Good morning, afternoon, or evening. Please delete as appropriate. Hello there, and welcome to this episode number 542 of the Material Podcast. I'm Andy Notko, and please, please, please, I hope you didn't skip to the next podcast because you heard my voice introducing the show two weeks in a row. Florence Ion is back. Hello, Flo. Welcome back. I'm here, but I'm a little sleepy. I just need everybody to know. I swear to God, I am thankful for my meat suit, even with all of its flaws, even with all of the ways.
And it's not even that it's flawed. It's just that I got really beat up by a yucky virus called COVID, man. And it's just like every little thing hits me like a truck. And I really want you to imagine, it is like a truck. The littlest little sneeze will turn into just this entire, I'm still a little, I still got a little bit of it going on. So sorry to everybody. My podcasting voice is not at its prime. Everybody understands it. It's amazing how quickly people, as titanic and unavoidable, inescapable, like 2020 was, like the COVID lockdown, so many people seem to have forgotten that it happened.
And a lot of people, probably society in general, has forgotten that COVID is still having effects. Like both from, yeah, you still need to be immunized against it because death is still very much on the table where that is concerned. But also that there are still people like yourself that are still like, this is a lifelong, this was a life-altering illness. You know what they're going to say? World War III was inside our bodies.
Okay, sorry, that was a little dark. But what a great way to start off the podcast this week. No, no, no. Actually, let me go for a happy pivot. Please, balance me. This has been the kickoff of cozy season in the past. I don't know when specifically it happened. I'm wearing a blanket right now.
it's not like, oh, today's the day that I put out like all of the Thanksgiving decorations. And it's more like, it's not like a celebrity sort of like date circled on the calendar. It's just that I've realized that, oh, well, at some point, like last month, I did break out like the box that has like all of like the sweaters and all of like the fleece and zip ups. And I put like, I swapped out like the spring and summer, like bedding for the fall and winter bedding. And flannel sheets. Flannel sheets. It's a sheet. It becomes a sheet and a blanket.
comforter and i have an optional like fleece blanket that can go like in between that sandwich because i i am i am still being a cheapskate uh because like a few years ago like our energy company was like bought up and now they decided hey people can kind of afford power right now. That means that there are a lot of people who could probably afford like 50% more to pay. And so that's why I said, you know what, maybe if I just, 65 degrees was fun. Let's see what 55 degrees feels like. And then, oh, let's see what 40 degrees feels like. But the thing is like, rather than feeling, oh God, it's so freaking cold in here. It's like, oh boy, I can't, it's kind of nice to be in the fuzzy, wear my fuzzy slippers and have a nice cup of tea in the morning and oatmeal. And the other thing is that I realized that
My box of cozy clothing is mostly like a scrapbook of conferences I've spoken at and speaking gigs I've had because it wasn't until this year that I kind of realized how much of my speaker swag over the past 10 to 20 years has been, hey, thanks for coming up to John Hopkins to speak. Here is the most cozy fleece zip up you've ever had in your life. A listener to one of my podcasts, I think it was MacBreak, is a firefighter. And he sent me a job shirt from his company. And it's like, these are what firefighters wear in freezing cold weather. And it is almost violently warm. And so I can only wear it when I really, really need warmth. Oh, yeah. I fall in the violently warm very, very quickly, being in California, I will say, which sucks. But I'm just saying, so I'm kind of appreciating it. As opposed to, oh, damn. I'm never going to come around to the idea of, oh, well, it's for...
10 in the afternoon, which means I've got exactly 18 minutes left to go outside and enjoy. I will never come around to that. But it's like, oh, it's kind of nice to be wearing like layers. And I've got a couple days ago was the first day that my wool cap and like my really, really nice red scarf came out. And it's like, I think part of it is like in addition to all of the really good and also like the leaves are down and it's windy. And it's like you walk around, you just see leaves falling like big clumpy snow like a little bit. And that's in New England, that's a very, very pleasant thing. And I think that part of it, particularly being a lifelong New Englander is just knowing that.
Like, you know what, in the course of any week or even day or even hour, okay, you're going to have some victories and some, well, whatever the opposite of victory is, where you feel like, my God, I'm not 14 years old. I should be able to know how to do this by now. Like, what life skills have I actually accrued in these past decades that actually mean anything? Oh my gosh, don't be so hard on yourself. No, no, no, no. I'm saying that like, but on the opposite side of that is like.
fall and winter are like, I am from New England. I know how the hell to dress for cold weather. Oh yeah, you gotta lean in. You gotta lean in. That's like me leaning into a sunny day with palm trees everywhere, okay? So you gotta lean in. Well, it's knowing that you've got this accrued knowledge of, nope, we're not gonna spend $300 on this polar Arctic pillow type jacket because that will be fine for when it is eight degrees outside, but it will be way, way too overbearing and warm. I'm gonna dress in layers. And I've got clothing piece by piece by piece that are absolutely like...
like a movie where they, a movie where, where, where the, where the dashing middle-aged heist chief thief assembles a crack team. Every member of this team is, you've got the Cockney safe cracker. You've got the, the, the Eastern Asian, like martial artist expert. You've got the, you've got the person who knows computers and technology. It's like every time, like when I've got all that stuff unpacked for the season and it's like, okay, I've got the, the, the thrift store jacket that I spent $12 for. That is the perfect, like outer layer jacket. I've got this perfect sweatshirt. I've got this perfect scarf. I feel like, you know what?
