mikah Sargent [00:12:38]:
But, I mean, there are so many aspects of this that are confusing to me in terms of the way that I feel we typically see business done. Um, when I think of, of Apple, um, and think of the, the, the sort of CEO transitions that have taken place there, they're very careful about it. There are other companies where that's the case. The, uh, when a company is actually successful and they switch CEOs, I mean, It's obviously a different story whenever they're not doing well and they switch CEOs. But, like, when I was talking to my partner about this, he's not techy at all, and I love getting that kind of outside perspective. And for— the first thing that he said to me was, you mean he wasn't— he wasn't prepared for something like this?

Jacob Ward [00:13:28]:
Yeah, right, right.

Mikah Sargent [00:13:29]:
And that was my first thought. I thought about, like, I— still to this day, I don't know if Tim Cook was ever with anyone. And I feel like that's part of what you do when you're CEO. You just can't— or if you are with someone, then you're with them. It's a little bit like an old-school Puritan wedding, right? Like, you're there until you're dead, and you just gotta do it. Yeah. And that's— yeah. So, it just kind of boggles the mind for me that, A, there wasn't this level of separation that he had in such a position of power, and that then, the succession plan was not in place to the level that it should be.

Mikah Sargent [00:14:15]:
Is there any talk in the business community, or I guess in any of the reporting that you've seen and looked into, about that aspect of it, the sort of scramble?

Jacob Ward [00:14:28]:
Yeah. So it brings up so many smart things, Mikah, as usual. So I think you're getting to the very core of what is one of the big problems here, which is that We are conditioned as Americans to believe that there's democratic inputs on an organization that is certainly one that's gonna be central to American ambitions, right? Mm-hm. Nvidia is considered the frontline of our chip war with China. It is the vendor financing hub of all the money that kept the hyperscalers going until they could go public. It's so crucial in theory to the American economy is what everybody keeps telling us. And yet there's so little form of accountability like what you're describing. We like to, for instance, think that like a board is, you know, a sort of a neutral arbiter, a judge of your peers that is somehow gonna sort of, you know, make sure that you don't do anything wrong.

Jacob Ward [00:15:22]:
Well, a board is assembled largely by the founders of a company. And so you ask your buddies to be on that board, right? Musk is famous for assembling a board that he like parties with, you know, like this is not a jury of your peers. And so, you know, this board that Jensen Huang put together, you know, presumably, you know, are fans of his, right? Of course. It would've been all about him. And so, and they would have at that time known about what makes him famous, which is that as a CEO is that he, He famously eschews the normal org charts of a corporation in which you have like the CEO and 2 people report to that person and then they go off and do their kingdoms under that person, right? Mm-hmm. No, this guy directly oversees 60 people who all report to him about— so he is the ultimate micromanager. He's directly involved in every decision. He told one podcast interviewer, and this may be crap, but who knows, he said that he reads thousands of emails a day.

Jacob Ward [00:16:23]:
Like he's the ultimate, micromanager guy. He sounds like a very terrible boss to me. I

Mikah Sargent [00:16:28]:
was gonna say, sounds like a nightmare for me.

Jacob Ward [00:16:30]:
Nightmare, nightmare, right? Nightmare. Like, you can't get anything done without it going through him. Oh my God. But he's been very successful, right? So, so, so yeah, nothing is set up, um, to, uh, for any kind of succession, which is crazy for a 63-year-old guy to just like to not think that he would at some point need to not do this job anymore. But, you know, CEOs can last a long, long time. And God knows his company, the success could not be argued with. First company to ever cross a trillion-dollar valuation. I mean, I get it.

Jacob Ward [00:17:02]:
But it is interesting that now that we've seen that the whole, not just the company, but now the AI bubble may be on the line here. You have the institutional shareholders, the big investors that are in the company. So the Chief Investment Officer of Questar Capital Partners, which has a big stake in Nvidia, a guy named Richard Rael. He said the lack of a succession plan makes Nvidia, quote, uninvestable at the moment. So now you have shareholders who were only too happy to go forward with this guy in his kind of monarch system before, now realizing, this is a real— Finally. Yeah, I guess. I mean, but this is the other thing is like, I think it's quick. I'm quick to be like, good, accountability.

Jacob Ward [00:17:49]:
But then I'm like, wait, is this accountability? Because fundamentally, like, this isn't, you know, this isn't— this is shareholders and boards. Like, this is not— this is Star Chamber stuff, you know?

Mikah Sargent [00:17:59]:
Yeah.

Jacob Ward [00:18:00]:
Now, I've heard a couple of smart people I know are saying, are making the point that, like, this is in part perhaps the board responding to the midterms, right? Where they saw that, like, AI deeply unpopular in the midterms, you know, something like 44 out of 47 ballot measures about AI data centers you know, went forward to shut down development. Like, you know, maybe they're taking some cues from that, but I don't feel like this is us. Like, this isn't the will of the people, right? This is a guy lied to his board and then was discovered lying more, uh, you know, about a second affair, and is getting tossed because they feel they can't trust him to tell them the truth.

Mikah Sargent [00:18:40]:
It's very much— you can imagine he walks in And the board are all— his buds are all looking at him, and they're kind of making one of these, uh, sort of sad faces. And then he quietly nods his head and goes, I know. And then they go, yeah, we know. And that's— yeah, that's not accountability. You're right. No, that's just like, oh, we've got to do the thing, don't we?

