Leo [00:00:24]:
And we're back. Yes, thank you. I am feeling better this week. That's why we missed last week's episode. But, you know, life goes on. Head cold or not. I think the big one for today, specifically, since we are actually recording on Tuesday the 14th, is that today is the official end of Support for Windows 10, which is apparently a lot of news. There's been a lot of fud.

Leo [00:00:54]:
Microsoft has been leading. Now, I don't want to say they've been leading into it. They just have no vested interest in clearing up any of the fud, which is one of the. One of my pet peeves and one of the reasons I've been taking a somewhat contrarian position on it. So, yeah, ultimately, you know, it is what it is. It's not really news. I just wanted to acknowledge it here today. The.

Leo [00:01:19]:
The contrarian part of this is that I am of the opinion that, that, well, yeah, you can keep using Windows 10. You know, sure. There's nothing. I mean, you know, great. If there's a vulnerability discovered sometime, Windows 10 may not get a fix for it, but that means that it will have, you know, in order for that vulnerability to matter, it will have to apply to a large swath of people, which generally lately doesn't seem to be the case. Most of these vulnerabilities that we hear about are very obscure scenarios and very obscure situations, often enterprise situations, where they're going to get a fix for it anyway. And, you know, as long as you keep your own personal defenses up, you're in fine shape. And apparently, if you were to read the headlines, we are on the verge of Windows Armageddon.

Leo [00:02:20]:
The. The claim, the. If you read them right, the way they interpret things, it seems like all hell will break loose tomorrow when there's no more Support for Windows 10. And that's just not the case.

Gary [00:02:31]:
But it gets more clicks.

Leo [00:02:33]:
Well, it gets so many more clicks. And to be honest, so does a contrarian opinion. But the bottom line, though, is that we've been here before. I keep telling people this and nobody wants to listen to me. We had the exact, exact same scenario when Windows xp, end of, end of support came around because it was very popular. Nobody wanted to switch. Vista was the next thing, and most people just really strongly disliked, to put it bluntly, Windows Vista. So they wanted to keep using Windows xp, and a bunch of them did, and, you know, nothing really happened.

Leo [00:03:17]:
And the same thing happened yet again with Windows 7. The exact same scenario. A lot of people loved Windows 7. A lot of people did not like Windows 8 or 8.1. So they just wanted to keep on using Windows 7, and they did, and nothing happened. It. It just. I find it very, very frustrating to see all these gloom and doom headlines and even comments on things like my YouTube videos.

Leo [00:03:41]:
You know, I've been called irresponsible for holding the position that I hold.

Gary [00:03:46]:
Really? Wow.

Leo [00:03:47]:
No, it's, it's. History tells us. I mean, I realize that, you know, past performance is not an indicator of. But, you know, chances are there are to begin with. There are no absolutes. So we're always, always simply stacking the deck and understanding what the real risk is. And to me, the risk of not upgrading to Windows 11 just ain't that big a deal. You know, obviously, if you can, great, you probably should.

Leo [00:04:20]:
But if you can't, or if you can't because your hardware isn't compatible, or if you can't because your brain isn't compatible, that's okay, right? There are lots of things you can do. What cracks me up is that there are a set of people that have actually intentionally put themselves in this position already. Like years ago, their position was that Windows 10 updates were themselves riskier than not taking Windows 10 updates. So they actually did whatever hack they were able to do to literally prevent Windows Update from updating Windows 10. They've been fine, they've been happy, they've been doing whatever they're doing. So anyway, that's the big thing. The big twist that Microsoft threw at us, of course, is this extended security update, which basically allows you to essentially postpone the end of support for another year. Originally they discussed it or announced it as being a $30 for one year kind of option.

Leo [00:05:24]:
But then they said, oh, by the way, if you jump through a couple of hoops, then you'll get it for free. Those hoops being having Bing reward points or opting to update or backup some of your settings into the cloud. But now that we're here, a lot of people have been getting it and a lot of people have just been getting it for free. I know that in the EU they mandated that it be available for free, but even here I'm not sure I've run across anybody that's actually paid the $30. So it's. There's a whole lot of kerfuffle about it. And honestly, it's just not that big a deal.

Gary [00:06:07]:
Yeah, yeah. I'm surprised to see so many headlines about it that, you know, if you read into the meat of the article, it's the headlines are worse than the Articles. This is true in a lot of the cases, but it is getting a lot of attention. Of course, Apple users used to this because the annual update cycle means that every single year a support is dropped for an old version of Mac os. So you just kind of get used to it. And you know, you get used to people asking if is it okay if they keep using their old Mac with the old operating system or something like that.

Leo [00:06:45]:
But yeah, the answer is almost always, sure, just be careful. And ultimately being careful is just keep doing all the things you were supposed to be doing to begin with.

Gary [00:06:56]:
Right? Exactly. And there are other things. Like, I mean, you know, sometimes there's unforeseen things. Like one of the biggest ones that I personally experienced with people I knew was at some point, you know, if you're one of the millions of people that used Yahoo. Mail, which was a fully, like, browser supported, you know, email thing, it's still a lot. At some point, the version of macOS with the version of Safari that was bundled with it, it wasn't supported anymore. If you were far back on that, then Yahoo. Mail just didn't work.

