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One, two, three. Sounds good to me on my headphones. Sounds good to me on my headphones. Sounds good to me on your headphones. Sounds good to you on your headphones. Sounds good to Mariah on Andrew's headphones. Sounds good to Andrew on David's headphones.
Yo, what is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. I'm Andrew. And I'm Nintendo Switch 2. I almost said that. I had to think about it for a second. It hasn't been working as well as we'd hoped, but... I'm David. Do it more. Yeah. You know what did work? Last time we asked people who hadn't subscribed to subscribe, and then they did. Yeah. Yeah.
It was kind of crazy how directly... I hate how that works. Yeah. Yeah. I have this peeve where if I'm watching a YouTube video and the YouTuber looks into the camera and asks me to subscribe before starting anything in the video, I get a little mad. I usually click off. And I usually don't.
But now we'll have to find a better way. Yeah, but then we cuz it works very well and it kind of works So yeah, it's a it's a middle ground I guess what I'm trying to say is if you're watching this and you're one of those people, please don't get mad But if you aren't subscribed and they showed us up on your feet every week, maybe consider subscribing it. It does great for us. It's amazing Yeah, anyway this week we have a whole bunch of stuff metas in the midst of an active lawsuit. We saw maybe there's a new air tag competitor coming possibly and
And we also want to wrap it up with a game because we have a lot of fun with those. So the last segment will be a game. But first, there was a huge story this week. I mean, it's the elephant in the room. We can't really not talk about it. So I figured we might as well intro the entire podcast with it. Sometimes it's an uncomfortable topic for people, but we just got to get right into it and not really mess around. New Beats Cables.
I mean, we saw this coming a mile away. Once we saw Beats was making phone cases, we knew that this was not off the table, but we just didn't know when. We knew Beats, they've got to make more iPhone accessories, but when are they going to make a cable? And they finally did it.
And so we have them here. There's actually four colors. Product of the year, probably. I know it's a little early to say that, but I feel confident. It's 2025. They go pretty hard. There's four colors. I'm holding two of them, the black and the white. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Sorry, dumb name. You mean Bolt Black and Surge Stone? Surge Stone. You're right. Those are the names. And I have Nitro Navy and Rapid Red.
What? Those are worse somehow. They like alliterations, huh? These sound like Red Bull names. Dude, they sound like monster names. Monster. Yeah. Wait, what was the black one? G Fuel? Are they all alliterations? It was Bolt Black. So they're all alliterations. Cool, cool, cool. Nitro Blue? No, Nitro Navy. Nitro Navy.
Rapid Red. Surge Stone? Surge Stone. Surge Stone's fine. That sounds like a Pokemon evolutionary stone. No, it's not fine. It's better than Rapid Red. Yeah, but Stone, at least Rapid Red, like, oh, it charges fast or whatever. Like, Stone does not surge. I mean, there's one surging in your computer right now.
Oh, silicon. Technically a stone. They do charge at 60 watts. So these are one and a half meter woven USB-C cables, C to C, 60 watt charging. They're USB 2.0. They're not really meant for data. But they do. They technically do. So if you want to like transfer, if you want to plug them into your headphones or whatever, I guess that's cool. But yeah, they're just charging cables. I also think the USB-A to C is 15 watt.
Oh, is it? I think so. Okay, well, they are selling these four colors. They sell them in two length variations. There is a five foot or eight inch option. They come in C to C, C to A, and C to lightning. They are all $19 for one or $35 for two, no matter what length you get.
Which is already ridiculous. Can I ask you a question? Sure. What is the point of an 8-inch cable? What do you do with an 8-inch cable? A USB-C to C cable? Yeah, I'm not sure. And they're all $19. For everyone who's literally not in the U.S., 20 centimeters. 1.5 meters, I think. Oh, you mean the smaller one? The 8-inch cable, yeah, 20 centimeters. Here's the thing, guys. They're $19 for one or $35 for two. They're 60-watt USB 2. The anchor equivalent...
on Amazon right now is $10 for two of that same spec that is also braided. This is the thing you're going to find in the Best Buy airport kiosk where like, oops, I forgot my cable. Like, I know I'm going to get upcharged for convenience here, but I'm just going to buy one anyway because I need it because my headphones are about to die and I'm about to get on a plane. Yeah. And whatever. They're just...
cable and it's the beats cable so they'll probably work with my headphones mark has made a good point that Like Apple does not sell anything except for the MacBooks that charge at more than 60 watts Yeah, so that's fair, but they're expensive and I would rather have something that's faster and Can do more data for cheaper? I'd argue most people have the brick as their limiting factor so if you're buying a new cable and
It's probably to charge something under 60 watts. It's probably, oh, my phone, I need a new charging cable. Oh, my headphones, I need to charge my iPad. I don't like that you're right about that. If you want to spend a lot of money on cables, there are some really nice cables out there. There are. The Anker Prime is one of the nicest braided cables. And this is 240 watts. It is $30. And PD. Yeah.
You know, it's 30 bucks for one cable. 30 bucks for one cable is a lot, but this is a very nice pretty cable. And that's the Cadillac of cables right there. You know what? Okay. So you guys have a box of wires, right? Everybody. Yeah, exactly. Everyone's got a drawer or a box. I have two. I have one just for power and one for non-power. Mine's a suitcase. It's full of wires. It's full of like old random earbuds that I got given. Yeah.
But there are so many. So I had a couple weeks ago, I went through my suitcase and I recycled anything that any brick that was less than 30 watts, I recycled.
And I recycled any cable that was micro USB, except for one, just in case. Just in case you need one. Yeah. And then anything that was like A to C, I was like, I just, there probably will be a day. Whenever I rent a car from Turo, it's always only gotten a like USB A port. And I'm like, well, now I can't use Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. There's a lot of people out there who just buy a cable that's just convenient. Best Buy kiosk is 100% with these.
are for. They look nice, so people will be more willing to spend money on them at the last minute. The top comment on the Apple subreddit about these was is it compatible with the polishing cloth? That sounds like the Apple subreddit. Got them, yeah. Shout out to the Apple subreddit. Is the polishing cloth more expensive than these? It's $19. It's the same price? I think it's the same price, yeah. But
Yeah. How fast does that charge? Oh, I think I've said this before. I think that one of my hottest takes is that the polishing cloth is worth the money. No, I know. I think I've said that on the podcast. But it is actually, it's like nano, you know, it's not microfiber. It's like nano fiber. It's so good. You think it's worth $20? Yes.
Yes, I do actually. Have you bought one? No. I think you have. But it's come with stuff that I have bought. Wait, this is probably a good time to announce to audio listeners that Adam is not actually on the podcast today. And we are joined by Mariah Zang. It's a cool animation, yeah.
Nice. Well, anyway, yeah, that was the big story of the week. We just had to talk about it up top. I know we don't usually, you know, get into that stuff on this podcast, but this felt like a big enough story that we had to go there. So I hope you guys appreciate our unbiased coverage. Right. Moving on. There's a story. iPhones may or I guess have now been exempted. This is an ongoing. OK. Yeah.
Ongoing development with tariffs. We left off last week with some things that have been changing. It's hard to cover tariffs right now. Do you remember the number we left off with last week? It was like 20, 25 percent. It was 34 percent. It was 34 percent. You know what it was when the episode came out? I think it went up. 145. 145 percent. I think it's in the 200s now. It's bumped up again. Or maybe that's just something I saw on Reddit. Maybe that's not even true.
Who knows, baby? But the story now is iPhones may be specifically exempt from tariffs. So this was one of those big questions that connects to regular people, which is, okay, the new iPhone is going to come out later this year.
Will it be dramatically more expensive than we're expecting because of tariffs? $3,000 is not how much it will cost. That is what everyone online says to scare you. Well, there were some stories floating around of like lots of these things are made in China. They're assembled in China. These factories are in China. A lot of Apple stuff...