Again, I wasn't being down on myself earlier. I'm saying in normal circumstances, you judge your own performance day by day and everything you do. But basically to see what did you do well, what do you need to improve your performance on. And it's very, very satisfying to say, no, this is a solved problem. I am so freaking good at dressing for fall weather. Other people should admire me. I should be on the lecture circuit explaining how to dress for fall weather. I'm going to – Veterans Day was – You should do that for TikTok, by the way, just as a side note. If you ever make it on TikTok, that's exactly what you should start us with. Yeah.
See, it's the one thing that I feel like I should, like, lecture children on. Because there was a – in a nice way. You know, I'm not quite old enough to be, like – I'm still, like, the middle-aged guy who will come across to a young person as, what does he know? He's old. I'm young. Oh, yeah, yeah. In, like, another 15 years, I will be, like, the elderly guy that is, like, actually, you know what? We have to be – you know what? I am inclined to respect somebody in their 60s who, like, at least is coming from a place of wanting to help. And so Veterans Day was, like, really, really cold for some reason. This is what – and the parade in the festivities is, like –
right outside my house, like a lot of the town festivities are. And so this is why, another reason why I'm like, I went outside, was outside for a good 15 minutes and said, you know what? I think I'm going to go all the way home and dress more warmly for this. And that means like a six minute walk. This is, it's a great, it's a great place to live. And I just felt that way of not feeling superior, but saying, oh, I really need to talk to these, like to these younger people about, I know you love those sneakers, but I really need to have insulated boots. And oh.
I actually passed by someone who was like in their 30s who should know better, giving that explanation that you never, ever, ever believe, which is, okay, yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of people might think that like I'm freezing cold, like wearing these basketball shorts like on a day like this in mid-November. But, you know, I mean, I'm comfortable in them. Like I'm not warm, but I'm comfortable if that makes any sense. And you just want to say, no, you're freezing your knees off. And I can see that your various like internal systems are like pulling blood away from your legs and your limbs to make your brain and heart still work.
I don't know, Andy, because I went to Canada. I went to Canada and it was snowing there and there were a lot of people that were not dressed. They were wearing sneakers around the snow and they were able to wield. But I feel like that might be more of just like a Canadian thing. Sneakers are a small part. I will forgive. I don't blame people. I think that that's the power move when I'm sort of like...
That's what got me is I was slipping and sliding in the appropriate gear. Meanwhile, you've got all these people who grew up in this who are just striding on by like it's no big deal. Yeah. And to be fair, I am one of those New Englanders who was like, this isn't cold. This is just crisp.
Meanwhile, internally. Oh, you know why, Andy? It's because of your Eastern European background. That's why you can do that. As I have said to people before, I am genetically, my body is genetically optimized for winter warfare. Yeah, I was going to say. I'm not optimized for running. I'm not optimized for, I'm optimized for, by the way, you've been sent to the Eastern, you've been sent to fight this war in this freezing cold weather and you're not going to be relieved for about 11 months, assuming that you survived. Good luck with that. Those are my answers. Listen, I say the same thing. I say that I was made to pull a cart.
Which honestly makes me feel, it makes me feel very strong. Like when I say that, it makes me feel very, and I'm not just saying empowered, but like I feel like a strong entity. Also because my zodiac sign is Taurus. So I feel like it fits in with the whole, yeah. Anyway. In things I wasn't expecting Flo to share with me today. I almost bought you a book at the library book sale. It was a children's book called Gemini. And like the word Gemini was like printed in like these sparkly sort of like gem sort of things. Like where they actually like embossed like gems or shiny things into the cover.
But I would have had to like read it and screen it first. And who has time to read a 31-page children's book that's mostly illustrations? Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you for thinking of me. Thank you. I get more than zero credit. Not a lot of credit, but more than zero credit. You're the best, Andy. I'm not the best, but I'm not the worst. I'm finding my zone. I'm finding my zone.
What if we got on the docket today? I feel like it's been a sleepy but not sleepy week. Pretty good. There's a few stories and they got a lot of protein in them. So basically, so last week we talked about how Android is, with the help of legal coercion by Epic Games, came up with a really, really neat plan for how Android should handle app installation in the future, both the one way we do it and the other way we do it. And we have some updates to both of those ways. And both of them are pretty, pretty interesting. And also...
Google, all along with their AI policy, has been saying, everybody, don't worry. Tell Gemini everything. Don't worry. Trust us. We will not abuse your private data. And somehow, perhaps they've actually asked around how well that message is penetrating. And as a result, just yesterday, the day before they came out with, okay, you know what? How about instead of trusting us, we create a system that makes it absolutely impossible for us to abuse your private data. How about that? And I've read through it with great, great struggle and difficulty and lots of tea.
Well, we're not going to talk about this. So there was a Google, there's a Google workspace outage yesterday. I don't know if it affected you. It was one of those things that you didn't, it didn't affect me, but I read about it. And I thought about like, if we were doing the show yesterday, how do you, obviously the top news on Wednesday was that Google, no one had access to Google Docs or Google Meet, but how would we report, how would we do a podcast in which we talk via Google Meet and we use Google Docs as for the show doc to talk about how neither of those services were working?
