TechTime with Nathan Mumm

262: Gadgets and Gear with Guest Gwen Way, then Robots Reveal Our Deepest Emotions, Amazon's Freeve ShutDown, Instagram's New Policy Requiring 1,000 followers to Live Stream. | Air Date: 8/5 - 8/11/2025

• Nathan Mumm • Season 7 • Episode 262

Share episode

The digital landscape is shifting beneath our feet as free streaming services continue to vanish. Amazon's Freevee joins the growing list of casualties, leaving consumers with fewer no-cost options while paid services paradoxically charge premium prices yet still bombard viewers with advertisements. This troubling trend prompted a spirited discussion about the psychological tactics companies employ to normalize paying for content that still contains commercials.

A fascinating study reveals unexpected insights about our relationships with robots possessing different personality traits. While people generally enjoy interacting with confident, extroverted AI, they find neurotic robots surprisingly relatable—even attributing emotional depth where none exists. This anthropomorphizing tendency raises important questions about how we connect with technology and the blurring lines between human and machine interaction. As one host quipped, "This is technological schizophrenia," highlighting concerns about our growing emotional dependence on artificial companions.

Instagram's controversial new policy requiring 1,000 followers to live stream effectively eliminates a feature many small communities relied upon for intimate gatherings. This fundamental shift away from Instagram's original purpose of connecting small groups mirrors broader changes across social media, where platforms continually modify features to prioritize growth and revenue over community building. Yet despite frequent controversial changes, these platforms maintain their user bases, demonstrating the powerful hold they have on our digital social lives.

The episode also explores Natura AI, a polarizing new product combining earbuds with an AI assistant that responds to voice commands throughout the day. While one host saw potential benefits in having information instantly available, the other condemned it as promoting social disconnection. This tension between technological convenience and human connection underscores the central theme running through the show—how we navigate the complex relationship between innovation and our fundamental need for authentic human experience.

Support the show

Speaker 1:

Broadcasting across the nation, from the East Coast to the West, keeping you up to date on technology while enjoying a little whiskey on the side, with leading-edge topics, along with special guests to navigate technology in a segmented, stylized radio program. The information that will make you go, mmmmm. Pull up a seat, raise a glass with our hosts as we spend the next hour talking about technology for the common person. Welcome to Tech Time Radio with Nathan Mumm.

Nathan Mumm:

Welcome to Tech Time with Nathan Mumm. The show that makes you go hmm. Technology news of the week the show for the everyday person talking about technology, broadcasting across the nation with insightful segments on subjects Weeks ahead in the mainstream media. We welcome our radio audience of 35 million listeners to an hour of insightful technology news. I'm Nathan Mumm, your host and technologist, with over 30 years of technology expertise. Our co-host, microday, is in studio and he is the award-winning author and our human behavior expert. Now we're live streaming during our show on four of the most popular platforms, including YouTube, twitchtv, facebook and LinkedIn. We encourage you to visit us online at techtimeradiocom and become a Patreon supporter at patreoncom forward slash techtimeradio. We are friends from different backgrounds, but we bring the best technology show possible weekly for our family, friends and fans to enjoy. We're glad to have Odie. Good afternoon and good evening. There we go. She's our producer at the control panel today.

Nathan Mumm:

Welcome everyone. Let's start today's show.

Speaker 1:

Now on today's show.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, welcome to Tech Time Radio. Today on the show we have our main segment with Gwen Way and our gadgets and gear. This is a gadget that Mike and I may have a different opinion on it. We'll need to see you as a listener If you decide to side with Nathan or with Mike. And, of course, we have tons of other subjects we're going to be talking about, including Mike's mesmerizing moment, our technology fail the weekend and Nathan nugget and, of course, our pick of the day, whiskey tasting to see if our selected whiskey pick gets zero, one or two thumbs up at the end of the show. It looks like we're doing our playoffs with the whiskey today, so we'll have to see what we got. Is that what this is? Yeah, this is the whiskey. It's the top of the month, so we got our whiskey competition. There's only two here. I know that's not enough for us to drink for our normal show. Who or who is it? I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Okay, Well, everybody welcome. Let's start with the top technology stories of the week.

Nathan Mumm:

Here are our top technology stories of the week. All right Story number one. Popular streaming services are shutting down all the time now and Amazon prepares to pull the plug on Freebie. Have you heard of Freebie?

Mike Gorday:

Yeah.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, well, guess what? An exact end date is not announced, but the app is expected to stop working at the end of this month. Let's go to Lisa Walker with more on the story.

Speaker 2:

After years of offering the free streaming TV service Freebie through a standalone app, amazon plans to shut down the service next month. Launched in 2019 under the Amazon-owned IMDb website, the app offers free ad-supported content including TV shows, movies, original programming and some Amazon Prime content. Out of 10 once-free streaming services, we now are down to 2.5, pluto TV, tubi and Roku Channel. If you have a Roku device, back to you guys in the studio.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, we got to talk about this. All right, Do we? Do we really need to talk?

Mike Gorday:

about it.

Nathan Mumm:

We keep on talking about it. You remember there was a time when we did streaming services. There was a new one that would pop up every two or three months. That was available.

Mike Gorday:

You didn't have to pay. Everybody's figuring out how to screw the American public. Wow.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay. Well, freebie will shut down at the end of this month. Amazon has confirmed it will discontinue the app at the end of August. However, the exact date still hasn't been said. When you go and actually log into the Freebie application, as I did, checking up on the story, it said it should happen at the end of this month. So they're kind of vague on when they're going to pull it. But they're also vague on why they're pulling it. They're saying that most of this content most will be now available on Amazon Prime without requiring a paid membership. So if you just have a standard Amazon Prime login, you're going to be able to get this still with the ads. Standard amazon prime login, you're going to be able to get this still with the ads. Uh, amazon announced the shutdown aligns with amazon's previous statement from last year that indicated plans to discontinue the service.

Mike Gorday:

Now very interesting, rather redundant was that that seems rather redundant.

Nathan Mumm:

So here we are at two, so I have a roku tv, so I get the roku station, I get to be and I forget what the, what the other one was, was it? What was the other app on that od? Did you remember?

Ody:

pluto, and another thing that you're forgetting yeah, is samsung also has their own.

Nathan Mumm:

Uh, oh, they kind of do that, if you have a samsung device, you have your own free kind of it's like the roku, so there's a couple of these now with your device that you have available. I I kind of I myself go to these stations looking for the old 60s and 70s westerns, looking for the old my two dads, some of the old content that a matlock, some of these old things um, back in the day when they were on television have been free on these services, and I actually enjoyed jumping on in watching a happy days episode here, a little bit of a commercial. My real problem that I have now, though, is I pay for Netflix, I play for paramount plus, I pay for Hulu, I pay for ESPN extended, I pay for all these services and guess what, I still have to watch commercials.

Mike Gorday:

So I am now paying they all have premium services right.

Nathan Mumm:

So well, they have premium premium services money from you yes, in the 19 to 20 a month range, if I won most services. I wouldn't get a commercial, but I am cheap where I only want to pay the nine dollar or fourteen dollars see, that's.

Mike Gorday:

That's the problem with, with our, our american business acumen is they're going to keep digging you until you give them more money and at some point they're going to over overdo it and then lose customers. Is that okay?