Gets built there and these tariffs, you know seem to be heavily affecting a lot of these parts So maybe the iPhone will be heavily affected. So understandably there's a lot of conversation about it But you know Tim Cook doing his supply chain Wizardry or just politicism or whatever just has a few conversations and now the iPhone looks to be exempt from tariffs at least for the time being well Okay, this is as far as I've got and once again could change it
from reciprocal tariffs, but placed in this different... I kept seeing it called a tariff bucket. It's right now in this weird thing they're saying called the fentanyl tariff, which is to punish China from importing fentanyl into the US. I don't want to go any further into that because I don't understand it. That was an existing tariff that they had. Yeah, and it's for...
It's a punishment. Setting fentanyl precursors to Mexico where it is manufactured into fentanyl. The talk is that within the next couple of months, we might see some different types of tariffs coming to the semiconductor industry. So it's not just Apple, but semiconductor tech. Pretty much everything we've talked about will have some sort of reciprocation from that.
But I think I wanted to say that because I don't think it'll be in the whatever 145% proposed tariff, but it will have some tariffs. And also, we're going to try and maybe not talk about numbers of tariffs much here because it's almost impossible for it to ever come out at the updated price point. Yeah, by the time this podcast comes out and by the time you listen to it and by the time it's a week later and someone else clicks on it. Yeah, I mean, here's the headline.
new tariffs on smartphones days after exempting them. So I just got to tell you know it's hard especially on a podcast that we record two days before we release things change multiple times a day in
In the current moment. We have a quick turnaround also. We do, considering. So that's the best we can do for now. If we're wrong, I'm sorry. We try our best. Cool. I have two other updates that have come that might be updated slightly to tariffs. Heck yes. Cool. There's a leaker named Billy Bill Kuhn. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but that's their username. And...
it's going around that he's found some things about switch to pre-order dates opening in canada in the u.s so that's you know one thing we've worried about if it got delayed because of that what's happening but it seems pretty soon this the canada might open up on april 23rd and we might see in the u.s pre-orders opening sometime between the 21st and the 30th which is next week right a week
Hopefully we'll be able to talk about it next week. And I think the most interesting thing there, other than, you know, actually pre-ordering, is how much it'll cost. That's what I'm just so curious. If those are the pre-order dates and the price doesn't change, I forgot if I asked y'all already, are you pre-ordering? Did you say you would? Or you were just going to wait? I went from duh to maybe. Okay.
Okay, so maybe that's not a pre-order that's like just waiting in I feel like it would probably be smart because I'm probably not gonna be one of the people that just like wants to play the new games immediately so it might be like a Down the line when it's discounted. Maybe I'll get something like forget one. Yeah, like this the consoles discounted Yeah, I think I'm gonna be the first time I happen to see it sitting in physical stock like a store and just be like yeah, I
I mean... You're probably going to walk into a Target or a store you don't expect because they're going to be sold out from all the obvious places. But then you'll see at a random Barnes & Noble and be like, ah, I'm going to buy a Switch 2 today. I really... I want to hold it. That's the annoying thing. I would like to actually...
hold it and see how it feels and see if I because I have an OLED I have a switch OLED so I would like to be like is this worth the higher refresh rate better build quality for a different type of screen yeah that is interesting so I when I went to my hands-on came directly from my regular switch non OLED yeah this I mean that's a huge and it was a night and day difference yeah much bigger screen higher refresh rate and all that
but I could distinctly tell it was not an OLED. And I kind of feel like coming from a Switch OLED, I would be in the same place as you. I would be less likely to jump fast. The OLED has a bigger screen. It has much smaller bezels. It is a little bit thinner. It has way better build quality. It's a bigger battery that lasts longer. It's got a way better kickstand that arguably, I mean, I have not touched the new kickstand yet,
But it seems better than the Switch 2 kickstand. I think they're both just as good as far as, like, full width and, like, range of motion, and they just hold in place. Yeah. Yeah. So the big things for me are, like, I mean, I don't use my Switch that often, so I probably shouldn't be one of the day, you know? That's just, like...
launching into the consumerism for no reason. Can I ask, you say you want to hold it. I haven't been to the electronics department in a store in a long time, but do they still do the like... Not yet. Well, not yet, but I'm saying will they do it? Tethered. Do they still have the like tethered console where you have to look like eight feet up in the air and crack your neck just to watch it? I don't think they do that in like Best Buy. I think you were just a child.
but it was the TV was always on the top of the display with everything. So like even now would be above my head. It's like the pinnacle of that subreddit of like TV's too high. Okay. But if you find that, let me know because I'm curious if it actually is too high or if you just remember it. I think it's both. I think cause it was angled down. I remember that. So even as an adult, you have to do kind of like this.
I think they'll probably have, well, the Joy-Cons, if they can have that same tethered setup, because in the hands-on area, they had tethered Switch 2s, and you could not remove the Joy-Cons, so everything was kind of locked in. If they could do that in a store, I think they would. Yeah, if you go to the Nintendo store in Manhattan, they have them available for you to try.
Wait, really? Switch 2s? Well, when I was there, it was the other Switch, but everything is completely tethered. Do you think with it, like, okay, let's say these leaks are true or these rumors are true that it does pre-orders come out next week. And they're the same price? Do we think it's the same price or do we think it changed? Because that feels, it was weird that it got delayed, but this isn't that delayed off the Rift. So, like, is that enough time to find a new price for it? Especially when... Yeah.
Everything's moving all over the place. I kind of feel like it's still gonna be $4.99. I think it is gonna stay the same price because one, Nintendo already has a bunch in the United States, they said. Two, they are, I heard they were allocating like, so they produce a number of them in China and a number of them in Vietnam. And I heard that they had just, the Vietnam tariffs got basically cut down to just the base 10%.
And I think I heard that they are going to be using basically all of the ones in Vietnam for the United States because of this whole situation. So I don't think that they would up the price. And then also, I think they're like, okay, we have enough allocation for the first wave of people that want them. And all of this will probably be settled by June, maybe, hopefully. I don't know. We'll see. I mean, I think that's a fair thing. If I had to guess anything wrong,
Pre-orders come out, same price, where we see the difference is like a huge delay in first wave to like second wave of like getting them in stores. Like two to three months. I could see a really, really hard to get these if you missed the pre-order. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So other tariff news. Well, other update that might be related. Which is almost definitely, but not allegedly according to me. The OnePlus Watch 3.
which we talked about. It's a very good watch. A lot of people really liked it and it was at a pretty good price for
Remember, it had $3.29, which is a very good price. It had a misprint on the back where it said, Meta in China instead of Made in China. In tiny fine print that you had to go check to see. Yeah, and people called it out and OnePlus freaked out and decided to... It's me, people. I treated it. I wouldn't want to be at fault for what they did to it. Look, I put it out there.
They took it off shelves and they had a delay and they were like, actually, this is going to ship in April. I was like, okay.
Now it's shipping again, and now it's $500. So it went up $170, which is like 50% price increase. Many reporters have been asking, what's the deal? What's the deal with the tariffs? And OnePlus is just not answering at all. So they're not saying we're raising the price because of tariffs. We're doing this, this, this. They're just like, it's $500 now, guys. And it's a very good Wear OS watch.
I don't know if it's a $500 Wear OS watch, but $329, it was a super good Wear OS watch. Fascinating. So that's a fun tariff story. So there's like three possibilities here of what I'm imagining could have happened. One is the tariffs affecting the price, and then they're just accounting for that in the new price. Yeah.
Yeah. Two is it went on sale and it didn't sell as well as they expected. And so when they took it down and brought it back, they're bringing it back in lower volume and therefore a higher individual unit cost and therefore pricing that in. Or possibility number three, it was crushing.
