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1:28

is the Daily Tech News for Friday, June 21, 2024 in Los

1:30

Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And

1:41

from Studio Animal House, I'm Sarah Lane. At

1:45

the edge of the 314, I'm Patrick Norton. And

1:48

I'm producing today's show. I'm Amos. Hi, Amos. Raise

1:52

your hand if your hand is covered

1:54

with very microscopic puppy bites. Oh,

1:57

that's just me. I can't. I

1:59

can't. today. It's just

2:01

my, yeah,

2:04

it's, it's funny how it feels like a

2:06

rash. Yeah. But you

2:09

can't see it. It's just

2:11

your hand looks normal. Have you

2:13

entered into the pterodactyl stage of the puppy

2:15

yet? I feel like, yeah, I feel like

2:17

maybe, uh, seven,

2:20

the dog being the advanced puppy that he is,

2:22

this has entered it a little early. So, you

2:24

know, good, good for him. Tom, do

2:26

you have any tattoos? Uh,

2:29

no, I do not. Not dissimilar.

2:31

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I can get

2:34

tattoos all

2:36

over your hands. That's what you should start doing.

2:38

Tell people like, eh, it's a tattoo. It's, you

2:40

know, it's kind of a millennial thing you wouldn't

2:42

understand. Trying to figure out how to get

2:44

ink into seven's teeth now. So if we can, we

2:46

just put on your hand and let him punch it

2:48

in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a whole business model

2:51

there. I'd

2:53

never thought of before. All right. Let's

2:55

start with some technology news in the quick

2:57

hits. Spotify

3:00

introduced a new basic streaming plan for users

3:02

in the U S for $10 and 99

3:04

cents per month, including

3:06

all of the benefits of a premium plan,

3:08

but without the monthly audio book listening time,

3:11

the launch of the new basic plan comes weeks

3:13

after Spotify announced the price of its premium plan

3:15

would increase to $11.99 from 10 99. TikTok filed

3:17

its briefs in

3:22

not boxers briefs in the U S D

3:24

C circuit court Thursday detailing its

3:26

case for why it believes the U S

3:28

law ordering its sale is a violation of

3:30

the first amendment. Uh, and if

3:32

this confuses you, cause TikTok is not

3:35

a U S company, uh, non U

3:37

S companies by precedent have rights under

3:39

the first amendment. So that's not even

3:41

an issue here. An appendix to the

3:43

filing includes hundreds of pages of communications

3:45

with the U S government over security

3:47

risks and how to mitigate them. So

3:49

TikTok trying to show we talked to the

3:51

government about how we could get around the

3:54

security risks they're talking about. TikTok already separates

3:56

U S user data from the rest of

3:58

TikTok by storing it on oracle. servers

4:00

in Texas and contracting a separate

4:03

company called USDS to administer that

4:05

data. A proposal in the filing

4:07

from 2022 would have given the

4:10

United States a kill switch to

4:12

suspend the platform if it violated

4:14

rules around funding and accessing US

4:17

user data. All right, this

4:19

is just the beginning. This is their

4:21

first filing. It won't be the last

4:23

information to come out of this case.

4:25

Oral arguments begin September 16th and the

4:28

clock's ticking because the law requires TikTok

4:30

to divest its US operation or

4:32

face a ban on its distribution as

4:34

of January 19th. YouTube

4:38

is cracking down on people who

4:40

pay for YouTube premium subscriptions with

4:42

using a VPN to change their

4:44

apparent location. YouTube premium is

4:46

priced cheaper in some regions than it is

4:48

in others. So if you use a VPN,

4:51

you can theoretically get a less expensive subscription.

4:53

YouTube premium is $13.99 per month in the

4:55

US but the equivalent of $1.54 a month

4:57

in India. YouTube told TechCrunch, in

5:05

instances where the signup country does not match

5:08

where the user is accessing YouTube, we're

5:10

asking members to update their billing information

5:12

to their current country

5:14

of residence. Although

5:16

some users posted on Reddit that their

5:19

subscriptions were canceled without warning. I

5:23

should have thought of this before they figured out how to crack down on

5:25

it. A vulnerability in Phoenix

5:27

Secure Core UFI firmware, that's the

5:30

firmware that runs at boot up

5:33

to kind of communicate with your chip, is

5:36

being called UFI Can

5:38

Has Buffer Overflow, all one word,

5:40

all caps with a Z. It

5:42

affects several models of Intel CPUs.