Nathan Mumm:

I? I it's just I really enjoyed having streaming services with a little bit of ad content, and the ad content on these services were never really the grade a commercials, they were kind of grade b and grade c commercials. So it was kind of some of these were handmade a little bit of a lower budget and I kind of actually enjoyed watching the commercials that would, uh, be on here. They had, like some gallagher law office firm that would be on here a couple times, a couple other type of funny little ads okay, and now they're all gone.

Mike Gorday:

I don't know what your problem is.

Nathan Mumm:

So those good funny ads are gone. Now I'm back to the high-end commercial ads for stuff that I'm paying for. So I I'm just I guess I'm just mad in general that these free services are going away well, even with the free services, you had like 10 minutes of commercials yeah, a couple at one time you know You'd have it out of bulk.

Nathan Mumm:

That would be when you get up and went to the restroom. You ever remember back in the olden days when we had television and commercials? You'd get up, you'd go to the restroom, you'd grab whatever you needed to do, You'd get on back in about that minute and a half, two minute type of window and everything was perfect ready to go? Yeah, yeah, Do you remember back in the olden days when we had to use a?

Mike Gorday:

dial a rotor from, and well, those days are coming back. We talk about them on technology shows, right? Everybody's trying to get back there. I don't know what the hell. All right, here we go, all right?

Nathan Mumm:

well, make me feel better with story number two here, mike. I don't know why you give me these.

Mike Gorday:

What do you mean? You know why we give you these yeah, okay, okay so I guess, I guess they, you know, did a study on robot personalities.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay.

Mike Gorday:

And guess what, what People really like extroverted robots, but they relate to the neurotic ones.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, well explain more on that.

Mike Gorday:

This is ridiculous. All right, so you know, like C-3PO, yes, do you?

Nathan Mumm:

consider him an extrovert no c-3.

Mike Gorday:

Oh yeah, I know he's like your worst, isn't it? He is the worst. He's a white, he's a whiny bitch, wow, but but it's. It's weird because if you look, if you look at the original star wars, he was kind of like a translator. No, he was just a bit of a complainer okay but as the movies went on, he, he developed this, this kind of high, high-pitched, whiny voice that I just really can't, I really can't relate to. Okay but, apparently c-3po comes off as relatable to people okay, okay and, yeah, I can understand that.

Mike Gorday:

All right. So while neurotic robots are a staple of science fiction, just think of cp, c-3po, marvin in the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. Now, see, I like marvin because marvin was this total downer and okay was always complaining about everything all right so it was. It's a different, but at least marvin didn't have this high-pitched whiny voice.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, the high-pitched, whiny voice they haven't really been a focus of research until into how people react to their personalities, but one recent study found that a highly neurotic robot provoked some interesting responses. Okay, they found it to be more relatable. The experiment involved a human-shaped robot made of white plastic. People who were visiting a museum in chicago were randomly invited to go into a room and interact with the robot, which was described as a restaurant greeter okay man has skynet really worked hard on these.

Mike Gorday:

All right, the bot and the person had to sit together and just answer some simple questions all right the first one is what are three things that you are grateful for?

Mike Gorday:

When the robot had been given a highly extroverted personality, it spoke of being super grateful for the amazing people and it got to meet each day. The best part of its job was, hands down, meeting the folks. Okay, and I don't like this either. Okay, I'm not the guy that really likes people going around. Oh, I'm super grateful about everything. Even I just can't do it. I just can't do it. Okay, so this study would have just not worked on me. It would not have, no, but when the robot was given a highly neurotic personality, it spoke more tentatively, peppering its answer with filler words like um, and it said it was grateful for having a job where it could keep things organized, so it could stay focused and avoid unexpected issues. All right, the experiment also included a third version, which is commonly called the control version, with a more typical robot personality that was bland and flat. People generally didn't like that one. Okay, overall, they rated the extroverted bot as the most enjoyable to interact with personality.

Mike Gorday:

That was bland and flat people generally didn't like that one. Okay, overall, they rated the extroverted bot as the most enjoyable to interact with, but the neurotic was described as being surprisingly able to understand deep emotions. This is where I start having problems, of course.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, deep emotions yeah, so I'm emotionally the robot does not understand deep emotions okay but we, we, we related to it, we start relating to it, we start anthropomorphizing it, and then that's when we start giving it qualities that it doesn't have. Okay, uh, one person remarked that the neurotic robot seemed like a person who was trying to get by in the world, while another comment that I think we both seem to make an effort to think about ourselves and do a lot of inner contemplation boy okay so the so they were relating that that the robot was having problems to.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, I just can't, I don't I don't understand all right.

Mike Gorday:

We found a lot of joy and fun in seeing that personality who says sarah sebo, a computer science researcher at the university of chicago, one of the authors of the study. We felt there was a lot of novelty in trying to explore, like, what does it mean for a robot to express neuroticism? But at the same time he thinks there was also a question of when this would actually be helpful. Focus on extroversion is understandable, given that robots are being sold to do skill-based tasks that require an appearance of positivity and confidence, like customer service, which, of course, we has gone downhill since the 70s.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay we're going back to the 70s. It's a 70s retro show.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, there we go, all right uh, neurotic traits such as anxiety, worry about performance plus fear and sadness haven't been seen as useful. For example, imagine if your autonomous vehicle was neurotic. Yeah, that would. That would be fun with your.

Nathan Mumm:

You know your tesla was going, tesla's going around, going around.

Ody:

I feel depressed and I'm gonna slam on the brakes yeah, doing a bunch of slowing down and you know, I wouldn't be opposed if, if I had an electric car and it would just go around like R2-D2.

Nathan Mumm:

So you just want noises.

Ody:

Yeah, I think that would be cute. Like me raging on the freeway and instead of me freaking out, my car is just going.

Mike Gorday:

Well see, r2-d2 was an angry robot.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, exactly that's Mike's favorite, that's fine.

Mike Gorday:

Mike likes the angry robot, but the one that's mike's favorite. That's mike likes the angry robot, but the one that's going. Why do we have to be in traffic right now? Yeah, I hate that.

Nathan Mumm:

I, I I just wish it wasn't so dark outside today. It was dark outside today. Why are people so mean? I? Feel so down I don't know all right well, so what happens? How did this conclude?

Mike Gorday:

Do people want to pay money for a neurotic, or do they want to pay for a confident one? I guess they just want the extroverted one. Okay, I don't know. Okay.

Nathan Mumm:

All right Okay.

Mike Gorday:

There is no. People want to buy stuff.

Ody:

Yeah, do you think there's a market out there for people that are wanting to talk to its Roomba? You know, would you want to talk to your Roomba? Yes, michael.

Mike Gorday:

In today's society. Yes, there are plenty of people that want their Roomba to be able to chat with them. This is the same piece of carpet I've traveled over five different times. Why do you keep dropping crumbs right here?

Nathan Mumm:

what's your problem? Would you like that as a room? No, I, I would.

Mike Gorday:

She kicked like my alexa telling me, telling me stuff when I don't want her to tell me oh wait, we got a story about alexa later in this episode today shut up, alexa I don't want to talk to you right now.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, we're going to talk about alexa plusley but yeah, I mean, this is so this is. This is not a surprise to me. Yeah, because we, as people, we're we're looking for relatableness, and if you have a robot that's showing neuroticism, then your own neuroticism is not as bad okay that that kind of makes sense.