And tons of people were buying them at $329. Couldn't keep it on the shelf. And so while they did take it off the shelf to fix the typo, they brought it back and increased the price to account for that supply and demand. Do you think there's an option of it's selling exactly the same, but to make up for the cost of
presumably thousands of watches that can't be sold anymore because of the typo. This is to recuperate cost a bit. My question also becomes, did they just replace the bottom plate or did they throw away all the watches they made and then just make new ones? They're all boxed and everything. It's manufactured, assembled, boxed, packaged, sealed, probably wholesale shipped already.
I don't know what happens to this. I 100% would have kept it. I would have thought that was funny and a cooler watch. I did keep it. You did keep it, right? Yeah. I'm wondering if any of our listeners are someone who said, I want to return this and get the...
I forget. Did they promise you'll get a new watch at the price you paid already? Or did you get your refund and could order it again? Because if I saw, oh my gosh, now I have to spend 50% more just to have two letters switched around, I would be pretty upset. Right. Especially that they're underneath. They're touching your skin all the time. You literally can't even see it. Yeah. I believe they made up for it with customers. Yeah. OnePlus says they can get a free replacement if they receive the meta version and are bothered with it. I want to
talk about one more micro story before we take a break. TikTok is getting its own version of community notes in the US. So these are called footnotes and you can apply to be a footnotes contributor where you effectively leave little community notes on the platform. Probably good. I mean, this is one thing that I think
Twitter has done well. It's like the only thing that they have added to the media ecosystem, even though it gave Meta an ability to just not do any fact checking and say, we're just going to do community notes instead. And they won't accept me as a community notes author. Yeah. I've applied like six times. Second best thing Twitter's ever done. Do they say why? No. There is a lot of misinformation spread around on TikTok. Notably, one of my therapists told me.
that there is way too much fake therapy stuff that gets spread on TikTok from people who are not licensed and don't know what they're talking about. So it's probably good that people can go in and actually fact check things, especially because people just share things that they see all the time without doing any research on them. It is a big challenge. My experience with Community Notes is...
is not heavy, but I remember, like, Wikipedia has, you know, has a similar system where people can edit things that they see incorrect and then, like, add citations, things like that. And that, even that is incorrect all the time and needs more citation and people kind of just edit things that aren't necessarily true. Yeah. I would know. And so...
Twitter and social media is like a real-time version of that where everyone is fact-checking everyone and things are swaying back and forth, oftentimes both wrong. And it's hard to have a correct solution for all of this. And I think companies like...
TikTok and Twitter have identified this as probably the cheapest way of having fact checking on their site, but it's not necessarily the most accurate thing. Yeah. Yeah. A way that they're trying to get that accuracy up is that basically you can leave a footnote and then other people can vote on whether or not that footnote was helpful.
So it's like there's a fact checker person that's fact checking and then other people have to fact check the fact checker to make sure that you're not just like spreading misinformation for fun. Which is a good idea, but it's still just a popularity contest. Until everyone wants to spread misinformation for fun. That's true. Which, you know, if we know anything about the internet, people do love doing that. I'm interested in the only screenshot they show is the page to become a footnote contributor. I want to know where this pops up.
Like what? Video. Like, is there something that comes up at the bottom? Like there may be inaccurate information. Is this in the comment section, which is nice, but also like, I think I would argue with the content. Yeah. Like 80% of the people watching a TikTok don't go into the comments and TikTok comments mostly never have anything to do with the actual. Really? It's been a while since I've been there, but every time I would like watch a video and want to know something more about it and see the comments, it would just be like,
I don't understand this. What's going on? And like 50 comments just making fun of the person for not understanding. That's interesting. I could be wrong, so we can cut this. But I think Harper was talking about how the TikTok comment section is like dynamic. And so the comments you see might not be the same as the comments someone else sees. That's true about a lot. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know if the footnotes will be...
you know, available to everyone. I don't really know how that'll be different, but well, it says after it meets the standard of helpful, it will be visible to the community. Yeah. So like Twitter, you know, it almost like quote tweets itself, right. And puts the community note on the bottom, but in videos where there's not a lot of texts, there's a description that's usually cut off. Where would this pop up?
It's a good question. Like on the video or do you have to go into the comments or the description to see it? Well, anyway, we do have a lot more to talk about, but we should take a quick break. So let's do trivia. I was thinking on that note, because like a community note. Oh, that's a pretty good. No, on that foot. Thank you. So, guys, we talked about Beats cables earlier in this episode, and I thought this story was so funny because one of the big selling points was
of Beats back in the day, first wave Beats, was that their cables came from what audiophile-oriented cable supplier? I remember old Beats. Old Beats were. This was advertised. This was like, hey, Beats headphones use that cables. I think I might have made a video about this.
Maybe not entirely about it, but I definitely have mentioned it. The Truth About Beats by Dre. I'm sure you did, because you did some. Yeah, I did a video on that. You've been doing beats on and off for years. Yeah, a lot of beats coverage over the years. Okay. Well, hopefully I'm remembering correctly. That's the first video I ever saw from you, by the way. Which one? The Truth About Beats by Dre video. The Truth About Beats by Dre. It went viral on Reddit. I was sitting in my friend's... It was the top of Reddit. I remember that. I was sitting on my friend's couch.
that I was living at at the time. And where were you when it dropped? I remember I literally I it's burned into my memory. I don't really know why. Anyway, incredible. Okay, well, we'll think about that one. The answers be at the end like usual. And we'll be right back.
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Meta not meta in China meta the company Wow, we're doing segues everywhere in this I don't know if it's a segue if it's this far after that I count it I'll call it private Facebook for most of this because a lot of what we're gonna talk about is in the Facebook days Which is so funny it is there in the midst of an antitrust lawsuit in the US In fact this week Mark Zuckerberg's taking the stand to defend himself and his meta company against the FTC and
We're quickly going to talk about it because it really reminds me of when we talked about the Google antitrust case. But if you want like the real in-depth live coverage of it, Lauren Feiner at The Verge is always the one who's down in D.C. covering all of these cases. And I'll link it in the description. But she has this great page that's just like pretty much everything about this in order. And if you really want to dive into it, she's the one to go to. But so what they're going over right now in the court case is
if meta Facebook was creating scenarios where they stifle competition versus Facebook and you know antitrust monopoly um so the two main things it seems that they're focusing on is purchasing Instagram which they did for a billion dollars in 2012 and also purchasing WhatsApp for 19 billion dollars in 2014 um
What we're discovering during this time is a bunch of leaked emails, which is always the fun part of these cases. And a lot of them seem to be done or a lot of the things we're seeing is that these purchases were made to quote unquote neutralize the competition. Because at the time when they bought Instagram, Facebook was working on a camera app and they were doing a lot of photo stuff and marketing.
Mark Zuckerberg in an email just said it'd be better to buy them. In fact, there's an email in 2008 that has been referenced a bunch of times already this week where he literally just says it's better to buy than to compete, which I feel like that quote in an antitrust lawsuit case is pretty damn pretty straightforward.
Okay. Yeah. My take on this, it feels like we have one of these cases like every year. Indeed. Yeah. I've definitely said this in videos before, but companies this big always, whenever they make any public facing decision, especially acquiring a company, but any product decision, they always will be ready with a public facing reason and a behind the scenes reason for why they're doing it. Yeah. Yeah.
And both can be true at the same time. So, I don't know, if you're Apple and you're removing the headphone jack, for example, universally everyone's like, wow, they're doing that to just like, you know, charge wireless headphones. But also, up front they're saying courage and they're saying things like more room inside the phone, etc. Both can be true at the same time.
But, you know, you might feel a certain way about one of those reasons. This is like we are seeing very blatantly the behind the scenes reason for Facebook acquiring Instagram. It's better to buy than to compete. Okay, well, there it is. But also the public reason is things like, oh, there's so much competition in the video space and they do well with video and we're never going to be as big as YouTube, but this is our chance at being YouTube's competition, whatever. They're all true at the same time.