5:45

It is a buffer overflow bug

5:47

in the firmware's Trusted Platform module.

5:49

Actually, it's a bug

5:51

in the way that the Phoenix

5:53

software accesses the Trusted Platform module.

5:56

Security company, Eclipsium, found the vulnerability on the

5:58

Novo device. devices first, but

6:01

confirmed with Phoenix that it affects multiple Intel

6:03

chip models. So it could affect PCs from

6:05

Dell, Acer, and HP as well. Lenovo has

6:07

released a firmware update. So if you have

6:09

a Lenovo computer, you might want to look

6:11

for that. Uh, they started releasing those

6:13

in May to resolve the flaw in more than 150

6:16

models, though, not all the models have

6:18

gotten the update yet. So check until you

6:20

get one. If

6:22

there's an, I can has cheeseburger thing

6:25

going on. Uh, you know, not

6:27

that, uh, this is all good news, but

6:30

sort of props. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't heard

6:32

that one in a while. It's a classic.

6:35

It is writer sources say

6:37

that Amazon's revamped Alexa service

6:39

known internally as Banyan will

6:41

include a conversational generative AI

6:44

with two tiers of service.

6:46

Amazon has reportedly considered a monthly fee

6:48

of around $5 to access

6:51

that superior version. This

6:53

new a is said to

6:55

be dubbed remarkable a and is

6:58

the first major overhaul of the voice assistant since

7:00

it was introduced back in 2014, 10 years ago,

7:04

along with the echo line of speakers. I like

7:06

calling her Al in these situations where you don't

7:08

want to set her off too. Al. Although

7:11

sometimes she is, she is an A. Uh,

7:14

the U S department of commerce

7:16

has classified security company, Kaspersky lab

7:18

as a threat to U S

7:20

national security and added it to

7:22

an entity list. You may remember

7:25

that from the Huawei prohibitions, uh,

7:27

that prohibits the sale of Kaspersky

7:29

products in the U S without

7:31

a special license from the department.

7:33

Commerce department's bureau of industry and

7:35

security or BISA said that their

7:37

BIS not, there's no way I

7:39

just added that BIS said that

7:42

the Russian government could exploit Kaspersky

7:44

to collect sensitive information through administrative

7:46

privileges. In addition, like

7:48

most security software, Kaspersky has the ability

7:50

to install malicious software. Usually you trust

7:53

your antivirus not to do that, but

7:55

theoretically it can. Uh, and

7:57

it could withhold updates. to

7:59

prevent the removal of malicious software

8:02

if it desired. The ban

8:04

on Kaspersky in the US takes effect on

8:06

July 20th, and software and

8:08

security updates for existing US customers must

8:11

stop after September 29th. The

8:13

idea there is to give customers time

8:15

to switch and stay secure while they

8:18

shop around and switch. Kaspersky,

8:20

however, plans to fight the ban.

8:23

Patrick, are you surprised

8:25

that the United States... I know you're not, but

8:27

what do you make of this ban? Okay,

8:31

so you and I were talking earlier

8:34

today and one of the things you pointed out

8:36

that this

8:38

seems much more rational than the TikTok

8:41

ban. In

8:43

fact, on some levels, I

8:45

think... Well, my point being, there's no

8:47

question that Kaspersky is a Russian company

8:49

with its headquarters in Moscow, and there

8:52

is in fact a law in the

8:54

books that says Russia gets to intercept

8:56

communications for national security reasons if it

8:59

so desires, right? Yeah, and that's a

9:01

big deal because I feel, I'm using

9:03

feeling words, this is not a statement

9:05

of fact, please don't sue me Russian

9:08

government. Say it to the stuffed animal.

9:11

Say it to the stuffed animal. Dear

9:14

stuffed animal, I feel that

9:17

national security is whatever Russian intelligence forces

9:20

wants it to be at a given

9:22

time. So that makes... On

9:25

a lot of levels, it makes sense to me. I'm

9:30

kind of curious where this is going to...