Jacob Ward [00:19:04]:
Yeah, yeah, we got to do this. Exactly. And supposedly he did not just nod sadly along with them. Supposedly he spent yesterday and beyond saying, like, I have to keep running this company. And they said, we have confidence in him. You know, what do you think is that? What do you—

Mikah Sargent [00:19:14]:
do you think Because, okay, you were in the room where it happens when you saw the lawsuit playing out with Altman—

Jacob Ward [00:19:28]:
And Musk.

Mikah Sargent [00:19:29]:
And Musk at the time. And you talked about sort of seeing these people in everyday democratic process. And when you think of Because, okay, let me add on to this. I've seen these interviews with him. I've also talked to journalists who've spent time with him.

Jacob Ward [00:19:54]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:19:54]:
And it seems like if you're not working for him, at least, um, he has a little bit of, of a razzle-dazzle. I just saw that, uh, the people— I think it was r/menswear— are now very upset with him because he's ruined the leather jacket. But up to the kind

Jacob Ward [00:20:11]:
of— Ruined the leather jacket already. But yeah, okay. Yeah, I know, I know what you mean. I know what you mean, though.

Mikah Sargent [00:20:15]:
Right? So, like, there's this everyman aspect to him. When he was asked about being taxed in California, he said, I'm cool with that.

Jacob Ward [00:20:29]:
The rare billionaire who said, yeah, you should tax me more. That's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. I hadn't thought of that.

Mikah Sargent [00:20:35]:
That leads me to think, at least, that this is a person that's It's so weird for me to— like, my body is disagreeing with me as I'm saying this, but a down-to-earth billionaire?

Jacob Ward [00:20:50]:
Oh, God. Yeah, I know. I know.

Mikah Sargent [00:20:52]:
He feels that way. And so, something like that, just that— what you said about him going in and trying to argue, that boggles the mind because that's not someone that I feel is in touch with reality anymore. Like, he should have been going in there and going, I know. I know.

Jacob Ward [00:21:09]:
Yeah, I know, I know, right? Yeah, no, I think that's really smart. Yeah, no, I know. I think our standards have been so skewed by the billionaire moment that we're— the fact that we're like picking and choosing among ethical billionaires, you know, who's our most down-to-earth billionaire? Blech. Because it's totally, it's totally, uh, it's not a good field, you know? Like, there was all of these great memes going around of, of, uh, Dario Amadei when he was at the Trump gathering where they were announcing their quote unquote AI guidelines that were like nothing, that were written by Mark Zuckerberg. And they all had to stand there and you could see Dario Amodei clearly having stomach issues.

Mikah Sargent [00:21:52]:
Oh yeah.

Jacob Ward [00:21:53]:
He's standing there and his face is being like, you can just see that he's got a nervous stomach anyway and he doesn't want to be there. And the memes going around were like, oh, this is my guy, he's the one. It's like, that's as close as we've got to someone that we would be like, yeah, he's got his head screwed on straight. Yeah, but when you think about— I took a nice detour once into how these folks, the weird way. So basically the way in which they build their houses, the billionaire houses are really fascinating. Zuckerberg and Pierre Omidyar and these guys bought Hawaii first.

Mikah Sargent [00:22:39]:
Yeah.

Jacob Ward [00:22:40]:
And then everybody else tried to buy Hawaii. All the other billionaires started piling in because they didn't want to be left out. And so they started buying crappy cul-de-sacs and pouring money into them. And there's some great book to be done about the billionaires on Hawaii. And what I get out of that is their children, They're just like teenage, they're teenagers. So the idea that they have these higher principles or they're salt of the earth or see their place in the narrative clearly, no, dude. I respect that Jensen Vine wanted to be taxed more than he was, great, I'm glad. But those jackets, man, those are like $9,000 jackets.

Mikah Sargent [00:23:21]:
Yeah, yeah, you're right. It's still incredibly, Your existence is out of touch.

Jacob Ward [00:23:26]:
Yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:23:26]:
So it's kind of impossible for you to be in touch.

Jacob Ward [00:23:31]:
Yeah,

Mikah Sargent [00:23:32]:
that's a good point.

Jacob Ward [00:23:33]:
You know what I mean?

Mikah Sargent [00:23:34]:
Yeah, absolutely. Um, now we are seeing, uh, NVIDIA announced this morning, uh, of course, that, uh, that Jensen Huang is stepping down. Um, and then I do believe they said that the CFO was going to—

Jacob Ward [00:23:51]:
Yeah, Colette Kress is going to step in. Colette Kress, she's been there a while. Only that she's been there since 2013. She's a longtime CFO. I know that it's the move. She's interim, right? Yeah. And so we'll see. It is a classic move in a scandal-beset company to elevate the CFO because the CFO is almost always the most tied-up person.

Jacob Ward [00:24:20]:
That's the person who's like, plays by the rules, you know what I mean? They're usually the one that knows how to play by the rules. And so she clearly is that, but she now has to, not that I have any real sympathy for Silicon Valley CEO people, executives, but I don't envy her now trying to be like, okay, I guess now forward me the thousands of emails each day. I don't know how she's supposed to now Will she now go for, I assume, I would assume that she's gonna now go for a more conventional organizational chart because this is crazy, but I don't know, that's a really interesting thing. The other thing, the other turn of the wheel that I'm watching for— Mm-hm. Is I was looking at the incredible amount of sales, stock sales, stock selling that's been going on at Nvidia for a long time. So they've been banging, like the executives and the board have been selling stock at a pretty rapid clip in 2026.

