05-16-26 You Are More Vulnerable Online Than Ever So Update Everything

AI is no longer just a productivity tool, it’s a force multiplier for cybercrime. We dig into Google’s Threat Intelligence Group warning about the first confirmed case of criminal hackers using AI to discover and weaponize a zero-day vulnerability, the kind of software flaw nobody can patch because nobody knows it exists yet. That changes the clock on security from “weeks to respond” to “minutes to get hit,” and it’s why we keep hammering the basics that still work. 

We walk through the simplest, highest-impact defenses for real people: turn on automatic software updates, patch your router, and stop treating smart home gadgets like toys. Every connected device is an endpoint, and attackers only need one weak link. We also talk about practical account protection with passkeys and why you should treat unexpected emails, texts, and scam calls as hostile until proven otherwise. If you want help checking your settings, we point you to the free tech support hotline and what to ask. 

Then we hit a privacy shift you may have missed: Apple finally makes iPhone to Android texting secure with RCS and end-to-end encryption via iOS 26.5, closing a long-standing gap where SMS and MMS were basically digital postcards. From there we zoom out to the bigger AI landscape, including Google’s Gemini push across Android and the messy business side of AI with the Elon Musk vs Sam Altman lawsuit over OpenAI’s original mission, plus why Grok may be losing momentum as competitors gain fans. 

If you get value from the show, subscribe, share it with a friend who keeps postponing updates, and leave us a review so more people can find Tech Talk. What security habit are you changing this week?

Transcript

Welcome And Today’s Lineup

SPEAKER_02 0:08

Hey there and welcome to Tech Talk here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580 Orlando's News and Talk. I'm Greg Rhodes here with David Levitt, President and Founder of Refresh Computer Superstore, and technician Adam Littlefield. You can contact the Refresh Computer Superstore by calling their free tech support hotline at 407-478-8200. Or if you have a comment during the show, we'd love to hear it. Use that open mic feature inside the WDBO app. You can also check out the website over at Refresh Computers.net or stopping at the Refresh Computer Superstore in Longwood at 820 East State Road 434, just three and a half miles east of I-4 in Longwood. Store hours are Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. And if you're listening to the show here on Saturday, means you still have time to stop by. They'll be open until 7 p.m. today.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

And now for David Levitt and Adam Littlefield. All right. Thanks, Craig. And thanks everybody for listening to another edition of Tech Talk with Refresh Computers. This is the Saturday edition, and tomorrow we'll have a whole new show. Can't wait to for that uh to occur. And so today we got a lot of tech stuff to talk about, of course, like we always do.

AI Weaponizes Zero-Day Vulnerabilities

SPEAKER_01 1:15

And we're going to start off talking about how there's a new program that Google is involved in, and I call it the GTIG group. The GTIG. The G it's Google's threat intelligence group. And they confirmed just this week that there's the first known case of criminal hackers using, guess what? AI to discover and weaponize a zero-day software vulnerability. And we'll get into what zero day is and how and what that means. And we had a whole show about zero day vulnerabilities one, oh gosh, probably a few months ago, and what they mean. So we'll talk about that. And we'll also talk in about SummerTech Refresh. Why is now the perfect time to come by your favorite computer store there, Refresh Computers, and then we'll chat about Apple just making texting between iPhones and Androids finally secure. And what I'm going to tell you about in that segment might just scare you. But now they seem to have addressed the issue, finally decided that they're going to take care of it, and they did. We'll talk more about that a little later. And then finally, we'll talk about oh, the Musk and Altman trial. So who's Elon Musk? I think we all know who Elon Musk is now. By now, yeah. Who's Sam Altman? Well, maybe not everybody knows who Sam Altman is, but between Elon and Sam, they founded Chat GPT, basically. Yeah, the parent company behind that, which is OpenAI. And there's a big lawsuit going on between the two of them now, and we'll talk about where that stands. All right. So let's get into more detail about the first topic of the day, which is Google's Threat Intelligence Group. Again, they confirmed that they prevented the first known case of criminal hackers using AI to discover and weaponize a zero-day software vulnerability, a zero-day attack. And so, you know, what is zero day? Zero day is a software flaw that nobody knows about yet. Not the company that's being attacked, not the public, just the hackers. So they they they they find a door, if you will, they a gateway to get into something, and they start hacking away, and they can exploit it before anyone can catch it or patch it. And that's you know, just like finding an unlocked door nobody knew existed. So that's what a zero-day attack is, and it's very serious. It's probably one of the worst types of attacks because they haven't had it, nobody's had a chance to patch it.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

