Leo [00:00:22]:
Hey, Gary. How's it going this week?

Gary [00:00:25]:
Hey, Leo. How are you?

Leo [00:00:26]:
I'm doing okay. I'm here. You know, it's it's like I've been saying, it's another week. Yep. Life life goes on. Mhmm. We so we haven't talked about AI nearly enough. You have something to start with with

Gary [00:00:44]:
Yeah. Yes. Well, you know, since our last episode, Chat GPT quietly or somewhat quietly, gave us their search engine. So the way you use chat gpt to search the Internet is if you have I'm not sure how it looks on the web. I haven't used the web first in a while, but in the apps, now there's a little, button at the bottom of the you know, where you type your prompt, that looks like a little globe. And when you click on that, you can I guess you click on it twice, or you just click on it and it switches to search? Yep. And then you could you could basically do an Internet search, instead of using Google or DuckDuckGo or Bing, whatever you want, you can use Chat GPT to search. Now it works a little differently because it's giving you the results inside of Chat GPT.

Gary [00:01:36]:
I guess there's too many differences. One is the prompt is seems kind of preloaded to, like, give me web pages that will tell me about, you know, and that's what the results are. Because it seems like a normal chat gpt, like, result. It just doesn't it doesn't give you, like, a search page, you know, like Google does. It actually yeah. It's kind of verbose. And it does but it does give you a bunch of links to things and it describes, like, the page. But the other thing it's doing, of course, is these are, you know, these are current web pages.

Gary [00:02:05]:
You know, one of the things about chat catch EBT that's always months behind in terms of information. So it, you know, isn't very good for asking about current events. But, this case, the search engine data seems to be, yes, you would expect to be recent. It's very good. It does give you search results. We talked before about perplexity

Leo [00:02:28]:
Right.

Gary [00:02:29]:
Which you you brought up, and it's definitely it's head to head with perplexity in terms of, like, what it's doing. Perplexity might, well, they both try to kinda give you an answer if you've asked a question.

Leo [00:02:40]:
Correct.

Gary [00:02:41]:
But they they then they both give you links and references and stuff. It is interesting though, and I've heard I've seen tons of articles saying, you know, is it is this the end for Google and all that? And the one thing that Google has, that these don't is it has the placement in the browsers. Like, you can use the, you know, the the search bar at the top of browsers to either search with Google, like in Chrome, for instance, or Safari on the Mac, or, obviously, the competitors like Bing have the search, you know, I guess, default in Edge and other, you know, other places. I'm not sure what Firefox's default is, to tell you the truth. It might

Leo [00:03:24]:
be duck.co.

Gary [00:03:25]:
Oh, it is? Okay. So there so there's the major there's the 3 big ones. And there are a couple other ones too that are allowed into that arena. But until, like, you know, there's like a wall now, I feel, between, like, search engine you could easily use in the browser without thinking about it. And these new search engines like perplexity and chat gptsearch, that you have to go into the domain of the AI, you know, the that web page or that app to use them. And it's, it's interesting. I it's like, will this will there always be this divider line here? Will this, or will it change? I mean, I I don't know. I I because I think Google is in trouble if it changes, if you have the ability to if, like, Firefox were to go and say, we're just gonna use chat gptsearch from now on.

Gary [00:04:18]:
And then and then it's like, oh, then they got a big foothold, and then maybe Apple adds them to the list of of ones you can change to, you know, and it's like, encroaches on that on that territory.

Leo [00:04:29]:
So so, of course, while you were chatting, I I asked chat GPT.

Gary [00:04:34]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:04:35]:
And said, yes. You can set chat GPT search as your default search engine in Google Chrome, which is what I asked, by installing the official chat GPT search extension.

Gary [00:04:48]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:04:49]:
Yeah. So that's kinda sideways. But but what I was thinking about is that there's nothing magic about being a search engine, a default search engine in any of the browsers. All it really means is that you have to support a specific kind of URL based query.

Gary [00:05:05]:
Right.

Leo [00:05:06]:
If you just if we were able to say, you know, chagpt.com question mark s equals followed by your search query, that's all it would take.

Gary [00:05:14]:
Yep. Yeah. So it comes down to, like, what can you set in settings and how can you break the barrier of, like, the everyday user.

Leo [00:05:23]:
Yep. You

Gary [00:05:24]:
know? And and I mean, the the first step is to make yourself available in that list. Right?

Leo [00:05:29]:
By the way, since I asked that question about using it as a search in Google Chrome, there's also a pop up that it gave me, a small one, not you know, an unobtrusive one that says use chat GPT for every search. Download the Chrome extension with a with a button to click to get the extension. Yeah. So if you if you ask about it, it will not only tell you the answer, but encourage you to actually do it.

Gary [00:05:55]:
Interesting. I I mean, I think it makes Google very vulnerable right now.

Leo [00:06:00]:
It sure seems like it would.

Gary [00:06:01]:
I mean so okay. So let's say alright. You've got Chrome is I'm not sure what the biggest web browsers are now. Chrome's obviously a big one. So Safari is the big one, but only on Apple. Right? But but that includes the iPhone, which makes it huge actually. And then you've got Edge, which is the default on Windows. So and then that's probably the big three, really, when it comes down to it.

Gary [00:06:25]:
If there are extensions available for each of those, you know, it would only take a major marketing campaign on the part of Chat GPT or a partner to really push things? I mean, because like you said, you got that you know, when you asked Chat GPT, you got, hey. Install this to do it. You know? So what would it take considering the money talked about in AI circles is in the billions all the time.

Leo [00:06:50]:
Yep.

Gary [00:06:51]:
What would it take for a, ChatCPT or a partner to go step forward and say, let's let's bring this to everybody. Let's do a major campaign, hit them with ads online, hit them with ads on TV everywhere, and take a bigger and bigger chunk considering what's, you know, at stake. I I don't know. It could be

Leo [00:07:12]:
a What I find interesting, is that I wonder if there's a certain amount of reluctance on the AI companies to do this, to make them the default yet. And I say that because we're still dealing with hallucinations. And no matter how much you quantify or qualify the answer you give, the answers could still be wrong. Now I'm not saying that Google based answers, Google search based answers are always right either. They have a different set of problems.

Gary [00:07:41]:
Yeah. Exactly.

Leo [00:07:41]:
I'm just wondering if that's part of what's keeping them from jumping off this edge. Interestingly, again, while you were talking, I asked chat GPT what the current browser market share is. Yeah. Google Chrome, 2 thirds. And then Safari, 18 yeah. 2 thirds. Safari's at 18%, and then Edge at a little over 5, Firefox at 2a half, and then Samsung Internet of all things at 2.23, and Opera at, 2.2.

Gary [00:08:09]:
Yeah. I think another barrier too might be, energy cost. Like, how much does it cost Google to serve up as a results page versus how much does it cost chat gpt to do it?

Leo [00:08:21]:
That's a really good point.

