What podcasts say about Bill Thompson
Every statement, with the speaker, the exact quote and the moment it was said.
What Bill Thompson has said on podcasts
47 statements · 22 positive · 19 negative · 6 neutral
People working from home should work outside the house when family interruptions matter.
“the answer if you can swing it is to get out of the house”
Open the episode · Harvey's Margin Whiplash, Human Powered Agents, McLaren Rebrand, Insects > Humans? | Ben Thompson, Gagan Biyani, Alex Ratner, Peter Kalogiannis, Daniel PetkevichListen at 59:45
A well-used personal assistant can substantially free its user.
“it is tremendously freeing”
Open the episode · Harvey's Margin Whiplash, Human Powered Agents, McLaren Rebrand, Insects > Humans? | Ben Thompson, Gagan Biyani, Alex Ratner, Peter Kalogiannis, Daniel PetkevichListen at 1:03:13
Bill defines AGI as AI that genuinely learns.
“My personal what is AGI rule is AI that actually learns.”
Open the episode · Harvey's Margin Whiplash, Human Powered Agents, McLaren Rebrand, Insects > Humans? | Ben Thompson, Gagan Biyani, Alex Ratner, Peter Kalogiannis, Daniel PetkevichListen at 1:17:52
Personal agents should be framed as removing annoyances rather than increasing productivity.
“we're not helping you be more productive. We're helping you get rid of annoying crap in your life.”
Open the episode · Harvey's Margin Whiplash, Human Powered Agents, McLaren Rebrand, Insects > Humans? | Ben Thompson, Gagan Biyani, Alex Ratner, Peter Kalogiannis, Daniel PetkevichListen at 1:19:14
Tesla self-driving improved substantially over the previous year.
“it's so much better this year than it was even a year ago”
Open the episode · Harvey's Margin Whiplash, Human Powered Agents, McLaren Rebrand, Insects > Humans? | Ben Thompson, Gagan Biyani, Alex Ratner, Peter Kalogiannis, Daniel PetkevichListen at 1:24:10
Amazon is preferred because its deliveries are trusted to arrive reliably.
“I would almost always want it from Amazon because I trust it's going to get there.”
Open the episode · Harvey's Margin Whiplash, Human Powered Agents, McLaren Rebrand, Insects > Humans? | Ben Thompson, Gagan Biyani, Alex Ratner, Peter Kalogiannis, Daniel PetkevichListen at 1:27:36
Amazon will ultimately prevail in the agentic-commerce dispute.
“Amazon is going to win this dispute or it's going to be resolved in their favor in the end.”
Open the episode · Harvey's Margin Whiplash, Human Powered Agents, McLaren Rebrand, Insects > Humans? | Ben Thompson, Gagan Biyani, Alex Ratner, Peter Kalogiannis, Daniel PetkevichListen at 1:31:22
Consumers enjoy shopping as a form of entertainment.
“people love shopping”
Open the episode · Harvey's Margin Whiplash, Human Powered Agents, McLaren Rebrand, Insects > Humans? | Ben Thompson, Gagan Biyani, Alex Ratner, Peter Kalogiannis, Daniel PetkevichListen at 1:32:05
Complaining during shopping does not necessarily indicate consumer dissatisfaction.
“Just because someone's complaining doesn't mean they're unhappy.”
Open the episode · Harvey's Margin Whiplash, Human Powered Agents, McLaren Rebrand, Insects > Humans? | Ben Thompson, Gagan Biyani, Alex Ratner, Peter Kalogiannis, Daniel PetkevichListen at 1:33:50
Android’s open-source design enables inspection for vulnerabilities.
“Android being open allowed us to look into those types of things.”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 1:24
The Patriot Act permits phone access with limited justification.
“You don't need a lot of justification with things like the Patriot Act.”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 2:19
Updates made the Patriot Act more invasive.
“they updated it and made it more. It's more usurpatious.”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 3:02
Bill Thompson characterizes FISA’s surveillance court as illegitimate.
“FISA is a Foreign Intelligence Security act, which is a kangaroo court that sits near Fort Meade, Maryland.”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 3:59
Minimization procedures still retain collected information in government records.
“all of it still gets cataloged, so it's all still there.”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 7:40
Minimization procedures can move slowly and enable rights abuses.
“the process moves conveniently slow in my experience, and is another vector for usurping people's rights.”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 8:42
DARPA is among the few highly competent U.S. government organizations.
“One of them would be darpa.”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 10:01
DARPA funds projects expected to generate useful technological spin-offs.
“Oftentimes they'll fund things that they don't. They know will not be built, but they're hoping that there'll be spinoffs from the idea that will help.”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 10:14
Government hackers exploit computer systems and develop zero-day vulnerabilities.
“you're exploiting computer systems and building things like zero days.”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 11:39
Recruiting organizational insiders is generally the cheapest intelligence-access method.
“the cheapest ways are always recruiting humans that work inside of the organization.”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 14:34
Human recruitment is cheaper than technical attacks about 95% of the time.
“95% of the time it's cheaper.”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 14:43
Pegasus is a highly capable persistent phone surveillance implant.
“Pegasus is probably the king of that. It's basically a persistent, persistent implant that lives on the phone”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 17:16
Pegasus can evade quick forensic inspection by hiding in an unexpected phone location.
“It was stored in a place where it wasn't obvious that you should be looking for any type of code there”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 18:27
Bill Thompson believes Israeli developers made Pegasus.
“I believe it was made by the Israelis.”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 18:36
Asymmetric adversaries change or simplify technology after exploitation.
“they pivot to a different piece of technology or regress back to something more primitive.”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 21:08
Government organizations tend toward self-perpetuating growth and larger budgets.
“it's a self licking ice cream cone that's it's only ends and means are to grow and to pull more purse Strings”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 25:08
Government funding incentives dominate operational decision-making.
“money drove every, everything.”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 29:18
Military programs are treated as successful when they spend their allocated budgets.
“when you executed the budget, it was successful”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 30:08
Current AI code generation is less robust than widely believed.
“I don't think it's as robust as everyone else thinks it is.”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 32:12
AI can rapidly generate routine software code.
“the mundane code or the less elegant code that's been written a million times over, you can generate very quickly”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 32:20
AI may reduce hacking target-development work from months to hours.
“now I think there's probably a month at most people would spend on these things and probably most of the work's getting done in the first three hours.”
Open the episode · Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131Listen at 34:57
Statements are attributed to the speaker as said on the episode and reflect their view at the time, not PodLume's. They are not advice.