Right. Like I said, nobody was ready for it. So it's one of those things that comes out when the software first gets shipped out or whatever the program is, and yeah, it just happens.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

It just happens.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

So and this isn't something new in tech either. There's always been zero day vulnerabilities like this, but we've never seen it on this level, especially now with AI getting into the masses.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

So they yeah, so these hackers, again, you know, we talked about this last week. They are getting smarter, they're using, they're using AI tools, and they are making them work. So historically, you know, finding zero days required, you know, elite, highly skilled workers, right? And a lot of them. And it was rare and uh to because it's a rare kind of occurrence, and it's very expensive to try to nail down because they got to nail it down fast. They got to create a patch for it if it's like on an iPhone or something, or maybe in Windows. They have to find a patch, implement the patch, let it let the world know there's an update. You know, this is again, we talked about why it's important to go ahead and do those software updates. Right. This is why.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Especially when you see actually critical, it might actually be a critical update that you need.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

It would be, even if it doesn't say critical, because a lot of times they're a little sleuthy, they don't want you to know they have some serious issue going on. Right. So if you see a software update for your iPhone, your iPad, Windows, just do it. Do it. Just do it. Just do it. You know, years ago we used to suggest to people don't be the penny guinea pig.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Don't be the first one to to to do a Microsoft update. Because, you know, years ago they might it was very common for Microsoft updates to go bad.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

Cause some problems, yeah. A little buggy sometimes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

And then they would go, whoops, that's okay. Now we get we fixed it so the rest of the world you can you know do your software updates. But that's not the case anymore, folks. If if you see update available, I can't stress enough, update. Yeah. Just update it as soon as possible because a lot of those updates are doing what? They are a result of fighting and patch finding and patching one of these zero day attacks. And so you need to get your computer, your iPhone, your iPad, whatever device, your Chromebook, that they're all successful to these kinds of attacks.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

And and the the thing with zero days now is you know, back um before we had the dawn of just all this AI explosion that we've had going on, it used to be humans combing through millions of lines of code and looking for just that that one spot, that one vulnerability that they can just get into. And that you know would take months sometimes for some groups.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

And that was on both sides. Exactly. You have like the what the what they call like the white hat hackers, the guys that were looking for vulnerabilities to help out these software companies after the release. And then also you have the bad guys too.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

And heck, even some companies used to offer some bounties to find vulnerabilities in their software and say, hey, we invite people to try and do this. If you find a vulnerability, tell us and we'll pay you. Now it's just you you can plug all your code into an AI and it'll read through it and can spit out in five minutes if it finds something to take advantage of. You know, that's that's a little scary now to think how quickly you know a software can be vulnerable vulnerable like that.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

So, you know, so what did Google find? Right? So they found their their security team, which is the Google's threat intelligence group. I didn't even know they had that, the GTIG. So they found a you know that a criminal group, right, was using AI to identify the flaw, and they built an exploit. So Google used AI, used this new group. They and and they blocked it before it could be used at scale, before it could just like blow up. But you know, the warning is very clear. This is happening now, this is happening all the time. So be very vigilant. I mean, you have never been more unsafe on your computer or your iPhone or your Google phone or your Chromebook. If you connect to the internet, you have never been more unsafe than today. You have not because of AI and what AI is able to do for these hackers. And so you just have to be very, very vigilant. And we talked about before how good they've gotten with tricking you. You know, a lot of these things that just happen with the you know, the local school systems here with compass, right? Uh canvas, yeah. Canvas, canvas. I keep wanting to call it compass, but it's canvas being hacked by the shiny hunters and demanding ransom. And we just found out, too, that Greg, I found out from you yesterday actually, that Orange County paid up. So the uh company overall paid up. So Compass paid up. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I see.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

The company that runs Canvas paid up to allow access because coming up on the end of the school year, all of these different school districts and universities they needed all that information to the police, couldn't give grades. They didn't have they didn't have really an option, and that was why Shiny Hundreds waited until the time they did to do that hack.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

And so they got released, I would imagine.

