AI Hallucinations, Windows Frustrations, and the Future of Tech

[00:00:18] All right, happy to have you along my fellow tech enthusiasts, Sam Bushman, Jay Harrison on your radio. We're talking tech and we keep an eye on tech so you don't have to. Brought to you by NetworkProvidersInc.com, NPITechGuys.com for the podcast. Spread the word, show the love, listen to it on the radio, call your radio station, ask them to carry the show, and or listen to it, NPITechGuys.com anytime you like. Welcome to the show. I'm Sam Bushman. Jay Harrison's with me.

[00:00:45] The headline I find fascinating says this, Jay. Apple update to stop your iPhone's hallucinations. Wow. They say I feature, or I'm sorry, AI feature, I'm dyslexic, AI feature temporarily disabled after it began to generate, quote, fake news headlines and fake news summaries. And anyway, so there's a big canceling of that.

[00:01:13] And this is kind of why, you know, a lot of people have come to me as a consultant and they say, Sam, what do you think of AI? And my response has always been, I think it's incredible. Don't get me wrong. I think it's just amazing what it can do. It's shocking. And you ain't seen nothing yet, I'll be the first to say also. Right. However, the embracing of AI too quickly is a mistake. The trusting of AI completely is a mistake.

[00:01:38] If you want to use AI intelligently, which means, hey, I'll use it to make things quicker for me. I'll use it to make sure that I can, you know, put something together quickly. And hey, using it as a support, as an assistant is wonderful. At the end of the day, though, you as a humanoid are responsible to review everything that you've got from it and make sure that it's all accurate. You need to vet the claims or vet the statements to be factual.

[00:02:05] You need to go research and make sure that it's really, you know, what it says. You know, for example, if it hallucinates and gives you a headline, you need to go find out, is that a real headline? Exactly. Because it's not just the news put together by a human. It's AI. And it hallucinates. It does wrong things. It gets details wrong. And I remember one time, I'll just give you a quick example. I was looking up something relating to a group called Liberty Village. And I typed in Liberty Village and it came back and gave me this whole thing about a Liberty Village. But it was a different thing.

[00:02:35] Honest mistake. It wasn't hallucinating. It just got the wrong entity, if you will. And imagine if you just copy and pasted that and then you're just looking like a doofus because you didn't proof it to make sure that it's talking about the right thing. And so that's my point. And a lot of times it's not that blatant. A lot of times it's more nuanced than that. But my whole point is if you want to have it help you. So let's say you write something that's completely factual.

[00:03:01] What I've learned to do with AI a lot of times is I will write something, Jay, but I won't even try to write it nicely. I won't even try to write it. But what I'll do is I'll just get the facts that I want down. I mean, they're redneck. They're misspelled. They're everything. And then I say generate something from this that's formatted, that's in a paragraph style, and let it do it. Then I review what it wrote and say, okay. Now I don't have to think of all the different complicated words that it can just find in two seconds.

[00:03:31] But I gave it the direction. And now I'm the gatekeeper to say, okay, wait, I don't like that. Hey, you know what? I want you to rewrite this. Make it less wordy. Make it less complicated words. Make it simpler like a mere mortal would write, not like a collegiate authored something, whatever. And so I give it this guidance. And at the end of the day, you or I, whoever's using this, needs to realize it's your assistant. But it isn't the gatekeeper. And you better be the gatekeeper. And so I teach all my people, AI's great. It's incredible.

[00:03:59] And it's going to get so much better so fast. But you've got to make sure that you're on top of it to make sure that it doesn't go off the rails intentionally or otherwise. Yeah, it's sort of like cruise control or lane assist on your car. You know, they're nice and they're great, but you're the one ultimately responsible in the driver's seat. So make sure that you keep your eyes on things. You mean I can't just turn on Tesla and go to sleep and get there in an hour? Come on. No, no, I don't think so. Yeah, there's been wrecks all over the place for that kind of stuff. And I know they say we're going to get there soon, but I'm just telling you they're jumping the gun.

[00:04:30] Anyway, I digress. The reason I brought it up, though, is because it's interesting. Even Apple, of all people, they're kind of known as the more conscientious, careful, professional delivery. Everything they do is professionally packaged. And even they have hallucinations they've got to back away from and cancel and go, holy, wait, hold on. Let's get a handle on this thing. Now, I wonder if that's only for the 16. Companies like them, it's likely to happen to you and your business too, Jay, is the point. Yeah, I wonder if that's only for the iPhone 16 that has the onboard AI, not for just all of the iPhones, just the latest one.