Mikah Sargent [00:25:27]:
Wow.

Jacob Ward [00:25:27]:
They've been moving shares pretty hot and heavy. Now, that could very well be because stock-based compensation has gone up. Their stock value has gone up tremendously, like, I'd like, if I had that stock, I'd, you know, if I were sitting on a bunch of Nvidia stock, I might have sold it this year just to make the money, sure.

Mikah Sargent [00:25:47]:
Yeah, before the bubble, right?

Jacob Ward [00:25:49]:
Before the bubble, right? But, you know, and because of the midterms or whatever else. But did these board members and executives know about this affair as long as President Trump did?

Mikah Sargent [00:26:01]:
Oh my God, this is gonna be ongoing for a while.

Jacob Ward [00:26:03]:
You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, like, like the, the The New York Times, they're reporting on this stuff. When they reported the second affair with this health executive at Nvidia, they cited 5 people internally at Nvidia. So you gotta assume if 5 people are talking to the New York Times about this, there's a lot more people than that that know about it. Are those people board members? Are those people top executives selling shares? And is that insider trading? What is that? That's the kind of thing that a 2028 presidential candidate might be excited to talk about. Absolutely. So I mean, I just think again, what a failure of judgment by this guy. The ripple effects, the shrapnel that's gonna be kicked off by this is crazy.

Mikah Sargent [00:26:52]:
I just wanna say for any investigators who are watching this episode, I just remembered something that happened. I, I forgot that in the— I have like the Cash App from Square, and I forgot that I had set it so that it rounded up every purchase that I made over the course of all time and popped it into an investment account. And I thought it was savings, but it was investment. And so I went in there a couple of days ago now, and I— this was, well, before the news broke, and I, I got—

Jacob Ward [00:27:29]:
Careful.

Mikah Sargent [00:27:29]:
Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying. I didn't know about this, I swear. I sold it and it was Nvidia stock that I sold.

Jacob Ward [00:27:37]:
No way.

Mikah Sargent [00:27:38]:
Yeah, swear to God. And because it wasn't that much money and I didn't want to have this extra thing happening and me not remember that anyway. So I sold it and everything, but it's so funny that then this broke right afterwards.

Jacob Ward [00:27:51]:
So I don't know if I—

Mikah Sargent [00:27:52]:
I don't want to look now because I'm like, what if I would have waited? Would I have gotten— but I—

Jacob Ward [00:27:58]:
Oh no. I mean, yeah, my God, are you kidding? Is there like a trillion— like 13% fall in your— in your, uh, you would have gone from, you know, whatever that is, like $10 to $7. But, uh, yeah, that's— no, that's not good. So that's right. Oh man.

Mikah Sargent [00:28:12]:
Um, I guess I wanted to ask you before we say goodbye, uh, what, um, who do you think— it's your draft time— who do you think might end up taking the full place, or have you had time to think about that? I saw Jonny Sferugi from Apple is allegedly in the running, which is interesting.

Jacob Ward [00:28:35]:
I don't know. Yeah, I really don't know because I mean, the, the— yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm— I don't know. You know, President Trump was like, Tim Cook should do it, you know, like, because he's been on the plane with, with Tim Cook in the past. I think whoever it is— this is the hard part, right? Whoever it is is going to somehow have to thread the needle of the gathering storm clouds of regulatory interest over this company, right? Like, whoever sits— so like poor Colette Kress has to do both the investor call on October 17th, or sorry, November 17th, next week, has to do the 3rd quarter earnings call. And then the next day, Jensen Huang is supposed to appear in front of a Republican-led House subcommittee about the Alice Wong affair. Like, whoever it is has gotta like placate investors, deal with the fact that politicians have all figured out they can make a career out of beating up AI companies. And then this new crop of senators and representatives comes in in January, many of whom defeated their opponents, their Republican opponents, by tarring them as data center enablers. I just think you've got a CEO and for the last 2 years of the presidential term, you gotta placate Trump because he's shown that he can make a mess of your company and will insist on taking 25% of your sales to China, which they currently do, PS, right? Every chip sold to China, the US Treasury gets 25% of that.

Jacob Ward [00:30:07]:
I mean, so like what a— God, what a horrible— I mean, the money is why you take that job, you know, but, but that is— it's going to have to be good money because my God, that— I do— yeah, I don't envy that, that person coming in and being like, huh, okay, let's look through this rubble and figure out how we're gonna make it work. That's right.

Mikah Sargent [00:30:27]:
That also sounds like a nightmare for sure. And then, uh, like having to in theory shift the— because I don't think most In my mind, I don't think most CEOs want to do the 60-person micromanage-y stuff. So I assume not.

Jacob Ward [00:30:44]:
How many of those psychopaths are there? But I don't know how, you know, but, but you, you, you're not, you're not putting a normal person in that job.

Mikah Sargent [00:30:51]:
That's right.

Jacob Ward [00:30:51]:
You want someone really crazy.