Gary [00:07:32]:
It just came out with a message saying, sorry, you're using a really old browser here. You had workarounds like you can install Firefox, for instance, because you had a newer version of that browser. It was okay, but it did. People that were like, I'm okay, I don't need to update. There's nothing I need in the new operating systems or with a new Mac found out that there was something they needed. But it leaves a bad taste in your mouth because it's like, well, I didn't. There's not like there's some big new innovation in email that I wanted to get. And that's why I wanted to update.

Gary [00:08:05]:
I wanted the same old features of email, being able to read it and write it. And now you're telling me I have to spend money or do something to get it. And software gets outdated or requires support. There's all sorts of little things. Everybody. It's like your computer setup is different than everybody else's. Which is one of the problems with those articles is like they could say, oh, you need. The reason you need to go from Windows 10 to Windows 11 is this.

Gary [00:08:32]:
But that may not apply to you reading the article. On the other hand, somebody may say you don't need to update. And that may also not apply to you because you use some odd.

Leo [00:08:42]:
Exactly.

Gary [00:08:43]:
Software need.

Leo [00:08:44]:
Yeah, we've run into a leading edge on that already with Windows 11. I believe it's QuickBooks, how?

Gary [00:08:51]:
That they're a common culprit.

Leo [00:08:53]:
Yes. They have said that they will no longer support Windows 10 and if you want to use their tax software next year, you have to use Windows 11. To which I'm saying, well, or maybe use something else. QuickBooks.

Gary [00:09:10]:
Exactly. Yeah. QuickBooks actually had the same issue with Macs like maybe 20 years ago, whereas they had an old version of QuickBooks that in a standalone software that they did not update for newer versions of Mac hardware like the operating system. So you had to stick with old hardware, old operating system in order to keep using QuickBooks and they did not provide an update. So it was basically, yeah, you can't use QuickBooks on Mac anymore unless you have an old Mac.

Leo [00:09:40]:
Right.

Gary [00:09:40]:
And it, so it put lots of people into the state where they were like, well, it's important to me, so I'm going to keep using my old Mac, not a new Mac.

Leo [00:09:49]:
And what's frustrating is I don't want to minimize individuals experiences. Right. I mean, if you're terribly invested in QuickBooks or whatever software that comes along with these kind of new requirements, and you're also invested in avoiding Windows 11 at all costs, you're in a hard place. Right. If you can't afford a new machine that makes the new hardware requirements or whatever. I get it, that's painful, but it's honestly as painful as it is for that individual. You're the exception, not the rule.

Gary [00:10:20]:
Right.

Leo [00:10:21]:
You're not a sign of what's happening to absolutely everybody. For the most part, everybody is in a position where they can keep using Windows 10. Yes. Eventually. Eventually some piece of software that they use will probably stop supporting Windows 10 eventually. We've certainly run into this with Windows 7. Right? There are applications that no longer run on Windows 7. Sometimes there are alternatives, sometimes there aren't.

Leo [00:10:49]:
But the people that have continued to use Windows 7 for all these years have run into this kind of situation and eventually that's going to happen for Windows 10. But even then you're the exception, not the rule. Chances are most people will have actually gotten a new machine for other reasons that have come with Windows 11 pre installed or maybe at that point Windows 12 that basically they sidestepped the whole issue because they had to do it. They just ended up upgrading. Not because they upgraded, but because they replaced. So I don't know. It's fun times. I did want to ask you one specific question because one of the things that happened with one of the big differences between Windows 10 and Windows 11 that Microsoft has been pushing on is that back in the day there did not used to be a Microsoft account.

Leo [00:11:45]:
When you set up your machine, you set it up like, I don't know, like a Linux machine. You have an account on that machine, it's got a password, it's how you log into your machine, and it was all independent. Windows 10 allowed you to set your machine up that way, but they strongly encouraged the use of a Microsoft account when that was introduced. But Windows 10, again, still, you can set up a machine without a Microsoft account and have it just be local and have it not be tied to the Microsoft ecosystem. Windows 11, it started out that you could do that, then they took that away, then people discovered a workaround, then they took that away, then people discovered another workaround and they took that away. And there's a current workaround that Microsoft has announced that they are going to take away so that you are pretty darn close to not being able to install Windows 11 without a Microsoft account. I believe I've discovered a new one. I It's super simple, it's a little time consuming, and I'll be announcing it in an article a couple of weeks from now.

Leo [00:12:51]:
But it's something I've experimented with and yes, it's still allowing me to have Windows 11 installed from scratch with a local account only. My question to you, can you install a Mac from scratch without an Apple account?

Gary [00:13:06]:
Yes, you can. Now, more and more things, features and advantages of using a Mac are tied to having some sort of an account, an Apple account, what it's called. But you can buy a new Mac, you can set it up and say, I'll do this later, as far as like signing into your Apple account and then just not do it. And you get the operating system, you get the ability to do most of the local things you can do. You get the ability to update the operating system through the software update feature. You then of course are missing the obvious things like obviously you don't have any icloud stuff at all because it doesn't know who you are. How could it need to know who you are to know where to put your stuff? The App Store, of course, you need to have an account there to be able to download software, even free software, which means you could still download software from developers on the web. But if a developer has chosen to only have their app in the App Store, then you're stuck.