[00:04:59] Didn't say. Don't know. But I will say this. No matter what, you've got to be careful and remember you're in charge. Don't let those bots take over. Remember, tech needs to serve you, not own you. And that's one of the big phrases we use here on TechWatch Radio. How do you make sure that tech does your bidding? Tech's here to serve you, not to make your life more difficult. It's here to ease your life and simplify your life and be the great assistant for you. Make sure that it remains that way for the foreseeable future, okay?

[00:05:28] All right, Windows 10 PCs are having trouble, Jay. I don't know if you know, but I guess they got stuck in an update loop for days for people. Update for Windows 10, which happened a while ago, believe it or not, on November the 12th. 2024 to make some improvements to what they call the Windows recovery environment is causing headaches for many users. Everyone who tries to install the patch ends up stuck in a loop.

[00:05:57] They call it boards tech. And Windows World and others have been getting emails from users saying this is disaster. Basically, you install it, it says it's good, but then later it says it still needs to be updated. The problem is all the other tools say that it's already installed. And so that's kind of a big old battle on Windows 10. So, you know, you and I have kind of thought Windows 10 was the best. We don't really want to move to Windows 11. But, Jay, it's getting to become a problem already.

[00:06:24] Yeah, I do think still that Windows 10 is better than 11 in a lot of ways. And that's not just inertia. That is, it still hasn't met that tipping point. I remember when Windows 10 finally did it over 7 and there was still a good, you know, year or two left of Windows 7. And it was like, no, clearly Windows 10 is better at this point. It's more stable. It has more features that are actually usable stuff, not just fluff and icing.

[00:06:52] And but I don't think that Windows 11 has really made that. Now, they have pushed back the date. It was going to be April of 2025. It's now October of 2025 when you supposedly will not get any more updates. I would not be surprised if they push that date back. Maybe they won't just because they're running up against a wall. But even then, I don't know. We'll see. We're going to have to update some stuff. I could share personally with some of the people that I work with. We had a Windows 11 that came through and updated some point of sale systems.

[00:07:21] And all of a sudden, the updates would no longer work with their receipt printers. And the only solution, because there's not Windows 11 drivers for this. And they tried a bunch of different stuff. We tried stuff. We even had some outsourced experts in this field look at it. Their only solution was, sorry, you've got to buy a new receipt printer. This is a receipt printer that's working perfectly, has been for years. There's nothing wrong with it. But no, you have to buy a new $400, $500 receipt printer, thermal printer, because Windows 11 just doesn't work with it anymore. It's nonsense. There's a lot of stuff like that.

[00:07:50] And a lot of people are getting bit when they don't expect it. And it's expensive. People are frustrated. But they're crunching these timelines more and more. So they might push back the date. You may be right. But they might also force this on the rest of us. So now they say, don't wait till October to switch to Windows 11 security experts are warning. In a recent blog post, Microsoft declared 2025 what they call the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh, Jay.

[00:08:16] That's because when October rolls around, official support for Windows 10 is going away. And you'll have to switch to Windows 11. However, if you're planning to wait till the last minute to make that switch, you might want to think again, they're saying. According to one security expert, the security risks for, quote, all non-upgraded PCs will continue to get worse and worse and worse between now and then. And Windows 10 is a, quote, ticking time bomb, they claim.

[00:08:42] And Windows, they say, continues to hold out 65% of the market share among desktop operating systems, still amounting to millions of PCs around the globe. Now, I know last episode we talked about, hey, they don't have near that much operating system. But that's across all devices, not just desktops. So that's the difference for your knowledge. IT security experts are saying, hey, you've got to update your ticking time bombs to 11.

[00:09:12] And you've got to do it fast. Now, Jay, I don't agree with that ticking time bomb scenario. Or fast. I don't agree with that either. I think that they're jumping the gun on this. We have a better part of this year before you even, and all you're going to do is lose security updates at that point. It's not like a bomb, so to speak. It's, hey, after, you know, in November, December, into 2026, there could be unpatched vulnerabilities that will start to have your computer exposed to you. I understand that.

[00:09:39] But I don't understand the rush, the hype, the ticking time bomb of, I don't think it's like that. I think that you've got all spring, summer, and fall, really, to get this done. I don't know. Well, and what people need to understand is if you work for, if you're a business and you have an outsourced IT department or whatever that knows what they're doing, they can keep things safe for you. That's one thing. The other thing is a lot of people have routers now that are firewalls, and there's more protection in that side. If you have Comcast or some of these other big internet providers, they have all kinds of security.