SPEAKER_02 9:29

So they they they were, you know, they there was there was supposed to be some kind of gradual rollout as different districts were allowed to access Canvas once again here over the last week.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

So see, this is a very interesting issue that we're in now with AI being able to pull off stuff like this too, because just last week I you know we were talking about how now government is starting to be roped in to authenticate these AIs before they're being released. And this may be a good reason why, because you know, AI can be used for finding flaws in software already. You don't know what kind of national security risks that may carry in the future. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Nobody knows. Good question. I mean, good

Updates, Passkeys, And Endpoint Safety

SPEAKER_01 10:06

good point. I mean, it's just uh you know, so what can you do as a as a user of of of all these electronic advice uh devices that we've become accustomed to you know needing?

SPEAKER_00 10:17

We can't just cut them out of our lives anymore. All most of our lives revolve around some form of technological device that could be compromised at one point because of something like this.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

So, you know, we talked about let your phone update. And let's just go ahead and say do it automatically. Turn on automatic updates on your devices if they're not already turned on. And if you're not sure if your device has automatic updates enabled, that's what the free tech support hotline is for at Refresh Computers. Give us a call, we'll help you out over the phone. That should just take a few minutes and we'll help you get your device safer. The free tech support hotline number is 407-478-8200. So it's just not automatic updates on your phone and your computer, but you know, your things like your router, your Wi-Fi router, and your house, and your in your business. These things need to be updated all the time. And seriously, folks, do it. Do it today. Don't wait and give us a call again at 407-478-8200. If you have any questions or don't know how to do it, we'll help you out over the phone.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Well, we always make the joke about the uh toaster that has internet access. That's right. But those toasters that do have internet access, probably access your Google account or access some form of main account that you have. So making sure those are up to date as well. Those appliances and things that offer those over-the-air updates, you've got to keep those up too.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Those too. TVs, TVs, the the fart bridges, though, yeah, and the photo frames. Your vacuum cleaner. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:51

I mean, it's nobody wants a rogue uh Roomba coming after them. Right. And yeah, and that would be the that that's definitely the joke about it, is it's gonna take over and just kind of vacuum the right spot of your house. Right. But again, that's accessing probably some kind of main account that you have access to. All of those are info.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

All of those devices are what we call in the tech space endpoints. And if you're a business, you know endpoint security is one of the major things you have to care about. So as a business, you already care about it. As a consumer, you should start caring about that too.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Oh, yeah, because that's the back door in. It is the way in. And so, and that's one of the reasons why we promote the antivirus malware bytes. Right. Malware bytes premium, that is, it will help you lock down all those endpoints as well. So it's monitoring not just your phone or your computer, it's monitoring your endpoints for intrusions, and so and it's and it can help knock those down. So, you know, that's malware bytes premium does a really good job of doing that. So, and again, I'll we can't emphasize enough, use strong, unique passwords, or better yet, what we've talked about before, pass keys. If you're not sure how to use a pass key or what a pass key is, we had a whole show about that just a few weeks ago. And you can go to refreshcomputers.net, click on the podcast link up there, and you'll be able to find that show and listen to it, and you'll even be able to you know see a beef a brief description of what the show is about and what the pass key is. And you it's just important today. So passwords are not enough. You should have a pass key as well. And a lot of times a pass key is just a four-digit code, just a four-digit code. So, and it locks down everything that's not connected to that device. So again, and be suspicious of anything unexpected, like you know, emails, texts, pop-ups asking you to click or download something. Just don't do it. Go directly to the source. If you get an email saying your Facebook page has been hacked, you just automatically just don't believe it.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Yeah. Or recently there's actually been a bunch of scam calls going on claiming that they're from the police department. I know I think Orange County's been having that go on in Seminole County and saying, oh, you know, you have a warrant out for your arrest and you need to wire this amount of money. Things like that just it's happening.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

It's happening. And people are getting duped. So, and but I think people are also wising up to the to the to the extent that it's you know those kinds of hacks are probably getting fewer and far between, but they're still out there. I mean, look, even big companies, Fox, Foxconn, that you know, they make they make the iPhone. They literally make the iPhone. It's the Chinese company that makes the iPhone, they make devices for Google, they might make devices for NVIDIA, they just got hacked. So that you know, that that's a whole supply chain issue that can affect millions and millions of devices.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

If someone like that, that large is able to get hit, you know, who else knows who's gonna get hit next?