I got to tell you, I completely missed that because I was working offline in, what is it? Notepad on Windows, writing the OnePlus 15 review yesterday, which I'm going to save right now because I haven't actually saved it. Really living on the edge there, Flo. The embargo is lifted in everything, by the way. It's published, but I still didn't save my rough draft. And yeah, I don't use Google Docs until I'm like, actually, I didn't need to use it yesterday because our CMS is ghost. Nice.
So I avoided the outage. Good for me. I only use Windows as when I need to, I don't know, test something when I'm writing about something Windows-related. And I'm always impressed by how popular Windows Notepad is for actual real things. There's a lot of love for that app. Since the 90s, baby. It's my favorite. It's my favorite. And I had the same love affair with TextEdit on the Mac.
Like, I really just want to keep it so simple so that I can just think because I have such a hard time with so much noise anyway that I'm fielding in my head. Anyway. I mean, we won't turn this into a huge digression, but I would not like 10 or 15 years ago, I would not have predicted that. Collectively, almost the entire world seems to have said, you know what, WYSIWYG text editing in 1984, when the Mac came out, I can understand why it became so popular. It's really cool. Lots of people work very, very hard on that, on word processors that actually show you use complex formatting. You should be very proud of that if that's what you were working on. But we think that we kind of would like to go back to like 1982 and just make text the space that we operate in. And it is true. Every single thing that I do is now just a plain text file in Markdown. As a matter of fact,
I'm struggling not to turn this into a big digression because this is something that's been much on my mind for the past two or three days. So like, so last week I had to share the show doc with you so that you could like write up the, so you can post the episode. And so I wrote the show because it was a solo in Ulysses, which is again, a markdown, like plain text editor. And of course you can just like select basically every, every single section of the show. Every single story was a separate text document. Off to you is click, click, click, click, click, click, click. Multiple selection and say, please export this. But the templates that Ulysses uses are just such absolute.
garbage. And they give you like a hundred different styles of templates. And I've yet to find one that was not total garbage. So I apologize that like the PDF, like at some point it's like, she just needs to have text in a document she can read. It's fine. But the best way of, it turns out the best way of doing that. I thought something happened to you. I was like, what kind of, are you having an okay week? Like this is a PDF. This is really permanent. I realized that what I should have done was just like take all of those stuff, paste it into like another Markdown editor that just simply says, oh, so like a top level heading should probably be.
bigger and bolder than the body text got it. Oh, and you've got like a level two header. I bet that should just be like a little smaller, still bold, and maybe some white space above and below it to set it aside. Great. And it would come out beautifully. And it's like, you can customize these things, but it is so freaking complicated to do. I tried, I actually tried like, it shouldn't be that difficult to change this. And it was, it was so totally different to change this. And it's almost like an act. I've kind of got this as like sort of a background, like process sort of thing where sometime over the next.
eight to 11 months, I would like to have slowly incrementally created my own Ulysses export theme that does not look like garbage because I'm so sick and tired of like every single time having to apologize for. Yeah, I know there's like 18 inches of white space between a level two header and the text goes below. Yeah, I know that every topic starts on a brand new page. Even if the topic is only three lines long, I apologize for that. I just needed to give you something. I know better. I promise you, I know better than this. On the plus side, it's something I can print out and put on my wall and think of you. So there we go.
Well, we do a lot of show to get through. But before, let's once again send out our thanks to our members for helping to support our show. And we've got some special news. Relay every year has a special Black Friday sale. And that Black Friday sale is now active on brand new memberships. If you go to giverelay.com, you can give the gift of Relay membership to anybody, even to yourself, because you are a good person. I can sense that because you give us your attention each and every week. You are a good person. And you can give the gift of a Relay membership to yourself. And if you sign up for a yearly membership, that's going to be 20% off all the way to the end of the year. The sale will be in effect at the end of the year. And you or your gift E will get all of the benefits of Relay membership. And that's a pretty long list.
includes, well, number one, Flo and I do an extra special bonus episode that's just for our members at the end of every single show. Very introspective. Also, you'll also get access to the bonus episodes that have been created by all Relay podcasts. So that's a big pile of really cool, like, loosey-goosey fun. Let's let our hair down content. You also get access to the Discord for all Relay members to talk about behind-the-scenes stuff. A monthly behind-the-scenes newsletter. You get wallpaper packs from Relay. Also, access to a whole separate podcast feed called Crossover that includes episodes of members-only podcasts called Backstage and Spotlight, which are all about Relay. That's a whole lot of entertainment for your annual membership. And thank you so much for doing that because you're not only supporting Relay, you're not only supporting us, you're also indirectly, I mean,
I didn't want to come out and say that, but it seems like the right time. I have a clerk and he's always complaining that I only let him like put one piece of coal into the, into the little heater in his, in his clerk's office. And I would love to be able to, and this time of year I can say, you know what, Bob Cratchit? Take a whole scuttle of coal. Make your workspace nice and warm toasty because it's Christmas, damn it. And I feel like I have the flexibility of doing that because of relay membership. So you're not only helping me, you're also helping. He has a family support. I don't know much about him. I don't want to know much about this family. It's a whole economy of people. Yeah, exactly. We're like Brianna. I mean, we've got people that we have to support. We've got a staff, we've got a crew, and we have to support them all. Family members who just keep needing cosmetic surgery. It just never ends. But your contributions. Listen, in this economy? My Aunt Frida's lips are big, but they could be bigger. You know?