Gary [00:08:22]:
So but I but, you know, there might be ways, I mean, to to mitigate that. I mean, obviously, a prompt in AI and large language model AI is expensive in terms of energy. But if they wanted to go big on search, they there might be, caching and other things that they could do to maybe lower the cost, but specifically for web searches. You know, we we take the top 1,000 web searches and cache them. Right? What percentage is that going to be, you know, in any given time? So Well, to

Leo [00:08:54]:
be fair, the number one web search, as I under if I recall correctly, is Facebook.

Gary [00:09:02]:
Yeah. There you go.

Leo [00:09:02]:
Yeah. What it is I mean, it's it's people using the address bar, quote, unquote, incorrectly. Right? They're just typing in Facebook, in order to go to Facebook without realizing that they're first getting a search engine result, and then they have to click on the link.

Gary [00:09:15]:
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Cached.

Leo [00:09:18]:
That could be cached easily.

Gary [00:09:19]:
It's interesting. Well, I guess the thing is is now that we see that, you know, these large language model cert AIs can be used as search engine because there's at least 2 of them, probably more, which is interesting because it was so hard to enter the search engine market before. Like, you had companies like, a lot of companies are basically piggybacking either on Google or Bing.

Leo [00:09:42]:
Right.

Gary [00:09:42]:
Right? As, like so Google and Bing are expending the energy to actually create the search index to to actually, you know, figure out what what's there and have the database. And then other search engines jump on top, do some modifications. There are a few other ones experimenting in that, but it's it's tough. Whereas, you know, so now all of a sudden you've got these other search engines coming in. I don't know. It it's it could be a shakeup or could be nothing. Right? If we could, you know and 3 years from now, we could just be doing the same web searches and have this alternative, like, perplexity and

Leo [00:10:14]:
My sense is that it's that it's actually a shakeup. We've been down this road a couple

Gary [00:10:18]:
of times.

Leo [00:10:18]:
Right? It used to be Yahoo, then it was AltaVista, then it was Google. And Google held on for quite some time, but it's not that people's behavior can't be changed if there's incentive to do so. What I suspect we're gonna go either of 2 ways. Right? Either OpenAI's, chat GPT search will will, you know, start to come about come up or perplexity will, or maybe there's a 3rd AI based search engine we haven't seen yet. Or and this is honestly part of what I kinda sorta hope happens. Google will clean up their act.

Gary [00:10:52]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:10:53]:
Google will actually address some of the problems that are causing people to use them less frequently. And they've got their own LLM as well. Right? They can do the AI as well on top of it. So right now, I think from Google's perspective, it's not a lack of technology. It's a lack of of implementation, a lack of execution where they're just dropping the ball and letting these other guys sneak through.

Gary [00:11:18]:
Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely interesting. A nice, I mean, there's activity going in the search engine space.

Leo [00:11:26]:
I will say that, you know, I've been I mentioned it a couple weeks ago, perplexity continues to impress me. I will start playing with chat GPT a little bit more, but I've had it now a couple of times where I've just dropped in the most obscure stuff into perplexity, and it figures it out. It understands it, and it just gives me the right answer, which, you know, and the right answer with citations, which I think is the single most important part of any search engine result these days, especially if you're gonna throw some kind of, meta analysis on top of it, whether it's being, you know, the old Google summaries or an AI interpretation or whatever. You've gotta have the the citations that will let the searcher, confirm that what they're seeing is what they you know, is actually accurate.

Gary [00:12:14]:
Cool. Yeah. So, getting away from AI for a second, I I had an interesting little debate thing going on in my my world here based on a video I did. But the video is based on a new feature that was added to iOS 18 for the iPhone. And that's the ability to do call recording. That call recording isn't anything new. And there were ways to do it using apps. There were very poor ways because, you know, you you would just wanna make a nice regular phone call with your iPhone using the phone app, and you can't really use that.

Gary [00:12:47]:
You have to use another app, and then you have to make the call through another system. It's a whole thing. So Apple finally added the ability to just start call recording in the phone app. Just default functionality. Right?

Leo [00:12:59]:
Right.

Gary [00:12:59]:
Now when you do this, it's very easy to do. Like in the phone app, there's just a button. You could just be talking to somebody. Hit that button, and then it comes up with a little, like, you know, thing you wanna do call recording. Yes. You do it and it starts recording the call. And it's very nice because first it starts recording and then it takes you to a note in the notes app. And the notes app shows that it's recording the call and you could take notes at that point.

Gary [00:13:23]:
And then when you're done with the call or you stop call recording, it actually transcribes the call. So you end up not just with an audio file, but with a transcription as well, which is really nice and has all sorts of interesting things. You know, p tech support for instance. You wanna make sure that you understand everything correctly or be able to repeat what's going on. You know, whatever. But there's one feature of it I did mention, and that is when you hit the record button to go, the both people hear a voice say this call is being recorded.

Leo [00:13:57]:
Right.

Gary [00:13:58]:
So the other person knows it's being recorded. Yep. Now the interesting thing is there's been a bunch of, reactions to that I've seen. 1st, there's people that says, oh, good. Oh, good. It does that. People some people are happy because it'll mean the other person will be on their best behavior, if they you know, as soon as they turn that on, you know, which is, you know, if you're calling some sort of contentious situation, just turning that on could mean the other person really has to think before they speak and who knows, you might have a good phone call instead of a bad one. And other people say, oh, is there a way to turn that off? Is there an option to turn that off? And my explanation is without any you know, Apple didn't really say much about this, but my explanation is well, in the United States, there are 50 states.

Gary [00:14:44]:
Each one has different laws about recording phone calls. As I understand it, I think 11 of them are, all person consent, which means that everybody on the phone call has to consent to the call being recorded. Right. The other 39 are 1 person consent. The one person can be you. In other words, you can't secretly record a phone conversation in your state. So the the the announcement kind of fulfills the the legal requirement for all 50 states because it's telling everybody that the call is being recorded. Now there's a bunch of interesting things here.

Gary [00:15:24]:
A lot of people say, well, what happens if I'm just calling somebody and they're in my state or in another state where it's just single call consent? Can I turn it off? Well, how would you know? Like, how would the iPhone know where the other person is located? It doesn't. Right. That's the thing. There's no way it can't. It can know where you're located to a certain point. I mean, you could trick it if you really want to, but this is your phone and it's your app and it's your phone call. So you're probably not trying to trick, you know, any of those things. So we could reasonably say, yeah, according to GPS location, everything else, I know what state you're in.

Gary [00:16:00]:
But the other person, no way of knowing. The area code doesn't mean anything anymore. People now regularly move. You know, they take their AT and T, Verizon phone, move to a different state, and keep their phone number, and it's perfectly fine. Yep. I run into this all the time, especially if you have, like, any like, you ever get, like, an Uber or Lyft? There's seems to be a pretty high percentage of people that do gig, economy jobs like Uber and Lyft who have recently moved to a state like mine, like Colorado where there's a lot people moving to Colorado all the time. So, yeah, you get, you know, the phone number that's associated with your Lyft or Uber is usually, like, you know, some bizarre area code. It's like, oh, they must have moved from New York recently or whatever.

Leo [00:16:44]:
So the thing is

Gary [00:16:45]:
there are use that.

Leo [00:16:46]:
There are phone services where like, Google Voice. If you sign up for Google Voice number, you get to choose your area code.