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Right. So stay tuned because coming up, we're gonna talk about summer tech refresh and why now is the perfect time to visit Refresh Computers.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

You've been listening to Tech Talk right here on WDBO1073FM and AM580. And then welcome back to Tech Talk here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580, Orlando's news and talk. I'm Greg Rhodes here with David Levitt, president and founder of Refresh Computer Superstore, and technician Adam Littlefield. And you can contact the Refresh Computer Superstore by calling their free tech support hotline at 407-478-8200. Or if you have a comment during the show, go ahead and use that open mic feature inside the WDBO app. And now back to David and Adam.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

All

Summer Tech Refresh And Refurb Deals

SPEAKER_01 15:45

right. Thanks, Greg, and thanks everybody for listening to Tech Talk with Refresh Computers. We had a very interesting first segment. We talked about Google's new tool that will help uh prevent hackers using AI to well hack you. Yeah. To hack your computer and your iPhones and your smart devices and things like that, and why it's important to make sure that you be more vigilant than ever, because you know, today it has never been more serious and more likely that you're going to be hacked than it is right now. And that's thanksful to AI. If you have any questions on anything that you think is an issue or a concern, give us a call at the free tech support hotline 407-478-8200, and we can help you out over the phone, let you know what's going on with what you're seeing in front of you if you think it's something suspicious. So, anyway, why you know summer tech refresh? Why now? Why now? Why is it a perfect time to visit refreshed computers? Well, always a good time to visit refreshed computers, I would say. You know, we've been around for 26 plus years, so quite a long time. So a very respected resource for computers and laptops and monitors and peripherals and support service, right? We fix just we fix every model. It's not a model, a laptop or computer that we don't work on. And so we have the best techs around. So, you know, if you have any kind of issue with your computer, your laptop, or anything like that, you know, you can start out by calling that free tech support hotline, 407-478-8200. You can go to refreshcomputers.net. You can find out all a bunch of information right there. We have a chat bot on the site now that you can ask questions and it'll answer you with with it's it's trained to to understand all about refresh computers. And so it won't give you a recipe for how to bake a cake. Exactly. I've stress tested that enough before we put it live. So we tried to get it to do before we made it live, yeah. And so it'll just tell you, well, we it can't do that. Yeah, but I can tell you anything about refreshed computers. So it'll it's trained and just know about refreshed computers. So if you have any questions about any products, anything that's on the site, any of our shows that we do, you can ask that chat bot because it's plugged into all that stuff. So what can refresh computers do for you? Well, we sell quality refurbished computers from major brands. So all the major brands, right? Dell, HP, Lenovo, Apple, they're tested and ready to go.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

At really good prices, too. You know, most of our systems are 50 up to 70% off of what they'd be brand new. Because these machines are still really good machines. They just need a little bit of TLC, and that's what exactly what we give them.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

And I can tell you, I mean, refurbished in in a way that it's almost like they're remanufactured, is a probably a better term. And because we put new thermal paste, new button batteries on the motherboards. Nobody does that. No. You know, and you know, you see these things in other places, and it's like even some of the name brand places, you know, box stores and stuff that might show refurbished computers now, you don't know what you're getting. Yeah. At refresh computers, you get a nice fresh computer. I'm telling you, any computer running Windows 11 that we sell at refresh computers is going to last you just as long as any brand new computer you buy today. Right. You're going to save 50 to 60% on the cost of a computer. And another bonus is most of the computers and laptops we sell at refresh computers that are refurbished are the business class. So the heavier duty models is the type that businesses buy. Why? Because they last longer and they do, you know, they perform better. Right. So it's just a smart money move to buy a refurbished computer from refreshed computers.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Especially with all of the just the prices going up now because of AI buying up, you know, materials. Our prices are still as low as ever. So they are.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