We're not going to know until we try it. It really is the fad sob. I'd like to be able to afford to send her to a domestic cosmetic surgeon instead of going to Columbia or Thailand or something like that. I mean, but it's up to you. Once again, go to giverelay.com. The new one, by the way, is Turkey, but yes.
So last week we talked about a potential underscore potential really big change in how we all might be installing apps on Android in the future. A judge had ended the five-year-long lawsuit between Epic Games and Google by imposing a super gnarly permanent injunction against Google that controlled basically the intention being let's make sure that Google can we find that Google has way too much control over apps on Android. Let's make sure that that control is. dissolved and could never reemerge again. And the injunction outlined huge changes that Google was required to implement in order to end Google Play's chokehold on the apps market for Google. And the terms of that injunction went to force at the end of the very, very end, asking the Supreme Court, can you at least give us some more time to fight this and not force us to make these changes right now? But no go. But while creating that injunction, the judge, James Donato, had also asked the two companies to, look, can you just keep talking and try to come up with something better than forcing me, someone who has never run an app store in his entire life, to tell you how to run an app store? Can you just like...
Stop fighting and agree on something. And last week, Google and Epic Games jointly announced that, yes, they had come up with that something better. Of course, listen to last week's episode for all the details. But to me, it really sounds like a terrific roadmap that makes Android's relationship with apps even better and just more modern. Flo, do you read anything about this? How do you react to this? A little bit. I mean, I've been following what's been happening to the Android platform, the trajectory of it. And so it seems to me like we are really dawning upon a new, a next generation of the operating system and how it's going to function because of...
not only the law, but the way that computing has changed. So I'm sitting and watching what unfolds because as a user, that's most of the power I have. I don't have any more power than that. I can't go to courts and say like, ah, make it free, you know, or whatever. That's the absolute truth. Like some of us have a small amount of greater power that is like to be upset by what happens, but also be able to talk about it on a podcast. But that's not the same as saying, oh, could you please just not be jerks? I just do something that makes everything better instead of just makes everything slightly different. Yeah. Can you just stop?
Well, the two companies... The thing about a permanent injunction is that it is meant to be permanent and it is in effect. And so it didn't matter necessarily that Google and Epic had agreed to a much, much better solution than the permanent injunction. The judge also had to approve the changes that Google and Epic were jointly proposing to that injunction. So they met in a hearing late last week. And it's not bad news, but it wasn't great news. Judge Donato seemed skeptical. He cited a number of issues that he had with his proposal, including, well, like the law.
Okay, the law, whatever that word means. He's really only supposed to allow a modification to an existing permanent injunction if there's been a really significant change in circumstances that would render the original decision ineffective or inappropriate. Like if Google, I don't know, went out of business and started making cookies instead, then Epic and Google could say, yeah, we're actually in the cookie business. We're not in the application business and we really don't want to have to continue to do that sort of thing. As the judge himself said, the only changed circumstance that I can see right now is Epic and Google.
Two, I'm quoting here, two mortal enemies who pounded each other relentlessly in this courtroom for many years are suddenly BFFs. Pounded each other. I don't know why I'm using like the old like Mr. Monopoly man voice because. Well, but then when you say words like pounded each other, like modern words like pounded each other, it does, it all makes it way more entertaining. So thank you.
Also, I couldn't help but BFFs. Doesn't it seem at least a little bit remarkable that we have esteem? That's so millennial coded, by the way. Nobody says that anymore. Gen Z is completely new slang. Continue. Sorry. I'm just impressed that he used it appropriately in the right context. It did not sound like he was trying to, well, I've got a grandchild who says that I'm not hip enough. I should start wearing my hair longer and wear flare trousers and maybe start listening to, I don't know, Oingo Boingo or one of those new modern bands. Oingo Boingo.
Thank you for catching that reference, by the way. Danny Elfman. Mostly known as Danny Elfman's original band. Yes. They were also the... I'm married to a Gen X-er, by the way, just to remind everybody out there. Solidarity.
So anyway, so the upshot of all this is that this revolution in Android apps, as much as some of us might really, really like it, it's not going to just get rubber stamped through. But it's far from over. More hearings have been scheduled. But he's going to take some convincing to get this through. And I really hope it gets it through because it's the first of a couple of stories we're talking about this week in which I was provoked to say, gee, that's a very Android-y way of doing that and saying that in a positive way. And we're Android users for a reason. And we like to see it when Android-y things happen to Android. That seems like a very Android-y thing. Correct.
Correct. So privacy is not necessarily an Android thing. It's kind of like the most contrary thing to anything with a Google logo on it. Yeah. But our next story has to do with privacy. But it's also kind of related tangentially to something, another thing we covered last week. Bloomberg reported that Apple is very, very close to signing a deal with Google that has basically had Apple giving up on any hope of possibly...
coming even close to shipping an AI-enhanced version of their Siri assistant by spring, which was the second deadline that they were about to blow. And they decided, you know what, maybe, just maybe, we should hire the company that's been doing this for 10 or 15 years to build this for us. And we don't have to, like, say that it's – we don't have to yell to the clouds that this is Gemini running on the iPhone natively. We can just say that, well, we hired a contractor to do this. That contractor, yes, I suppose, is Google. We had a billion dollars a year to throw money at this problem, and we decided to throw money at the problem. But like that, because, like, from the beginning –
Back in 2024, June, July, June, during the Worldwide Developers Conference, when Apple first announced Apple Intelligence, when disaster was imminent, but not known to be imminent of this entire project. Right. Apple seemed to kind of gloat about, like, they wanted to make sure that everyone knew that other companies, they don't care about privacy. They don't care about the integrity of, like, your personal data. We want you, the iPhone user, to trust our AI so much that you are going to allow it to do things like look at your calendar and make plane reservations for you.
