In this episode of Tech News Weekly, Mikah Sargent and CNET's Abrar Al-Heeti talk the latest developments in self-driving tech, Sonos' work on a new streaming box, an AI-assisted Beatles song winning a Grammy, and the current state of Meta's Quest platform according to developers.

- Uber is expanding its partnership with Waymo, allowing people in Austin to summon a Waymo robo-taxi through the Uber app. Abrar shares her experiences with self-driving cars and discusses the evolving relationship between Uber and Waymo.

- Sonos is reportedly working on a new streaming box codenamed "Pinewood," which includes an HDMI switch to address inconsistencies in smart TV firmware and software. The device is expected to cost between $200 and $400, and it aims to provide a full-featured streaming sound setup.

- An AI-assisted Beatles track, "Now and Then," won the Grammy for Best Rock Performance, sparking conversations about the role of AI in music and art. The US Copyright Office has stated that AI tools used to assist in the creative process don't undermine the copyright of the work.

- Developers are struggling with declining sales and visibility on the Meta Quest app store, despite record revenue for Meta Reality Labs. Meta's focus on its own Horizon Worlds app seems to be at the expense of traditional VR games. Some developers find it more profitable to sell on other platforms like Steam and PlayStation VR.

Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Abrar Al-Heeti

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From customization to Co-Pilot, this week we take a refresher on Paul's top Windows 11 Tips.

Host: Paul Thurrott

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This episode sees Mikah Sargent walking through the newly announced Apple Invites app. This event invitation tool allows one to invite friends and family to an occasion (like a BBQ) even if the recipients don't have an iPhone. Importantly, a user needs to have an iCloud+ subscription in order to create an event.

Host: Mikah Sargent

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Terence had the luxury of building a home theater from scratch in his newly constructed house. He wanted to replicate a Dolby Cinema as much as possible, the result certainly does that!

Host: Scott Wilkinson

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In this episode of iOS Today, hosts Mikah Sargent and Rosemary Orchard dive into a comprehensive comparison of popular note-taking apps for iOS, examining their unique features and use cases. They also discuss Apple's surprise launch of a new event planning app called Apple Invites.

• Apple Notes: New iOS 18 features including Math Notes, collaborative note-taking capabilities, and family wish list sharing functionality
• Freeform: Apple's infinite canvas app that enables collaborative brainstorming, room planning, and freeform content organization with drawing support
• Bear: A beautiful Markdown-based notes app with custom keyboards and nested tags, available with a free tier and subscription options
• Obsidian: A powerful, customizable note-taking app with community plugins and the ability to create personal wikis
• Drafts: An advanced text editor that creates new drafts automatically, featuring powerful actions, custom themes, and extensive widget support
• Notion: A versatile workspace tool with templates for various use cases, featuring databases, calendars, and collaborative features

News

• Apple launches new "Invites" app requiring iCloud+ subscription to create invitations. It features shared photo albums, weather information, Apple Music playlist integration, and Apple Intelligence for custom backgrounds

Feedback

• Question about limiting group chat notifications in driving focus mode
• Request for help with continuous reading of non-Kindle ebooks using iOS accessibility features
• Discussion of potential workarounds including sending content to Kindle and exploring alternative solutions

Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Rosemary Orchard

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• Interview with Zack Kass, Former GTM for Open AI
• Why you can deep-six the DeepSeek hype
• Gemini 2.0 is now available to everyone
• OpenAI has undergone its first ever rebrand, giving fresh life to ChatGPT interactions
• AI Has Shown Me My Future. Here's What I've Learned.
• Senator Hawley Proposes Jail Time for People Who Download DeepSeek
• Hugging Face researchers aim to build an 'open' version of OpenAI's deep research tool
• Anthropic makes "jailbreak" advance to stop AI models producing harmful results
• WSJ: The Manhattan Project Was Secret. Should America's AI Work Be Too?
• EU AI Act: Ban on certain AI practices and requirements for AI literacy come into effect
• Cathy Gellis: When It's Not Just A Coup But A CFAA Violation Too
• a16z slides on AI and voice
• Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman poaches three Google DeepMind former colleagues, including two who built NotebookLM's Audio Overviews and worked on Astra
• Meta's CTO said the metaverse could be a "legendary misadventure" if the company doesn't boost sales, leaked memo shows
• The Salvadoran Mega-Prison Offering to Take America's Worst Criminals
• Hilarious analyst on Tesla
• How the DJI Flip uses AI
• Marketers will have to market to AI agents
• AI systems could be "caused to suffer" if consciousness achieved, says research