It's kind of like, Ellis might appreciate this, SGA deserves MVP this year. He deserves it. He's on a 68 win team, historically good. He's led the league in points. I think he's top three in steals. He's an incredible defender. He's just having a historically good leading campaign on a very young team.
Best player best team he deserves MVP. Okay, I like that argument Jokic Deserves MVP this year. He's averaging a triple-double. He's had his historic Statistical season his on/off splits are ridiculous without him the Nuggets are a basement dollar team Yeah, he had a 60 like 2010 game or something crazy this year like he clearly deserves MVP Can I ask which one's the monopoly in this analogy? I'm saying both are true at the same time. What is SVG?
SGA. I thought it was an audio company. I thought that's what you said. SGA. SGA is an NBA player. Is the R.A. MVP? Wait, he's a player? He's not an actor? Okay, back up, back up. The NBA season just ended this week. Oh, really? And at the end of the regular season. Did someone win? Well, it's the regular season. Then the playoffs are going to start and all the best teams will compete for the championship. But the regular season is over. Okay.
And once the regular season is over, all of the voting for the regular season awards happens. So about 100 media members, coaches, et cetera, get ballots and get to officially cast ballots to vote for who they think should win each award. One of them is the MVP. Okay. And this regular season has been one of the tightest MVP races ever because typically—
There's kind of one runaway historic like this guy had an amazing year give him the MVP I don't want anybody else considered somebody else might get a few a few votes here and there but it's got to be this one person right this year there are two players
Who, if you ask those teams fan bases, this guy deserves it. I don't want to hear it about anyone else. And that is Shea Gillis Alexander for the Oklahoma City Thunder. And that is Nikola Jokic on the Denver Nuggets. Who is the guy that did the thing where he did the multiple?
things that's hard to do at the same time. I was telling you about the 30-20-20 game. That was Jokic this year. He had a couple historic games like that. So it should be him, right? Historically great player and he deserves it. Yeah, he deserves it. I guess my tangent here is just to get back on track is both things are true at the same time and
And even though I might like one of the arguments more than the other, you can kind of just assume they are both true. And that's what court is for. Yeah, so court's going to decide if one of those reasons is unfair or more true than the other or whatever. So I think they will find that, yes, there were anti-competitive motivations behind a lot of those things. What do they decide to do about it? I think the super TLDR version is, yeah, the FCC is trying to prove that they're technically
taking up, you know, they've got way too much of a monopoly in the social media space, especially with buying those two. And it's weird because back then it was kind of a stifle and neutralism. Now that's weird to say because WhatsApp and Instagram are like two of the largest social media apps, but it's still all owned by Meta with Facebook. I mean, Meta's thing has always been let us buy you or we will destroy you. That has literally been, that's always been their thing. Here's a question though. When they bought Instagram, it wasn't nearly as...
Monopoly-ish and massive, and now it is. And they've grown into this thing. And kind of similar with WhatsApp. It was huge already, but now it's even bigger. And so are they more like...
for successful growth of those companies? Or were they buying their way into a guaranteed monopoly back then? What could happen here, though, which is why I think it's similar to, remember when the Google antitrust won, they might have to get rid of Chrome? Which is still possible. It's still possible. Yeah. This could end in the sense of Meta getting rid of or having to
having to get rid of WhatsApp or Instagram. Yeah, which is also ironic because there was another email that surfaced where Zuck said, maybe we should spin off Instagram into a separate company because historically companies that are separate from the giant companies actually grow more and do better.
And he had said that a number of years ago in an email. And now he is defending why they shouldn't have to do that. This is litigation between a government and a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars. So who knows when we'll see a result from this. But I think it was interesting to bring up because we covered the Google stuff. And again, there's lots of other reporters involved.
dealing with government processes and court cases like this that get really deep into it. And I highly suggest following them. Can I throw to an article that I thought was really, really good about this exact topic? Sure. Please. It's a Wall Street Journal article called Inside Mark Zuckerberg's Failed Negotiations to End Antitrust Case.
It's in the Wall Street Journal. It was written by Dana Mattioli, Rebecca Ballhaus, and Josh Dawsey. And there is one really baller quote in it from former head of the FTC, Lena Kahn. And that is, Mark bought his way out of competing, so I'm not surprised that he thinks he could buy his way out of law enforcement too. Also, I was thinking about just like,
Met his whole thing being like, what do you mean we're anti-competitive? Like, we're just doing business stuff. And I think two sort of unrelated things that point to like, OK, bro, is I don't know if you remember all those news stories in Wall Street Journal and also weirdly in like New York Post.
about meta engineers in 2022 and 2023 being hired and explicitly told to do nothing so that they couldn't work at other companies. I mean, every, yeah, every company. That's like a huge joke in the Silicon Valley show. It is, but also like,
Come on. And then also, if you go to Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snapchat's LinkedIn, his bio says VP of product at Meta. Yeah. Because they just steal so many of Snap's ideas. He did that a few weeks ago. Yeah. Anyway, like we said, there are many better reporters than us covering the story in real time. So you should go check them out. Yeah. Like that Wall Street article. Shout out to that article and also Lauren and Fire at the Verge. They have a live blog. Literally just amazing.
in real time detailing what's happening at the trial. So you can go check that out. Speaking of competition, Chipolo has launched massive tech company Chipolo. Well, I guess this ties into Google and Apple. So competition for AirTags and other Find My devices. Chipolo has famously made a couple products in this category, but they are launching PopTags, which support both Google's Find My network and Apple's
Apple's find my network. Yeah in the same product, which is very cool They previously sold different devices different tags that supported one or the other that you could buy, right? And notably Chipola was sort of the first company to adopt find my after the whole tile V Apple situation that we made a video about called Apple versus the paradox of choice and Now they are supporting both
Find my device from Google and Apple find my which is very cool. So you can only use one or the other at a time. So, you know, yeah, you can't like have your iPhone connected to this tag and also have your friends or your spouse's Android phone connected to the tag at the same time. Let's let's make it simpler. Marquez has both an iPhone and an Android phone. Yeah. This Chipolo pop tag could not be findable by both phones by both phones. Oh, for some reason. Okay.
Like, Apple does support multiple people having access to the same Find My Device object through iOS 18 or whatever. But yeah, you can't be using an Android phone and an iPhone and be using it for both networks. Here's my question. Do you have to choose which network it's on? It uses both. It has the technology for both. When you set it up for one, it cannot be set up for the other at the same time. But what Andrew's asking is, if you put it on the Apple's Find My Network, and then...
You take, you lose your keys in a country solely with Android devices and no Apple devices. You goofed. Will you not be able to see the location? No. Oh, so it only uses one of those networks at a time? At a time, yeah. Well, here's my question. I have an Android phone. I can use the Chipolo app on my Android phone, but I want the chip to connect to the Find My Network in the US because there's more iPhones. I don't think you can do that. Oh.
Yeah. This sucks. It probably has to do with a radio thing because they're pinging devices all the time. And if it was pinging two sets of radio frequencies all the time, it would die much faster. Okay. My guess. It doesn't suck. Sorry. It's still cool. This would be...
cream of the crop if it could hit both if it could hit both or i could pick which one because guessing that's against the terms of service to at least one of them which seems anti-competitive yeah right remember that yeah so there's yeah remember the lawsuit google yeah so there's there's other benefits to this they extended the wi-fi range so it used to be 200 feet on their previous tags is now 300 feet which is very cool you can also use them as camera shutters
which is interesting. I think that's why they call them Chipolo Pops, because I think that they have like a button. - Wait, that's awesome. - Which is dope. - That is really dope. - So they have a little more functionality than just an AirTag. And it also has IP55 water and dust resistance. It comes in multiple colors. It comes in like these bright neon type colors, like yellow and green and red, which should be easier to see with your eyes.