Gary [00:14:19]:
You can't get that anywhere else. It's easy for developers to offer both. When I say easy, the only piece of software I've got, I don't do it. My Clipboard manager is only App Store just because it's like, oh, it's a whole bunch of other things and tools and stuff I need to do on the website to just have it so you could download it and all that. And I said no, I want to make this simple on me. And it's only App Store, but yeah. So technically clip tools, like you would need an Apple account to get clip tools because there's no other way to get it except for the App Store. But for other software like anything from Adobe or Utilities or any, you don't need an account with Apple.

Gary [00:14:56]:
There are a few other things. Like Apple Intelligence, for instance, does require an Apple account. Even if you say I just want to use the onboard LLM the whole time, there's just no option for that. Now there are parts of the operating system now that are starting to be covered by that part of the Venn diagram where you need to have an Apple account. But in general, no, there's like people who set up computers in public places like schools or cafes or whatever like that can set them up without it. There are tools for actually doing device management that will substitute in as kind of an Apple account type of thing. Like in other words, so you could do, and I've really no familiarity with the management tools, but you could do Apple account, like for an individual, a management tool, device management tool for schools, offices, cafes, whatever, or nothing, you know, no account at all. And yeah, it's, it's perfectly fine.

Gary [00:15:57]:
I mean if I, you know, if I had a young kid right now and I, I take one of my old Macs and just wipe it and reconfigure it and I wouldn't, wouldn't install an Apple account on it. I wouldn't hook it up. I just install a bunch of software and not hook it up to the Internet. It would run perfectly fine as a regular old school computer. But with the modern operating system on it.

Leo [00:16:17]:
Right, Interesting. One of the frustrations from the Microsoft perspective is that again, like with Windows 10 you can. And with Windows 11 you have to do some tap dancing to make it happen. But assuming you've got a machine that has only local account, you have not set up a Microsoft account for it. Again, you miss out like you do on a Mac, you miss out on features on services, right? Like OneDrive. It needs to know who you are. Microsoft Office subscriptions. It needs a Microsoft account.

Leo [00:16:49]:
Even I think the Microsoft Office single purchase still needs a Microsoft account. Don't know about the Microsoft Store, but I suspect it's in that same bucket where, yeah, you probably can't get what you want out of the Microsoft Store without an account. The catch, the frustrating catch, is that people are avoiding the Microsoft account in many cases because they explicitly don't want to run the risk of enabling OneDrive or enabling Copilot or doing whatever other things are associated with a Microsoft account. But eventually they stumble into some feature or service that they do want where they break down and they say, okay, fine, I will sign into my Microsoft account for just this. And Microsoft will say, oh, look, we have a Microsoft account and now we're going to use it for that and this and this and this and this. And all of a sudden you've basically undone all of these protections that you think thought you were getting by not having an account. That is actually pretty frustrating, but it's the way Microsoft has been pushing things, for sure.

Gary [00:17:53]:
Yeah, that's interesting. I thought Apple does a better tact on it. Like, for instance, if you set up your computer without an Apple account, you're not going to use icloud, you're not going to do any of that. And then you go into like Messages or facetime which use these systems and you could sign into those right, with your, you know, sign in with this account. And then it's not hooking anything else up, it's just those. So I've never tried to do that and how smoothly it works, but they are separate. Same thing for like buying. I don't know how it works on the App Store, but I know, like, you used to be able to sign into itunes to buy music and not sign in anywhere else.

Leo [00:18:33]:
Honestly, it should work like that. Yeah, absolutely. 100% it should work like that. But for whatever reason, Microsoft has been pushing OneDrive really, really hard over the past couple of years. They desperately want you to back up your documents in OneDrive. And the conspiracy theorists say that that's because they want to scan all your documents. Although it's Microsoft Windows, if they wanted to scan your documents, they could do that. Already the others are saying, well, they want you to run out of space so that you're forced to purchase more space.

Leo [00:19:07]:
Yes, whatever. Microsoft. My belief is that Microsoft is using quote, unquote dark patterns where they will offer you a service unrelated to OneDrive that will require you to use a Microsoft account. But then if you don't read carefully or you, you don't read the fine print, what you find is that enabling that service as a Side effect then also signs you into OneDrive and all heck breaks loose. So, yeah, that's what people are doing. But okay, it sounds like Macs are doing the right thing in the sense that you can still do it and they keep things appropriately separate.

Gary [00:19:52]:
Yeah, I mean, I think there's some of it. I don't think they're completely clean, but it seems to be better. The funny thing is Microsoft does the same thing with. What did you call it? The dark patterns. They do that with the Microsoft Office apps on Mac. So if you're just a casual user, just like, okay, my computer is a tool for me to use. I don't want to know much about how it works. I just want to use it.

Gary [00:20:20]:
I need Microsoft Word. And you just install it and go about your business and just kind of go the path of least resistance. You're going to get into OneDrive. It's even going to be like, you'll be like, oh, I'm not going to do OneDrive. I'm just going to save stuff locally. And that'll be like, oh, but it wants me to save stuff. It wants to open files from OneDrive. Like, it's going to push you in that direction.

Gary [00:20:43]:
And you really have to say, no, no, no, turn that, go over here. I want to open a file for my local drive.

Leo [00:20:50]:
Right.

Gary [00:20:50]:
And that's all I want to do. And I'm going to do that each time. You could do it. But tons of people I know because I read the comments and I've heard from individuals asking me haven't have gotten into OneDrive without really wanting to get into OneDrive. They just installed Word and started using it and followed along.