suggest birthday greetings. And it's only if the AI has access to all of your personal information, that's the pinnacle of what we can do with it. And we're the only company you can trust with this. And just to show that we've got so much skin in this game, we're creating this thing called Apple Intelligence Private Cloud Compute. And here are all the reasons, all the things we've developed for when the AI has to do something that's so complicated that it can't be handled completely on device. We have to connect to a server. We are, boy, did we inconvenience ourselves and innovate and et cetera, et cetera, to make this happen. And we're the only people who really care about that. And so...
In that context, this week's news is interesting. Google basically announced on its blog that, yeah, we're doing the same thing. So if you were about to think that only Apple is going to have an AI system that can benefit from total knowledge of your life and Apple's the only company that you would trust with total knowledge of your life, don't worry about it. So they've got this thing. They announced this thing called private AI compute.
from the blog post. We built private AI compute to unlock the full speed and power of Gemini cloud models for AI experiences while ensuring your personal data stays private to you and is not accessible to anyone else, not even Google, he said, pounding on the desk. Sorry, Jim. But I thought that that was the sort of thing that would be accompanied by pounding on the desk. There's no markdown editing tag that indicates pounding the desk, so I had to do it actually physically.
There's a blog post, but also technically paper. The blog post is a little bit thin on details. Essentially, roughly speaking, when a task is way too complicated for Gemini on device to handle it, it will get securely sent over to Google's AI servers where the data and Gemini work on this thing inside of like a sealed off box that is completely bricked off from the rest of Google. And then the result will be piped back down your phone in a secure way. And the transaction that happened on the server like absolutely disappears as it never happened.
There's a technical brief that I'm glad that we were both, I'm glad that we delayed a little bit to talk about this today instead of last night because I really, really had to. Remember that scene from The Office in which Oscar, the accountant, is trying to explain something to Michael Scott? I was like, okay, explain it like I'm five. Okay, well, how about if your parents gave you $5 to run a lemonade stand? That was the sort of dumbing down. The technical paper is technical. But nonetheless, even there, I think Google really understands that the level of trust in Google to not exploit.
personal data to train ai models to sell ads all this like that trust level is non-existent and they have to really really like triple remind people and prove to people because even the technical brief like the opening salvo of it is i don't know it's like intended for people like me who are not like technical experts at ai and server and security infrastructure like the first few paragraphs are the big bullet points are in huge huge like bold blue letters like the first line the very first line we believe privacy is the foundation of personalized ai assistance it's huge letters and right close underneath that says user data processed by private ai compute is not available to anyone other than the user including google again in like huge blue letters the other you also can't help but see uh in also huge blue letters like external verifiability for this initial release an external auditor has validated that our system design meets strict privacy and security guidelines and it promises quote deeper independent verifiability over time so it's like don't even trust us to tell you that you can trust us trust the
independent panel that is telling you that we have verified that this is trustable. Again, from what I can understand, underscore, from what I can understand, it's Google's private AI compute is really just as hardcore as what Apple's got going. It runs on specialized servers whose hardware and software has been configured specifically for private AI compute. It's not as though like, it's just joining the jumble of AI tasks on Google servers. And there's like a little software flag says, oh, and by the way, don't let advertising see this one thing. Everything else is great, but don't let advertising see. No, it's actually on like dedicated hardware that is configured and built specifically for this purpose. Security is enforced not only by, like I mentioned, like software enclaves, like, you know.
like a brick wall of encryption and software that prevents that data from getting out or prevents from any other code from seeing it. But there's also like hardware enclaves, actual hardware that prevents that from happening. There's no possible pipeline of data out or in from these enclaves. The data is destroyed securely just as soon as the task is complete. That was a highlight of Apple's system. They actually are on Apple's servers. They're running a custom operating system that does not even have the capacity of retaining data. That's how hardcore that is.
They also want to flag the idea that even a, quote, break glass scenario is absolutely impossible. So that, like, if there was, like, an emergency where, like, actual lives were to depend on the ability to exfiltrate data from a Google private AI compute server, it's not even physically possible. rogue members of the Air Force want to want to bomb Walpole, Massachusetts with nuclear weapons. And the only the end of the coast to turn that off your enclave. No, unfortunately, Walpole, Massachusetts is not happening. The millionaire, the comic book shop, that really nice dose of place across from the comic book shop, the museum of 1900s technology and industry, the fish ladder, Mike's ice cream store. Yes, I'm familiar with Walpole, Massachusetts. Actually, no, I'm sorry. This is Walfam, Massachusetts. Okay, forget it.
But trust me, they're basically saying that, yeah, there's absolutely no way, even under the direst of circumstances, there's no way of doing it. Now, of course, the timing is funny, but it can't have anything to do with Google's supposed contract with Apple because that thing is going to be running on Apple servers. So totally hardware that Google has no control over. But it does show that Google is, as always, just dreaming really, really big. I mean, this stuff, it's not just for its own Gemini-powered apps and services. They're also putting that in so that if you are a company like Salesforce or...