Mikah Sargent [00:30:53]:
Yeah.

Jacob Ward [00:30:53]:
You got to put someone who really likes to work.

Mikah Sargent [00:30:56]:
Yeah.

Jacob Ward [00:30:56]:
To make that happen. That's right.

Mikah Sargent [00:30:58]:
Well, I will let you get back to things. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to be here today with your ironing board and your magnets at the ready. If people would like to stay up to date with the great work that you're doing, where are the places they should go to do so?

Jacob Ward [00:31:13]:
You are the man, Mikah. Thank you. I am at theripcurrent.com. I cover the invisible forces shaping our lives, tech and power and, uh, the democracy such as it is. Um, so yeah, theripcurrent.com. Please check it out.

Mikah Sargent [00:31:25]:
Awesome. Thank you, Jake.

Jacob Ward [00:31:27]:
All right. Thanks, Mikah. See you guys.

Mikah Sargent [00:31:28]:
Bye. Bye-bye. All right. We are back from the break. And as I promised, we've got a great interview. 2 weeks ago, we walked through everything that Apple announced for its new MacBook Pro. It's finally in reviewers' hands and in front of their fingertips. And the feature that everyone expected to steal the show, it may not be the one that does.

Mikah Sargent [00:31:48]:
Joining us to share what it's like to actually live with it is ZDNet's own senior editor, Kyle Kacarski. Welcome to the show, Kyle.

Kyle Kucharski [00:31:57]:
Hey, thanks for having me.

Mikah Sargent [00:31:58]:
Absolutely, it's a pleasure to have you here. So you had the opportunity to spend some time with the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Can you tell us about which configuration You tested, and then, you know, what, what, uh, tests— how'd you, how'd you kick the tires on it?

Kyle Kucharski [00:32:14]:
Yeah, so I was lucky enough to receive the big boy. This is the, uh, with the M5 Max, so 128 gigs of unified memory, 2 terabytes of storage. Uh, definitely a powerhouse machine if ever there was one. Um, and yeah, we started off by just, you know, we, we run through standard industry benchmarking programs to sort of just see on a theoretical level what the CPU, what the GPU can do, the kind of metrics that they can put out. But we also want to, you know, live with it for, you know, a couple weeks, do the things that people do with a MacBook, export large 4K video files, 8K video files. dump huge amounts of image files onto a, onto a drive, that sort of thing, and just, you know, have a billion Chrome tabs all open at the same time, you know, the way that people use it. So yeah.

Mikah Sargent [00:33:11]:
Wow. Yeah, it's good that, uh, we put it through its paces, and in, as you said, in a way that's not just kind of, um, the way that Apple does it and the, the PC companies do it, where you're not quite sure, uh, how it works with real use. So Obviously, the big thing about this machine is the fact that you can touch the screen. And, you know, perhaps I think any reviewer going in is going to at least have some expectation that that's going to be a big part of, of, of the, you know, the pomp and circumstance, as it were. But you talked a lot about the display sort of beneath the touch, right? When, at what point did that kind of click for you that you said, oh wow, this display is something else? And what, because photos can't quite necessarily show what that experience is like, uh, what does it look like in person that may be kind of difficult to notice in photos?

Kyle Kucharski [00:34:16]:
Yeah, I mean, the first thing I would say too is that, you know, this is at the end of the day, it's still a MacBook. It's still a MacBook Pro. It looks pretty much identical to what you would expect it to look like, at least on the surface. Once you open it up and you see that screen and you see the, you know, the thinner bezels, the rounded edges, just how thin the actual build is, it looks, uh, it has these subtle sort of improvements to it. But I would say that it is It is still very much a MacBook. It still feels like one. And that is definitely evident when you open it up. You know, it's still macOS.

Kyle Kucharski [00:34:55]:
Everything looks exactly how you would expect it to. But the touch elements are subtle and they're thoughtful and they don't really scream out at you. So if you're touch— you know, you're navigating around, you hover over, you know, the traffic light, close window, minimize window things, they will like They expand, um, little small things like that. But, um, on the, on the whole, the, the device itself looks like a MacBook, just a little thinner, a little lighter, um, and a little more premium.

Mikah Sargent [00:35:29]:
All right. Now, um, one of the, the questions that I had was around Apple kind of talking about this being such a lightweight device despite being the Pro model. The 16-inch weighs just a bit more than a 15-inch MacBook Air. What was it like carrying it around? Did you use it as a laptop? I know a lot of people with Pros end up just like I did when I had one, using it in clamshell mode with, you know, a display attached. Did you get the opportunity to kind of go portable with it? And then maybe a little bit more detail if you'd like to share about battery life in

Kyle Kucharski [00:36:12]:
Yeah. Well, first off, the thickness of the chassis is definitely noticeable. It's thinner. You know, it is, like you said, it's only— it's 4 pounds even for the 16-inch. So it's light. This is a light laptop for every— especially considering all of the hardware that's on board. In clamshell mode, same thing. It's, you know, it's sleek, it's light, it looks just as good.

Kyle Kucharski [00:36:37]:
just exactly how you would want it to look. The battery life is actually fantastic. We, you know, I, this is a huge battery in the, in the 16-inch. It's a 99 watt-hour battery. That's like the max that you can get to get this thing on a plane. It's, it's fantastic. You know, this will last you all day and then some. And considering that it has this, you know, 2,000-nit bright OLED display on it, it's pretty impressive that it that it's so good.