Leo [00:21:08]:
The phrase you used is exactly the right one. It's the path of least resistance. Microsoft has made the default path. If you don't pay attention, if you don't make any contrary decisions, if you don't look at the appropriate options, yeah, you're going to be saving documents to OneDrive whether you like it or not. Yeah, there are ways to get around that. They are not necessarily convenient or they are not necessarily even easy to find. And that's why I call it a dark pattern. Because Microsoft is just, yeah, pushing you in a direction that they want you to go into.

Gary [00:21:42]:
And to be fair, I think some of that goes on with Apple too. Certainly. I think if you follow the path of least resistance with getting a new Mac, you would end up with files on icloud drive. Like, you would just be like, oh, okay, it says use icloud. Okay, yeah, sure. If it's saying I should use icloud drive, I guess I use icloud drive and then you're using icloud drive.

Leo [00:22:02]:
It kind of sort of also depends on what do you think the motivations or the intent is behind that kind of a push. Like I said, the Microsoft side, people are believing that Microsoft is looking for more subscription revenue or they just want to look at your data or whatever. But there's actually an altruistic alternative that says, you know, people don't back up. After all this time, people still do not back up. How about we make it easy for them to do that? Just, you know, the Internet connections are ubiquitous, and fast enough, a little bit of storage gets them a long way so that the document, documents they're working on today, even if they delete them, because there's a recycle bin in OneDrive, even if they delete them, then the document is still recoverable, which is not something. I mean, people have to ultimately take responsibility for themselves if they're not going to use these on these online services. So, like I said, there's at least an argument that says there's a potential for some altruism there. But after, after seeing how hard Microsoft has been pushing this and how hard they make it not to do it, I'm.

Leo [00:23:13]:
Altruistic is not a term that I want to use.

Gary [00:23:17]:
I think it's maybe applies better more to Apple and Google in terms of the Google, in terms of Android, with Google Drive and with icloud Drive, because I really do feel the beginnings of all of this for those two companies and maybe it was for Microsoft and just not anymore was the whole like, okay, every day at every Apple store, we're going to get 50 people coming in saying, I lost my data. And it turns out they didn't back it up or use any cloud service or whatever. So we're just going to. For people with the iPhone, we'll just have it be automatically like their notes, their reminders, their calendar events. Everything's just going to automatically be on the cloud. So they come in and they say, someone stole my iPhone. Oh, we could sell you a new one. Oh, well, great.

Gary [00:23:59]:
But unfortunately, all my stuff was on my iPhone. Well, guess what? All your stuff is now in your new iPhone. Like magic. And it's still to this day for, especially for those iPhone users, they don't do anything with their photos. Like, really, they get somebody a new iPhone, it's like they go and they take a thousand photos. They're not backing them up anywhere. And then the phone breaks or is stolen or falls to the bottom of a lake, and they're like, I just lost all my photos. And then they're given it.

Gary [00:24:33]:
They buy a new iPhone. And then there are all the photos to the point now where I think people are taking it for granted. Like, I think. I think they don't know that that was how it was supposed to be. You dropped your phone and are like, your photos are gone.

Leo [00:24:45]:
Lose your photos.

Gary [00:24:46]:
Yeah, you know, they just go to Apple and Apple says, here's your new phone. They say, great. And all my photos are there. Perfect. Like, why wouldn't they be? I don't understand how this works, but I just know my photos will actually be on the new phone because they are.

Leo [00:24:58]:
When I replaced my Pixel earlier this year, you know, my Pixel 6 died. Screen broke the third time, I think, and I just replaced it with a 9. But I did it all myself here. And it was one of the things where I turned it on. It says, hey, do you want me to restore? So now? Well, guess that would be a lot easier. So I said yes. And a couple hours later, everything that was on my old phone was on my new phone. The biggest dilemma for me was that I typically use these situations as an opportunity to start from scratch and not reinstall all the applications that I hadn't used forever.

Leo [00:25:38]:
But I decided I just got lazy. And, yeah, all the apps I wasn't using on my six, I'm now currently not using on my nine.

Gary [00:25:47]:
There you go. Consistency.

Leo [00:25:48]:
Yes. So, anyway. Okay, well, that's curious. Anyway, like I said, Windows 10 end of support today, Armageddon tomorrow. I don't think so. Oh, one point I was going to make. I mentioned earlier that it's not in Microsoft's best interest to deal with a fud. Is that from their perspective, the FUD actually pushes people in a direction that is most beneficial to Microsoft.

Leo [00:26:17]:
They will buy more OneDrive space, they will buy new machines, which means new licenses for Windows and all that kind of stuff. So even though Microsoft, I'm sure internally knows that now, of course you can Keep using Windows 10, no way are they ever going to say that publicly because it just doesn't serve corporate interests.

Gary [00:26:37]:
Yep.

Leo [00:26:39]:
Anyway, so what you got, anyway?

Gary [00:26:41]:
Oh, did you say AI? You. You wanted me to talk about AI? I did mention. Of course.

Leo [00:26:46]:
So there was what? There was a reference? Yeah.

Gary [00:26:48]:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, you're right. This is actually a topic we put on our, you know, our topic ideas several weeks ago, and it's only become more pertinent. A lot of times we put stuff on the list and we don't get to it. And then three weeks later I'm like, well, that's. Nobody's talking about that anymore. That doesn't mean anything.