Gary [00:16:52]:
Sure. Yeah. So the area code means nothing. Somebody, tried to point out that, it doesn't matter what the other what state the other person is in. If you're in a one state, you know, one consent state and you're doing the recording, it's fine. But in fact, I've I looked it up because I was like, oh, well, maybe that's true. Maybe I'm wrong. Nope.

Gary [00:17:13]:
Turns out California specifically has a court case saying it does matter. You can't call somebody from, like, one of our states into California and record the call without their consent. You'd be breaking California law.

Leo [00:17:26]:
Right. Right.

Gary [00:17:27]:
I don't know if you care about that or not, but, you know, you are you would they have determined that that's true. So it it's interesting. And then, oh, there's a whole other aspect to it. It's, like, even if there wasn't there weren't any laws at all about this, I think Apple would still do it because Apple's about privacy. Right? They make a big deal about being about privacy.

Leo [00:17:49]:
Thing to do. Yes.

Gary [00:17:50]:
Yeah. Could you imagine if there were no laws about this, but Apple just let you record like, the headlines would all be on all the different sites is, like, Apple, you know, huge privacy breach. Apple call recording allows you to secretly record anybody without letting them know. It would be, like, a big privacy thing. All the privacy bloggers would be like, Apple needs to stop this. This is horrible. There would be all these posts about how to avoid phone calls from people with iPhones, you know, how to tell if the person calling you is on an iPhone where they could breach your privacy by, you know, recording without telling you, all this stuff. So I don't think Apple even cares that much about the laws because it doesn't get past that.

Gary [00:18:30]:
It gets right to the point where it's like, well, we should tell people. Anyway, there's still people saying, oh, I'd love to be able to secretly record people. This is a useless feature without being able to secretly record somebody. And I I don't know. I disagree. I mean, both you and I are pretty we're we're pretty moderate on privacy because there's some pluses and minuses to things. Sure. But even being moderate on privacy, I have to say no.

Gary [00:18:54]:
Secretly recording somebody is not a good privacy practice. You don't want it to happen to you. So I

Leo [00:19:00]:
know exactly I know exactly what the scenario is where people want it and honestly Yeah. I want it to. Yeah. That is if I'm calling a customer support number

Gary [00:19:12]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:19:13]:
Obviously, they always say your call will be recorded. Your call may be recorded for training purposes.

Gary [00:19:19]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:19:19]:
Great. I wanna be able to do that too. But you know that as soon as they hear this call is being recorded, they're probably instructed to hang up immediately. Right?

Gary [00:19:30]:
They

Leo [00:19:30]:
don't they don't wanna be on record giving you a shitty experience when you're calling customer service.

Gary [00:19:35]:
Do you think though? I mean, I've never I've never tried it, but, I mean, I think that the the individual on the other end is so used to being recorded for everything that they do that they probably don't care.

Leo [00:19:49]:
Right. But it's corporate policy. I'm I'm like, what's

Gary [00:19:51]:
the policy?

Leo [00:19:52]:
They're they're being instructed that, yes, we can record the conversation, but the customer cannot.

Gary [00:19:58]:
I'd be I'd be interested to hear if that's people's experience.

Leo [00:20:02]:
Right.

Gary [00:20:02]:
Or this is widely available. The

Leo [00:20:04]:
other good part about it, though, is if you start recording during the, the phone tree

Gary [00:20:10]:
Yes.

Leo [00:20:11]:
Gets you to the customer service rep, there's nobody to hear the message.

Gary [00:20:15]:
Yeah. Somebody pointed that out too. It's like, what's the deal with that? I'm like, I don't know. I mean, I guess the idea is that the other party wasn't was informed. Yep. It's their fault. They weren't paying attention that there's a phone tree and all that stuff.

Leo [00:20:30]:
I did want to point out that Washington is a 2 party consent state. So this is this is stuff that I'm well aware of. And, the other thing that just cracked me up is what obviously our conversation right now is being recorded. We're using zoom to do this.

Gary [00:20:47]:
It is. I'm shocked.

Leo [00:20:49]:
What what happens when we can't we can't record the message, but what happens whenever we start to record? We get an audible message that says this call is being recorded.

Gary [00:21:01]:
Yeah. Or,

Leo [00:21:02]:
if it's being recorded twice as it is for backup purposes as we do, we also get a pop up message that says this call is being recorded. So Zoom has been down this path also for obvious reasons. Even though they're not technically a telephone, they're facing, I'm sure, the same legal issues that the phone company Oh,

Gary [00:21:19]:
yeah. Oh, no. I I I believe they they do have to follow the same rules. So yep. So, anyway, it's it's interesting. It's a neat feature. I don't know if I'd, ever use it, but I will recommend to people, like, you know, if you need to call support or something, like, particularly not I'm not talking about support in terms of, like, oh, something's broken. I need to, you know, warranty, whatever whatever.

Gary [00:21:43]:
But, like, support as in, like, I'm calling a helpline, and they're going to explain to me how to do something.

Leo [00:21:50]:
Right.

Gary [00:21:51]:
It could be very useful to record it instead of having to call again 3 weeks later when you need to do it again.

Leo [00:21:57]:
There is that because, obviously, you can then take the recording, run it through voice recognition, have a nice written up summary of what

Gary [00:22:02]:
already done. Yeah. The the the iPhone thing already does

Leo [00:22:04]:
the transcript. IPhone will do that for you. I'm actually thinking of more contentious customer service calls where I think that's getting the support they feel they deserve, and they, therefore, need to record the interaction.

Gary [00:22:16]:
Yeah. Yeah. No. Definitely. That's, I I get it. You know, what I do I I tend to favor the online chats Yes. And a lot of and I love those because you don't have to have your attention completely used up. Right.

Gary [00:22:28]:
You know, you know, by the phone call. You don't have to have, like, a, you know, speaker phone on and all that stuff. You can listen to music. You could do other work. You could even get up and leave the room for a minute and come back to see if the chat's been updated, that kind of thing. And almost in all cases, at the end of that, you're given a transcript. I mean, you know, you could obviously copy and paste the whole thing, but a lot of times you're, like, emailed, like, here's the complete transcript. And I think part of the reason is is for that.

Gary [00:22:56]:
Like, you know, we told you how to fix the problem. Here's the transcript. Please keep that so you don't have to call us again.

Leo [00:23:03]:
And if it breaks, we told you what to do, so it must be you who didn't follow the instructions.

Gary [00:23:08]:
Exactly. So, anyway, so yeah. So moving on, this is, oh, this is a weirded trickster. I'm I'm looking for stories obviously that aren't AI. Right? So I found this interesting, rabbit hole I went down the other day that, somebody had asked online, can, I don't know what's like in Washington, but in, Colorado, can you do vinyl license plates? What vinyl license plates are are, you know, you've got your metal license plate that goes on the back. Right. And some states, like Colorado, require a front license plate.

Leo [00:23:43]:
Washington too.

Gary [00:23:44]:
Some cars do not come with a front license plate holder.

Leo [00:23:48]:
My car did not.