9:33

I'm kind of curious how much technical interaction there

9:35

still is. At one point, renting

9:37

Russian programmers was a really big thing,

9:40

or excuse me, outside contracting to,

9:42

but this is... It's

9:45

that law that keeps getting back

9:47

to me. Like if we need you to do X...

9:50

I'm sure there's someone out there smoothing out the

9:54

folds in their tinfoil hat right now. It's like, well,

9:56

we do that in the United States. We

9:59

just don't make it a... public law. It's a

10:01

private law. But, um, it's not really a law,

10:04

but yeah, I agree,

10:06

but yeah, you're proving my point here. Um,

10:09

you know, but it's, it's messy, right? Uh,

10:11

you know, what am I supposed to say?

10:13

I feel bad for Kaspersky. Um,

10:16

well that all of my, all of

10:18

the things I said about it was how rude

10:20

Russia and, and the law and the books. I'm

10:22

like, this is very clear. This is not like

10:24

tick tock where they've, they've gone bending

10:26

over backwards to not be in China

10:28

as much as possible while still being

10:30

in China. Uh, there's no law that

10:33

says they, they have to give

10:35

stuff. It's, it's just the unwritten law. Like

10:37

you're talking about people saying about the U

10:39

S in the past and Kaspersky is out

10:42

there uncovering actual security

10:44

threats, many of which are

10:46

from within Russia. So it's

10:49

acting as if it is

10:51

not under the thumb of the Russian

10:53

government. So it's, it's curious to me

10:55

why they went after Kaspersky in particular

10:57

here. Uh, they are

10:59

not going after every single Russian company out

11:02

there. And Kaspersky seems to be one of the

11:04

better behaved, uh, of the

11:06

companies that exist on in

11:09

countries that the United States does not consider

11:11

its friends. Well, so the U

11:13

S first banned federal

11:15

agencies from using Kaspersky software in 2017.

11:19

Correct. So we are what? Six years, seven years

11:21

out of that. Not

11:26

this hard. Um, but, uh, you know, I

11:28

wonder, yeah, has

11:31

something happened that may come to light to, to,

11:33

to kind of bring the momentum

11:36

back up? There was a pretty high profile case. We

11:39

talked about it on DTS back in January

11:41

of a contractor for a U S intelligence

11:45

agency, uh, having confidential files exfiltrated

11:47

from their computer. And it appeared

11:49

that they were targeted because of

11:52

the fact that the

11:55

attackers could see that

11:57

they had the files based

11:59

on Kaspersky. Kaspersky antivirus. It

12:03

was questionable whether they were just using the antivirus

12:05

like they could use any antivirus to be like,

12:08

oh, it looks like the code is there. Or

12:10

if Kaspersky antivirus was constructed in such a

12:13

way to make it easy for them to

12:15

see what was on the file, this would

12:17

imply that at least somebody in the US

12:19

government is convinced that Kaspersky made it easy

12:22

for the attackers to do that. Yeah.

12:25

I mean, I'm really curious. I've

12:28

read a number of articles on this and no one's,

12:30

I haven't found any that say

12:33

Kaspersky joins or that Kaspersky

12:35

is one of many. It

12:38

seems very specific. And

12:41

that's the part that's kind of fascinating to

12:43

me is that, is this the first of

12:46

many? Or did Kaspersky do something

12:48

in particular that we don't want to talk

12:50

about? Or are enough other

12:52

companies already under sanctions that are

12:54

just generally being applied to Russia

12:56

that Kaspersky was able to avoid?

13:00

And so you had to go after them directly instead

13:02

of having them just withdraw on their own. Interesting

13:05

stuff. Well, SpaceX's

13:07

Starlink satellite internet service

13:09

announced the Starlink Mini.

13:12

It's a compact DC powered satellite dish about

13:14

the size of a thick laptop, something that

13:17

you could put in a backpack type thing.