Nathan Mumm:

I can see that.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, alright, I guess we get to in the future. We get to cruise up to McDonald's and have a robot be like hey, how you doing today. It's a super great day and I'm super grateful for you to be here. You want a Big Mac?

Nathan Mumm:

Then your neurotic car will respond in the face your neurotic car.

Mike Gorday:

While your neurotic car is going, why are we at mcdonald's this?

Nathan Mumm:

place sucks all right, okay. Well, guess what, if you're building a robot comedian, I I bet you a little uh I don't know.

Mike Gorday:

A little the comedy, a little bit of personality would be better. Sure, yeah, let's just chat, gpt that up to up to the chain.

Nathan Mumm:

All right Story. Number three Instagram no longer allows public accounts to go live If they have less than a thousand followers. It's kind of a big deal. Instagram during. Covid, how do you get your followers If you can't go live the whole idea of Instagram was to have like small private groups Of like 20-30 people where you could all talk to each other, you could go live and you can share stuff. Now Instagram Requires you to have A thousand followers.

Ody:

So that's the same realm of TikTok, because TikTok also has that same.

Nathan Mumm:

It does. Tiktok was built with that a thousand, so Instagram.

Ody:

You know that's going to ruin so many parties.

Nathan Mumm:

Yes, the whole idea of Instagram parties where you have like 20 people in and you're all talking about stuff. Well, users have been reported over the last few days that their accounts now aren't eligible for live broadcast. That's BS On the app. We changed the requirements to use this feature. Meta said Reason to notice that pops up when people try to host a live stream broadcast to their followers Only public accounts, only public, so you can't do it private anymore. Only public accounts with a thousand followers or more will be able to create live videos. Meta has confirmed the new eligibility requirement on many publications. The company told us that it started implementing the new rule in order to ensure that it's providing the best experience for its creators that host live broadcasts is that really why and it's driving improvements really why is that like instagram or meta going?

Mike Gorday:

we should be more like tiktok, because we're kicking our butts, probably that.

Nathan Mumm:

But I don't know. Gwen, who's on the chat, says it's all about the money. Well, yeah, we all know that.

Mike Gorday:

That's true, we all know that, but I don't think if you want to live stream to three people, I don't know why you shouldn't be able to.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah that was the whole idea that you could have small groups live stream. You're all talking about a movie. You're talking about a book club, Book clubs and stuff. I know use this all the time.

Mike Gorday:

Not that I'm in any book club.

Nathan Mumm:

But if you were in a book club or a small group, you could have all your people talk about what's going on. You could live stream, you could read the book, you could do stuff. Now you would have to have a thousand people and have to be no longer private but a public account to broadcast.

Ody:

See, you're talking about this, and the only thing that's going through my head are those uncles and aunts that are always at the quince in the background, streaming to like three members of the family, of the whole party. What are they going to do now?

Nathan Mumm:

They're going to have to find a brand new streaming platform.

Mike Gorday:

I guess they're just going to have to take pictures and post it, like everybody else.

Nathan Mumm:

On Meta's Facebook, but maybe they'll only allow those to go public after you have a thousand followers on your private Facebook.

Mike Gorday:

We need to get rid of social media altogether, all right.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, uh, instagram did not clarify, uh why it did this, but it does say that users with below a thousand followers uh will not be able to live stream coming soon.

Mike Gorday:

Well, yeah, okay.

Nathan Mumm:

Uh meta did say, the new requirement applies to not just the public but also private accounts. However, the change has only started to roll out to the private accounts, so it likely means that Instagram is killing the ability to do live streams for up to three close friends where you can hang out, and this was a part of their feature platform that launched in 2024 as getting connected with each other, and clearly it lasted a year and a half and now they're pulling it wow, so maybe maybe meta instagram tiktok tiktok did it successfully in instagram we know we're just, they're just copying them, but I think they might be.

Mike Gorday:

They want to save bandwidth.

Nathan Mumm:

They want to save costs, so it's about the money.

Mike Gorday:

Go get those followers there, you go Well, that ends our top technologies. What happens when all those Instagram people go to TikTok?

Nathan Mumm:

Well, they're just going to go to a new platform. Well, the small platforms. Instagram is the only platform I know that can keep on screwing itself up, and yet people still go back to use it, I don't get it, I do not get it.

Mike Gorday:

Hey, you just described the human condition right there.

Nathan Mumm:

Is it?

Mike Gorday:

TikTok really hasn't changed. We do stuff like this all the time.

Nathan Mumm:

Their platform should die. Meta should lose Instagram. Instagram should go away. Meta should just focus on Facebook and TikTok and other services.

Mike Gorday:

Have you ever wondered why customer service has been really crappy the last 20 years?

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, because they got rid of it. During COVID, customer service went to zero. You would be lucky if you could get a hold of anybody.

Mike Gorday:

That's not it. They figured out that they can just ignore customer service and they would still have customers, or you could be like T-Mobile. Because that's what we do.

Nathan Mumm:

And you go in and you talk to them and the customer service rep says, yes, we can do this. Yes, we can do this. Yes, we can do this, sign up here on the contract. And then, when you sign up on the contract and you actually call back to the customer service, they say, oh, the guy shouldn't have done that. But guess what? Now you on track. So guess what? Best of luck for your next two years. Yeah, t-mobile's customer service is the worst I thought.

Mike Gorday:

I thought xfinity's was the worst.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, xfinity's is like second worst, and then you need to have a xfinity.

Ody:

Well, I disagree. You like xfinity's service? No, no, I'm saying xfinity is the top worst of the worst. No see, that's why that's why we got there?

Mike Gorday:

because there's very little choices between xfinity and other services.

Ody:

So Xfinity is like we don't care about you. There's very little choices with Instagram and Facebook.

Nathan Mumm:

Yep, so you really Instagram.

Ody:

You don't really have a competitor, except for TikTok, which is interesting because, when you look at MySpace, MySpace died when Facebook was introduced.

Mike Gorday:

Hey, MySpace is still alive.

Ody:

Not to the same number.

Nathan Mumm:

It's not to the same. Myspace is still alive. Not to the same number.

Ody:

It's not to the same numbers but nobody has been able to like kill off because we all wanted to have our own private uh website.

Nathan Mumm:

So back before facebook became popular, we had we had myspace, we had myspace and myspace was like our personal nathan mums, myspace was a personal website.

Ody:

That's not what I'm. That's not what I'm talking about.

Nathan Mumm:

I'm talking about? Are you mansplaining right now? I don't know. What are you trying to tell me?

Ody:

What I'm trying to say is Facebook came in and killed MySpace.

Mike Gorday:

Instagram came in Video killed the radio store.

Ody:

Yes, Instagram came in and didn't really kill Facebook, but it did hurt Facebook for a little bit.

Mike Gorday:

It did.

Nathan Mumm:

But Facebook is still thriving. And then Facebook bought it, and then Facebook bought Instagram.

Ody:

But then TikTok is now here and Facebook is still living, and well.

Nathan Mumm:

Yes, because there's nobody else to make a personal webpage.

Ody:

Right.

Nathan Mumm:

Where you can share photos, I mean.

Ody:

No, not this. Whatever, I give up. I'm just crashing out. Wow, she just threw something at us.

Nathan Mumm:

Wow Okay.

Mike Gorday:

So she just threw something at us. Wow Okay, so you're trying to say that you think.

Nathan Mumm:

MySpace was killed by Facebook, okay, but nobody's been able to kill Facebook.