Oracle or whatever. If you decide that, hey, we need AI services for our apps, whether it's a phone app or whether it's for anything else, who can we hire to do that? They're basically saying that, no, we have this as a service that can be a feature. So if you want to promise your users that nobody ever, ever, ever gets to see or exploit or exfiltrate any of the data that you communicate with our brand new $12 a month subscription model AI calendar app or whatever, don't worry. It's being handled by Google's actual special private AI compute things. That's absolutely impossible.
Okay, good stuff. Again, another brick in the wall. Who knows? The thing is, though... Dang it, why'd you have to say that? Now it's playing in my head in the background. Thanks a lot. I'm not even a real Pink Floyd fan. I'm more of a... Anyway, in terms of Van Rock, that was still at least a decade before my time, but I decided you can either be a Who fan. As a kid growing up in the 80s, you can be either a Who fan or a Pink Floyd fan. I decided on the Who because you needed energy to properly air guitar the Who, whereas the Pink Floyd was like, Hey, I just want to smoke grass and just play here and just listen to Pink Floyd, man.
Anyway. Sorry about my brain. Okay. Okay. Well, we're going to take another break and then we're going to be talking about apps yet again. Back after this. So we previously talked about upcoming hopeful changes to how you install apps from an actual, like approved, secure, trustworthy, non-scam filled app store. Now we get to talk about if you really want to be wild.
If you want to say, I don't care. I don't care about the danger. I ride at Gates of Dawn. I take no prisoners. I'm a power advanced user. I will take a USB stick that I found on the floor of a bus station bathroom that says, hey, there's a really cool app on here. Why don't you sideload? I want to be able to do that because that's how I roll, baby. Don't do that. Don't even enter a bus station bathroom. Maybe the ladies' rooms are better than the men's rooms. No, no.
We're full of all kinds of cool advice this week. Women, women learn ways around it. Okay. So that's why I'm, I'm again, women are stronger than men, but continue. Yes. Speaking of being strong enough to accept the inevitable, continue, Andy. Okay. Well, if you've been following this story, fairly recently, Google proposed some big, big, big, maybe even foundational changes to their Android's attitude regarding side-loaded apps. Historically, a user can install any APK app file from anywhere. All you got to do is go to settings and flip the switch, tap through a very, very simple, but Kurt noticed that, okay, it's maybe not the safest thing you can do, but hey, this is your phone. Do whatever you want. We're Android. But so...
Android, Google decided that, yeah, that was a great thing for like 2006, but maybe in 2025 with all these really, really well-armed scammers out there, maybe we need to revisit that. So they proposed a series of future changes in which Apple would only allow the sideloading of apps that have been built by developers who have been screened and certified by Google. The proposed change came as a way to a new wave of criminal scams that were particularly happening in Southeast Asia, where scammers will try to scare users into installing a so-called verification app. Like, hey, we're from the bank. And oh, my God, someone is trying to steal all your money from your bank. But don't worry. We detected the fraud. And we're going to stop all this verification app. So we know that this is actually you. This is actually your phone. And of course, the sideloaded app is just a scam app that actually is designed to do nothing but actually transfer all of your money out of your bank accounts and crypto accounts and everything. Google decided that this was a bad thing, that perhaps Google was in a position of preventing people from losing all of their money.
to these scams. And so this new scheme would have allowed Google to kill an app remotely by simply revoking its certification. So you would still be sideloading an app, but it only works. The sideloaded app only works if Android has verified that, okay, this is from a developer that is allowed to run code on Android devices. this caused some outrage amongst certain people. It was definitely a step backwards. I mean, I'm sure you saw the same things I was saying where like people were like, the people who are outraged were really outraged. Like most of us have never installed like an AP, sideload an APK file in our lives. But the people who like really, really want this or even just on principle want this, this is like, no, no, no, no, no, no. And did I mention no?
I mean, it does. I can see their point. It really did seem like a step backwards from Android's foundational premise, like the really, really Android-y thing about Android, which is this is your phone. You spend $1,000 for it or maybe spend $100 for it if you want to tame it or whatever. But anyway, you own this phone. You can go ahead and do whatever the hell you want with it. We will try to stop you from doing things that are not your best interest. But hey, we're not Apple. We go have the adventures and misadventures that you are destined to have. We're not going to stop you from doing that. You're on your own, kids. Yeah. But when you need to come home somewhere soft to land, mommy will be here.
And we'll try not to tell you, yeah, we told you not to sideload that app. You can come home, but we are going to tell you we told you not to sideload that app. We're going to give you a 72-hour grace period because you probably had a bit of a week. Before we start railing into you. Yes, exactly. By the way, that's my parenting style. And I bet you're kind enough to start off like passive aggressive about it.
No, no, no, no, no, no. That stuff is, I'm not traumatizing my child. You got to stop the trauma, Andy. You got to stop the cycle. I was thinking of like just easing kids into it by saying that, oh, you want to have dinner, you want to have lunch at 2.30 in the afternoon. Okay, well, you can make your own choices. Some of the choices you have made in the past have not worked out great for you, but you can make your own. And then next week we have the conversations about.
That actually I would probably when she's older. I'm not going to lie. I'm going to get dirty probably. I know who I am as a person. I hope she forgives me. Anyway. You're going to do your very, very best. You're a good person, which means you're a good mom. But anyway, so just yesterday, Google posted an update to the official Android developers blog, which is they were basically saying that, look, okay, there has been feedback. We acknowledge that some of you have been very verbal in failings that you perceive in our new plan. And we're modifying our plan and to loosen up those restrictions in response to this feedback.