13:19

It also integrates the wifi router inside the

13:21

dish and consumes an average of 20 to

13:24

30 Watts and can be powered by something

13:26

like the anchor portable battery for your phone

13:28

or tablet. But it does need an

13:31

external battery. The Starlink Mini

13:33

costs $600, $100

13:35

more than the stationary residential model and

13:37

costs $30 a month extra on top of

13:40

a standard $120 a month subscription with a 50 gigabyte per month

13:46

data cap. Patrick, we

13:48

were talking before the show. I

13:50

know you are a fan of

13:52

traveling and a fan of having

13:54

connectivity while traveling. What do you

13:56

like and not like about that? I

13:58

love the size. The portability. is fantastic. The fact

14:01

that you basically power it off of a USB

14:03

is going to simplify

14:05

installation or use in a

14:07

lot of cases. The Verge has

14:09

a really nice write-up on this. They

14:12

talk about two to three hours from

14:14

a big USB battery

14:16

power cell. When you get into that

14:18

28,000 milliamp hour range, maybe

14:22

an hour with a 10,000

14:24

milliamp battery, which means if you, for

14:26

some reason, want to hike to somewhere

14:29

and update your selfies immediately in a place

14:31

where you don't have a

14:34

cell phone connection or if you want to

14:36

occasionally bounce updates

14:39

through the satellites. This has

14:41

definitely got a possibility in places where you don't

14:43

have a cell phone. Man, that 50 gigabyte

14:46

cap and it's a gigabyte,

14:49

a buck a gigabyte after you hit

14:51

the 50 gigabyte cap, that really bums

14:53

me out because there are

14:55

a lot of cases where you can get

14:58

similar speeds and probably

15:00

more data for

15:03

less money. I was super excited right up

15:06

until I saw that 50 gigabyte cap. I

15:08

think we all conceded that any one of us alone,

15:10

much less a group of people, could blow through

15:12

that cap in a good weekend of use. Yeah,

15:15

this is not for camping, is

15:18

essentially what that means to me. This is for, I

15:21

want to power some mapping software while

15:23

I'm hiking far away from all cell

15:25

signals or I want to just be

15:28

able to check in and text when

15:30

I'm taking a break on the trail.

15:34

It is definitely not a sit in

15:37

one place all weekend and stream Netflix

15:39

kind of a situation. It's

15:41

pretty narrow in what

15:43

it's going to be used for, although

15:45

it's only a dollar per gigabyte extra

15:48

over the cap. That's going

15:50

to rack up real fast. Sure, but they

15:53

often just cut you off or

15:55

charge you much more than a

15:57

dollar per gigabyte. relatively

16:00

speaking, not that bad,

16:02

even if you do go over. But yeah, be

16:04

careful because if you're streaming Netflix and you go

16:06

to 100 gigs, you own 50 bucks.

16:10

In the days before, not

16:12

everybody has unlimited data

16:15

on their mobile plans now,

16:18

but I do. But

16:20

back in the day when I didn't,

16:22

yeah, going outside of, I

16:25

don't know, the US or whatever, I was

16:27

keenly aware of exactly how many gigabytes were

16:29

being used. They were charging you. Even megabytes

16:32

at that time. Yeah, megabytes, exactly. Right. The

16:35

only thing is, this thing's kind of heavy. It's

16:40

1.1 kilograms or 2.43 pounds, and then you

16:42

got to have that battery. If you do

16:44

that anchor prime battery, that's another half a

16:46

kilogram right there. Yeah, it's kind of a

16:49

heavy backpack. When you

16:51

look at satellite messaging, Garmin

16:53

many years ago bought Delorme.

16:56

Garmin now runs the, they're on the

16:58

mini two, the second evolution reach. Those

17:01

do satellite communications. You can do text

17:03

messaging. You can connect your phone to

17:05

them so that

17:07

if you want to be able to communicate remotely, that's

17:10

probably a less expensive or less complicated

17:12

way of doing it. I'm actually kind

17:14

of really curious, is this going to

17:16

be for people who, are they going

17:19

to be, do they want to watch a football

17:21

game from a park where they don't have good

17:23

cell phone reception? I'm kind of curious what the

17:25

kind of end users are. Who's

17:28

the target audience really? We're not all hiking all

17:30

day every day. Well, some people are, but. Are

17:32

there enough of those people? For those of us

17:34

who aren't, who's going to buy the ... Yeah.