Kyle Kucharski [00:37:04]:
I think it's, um, the, the MacBooks have just gotten so good at reducing battery life to a trickle when they're in idle. Um, when you close the lid on this thing and you set it down, it's just, it basically stays as is. So even, uh, when you, when you open it up and you're working on it and you're taking multiple calls throughout the day, um, yeah, it's just very measured.

Mikah Sargent [00:37:28]:
Uh, another question that I had that I think a lot of people have had, um, It surrounds the fact that Steve Jobs once famous—I'm wearing a turtleneck in honor of him today. Steve Jobs once famously said that touch on a laptop would be terrible, and I still remember that sort of like ape hand reaching out. In your testing, where did you find yourself? This, I think, is the big thing: Where did you find yourself reaching for the screen, and where did you end up kind of going back to the trackpad? And did you find yourself because you were doing a review? reaching for the screen than you maybe otherwise would because you were testing it? That's like— I know that's one of the difficult things about being a reviewer is separating what is testing, what is sort of, uh, natural use. Um, so where did you end up landing with that?

Kyle Kucharski [00:38:24]:
Yeah, it's a really good question. Um, you know, he, he famously said that it was ergonomically terrible and And, you know, I understand that perspective as well because, you know, Apple has— it's not like Apple is a stranger to touch. I mean, they make probably the most popular touch device of all time, the iPhone. So it, you know, this idea of keeping these modalities separate is, you know, there's a sense to that. So that being said, I think that the touch element to the MacBook Pro shines the most when you're utilizing features that were meant to be touched. So for example, the Dynamic Island, which is on the, you know, it's on the laptop now. It— this is— that's where I found myself tapping. You know, it feels weird to use them— to use a mouse because the cursor actually like disappears when you mouse over that.

Kyle Kucharski [00:39:20]:
Um, so that's one thing, you know, obviously that, that that was a native touch feature. The other thing I would say is like working with the iPhone, like iPhone mirroring on the Pro, the whole, you know, ability to pull up your iPhone if it's not around you and just, you know, navigate through your phone in the way that you would normally.

Mikah Sargent [00:39:41]:
Ah.

Kyle Kucharski [00:39:41]:
I mean, it's pretty genius. It's pretty— it's a simple thing, but it's like, okay, here's your iPhone exactly how you should be using it on the MacBook.

Mikah Sargent [00:39:50]:
That is, yeah, that's now, you know, Apple regularly sort of trickles out different features that end up becoming more important later. And of course we saw, I mean, one of the, I think going to be one of the best use cases outside of this are all of the apps that have been toggled to allow for use on macOS, even though they're Designed for iPad or designed for iPhone, and so even if you don't have iPhone mirroring turned on, those apps that up to this point have required those touch accommodations now work a little bit better. One of the big concerns that I had had about this this this new device and the you know potential future of more touchscreen. Max was the loss of pointer-based navigation on macOS that slowly but surely the the operating system would get Fisher priced. Can you talk because you you did touch on touch on some of these aspects up to this point? Do you think that The OS in its current state is supportive of touch, or do you think there's more work to do?

Kyle Kucharski [00:41:23]:
Yeah, I mean, I think that's part of the reason why Apple decided to roll this out as a sort of— it's a bonus feature. I would say the touchscreen is not the reason why— the primary reason why why you would buy this device. It's a bonus feature that's added on to an already premium display. This is the, like, you know, it's the most premium display that Apple's ever made. So naturally it's gonna have additional feature elements that previously didn't exist. So I think that's kind of how the touchscreen fits into that. Um, they're not going to redesign macOS around touch. I don't think that's ever going to happen.

Kyle Kucharski [00:42:04]:
I think there Subtle different, um, subtle elements like the, you know, like the traffic light magnification effect and other elements that are more, um, akin to using a finger on a screen, but I don't see it ever really drastically changing.

Mikah Sargent [00:42:21]:
Now, you— this, I feel the same way about it. It's like if you're going to go into touch on a Mac, goodness gracious, why can't we have what we've seen from, uh, Windows PC manufacturers where it's flipping and folding all over the place and you can carry it around and use it like a tablet. The lack of Apple Pencil support, the convertible stuff, do you think that that would add to the experience for the people that this device is, you know, marketed to be designed for?

Kyle Kucharski [00:43:02]:
I think so. I think the, you know, making the MacBook Pro into a 2-in-1 is certainly an iffy proposition. Uh, that I can understand not wanting to do. The Pencil, on the other hand, I do think that was a little bit of a, of a miss on their end. I do. I, I was a little surprised to not see it support the Apple Pencil just because this was Because, you know, this is a device that already exists. It's already being sold. It seems like it would be an easy way to bundle that in with an exist— you know, it already exists for the iPad.

Kyle Kucharski [00:43:38]:
Why couldn't you just throw it in for the MacBook? But again, I think it would push this device further into touch territory when they don't really want to do that. I think they want to keep it— they want to hold it back a little bit and just keep the touch as a bonus point and not as a preliminary, like a primary feature.