Gary [00:27:05]:
And sometimes it's like, no, this is actually. It's trying to push itself up to the top. So AI video generation. So this is something I've been really interested in for a long time. The, you know, the part of AI, the little section of AI where you can type a prompt and maybe feed it some images and stuff and it will generate video for you. And it's fascinating stuff. It's basically computer generated video, just like we've had with graphics tools and stuff in the past. But it's using AI to basically cut out a lot of work on your part of modeling and doing all this stuff.

Gary [00:27:46]:
And you could just say, oh, give me a tiger and a trampoline and it would give you video of that. Of course the original stuff was bad. It was bad, but it was impressive because it was like, it's something that is technically a tiger on a trampoline or Will Smith eating spaghetti or whatever. It just looks ridiculous. But then eventually it got better and better and better. It's an interesting tool that can be used in a huge variety of different ways. Now, like the rest of AI, there's people that latch onto some of the ways it's used and just label the whole thing as bad without bothering to look at some of the other ways it could be used and how that's not as bad. But it is interesting in that in the last two weeks, a big story has been Sora 2, which is OpenAI's video generator.

Gary [00:28:38]:
Obviously, Sora 2 is the successor to Soar 1, and it allows you to type. You can type a prompt and it'll generate video. You could give it images and source material and refine the prompt and all that and it generates a short bit. I think it's like 12 seconds now or something like that. Maybe 20. I think it's 12. And people have been using it in an interesting way because it looks kind of fake unless you work really hard at it and then it could look kind of real. But they're leaning with SORA too heavily into the meme making and kind of TikTok viral video generation stuff.

Gary [00:29:23]:
Instead of saying, let's make it real, let's just make it fun, right? You know, let's make it look maybe not as real as before. Like, let's scale back the Real, but it gives you the opportunity to put a tiger on a trampoline. Like instead of saying, let me find video of a tiger on a trampoline. To illustrate my point, you just say tiger and trampoline and then you get. You get that. And it may not look as realistic as you want it to, but it's fun to look at. And they've put it together in what is basically like a tool like TikTok, where the whole thing is, instead of you filming yourself and putting stuff up, you just prompt out a video and share it. And then people can watch those.

Gary [00:30:10]:
And the idea is just like with any other streaming media stuff or streaming social media stuff, the good one drives to the top of the algorithm and everything. So it's fun. You can go through and see all these creative animation bits because they look kind of animated. Then the neat thing is on top of that, everyone you view, you can then modify. So you get tiger on a trampoline and you see it and you're like, that's cool. And then it prompts you. You could just go to the next one. Or you could alter this.

Gary [00:30:43]:
So you could say, we'll do a Cheeto on a trampoline or do a tiger and a dog on a trampoline or whatever it is. And you could just basically make your iteration of it, which also then gets put up there for the next person to come along and make their version of your version of the previous one. So it becomes this kind of collaborative, creative, fun tool that doesn't really have much artistic thing to it. It's not like, you know, it's just fun. It's just a little like playing around kind of thing. And it's got other parts to it. Like, for instance, you could scan yourself as a model and then use yourself in your videos and make yourself the model of yourself available to others, either specific others to use or the general public to use. So some like, you know, minor celebrities or people that want to be celebrities can actually go and do that.

Gary [00:31:37]:
And people can then go and, you know, having. Have them pull trains with their teeth or whatever they want to. Crazy thing they want to do. But it's kind of this neat way that this online video has gone now. There are people that are abusing it somewhat. The. It's. It's all.

Gary [00:31:55]:
That's all sorts of different gradients like you. So you could look on a different platform like TikTok or Reels or YouTube and find some of this stuff. And you could look at it and say, wow, look at that look at that kitten and chimpanzee that are friends or whatever and then be like, oh, wait a minute, this isn't real. And a lot of times it's like, yeah, it's not real. And the name of the account is Sora Fun and with the tag AI Fun generated videos. So what gave you the clue? Like they're not eyed in it. Other times it's like, well, it is. They're not really saying that it's AI in the account, but they do label the video as AI or they leave in the SORA watermark.

Leo [00:32:38]:
Right.

Gary [00:32:38]:
Which is AI, you know, which tells you it's AI. So they're not hiding it. Right. But it does fool you for a second. It's kind of like, oh, yeah, I got you to watch this video of the chimpanzee and the kitten and not hiding that it's AI But I got you to watch before you realized it was. Other times people do actually try to get the watermark out of there. SORA does a neat thing where the watermark jumps around so it's not like in the corner and you could just crop jumps around and you can, you know, it's hard to miss the blurry area where they've tried to constantly.

Leo [00:33:10]:
Where it used to be. Yes.

Gary [00:33:11]:
Yeah. Trim it out so. So it's interesting seeing people try to abuse it. Other people. Probably the most interesting stuff is people not at all trying to abuse it, but make cool, weird science fiction, fantasy looking kind of stuff. That's far more interesting than seeing like, you know, the. How the run of videos of like a bear on a porch and either a little kid or grandmother trampoline earlier.

Leo [00:33:37]:
Right. There was a whole sequence that started out with something that people thought was real.

Gary [00:33:41]:
Yes.

Leo [00:33:42]:
Was it, what was it? Raccoons on a trampoline or something?

Gary [00:33:44]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:33:46]:
And all of a sudden people took it and ran. And all of a sudden there were corgis on a trampoline. Yeah. Bears on a train.