17:37

Well, it's much more car friendly, right? Or much

17:39

more sort of weekend at the

17:41

cabin or the beach house friendly than

17:43

even one of the

17:45

mobile satellites. That

17:48

appeal I can see. It's certainly car friendly. And

17:50

SpaceX made a big point, which they have done

17:53

in Starlink stuff in the past of saying, price

17:55

is going to come down on this. So yeah,

17:57

we aren't making a lot of these because again,

17:59

they're not. giving us a release date yet. They're

18:01

just saying, we're going to start selling these, which

18:04

implies they're not making a ton of them. So

18:06

they're probably fine just selling it to a handful

18:08

of backpackers who would be really excited about it.

18:10

And then as they can

18:13

make more of them, theoretically, they would

18:15

bring those prices down so that it's not

18:18

as expensive to use the internet connection.

18:20

Because I don't know that it needs

18:22

to be that much

18:24

more expensive, right? Like it's

18:27

a $30 and a

18:29

cap on top of a regular subscription

18:31

so that if you're using it at home, you don't

18:34

have the cap. And can

18:36

you use the portable version at home or do you

18:38

have to have the separate device to use at home

18:40

to use your regular internet connection? There's a lot of

18:42

questions there, but if they

18:44

did bring the price down and got rid of

18:46

that cap, then we start to see a

18:49

whole different situation. Well,

18:53

every year we try to improve DTNS

18:55

because we do the show for you.

18:57

Keep it as our best source of

18:59

understanding the tech world around all of

19:01

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19:04

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DTNS listeners. Are you curious about how

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keep an eye out for research done

21:18

on the effect of cognitive decline caused

21:20

by AI. In other words, any evidence

21:22

that using chatbots, chat

21:25

GPT, Claude, et cetera, make us

21:28

use our brains less and lead

21:30

to negative cognitive effects as we age. Now,

21:32

of course, I promised Komei like, oh yeah,

21:34

that's a great idea. I'll keep a lookout

21:36

for that. It will be a few years

21:38

before we have enough data usage to create

21:40

a decent study on this, because people

21:42

have to age while they're using them, and they have to

21:44

be around long enough for people to age while they're using

21:47

them, but this builds on the

21:49

idea that search has made us less intelligent

21:51

because we don't have to know things, right?

21:53

There's some people, and I'm not saying Komei

21:55

is this person, but some people who are

21:57

saying, you know, that AI is just gonna

21:59

make us die. So I did

22:01

a quick review of the literature and here

22:04

are some of the things we found. Sarah

22:09

kick us off. I

22:11

will do that. So several studies have found

22:13

that among millennials, knowing you can look into

22:16

something like in a search, making you

22:18

less likely to remember what you looked

22:20

for in a search. So you

22:22

can say that search has made it worse

22:25

at memorizing things. Yeah. All right. Basically

22:28

four studies found that when faced

22:30

with difficult questions, people think about

22:32

where they can find the answer

22:35

and have lower rates of recall

22:37

of the information itself. A

22:43

UCLA study found that internet searching appears

22:45

to engage a greater extent of neural

22:48

circuitry that isn't activated during

22:50

reading, but only in those with prior

22:53

internet experience. In other

22:55

words, searching stimulates complex reasoning

22:57

and we use more of our

23:00

brain when we're searching and a study looking

23:02

to see if searches affected cognitive decline in

23:04

older people found instead that the kind of

23:06

searches people do are predictive

23:08

of early decline in cognitive function.

23:11

So they didn't find any effect,

23:13

but they found out that the kinds

23:15

of search words people use could indicate

23:17

that they had an issue. So for

23:20

search, it looks like it's making

23:22

us worse at remembering facts, but better at

23:24

complex reasoning. And while it may not do

23:26

anything to prevent cognitive decline, it might be

23:28

able to detect it early. All

23:31

right. Let's switch from that,

23:33

which is like, all right, this is what

23:35

people thought about search. This is what the

23:37

research is finding so far. Patrick,

23:40

how do you think AI or what

23:42

we call AI, chat bots, assistants, et

23:45

cetera, may or may not be different?