Which would be nice. So anyway, I think this is kind of nice for people who are thinking of maybe eventually switching to a different mobile phone. Yeah. Which is kind of nice. And also, you know, maybe they're probably more likely to go on like
bigger sale than AirTags are because Apple devices don't go on super sale that often. This is the perfect device for Adam because he's constantly switching between devices. That's true. Adam switches from Android to iOS like every other week. So this is perfect for him. I want to listen to this like, yes, this is my thing. How many times do you think he's changed
since he's been on vacation. At least twice. Probably. It's been like two days. Over under 2.5 for sure. Yeah. They also have a replaceable CR2032 cell battery that lasts about a year that is, I think, the same battery that the AirTag uses. So it's nice that you can do that. Yeah. I think that's pretty sick. Moving on. Speaking of
networks. Oh, well done, Ellis. Find my AI generated social network. You know what the worst part about social media is? Everything. Yeah. There's a bunch of people there. Yeah, that is the problem. Yeah. You know what I wish was there? No one. Slop. The Verge is reporting that OpenAI is building its own X-like social media network.
That's fun. The network is reportedly focused around ChatGPT's image generation with a social feed. It is currently unclear whether or not it will be built into ChatGPT or it will be a separate product. They just know it's in the early stages and is in development, which is weird and interesting and funny. There are a few different reasons they might be doing this. Obviously,
just like X does, you can just keep collecting data and you can keep adding training data to your systems. That only you have. That only you have. So if OpenAI themselves creates a social network that people post on a bunch, they can just use that information to train more. I'm sorry to cut you off, but if someone harvests
for training purposes from the social media platform and OpenAI is like, hey, that's ours. That is going to make my blood boil. It would be really funny. The other things, they said it was focused around image generation. We talked about last week, I believe, all of the, or maybe it was two weeks ago, everyone was getting on the train of making their own AI-generated avatars using Studio Ghibli prompts. So I imagine OpenAI is like
Oh, they also recently announced the infinite context window for chat GPT where it remembers literally everything you ever talked to it about. So I could imagine that maybe it will suggest social media posts that you could make based on things that you've been doing, which is just bad. I just really it's kind of it reminds me of LinkedIn. You know, when someone like changes a job on LinkedIn, there's a button that just says congratulations. Yeah.
Or on Facebook, if you go on, it's like, wish this person a happy birthday. And there's a button that says like, happy birthday, Ellis. It's funny you mentioned LinkedIn because I was reading something the other day, like an old article talking about how over 50% or some...
considerably large amount of posts are already AI on LinkedIn. Oh my Lord. So we already have an AI social media network just waiting for us. We're just burning down the world, creating a network of information that nobody reads. I think Twitter, a lot of like third party sources estimate is even higher than 50% of
posts on Twitter are from AI or bots. I see a lot of AI generated. I'll post a video on Twitter or post something and within two seconds get a reply saying, great video about the A, B, C, D, E, F, and G because the AI summary just auto-detected and auto-replied in two seconds. That's all over. Speaking of
The ultimate segment. You didn't give me enough time. Sam Altman might be the new social media head honcho around these parts. Obviously, when slash if that drops...
It's going to get a lot of buzz, a lot of coverage. But not every social media startup gets that much coverage. So I have before me four real social media platforms that might be flying under the radar. They are all real. They are all real. Instead of having you guess which one is fake like I normally do, I want you to tell me which of these is fake.
is the oldest. Oh. Which one has been around for the longest time? Are you ready to hear them? Yeah. A, No Place, a mashup of Twitter and MySpace for Gen Z. B, TenTen, a walkie-talkie app, sort of like if Snapchat was focused on voice messages.
C, AirChat, another audio-focused social media network described as a combination of Twitter and Clubhouse, which is weird because Clubhouse is baked into Twitter now. And D, and I really hope I'm saying this right, Jagat. J-A-G-A-T. Jagat. A location-based social media platform for real-time tracking. Remember when Clubhouse got offered a billion dollars and didn't take it? Mm-hmm. Ha ha ha!
god i i have lots of memories of failed social networks from last year to google buzz t2 to t2 t2 baby we'll think about this one answers at the end be right back
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Welcome back. We are going to wrap up today's podcast with a little game. I just almost fell out of my chair. You're so excited. I'm so stoked. Yeah, so this is a new thing. We like to try new things here. And this game was recommended to us by someone on...
Twitter, the username M100X. So thank you for recommending this game because it seems like it's going to be really fun. So the way this is going to work, I am going to name a popular product or service in the technology sphere with a catch, a catch that does not exist in real life. Feel free to ask me any questions about any of these hypothetical scenarios and I will clear it up. You guys, upon hearing...
Each one of these hypothetical product services with a catch will make a blind ranking of 1 through 10. This means you will not know what is coming later. It could be better, it could be worse, but you will still need to rank it. And hopefully at the end we have a hilarious list of ranked number 1 being "this is fine and I would use this" and number 10 being "dear god".
of good tech services and products. I think as a baseline between the three of us,
On a rating of 1 through 10, how much do we trust Ellis? He is the one feeding it to us in this order. So if we are all on the same page, the best one. A banger for the last one. Second to last one. A banger as in good? We don't know if it's best or worst. Okay, so it's a banger. He probably saved it for the second to last one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we would think that he'd save it for the last one. Let's keep that 1 in 10 spot open. Awesome. We all distrust Ellis, and that's exactly where I wanted to get to. Let's start off with something...
A little easy. Google Maps works exactly the same as it does in real life, but you cannot complete a trip without picking someone up along the way. And if you think you can get around it, Google Maps will reroute you until you have picked someone up. Like a stranger? It could be a friend. It could be a stranger. It doesn't really matter. But you can't do the trip alone. When you're driving. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This only applies to driving trips and cycling trips. What?
Get on my spokes. Stranger, you need pegs on your bike. This has got to be low. I feel like I could get around that. I feel like I could have someone waiting for me at each destination and then just pick them up right before the destination. And that's my pickup. Carpools are accepted forms of picking someone up. What do you mean? Okay.
Like if you have someone come to your house and do the entire trip. So basically you just never drive alone. Yeah, that's exactly it. That is good for the planet. That's a 10 for me. It's like the worst thing ever. If it's in the city, I think this is a much more obtainable thing and a lot easier. But if you're in the city, you don't even need Google Maps. You just go by street numbers.
- If I'm using maps, I'm like going somewhere I don't know. - Man, I'm taking the subway everywhere. - This is just public transit, guys, right? - Yeah, but you have to stick people up. - What about all the places that, you don't have to be in an enclosed small environment. Well, yes you do, but there's a lot of people, you know? - It can be a stranger too. - Let's go six. Let's go six. - Six? Are we in agreement there? - I think my thing is, is like I do maps on the way home every day and Alex and I could carpool. That would make perfect sense.
It's going to like, who am I going to pick up when I'm going to like, when I drove down to like the Smoky Mountains. When I go to the tire shop, when I go get groceries. I mean, I don't need Google Maps every time, but like it's going to get annoying. You know, I like this. My sense of direction will explode. Yeah, I have horrible sense of direction. I think six or seven. I mostly only pick up Ellis when I'm driving here. And then if I use my car otherwise, I usually have a full car.
- So what happens if the car is full? - That counts. - Oh, right, right, right, right. You don't have to pick up, yeah, okay. - This also implies at some point you will go in a stranger's car. - Yeah, yeah. - At some point. - Really? - Yeah. - We do that all the time for Uber, right? - Technically, yeah. - Yeah. Five?