Mikah Sargent [00:44:01]:
That makes sense. Yeah. And then I think this is a big one price-wise. Was it $7,549? So you know what, actually, before we get to that, I I meant to ask you this. Obviously, Apple, in all of its latest hardware that is some form of PC, or in this case, Mac, they tout the AI capabilities of these devices. And I was curious, is that a part of the process? Did you have the opportunity to kind of put that through its paces at all? And how much, as much of course that you can share, was that part of the kind of, hey, here's the review unit, here's what you need to know about it, and also AI, AI, AI, AI. Do you feel like that was an important aspect of this Touch MacBook Pro? Or was it more of the traditional, uh, macOS marketing that we've seen?

Kyle Kucharski [00:45:18]:
It's, it's definitely a part of it. Uh, you know, there's a reason why this thing has so much memory, and a big part of that is running AI, running local AI specifically. Um, you know, this is also coming off the heels of, uh, NVIDIA's RTX Spark laptops, which are are also beasts for running local agents. I tested the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra, a compatible laptop in terms of price and power. But those things are made for running local agents like Perplexity and OpenCLAW, doing all of these things locally and off of the cloud. So this This MacBook is 100%, you know, ready to do that as well. This is sort of Apple's answer to compete with those premium Windows PCs. They need to have some sort of local AI, competitive local AI machine as well.

Kyle Kucharski [00:46:19]:
And the other thing I would say is that this is, you know, we saw with the MacBook Neo, Apple entering into the lower end of the PC market. with that device. And so they can now have room to expand upwards as well as downwards. So there's really a Mac now for every level of the consumer market. You've got the sub-$1,000 market, and then you've got the base model MacBooks, which will continue to exist as they do. And then at the very high end, you've got this awesome Pro XDR MacBook, which is, you know, top-of-the-line specs, a gorgeous display, and all of those touchscreen things, but also, you know, very AI ready.

Mikah Sargent [00:47:09]:
Yeah. Um, the, the last thing that I'll ask you here is the question that I know every reviewer loves to be asked, which is, who is this designed for? And I think we've kind of touched on that through— oh God, I just said it again— touched on that throughout. But oftentimes, I think especially lately, we've seen Apple putting out new unsettled hardware, the Vision Pro, the Duo, touchscreen MacBook Pro. And so that for me, as someone who gets asked the question of should I get this, should I get that? has played into who I've slotted into this, whether it's more of a, an, you know, an early adopter or somebody else, just a creative looking for the latest. Where do you think this sits? Is it still experimental territory, or given Apple's touch knowledge, is this just kind of another link in the chain?

Kyle Kucharski [00:48:16]:
It's definitely, um, niche, you know, especially when you look at the high-end configurations with this amount of memory and the, like, the M5 Max, for example. You know, this is a device that's designed for pros. It's designed for creatives, for people running complex AI workloads. It's not designed for, you know, the everyday person who lives and works in the cloud and, you know, works in Google. Google Docs, that sort of thing. That is what the MacBook, you know, the base model MacBook is for, and it does, you know, exceptionally well. So I, again, I think that this is aimed at a niche audience, but it's also a little bit of a flex from Apple to compete with all of these Nvidia laptops that are just coming out and to show that they have something to offer, uh, for the high-end creators and has— that has something different to it. It still has something else, something uniquely Apple that these other PCs don't really have, and that is just a brilliant display.

Kyle Kucharski [00:49:26]:
Um, the haptics, you know, the trackpad is still bomb. Uh, it's still one of the best trackpads and keyboards that you can have. Um, and another thing on this laptop that I mentioned that I forgot— I forgot to mention is the speakers, which are like insane. These are the best speakers that I've heard on any laptop ever.

Mikah Sargent [00:49:45]:
Really?

Kyle Kucharski [00:49:46]:
Yeah, uh, it has like a 6-speaker setup. Um, and something that I used it for is you can actually— it's made to sound just as good when the lid is closed. So you can hook this up to a TV, close the lid, watch something on the TV, and the laptop is like powering the sound. which is totally unheard of. You would never really want to do that. But if you have like a TV with a— if you don't have a good sound system, it's, it's an option. Um, but other than that, like, music sounds great. The bass is there.

Kyle Kucharski [00:50:16]:
It's, it's really impressive.

Mikah Sargent [00:50:18]:
Yeah, that's, that's pretty cool. All right, well, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today on the show. If people would like to keep up to date with the great work that you're doing, check out your other reviews and articles, Where are the places they should go to do that?

Kyle Kucharski [00:50:33]:
Yeah, definitely check us out on zdnet.com. We have lots of reviews going. We review everything from computing laptops to wearables to random weird gadgets that you would never suspect work but end up being awesome.

Mikah Sargent [00:50:47]:
Awesome. Thank you so much, Kyle. We appreciate it.

Kyle Kucharski [00:50:49]:
Thank you so much for having me.

Mikah Sargent [00:50:51]:
All right, I've got a little story of the week to share with you all, and it's all about your brain. Uh, you know, there are sleep trackers, there are focus There are focus headbands, there are meditation gadgets. These are all part of a growing number of wearables in the market that read the electrical activity buzzing around in your brain. According to a year-long investigation from Science, the data they collect is turning into something far more valuable than a morning sleep score. Reporter Jonathan Moens, working with the Pulitzer Center's AI Accountability Network, reviewed the privacy policies of 50 87 consumer neurotech— neurotech meaning related to the brain, tech related to the brain— companies around the world and talked with the people who build these devices, the experts who study them, and the people who wear them to bed. What he found is an industry racing to build AI models of the human brain, often trained on customers' own brainwaves, and often without clearly telling them. At least one user learned about it only when a reporter got in touch. A few governments are starting to catch up, but most, well, they haven't.