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Mike Elgan

Guest: Zack Kass

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Microsoft reported that it earned a net income of $24.1 billion on revenues of $69.6 billion in the quarter ending December 31, the second quarter of its fiscal 2025. Those figures represent gains of 10 percent and 12 percent year-over-year (YOY), respectively.

Microsoft Earnings Overview

• Not much going on with client-side products and services, so a focus on AI
• Productivity and Business Processes: $29.4 billion in revenues, up 14 percent YOY. This was 42.2 percent of Microsoft's earnings
• Intelligent Cloud: $25.5 billion in revenues, up 19 percent YOY. This was 36.6 percent of Microsoft's earnings
• More Personal Computing: $14.7 billion, unchanged from the year-ago quarter. (Literally flat YOY.) This was 21.1 percent of Microsoft's earnings

Windows

• Microsoft testing AI-powered search in Windows 11 Dev
• New Canary build- Windows Midi Services preview, OneDrive resume, File Explorer folder resume
• Microsoft is experimenting with new Windows 11 UIs
• Microsoft Edge text rendering comes to all Chromium web browsers on Windows - That only took a few years
• Microsoft explains deprecation after using the term for decades

AI

• Week 2 of submitting to our new Chinese overlords
• Gemini catapults into the lead for a few days as Gemini 2.0 becomes broadly available
• Inspired by DeepSeek, OpenAI releases reasoning model to free ChatGPT
• This comes after Microsoft added it to Copilot
• Reasoning vs. traditional models
• Also, DeepSeek R1 is on Azure AI Foundry and GitHub
• Sam Altman discusses DeepSeek, more
• OpenAI offers up an AI research assistant

More Earnings (Lightning Round)

• Intel - $14.3 billion in revenues, down 7 percent
• AMD: Revenues up 24 percent, market share gains on Intel
• Apple - Record $124.2 billion in revenues, up 4 percent
• Alphabet/Google: Revenues at $96.47 billion, up 12 percent - CapEx expenditures closing in on MSFT
• Samsung - Revenues up 12 percent to $52.2 billion
• Spotify is profitable for full year for the first time

Microsoft 365

• Designer makes its way to Photos (Windows) and Microsoft 365 Copilot app (mobile)
• Microsoft is removing the VPN from Microsoft 365 Family and Personal
• Outlook for Mac to get email recall feature

Xbox

• Starfield is coming to Game Pass Standard this month, more Game Pass titles
• Forza Horizon 5 is coming to PS5
• Two Age of Empires titles are coming to PS5
• Remember that Microsoft partnership with Start.gg? Me neither
• Nintendo revenues, Switch sales fall more than expected, will no longer beat DS this fiscal year

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: It's time for an online account audit
• App pick of the week: Another week of big browser update
• RunAs Radio this week: Entra ID Protection with Corissa Koopmans
• Margarita of the week: 2 oz white tequila, 1.5 oz Triple Sec, 1 oz fresh lime juice.

Hosts: Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott

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The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

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• Why was DeepSeek banned by Italian authorities?
• What internal proprietary DeepSeek data was found online?
• What is "DeepSeek" anyway? Why do we care, and what does it mean?
• Did Microsoft just make OpenAI's strong model available for free?
• Google explains how generative AI can be and is being misused.
• An actively exploited and unpatched Zyxel router vulnerability.
• The new US "ROUTERS" Act.
• Is pirate-site blocking legislation justified or is it censorship?
• Russia's blocked website count tops 400,000.
• Microsoft adds "scareware" warnings to Edge.
• Bitwarden improves account security.
• What's still my favorite disk imaging tool?
• And let's take a close look into the extraction of proscribed knowledge from today's AI

Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1011-Notes.pdf

Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte

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For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6.

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