Gary [00:33:52]:
That was all part of this. Yeah. This whole thing. But it was. People have been. Because obviously if. If it got to you and there were no corgis on a trampoline yet, you would have been really tempted to say, well, here's my contribution. The corgi isn't a trampoline.

Gary [00:34:06]:
There was somebody. I saw, for instance that it was. It got to the point where it was a dog and a cat play fighting on a trampoline. And the only alterations when he made was they changed the type of cat to the type of cat that they had, Right. Because they wanted to see, you know, so that's the kind, the level of stuff we're looking at here. Right. And it made somebody happy for 30 seconds to change that and see that video.

Leo [00:34:27]:
And there is a sequence of AI generated videos. And I don't, honestly, I don't know if they were using Sora, but they were using something along those same lines. And they were basically little mini stories, you know, the 32nd or 62nd tick tock length stories. And they were like Sasquatch who had just eaten Taco Bell.

Gary [00:34:51]:
Yes.

Leo [00:34:51]:
Running through the forest trying to figure out what was going to happen. And you know, they were funny. They were, they were in. Yes, it was completely, obviously completely AI, but it was just a bit of humor. And that's actually an interesting use of the technology that I kind of sort of appreciated.

Gary [00:35:09]:
Right. And, and I, when I first started to see them appearing, I, you know, was like, ah, some of them are trying to be tricky, some of them are trying to just be fun. The neat thing about going to the, like the Sora app, which is still to use Sora too. You still have to. There's a bunch of hurdles, there's invite links and stuff, but you know, in a few weeks everybody will be able to use it.

Leo [00:35:27]:
By the way, it's still Mac or iPhone only, which is. Oh really trading for.

Gary [00:35:33]:
Well, it's web now too, some of us. Okay, yeah, it's iPhone, the iPhone app, but also Web2. But it's weird because without going into too much detail, I was trying to use the web version and even with everything done right, it wasn't letting me into Sora 2. And then somebody said, you try on the iPhone. It's like, I don't want to do it on the iPhone version. No, just do it on the, like, go to the iPhone version. And I, and I did. And it said, do you want to use the new Sora too? I was like, yes.

Gary [00:36:03]:
And then now stop right there. Go back to the web version. And it was like, oh, the button for do you want to upgrade to Sora 2 is gone. And I'm in Sora too. Okay. They're being tricky, right?

Leo [00:36:15]:
But I have to fire up my iPad and see if I can make that happen. And then.

Gary [00:36:19]:
Yeah, well, and the neat thing is when you're in the Soar app, you know, it's 100% AI generated stuff. So suddenly that whole thing of like people trying to trick you falls away. And now you're just looking at creative stuff. And it reminds me of like, the weird. Like when you would go to web pages 30 years ago that were pixels and you could, like, make a pixel a color, and people started painting, like, flags and corners and stuff. I mean, little creative, weird ideas that people came up with, and you just have fun with them and you contribute to this big, huge, worldwide community art project. It kind of feels like that. Plus, of course, it's helping desensitize people, too.

Gary [00:36:57]:
Like, you know, video may not be real, which I like, you know, a safe place to be. Like, all the video here is not real. Play around, enjoy. Have fun. Good. Now that you've done that for an hour, you are less susceptible.

Leo [00:37:09]:
I was going to say be amazed at how realistic this looks and then understand that when you're not on this platform, some of the things that look realistic might not be.

Gary [00:37:19]:
Yeah, it uses sound with dialogue often, which is also a new thing. And the stories are. Since it's a little bit longer, like 12 seconds or so, it actually does different story points. Like, it's not just a one little action happens. There could be various things. And it's pretty good with humor. Like, if you give it something vague enough, it goes for humor every time. Like, everything is.

Gary [00:37:47]:
Unless you're specifically saying this is serious, it's going to make something funny kind of happen. Or the character say something kind of funny or sarcastic. Like, that must be built into it. It's like, make this fun, make it funny, you know, make it entertaining. I don't know.

Leo [00:38:06]:
I'm going to have to go play with it. It's fun.

Gary [00:38:08]:
But now, outside of that, of course, you still have lots of people working on some serious tools, you know, doing cool stuff as well. And the tools there are getting better and better for generating video, for generating images. The criticism is getting harder and harder. It does seem like we are definitely entering up. Like, there's almost like a religious war. The people that hate AI and the people that like AI. And once again, I find myself, I think you too, kind of in the middle of, like, not being subscribing to one or the other.

Leo [00:38:41]:
It's AI. It's how you use it, right? Yeah, it's similar to lots of tools. Some people use it for really good and creative and entertaining things, and some people use it for absolute garbage.

Gary [00:38:55]:
Yeah, I'm. I'm looking forward to, for instance, things getting to the point. And this is a big step in that direction for educating with it. Right. That's a big thing. Like, I'm looking at. Okay, 12 seconds. In 12 seconds, can I Get it to generate a video that would educate people and help kind of inoculate them against a certain type of scam, like an online scam.

Leo [00:39:15]:
You know, that's a good segue for a couple things. One is I think the 12 second limit is temporary. Oh sure, that that will change. It will become actually probably pretty quickly. I Suspect it'll become 30 seconds so that people can do true tick tock style videos, you know, of, of appropriate length and eventually a minute or longer. Here's a question that somebody asked me this morning, literally this morning. The comment was that we might want to do something to my videos that point out that they are real. I do this already on the website.

