Top Five Tech

Welcome to Top 5 Tech, my
weekly show about what to watch,

listen to, read, download,
and something deep every week.

You've probably heard about breaches
in cybersecurity and AI agents,

and one of the biggest was
the hugging face breach,

where open AI models broke containment
and actually hacked the hugging face

distribution, which is like
a marketplace for AI models.

Well, Kurgazot, in a nutshell, the YouTube
channel has an incredible explainer video.

It's called AI just became
humanity's biggest threat,

and we'll get more into the AI doomsday
stuff in the deep section of this episode,

but if you really want to understand what
happened in that situation with hugging

face, open AI models, how they broke
containment, what that even means,

how the models communicated
and work together,

this video is an incredible
explainer all about it.

I've already watched it
once in a half times,

probably going to watch it a couple
more times to really understand what's

happening, but highly,
highly recommend watching.

On what to listen to.

I wanted to plug this podcast.

It's called Creator After Hours,
and he invited me to be on,

interviewed me about leaving Riverside,
going off on my own as an independent

creator. I thought it was actually a
really great conversation He just launched

this podcast. It's on YouTube, but you can
watch or listen to it in the background.

There's not a ton of visuals.

So just want to plug that, go listen to my
interview with Justin on the creator after

hours. And what to download?

I've I've coded 3 apps this week.

Most of them were actually in a single
day because I have some use cases when I'm

making these kinds of podcasts, videos,
and audio that I just wanted quick,

simple utilities that did
exactly what I wanted.

And all 3 of these apps
are completely free.

The 1st one is called Leveler.

If you were a fan of
Levelator back in the day,

I've actually gotten some feedback from
people on social media that they prefer

the end product that
Leveler actually gives them.

I basically gave Claude an audio
file that I get raw from Riverside,

and one that I edit to
actually sound how I want it,

and let Claude analyze that and build
an audio engine for leveling audio.

Actually does a great job.

The latest episode of Primary
Technology was using the Leveler app,

really helpful for either video or audio
files that you just want to have even

audio throughout with multiple speakers.

It works great. You can go to beardfm.app,
and links to these are all down in the

show notes, but that's Leveler.

I also have Transcriber.

And what's cool about this is it uses
Apple's on-device models on your Mac.

So you don't have to download any models.

This is not going out
to the internet at all.

This could happen totally offline,
but you drop a video or audio file,

and it just transcribes it.

You can correct the transcript
if you need, export a text,

SRT, or VTT file, whatever you need for
subtitles or just your own search and

transcription needs, transcriber is
super fast, on-device works great.

And finally, if you want
to add animated captions,

there's so many apps for this, I was using
the edits app on iPhone for a long time,

which is a great free
app, it's made by meta,

but I wanted to be able to batch process
my reels because I usually make 5 to 7

reels in a day, and I just want to add the
same style animated captions to all of it.

And because I built
Transcriber with Claude.

I asked it to build that same
functionality plus some animated captions,

and I made that totally free.

Again, it's on your Mac.

You can give it one or
multiple video files.

There's lots of different
animated caption options.

You can save your favorite styles.

All of those 3 apps are
completely free to download.

And while you're on this
website, beerfm.app,

you can check out can do
my project management app,

it's a $3 one time purchase, stash, which
I've been using more and more for saving

links, and a ton more.

It's all there. And one other
bonus, what to download.

Listeners, send me this, made some clip.

It is a one-time purchase of $8.

But if you do a lot of short little
calculations and you copy numbers a lot,

maybe you're working
in Excel spreadsheets,

this is a cool little app where it will
automatically calculate the numbers that

you are copying to your clipboard, and it
can just be in a little window off to the

side on your Mac. Pretty cool
app in the Mac App Store,

link is below. And what to read?

I actually have to get
into this this week,

but one of the new automation actions
in iOS 27 shortcuts is the ability to

automate something based on a notification
that arrives from a 3rd party app.

Well, this app called Deflector has kind
of hacked that functionality and made it

so you can run shortcuts by hacking this
notification system and using this app.