Ody:

Yes, or Instagram, like you said it right now. Instagram has had so many issues throughout the years and they're still one of the biggest platforms to be used, even though they're doing all this BS stuff.

Nathan Mumm:

Just kind of like X in Twitter. Yeah, exactly as much as you want to kill the person that runs X, people still use X and once they got used to it, they didn't want to go anyplace else.

Ody:

Blue sky is out there trying to succeed and nobody goes to it because they all go back to X. Yeah, everybody complains about Netflix, but they're still there, they're still thriving.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, that ends our top technology stories and a positive note.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to be the positive robot here.

Nathan Mumm:

Congratulations. Thank you very much, that was fantastic. Moving on, we have Gwen Way joining us on our next segment, gadgets and Gear. Buckle up as we drive 88 miles per hour into our next segment. See you after the commercial break.

Speaker 8:

Looking for custom glass solutions for your next commercial project? Hartung Glass Industries is your trusted partner in custom glass fabrication. For over 100 years, hartung has delivered proven manufacturing expertise, comprehensive product offerings and dependable service and quality. From energy efficient facades to custom shower doors, we create glass solutions tailored to your project needs. With eight facilities across the US and Canada, we combine national expertise with a local touch, ensuring faster service and unparalleled customer care. Hard Tongue Glass Industries where quality meets innovation. Visit hardtongueglasscom to learn more. Visit.

Nathan Mumm:

HardTongueGlasscom to learn more. Welcome back to Tech Time with Nathan Ma. Our weekly show covers the top technology subjects without any political agenda. We verify the facts and do it with a sense of humor, in less than 60 minutes and, of course, with a little whiskey on the side.

Ody:

You know what's so great about you, Nathan.

Nathan Mumm:

What's that?

Ody:

You're a human being.

Nathan Mumm:

What is that?

Ody:

Nobody could ever.

Mike Gorday:

He's not a human being, he's a human doing. No one could ever what Nobody could ever.

Ody:

I would never think to talk about it like that.

Mike Gorday:

You would never get on live and be like trying to talk like some weird robot guy Neurotic voice that wasn't neurotic, that was just moronic. I was trying to stay very neutral, very neutral.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, today, Mark Gregoire, our whiskey connoisseur, is in the studio. He has our monthly tradition. Mark, explain what we do with the whiskeys this month as the top of the month for the listeners.

Marc Gregoire:

Well, we are using the 2024 Flavor Whiskey Advent Calendar 24 remarkable whiskeys used for our year-long blind whiskey competition to see which one Nathan and Mike like best. So I invite our listeners to come along for the ride once a month while they uncover new tastes and train their senses to become true connoisseurs. Nathan is struggling.

Nathan Mumm:

I'll just tell you. I got feedback that Mark was mean to Nathan last week on the show, so I just want to share that feedback. Nobody was mean to Nathan last week on the show, so I just want to share that feedback. Nobody was mean to you. You were commenting on my palate or lack thereof, and people were like they think my palate is very good.

Mike Gorday:

How would they?

Nathan Mumm:

know what your palate is like Because they go with my palate when they buy whiskey from Wines and More Tracy is wrong.

Mike Gorday:

Was it your wife who said that we?

Marc Gregoire:

are in round two and today is the second battle of round two. We're going to have three in round two. This is our second, where you will choose the winner to move on to the next round. If they disagree, I will be the deciding vote Now. Today we are tasting two whiskeys with a lot in common, but legally they are quite different, uh-oh. One is a straight bourbon which has to be aged at least two years and, if under four, stated on the label. Also, it must be from a single state and distillery, with no flavoring finishes or blending whatsoever. The other is a blend of straight bourbons, still same age requirements, still same additive free, but because it is a combination of two or more straight bourbons. Still same age requirements, still same additive free, but because it is a combination of two or more straight bourbons, even if they come from the same distillery and state, they must carry blended label by law. It's a great reminder that in whiskey, what goes on the label matters, nathan, just as much as what goes in the bottle.

Marc Gregoire:

Let us see if our pal pals can taste the legal difference. Stay tuned to see which one wins out and advances from this round. So, nathan, what is all that moaning and groaning over there.

Mike Gorday:

He just became Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein.

Nathan Mumm:

This is. I don't know which one this is. This may be the blended, this may not be the blended, but this is by far the best and you've tasted the other one already I did. I tasted the other one and then I fully drank the whole glass.

Ody:

Yeah, but is he going to remember that towards the end of the show? No, I'll still drink.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, absolutely. This is by far the winner right here. There's no ands, ifs or buts about it. That's the winner.

Marc Gregoire:

Okay, yeah, alright. Do you want another little splash? Do you want another?

Nathan Mumm:

little splash, absolutely.

Marc Gregoire:

You have more of that? Oh yeah, okay, all right.

Nathan Mumm:

There you go, thank you, yeah, drink up buttercup All right, there you go.

Marc Gregoire:

We have to say some, just in case.

Nathan Mumm:

I got a bunch of family stuff that I'm doing this evening, so you know what.

Mike Gorday:

I just will drink as much as possible, you need to get lit.

Marc Gregoire:

There you go, there you to like and subscribe all there out there. Add a comment but, most importantly, unlike Nathan's doing now, drink responsibly, because heaven can wait.

Nathan Mumm:

He just slammed it again.

Mike Gorday:

He just slammed it.

Nathan Mumm:

I know that was good. That's so good. Well, with our whiskey tasting completed, let's move on to our feature segment. Today we have Gwen Way joining the show. She's an expert in cybersecurity during the day and a game board geek in the evenings, as well as a producer of Tech Time Radio and our Gadgets and Gear gal. Let's get ready to start our Comcast video stream the favorite service of Odie and start our segment Gadgets and Gear.

Speaker 1:

What's new in our Gadgets and Gear.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, Gwen, welcome to the show. Tell everybody a little bit about yourself for any new listeners.

Gwen Way:

Well, I'm somebody who has been in the technology space for about 25 years and focus on cybersecurity. As you said, it's a fun, fun field.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, there you go, Okay, well.

Marc Gregoire:

I'm glad that you're here.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, so now tell us a little bit. Today we're going to be looking at something that when we have our production show so for people that have long-time listeners will know this for new listeners. So as we do, is we do a production show, we do it on an evening. We go through all the stories that we have. We kind of debate, we say this subject works well, the subject doesn't work well. We kind of pitch some of those. Then, all of a sudden, nathan, we'll see something on feedly and then he'll put it. That is another story in there. But regarding our gadgets and gear, this is probably the most polarizing item that you've had on for quite a while. So explain to us what you have and a little bit about this device.

Gwen Way:

Certainly so. The product that we have right now is actually a combination of two products. They're calling it Natura AI, that's N-A-T-U-R-A space AI, and it is a set of earpods and an OS that allows you to interact as you would with AI just using earpods, so that you don't have to be at your computer all the time.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, so tell us how this works, tell us about where you can find this on Kickstarter, certainly.

Gwen Way:

So you can go to Kickstarterstarter search for natura ai and basically how this works is you've got two little air pod style things that go in your ears. You wear them throughout the day. If you decide that you want to search for something or need help coming up with words, you tap the pod twice to turn it on and you ask your question. Now it does lead to you know, talking to yourself in public, so that's always fun. But theoretically they'll be able to actually give you feedback, provide you the answers that you're looking for or, you know, just kind of help you out, give you advice.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, so. So now you wear. You wear this in your ear, right? So the idea is, it's in both ears.