They're great. I mean, and guess what? We just announced free shipping for any orders over 300 bucks. Oh, what a great deal. That's brand new. So if you uh live out of the area or maybe it's just not convenient to get to the store.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

And to grab that deal, make sure to check out the website there at refreshcomputers.net. Or if you're in the area, stop in at the Refresh Computer Superstore. They're in Longwood. You've been listening to Tech Talk right here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580. Hey, then welcome to Tech Talk here on WDBO 1073FM and AM580, Orlando's news and talk. I'm Greg Rhodes here with David Levitt, President and Founder of Refresh Computer Superstore, and technician Adam Littlefield. You can contact the Refresh Computer Superstore by calling their free tech support hotline at 407-478-8200. Or if you have a comment during the show, we'd love to hear it. Use that open mic feature inside the WDBO app. You can also check out the website over at Refresh Computers.net or stop at the Refresh Computer Superstore in Longwood at 820 East State Road 434, just three and a half miles east of I-4 in Longwood. Store hours are Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. If you're listening to the show here on Saturday, means you still have time to stop by. They'll be open until 7 p.m. today. Now for the men themselves, David Levitt and Adam Littlefield.

Apple And Android Texting Gets Encrypted

SPEAKER_01 21:20

All right. Thanks, Craig. And thank you, Adam, for being here also. And thank you for listening to Tech Talk with Refresh Computers. We talked about a new tool that Google came out with to help AI discover breaches, right? Zero day vulnerabilities. Zero day vulnerabilities. And we talked about what that is. These are the types of attacks that happen before anybody knows they happened, except for the hackers themselves, before anybody has a chance to fix them. Those are called zero days. And Google developed this software using guess what? AI to help find these things and patch them up quickly, to delete them, get them out of the system quickly, fast. Faster than ever, faster than any humans can possibly do. And so what would take probably 50 programmers sitting around trying to, you know, bounce ideas back and forth on how to get rid of this zero-day attack can now be done almost instantaneously by AI. So it's a pretty cool tool that Google came out with. We also talked about the new free shipping program that Refresh Computers has. Any purchase on the website that is over $300 is free shipping anywhere in the continental USA. So maybe you just live across town. You already know Refresh Computers. You know that we've been around for 26 years, a trusted source. And maybe you just don't want to drive all the way across the town like a lot of people do anyway. Yeah. And we, you know, just order that online, your computer. It could be more than one device, too. I mean, it could be any number of devices that total $300 or more. Then you will get free shipping on those. So we're excited to be able to offer that now. So in this segment, we want to talk about something that I think probably, you know, maybe we should have started the show off with. Because this is like this is big. One of the biggest tech news items that you probably didn't know about, right? That's out there. And that is what Apple finally was able to do, what they finally did. They've been able to do it, but what they finally allowed is the texting between iPhones and Androids, which they've has has been going on. You've of course you've been able to do that, but it's never been secure.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

It's always been SMS or MMS. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

It's never been secure. And so, you know, when you hear me talk about warning, you know, being connected to public Wi-Fi systems like at your local coffee shop or at your favorite RV park or you know, places like that, and and warning, you know, that these are not safe places because they can be so easily hacked. Those types of text messages between Apple devices and Chrome or Google devices or any other device that sends and receives text were not encrypted. Yeah. Which means they could be intercepted very easily. I mean, you yeah, you still get them, but you don't know somebody else is getting them also.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Somebody's reading the paper as you pass it between uh between spots.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Yes. And so when people share things like passwords to accounts via text, you know, these kinds of things, which you should never do anyway. But people do because it's a quick, convenient way to do that, right? And and so these hackers are it's pretty easy for them to get that. Well it was pretty easy until just very recently, because just this week with Apple release iOS 26.5, so you can check your iPhone. If you don't have 26.5, go ahead and update it. And we just talked about earlier that hey, another reason to just go ahead and update now as soon as possible, when there is a new update, is because it's there to make your phone more secure. So you just go ahead and do that. So it has what they call end-to-end encryption, so it's enabled by default now, too. So as soon as that that uh new Apple iOS is uploaded and installed on your phone, it will automatically be doing these messages. It's it's called RCS messaging, right? As opposed to SMS. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

And just the other day, I have one of my friends that I text regularly. We I know he has an iPhone, I have an Android, and it popped up in the top of my chat one day. This this chat is encrypted and protected by RCS.