- I mean, five and six is close. I could get on board with. - I'm down with five. - Yeah, let's go five. - Also, I think it's smarter to start in the center and move out. - Agreed. - All right, okay, five. - We're going five. - Number two, YouTube with all of its features, subscriptions, live streams, YouTube TV, YouTube, like everything's the same, except in order to use it, you first have to crank a box, like one of those emergency flashlights. - How long? - You know what I'm talking about? One to one with watch time.
Is it hard to crank? It's the same resistance as one of those flashlights. Is that a lot? That's hard, right? No, it's not too bad. It's not too bad? Mm-mm.
- Honestly? - Real time? - One more question. If you're watching the video in 2X speed, do you have to crank for the video time of 1X or what you're watching at 2X? - Amazing question. I'm gonna say you have to crank for the 1X. - Oh, David, screw it. - What? - David is gonna be jacked. - Can't watch podcasts. - Why don't we just go to the gym, go on the treadmill, and then use the crank
On the treadmill. And then when you're... So get a workout in and then go home and now you've got like an hour, an hour and a half of YouTube. I've been being served these Instagram reels. It's so dangerous and you should not do it. Of people literally doing deadlifts while running, sprinting on the treadmill. And it's like... Overhead press. Yeah, overhead press. Overhead press while sprinting on the treadmill. Deadlift would be insane. Probably one of the most dangerous things you could do. Don't do that. That has big like face in Saratoga water energy. Yeah. But that would be me with the box. Yeah.
Yeah, multitasking. I like this idea. All right. I want more of a, yeah, it's payoff. It's kind of like the- You guys don't watch as much YouTube as I do. I do, but one, maybe I would watch less. And two, it would have a direct benefit to watching YouTube. I feel like they should have this, but for screen time on your phone. Don't get many ideas. Yeah, should we? Maybe we just got the best start. Million dollar product today. Okay, I'm going to put this on- I'm like two or three on this. I would say, no, I can't be there. Okay.
four three three three four four this i can do four what's your final answer i think seven really because you're always that much worse than the google maps one for me yeah it's worse it's way you're gonna proactively you're i'm just gonna no one's gonna proactively do it so six six i would say seven seven which is i i would go seven just because you can't crank it all right a nintendo switch two but it is twenty seven hundred dollars
That's fine. It's not that far from reality. I'm not going to give up anyway. One. Totally fine. Can you clarinate it? You know, I... Straight up or can I do a payment plan? That's not real. Sure. Payment plan. Now, I feel like this one needs some extra zing. $2,700 all at once. All at once. All at once. Are games still the same price, which is $80? $80. Games are a value if the Switch is $2,700. I would not buy it.
So where does that put it? Yeah, it would just take me from probably not going to pre-order to just I'm not buying one. Yeah, it would take me from maybe but to absolutely not. So to me, that's like I'll put it at two just to be safe, but I don't have any problem. Just so we're clear, you're ranking on...
on how much you would enjoy using it, which includes the purchasing of it. So I'm forced into this? Yeah, you're ranking the desirability of actually purchasing this compared to the other torture I'm hypothetically subjecting you to. Yeah, I feel like right now with the current games available, it's like that's...
so not worth it. I'd be so mad. Would you rather spend $2,700 on a Switch or let a stranger join you on every car ride you take? For the rest of your life. Only when using. I'd rather spend the money on the Switch too. Yeah, like I'd probably rather have... I'd probably have it. I'd hear it at three. It was a bad... I'd say...
Two. It's just money. Two or three. It's just money. Two. It's a lot of money. This is a two. So this next one is Spotify. We all know Spotify. Excuse me, Spotify Premium. Thank you. So you are paying the normal price for this, whatever it is now. Except they have disabled the ability to skip to the next song. You must listen to every song in its entirety. And every third song is this.
Hell yeah. This is gonna ruin my life. Is this royalty free? Yeah, I mean we've already licensed it. Nice. And yes Marques, this does count on your cardio playlists. He's running full speed and then he's just like... This song is two and a half minutes long. That's not that bad. That's like a pop song. Yeah but I gotta... I guess I'll mute it but like, Jesus. Um, I'm down.
You want to do that right now? You know what? I have a hot take. Okay. This would, the fact that you have to, is this song? I'm having trouble. I think it's, there's a few bars of seven here and there, but that's a good catch. Can we turn it off? No, no, no, no. We're going to simulate this so you can really. I'm having trouble thinking, but okay. I think that it would help people appreciate music more because they'd have to listen to like the full album again. They would never listen to a full album.
Why? Because you'd hear this like six, you know, like four or five times. You'd hear this several times. It's two songs, this song. Two songs, this song. Yeah, you couldn't listen to an album cover to cover because you have to listen to this every time. This is kind of making my skin crawl. Like six times. I don't know. We are halfway through the song. This? I listen to hundreds of hours of music every month. This is tough. Four?
This is worse than the Google Maps one. Really? Yes. My two greatest things are like, I drive alone and with music. If you're going to force me to do one or the other, this is brutal. I'm just imagining the guy you pick up for your trip and this comes on and you're like, I'm so sorry. Eight? You think it's an eight for you? For me, it's like a six. I would probably be on the top five part section, but...
I mean, I don't listen to that much music then. I could do it. No, but where it would really hit me hard is Lane is super particular about music that I turn on where she just starts screaming. I think she liked this song. No, no, no. No, she hates almost every song unless it's the Five Little Ducks song. Yeah.
And so she would just be in the backseat screaming at me. Oh, she's going to learn to love this song. And you can't skip any other song. So if you put a different song on and it's not the right song, you, oops, I have to listen to the whole song now. Guys, the song is almost over, so I need a number in the next five seconds. What? Sorry, what do we have? Six. Six is open. Six is open. Six, six.
Six. All right. Up next, iMessage, but you are limited to one-syllable words. That's money. Have you ever played a game like I am a cat? I am not a cat? Yeah. Hi, Dave. Dave. You take me to work? That's...
Have you played the game Poetry for Neanderthals? Now? Yeah. There's a game. That is what this is based on. I am really good at that game. So this is a game based on where you have to try and explain something to someone, but if you use more than one syllable in one of the words, somebody has a blow-up mallet next to you and you hit them in the head with it. Oh, that's how I talk. That's how I talk. You pick me up in car? That is so fine. What song this?
You can just say, what song is this? This podcast would be awful if we could only talk in one song. Why are we listening to it? Not really. Why are we here this again? Why my ears no like. Why we hear this now. I think this is fine. Okay, so one or two. Our two's already taken, so one or three. So it's just on iMessage? Just on iMessage. Oh, okay.
Yeah. The efficiency is through the roof. Yeah. That's a one. Yeah, one. What does Kevin say in the office? Why say more when less words do the same? Okay, okay, okay. Well, on that tip, Gmail, exactly the same it is now, still free. Gmail. And this one is actually inspired by one of MX100's suggestions. Gmail, accept every 100 emails you get.
there is a 50% chance that all of your communication records get deleted. All of them? So text messages, answering machine, all your emails across every email account. What? So they all get deleted every day because I get hundreds of emails a day. Marquesas would have a 100% chance pretty much because of that.
His inbox sounds like this is not for him. I've been playing too much Bellatro. Do you get emails in Bellatro? No, but there's just too many multipliers and chances and like, oh, you got statistics on the one or four chance that I'll just to get this straight. Every hundred emails you receive, there is a coin flip. There is a coin flip of deleting all records of all of your communications across every service. I thought it was a one in 100 chance. It's every 100 emails. There is a 50 percent chance. And I will say I'll give you this.
All of your tweets stay up. All YouTube, like all social channel posts remain intact. Public posts. All private communications get destroyed. It's funny because of how many people younger than us use Snapchat to communicate where this basically just happens on purpose. Fair enough. But you also have to talk to your accountant. Well, okay. The benefit of this is that you'd have to like post
put things in your calendar immediately. Which I do. Yeah, it would help people stay more on top of it instead of relying on their email as a second brain. You know what I mean? It would for sure ruin some things, but maybe it's manageable. Think about how free you'd feel. This burden is lifted. Honestly, yeah. I try to get to inbox zero like every six months and if this just did it for me, I'm kind of down for that.