Mike Gorday:

You look like you're one of those morons that walk around with a Bluetooth in their ear and talking to themselves, except you have two.

Nathan Mumm:

You do get two of these. Now there are an open. You look like Lobot from star wars. Okay, now, hang on now. So that it is open ear. So that means you can hear. So it's around the outside of the ear, so it doesn't cover the whole ear. So if me and you are having a conversation, mike, I can still hear you, but I can then enable my ai and't know why you're trying to sell this to me.

Mike Gorday:

This is the dumbest thing ever.

Nathan Mumm:

No, no, no, Hang on, you can ask it questions. Now here's the problem that I had, gwen, and you're going to have to help me out here, because I tried. I watched the video at least six times. The poor guy that was trying to do like a TED talk on this video, right, so kind of a bad video, but whatever, he's talking about this. How do you interact with the device? If I'm having a conversation with Mike, do I say AI, do this? Do I say AI, do that? How would I interact and say, okay, mike, we're talking about the Empire State Building and I want to sound really like a smart aleck that knew everything about it where I can say AI, tell me about the Empire State Building. How would I trigger that in our conversations?

Gwen Way:

You actually tap on the earpiece twice to turn it on. Okay, so if you're having the conversation you can casually Tap, tap. No, I heard that the Empire State Building is X feet tall and then the AI will tell you in your ear that's wrong, it's actually y feet tall and you can provide that information to mike smoothly, theoretically oh, okay, so so I'm gonna go around and bang my head on something and then be like the smartest guy in the world because my ai is there well, well you didn't get to the part where it's about ai people okay, so yeah.

Nathan Mumm:

So let's talk a little bit about.

Mike Gorday:

Let's talk about this stupid thing.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, hang on. So, first off, if you buy this device and there's still early birds available. I looked at this morning. It's interesting, though, because there's one price for like the $99 price, point right, and then there's like $149 because there is a subscription that you have to get no way explain to me about. You don't have to get the subscription there is.

Gwen Way:

There is a free version, but that does have a pared down uh number of the benefits of the device okay and commercials the best way is to act exactly there's no way it's going to have commercials that would be awesome, wouldn't that be awesome.

Mike Gorday:

Like hey how tall is the Empire State? Well, I'll tell you that. Just hang on. We need to talk about build a better life with Bryce Roney.

Nathan Mumm:

Better health, yeah, yeah, all right. So there is a subscription service, right?

Gwen Way:

So there is a subscription service, right, there is a subscription service that gets you access to AI people, which is kind of an interesting tweak on things. It basically creates personalities, if you will, for various things.

Nathan Mumm:

So explain that.

Gwen Way:

So you have the fitness trainer personality, you have a business news personality and when you ask questions related to those things, those personalities, those ai people, if you will uh, pop up and they're the ones that actually provide you know what this is you know, what this is.

Mike Gorday:

This is technological schizophrenia. How would you say that you're? You've got all these voices in your head, right In your technology that you're interacting with in public. It's exactly the same thing.

Nathan Mumm:

So I don't think the AI peoples, because I was looking at the AI peoples and so what it's trying to do is it's trying to create a customized AI bot for you. It's kind of what they're trying to do. So if you're into fitness, you're going to get the fitness bot. If you're into technology, you get the technology bot. So there's many different versions of this and you can hop between one. If I all of a sudden I feel like I want to be athletic, I can go to the fitness one and I think then I can switch over to the business one if needed.

Nathan Mumm:

I thought it was it was trying to team for you. It is.

Mike Gorday:

It is, yes, a team of people that will help you get the best answers related to your personality. I will. I will tell you if, if somebody comes up to me and they're wearing these double bluetooth things in their ear and they're they're chatting away to themselves and they want to talk to me, I'm going to walk away you to. No, because they don't need me there. Oh, that's the problem here they're having their own conversations. We're going to yeah, we're really pushing into Wally man. We're really pushing into Wally and this is a bad idea.

Mike Gorday:

That's a bad idea. It's a bad idea. I think it's stupid. I kind of like the idea, but psychologically it's stupid. I kind of like the idea. Psychologically it's bad Really.

Nathan Mumm:

It's a bad idea. So let's say, all of a sudden I just wanted to listen to some history about baseball and I'm in a meeting. I got these big, huge things in my ears and everybody thinks I'm a dork. To begin with, I could just listen to all the stuff that's going on and pay no attention to what's going on at all.

Ody:

She described it as AirPods. Airpods are not these big, huge things.

Nathan Mumm:

Did you see them? They're a little bit bigger. They're a little bigger than AirPods.

Mike Gorday:

They're the little Bluetooth things. Yeah, they're a little bigger.

Nathan Mumm:

They're a little bit bigger than that. All right, so tell me where you can find out. Where can you back this? Where's the company located? How many pledges let's get to the Kickstarter?

Gwen Way:

effects, All the good numbers and stuff. So you can find this on Kickstarter Again. Look for Natura AI N-A-T-U-R-A space. Ai. There are 720 backers currently. It's going through September 7th, so you still have plenty of time If you want to investigate and figure everything out. They are out of Wilmington, delaware, so it's another US-based company, and they say they're going to be able to get everything up and running by fourth quarter. So you might be able to get these by Christmas.

Nathan Mumm:

Sure they will. Nothing better than have like four sets of these and we could all be talking to our family and then listening to different voices.

Gwen Way:

And not actually talking to the family, because you're talking to the voices. Absolutely, gwen. We have enough problems with no, I don't need. And not actually talking to the family, because you're talking to the voices. Absolutely, gwen, you get it.

Mike Gorday:

We have enough problems with voices in our head anyway, we don't need other ones.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, well let me ask you the most important question you need one that's called Jiminy Cricket Jiminy. Cricket.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, that's my conscience, yeah, you need one that tells you when you're doing right or wrong.

Gwen Way:

Okay, all when you're doing right or wrong. Ai people for conscience living right here.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, Gwen are you?

Gwen Way:

going to get one of these units. I'm still contemplating it, but I think I might.

Nathan Mumm:

Don't do it, it could be interesting. It's $149 for the one-year subscription, right? So I mean, holy crap, that's $149 for the device, plus you get a year subscription of the natural. It's both os pro subscription and I don't know. I'm kind of in, I kind of yeah, you would be.

Mike Gorday:

I kind of would be, because, you know, wouldn't this be kind of cool? No, no, I don't think it would be cool to walk around with things, sticking them out of my ear and then talking to 50 different personalities that I've created about everything I want so you know what I really want.

Gwen Way:

That's right.

Mike Gorday:

We do it already and it's obnoxious. I don't know how many times I've been standing in line at a store or something and somebody is just yakking away. I want a communicator from Star Trek.

Nathan Mumm:

Is that you?

Mike Gorday:

I totally want to just throw things at you.

Ody:

Hell. No, my ears are too small for the little earbud things. Okay, so it would even stay in. And two, I can't imagine that working every day okay, I, I just want someone to create.

Nathan Mumm:

Can you imagine everybody walking?

Mike Gorday:

around with the this. This is like a like a science fiction episode. Yeah, like Black Mirror or something. See, that's exactly what I was thinking about. Everybody's walking around with these things going. Can you tell me what's going on in Washington today?