23:48

You know, I was laughing because what I really

23:50

want to find out is did anyone do a

23:52

definitive study of how we, you know,

23:54

forgot how to remember phone numbers when we all started

23:57

putting phone numbers in the cell phones we had around

23:59

the time? around this 24 hours. Totally,

24:01

yeah. You know,

24:03

I was laughing. If you type, does

24:05

blank make you dumber in Google search

24:07

bar? Or you

24:09

know, does blank make you

24:11

D-U-M-B-E? Don't finish the R.

24:14

You get a whole bunch of suggestions,

24:16

right? Alcohol, TikTok, boxing, depression, vaping, nicotine,

24:18

gaming, music, coffee, stress, at least on

24:21

my machine. And if

24:23

you actually finish that search, does blank

24:25

make you dumber? The number one result

24:28

is does smoking pot actually make you

24:30

stupid? Which I found fascinating because that

24:32

article, which is up on statnews.com, it

24:35

talked about a recent study that used twins

24:37

to study marijuana use and its impact on,

24:40

well, your intelligence, right?

24:42

To oversimplify, more frequent marijuana use

24:44

wasn't associated with greater IQ decline

24:47

as you'd expect if marijuana were

24:49

toxic to brain function. And

24:51

B, measures of so-called inherent intelligence

24:54

like problem solving didn't fall on

24:56

users on some measures like puzzle

24:58

solving scores actually rose. So,

25:00

you know, this kind of, in

25:02

their words, this undermines the idea that

25:05

marijuana impairs cognition. And to

25:07

oversimplify even more, basically what

25:09

they said was poor life choices are more

25:11

likely the cause of, quote, low intellectual attainment

25:14

that you might associate to use

25:16

a non-scientific word with stoners. I

25:20

mention all that because people as a

25:22

group tend to suck at differentiating correlation causality,

25:24

which brings me back to AI and whether

25:26

or not it makes us dumber. A

25:29

lot of the same observations or arguments

25:31

or rants, whatever you want to call

25:34

it, they've been applied in recent memory

25:36

to TikTok, Facebook, not so recent memory,

25:38

smartphones, screens in general, the internet itself,

25:41

video games, going farther back

25:43

before I was born, rock music, novels

25:45

in the 18th or 19th century, Bibles

25:47

translated into languages other than Latin. And

25:50

of course, the timeless classical, you can

25:52

literally find people writing about in Grecian

25:54

ages and probably complaining about around fires

25:56

before we had written the language is

25:59

how the young younger generation is just

26:01

dumber or doesn't work hard or any

26:03

of a number of things we like

26:05

to apply to those kids. I

26:09

mean, this feels like the argument

26:11

that like, well, you shouldn't have

26:13

a calculator in math class. Well,

26:15

you should be doing all that on your own. It's

26:18

funny you should mention that, right? So one

26:21

of the big, uh, Fu-Raz,

26:23

one of the big, uh, one of

26:25

the things that happened back around 2010,

26:27

uh, Nicholas Carr wrote up a

26:29

big article, an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. Does

26:32

the internet make you dumber? And

26:35

a lot of what it talked about was

26:37

the issues with the depth of learning versus

26:39

what they termed the velocity, right? Um, constant

26:41

distraction is a problem. Constantly changing what you're

26:43

looking at is a problem. Um,

26:46

quotes Nobel prize winning neuroscientist Eric

26:48

Kandel, quote, only when we

26:50

pay deep attention to a new piece of

26:52

information, are we able to associate it meaningfully

26:54

and systematically with knowledge already well established in

26:56

memory, i.e. constantly, you know, not

26:58

really going deep on things and constant distractions

27:01

are a problem. See any of a number

27:03

of 12 year olds in my experience, right?

27:05

As their brains ping ponging around, they tend

27:07

not to kind of remember anything. Um,

27:11

and it's interesting that UCLA study you guys are talking

27:13

about earlier, um, there's a good

27:15

quote in there. Internet searching appears to engage

27:17

a greater extent of neural circuitry that is

27:19

not activated during reading. And

27:22

it goes in the whole thing about

27:24

people without prior internet experience reading. It's

27:26

a very passive thing. It's an active

27:28

consultant consumption. Um, but when

27:30

you're looking for a legitimate answer, or at

27:32

least the right answer involves a lot more

27:34

reasoning and decision making, especially now when you're,

27:37

you know, think about how many Google search

27:39

results are just overwhelmed by

27:41

low quality SEO answers. And I

27:43

think having AI summary is that,

27:45

you know, makes it probably worse.