SPEAKER_03 25:36

Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

And and immediately I'm just like, whoa, that's that's different because you know, me, I always knew Apple and Android, there was this big friction between them. They never wanted to work with one another. Apple was so, so into that idea. And if you told kid me 15 years ago that Androids and Apple would be able to communicate with encryption over RCS, I would have never believed it then.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Yeah. Well, you know, and it's been possible for quite some time. Right. And Apple's just been slow. That's the thing.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

They've been rather stubborn about it.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

They have been. And because you know, we had this, uh you have a term for what Apple does. Everything in Apple stays in Apple. It's the the walled garden idea. Yeah. And I I think that's is that that's Apple's term, right? It is, yep. And so you know, they they're just so bullheaded about that walled garden idea that you know everything stays Apple, that they weren't willing to make your tech secure. That's terrible. Right. They weren't willing until now. They finally bowed down and decided, you know what, this is better for society if we do this. You know, right? It's just let's just make them secure.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

And and we've even seen some social media platforms are starting to adapt this. I know Meta with I believe Facebook Messenger and Instagram messaging, they're starting to offer encryption on those chats. They've they've utilized their WhatsApp platform to use that encryption.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

They use all kinds of other types of chatting because you know it's more it's more secure.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Yeah. If the social media apps are starting to do it, why aren't bigger companies like Apple and Android doing it? And I think that's what led to this point here.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Every other medium to to to text people is encrypted. Yeah. This was the last one.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

This was the the the last straw that people had to be able to steal stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

Messenger on Facebook. Yep. Encrypted, right? WhatsApp, encrypted, signal, encrypted, telegram, encrypted. They're all encrypted. And heck, what helped make Telegram and Signal even get the customers they have more than anything else was the fact that Apple wasn't when it was giant, you know, so they called that you know, like the green bubble problem. So, you know, when you either get a blue bubble or a green bubble, and they mean different things. And the and the blue bubble, by the way, means it is encrypted. So if you see the little blue bubble there in your text there, it's it's encrypted.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

And that's that's a whole different form of messaging, too, because you know, I've I've mentioned SMS, which is just normal unencrypted messages. We've got RCS, which is now encrypted between Apple, Android, Android, Android, all of that. And then there was also iMessage. That was a service completely ran by Apple. And because it's ran by Apple, it's encrypted by Apple.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Yeah, but that's only between Apple devices. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

Right. That's why I, as an Android user, popped up as a green text message to Dave whenever he would message me. Right. Right. And that was iPhone's fault, not the Android's fault. No, not the Android people's fault. That was the iPhone people's fault. Just so we get that clear. It's been such a strain on the relationship between iPhone people and Android people. You can now become in harmony. But I wonder, are they going to keep the green messaging for Android people? Just to just to kind of maintain the uh the idea of separate, separate but equal, right? I don't think so.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

I don't know. I I I see it going away. I I hope you know I hope it does. I hope it's all you know, blue bubbles. Blue bubble, I mean it's in encrypted and and the you know, and usually when you see the blue bubble in your messages, that means you have been texting back and forth to somebody else that has an iPhone. Yeah, that's pretty much what that means. I think a lot of people probably weren't aware of that, you know. So RCS is supposed to fix this. So the old way of texting, SMS and MMS. That's the old technology because it's not encrypted, right? So it's like sending a postcard. Anyone can read, right? It's like sending a postcard through the mail. Everybody that touches it can read it, you know, on its way to your door. Right. And if you're in an RV park somewhere or in a coffee shop somewhere, and you're sending an SMS, you know, they're it's so easy to hack to get in the to see your messages. Yeah. Because they're not encrypted, they're just straight text.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Yeah. And I know even like the um the EU, they they've been kind of taking the bigger picture on all this privacy stuff, especially with social media and how things are designed with that now. And we, you know, talking a lot about privacy with that. There's algorithms built into social media that track the kind of uh the content that you want to be seeing, right? You know, they know what you want to see. And the EU, they've been cracking down on a lot of that addictive stuff now.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