I guess the way around this would be anytime you ever get any communication with anything you need to see, like to save, like someone sends you a concert ticket, you immediately have to save it just to make sure. If anyone sends you a date or an address, you have to save it somewhere else because all of your communication records are probably going to get deleted the next day. I actually like that.
The more I think about it, the Gmail search sucks so bad anyways, so I can barely go back 12 emails. That's true. So maybe it's not that much different. Text messages suck. I'm starting to think this isn't that bad. Yeah. I kind of already saved everything anyway. We already used one and two, so let's use three.
I think it would encourage people to actually be proactive about the things they get in their email. And I like that. So this next one is another coin flip one. It's a little different. Stats. It's Venmo. But whether you are sending or receiving the given amount is decided by a coin flip. I love that. And this applies to all users of Venmo. Meaning if your plan is to be like, oh, if I accidentally send this to you, send it back.
- Coin flip. - So if I have to-- - That's a double or nothing. - If I have to send Marques $500, it flips a coin and he might have to send me $500? - You're saying my landlord could pay me? - Yeah, what the heck? - That's interesting because I don't use Venmo that much, so it would be kind of funny.
And I think I can work with that. If you're the one who's always paying other people to be the one that pays for things, like because of dinners and stuff, it's way in your favor because there's just a chance that you make money. But if you're an oft recipient of Venmo transactions, you could end up just owing people a lot of money. That you're already paying. I think this would...
what's the baseline of like the most expensive thing you've sent on Venmo? I don't I sent like $20 to $50. I sent $5,000. Oh, I have a way this could potentially suck. You are limited to $7,000 a week. Yeah, that's actual Venmo terms of service. I'm just saying like in general, I'm mostly paying people back for like we got food. Yeah, here's my part of the bill. My burrito. So like
That'd be kind of fun every once in a while. Venmo roulette. Sometimes I get a burrito and 50 bucks. If you agree to it with your friends, I think it would be kind of fun. Yeah, I think that could be managed with reasonable amounts of money. My only thing is the tip jar on several social networks, including Twitter, is just a link to Venmo. So people could just constantly flip a coin until you get money from people. It would be better if it was PayPal and they took a transaction fee. Yeah.
And that way you would just be losing money. Yeah, it's like I go, I see the tip jar, I go donate a dollar and coin flip, I end up like having to pay a dollar. Okay, next one, $2. Coin flip, I paid again. Okay, $5. And you just keep going until eventually the coin flip is in your direction and you made money and then you leave. As someone who doesn't have to like pay rent through Venmo or anything, I'm super into this. But I do think if there was somebody who was significantly like paying their roommate
over hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, this would be like... I think this is an app idea. If you were paying your roommate or paying your rent on Venmo, this would be a good thing because in theory, six months out of the year, you would get your rent paid back. Okay, but if you're the person collecting or even the roommate who's the one collecting from the other roommates... Then this becomes a very difficult proposition. It's only bad for the people that are actually owed money in real life.
Yeah. It's potentially good for everyone else. I guess that's a four. I'll go four on this. I could see how in situations where this could be like a 15th. All right. So guys, we have three left and nine and 10 is what you have available. I would like to take this moment to publicly apologize to
to Sorin Iverson because I don't think I stole any of these ideas from you, but these are all very Sorin Iverson coded things. So if I did accidentally have one of your hilarious tweets lodged so deep in my brain that I didn't realize I was stealing from you, I humbly apologize. - And we can't move any of these around, right? - No. - Anyway, last three, are you guys ready? - Mm-hmm. - All right.
iPhone 16 Pro Max. Everything is the same, but it gets really hot all the time. And I don't mean like too hot to touch, but like... Too hot to handle. Pretty close. Yeah.
I think I can work with that. Even though it's in your pocket? All the time. If you put it in a case, what happens? It's just going to melt the case. I'm okay with that. What? Because my phone is either in my dash for navigating or in like a seat next to me or on my desk. I'm not really holding my phone that much. If I am. What about when you're using it? Then I'm like, okay, it's hot. And then I put it down. It's not too hot to touch. But it's almost too hot. It's not like so hot that you touch it and you're like, ah, okay.
But like you would not want to be holding this thing for more than like two minutes. How long? One minute? 30-ish seconds. That's fine. That's fine. Do we know if it's safe? I put it up in a little stand. You know what I would compare it to? A toaster. You ever made a quesadilla and you're like, I'm not getting a spatula out. It's not like I'm holding this quesadilla. You're like whipping it over. Yeah. That's what I would compare it to. You whip it from the pan to the plate. Yeah. Or, you know, the flip. So quesadilla time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I could work with that. Yeah.
Do we know it's hot and safe or we don't know why it's getting that hot? It's not going to blow up. It's not going to catch on fire. It's just hot. I'm going to say nine. We're only between eight, nine, ten and I feel like it's safest. This one honestly to me is like three or four. What? Just don't hold your phone. What about what's in your pocket? Unfortunately are not available.
How are you gonna bring it anywhere with you in a bag put in a sweatshirt pocket put it somewhere else gloves? Yeah, excellent. They're in the middle of summer. I mean eights our best option. I think that's an eight. That's fine All right, that's it's funny that really hot phone is somehow less desirable. I really think it's a 50/50 coin flip Ring it doorbell. Oh, no that doubles as one of those old-school Amazon buy button
You can set it to whatever product you want, but it must be more than $15. And it is something that will be shipped to me. Every time someone comes to your house and rings the doorbell. And it's not advertised. People don't know they're doing this to you. That's so funny. Okay, my doorbell almost never gets rung, so this is totally fine with me. Mine's pretty rare.
Set it to something. David lives in an apartment and the buzzer to his door, the front door of his building counts. That's tough. Well, and like you can ring different apartments, but I have the first apartment on the first floor. And so when delivery people show up for not me, they always ring my apartment. So you get a lot of buzzes every day. A lot. So you're going to be
That's kind of tough for you. What do you buy a lot of? Guys, Halloween. I get one or two a year. Halloween, you sit on the porch already. Yeah, put some candy out. They're not going to ring me up. Where I'm in Brooklyn, nobody knocks on my apartment door. Yeah, yeah. There are ways around this. You put a little doorbell broken post-it and say knock instead or something. Oh. Something like that. So what do I need? Toilet paper for 15 bucks? Yeah, pick something you need once a month.
Yeah, but mine gets wrong like once a day.
- Pick something you need. - Kodak film. - You said there's a minimum value to the purchase? - $15. - $15 a day? - That's like a meal. Just have it ship a dinner to you every day. - Oh wait, yeah. - Just DoorDash. - Delivery. - There's a dinner waiting for you every day at home. It's not bad. - 'Cause somebody rang your doorbell. - But Amazon? - Amazon is on fresh. - Amazon Fresh. - Well, it's between nine and 10. - This is not as bad as some of the others. - It's still gonna bankrupt me though, let's be real. - 15 bucks a day. - But you won't be hungry when you're getting bankrupt. - That's true.
I'll say nine. Nine. Yeah. I like how the one that we don't know, which could be like, it's your laptop, but every time you type on it, a puppy appears and you get to pet it. And we go like, this is the worst thing on the list. It's iMessage, but on Android. Ten. Ten. So I have one in reserve that I was thinking about being like, it's Books Palma 2, but it's a phone. But I, you know, I don't want to see that at the bottom of this list. Yeah, that would have been one for me. So instead. Books Palma 2 is not even different. I will do this one. I'll take it.
Uber, normal Uber. You are a passenger, not a driver in this scenario. Instead of music playing over the car's audio system, it is a LLM with generated speech telling you and your driver about every embarrassing thing you have ever done.