27:48

We get into a whole like I

27:50

learned how to do this on TikTok,

27:52

or I'm going to take the tide

27:54

swallowing, just to church and, and, or

27:56

battery acid challenge. Cause I saw kids

27:58

doing it on TikTok. This is hyperbole.

28:00

being humorous, please don't drink battery acid

28:02

or don't go look for battery acid.

28:04

Don't drink battery acid. Don't swallow dried

28:06

carrots. Those are bad for you. Also,

28:09

people were doing dumb things before TikTok

28:11

existed. No. Yeah.

28:14

Right? So it's funny, right? But

28:16

like having AI summarize things, I guess it

28:19

depends on if it's right and it depends

28:21

on the whole idea of how we become

28:23

smarter. The key to that UCLA thing was

28:25

that we were strategizing when we were searching.

28:27

So we were using our complex reasoning.

28:29

The argument could be, well, AI is

28:32

just going to give us the answer,

28:34

except so far, and this may change,

28:36

prompt engineering is a job now because

28:38

strategizing how to properly prompt the AI

28:41

engages complex reasoning as well. Maybe that won't

28:43

bear out, but there's always some unintended thing

28:45

that we didn't realize that happens, I feel

28:47

like. Not going to argue. Well,

28:51

too bad. There

28:54

definitely are. And this is

28:56

just a very specific thing in

28:58

my household, but there are times where

29:01

I'm sitting in front of a computer.

29:04

I have all the

29:06

tools available to me to get

29:09

the answer that I want very

29:11

easily. And I will ask

29:13

my voice assistant, hey, what's seven

29:15

times 40? Just

29:18

because I'm like, eh, I don't know. Just

29:21

tell me. Right. It's not

29:23

hard for me to figure out myself or just

29:25

know, but sometimes I do feel

29:27

like, gosh, I was lazy just now, but

29:30

was I, I got the answer. We can

29:32

also schedule your lights to go on and

29:34

off on a routine. Would you like to

29:36

activate that routine? It's usually what happens when

29:38

you ask it a math question in my

29:40

experience. But I mean, it's interesting when you

29:42

start reading as you get to a certain

29:44

age or I have a

29:46

family member that's dealing with, you

29:48

know, essentially Alzheimer and short term memory loss.

29:52

And you start thinking like, wow, am

29:54

I engaging my brain enough? Should I

29:56

engage my brain more? Am I actually

29:58

stimulating and engaging my brain in a

30:00

deep enough. level to keep Alzheimer's and

30:02

or other things as far

30:04

away as possible into the future. So I

30:07

can see also where for some people, this

30:09

is a much more, I mean, Sarah,

30:11

I'm with you. I think we've all typed

30:14

a math question into the search bar at

30:17

one point or another rather than writing it

30:19

down. But I, it's

30:21

funny, right? Do

30:24

you get your- Yeah. It's like your mileage may

30:26

vary for sure. Yeah. Where you

30:28

are in life and brains and everything.

30:30

My guess is that we will find

30:32

that offloading some of the

30:34

more tedious things may enhance

30:37

our cognitive abilities and stave off

30:39

cognitive decline because we can spend

30:41

more time doing more higher

30:44

level complex reasoning things rather than

30:46

spending a lot of our brain

30:48

power on the tedious stuff. But

30:51

we won't know until we've lived with this for a while. I

30:54

will also say if AI doesn't get- Oops,

30:56

sorry. No, go ahead. Because if

30:58

AI doesn't get better at finding the

31:00

right answer in many cases, we're going

31:02

to spend a lot of intellectual, we're

31:05

just going to spend a lot of intellectual energy trying

31:07

to find out what it should have told us. Yeah.

31:10

Yeah, that too. All right. Speaking

31:12

of which, let's check out the mailbag. Not

31:16

that Dan commented on Patreon about

31:18

our DAC or DAC conversation with

31:20

Rob Nemillo in Yesterday's show on

31:22

Thursday. Great show by the way.