This is from MacStories.net, and they go
onto to explain in-depth how to use this

app, how to create these automations.

This is really interesting to me.

I'll probably be doing a video
on this on YouTube pretty soon,

but wanted to link it here and you can
download the app in their article as well.

All right, and finally on something deep,

I watched this entire interview
with Cleo Abram and Alexander Wang.

Alexander Wang is one of the leading
AI researchers and builders of these AI

products and agents.

He was poached by Meta, so
he works at Meta right now,

and he was in large part
responsible for the Muse AI agent,

which has been the number one free app
in the App Store for a couple weeks now.

We've talked about it at
length on primary technology.

My co is Jason Aten,
downloaded it on his Mac,

and it scooped up all his messages
and didn't have permission to do that.

So I would not download
Muse on a Mac or a computer,

but I've been using Muse on my iPhone
because when you download an app to your

iPhone or iPad. It's sandbox.

It can't get out of that app and do
something nefarious with the other data on

your iPhone or iPad.

So I've been using it just there.

And I totally get why this is
one of the most popular apps.

Muse is an AI agent that can
do so much action for you.

And the technology behind it is you have a
virtual machine or a computer in the cloud

that when you ask Muse to do
something, it can use that computer,

and it has nothing to
do with your hardware,

nothing to do with your device in
the app that you're prompting Muse.

It's just something that
it will work in a browser,

in a computer, in a server
somewhere, and do lots of stuff.

For instance, I actually have a
notification from you right here because I

asked it to let me know when the Apple
Home event was going to be officially

announced. There's been rumors that
Apple's going to launch an event on

October 13th, announced
new smart home products,

so I asked Muse to check every hour and
let me know when there's any news about

it, and it let me know right
here, even send me a notification.

You can use it to try and list
things on Facebook Marketplace,

although be wary of that because some
people have had their address given out

automatically, Muse just sent it to a
potential buyer because someone checked

the wrong permission box.

So again, be careful with
some of these use cases,

but I asked it to compare health insurance
plans for someone who's self-employed.

And when those come out during
open enrollment later this fall,

Muse is going to analyze all that data and
give me an easy to understand report about

what I should think about when it
comes to health insurance plans.

I asked it to find mats for my car because
my driver and passenger side mats are kind

of busted, and I found mats at
Home Depot that were affordable,

gave me several options
comparing in price,

but it also fails at some points because
it said it could buy the mats for me.

I said go ahead and buy it.

I linked Stripe and link
for a payment process,

and it couldn't finish
the checkout process,

and it told me to just take
control in a web browser,

but that was really janky.

So it is a mixed bag.

The security and privacy on
a computer is a major issue,

but I totally see the promise of this.

And Alexander Wang in this interview.

He is very optimistic saying
that 10 years from now,

it could basically help people achieve
their hopes and dreams because it could do

all this busy work or work that you
don't need to or find it difficult to do,

like choosing a health insurance plan,
and it can just do all that for you.

I see a small bit of that promise now and
they have definitely made Muse the most

approachable AI agent.

Not only is it kind of fuzzy and cute,

and Met is actually going to launch
a Tamagotchi style Muse pendant,

maybe before the holidays, and it's really
approachable in how it communicates,

being able to ask it things
just a natural language.

This is something I can imagine
telling my mom to try it,

so she can get some information in a
digestible and easy to understand way.

But it is a very fine line.

Again, go back to the AI agent video from
Kyrgazot at the beginning of this episode

about the dangers of AI agents,
and I also see the promise.

And so I am cautiously optimistic, but
also believe that we need to have some

real guardrails in place as these
companies and frontier models move forward

into this new AI agent world.

So just wanted to leave
that interview for you.

We'd love to know what you think
on that, the Kirkasad video,

or anything that I like.

And you can get all of these links with
some more commentary as a newsletter every

Friday. Totally free to sign up.

You can scan this QR code or click
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And thank you so much for
listening and watching.

I'll catch you next time.