Gary [00:23:49]:
Yeah. Exactly. So the problem is that you end up getting this car and you're like you have to then go take it sometimes aftermarket and get it fitted for a front license plate, a holder and then get the metal thing. So a solution in some states is that you get a vinyl license plate instead. That's is basically a sticker that goes on the front of the car. That's kinda cool. And but it cool. Except that it turns out it is not legal in Colorado to have a vinyl license plate.

Gary [00:24:16]:
You have to put the metal license plate on that the state gives you. And then I read in the fine print the only valid license plates in Colorado or the metal license plate the state gives you or digital license plate. End of story. No explanation for those words. I was like, digital license plate?

Leo [00:24:37]:
Who?

Gary [00:24:38]:
What is that? And I looked and searched, and it took me a while to find out what it was. But it's a technology thing that you could guess. I was wildly wrong in my first excited guess, which was

Leo [00:24:49]:
The QR code.

Gary [00:24:50]:
We a QR code or an RF, like some sort of, radio signal. Yep. Something where you, you know, you install it and then, you know, police or parking structures or whatever could just know your, license plate number instead of having

Leo [00:25:06]:
The toll the toll thing so you can put in

Gary [00:25:08]:
your card. Yeah. I thought all of these things. Turns out, no. It's far more literal than that. It is a license plate that fits onto your car that is an, e ink screen. So it's basically a little thicker than a regular license plate, has some technology built into it, displays your license plate numbers in e ink, including the little stickers. You know, here in Colorado, we've got a year and a month for your, you know, inspection emissions thing.

Gary [00:25:40]:
All of that, it's displayed on this e ink screen, and it has, a, afraid if it's 4 g or l I think it's LTE chip in it to be able to send the limited communications to do updates. So, basically, you spend a bunch of money to get this. It's not cheap. You stick it on your car. You register it with the app, and then all of a sudden the license plate turns on and it shows your actual license plate number, shows your stickers, and it's the reason for it, well, they give the first, the dumbest reason. You can choose the font of the of the license plate, the numbers, and you can make it black on white or white on black. It's like, woo hoo. Sign me up.

Gary [00:26:28]:
Right?

Leo [00:26:29]:
Yes.

Gary [00:26:30]:
But but the actual reasons there are other reasons. First of all, in Colorado, there sometimes there there's theft of the stickers. Right? Instead of somebody registering their car, just they will simply find a way. There's various ways to get that sticker off your card. It's very hard, but they get a sticker off of somebody's card, like a 2025 sticker, and then they stick it onto their license plate. And then you you get pulled over a few weeks later or not because it just never happens. That's a whole different story. And you find out that your your year is missing.

Gary [00:27:03]:
Somebody has stolen it. So that's automatic on these you know, they just appear. Nobody could steal it from you. Right. The other thing is if somebody steals the whole license plate, you could just go into the app and deactivate it and it's useless. So there's no point stealing it. Mhmm. You also have the ability to mark your car as stolen.

Gary [00:27:22]:
So somebody steals your car, drives off with it Mhmm. You say, oh, and then you mark it, and then the license plate changes to the word stolen, which, you know, is kinda neat. It's that's kind of a a neat thing. It's like, good luck. You're like, the the license plate isn't valid anymore, and it shows that it's stolen. So, yeah. Anyway, it's just a weird technology. As far as I can tell, the reason Colorado has this is because the company, may or may not be Colorado based or has ties to Colorado.

Gary [00:27:58]:
And they basically had this push through our legislature legislature and, you know, our governor. And they kind of, like, just added it on to a, you know, a bill in, 2022 or something, just to make it legal. Yes. You can have this, but I'm not sure it's yet available. I've never seen one certainly. And the website, I wasn't quite sure whether it was, like, you could sign up for 1 and we'll we'll let you know when it's available or it actually was available yet. Anyway, it's kind of kind of neat. I could see it being the very first instance of hearing about this.

Gary [00:28:33]:
And 25 years from now, we basically all drive around with license plates that are part of the car, like, you know, have this built in. Like, maybe the idea is eventually some company sells this to General Motors And then within 2 years, every major manufacturer is just putting them on their cars. And and then you just, you know, when you get your car and you, you know, the license plate just blinks on and there's your there's your thing. Certainly seems like that's our state at least spends a ton of money on, temporary tags, getting your real tags. You know, there's offices. There's people. There's lines. There's, the whole thing going on.

Gary [00:29:13]:
And if this was digital on cars, it could potentially pay for itself in terms of lower costs. So It's

Leo [00:29:21]:
it's interesting. The the first thing, obviously, that comes to mind for me is, okay, it's digital. It's, wirelessly connected to some network. Yeah. So it somebody's gonna hack it. Somebody's going to figure out a way in and either have a prank, right, where they'll just, you know, put random stuff on people's license plates. Or more interestingly, you know, if it really is, quote, unquote, criminal activity, stolen car ring, whatever, they could change the license plate.

Gary [00:29:54]:
Oh, yeah. No. It's definitely the kind of thing where, I mean, it just makes it it makes it harder because they have to they have to swap out the license plate if they sell the car or if they steal the car. Otherwise, it's gonna say stolen. Or if they just take it off, there'll be no license plate there, which makes them suspicious.

Leo [00:30:11]:
But if it's hacked, they can hack it to not say stolen.

Gary [00:30:14]:
Yeah. It could be I mean

Leo [00:30:17]:
So it relies on the security of the device. I'm not saying that the security can't be good. I'm sure it Yeah. It it

Gary [00:30:25]:
but nothing. I mean, the security the security can be good because it's really the only purpose for it. You know, a lot of times when our security is bad, it's because it's like the purpose of this thing is it's an icemaker. We didn't really put much think think thought into security because it's an icemaker and now people's icemakers are getting hacked. But when it's like you

Leo [00:30:45]:
go floor full of ice. Yes.

Gary [00:30:47]:
Yeah. And but when it's like this, it's like, no. The main purpose of this is is to be more secure than regular license plates. So our first thought is how do we make it very secure? And, I'm not saying it can't be hacked, but it you know, you can make it so hard, such so much trouble that the solution is simply just take it off or cover it with something. Right. And, you know, in which case, but either there could also be GPS built into these. I mean, if it's built into the car, the car already has GPS. I don't know.

Gary [00:31:19]:
It's just it's just interesting. It's a part of our world that is stuck in technology that is more than a 100 years old, that may actually just have taken a leap forward.

Leo [00:31:32]:
So the the most recent leap here in the state of Washington, I don't remember how many years ago this was, our license plates used to be, I guess, it would be embossed. Right? They were there were letters that stuck out from the metal. Now they're printed. They're printed on metal, but they're printed, so they're flat. I still to go all the way back to the beginning of this conversation, I did not realize that vinyl existed anywhere. And I just love that as an idea because, like you said, those tabs that you put on to your your license plates today, they are super sticky. I mean, you really wanna make sure you get it in the right place the first time. And, I could see, you know, if you had a a license plate of vinyl license plate that was that sticky, then, you know, it seems like it would solve a number of interesting problems and still be readable.