[00:10:09] And if you're sitting behind that firewall, it's not near as dangerous as you think. And so I think they're just propagandizing this thing, making you think that, oh, my gosh, the chicken little in the sky is falling. Now, I do agree that you eventually need to kind of keep up on updates. Eventually, you can fall behind, and it's a problem. But don't act like, for me, nine months before I'm supposed to switch operating systems that it's like a meltdown. It isn't really true. No.

[00:10:33] I think they're just trying to taint kind of Windows 10 to make it seem old or risky because every other effort they've made to get people to move to 11 is failed. I mean, even now, on every Windows 10 PC, occasionally, it seems like it's like once a week almost. You get a big full-screen thing that says, it's expiring. What do you want to do? Stay on Windows 10. Get 11. Like, you know, they're pushing it so hard. Like, you shouldn't have to do this.

[00:11:01] If you build a better mousetrap, people should flock to it. You shouldn't have to push people so hard to move off of an operating system. And if everybody loves 10 so much, why not continue to support it longer? I don't understand. Well, and especially when you have hardware people that are not up to date. In other words, Microsoft, if you really want to move everybody on to 11, that's fine. But why don't you start writing drivers for receipt printers then? Exactly. Why are we filling landfills? Help the environment forward. Why are we filling landfills with tech that's still perfectly good?

[00:11:29] It just doesn't run with Windows 11. That's the point. Anyway, I find that interesting. Now, network providers put together a document that I think is worth discussing. It says, hey, five options if your Windows 10 PC fails the Windows 11 compatibility test. In other words, a lot of times what you do is you run a test and you say, hey, my computer can upgrade no problem. By the way, even if it passes that test, that doesn't mean there'll be no problems. Just so you know. I'm just saying. Anyway, either way, they say there's five things that you've likely heard.

[00:11:59] Windows 10 will reach its end of life on October the 14th. If you've already attempted to update but your PC fails the test, there's things you can do. Here's five choices. What ignore the deadline? We don't recommend that, but people can do that, right? Switch from an operating system to Linux. You can move over to a different thing. You know, people can do that. But again, that's just hard, Jay. I mean, I don't really find that viable for most people. Linux isn't ready for most people's prime time. They say try to upgrade using a technical loophole.

[00:12:28] You can change some things in the registry and create a technical loophole. I mean, you can do that if you have to. But again, to me, those are bad choices. I think that's actually a viable choice. The technical loophole is like you can emulate a TPM module. There's some things that Windows 11 looks for that you may not have. And just because your computer doesn't have them doesn't mean that you can't really run Windows 11. And I've actually been surprised. If you're technical enough to do that, I think it's a viable option. But I think for most folks, messing with the registry is dangerous. Yeah.

[00:12:57] I've been surprised that Windows, Microsoft in general, hasn't relaxed some of these limitations that stop Windows 11 from installing, especially when you see how bad they're pushing Windows 11. You would think they would just have a simple thing that says, hey, you don't have some of our recommendations. Are you sure you want to upgrade? And you just say yes. And it would just put in those bypasses and let you upgrade to 11 anyway. But I think they're trying to clear out a lot of stuff. One of the things that Windows has, one of the problems is they've always had this issue.

[00:13:27] And you and I have talked about it for years of trying to support everything legacy. I mean, supporting stuff back into DOS 6.0 and all these things. And I think one of the things that Windows is trying to do is they're looking at, like, for example, Mac. Mac will just say, hey, we're not supporting this anymore. It's seven years old and we're done with it. Windows is supporting things that are three decades old. But yet they can't support your receipt printer. Yeah, exactly. I know.

[00:13:50] So I think they're trying to clear the slate a little bit and say, you know, you've got to have these things in order to roll up to the next operating system. And I understand why they're doing it, but a lot of it just isn't 100% necessary. So that loophole, there's more information if you go to NPI. What's the website? Yeah, and there's guides to help you do it. I'm not saying people can't do it if they know what they're doing. I'm just saying for the average Joe, messing with the registry can get very dicey quickly.

[00:14:18] And oftentimes I find when people say a registry hack does this or that, half the time it doesn't even work anyway. And you are really, I think, almost better if you can't run Windows 11. You probably, it's time for a hardware upgrade anyway. Well, that's right. Now, speaking of hardware upgrades, though, I used to have these sound cards. They were an M-Audio Delta 44 sound card. They were a PCI sound card that fit in a regular computer. They had these breakout boxes that gave you quarter-inch connectivity to all your audio. They were incredible. One of the best sound cards I've ever had in my entire life. Right.