Mikah Sargent [00:52:10]:
So let me walk you through what science found, starting with one man and his sleep headband. First and foremost was the man who found out from the reporter. Adnan Jinnah of Leicester, England, has had trouble, he says, falling asleep on and off for more than 4 years. Wow. God, that sounds like a nightmare. Every night, in order to help with this, he wears something called the Muse headband. This is from Canadian company Interaxon. That's I-N-T-E-R-A-X-O-N, which tracks brain activity, it tracks heart rate, and tracks blood flow and oxygen to the brain.

Mikah Sargent [00:52:48]:
Arguably, this is what's making it hard for him to sleep. I can't imagine having this, this wearable on my head that's, like, doing all this stuff every single night. Says the guy who has to wear a CPAP. Anyway, his morning reports have helped him see how medication and also stress have affected his sleep. Unfortunately, he wasn't aware that his data may have been training Interaxon's, quote, Brain Foundation Model, which is built on about 50,000 hours of user EEG data with names and emails removed. I shouldn't laugh. This is terrible. What I laugh about— what I'm laughing about is the sheer— it's not hubris.

Mikah Sargent [00:53:36]:
The sheer— just, it just doesn't surprise me. You just— it smacks of a, you know, a company or a group of people or one person going, You know what really would be valuable? Having a bunch of brain data. So what if we make this thing that will help people track their brain data, and then we'll also take all of that brain data and we'll do what we want to do with said brain data, because that's what we're really aiming to do. Ugh. I'm not saying that, to be clear, not saying that that was Interaxon's plan. Saying that it doesn't surprise me that there are companies out there that are doing this. Interaxon's privacy policy didn't explicitly disclose this. The company up— the company only updated its privacy policy to explicitly disclose this after Science pointed it out.

Mikah Sargent [00:54:34]:
And by the way, when I'm saying Science, I do mean the journal. I don't mean— or yeah, Science the journal, Science the magazine as well, isn't it? I don't mean the— I don't mean Science as a whole. So continuing on, Interaxon's CMO, whose name is Nadia Comentes, says, we agree users should be explicitly informed. Yeah, I agree too. It's interesting that you maybe didn't agree before, but by then, well, the training was done and data baked into an AI model, of course, is nearly impossible to remove. That training has been done. done. It has built the Brain Foundation model on 50,000 hours of user data.

Mikah Sargent [00:55:25]:
Jinna, who was again the English man, said he feels resignation. Quote, I suppose it's very similar to when big tech companies consume your data and That is not surprising to hear. That is a very common refrain that because all of these other companies are already scooping up my data and all of my data is out there, oh, who cares that it's one more company that's doing it? But psychologically, I've noticed something Regarding that refrain, that very common refrain. And I think I used to think that it was uniquely American. I think it just might be uniquely human, which is to say not unique at all, which is that people really don't like to be duped. And one thing that's worse than being duped is having other people aware that you've been duped. And that is, if we want to boil it down psychologically, it's at its core and at its root, it is a form of shame. And humans on the whole hate shame.

Mikah Sargent [00:56:56]:
And so you hear— you tell— I have told people, hey, Did you know that this was happening? And their initial, like, in-the-moment reaction is a little bit of, I didn't know. I didn't know that that's happening. And then I've watched it. It doesn't take very long before it shifts to, I mean, you know, it's fine. It's fine that that's happening. It's no big deal. You know, they're already doing this. They're already doing that.

Mikah Sargent [00:57:27]:
They're already doing this. And so often that shift happens just like that. And I've started to believe that it does have to do with not wanting to admit to oneself, and especially not wanting to admit to other people, that you've been duped. But that's what it is. If you were unaware— and there's another aspect to it as well, which is that we all want to believe that we're incredibly diligent people, right? I'm painting with broad brushstrokes, but The sort of anecdotally, we want to believe that we're diligent people. So to have missed something is something else to be ashamed of, right? To be clear, you shouldn't. If you feel ashamed, I understand, but you shouldn't feel ashamed. In this case, the company clearly needed to make it more explicit.

Mikah Sargent [00:58:18]:
But the self-blame that exists when it comes to this benefits these companies. It doesn't benefit us as individuals. God, I feel like I'm doing an Ask the Tech Guys sermon, but I do think that this story is indicative of a lot of the conversation around privacy and data protection. And this is kind of gross to me in reading about all of these companies and how they're scooping up this data. One of the individuals says, one of the individuals from the company says, our brain data is the— just comes out and says it— our brain data is the most valuable part of the company. Whenever it comes to training, Comenta says, we aim to use as much of that eligible corpus as possible. This reminds me of, you know, the DNA companies. It's the same thing when you you don't have these, uh, protections in place and you are— I mean, this was someone who was just trying to get help with their inability to sleep as much as they'd like to.

