Total Leo (Audio)

Is social media addictive by design or just irresistible entertainment? The panel tackles the lawsuit that's dragging tech giants onto the witness stand and how surveillance tech is quietly expanding while lawmakers and users scramble to catch up.

Jury told that Meta, Google 'engineered addiction' at landmark US trial

Instagram Chief Says Social Media Is Not 'Clinically Addictive' in Landmark Trial

Section 230 turns 30 as it faces its biggest tests yet

Meta apparently thinks we're too distracted to care about facial recognition and Ray-Bans

Amazon Ring's Super Bowl ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

TikTok is tracking you, even if you don't use the app.

Discord backtracks on controversial age verification rollout...kind of

Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass

The DJI Romo robovac had security so poor that this man remotely accessed thousands of them

HP's laptop subscriptions are a great deal — for HP

FTC Ratchets Up Microsoft Probe, Queries Rivals on Cloud, AI

T-Mobile announces its network is now full of AI by rolling out real-time translation

Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

SpaceX Prioritizes Lunar 'Self-Growing City' Over Mars Project, Musk Says

Elon Musk declares victory with Medicaid data release

Waymo Is Getting DoorDashers to Close Doors on Self Driving Cars

Backblaze Drive Stats for 2025

$1.8 million MST3K Kickstarter brings in (almost) everyone from the old show

OpenAI Is Nuking Its 4o Model. China's ChatGPT Fans Aren't OK

Hideki Sato, designer of all Sega's consoles, has died

Byte magazine artist Robert Tinney, who illustrated the birth of PCs, dies at 78

Launching The Rural Guaranteed Minimum Income Initiative

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Wesley Faulkner, Stacey Higginbotham, and Thomas Germain

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Leo Laporte and Paris Martineau go head-to-head over whether today's AI breakthroughs are truly unprecedented or history repeating itself. Hear what happens when the show's hosts use cutting-edge tools to challenge each other's optimism, skepticism, and predictions for the future of work.

Something Big Is Happening

Building a C compiler with a team of parallel Claudes

Amazon's $8 billion Anthropic investment balloons to $61 billion

Google is going for the jugular — by doubling capex and outspending the rest of Big Tech

Google's Gemini app has surpassed 750M monthly active users

OpenAI's Meta makeover

ChatGPT's deep research tool adds a built-in document viewer so you can read its reports

Alexa+, Amazon's AI assistant, is now available to everyone in the U.S.

Amazon Plans To Use AI To Speed Up TV and Film Production

AI didn't kill customer support. It's rebuilding it

Worried about AI taking jobs? Ex-Microsoft exec tells parents what kind of education matters

most for their kids.

A new bill in New York would require disclaimers on AI-generated news content

AI Bots Are Now a Signifigant Source of Web Traffic

Crypto.com places $70M bet on AI.com domain ahead of Super Bowl

Frontier AI agents violate ethical constraints 30–50% of time, pressured by KPIs

How To Think About AI: Is It The Tool, Or Are You?

LEO! Reliability of LLMs as medical assistants for the general public: a randomized preregistered study

HBR: AI Doesn't Reduce Work—It Intensifies It

As AI enters the operating room, reports arise of botched surgeries and misidentified body parts

Waymo Exec Admits Remote Operators in Philippines Help Guide US Robotaxis

Medicare's new pilot program taps AI to review claims. Here's why it's risky

Section 230 Turns 30; Both Parties Want It Gone—For Contradictory Reasons

Meet Gizmo: A TikTok for interactive, vibe-coded mini apps

The Evolution of Bengt Betjänt

Uber Eats adds AI assistant to help with grocery shopping

Is having AI ghostwrite your Valentine's Day messages a good idea?

As Saudi Arabia's 100-Mile Skyscraper Crumbles, They're Replacing It With the Most Desperate Thing Imaginable

YouTube Argues It Isn't Social Media in Landmark Tech Addiction Trial

'Man down:' Watch Amazon delivery drone crash in North Texas

Understanding Neural Network, Visually

Leo's AI Journey

The TIMELINE

TWiT x 2 in Super Bowl commercials

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau

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After years of ignoring and maligning Windows, Microsoft has finally woken up and is making some happy noises. Last week, we discussed how Microsoft plans to improve the quality of Windows and that there are already many signs of that work in various security features and new OneDrive Folder Backup changes - plus those two new direct reports to Nadella. Then, Microsoft announced its Windows Baseline Security Mode and User Transparency and Consent initiatives with questions about the timing. And now, Microsoft just explained Windows 11 version 26H1, and it's not like 24H2 at all despite being tied to Snapdragon X2 silicon.Something happened ... and that something is tied to 26H1

26H1: Only for Snapdragon X2, a "scoped release," based on a "different core" from 24H2 and 25H2