Marc Gregoire:

And you're trying to tell me and you're like tapping on your head.

Mike Gorday:

You know Like okay let's just.

Nathan Mumm:

There's just a lot of people doing this constantly, Constantly tapping on the side of your ear. But okay, so this is what we need to come up with. Still, we need to come up with the communicator device from next generation, because I don't know how the heck in in technology in the future. When I click on that, it comes in crystal clear. Okay.

Mike Gorday:

Crystal clear. The computer always comes back crystal clear, it translates, it knows everything I'm trying to say. I have some bad news for you. What's that? It's Hollywood man. That's fiction, what that's not a real thing.

Nathan Mumm:

It's in the name. I think that's going to come out.

Mike Gorday:

I think we're just a couple years away from that, they're giving you something to make you look like an idiot.

Ody:

All right, okay, well they don't have to work that out.

Nathan Mumm:

Be me up Scotty. All right, quinn, thank you for coming on the show. It's always a pleasure to have you talk about gadgets and gear. Thank you so much.

Mike Gorday:

You did this on purpose. Thank you for having me.

Nathan Mumm:

All right, this was a purposeful thing, all right. Well, we want to thank Gwen for being a part of the show. She does a great job finding the most unique items each month for our show. Alright, now let's move on to Mike's Mesmerizing Moment. Welcome to Mike's Mesmerizing Moment. What does Mike have to say today? I can't get this out of my craw, mike. Let's talk about story number one the free version of streaming. Why do I feel like, as a society, we're becoming more accepting of paying monthly subscriptions to watch TVs with commercials? It seems like just in four years we shifted from paying for media and now we have to tolerate advertisements.

Ody:

In what we're paying for Not to be that person.

Mike Gorday:

I think she wants to do this. What's what you?

Ody:

already asked this before. Well I have I?

Nathan Mumm:

this is, this is in my car, stuff that we and I can tell you what he's gonna say what is he gonna say?

Ody:

because we are lazy humans and we prefer to pay for the convenience of it even if it's just a facade this is all, yeah, this is yeah, this is all, this is all, this is all behavior modification by the media, by, uh, the merchant class, if you will.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, right, so here we're gonna say, oh, we're gonna give you this. They're like drug dealers, okay, there's a free sample, all right. And then you then you like, hey, I like this. And they say, okay, well, you know, we can't keep giving it to you. So we're, uh, we have to do something to make money. So we're going to put ads in. And you're like okay, I'll, I'll just do that. And next thing, you know, they're like hey, you want to get rid of these ads because we know you hate them, just pay us a monthly subscription service. So we do that, okay. And then it's the same thing later on. They're like and then later they just add the ads back, like, hey, just throw those ads back in, there, we can have what we can charge a higher price for no ads.

Nathan Mumm:

You see what they're doing, so does it ever come to a point where we stop? No no, so soon we're going to be paying hundreds of dollars for more and more.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, all right, all right, mr sham. Wow, yeah, do you remember late night commercials?

Nathan Mumm:

I do remember they were so horrible infomercials I used to. I loved. I loved watching them. They were entertaining, right, but Do you remember late night commercials? I do remember late night commercials. They were so horrible.

Mike Gorday:

Informaticals.

Nathan Mumm:

I loved watching them. They were entertaining, right they were, but they were just the dumbest things ever.

Mike Gorday:

They had these people that were having these mock surprises and it was just crazy and they would talk for hours.

Nathan Mumm:

Plus we got more and add this and they would talk for hours right.

Mike Gorday:

I used to sit there and wonder why the heck do these things keep? Coming on at night. Why are these here? Yeah, because people buy that. Yeah, people will buy it. So as long as people are doing it, they're going to keep making it happen. So we live in a society where we're not super conscious of what we're doing anymore. Okay, and these companies are using psychological techniques in order to keep you buying their product. They're trying to keep you addicted, because if you're addicted, you're not going to go away, so they're like crack dealers.

Mike Gorday:

Yeah, it is very, very similar to uh like breaking bad.

Nathan Mumm:

This is just breaking bad episodes over and over, that is why facebook and instagram and tiktok are so popular?

Mike Gorday:

because they have addictive qualities that nobody's aware of when they start using it. And suddenly you're.

Nathan Mumm:

You're sitting there for hours on end scrolling through videos my wife is doing that now a lot as she gets older.

Mike Gorday:

She dream scrolls for like hours yeah, see that it's an addiction and the addiction exists because we are medicating something also you gotta remember about the whole keeping up with the joneses yeah, aspect of it fomo, you're missing out. Fear of missing out. You know when it's time, you guys. When is it?

Ody:

time. I think it's called the blue pill.

Nathan Mumm:

Is it the blue pill in the Matrix?

Ody:

Disconnect from everything, is it?

Nathan Mumm:

the blue pill, yeah, the red pill gets you.

Mike Gorday:

The red pill wakes you up.

Ody:

The blue pill puts you back to sleep.

Nathan Mumm:

That's right. Yeah, there we go.

Mike Gorday:

Thank you, Mike, for that mesmerizing moment. Yeah, I don't think it was that mesmerizing and out of all the stuff that we had to chat about, this was the worst. That's why I selected it.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, all right Up next, we have this Week in Technology, so now would be a great time to enjoy a little whiskey on the side, as we will be doing so during the break. Anthemum see you in a few minutes.

Mike Gorday:

Hey, Mike.

Nathan Mumm:

Yeah, what's up, hey, so you know what.

Mike Gorday:

We need people to start liking our social media page If you like our show, if you really like us we could use your support on Patreoncom. Is it Patreon? I think it's Patreon. Okay, patreon, if you really like us, you can like us in.

Nathan Mumm:

Patreoncom.

Mike Gorday:

I butcher the English language, you know you butcher, the English language you know you butcher the English language all the time.

Nathan Mumm:

It's patreoncom.

Mike Gorday:

Patreoncom. If you really like our show, you can subscribe to patreoncom and help us out and you can visit us on that Facebook platform.

Nathan Mumm:

You know, the one that Zuckerberg owns, the one that we always bag on. Yeah, we're on Facebook too. Yeah, like us on Facebook. Do you know what our Facebook page is? Tech Time Radio. At Tech Time Radio. You know what? There's a trend here.

Mike Gorday:

It seems to be that there's a trend and that's Tech Time Radio, or you can even Instagram with us, and that's at Tech Time Radio.

Nathan Mumm:

That's at Tech Time Radio. Or you can find us on TikTok, and it's Tech Time Radio. It's at Tech Time Radio. Like and subscribe to our social like us today we need you to like us like us and subscribe that's it, that's it.

Speaker 1:

That's that simple and now let's look back at this week in technology all right, we're going back to august 7th 1944.

Nathan Mumm:

ibm presents harvard with the mark sequence-controlled calculator, the ASCC, an electrical mechanical computer devised by Howard H Aiken and built by IBM. Harvard renamed the ASCC to the Harvard Mark I. The Mark I was the first large-scale digital calculator ever built and served to spark the desire for more and better computing machines ever built and served to spark the desire for more and better computing machines. One of the first programs to be run on the Mark I was initiated on the 29th of March 1944 by John Van Neumann. At that time, neumann was working on the Manhattan Project and needed to determine whether implosion was a viable choice to detonate the atomic bomb. Although not the first working computer, the machine was one of the first to automate and execute complex calculations, making it a significant step forward for computing.

