In this episode, Donovan from SouthTech Network Solutions and Ben from Tifton Tech Works cover a variety of tech topics and share personal anecdotes. They monitor Hurricane Helene's expected landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm via Zoom.Earth, sharing humorous commentary on its impact on personal plans like golf cancellations.The hosts discuss spending excessive time on X (formerly Twitter), highlighting the chaotic conspiracy theories present on the platform. Donovan recounts a personal story about his son, whose Twitter handle was stolen and recovered twice, criticizing Twitter's support under Elon Musk's leadership.The conversation then shifts to emerging AI technologies, such as Google’s Notebook LLM, which generates realistic podcast-style conversations, sparking interest in enhancing their own shows. They provide detailed insights into using OpenAI's Whisper for podcast transcription, covering the technical process involving FFMpeg and ChatGPT for generating show notes.Donovan and Ben explore the potential applications of large language models (LLMs) for automating tasks and discuss challenges, including a client's failed AI experiment. They critique the service provider Truvista for its lack of redundancy during storm outages, sharing a humorous DIY lawnmower repair story.The episode also discusses the introduction of RCS support on iOS 18, allowing iPhone users to send rich media messages to Android users, along with personal perspectives on messaging preferences and security. Finally, they reflect on DirecTV’s new agreement with Disney for smaller, genre-specific packages, considering the evolution of cable TV and personal viewing habits in the streaming age.Special guest Sam Lewis joins to review the Apple AirPods 4. Join them for an engaging mix of tech insights, personal stories, and the latest trends!

Hosts
Donovan Adkisson
Ben Rehberg

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---Podcast theme music by Transistor.fm.---

• End of an era: iPhone 16 won't include stickers in the box - 9to5Mac - Apple has decided to stop including stickers in the box with the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro, marking the end of a long-standing tradition. Stickers will only be available upon request at Apple Stores, but not from third-party retailers or through online orders. This move aligns with Apple's environmental goals, as the company aims to be carbon neutral by 2030 and has transitioned to entirely fiber-based packaging for the iPhone 16. This change follows the trend set by other recent Apple products, such as the Vision Pro and iPad models, which also omitted stickers.
• PSA: With RCS now on iOS, be careful when renaming group chats - With iOS 18’s new RCS support, Android users in mixed group chats can now rename the group for both Android and iOS users, a shift from previous behavior where renaming on Google Messages was visible only to the Android user. Apple has long allowed iOS users to rename iMessage group chats, but this extension now applies to Android users as well. Messaging apps like WhatsApp offer more control over renaming permissions, but Android users should be cautious to avoid unintended or inappropriate names when renaming group chats with iPhone users.

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