Leo [00:39:56]:
In, on the upper right hand corner of the website it says written by a real human, which links to an article that describes how I use AI. But the fact that is, you know, I'm writing my own content at some point. The concern is that AI will be good enough, that what you and I do can be generated by AI. And again, there's two paths to that, right? There's the obvious, or maybe it's not intending to deceive, it's just here's an AI talking head, talking about something related to technology. They look human, they act in human ways. They've got the quirks and the, the verbal static or whatever. But the other path is a little scary too. And that is what happens if somebody tries to actually mimic you or me.

Leo [00:40:54]:
Which is certainly, it's not happening today, but I can see it on the radar. And I honestly, it's one of those things where, you know, somebody tries to mimic me. Well, okay, that's a sign of how successful I am because I suspect that there are more valuable people to go mimic. But the bottom line is that it's possible. And what does that do to our legitimate content when anybody can generate something that looks like us?

Gary [00:41:22]:
Yep. Yeah, I've thought about that too. Because I mean, clearly one, there is one answer, but it's not a great one. And that is, of course we control our websites. It can't get onto our websites without us putting it there. So somebody can mimic us, but they would have to put it somewhere else. Now that could still fool people and there could be, you know, tons of people easily fooled.

Leo [00:41:49]:
How many celebrities have these fake accounts?

Gary [00:41:53]:
Yeah, fake accounts just basically steal their.

Leo [00:41:55]:
Content and then start reaching out to individuals, scamming them for money or whatever.

Gary [00:42:00]:
Yeah, I mean, the thing is, it's like we have a way if, if it's just we have our audience and we have a way to reach out to them or not through our websites and say, look, if it's not officially here that it's not me, it doesn't help solve the bigger problem. But it is a way to prove, like, if somebody really wanted to know, is this a real video? There is a way for them to find out. It's just a matter of how easy can we make these tools or make some sort of tool or some process for them to figure that out. If they're not willing to put the effort in. If they just see a video of us and they assume, and then you don't put the work in to actually verify that it's really us. And yeah, I want to at some point. I would love it if these tools evolved at some point where I could make a video where I don't need a camera or a microphone. The idea being that it is me.

Gary [00:42:56]:
Like the words are me, like I've written the words, perhaps I've typed them. But what you see is me on the screen. Didn't involve a camera and it didn't involve a microphone. It's AI generated of me speaking. But it's no different than if I had a camera and a microphone. As a matter of fact, it may be better because I guarantee you, if you let me write out my tutorials as an article and say everything in them that I want to say, I will be editing them a lot more finely, spending a lot more time fine tuning what's there and creating something of higher quality. If I could do that and press a button and then it generates the video of me talking instead of me doing it live to camera, you will get a higher quality thing at the end. As long as you're willing to overlook the fact that there's a digital interface between us, which there already is.

Gary [00:43:48]:
You're not looking at me, you're looking at your screen or your computer and that's showing you pixels. And those pixels were decompressed from bits that were sent over the Internet that I had compressed that had come from the CCD in my camera of me, you know, so it's already there.

Leo [00:44:06]:
It's just that ones and zeros.

Gary [00:44:08]:
Yeah, yeah, there's already. We're already translating a lot of stuff to get our images to you. This is just a different way to do it that may actually improve the quality of things. I mean, I've never been felt. I've been very natural on video and I know for a fact that I could do better as a writer. So I don't know, we'll see. I would love then to be able to go and certify somehow and say, yeah, this is@macmost.com this is. I've approved every word.

Gary [00:44:37]:
I've written every word.

Leo [00:44:39]:
So here's a super geeky validation. No, maybe not. Anyway, think about this. Public key encryption and QR codes. So you generate something about your video that you then encrypt, usually using a digital signature, basically, and then you encode that as a QR code that you include in the video. Nobody else would be able to generate that QR code that actually validates against your public key.

Gary [00:45:13]:
Right.

Leo [00:45:13]:
Like I said, super geeky. Nobody's going to do it. But I just thought it was interesting.

Gary [00:45:17]:
No, yeah, you could definitely do. I mean, all the worst they could do then is pirate it and just copy it. But it's still that they'd have to keep the actual copy. So it's still you just being shown without your permission, which happens now, anyway. But, yeah, interesting, interesting stuff. So the video space is really interesting right now. Yeah, it could be fun, especially now, kind of trying to find alternatives to, like, TikTok in the future. I didn't expect the alternate.

Gary [00:45:49]:
I thought the alternative to TikTok may become something like, you know, Instagram reels or whatever. I didn't expect it to come from OpenAI.

Leo [00:45:57]:
There's that. What I'm seeing as an alternative to TikTok for existing creators turns out to be YouTube, which I love. I think that's a great direction for them to go.

Gary [00:46:07]:
Yeah, no, I definitely think it's. Yeah. And going long, longer form video is always good. More options, always good. The revenue model is better for creators.

Leo [00:46:16]:
Yes.

Gary [00:46:18]:
So, yeah, in general, you know, fortunately I started there, so I'm getting the benefits and I. And I know you're being very successful there now, too, so.

Leo [00:46:27]:
Yeah. All right, cool. So in the Ain't it Cool bucket.

Gary [00:46:33]:
Yeah.

Leo [00:46:35]:
I gotta admit, this may concern you.

Gary [00:46:39]:
Okay.