Mike Gorday:

Now we have AI people talking in our ears.

Nathan Mumm:

That was this week in technology. If you ever wanted to watch some Tech Time history, with over 260 weekly broadcasts spanning our five plus years of of video podcast blog information, you can visit us at techtimeradiocom to watch our other shows. We're going to take a commercial break. When we return we have Mark's Mumble Whiskey Review. See you after this.

Mike Gorday:

How to See a man About a Dog. It combines darkly comic short stories, powerful poems and pulp fiction prose to create a heartbreaking and hilarious journey readers will not soon forget. Read how to See a man About a Dog. Collected Writings for free with Kindle. Unlimited E-book available on Kindle. Print copies available on Amazon, the Book Pository and more.

Speaker 1:

The segment we've been waiting all week for Mark's Whiskey Mumble.

Nathan Mumm:

All right.

Marc Gregoire:

Celebrating today, August 5th, and I sincerely, sincerely hope we are all celebrating what today is.

Mike Gorday:

What are we celebrating?

Marc Gregoire:

today, mark. Today is National Underwear Day. Oh, uh-oh.

Nathan Mumm:

Uh-oh, are you serious Not?

Mike Gorday:

even Nobody wants to know that, Nathan.

Marc Gregoire:

Okay, continue on, mark. For National Underwear Day, let us briefly tell you why we love underwear. Okay, it keeps us from jiggling in public by covering our unmentionables. Did you know? Underwear appears in nearly every culture in the world, and for us now? It comes in all colors, sizes and fabrics. So I'll salute our underwear today.

Mike Gorday:

Did you have a mother that always said did you have clean underwear on, just in case you get into an accident?

Marc Gregoire:

Oh, absolutely yeah, and my grandmother always bought me underwear for Christmas. You never heard that. Well, you're young.

Nathan Mumm:

That was a big.

Mike Gorday:

Thing. That was a big.

Nathan Mumm:

Thing for us In case you had an accident, because if you didn't have underwear on and you had an accident If you had dirty underwear on.

Mike Gorday:

That was the biggest thing for mom. That all right. Of course, if you got into a horrible accident, mangled yourself probably would probably wouldn't have to worry about what your underwear okay, so on national underwear day, yeah, it only makes sense mark just continues like nothing happened just now.

Marc Gregoire:

We follow it with a tasteful showdown. Okay, barrel found versus chicken cock. Oh, or as we like to call it found cock.

Mike Gorday:

Okay.

Marc Gregoire:

Let us see which one rises to the occasion.

Mike Gorday:

I'm not. I'm not sure what's happening right now.

Nathan Mumm:

Underwear day we're talking about?

Mike Gorday:

we're talking about underwear and chicken cock.

Marc Gregoire:

Well, okay. So the two that we are drinking today, mike, yes, one of them is the Chicken Cock Kentucky Straight Bourbon. This is from Grain and Barrel Spirits. It's distilled in Bardstown Bourbon Company. It is straight whiskey, non-age stated, and there's nothing on the label. So we've learned earlier today that must be at least four years old. Okay, it is 90 proof and 60 dollars, all right. The other one is barrel foundation from barrel craft spirits. It's a blend of straight bourbons from kentucky, indiana, tennessee and maryland. Oh, it is five to nine years old. In the blend it's 100 proof and it is also 60.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, oh, so same price points same price point, that means, that means that means that means nathan is gonna have a trouble figuring out which one to get.

Nathan Mumm:

No, no, no, I absolutely knew it from the very first drink right here.

Marc Gregoire:

This is, this is my, this is my winner oh, okay, and Mike, is this your order of winner two no, no, actually that's just how I drank them, okay, okay.

Nathan Mumm:

Uh-oh, oh, stay tuned. Okay, if we can't come to a resolution, then Mark's going to get to choose.

Marc Gregoire:

I haven't even tasted them yet today, because I thought you guys maybe would be deciding on the same one. Uh-oh.

Nathan Mumm:

Maybe same one? Oh, maybe we're not. Well, you know what?

Mike Gorday:

whiskey and technology are such a great pairing. Okay, like milk underwear and well, no accidents like milk and oreo cookies you just have to dunk for that much you know. You know I never after the after the talk about uh, underwear. This is not a good place I already had it written up.

Nathan Mumm:

I had no idea, mark was doing underwear, stuff why?

Mike Gorday:

not August 5th is National.

Nathan Mumm:

Underwear Day, what else would I do? Does that mean I'm not celebrating it? You're definitely celebrating it.

Marc Gregoire:

Nobody wants to know about your personal hygiene habits. Mike's got to go a little closer to you All right, okay.

Mike Gorday:

No, I'm moving away from you. I'm putting social distancing.

Nathan Mumm:

All right. Well, let's prepare now for our technology fail of the week, kind of like your underwear in an accident. Congratulations, You're a failure.

Speaker 8:

Oh, I failed. Did I, yes, did I.

Nathan Mumm:

Yes, alright, our technology fail comes to us from Amazon. Amazon CEO, andy Jassy says Is he getting? Rid of freebie? Well, that would be many of the different things.

Nathan Mumm:

No, this has to do with their company's new AI-powered digital assistant, the Alexa Plus. Oh no, Plus plus, plus, plus, plus. So it was Alexa, Another plus. Now it's Alexa Plus, he said during Amazon's second quarter earnings call last week. People are excited about the devices that they can buy from us that have Alexa Plus enabled. Too bad, 90% of it doesn't work yet. But people do a lot of shopping with Alexa Plus, so their programming is so far behind on their AI that they have not gotten all the features that they promised to even have for this device. But good old CEO is out there saying this is the best thing since sliced bread. Now he's delighted to give. The shopping experience is going to be better. He says on this think over time that you have opportunities as people engage more and more with conversations on Alexa Plus. It will start advertising and play a role to help people find, discover and drive new revenue for Amazon, the company.

Nathan Mumm:

So the more you talk to this device, the more it's going to know what you like. So then, in the middle of your sentence, it's going to be like the Truman Show. Well, it's going to be like. It's going to be like Wife 101. This is what it's got to be. You're going to have a conversation and all of a sudden it'll interrupt and say we need to go buy this.

Marc Gregoire:

And I'll be. What the heck are you talking about? Interrupting sounds more like man 101.

Nathan Mumm:

Oh man 101. Okay, remember man 101.

Mike Gorday:

Whichever way, you want to say it in any conversation, you're going to get in trouble. Who me? Yeah, you are. Oh, okay, sorry, you just said something bad All right.

Nathan Mumm:

Alexa Plus is Amazon's answer to the generative AI voice assistant. It's going to compete with open ai, not really google, nope or perplexity, and none of those do they have to worry about this device that amazon is rolling out. But amazon is making it free for prime customers who pay 14.99 a month. So if you're just a prime customer, you get me and do I have.

Nathan Mumm:

So I have that that means you will get uh that. But if you wanted to upgrade, you could add a $20 a month subscription tier for Alexa Plus to have it on its own. So you could pay to have an AI suggest to buy you stuff for $20 a month if you don't have a Prime subscription.

Mike Gorday:

You know what my Alexa already does this?

Nathan Mumm:

It does. My Alexa just comes on in the middle of nowhere and says, hey, I was looking on Amazon and I found something you might like, like batteries, or your battery on this is low, so you should probably replace it with these Duracell batteries and then if you have it on pause, then it does videos now on the screen. You notice that the videos that I have up there.