[00:14:48] The problem is, hey, Windows 10 didn't support them. And so I stayed on Windows 7 for the longest time. And anyway, I finally had to just throw that away. They were working great. Great hardware. They're $150 plus dollar, $200 sound cards now just throwing them. That bugs me. They're no good. Can't use them. That bugs me, man. Thrown away good tech just because somebody didn't write a driver for it. That's right. And somebody didn't write a driver because I don't know if there's not enough support. I mean, I don't know if the writing driver is complicated.

[00:15:14] We're not talking about like ISDN equipment or modems or something. We know that stuff gets outdated and it's worthless now. You've got to just throw it out. We're talking about working good equipment that's still viable, that still can be used every day today. And it's better than oftentimes the new stuff that's coming out. And it just doesn't work because somebody didn't write a driver for it. That's sad. That's right. It's sad. Now, is that on the manufacturer or is that on the operating system, Sam? Whose fault is that? Because the manufacturer might just say we have newer, better cards and we'll just move to this.

[00:15:44] So it's very difficult. The problem is the consumer gets stuck holding the bag, which is the saddest part of it all. Yeah, they got to pay out. But number three, they say you can pay for Microsoft's, quote, security updates. Although they'll no longer offer the general security updates, they do have special security updates for business owners. But it's expensive. It's like $61 for the first year, $120 for the next year, $240 for the next year. It's like, I mean, you're paying big money and they say it's important to know that these updates are cumulative.

[00:16:14] That's like a ransom. And don't include technical support of any kind. So it's just like almost impossible. It's like holding users at ransom. I don't. And for money even. Yeah, I know. That's what I mean. You're going to pay to be held at ransom. It's insanity. And you're going to double it every year. Number five to me is the only real viable option, Jay. And I hate for people to throw good money after bad. I hate for people to throw hardware away that's not good. We've already been over that. But purchase a new PC. I think it's the only real choice for 99% of the people.

[00:16:45] Yeah. I really do. It really is. And if you're not running, if you don't have the hardware to support it, you probably, I mean, look at your computer. If it's older than five to seven years old, you probably need new hardware anyway. Yeah. I mean, I even think the number is kind of shorter than that these days because the computers are so much faster, so much more dependent on GPUs that most people had very minimal in the older machines that are now reasonably robust. And I'm just telling you right now, every three, four years, you need a new computer. Yeah.

[00:17:15] Unfortunately, everybody hates moving computers. It's expensive. I don't care. And they should make it easier to move from one machine to the other. That's been another big old disaster. I don't think they ought to have a central registry for computers. And I don't think they ought to have, you know, shared DLLs and all these different shared things everywhere. You know, I had a piece of software I needed to install for somebody just yesterday. And they're like, yeah, we need the net whatever framework. And we don't need the latest one.

[00:17:42] So even if you have the latest net framework on, you've got to install the previous one so we can run. Yeah. .NET Framework from Microsoft. I don't want two versions of net framework. And I don't want to install an older version. Upgrade your software. But they haven't. And if I either run the software and install both versions of net. What's it called? Net. .NET from Microsoft. .NET. Yeah. Okay. I don't want to run both versions. But I have to. Or I don't run that software. So that's, you know, I've got a problem with that whole thing. But upgrade your PC. That's the answer. Now they then say, here's this, Jay.

[00:18:10] Here are the improvements coming to Windows 11 in 2025. And so in January and February, at least, Microsoft claims that, you know, hey, it's been a long time since Microsoft receives actual updates with features included for Windows 11. I don't understand that why we've had Windows 11 for literally a couple of years now. And they haven't had any updates really. That's just insane to me. But now, as reported by Windows latest, the optional updates coming in January and February are going to be bigger than usual.

[00:18:40] There's a lot of cool stuff they're saying that they're going to include. February being particularly a big month for this to happen. What's the killer app? Just expect. Well, it all depends. All this is based on the release notes from the beta Windows whatever channel. Right? Yeah. Which you can't count on. Microsoft is tweaking the magnifier app, Jay. Okay. So that users can reset the zoom level with a single click, buddy. Okay. How many people actually use the magnifier?

[00:19:08] The last selected level will then be destroyed. Jay, nobody. I do, but it's I'm in the minority for sure. I mean, people see me do that. They go, how did you do that? You know, it's like I didn't even know it existed. But now you have one click to go to the last state, Jay, as opposed to just like, how do I get back where I was and all that? One click. Yeah. And I'm just thinking, I mean, that's good. But to me, that's a tiny change. That's not going to sell Windows 11. For heck's sakes. It isn't going to even close to sell anything.