It still seems very, very sensible. It's just a more Android-y way of implementing the same thing. Under this modified scheme, quote, developers and power users who have a higher risk tolerance, unquote, will still be able to sideload apps from unverified developers. So Google is still going to add a verification check, but Android will give the user a pathway around it should they know about it and should they choose to take it. They also mentioned a, quote, new flow, unquote, for installing an unverified app. And it's designed specifically to inform and protect a user who might be trying to install an app under the coercion of a scammer.
This new flow, quote, will also include clear warnings to ensure users fully understand the risks involved. And here's the passive growth. But ultimately, it puts the choice in their hands. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's what the new flow says. The new flow. I didn't even think about that. That's awesome. I can only think about that when I hear my name because, you know, I hear flow and I'm like, what? Is somebody calling me? Yeah, you're speaking to someone who's initializing AI. So tell me about it. That's true.
Those are your initials. That is true. People just don't trust AI. They never will trust AI. Because why should they trust AI? What an AI's past performance indicates that AI is in any way trustworthy?
I'm sorry. I'm kind of feeling that right now. Anyway, there's also a second instance. They also were considering feedback from groups they describe as students and hobbyist Android developers. Those people who just, hey, I built this app and I just want to share. Hobbyists. Hobbyists, yeah. Dabblers. Right. That's who you want to have control over your phone. But actually, they're basically saying, yeah, well, actually sometimes I just make apps that I want my family to enjoy or I want my friends to enjoy.
You're basically making me have to basically register like I'm Epic Games or some huge developer just to allow six people who I see every single day and who would beat the tar out of me if I wrote an app that cleaned out their retirement savings account. So Google's saying that, hey, okay, we're also going to develop a special kind of developer account for those types of developers so they can do that sort of stuff. Okay. So I'm going to have to register as a developer? They're still working on it. They haven't said specifically what it's going to be, but they're basically saying that the implication is that if all you want to do is...
basically distribute this app to a handful of people that you know, we're going to create a different tier of developer that is not going to have to submit a passport photo and sit to our interview. So you can still get it verified. I imagine so. They mentioned specifically that we're still trying to figure out exactly how this would work, but we're definitely working on it. And I wonder if it's more like...
I don't know, like a version of the newlywed game. Talk about something that like reference for like Gen X people. It's like, so Google has like, Gemini has to like have like a three hour conversation with this developer about conversation about like their relationship with all these friends. So if your friend tries to install an app from you, from the special students and friends like account, like what is the most exotic place you've ever made Whoopi? And by Whoopi, I mean like macaroni and cheese. Oh God, 70s. So if you, so yeah.
Again, I'm old enough that I mostly know this stuff in the Game Show Network and very, very dim memories of watching this when it was in syndication and aired at all hours. A lot of that stuff is borderline cruel. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying really hard not to veer us off track. It's just that I've also been watching I Love the 70s. I found somebody who uploaded the entire VH1 series to YouTube. This literally came out. Yeah. Anyways. I'm saving that for another podcast. I think we can look forward to this as a bonus episode when we both set aside a good 45 minutes for the bonus episode.
Exactly. But yeah, I'm glad they're making these tweaks. Like I said, that's a very Android-y way of, okay, this is no longer 2006, this is 2025. We might want to have better controls over this. But nonetheless, we don't want to abandon the reason why a lot of people prefer Android over whatever alternatives there are. Nonetheless, we don't want you to leave us for this reason. Yes. That's what it, yeah, yeah. And also, another new story from this week was another reminder of why...
people really need to have the freedom to install apps outside of an app store, whether it's on the iPhone or Android. There's a popular LGBTQ dating app that was removed from the Google Play Store and the Apple App Stores in China at the request slash demand of the government, citing essentially they have laws that basically say that, yeah, you do what we tell you to. And I mean, it's hard to, I mean, we need to hold Google and Apple accountable for just doing what they're told. At the same time, we have to acknowledge that this isn't just something of... that a government official and Sundar Pichai went on a golf outing and they made a gentleman's agreement that they stopped it. No, it's like, no, there are laws that if they want to operate, they have to do this. So fine. Actually, to clarify, Google Play Store isn't available in China, but we're talking about like, it's still an Android world in there. And so all the app stores in China that have to apply that. Anyway, so it's because free speech can't happen when a community has only access to apps that have been approved by a government or like for that matter, a multi-trillion dollar company. I mean, if there's one pinch point.
That's not free speech. And we like free speech. It's taking a bit of a battering, but it's still good. A tiny little battering. Big battering. Before we go, one last story. Actually, another very Android-y thing, although this isn't an Android story, is having so much control over your device that if you decide that Google, you're a piece of crap, Google. I know that Google, you sold me a Google thing, but I'm going to take Google off of this thing because you're a piece of crap, Google. Not exactly the same thing here. But what happened is that a few weeks ago, Google obsoleted all first and second generation Nest smart thermostats. Yes.
which kind of sucked because another example of, well, this is a perfectly functional thing. The people who are still using them probably haven't replaced them because they're perfectly happy with the core functions of it. But Google is able to simply say, yeah, guess what? Your smart thermostats can no longer connect it to Google Nest servers. And so therefore, all of the stuff that make this actually more useful than the $35 twist the dial thermostat you get at Home Depot, like being able to remotely check, hey, what's the temperature and kind of adjust the temperature from elsewhere and smart time sort of stuff. Like, yeah, good luck trying to get that working without access to the Nest servers.