Mike Gorday:

I don't have one of those. So who's this guy?

Nathan Mumm:

Jassy, he's the CEO, okay Jassy shut the F up. Okay, shut the f up. Okay, well, up until now the ads only appeared in alexa in limited ways, but users have this. Is they say? Amazon thinks users want to see more ads?

Mike Gorday:

no, no, we don't we don't want to see more ads the last thing I want the last thing I want to do is have, uh, ask alexa a question and have her follow up with some sort of ad for some tchotchke that I don't want or need. Every time she comes on to suggest something, I tell her to shut up because I don't want it.

Nathan Mumm:

I'm telling Jassy shut up. Jassy says that they are going to continue to work out bugs because right now the Alexa Plus has hallucinations and will suggest things that don't even make sense. So you could be like let's say, you're a person that doesn't wear underwear and all of a sudden it comes up and pops up and says I think you might need to talk to your therapist about that buddy. An underwear ad and you'd be like, what the heck? This is not even anything I would do.

Mike Gorday:

Okay, so, nathan, that sounds to me like something that you need.

Nathan Mumm:

I need an Alexa.

Mike Gorday:

Plus, no, you need Alexa telling you to get underwear, okay, so if that's your example, it was a bad example.

Marc Gregoire:

So the segment is brought to you by Hanes, America's choice for underwear.

Nathan Mumm:

Thanks, man On sale now. Yeah, I don't know who this is. That's going to be my ear. I'm going to double tap that and that's the first thing that's going to come out of my AI and my ear from Gwen. Now, jassy seems enthusiastic about making advertising a large part of Amazon business. Amazon advertising revenue went up 22% in the second quarter compared to the same period last year, so he's all in and providing you more ads to sell more items on Amazon.

Marc Gregoire:

Unfortunately, it's because they were, not because people want them, I think.

Mike Gorday:

Stephen Colbert should tell him what to do. What would Stephen Colbert say? You don't know what the whole Stephen Colbert controversy is.

Nathan Mumm:

No, explain that to me, Mike. This is better off air.

Mike Gorday:

Okay all right he should tell Jesse what he should do with himself.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, Well you know what we're going to head now. Are we going to go to that? No, we're not going to go to commercial. We're going to go right now to the Nathan Nugget. Let's go to the Nathan Nugget. No Well, I didn't do a Nathan Nugget last week. Come on, Nathan Nugget. Better watch Hit Nathan Nugget Owee Go, go, go.

Speaker 1:

This is your Nugget of the Week.

Nathan Mumm:

Thank you, All right we have. Windows 11 is rolling out 14 new features that I couldn't get to last week, so I got them on this week. Now Do we have time for this? Yes, Windows 11, Copilot Vision AI-powered vision mode in Copilot scans your desktop and even opens Windows.

Mike Gorday:

This is the most irritating thing ever. Yes, all right. I had a word document open and my co-pilot kept trying to rewrite it. Take my yeah, yes, I'm like get off this okay so that's making my stuff better.

Nathan Mumm:

Windows 11 these are new. These are new features. I'm just getting too old. Ai settings agent, natural language assistant. Inside the settings you can now say stuff like connect Bluetooth or make cursor larger, and copilot will automatically take over and make your cursor larger.

Mike Gorday:

So when you were writing that you should have asked for a larger cursor or copilot, make Nathan wear underwear.

Nathan Mumm:

Or it relights in photos. Now there's three virtual settings for cinematic glow studio portrait and you can adjust your photos. Now. This has been going on with filters for the last like 20 years, but now you can do it in Windows. So congratulations, windows.

Mike Gorday:

You're coming up to the plate there. I'm going to go right home and start using all these features, objects, select and paint AI-based tool to identify and isolate background objects, and sticker generator and paint.

Nathan Mumm:

Now there's been other applications that done all this a color picker, quick machine recovery, black screen of death. We talked about reading coach, co-pilot during word mike's favorite thing you can draft documents directly by hitting co-pilot to do the work and many other items, including you can now do your team meetings in your bnw cars. If you pull over to the side of the road and you want to have a team's meeting, you could actually still stay on your team's meeting in your car itself.

Mike Gorday:

That makes me feel so productive right now. All right, there you go, okay.

Nathan Mumm:

Well, let's head to our.

Speaker 8:

Go ahead.

Nathan Mumm:

Odie, I see it I see you playing with that board over there, all right, let's now move to our pick of the day whiskey tastings.

Speaker 1:

And now our pick of the day for our whiskey tastings. Let's see what bubbles to the top.

Marc Gregoire:

Ooh, that music just wakes me up. All right, there you go.

Nathan Mumm:

You didn't like all the features, the coffee wakes me up. All right, here we go. This is my fave All right, you are the Glen. Karen, it's not the chicken cock that has to be the blended, because I'm a blended type of guy.

Mike Gorday:

That's not the blended, I think. So, yeah, mike, which one did you choose? Uh, you know, I'm going to go with the chicken cock which is in which? Which glass? Which is this got to be this one?

Marc Gregoire:

oh, oh wow, oh, no right, mike, just mike just disappeared. Both were correct. And what was in your glasses?

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, really.

Marc Gregoire:

The beer glass was the chicken cock and the Glencairn was the barrel foundation. They were both very good. They were, I do agree. I tried them both while you guys were talking, and I did enjoy them both, which?

Speaker 8:

is your favorite.

Nathan Mumm:

I think, this one was a little bit more robust than this one. I thought this would add a smoother flavor.

Marc Gregoire:

That's what I got, too. Mike and I was going to go, because I've always chosen with Mike so far. However, I was just thinking long-term. If it's both on my shelf, what am I going to continually reach for? And it would be the barrel foundation.

Nathan Mumm:

Oh, look at that Winner. Winner chicken dinner. I had to get a chicken dinner.

Mike Gorday:

Winner winner chicken cock dinner.

Nathan Mumm:

Okay, all right. Well, you know what we're about out of time. We know what we want to thank our listeners. We're about out of time. About some other things Joining our program Listeners, we want to hear from you. Just visit techtimeradiocom, click on the BIA caller and ask a a question on technology in our talkback recording system.

Marc Gregoire:

You can always stay connected by visiting Tech Time. What's that I'm interrupting with the commercial? Oh, he's doing.

Mike Gorday:

Alexa stuff he's doing. Alexa stuff. Alexa plus Jassy. Look he's doing it and we hate it.

Nathan Mumm:

I'm tapping my ear. Nothing's going away. It still keeps on saying the same thing. Remember the science of tomorrow starts with the technology of today.

Speaker 1:

We'll see you guys next week Later. Bye-bye. Thanks for joining us on Tech Time Radio. We hope that you had a chance to have that hmmm moment today. In technology, the fun doesn't stop there. We recommend that you go to techtimeradiocom and join our fan list for the most important aspect of staying connected and winning some really great monthly prizes. We also have a few other ways to stay connected, including subscribing to our podcast on any podcast service, from Apple to Google and everything in between. We're also on YouTube, so check us out on youtubecom. Slash TechTimeRadio. All one word. We hope you enjoyed the show as much as we did making it for you From all of us at TechTime Radio. Remember mum's the word have a safe and fantastic week.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Nathan Mumm

Host
Head Shot

Mike Gorday

Co-host
Head Shot

Gwen Way

Guest