Gary [00:32:19]:
Even even if it was just the front license plate that was allowed to be vinyl Yeah. Because, you know, the the idea a lot of times that the front license plate is a convenience. It's just being able to, like, do things like parking garages, toll roads, things like that. It's like it's more convenient. If you just have it up there upfront, our systems can handle it easily. It's also extremely convenient in the, you know, going back to Uber and Lyft. I got reminded of this the other other day. We've had a a quite a bit of snow here in the last week.

Leo [00:32:49]:
Mhmm.

Gary [00:32:49]:
And I actually the wife and I went out and took a Lyft. And on our way back from the event, the it was snowing and the car pulled up that kinda matched the description, but the front license plate was covered with snow.

Leo [00:33:08]:
Yep.

Gary [00:33:08]:
So I actually had to do the thing where, you know, it said Lyft, Uber in the window. It kinda looks like our car, but I kinda had to do the thing where I waved to the guy to be like, stop. And I gave him, like, the one second, and then I walked over to the back, leaned my head back, and saw the rear license plate did match. And then he was in fact my Uber driver, and I was not, like, bothering

Leo [00:33:29]:
I thought you were

Gary [00:33:30]:
private person.

Leo [00:33:31]:
Say that you went up to the front of the car and cleaned his license plate.

Gary [00:33:33]:
Oh, cleaned his license plate. Yeah. And I think it's in Nevada where they don't have if I remember yeah. I think it's Nevada where they don't have front, and you try to get a lift there and it's also very disconcerting if you're used to doing it in other states. You know, you have cars pulling up and you're, like, looking for the license plate number.

Leo [00:33:51]:
Yeah.

Gary [00:33:51]:
And just to tell, you know, who you know, you're standing in front of a hotel or something. There's, like, 15 people getting picked up by Ubers or Lyfts at any given time. And you're like, is that mine? You know, and, you know, it's it's weird. But a vinyl license plate would it would just be a nice convenience. You know, make them make people have like an official or digital or whatever on the back make that the the real deal and then let people put as long as they're not, violating the law like they're not lying. It's it actually is their number.

Leo [00:34:22]:
And it's visible because, of course, when you find along there, it's gonna wrap around the bumper or something like that. So it's gonna need

Gary [00:34:28]:
It's it's gotta be visible. Yeah. As long as it's visible and it's right, it's correct, then it should be, you know, something maybe even, it gives the responsibility to you to be like it has to be visible and correct. And if it wears starts to wear or comes off, that's your fault. Right? If you choose vinyl. You know? That's fine. People would like that. Anyway

Leo [00:34:51]:
I I think you could go online and order a new one.

Gary [00:34:53]:
Oh, yeah. You could have a yeah. They should be cheap. You should could have and a spare one sitting in the car just to slap right on. Yeah.

Leo [00:35:01]:
Alright. Yeah. So you've also got the Apple Vision Pro going on here. I've heard some interesting things about it most recently, and that it it's not taking off the way they were expecting.

Gary [00:35:13]:
Yeah. The, I mean, it's it's hard to say because we don't really know what Apple, really wanted out of the Vision Pro. You know? Like, was there a plan to for this to be a huge hit and everybody want 1? Some people point to that's impossible because they did not have the manufacturing capability to deal with that. Like, if it become a huge hit, they still would not have sold more than they've sold now because they've produced as many now as they could have possibly produced no matter what happened. That's one way of looking at it.

Leo [00:35:51]:
I think I I was reading or what I was vaguely remembering is it had more to do with, apps being written for it.

Gary [00:35:57]:
Yeah. Yeah. There's that. But then there's also like you can look at it both ways too. It's like, you know, I'm frustrated by the fact that there are no big games that you can play on it because the display is amazing. The processor in it should be able to handle anything. But yet, you know, I can't why can't I play like a 3 d rendered version of Baldur's Gate 3 or something on it?

Leo [00:36:16]:
Exactly.

Leo [00:36:17]:
And and maybe that's kind of, you know, you you could look at it the other way and say Apple was like, no, this is a serious device. There will be games on it eventually, but for right now, you're supposed to buy it and get work done. If you want a toy, get Meta's thing. You know? I mean, that could be, you know, what their their attitude is. They are coming out with, you know, Vision Vision OS 2 came out, with, you know, the same time as all the new operating systems, but it didn't really have too much that's new. But Vision OS 2.1 or 2.2, whatever the next one coming out is, is going to expand the Mac display, which is really neat because so right now, this is what I use my Vision Pro for primarily is I put it on when I when I really wanna get serious about work, when I'm, like, editing my videos. Right. And I bring up a Mac display.

Gary [00:37:06]:
It's a like a 5 k display, and I just make it big and right in the center, and I work. And it works great. They are going to actually be giving options to do an a a wide display. So the same thing, but it's even wider. It's, like, not quite 2 screens. And then they're gonna do this ultra wide wrap around display, which looks incredible. You know, they're actually making it curved, So it will take up, like, a good portion of your view, and you just be able to just put all sorts of Mac windows everywhere and do all sorts of work. So I can't wait for that.

Gary [00:37:45]:
I it's in it is in beta now. But since I only have the one Apple Vision Pro and I like it enough to actually be using all the time, I've refrained from loading betas on it. Right. So I'm just I'm going to wait for the real thing to come out, which might be just in a few weeks. So I'm excited about that. Apple's also there's a lot of rumors about the next version of the Vision Pro, you know, that there might be a cheaper one offered maybe the by the end of next year. It would be, you know, dumbed down a bit in terms of some features, but, you know, with the lower price. So I don't know.

Gary [00:38:19]:
We'll have to we'll have to see. It's I continue to use it, for all my video editing, and I I like it. It it it's weird. I have what might be well, it's the 2nd best display for Macs. I have the Apple Studio Display. Apple makes this, you know, Pro Display, which I don't have. But the the Apple Studio Display is a fantastic display. It's amazing, but it's not as good as when I wear the Vision Pro.

Gary [00:38:44]:
And I have basically the same display more or less, but it's bigger. It fills this fills the room. And I can bring up other windows on the Vision Pro so I can have mail and messages up and other windows outside of this display. And it it also it's like putting like I said before, it's like putting horse blinders on. I'm focused because I've got this thing strapped to my head and there's my Mac screen. I'm gonna work. I'm not gonna get distracted. Right? I've actually taken to closing my door and locking it in my office when I put it on because we have a, cat.

Gary [00:39:22]:
And the cat knows when I put the thing on that it it's extra fun for him to bother me. And, because I'm I have a wire attached to me and it's attached to the battery, which is attached to the, you know, cable. Yeah. Yeah. You know, to so so I can't go after him. He could run a certain distance from me and I can't go after him to take him out of the room. So I I just put on the, I I just locked the door. So that's not so but it's great.

Gary [00:39:47]:
I get so much work done. Anyway, that's my update on the, Apple.

Leo [00:39:51]:
So the article that you included it will be including in the show now. It had an interesting thing, that I cottoned on to real quick. Yeah. Well, Canon is releasing a new spatial lens for the EOS R7. And which is cool. I mean, you kind of sort of expected that that kind of, you know, high end photography. But what I thought about it, if you take a look at the lens, the picture of the

Gary [00:40:13]:
lens Yeah.

