In This Episode: When the Internet Was Not Down: Cloudflare, Outages, and Automatic Buying.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 49:56 — 45.8MB)
This week the TEH Podcast is hosted by Leo Notenboom, the “Chief Question Answerer” at Ask Leo!, and Gary Rosenzweig, the host and producer of MacMost, and mobile game developer at Clever Media.
(You’ll find longer Bios on the Hosts page.)
Top Stories
- 0:00 LN: Cloudflare, and reliance on large providers
- Is it inevitable?
- 5:00 How good are services at fixing and acknowledging
- 6:30 Go to the internet to announce the internet is down
- 7:00 GR: Finding Cloudflare down
- Bot detection
- 11:00 VPNs
- 13:30 False consensus… what’s really wrong?
- 17:10 LN: Amazon versus Perplexity and agents
- Shopping agents
- I don’t yet trust AI agents. At all. Certainly not with my credit card.
- 26:00 GR: Cosmetic changes
- 27:40 OCD?
- 31:00 Windows desktop
- 34:00 Spam!
- 35:00 LN: Over-reliance on vibe coding?
- Is there a HUGE data breach or other security issue in our future due to someone’s over-reliance on vibe coding?
Ain’t it Cool
- 39:50 GR: Flybot by Dennis E Taylor – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/232957226-flybot
- 42:35 LN: Pluribus – Apple TV – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22202452/ – New take on “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”
BSP: Blatant Self-Promotion
- 45:00 LN: What Happens If I Don’t Update to Windows 11? – https://askleo.com/186512
- 45:50 GR: Using Apple Intelligence and Shortcuts To Rename Files https://macmost.com/using-apple-intelligence-and-shortcuts-to-rename-files.html
Could the reason for the Amazon vs Perplexity issue be the possible return rate of orders created by AI? Amazon has a very liberal return policy that could end up costing them a lot of money.
I assume that this is also the reason that some items have a warning that something gets returned a lot – kind of a warning to double check if it fits your needs.
This is the first time I noticed the credit for your synthetic announcer.
I miss the days when you did the announcing. Have you considered having an AI program create an announcer voice based on the two of you.
In the same area, your intro/exit music sounds like the tinny sound of a 60’s “pocket” radio with a crystal earphone. I dislike it but will continue listening to your very informative program.
I really like the tinny sound of the intro and exit music! You’re right, it *does* sound like an old low fidelity radio.
When I send in a request for help I always ask first if it is my fault, not that I even think so. I am leaving the host the opportunity to blame me. What I really want is the answer to my question.
At 17:10 Leo said that Amazon is suing Perplexity because the latter now offers AI shopping agent to place orders on the Amazon website. I agree with Leo’s rationale why it isn’t a good idea for consumers to trust AI agents to order merchandise online (e.g. requires giving the AI agent your login credentials, name, credit card number, address).
Why is Amazon suing Perplexity to disallow this? It seems like a consumer risk. Why would Amazon care?