Leo [00:46:40]:
This may worry you about me. So first off, we'll start here. There's a link in our show notes to YouTube Music's Top 100 Songs of the Netherlands. It's basically the top 100 playlist that they update regularly of what's happening in that country. I think that's pretty cool. And it's there for lots and lots of different countries. Of course, I have an affinity for the Netherlands. I've been listening to it periodically for the last few weeks.

Leo [00:47:06]:
And the top, I don't know, three, four, until Taylor Swift released her album, I think the top four songs were all from the movie K Pop Demon Hunters. Okay, fair enough. I mean, you know, it's. It's K Pop, it's fun music to listen to. And damn it if that didn't get my curiosity up. We ended up watching the movie K Pop Demon Hunters and I liked was cool. I don't know what that says about me, but I enjoyed it. So that's my.

Leo [00:47:46]:
Is it cool for this week? Is K Pop Demon Hunters the movie?

Gary [00:47:51]:
Well, I've. I've been K Pop Demon Hunters curious, so maybe I will check it out. Well, you know, the thing is, is that I'm looking at this moment in time. I am definitely looking for entertainment that is entertaining and there's a lot of stuff out there that is entertaining but also is a bit heavy. So, yeah, maybe I'll check it out. I really didn't have anything for this week. My been reading stuff slowly and haven't really been watching anything new on tv. But I guess if there's been something that I thought was cool, you know, there's a new feature in iOS 26 and also Mac OS 26 and all that.

Gary [00:48:34]:
It's the simplest little thing that I'm sure most people are ignoring and I can't even do a video on it because it's so simple. And it's just called Automix. What Auto Mix is, is when you play a playlist, instead of just either ending a track and going to the next track in music or fading one out and fading the next one in, it actually is using a little bit of AI to blend the two tracks together in the way a DJ mike might if they were playing on the radio or in a club. So there's a little bit of fade in, fade out. There's a little bit of beat matching, right? There's a little bit. I definitely hear a little bit of the vocal overlay where if there's a vocal starting on the new song from the old song and the old song is fading out instruments and you kind of hear that vocal come in first. I mean, it's really fascinating and I have found that it right away is like, how did I even enjoy playlists before this? Like, this is really cool. I'm like listening to old playlists because it's like, oh, I want to hear this group of songs auto mix into each other between each one.

Gary [00:49:46]:
And then every once in a while, if I don't do it or for whatever reason it doesn't do it and it actually fades out the song or the song Ends I'm like, what, what is going on? The music has stopped for half a second. It's like, come on. So anyway, it's a cool feature if you listen to music and you're on the, in the Apple ecosystem, you know, make sure you have auto mix turned on and start and maybe enjoy a few playlists with it on and see what I mean? Stupid little, tiny little thing that now seems like it should have been there for the last 10 years.

Leo [00:50:19]:
Cool.

Gary [00:50:19]:
Yep.

Leo [00:50:21]:
In terms of self promotion, I'm just going to go ahead and point people at. Should I Update to Windows 11? My October 2025 update. It covers a lot of what we talked about earlier in the show, but it's basically my bottom line recommendation that says, you know, yeah, you know, if you can, if you should, you know, if your machine's capable, if your brain's capable, you probably should, but there are some alternatives as well. Anyway, that's askleo.com 135037 Should I update to Windows 11?

Gary [00:50:51]:
Cool. I'll point to a video of mine where I talk about text scams. I always try to educate people about scams. The best way to protect people is just to show them the scams so that they kind of recognize them as soon as they come in. And I did one before that was. It went very well. It was mostly email scams. So I decided to do one where I focused on scams that just come usually over texting, a variety of things.

Gary [00:51:17]:
And hey, if you know these 10, then you'll know. You'll know them when you get them. And you will get most of these.

Leo [00:51:24]:
Do you actually interact? Do you, do you, do you take the next step when you get one of these texts?

Gary [00:51:32]:
No, no, this is, no, this is. I'm just talking about each one showing a little example. And, and actually I discourage people from interacting, you know, because every once in a while I do hear people say, oh, I like to mess with them, or I liked. And the first thing is like, no, it's not worth your time. Okay. This is. They're dealing with huge numbers. Right.

Gary [00:51:54]:
You may think, oh, I'm wasting their time. It's like, it's way more of a waste of your time than it is them.

Leo [00:52:00]:
They're probably driving a hundred different telephone, you know, 100 patients at the same time. So.

Gary [00:52:05]:
Plus, the fact is, is that is, you know, a lot of. If they're good, they're basically dealing with like psychological tricks.

Leo [00:52:15]:
Yes.

Gary [00:52:15]:
You know, don't open yourself up. It's like, oh, if a thief is trying to rob my house, I don't open the door and start messing with them. No, we don't open the door. You know, it's like, don't even give them the chance. And in some of these scams like pig butchering and stuff, I mean, there have been instances of people being like, oh, I know what you're doing. Oh, you got me. You know, and then the next thing you know, three months later there's some other scam gets pulled on them and their buddy that's kind of the scammer. But they, you know, so you just, you just don't even want to mess.

Gary [00:52:44]:
Don't mess. Don't waste your time with anything. Just like you see, you delete and ignore. Move on.

Leo [00:52:52]:
Agree 100%.

Gary [00:52:54]:
Cool.

Leo [00:52:55]:
Alrighty. Well, I think that does us for another week. As always, thank you for listening, thank you for being here and we will see you again sometime very soon. Take care everyone.

Gary [00:53:07]:
Bye bye.