Leo [00:40:14]:
It essentially has 2 lenses. It's got 2, so it's basically trying to do, 3 d, which makes absolute total sense. And what this immediately triggered was scenes in Star Trek from, gosh, probably a couple of decades ago, where they were, for whatever reason, apparently, they were still taking still photography. And the camera he whipped out had 2 bubbles like that, 2 lenses on it. It was clearly doing stereo. It just cracked me up that, you know, what we had kind of sort of envisioned 20 or 30 years ago. Oh, look. It's becoming reality.

Gary [00:40:56]:
Yeah. It's it's interesting. I mean, the Canon thing, you you could already take the spatial photos and spatial videos with the iPhone.

Leo [00:41:04]:
Right.

Gary [00:41:05]:
So, you know, you've got the ability to do it. Obviously, I'm I'm guessing that the Canon is higher quality, for probably for video.

Leo [00:41:15]:
Maybe. Yeah. Who knows?

Gary [00:41:16]:
The spatial stuff, I do try to take space some spatial photos every once in a while. First of all, it seamlessly gives you regular stills. So I can take if I'm gonna take one picture of something and I think it's oh, spatial might look neat, I'll take it knowing that this could be a regular photo too. Like, I don't have to take a separate photo to be a regular photo. It looks like on my Mac just like a 2 d photo. It's it's kind of, it neat. It works. It's it's still kind of like a bit of a novelty.

Gary [00:41:45]:
I like panoramas more. Mhmm. Panoramas just they're just 2 d. There's not 3 d. It's not stereo at all, but you're taking this kind of wrap around view. And because you're doing panoramas, most of the stuff you're taking is far away. It's like a vista off, you know, mountain or at the top of the building. So the 3 d part isn't that important anyway.

Gary [00:42:07]:
And it feels more immersive because it's surrounding you, whereas the spatial images and spatial video is like this box that's in front of you that is just happens to be 3 d, but it's a very just it's it's not big. It doesn't feel immersive. It's like a little somebody holding one of those, like, you know, when we were kids, you remember people had those 3 d little photos that, you know, you would just turn the photo a little bit and would reflect light in a different way? Yeah. Yep. The it feels kinda like that except, you know, obviously, it's much more there's much more depth to it than just, you know, 2 or 3 variations. But, yeah, it's, it's, it's cool. I wish I wish there was more. I wish there was, like, I don't know, more.

Gary [00:42:54]:
Like, I wish you could get a, or wish I I don't even want it myself. I just wish there was a rig where you could easily produce video that was totally immersive like some of the stuff Apple has as examples and then people actually were making content with it. It doesn't have to be narrative dramatic content. Like, it could just be, you know, going on a hike or hang gliding or whatever. I just want there to be lots of it. Like, enough that I could search for an experience and there would just be that online. Right now, there nobody's really come up with that yet. There's just a few things here and there.

Gary [00:43:34]:
It's very finite.

Leo [00:43:37]:
So we've reached a threshold. We must talk about AI.

Gary [00:43:41]:
Yes. Okay. Cool. So, yeah, so Amazon, is doing this thing in Prime Video. I think this is a good use for AI. I think, Prime Video is going to let you use AI to get a recap of what you're watching. I think this is really cool use of AI. It doesn't quite work very well in terms of, like using chat gpt or something for it unless the show is old, But I've done it before.

Gary [00:44:16]:
I've actually asked chat gpt about older TV shows, you know, things that were from the past that we happen to be watching right now. Like, who is this character or what happens, you know, what happened before in an earlier version because I'm missing something, that kind of thing. And Chat GPT is actually pretty good at doing that. But what this thing built into Amazon Prime will do is it will catch you up, on the show. So if you take a break from a show or you can't remember what happened last season, you'd get these little summaries. I think that's a good that's a good use for it. You know, probably something that maybe all the platforms could have or maybe somebody could build it on a website or something.

Leo [00:44:56]:
At the article, you you linked in the show notes. And, unfortunately, right now, it's currently available only on the Amazon Fire TV stick. And, it's got some limited rollouts on other platforms. I'm assuming it'll show up on Roku eventually, which is I think probably the biggest next you know, the next biggest platform, maybe Samsung TVs. But yeah. I mean, we've certainly run into that situation where, especially between seasons.

Gary [00:45:23]:
Mhmm.

Leo [00:45:24]:
Lately, especially partly due to the writers strike, but also partly due to just the way things the way production happens. It can be a long time between seasons. And you don't really wanna rewatch the prior season.

Gary [00:45:37]:
No. Yeah. Necessarily even the

Leo [00:45:39]:
prior episode. And the recap that's presented, they're mixed. Right? Some are really good. Some give you a nice wrap up of everything that happened. Some of them basically make all sorts of assumptions, and, of course, then there's the recap that doesn't exist. So, yeah, I really like this idea of having and like you said, this is a good use of AI. It's not it's not gathering information. It's summarizing information, and it's really good at that.

Gary [00:46:08]:
Yeah. Yeah. AI is a good, TV watching companion. For instance, I just used it last night. As I've mentioned before, my wife and I are watching, going through Star Trek Next Generation, which is, such an excellent show. We're loving it. And, we just got through the episode where, Kelsey Grammer makes a surprise appearance at the end. And we asked each other, what was that about? Why was Kelsey Grammer on, like, one minute at the end of Star Trek? And, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna find out.

Gary [00:46:43]:
And I brought up this search engine to to search for, like, the IMDB episode and to go look at the trivia for the episode where somebody's probably mentioned it. And I said, no. Wait a minute. And then I hit option space to bring up my little chat gbt prompt and just ask the question, why was Kelsey Grammer on an episode of Star Trek? It got the whole explanation in 2 paragraphs. Oh, he's a fan. He asked if there was an opportunity. Opportunity came up, and he was on for the end of an episode.

Leo [00:47:14]:
So I don't recall the episode. Was he playing a captain of some sort?

Gary [00:47:18]:
Yes. It was the episode. They went they got into a time loop, which was, you know, interesting because, you know, it's time loops are such a common trope now.

Leo [00:47:29]:
Yep.

Gary [00:47:30]:
This 1991 or 1992 episode would have been pretty early, you know, after Groundhog Day and stuff for there to be a time loop in a sci fi series. So they were in a time loop where they, the end of the loop happened where another ship collided with them. And they all died, and then the time loop started over again. And they had to figure out how to get out of the time loop. Right. And at the when they did get out of the time loop and, the other ship ended up being a 80 year old Star Fleet vessel that had been stuck in the time loop for much longer than the Enterprise, which was stuck in it for, like, 17 days.

Leo [00:48:07]:
I I remember now. Yes. Yes. That's funny.

Gary [00:48:10]:
Yes. And that was Kelsey Grammer was the captain of that ship. And apparently, it was a surprise when the episode first aired, and it was a surprise to the because he never appeared on screen with anybody else.

Leo [00:48:23]:
Oh, right.