They they have been, and some some other things that we're gonna talk about, I think, tomorrow in tomorrow's show.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

That the EU is doing. That's kind of one of the things that I'm kind of uh that it's I'm kind of agreeing with on uh government intervention because you know sometimes it's the you know the government's there to help protect you and and some of these things, and we'll talk about that in tomorrow's show, but something else just to to listen out for. So, you know, and you know, Android is getting a big AI overhaul, also, right?

Gemini Everywhere And The Privacy Tradeoff

SPEAKER_01 30:43

So Google announced Android is getting their probably their their biggest AI update right in 2026. So it's Gemini integration throughout the whole operating system. We talked a little bit about that yesterday on your or last week on your computer, right? And what Google did to you know, they put that four gig file right on your computer, and that was the way they got AI. Yeah. Something on your device. So, you know, it could be good, could be creepy, maybe both. But you know what? It's here, it's coming, whether you like it or not. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

I've been playing a little bit around with it because having one of the newer Samsung devices, it has Gemini on device, so I've given it access to calendar stuff, to my email, just to kind of see what it's capable of doing. And as far as you know, I've been using it, it's been helpful. You know, it's been helping just getting everything organized, and it's it's way better than filling my calendar full of events as reminders because that's what I used to do. Yeah, my calendar was always full of, you know, pick this up from the store at 12 noon on like Sunday. Now it's just Gemini will push me a notification.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

Well, and and and I use it too for like like finding events, finding things because you know my calendar gets pretty full. Yeah, and there's might be some things I I need to know when and where from three months ago. Right, right. Right. And so Gemini is a really good tool for that. Yeah, right. So it'll it it'll it's you don't have to the old way is right, open up your calendar. Click on each day, see what was there until you found it. You knew it was around this week or this this other week, and so you have to click on every day within that time period. But you don't have to do that kind of thing anymore with with the new AI tools in Gemini.

SPEAKER_02 32:26

I'll say I've been a little disappointed with the integration of it though, coming over from I've been using Google Assistant on mine for a while. And I had a couple of different interactions that I liked it to have throughout the day. So like I would ask it specifically this thing and it would run these specific programs for me. It did not integrate very well passing over. So now I'm having to go and try and figure out how to get Gemini to now react in the same way that the assistant did. It's not working out as well as I would have liked so far.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Well, and you know, and I get your point, Greg, because I I feel the same way. And also, you know, Google with Gemini, because you know, Gemini is Google's AI, it's it's Google's chat GPT, it's Google's GROK, right? Right, it's it's it's the agent that or the the chat bot that that Google uses for AI so you can interact with it and get information. They were very slow and still still they need to catch up with the other, right? And I suspect one of the reasons that Google was very slow in the very beginning of all this, I mean they they were like they're all they always seem to be the last to catch up. One is hey, that's a big company already. It's huge, you know. So we all know that you know the bigger the company they are, you know, you the whole alphabet. The whole alphabet, right? And so they they're just little slower to integrate things because of their size, where they're not innovating as much as new startups like the you know, the chat GPT folks and things like that, and and and you know, Anthropic with Claude and all that. So these folks are just have these people just going full seam ahead, innovating, doing things, and Google's kind of left behind a little bit. But another reason I suspect anyway that Google is slow, was slow, especially in the beginning, to respond to getting their own AI tool out there and fine-tuned is because think of the massive amount of revenue, ad revenue, that's slipping through the fingers of Google.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

I mean, because how many of you businesses out there have been paying for Google ads that you probably don't need to be paying for anymore?

SPEAKER_02 34:35

We've talked a lot about AI here on the show. What has been your experience with AI? Let us know. Use that open mic feature in the WDBO app. Do you enjoy it? Is there some questions that you still have on it? We'd love to be able to tackle some of those questions for you. Again, use that open mic feature inside the WDBO app. Coming up, we're gonna talk a little bit more about Elon Musk and Sam Altman and their trial. You'll have that update for you coming up next year on WDBO 1073FM and AM580. Also, check out their website over at refreshcomputers.net. And now back to David and Adam.