31:26

Not that Dan says, it's good enough all

31:28

the way for me, meaning

31:30

audio quality. $1,200

31:33

to experience the art as it was intended. I

31:35

spent less on that on my entire living room

31:37

setup. Most people in my life have

31:39

a sub $500 TV, use the built-in speakers. It's

31:44

anecdotal, but I suspect it's unusual

31:46

to get close

31:48

to the director's version at home. I'm

31:51

perfectly fine with that. If the story doesn't land

31:53

for me, no amount of the little details are

31:55

going to matter. And Jeff

31:57

wrote in with a long detail.

32:00

detailed and excellent review of

32:02

the Lenovo Yoga 7x

32:05

after one day of using it because it's

32:07

a Copilot Plus PC. I

32:09

asked ChatGPT to summarize his

32:11

email, got the response, sent

32:14

it to Jeff. That's

32:16

the step people skip and said, Jeff, I

32:18

need to summarize it for the show. Does

32:20

this look good to you? And Jeff wrote

32:22

back, yeah, it looks great. Thank

32:24

you very much for asking before just using

32:26

it. So here is the

32:28

summary. Jeff wrote in and said he

32:30

recently bought a Lenovo Yoga 7x on

32:32

launch day, drawn in by the Battery

32:34

Life claims. The AI features are a

32:37

bonus, but he mainly wanted something to

32:39

rival his friends' MacBooks. He likes the

32:41

build quality and keyboard, and the screen

32:43

is sharp and vibrant. No major compatibility

32:45

issues so far, though he had a

32:47

brief glitch with WSL. He found the

32:49

Copilot key a bit confusing since it

32:52

opens a web page and all AI

32:54

features seem cloud-based despite claims of local

32:56

AI capabilities. He appreciated the easy setup,

32:58

which allowed him to transfer settings from

33:00

his old laptop, though some apps needed

33:02

reinstallation. He misses a USB-A port and

33:04

finds the webcam shutter placement odd. Overall,

33:06

Jeff is happy with the laptop and

33:09

impressed with the Battery Life, which has

33:11

been fantastic after 24 hours. See,

33:14

AI works for us after all. You know,

33:16

when you handle it responsibly, it can. And

33:21

he's not crazy about- I like the whole,

33:23

like, Jeff, do we have your consent? Jeff's

33:25

like, yeah, looks good. He was like, thank

33:27

you. Some reporters have summarized what I told

33:29

them and didn't ask for my consent. So

33:31

I appreciated that. Thank you, Jeff. Also,

33:34

that Copilot key, yeah, it only launches a

33:37

progressive web app now. So

33:39

you can't do Windows settings with it. You can't do

33:41

it in the sidebar. Microsoft has not commented on why

33:43

they made that change. Well,

33:47

thank you, everybody, who writes in.

33:49

Certainly, thank you to Jeff and

33:51

Not That Dan. Back at dailytechnewsshow.com

33:53

is where to send your feedback,

33:55

questions, comments, all the things. But

33:58

thanks to Patrick Norton for being with us today. Patrick,

34:01

when a cat is

34:03

not scratching your forearms, what

34:05

are you up to? I am

34:08

working and raising children and I'm delighted

34:10

that I agreed with some of Rob

34:12

D'Amelio's Dac choices yesterday. If

34:14

you have a question about Dac or

34:17

home theater or Dac, do me

34:19

a favor, tweet at Patrick Norton or tweet

34:21

at Patrick Norton to tell me where I

34:23

should be in social media that is not

34:25

Facebook. Fantastic. Patrons,

34:29

stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet.

34:31

We love a person who can explain tech and

34:33

science well, so we're doing a quiz on some

34:35

of the best. Amos made the quiz today. Stick

34:37

around, find out what he'll quiz us with. Just

34:41

a reminder, we do the show live. You can

34:43

catch the show live Monday through Friday at 4

34:45

p.m. Eastern, 2,200 UTC, and find out

34:48

more at dailytechnewsshow.com/live. Happy to have you

34:50

join us live if you can, but

34:52

we're always on demand as well. We'll

34:54

be back on Monday with Justin Robert

34:57

Young joining us. Have a great weekend,

34:59

everyone. This

35:01

week's episodes of Daily Tech News Show were created

35:03

by the following people. Host producer and writer Tom

35:05

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35:08

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35:10

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35:12

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