Mikah Sargent [00:59:29]:
Brain foundation models, they work like large language models, but they're trained on neural signals instead of text and then adapted for tasks like spotting sleep patterns or neurological conditions. So this is a really cool area of science, not the journal this time, that essentially needs a crap ton of data to be able to pull it off because it needs to be able to kind of find the trees in the forest as opposed to the forest for the trees and sort of blurrily look at all of these patterns. And then with So much data, finally start to see through lines that helps to go, oh, all we got to do is put this cap on you for 15 minutes, capture your brainwaves, and I can tell you you've got this, this, this, and this because there's been enough data to do so. Oh, golly, it's starting to sound a little bit like a certain finger prick company. Anywho, 9 consumer neurotech and AI software companies have all publicly said they're building one. Others may be doing so quietly. Emotiv, which is— I have an Emotiv band. I don't use it.

Mikah Sargent [01:00:43]:
I've never used it. Oh no, I take that back. I used it once and it buzzed my forehead and I said, never again. Emotiv says it trains its large brain model partly on data from its higher-end headsets. So that's good to know. It probably didn't work on the one I had. Emotiv did add an opt-in consent. This is good.

Mikah Sargent [01:01:03]:
Opt-in. Not opt out, opt in. Good. But it only did so after science got in touch. Emotiv added this opt-in consent for model training to its privacy policy. The CEO of Emotiv said this update represents a forward-looking commitment. As far as Emotiv CEO, he went on to say about the models, the model is there in order to serve the world for so many things. For so many things.

Mikah Sargent [01:01:29]:
Science went in and reviewed the privacy policies of 57 consumer EEG companies. 4 had no privacy policies at all that definitely— I say may, but I think it definitely violates data privacy laws. 11 had a policy covering only visitors to their websites. Again, I shouldn't laugh. It's just, it's not surprising, but it's so frustrating. Of the companies with a broader policy, only about 2/3 explicitly mentioned collecting brain data. I'm not going to read too much more about the fine print because I want you all to go check out— this is an incredible piece from Science. I mean, this is at least a year in the making, so the value is there for you to go and check it out.

Mikah Sargent [01:02:15]:
We'll link to it in the show notes. As far as one more thing to bear in mind when it comes to these EEG headbands, of course they're not as good as the clinical thing. Clinical EEG caps use 19 to 25 electrodes. The last time I was connected to one, I also had this like gel squeezed onto my scalp that had, I think, some sort of electrically conductive material in it so that the electrodes could better go down through my hair and touch my scalp and maintain a connection. And again, 19 to 25 electrodes. These consumer wearables usually have 1 to 6. EEG shows when brain activity happens. It doesn't show where it happens.

Mikah Sargent [01:03:03]:
And so in deeper regions that are tied to emotion and memory, it can't determine where that's happening or if it's happening there. In many cases, a 2018 study checked more than 3,000 publications cited by consumer EEG companies. Only 11 used what are called gold standard methods, and 10 of those found no real benefit over a control. One, one scientist from the University of Rome said, quote, it would be equally misleading to suggest that it cannot reveal meaningful information about their cognitive states. So it— I think me— I think in that case, that's kind of a confusing sentence, but it says it would be equally misleading to suggest that it cannot reveal meaningful information about their cognitive states. I think that, you know, part of that is the idea that if it's no better than a control, then it may be revealing meaningful information. But it's also just as likely to not be revealing meaningful information. There's a lot more research that needs to be done in this.

Mikah Sargent [01:04:22]:
And again, that is where it makes sense that the training needs to happen. But I don't know. One area that could become beneficial financially— what about if you could go sleep and make money? God, I love sleep. Why am I not doing this? Farrah Haney says that she hasn't heard of any company that's selling brain data yet, but insiders say it comes up regularly in company offices. The Chinese company Matrix has a headset that purportedly samples brain signals 1,000 times per second, and its Neuromatrix marketplace would let everyday users lease their sleep data and earn income. Yeah, okay, in that case, yes, I would sell my sleep data if it means I'm making money off of it like that. That's fantastic. Sleep to make money? Heck yeah.

Mikah Sargent [01:05:22]:
Uh, But there's a lot, lot, lot, lot. As I said, this was a year at least of work, and I want everyone to go check it out. So head to the link in the show notes to that science article that talks even more about this. And I would love to know if you out there have one of these EEG headbands, has it helped you? Were you aware of this privacy policy? I promise not to shame you or share that with anyone else. And I'm also curious if you're, you know, maybe you do have one of these and you're like, you know what, I'm okay with it. I'd like to hear that as well. And in the meantime, anyone who wants to pay me for sleep, please get in touch. I would love to hear more about that.

Mikah Sargent [01:06:09]:
All right, that's the story of the week this week. Great work from the folks at Science. All righty, folks, that brings us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. I wanna thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us today. It's been an absolute pleasure bringing you the show. If you'd like to subscribe to Tech News Weekly, just head to twit.tv/TNW. That is where you can go to subscribe in audio and video formats. If you'd like to follow me online, I'm @micasargent on many a social media network, or you can head to chihuahua.coffee.

Mikah Sargent [01:06:40]:
That's chihuahua.coffee where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. As you know now, the— there are a few shows that will, that will have ended their run this week, including my Hands-On Tech show and iOS Today. So be sure to check me out here on Tech News Weekly and also Hands-On AI, which is the other show that I do. Thank you all so much, and I will catch you again next week for another episode of Tech News Weekly. Bye-bye! Bye-bye!