However, and so as a result, like that thing is great. It's now useless. I'm going to have to throw it out. This perfectly good device. More e-waste. Great, great, great. But a group of open source developers have leapt into the fray like Zorro trying to save Contessa or whatever. It's beautiful. Yeah. It's beautiful. Yeah. They've created a project.
to revive all these devices and not hiding their philosophy. It's called the No Longer Evil Project. Yes. That's a style. Listen, that's bold. That's bold. There's a panache that I absolutely approve of there. That's style, man. So what it is, it's a replacement for the Nest firmware that will route all of those API calls to a Nest server that we're supposed to go to a Nest server that no longer exists and reroute them to a new server that can replicate all of that stuff completely and basically give people a good interface and everything like that. Basically keep these things working.
So essentially with a new firmware installed, the devices will think that they're still communicating with Google's Nest servers, but they'll be going someplace else and they'll get back the real-time smart home monitoring control, that sort of stuff. Still in very early experimental stages. They've only been working on this for like a couple of weeks. They're working on it in public. It's open source. You can download the firmware and install it. The developers are actually like urging people not to install it yet, which is probably a smart thing when it's like, gee.
Why is it suddenly eight degrees in the garage? And why have all these pipes burst? And why is everything ruined in here? Oh, it's because I thought that I should just install this experimental stuff that I was totally warned not to install here. Okay, I guess that's on me. I guess it's on you, man. I guess it's on me. You played yourself, man. Yeah. Just kidding. Just kidding.
It's weird that this is the most non-apply thing. There are all these movements, organized, supported movements of de-googling, where if you have a Samsung device or even a Pixel device or anything that you bought because, or was originally designed and sold on the idea of, hey, you have access to Google Maps, you have the Google Play Store, all this really great Google stuff that makes it very googly and very fun and very useful. There's movements called de-googling, where you say, here's how you can de-google a Samsung Galaxy S23, which is, here's what you can do to make sure there isn't an ounce of Google code on there if you want to be absolutely private from Google and you're sick of it. Yeah, I'm on those forums. They certainly do try.
They really do try. I even have a friend who's trying right now in real life. And it's it's interesting. It's tough. It's interesting. It is. You have to really know. You have to really understand. You have to be you have to be a techie. Yeah. Sorry to use that phrasing, but you got to be a techie. And it's not something that a lot of people are going to pursue on their own. Yeah. I think that once you use a de-Googleized phone for.
maybe just a day. That will test your commitment to the idea of, hey, I'm not under the thumb of a $3 trillion company that's just selling all my, collecting all my data. Say, okay, great, but here, enjoy your open source map solution. That doesn't really talk to anything else very well. Hey, enjoy, enjoy nothing but like open source apps. Like, oh, I gotta admit that I really enjoyed like seeing photos of my cousin's dogs on Instagram. Yeah, yeah. That was fun. I missed that. I see a lot of that in the same forums, yeah.
It's a tough balance, man, living in a capitalist world, man. What are you going to do, man? At least we can still pretend that... Well, I still have a fully Google-ized phone, so I can keep tabs on what the man is doing. I'm not going to hide in a cave and not be able to hold the man accountable. That's exactly what the man wants.
He said as a middle-aged, white, cisgendered, heterosexual, nominally Christian person living in the United States. But I'm not the man, I assure you. I'm not the man. I swear. I told the man. I told the man. I said, hey, man, you sent me a membership card in the man-dom, and here's what you can do with your card, the man. Now that I've said that, I'm going to go walk the streets of a city at 10 o'clock at night without any fear of being accosted by anybody. But that's not because I have privileges.
Oh, God. Fools. We take a fun path through these topics, do we not? Sometimes. We try. Sometimes the fun of doing the show is hearing me say things as I'm saying these. Wow. I didn't expect to hear that. It's because I make it safe to be weird. I get it. Exactly. We are a safe weird space. If we had T-shirts, if we had the ability and the design, the business acumen and the design acumen to make T-shirts on demand, like instantly to honor a certain joke in one podcast, we would now have in our store a safe space for weird.
Write that down. A safe space for weird. Again, I'm so close to launching the site, but one of the last problems is that I chose a slogan for the site that was unique three years ago when I first came up with it, but now I've seen other people using it and it feels kind of overused, so it's like one of the last things that's on the do list is trying to find something better for that. And a safe space for weird probably will attract the right sort of people and repel the right kind of people. Exactly. I've made a note of it. I shall continue to consider it. Once again, just a reminder that Relay has started its annual Black Friday sale and annual membership. So go on over to giverelay.com. You get 20% off an annual membership for yourself or that special someone. Or you know what? Remember that special someone is also you. You are quite special. Thank you very much. And Flo, once again, you're doing your newsletters for Android Faithful?
I am doing my newsletters for androidfaithful.com, but if you want to come join my Discord or you want to see where else I am, just go to my website, florencelion.com. And hopefully this is the last week or the second to last week in which I can only say, oh, go to a not go on Instagram, go to a not go on Blue Sky to see what I'm up to. But thanks so much, everybody, for listening to us this week. We hope you listen to us again next week. And until then, please have a happy, safe, and healthy seven days. Bye-bye. Bye, everyone.