[00:19:36] Anyway, they say it's going to be available for 23H2 and 24H2. File Explorer improvements, Jay. Oh, please don't. Microsoft is bringing what they call quality of life. Like users being able to create a new folder directly in File Explorer's context menu instead of having to, quote, switch to the navigation pane to do so. Now, I don't mean to be rude, but that was in 7, Jay. They broke it. And now they're bringing it back and they're calling it a feature. I know.

[00:20:04] It's like, what is happening? If you know the shortcut key, Control-Shift-N for new folder, it works anywhere. It doesn't matter which pane you're in. But that's another one. Yeah. But all I'm telling you is they hid a lot of those things and now they're regretting it. It's like, don't you know from time? Don't just completely rearrange everything, every operating system. You just cause grief that way. And then why would you ever? Why would you ever take creating a new folder out of the general context menu and bury it somewhere else? Why would you ever do that? I know.

[00:20:33] The new, when Windows 12 comes out, the newest feature, the selling point is going to be, it's more like Windows 10. We're bringing it back. It's brand new. I mean, it's wow. Windows 11 will also retain previously opened tabs after a restart, but only after you enable it in File Explorer settings, Jay. This is for File Explorer, not for Edge. Right. Yeah. And so if you don't enable that by default, nobody's going to use it. That's right.

[00:21:03] But if you enable it by default, then the whole operating system runs weird and it keeps crap open. And then when you reboot, I mean, over and over, you have this massive swap file and everything else because everything is so bloated to where, you know, they say this control, intelligent tab control is what they're calling it. Intelligent tab control helps reduce system resources way better than launching multiple windows is the point. So putting it in a tab and it's better, Jay. I don't even like tabs in File Explorer anyway. I don't use that. I want separate windows.

[00:21:33] Well, you will now, buddy. Yeah, I'll be forced to. They say File Explorer will also be simplified. Now listen, Jay. Time zone improvements. Users that don't have administrative rights can change the time zones. Wow. Finally. See? I'm just saying it's huge. Dude, this is incredible. You have to have. Why they don't. To me, you roll these out, Jay, in tiny changes over the last two years that Windows 11 has been around. How long has it been around? Two years? No, more than that even. Three? For Windows 11? At least, yeah.

[00:22:03] Usually they have a look. I'll have to look. Anyway, so for the last three years that now they're going to give me this time zone thing is this big push? Like, are you kidding me? I have had users. This is a true story. So I have users that run, of course, are running in a standard user mode. Sometimes the clock will get weird or maybe if a battery dies like on their CMOS or whatever. They go to boot up. They cannot change the time without administrator rights. And I understand that.

[00:22:27] You know, maybe you don't want people dinking around with time and messing, but they can't even use the Windows sync time with Windows time servers button without administrator rights. It doesn't make sense, some of that stuff. Like, if you're just syncing time on the Internet so that you can fix your computer and then you can log on to certain websites that doesn't say that, you know, everybody's certificate expired. That's built in. That's not where somebody can really mess with the time or cheat things. They're just wanting to sync the time and get their clock back on track.

[00:23:24] Right. They're going to make it to where, hey, they've got these intelligent tabs that's not even on by default. And you're going to I'm just saying I don't really see anything here, Jay, that's that valuable. How can such operations stable? Just stabilize the stupid thing and make sure that it works with as many hardware devices, modern time as you possibly can and stabilize the system. Then I'll be interested in it. Otherwise, it's just a frustrating deal. I have Windows 11 now and I still can't figure out how to get my columns right for to show what I want to show.

[00:23:54] Right. I don't understand how they think that these such these obscure, very minor things are going to be great selling points for Windows 11. I don't that's they got to come out with something better if they want to attach a whole new version number to it. And if you're not, then just keep it stable. I think it's just about selling more operating systems to especially to corporate and enterprise. And I know you don't like this, Jay, but I just prefer don't even give me numbers. Just upgrade my operating system and I'll pay a fee every month to do it.

[00:24:24] And just make sure that I'm always updated with the latest, greatest, most stable features on the planet. You can give me. Yeah. But when you're running Windows Store, you should be able to upgrade everybody for free and keep them going. You're making a lot of money there. You're right about that. All right. Thanks for being alongside for the ride. We keep an eye on tech. You don't have to. It's not an emergency, but it is important. NetworkProvidersInc.com, NPITechGuys.com. Thanks so much to you from us. Make it a great day.