Musk Vs Altman Lawsuit And Grok Slump

SPEAKER_01 35:39

All right, thanks, Greg, and thanks everybody for listening to Tech Talk with Refresh Computers. Keep in mind that if you missed any part of the show or maybe you want to recap what we talked about, you can go to refreshcomputers.net, click on that podcast link at the top of the page, and you'll be able to hear this show in its entirety. Also, while you're at it, while you're on the page, go ahead and scroll down to the bottom of the page, enter your email address, and click send. That's all you have to do. We're not asking for your name, we're not asking for your phone number or anything else, just your email address, and that will sign you up to get notifications via email, of course, when a new show has been published, and you'll be able to just click on that email and go right to the show and listen to the show in its entirety. And there's a nice summary in the email, also now that describes a little bit, you know, bullet points of what the show is about. So in this last segment, we want to talk about the Musk man against the Altman. I don't know. Yeah. So Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman are, you know, and cahoots are they're not uh agreeing with each other so much. They're not heads a little bit. They're button heads. There you go. Sorry to say in cahoots, but it's not it's the opposite. And they are, you know, Musk is suing Altman because of what Musk is saying. That Altman took the idea that Musk had with Open AI, Chat GPT, right, which is probably the world's most famous, most popular was one of the first ones. One of the first ones. And that that was helped that actually Musk helped develop that as a free tool, according to Musk. So it was supposed to be open source, free to use, no no charges, you know, no fees, and it was like the next best thing, which well, it was the next best thing as far as internet and technology is concerned. And Sam Altman was his partner in that. So Musk bowed out of OpenAI. So, and you know, under what terms or agreement do you do you know, Greg or sure exactly.

SPEAKER_02 37:54

They kind of closed off about what exactly were the reasons that he left. I know a lot of it was to you know focus more on Rock in starting out his own.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But so what happened was Sam Altman decided that he was going to, you know, make this a for-profit company, and that's what he's doing. So Musk is suing, claiming they broke their founding agreement, right? That it was supposed to stay nonprofit. So what's going on? So, you know, grok is losing ground. Yeah. It is, you know. I and when we started talking about AI, I love Gronk, and I still like grok quite a bit. But it's losing a lot of ground. It dropped from like 20 million downloads in January to like just 8.3 downloads in April. And that's a that's a pretty rapid decline in the number of downloads. That's not like the number of users, that's just how many times it was downloaded. So it's still popular, obvious, still being downloaded, still being used a lot. And I suspect a lot of that has to do with a lot of you know, word of mouth about Claude. I mean, we you hear me talk about Claude all the time now. And because the word of mouth spreads like wildfire, and the whole tech world likes Claude. They just do. It's just I don't, it just seems to be a little bit smoother.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

I wonder if it has something to do with some of the restrictions that they've placed on grok on X itself as well. So if you go on there, you used to be able to ask Grok a question uh during a post and things like that. Now that's only for verified users on X as opposed to access to everyone. So I wonder if that might have something to do with it too.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

And there's a lot of rate limiting I've noticed now too. You know, you you use free versions of Grok. I've gone on there, I haven't used it in days, and I'll ask it one question. It says, You've reached your limit for today. Well, I've never even asked you anything today, but thanks for pushing me out the door.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Some of it might have to be with how you know with Elon, he he made Grok kind of cutesy. You know, you know, you got extreme modes and all this stuff.

SPEAKER_00 39:51

Kid mode.

SPEAKER_01 39:51

And I mean it was fun, it's like a like a toy as opposed to a tool. And so and I think that might be one reason. You know, I I I don't use those extreme modes in grok because I don't know it's not a toy for me. So I think that's all we have time for, folks, today.

Wrap-Up And Tomorrow’s Preview

SPEAKER_01 40:07

Don't forget to tune in tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. We have a whole fresh show. We're gonna talk about all kinds of really cool things, including uh social media completely redesigned. A lot of that has to do with Europe and why. We're gonna dig deep into that tomorrow morning.