Gary [00:48:24]:
Yeah. So it was so they didn't even know that that's who they were talking to in the dialogue at the end of the episode until the until the episode aired. But of course that doesn't that surprise doesn't happen anymore because, streaming platforms like Paramount Plus will pick out the frame from the episode that it thinks will get the most reaction and the most watches.

Leo [00:48:48]:
Yep.

Gary [00:48:49]:
And that frame shows Kelsey Kramer's face in a starfleet uniform, which is correct in it would probably get the most people to actually say what and watch that episode. But it spoils the surprise. So, anyway

Leo [00:49:05]:
Well, I wanted to talk very briefly about gosh. Part of me wants to call this an extortion scheme.

Gary [00:49:15]:
Mhmm.

Leo [00:49:15]:
It's not. It absolutely is not, but it kinda feels that way. And it's one of those things where, it sure would be a shame if some malware landed on your unpatched PC after October of next year. What's happening is that, for the first time, Microsoft has announced that they are going to provide extended security updates, literally e s u is their acronym of choice, for home users by using Windows 10 Home and and Pro. And it's for 1 year. They can extend it for 1 year for $30. And I just I I wrote an article about it this afternoon. It's it's an interesting concept.

Leo [00:49:58]:
In a lot of ways. I've long felt that, people who are running Windows 10, who are unable to upgrade to Windows 11, or who just don't want to upgrade to Windows 11, can still continue to use Windows 10 after the end of support date next year. But, you know, they need to take on a lit a little bit more responsibility about their security. The, this ESU, in a sense, it's like your car's extended warranty. It's basically $30 for another year of protection. Protection against what we don't know in case something happens, in case there's malware, in case there's a security vulnerability found. What's really interesting about this is that corporations and enterprise versions of Windows have had this for a long time. Companies with big wallets and deep pockets have been able to get this kind of stuff in previous versions for a long time.

Leo [00:50:49]:
This is the first time that Microsoft has, deigned to make it available to, end users. But what I've the I think one of the reasons is, the hardware requirements for Windows 11. There are machines right now running Windows 10 that are incapable of running Windows 11, and Microsoft has gotten a lot of flack for that. Of course, the conspiracy theories are out in force saying that, well, Microsoft is colluding with the hardware manufacturers to, you know, to force people to buy new computers, which, of course, is absolutely not true simply because Windows ten will just keep working. It just won't be getting security updates, but it'll keep working. But, anyway, I just found this thought this was kind of an interesting, and I loved the, the analogy to, we've been trying to reach you to talk to you about your card's warranty. Yeah. Now we've been trying to reach you to talk about your PC's extended warranty.

Leo [00:51:44]:
We'll see how it plays out. They haven't set up sign up or anything like that yet. They just talked about it. They set a price on it. It will be available for signing up supposedly when the actual deadline, which is mid October of next year, gets closer.

Gary [00:51:59]:
Yep. And, that's, of course, the extremely common theme in the Mac world is the whole built in obsolescence. You know? All the evil things Apple is doing to get you to buy a new Mac, iPhone, iPad. You know, just cons you know, you hear that a lot, but the the record doesn't the record, of course, shows that Apple is improving things, but I'm not sure how they're supposed to improve things without triggering that same feeling. It's like Apple's supposed to

Leo [00:52:27]:
say only goes so far. Yeah. Yeah. Things that that you're gonna improve, like the additional hardware security required for Windows 11. Nope. Yeah. I mean, it's additional hardware, and it's just not something you find on older machines. Yeah.

Leo [00:52:41]:
So does that mean they're not supposed to try and be more secure? Of course not. Uh-huh. Anyway

Gary [00:52:46]:
Anyway, one last, story here. Yeah. It's kinda timely. So surprisingly, in the last week, alt alternative non x Twitter, social media networks have been growing a lot.

Leo [00:53:01]:
Mhmm.

Gary [00:53:03]:
And the the 2 that I am on, that have been growing, 1 is Blue Sky, which is I'm trying to kind of engage as my main, my main one. Mhmm. I kinda like how they they're not as algorithmic as the others. It just feels a little bit better over there. I don't know. So, Blue Sky, you know, announced that they got 1,000,000 new subs in the last week, which is a lot, until somebody, else pointed out that threads has got 1,000,000 new subs per day in the last week. Of course, threads has the huge advantage of being meta, and basically being an offshoot of Instagram, which, of course, and also related to Facebook, so having a lot more going. Whereas blue sky blue sky is kind of all by itself.

Gary [00:53:48]:
It's its own thing. Right. But both of those platforms and I've noticed also because I've tried in the past. I've been on both those platforms for at least 2 years. Mhmm. Well, threads 1 year plus whenever they launched and Blue Sky for before that. Mhmm. And I have, noticed that, you know, I've tried to get engagement going there.

Leo [00:54:12]:
I've tried to, like, post things. You know, do I get responses or whatever? And I've noticed in the last week that I'm getting a lot more engagement. So it seems to be just beyond the numbers, beyond actually just saying, oh, they're they're growing. I'm actually seeing a change with my modest accounts in terms of, you know I think I'm only, like, in 300 some followers on threads. Yet most of the stuff I'm posting is getting a bunch of likes and a few comments, which feels good because it's been a while since I've seen any social media engagement probably really stopped using, the site formerly known as Twitter several years ago. And, I, you know, feel that it has been that long since I've you know, I just post to these sites and it's just like it just goes out there and I don't get anything back. And how soon am getting something back on both Blue Sky and threads, but in particular on threads probably because a little larger following its larger network. So so yeah.

Gary [00:55:14]:
It it and, unfortunately, a lot of the bad things about social media networks are coming over to these because of the growth. Of course. I noticed on threads, a lot of posts are what I would call engagement bait.

Leo [00:55:28]:
Yes.

Gary [00:55:28]:
Oh, so they're not clickbait because you're already looking at it. You don't have to click anything, but their engagement bait posing something that's making it hard for you to resist responding. You know? You know, you wanna chime in with, like, I don't agree or I do agree or you oh, you obviously misunderstood something. And I'm not talking about political. I'm talking about, like, even in tech or just cultural. You know? It's like, no. No. No.

Gary [00:55:52]:
I think you missed the point of that episode or whatever that TV show was. And then you start responding and you realize, oh, I think they know they've missed the point.

Leo [00:56:00]:
And I just don't

Gary [00:56:01]:
know they're Yeah. They're just they're gonna get more people responding if they if they say that. So there's some of that. And, and also, speaking a little bit more politically, I've noticed a lot of social media stuff, not just on those sites, but also in places like TikTok, where you're the algorithm is showing you stuff that you want to see or hear. Right. So basically confirming your predictions or confirming your, emotional state.

Leo [00:56:34]:
Yep.

Gary [00:56:35]:
And it's showing you a lot of that and it doesn't accomplish very much, you know, because it's not it's just basically somebody else saying I feel the same as you or I I'm gonna give you some good news. You know, if you've been worried about this, I'm gonna give you some good news. And it's like, yeah, but you're you're I don't think you're doing it because you're actually, like, you have good news to share. I think you're doing it because you're targeting me.

Leo [00:56:56]:
Right.