You cannot upgrade 24H2 or 25H2 to 26H1

You cannot upgrade 26H1 to 26H2 (!) - instead, those on 26H1 "will have a path to update in a future Windows release." - Is that future Windows release Windows 12? Probably

24H2, 25H2, and 26H1 will all have the same user-facing features, this has been the case with all support Windows (11) versions for 2+ years

(Remember, this is not what happened with 24H2. Shipped early on Snapdragon X1, but was made available to all Windows 11 PCs later that year)

So why is this happening now? Fortune 500/corporate customer pushback on AI is one guess

This is GOOD news, however it all unfolds

More Windows 11

Yesterday was Patch Tuesday, so get to work. Updates this month include: Agent in Settings (Copilot+ PCs only) improvements. Settings improvements, cross-device Resume improvements, Windows MIDI Services improvements, Narrator improvements, Smart App Control improvements, Windows Hello New ESS improvements, and File Explorer improvements

Somewhat related to the quality/security push noted above, Microsoft is rolling out new Secure Boot certificates this year for older (pre-2024/25) PCs

Microsoft announces a Store CLI that does (almost) nothing new compared to winget

New Dev and Beta builds with minor changes: Emoji 16.0, camera improvements, various fixes

More earnings

Amazon hits $213.4 billion in revenues, will spend $200 billion CAPEX/AI infrastructure this fiscal year, more than Google ($175/$185 billion) or Microsoft (estimated $150+ billion)

Qualcomm $12.25 billion in revenues, up 5 percent

Alphabet/Google - Up 18 percent (!) to $113.8 billion - 750 million MAUs on Gemini, 74 percent of revenues come from advertising

Spotify - somehow has over 750 million MAUs now

AI and dev

OpenAI and Anthropic release dueling agentic AI coding models that do more than agentic AI coding within minutes of each other

Ads appear in ChatGPT Free and Go as threatened

Duck.ai adds private, anonymous real-time AI voice chat

NET 11 Preview 1 arrives, but there's nothing major here

Xbox & games

Microsoft announces the 2025 Xbox Excellence Awards

Celebrate 35 years of Id Software - Castle Wolfenstein 3D was a wake-up call for PC gaming, but DOOM was a miracle, and Quake was a real WTF moment

Sony sold 8 million PlayStation 5s (down 16 percent YOY) in the holiday quarter, 92 million (!) overall

Valve predictably delays the vaporware Steam Machine

Epic Games is having a winter sale - for example, Silent Hill 2, GTA V Enhanced are 50 percentR



These show notes have been truncated due to length. For the full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly/episodes/970
Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell


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From EU fines that never get paid to cyber warfare grounding missiles mid-battle, this week's episode uncovers the untold stories and real-world consequences shaping today's digital defenses.

How is the EU's GDPR fine collection going.

Western democracies are getting serious about offensive cybercrime.

The powerful cyber component of the Midnight Hammer operation.

Signs of psychological dependence upon OpenAI's GPT-4o chatbot.

CISA orders government agencies to unplug end-of-support devices.

How to keep Windows from annoying us after an upgrade.

What is OpenClaw, how safe is it to use, what does it mean.

Another listener uses AI to completely code an app.

Coinbase suffers another insider breach. What can be done

Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1064-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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Apple is scaling back its plans for its AI-based health coach service. Could Apple's next AirPods Pro come with cameras in them? The iPhone 17 Pro Max has the best battery life out of a plethora of other smartphones! And Apple's Lockdown Mode helped prevent the FBI from accessing a WaPo reporter's iPhone.

Apple is scaling back plans for new AI-based health coach service.

Apple's next AirPods Pro will come with cameras, says leaker.

Leak suggests Apple's M5 Pro and M5 Max may be the same chip.

NASA changes its mind, will allow Artemis astronauts to take iPhones to the Moon.

Google & Apple CEOs offer seemingly contradictory statements regarding AI partnership.

New Alexa's issues are already making some users return to old Siri.

New Apple-backed AI model can generate sound and speech from silent videos.

iPhone 17 Pro Max has the best battery life of 35 smartphones tested.

Last week on my Mac: Why E cores make Apple silicon fast.

FBI couldn't get into WaPo reporter's iPhone because it had Lockdown Mode enabled.

Oura's FDA lobbying benefits Apple Watch, if everyone's smart about the risks.

Apple Music Replay 2026 now live, here's how to find it.

Ferrari's new Jony Ive–designed EV is swathed in glass and aluminum.

Applications are now open for the 2026 Swift Student Challenge -- but hurry.

Apple Arcade's 'Civilization VII' is good, but falls short of greatness

Picks of the Week

Dan's Pick: Ponies on Peacock

Leo's Pick: Moody

Andy's Pick: Hourly Comic Day 2026

Jason's Pick: Curling

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Andy Ihnatko, and Jason Snell

Guest: Dan Moren

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