Gary [00:56:56]:
Anyway, it's it's interesting. The like this this is kind of the bookend to this episode here. I think search engines are they've been stagnant, and now there's some movement. Things are changing. And I think social media has been a bit stagnant stagnant. And now there's actually some movement. Things are changing.

Leo [00:57:18]:
So So I've went ahead and threw into the show notes, my own link in bio page.

Gary [00:57:23]:
Yeah. I will too. Yeah.

Leo [00:57:24]:
And that's got links to, all of the socials that I'm on, and I'm on most of them. In a lot of a lot of times, I'm paying attention for engagement. I'm not seeing as much as you are. But, nonetheless, I'm trying to figure out which ones are worth spending my time in. I'm automated a lot of the postings. So when I make a, the YouTube shorts I've been playing with lately and some other things, or even if I, you know, am posting something humorous related to Ask Leo, I'll try to throw it out to those socials as well automatically, just to see if there's any, if there's any, engagement and see where I should be spending my time. But one thing I know is that, Facebook is not the place for me to be spending time.

Gary [00:58:07]:
Yeah. I'm not, not not there.

Leo [00:58:10]:
I post the other day for no reason at all. So Oh, yeah. Enough of that. Alrighty. So what's cool this week? I'm going to continue our Star Trek theme since we went there. Okay. I have been watching Star Trek Prodigy, which is an animated one. It is, in conjunction with Nickelodeon.

Leo [00:58:33]:
So you you know that it's actually aimed at a younger audience. But honestly, I'm just enjoying it. It's fun. It's light. I will absolutely admit to myself looking for escapism these days, and this absolutely fits the bill. I've been, you know, watching on my laptop when I've got a few minutes watching while I'm exercise when I've got some other time. So it's just fun. It's it's a Star Trek universe.

Leo [00:59:00]:
It's got, you know, Captain Janeway from Voyager and Voyager. It's got Chakotay from her crew. It's got a few other notables. Most recently, the episode, like, 3 episodes back, might be the 5th or 6th episode of the current season. Wesley Crusher shows up. And Oh, cool. Yes. He's, you know, the, Wil Wheaton is doing the voice for that as Great.

Leo [00:59:23]:
One should. So, yeah, that was a lot of fun. And I wanna throw out Umbrella Academy. It's on it's in its final season. I've only watched 1 or 2 episodes of that final season yet, but it has once again engaged me. I'm enjoying it. It's it's it's unique science fiction slash fantasy. It's it's a very interesting story that we've not run into elsewhere.

Leo [00:59:46]:
I may have mentioned it on previous, podcasts. That is the other one that I am escaping to time to time.

Gary [00:59:53]:
Yeah. Cool. I'll mention

Leo [00:59:56]:
Both are on Netflix, by the way.

Gary [00:59:58]:
I'll I'll mention a a book. We've talked, about Neal Stephenson's books many times in the years we've been doing the show. He has a new book out, and he is starting a series of historical fiction. He's done that before. He did a series called the, the baroque cycle that was like 3 or 6 books depending about how you measure it. That was about, 18th century scientists and engineers and adventurers. Some fiction some fictional versions of real people, some completely made out people, and it was a fascinating little universe he created, for that. So he has started a new one and this one takes place in early 20th century and it goes back and forth between, Western United States actually throughout the United States come to think of it, and, the Soviet Union, early Soviet Union, with a primary character.

Gary [01:00:55]:
And it's like all of his other stuff, it's a kind of a drama with characters in it, but there's psy science in it. Mhmm. And, you know, dealing with science and then the characters will get into deep discussions about the science of the time, and some of the stuff you can look up and say, oh, this event actually happened. That thing that he's describing was real. And then some of the stuff you look up and say, oh, no. That place doesn't exist. It never existed. He made that up.

Gary [01:01:25]:
It's it's kind of fascinating. Anyway, it's the first book of I don't know how many in this series, but I'm hoping because I I remember with the other series, he wrote them pretty fast. So I was like, oh, okay. I'll dive in. I'll read this first one, and then hopefully sometime in 2025, it'll be the next one and so on.

Leo [01:01:42]:
Very cool. Did you name it?

Gary [01:01:44]:
Yes. It's called Polo Stan.

Leo [01:01:45]:
Ah, okay.

Gary [01:01:46]:
Because and actually, Stan Avenue, you know, little Soviet Union naming there. And Polo because Polo actually plays a part in the story.

Leo [01:01:57]:
Oh, how bizarre.

Gary [01:01:58]:
Polo Stan.

Leo [01:01:59]:
The, series have a name.

Gary [01:02:02]:
You know, it does, and I will tell it to you in a minute. It is called the bomb light cycle. Bomb light cycle.

Leo [01:02:16]:
Interesting. Okay.

Gary [01:02:17]:
So, yeah, baroque cycle, bomb light cycle, I guess, is going with that. Okay.

Leo [01:02:21]:
I think

Gary [01:02:21]:
it would be interesting to see if it ties into any future books because the neat thing about the baroque cycle was there were characters in it that were referred to in, cryptonomicon.

Leo [01:02:32]:
Yes. I've I've never thought for some of his books. The characters will actually

Gary [01:02:36]:
Yeah.

Leo [01:02:37]:
Show

Gary [01:02:37]:
up. It was a specific universe that, you know, Cryptonomicon was the first book with those characters, and then the broke cycle had them you know, there was references back and forth, and then there were a couple of books, afterwards that then tied back into Cryptonomicon and The Brogue Cycle and all that. But then that's unrelated to the rest of his books which can't possibly exist in the same universe because they're contradictions and

Leo [01:03:00]:
things

Gary [01:03:00]:
that have happened. So it'd be interesting to see if Polostan, the bomb light cycle ties in with anything else he's he's written or perhaps is completely, by itself. Or maybe in the future, I'll write some books about. I mean, it's weird because it's early 20th century, so it's not that

Leo [01:03:18]:
distant Right.

Gary [01:03:18]:
From today, like, the baroque cycle was taking place in, like, in 17/14 and such.

Leo [01:03:24]:
Right. Cool. Yeah. Yep. In terms of self promotion, I've got an interesting article that we've talked about passkeys a couple of times here. And passkeys are very confusing to a lot of people, and I get that. There's a lot of pushback. But as it turns out, you can actually simulate going passwordless without having to go passwordless.

Leo [01:03:47]:
And it's an interesting exercise in understanding all the different ways that you could potentially sign into your account without a password. And it's it's a good exercise if you just want to experiment and understand how you might, how you might live in a world like that without passkeys. Right? No passkeys involved here, but just all of the other ways that you would sign in. Because without passwords, you need a way to to to basically kick start the the sign in process that doesn't involve a password and doesn't involve a passkey that you haven't set up yet. So, anyway, going passwordless without going passwordless, it's askleo.com/17 5103. Cool.

Gary [01:04:31]:
And I'll just, have a link to my video that I mentioned earlier on, how to record calls on your iPhone with iOS 18.

Leo [01:04:40]:
Cool. Yeah. Well, I think we did it. I think that's another week's worth of of t e h podcast. As always, thank you everyone for listening and we will see you here again real soon. Take care everyone. Bye bye.

Gary [01:04:54]:
Bye.