The whole ride is a, in fact, we'll say it's a celebrity of your choice narrating the worst moments of your life in front of a stranger. We have to do 10 because it's the only thing left, but I would do one. Really? No way. I really like telling strangers embarrassing facts about myself. Do you want to hear the embarrassing facts about the stranger? No, no, no, no, no, no. That would only happen if you're the driver. It's about you. It's always the past. It's the AI is telling the driver.
About the passengers. Oh. Yeah. I thought we were hearing both of them. Then they wouldn't have to talk to me. No, no, no. The AI. You get in a stranger's car and are just immediately judged. I love that. I would honestly give this a one.
Do you remember the, you guys, didn't you guys have an Uber driver in Austin that said, I'm not your typical Uber driver. And then like race to the hotel. And then yeah. Went back to the airport and we made our flight. That's true. Mariah, would you be so kind as to read out our, uh,
Our list of winners. Wow. What a list we have here. We went through a journey together. By that, I mean I witnessed a journey happen. So number one on your list, we have the iMessage that only allows you to send one syllable messages. That is fine. I think that's a good spot. Yeah. I can send one syllable.
word message and number two on our list we have the switch to but it's dummy expensive tough that's a tougher one yeah and then third you put the email like deletion gamble thing just be proactive with that and then number four you guys settled on venmo 50 50 coin toss if you get paid or not i just think that's fun it's just funny yeah
I'm never going to be the one that pays for dinner, though. They can do that for April Fool's. Oh, my God. That would be the best April Fool's tech thing ever. Global financial collapse. But it's a prank. It's just a prank. Number five, you guys put the Google Maps carpool pickup. That one should be a 10. Honestly, I'm more anxious about it, for sure. That one really stressed you out. Yeah. Yeah. It should be lower. Number six is the awful Spotify song. That should also be really low. Why did we put that at six?
Dude, I thought it was going to get worse. I'm the one that suggested those are the two worst ones. I suggested six. I regret my decision. It's kind of growing on me. It won't.
Number seven, you guys have the manual operated YouTube crank machine. Maybe that should have been nine or ten, honestly. Then the really warm phone. Yeah, the number eight, you had the really warm iPhone. Not too hot, just a little warm. I mean, kind of hot, right? And then number nine, the ring camera that orders stuff from Amazon every time it's pressed. That's also horrible, so I'm glad that's nine. And then number ten, you had the embarrassing AI Uber ride.
I just did my like, okay, we did the blind rankings. That was fun. My actual order is number one, the expensive switch to it's going to sting, but it's a one time thing. Number two is one syllable. I message totally doable. I can, I can work with that. Number three, really warm phone. Just put it down. Number four. What is it? A discipline thing? It's just like, I only hold my phone for like typing things like in scrolling. So I'll just scroll less and I'll just put it on a stand when I need to watch a video. I just don't need to hold my phone that much.
Number four is the Gmail gambling deletion. Just like low key, make me more proactive at saving things I need. I like that. Yeah. Number five, Venmo 5050. That's starting to get kind of funny, but all right. Interesting. Number six, embarrassing Uber LLM. I, you know, the Uber drivers just want five stars. They're not going to make a big deal about it, but it will be kind of annoying. But you don't have to talk to them then.
Exactly. So I just sit in the back and I just hear the story and they go, oh, that's totally fine, man. Five stars. And I'll be like, yeah, you didn't have to say anything. That's really embarrassing. Number seven, ring camera, doorbell rings. My doorbell rings not that often, but it would be kind of annoying for that to charge me and send something that I don't need. Number eight, this is where it gets tough. The Google Maps carpool pickup every time. I hate this one so much. I just hate this one. Number nine.
uh the spotify you can't skip songs and every third song is that song i'd rather die and then number 10 for me is i can't watch youtube unless i proactively crank a box for the length of that youtube video i just would not be the person i am you know i heard a funny video there's nothing there you know what's super funny about that is like the meta right now on youtube is really long
videos nobody would be making video essays anymore you'd have to sit and it's not possible it's not possible all your numbers would skyrocket that's true yeah so there that was fun that is that's my ranking dang yeah i think that's a decent ranking what's your just redo your one in ten dude my one in ten yeah
Um, my one is definitely the embarrassing Uber. Wow. Yeah. That's crazy. I, he's like, yeah, one of them is like just a Nintendo switch. Yeah, but it's expensive. It's really, that's a really expensive switch or a lifetime of LLM is telling people what you did. Lifetime cannot be more expensive than the Venmo one. Number 10. So the worst possible one on here. Um, uh,
Honestly, crankable YouTube. I'm against you guys. I would be... Maybe a really warm phone. Really? If it's that hot, dude, just...
We're talking about a phone. It's just over there. I want to hear you're using it right now. Can I hear a 1 in 10 out of Brian Ellis? You know what? Actually, never mind. Wait, wait, wait. Really quick. Not really one phone because I get my screen time down. That's a good thing. I'm going to go with Crankable YouTube. Okay. Yeah. Do you guys want to participate? No. That's all right. I mean...
I'm all set. I'm very risk averse. And I think the Venmo thing would drive me crazy. I think I would just stay awake at night. Just never be the person that's like buying dinner in your mind. Or I would just always be like, my Venmo would strictly be like, I need to pay you for...
this singular meal that we're all splitting the bill. Yeah, I don't know. And it's a $10 swing. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be, you know what I mean? I don't want to put my friends in that position. But I don't know. I forgot about them. I want free rent, baby. My number one is the Venmo one. Anyway, I know you guys are probably tired of hearing me talk for the past 40 minutes, but...
Oh, right. Real trivia. It's time. We have actual trivia. Question number one. Beats Cables, they're here, but when Beats was OG Beats back in the day, they advertised what audiophile-centered cable company as being their cable supplier? Google Gemini. Wait, they got rid of Gemini? No. That was so fast. Oh, but Google Assistant's going to be on there soon. Yeah. Yeah. Google Bard.
Oh my God, I forgot about Bard already. Bard. Oh, Project Aura. Wait, what was Bard? Bard was Gemini before Gemini. Way better than Gemini. It was the earliest LL. Bard was better. Really? As a name, I think. Oh, oh, okay. What do you guys have? Who wants to read? We literally all wrote Monster. We have all written Monster. That is, wow.
That almost never happens. A triple correct. Wow. That's crazy. I didn't know they were an audio centric. I was going to remember the gold plated HDMI cables. Did they not see ES1s and didn't they have like, what, like Shaq come in or something? I think they're one of those companies that back in the day, because they're from the 70s, you know, they've been making cables for a while. Oh, really? Yeah. It's plugged in. All right. Question number two.
Which of the following social media platforms is the oldest? A. No Place, a mashup of Twitter and Myspace for Gen Z. B. TenTen, a walkie-talkie app, sort of like if Snapchat was focused on voice messages. C. AirChat, another audio-focused social network described as a combination of Twitter and Clubhouse. Or D. Jagat, a location-based social media platform for real-time tracking.
That was timed perfectly. This is-- we're looking for the oldest one. Alright, who would like to go first?
You two said the same thing. Marques and I both said D, Jagged. That, unfortunately, is incorrect. Jagged is from March of 2023. That means it's B. I said A. Unfortunately, A is from July of 2024, making it newer than Jagged. We're referencing MySpace in 2024? No place. I went on basically just trying to, what was the oldest company referenced in all of this? It's not a bad strat, but unfortunately, the oldest one here is 1010 from September of 2022. Yeah.
Those are all very recent. Air chat was like an early last year or late 2023 thing. April 2024. Good job. Yeah. Wow. Everyone jumped on that and they were like, maybe. And then no. No. Anyway, no one got that last question correct. Meaning our scores leaving this episode. Andrew, you, my friend, are carrying the one with eight points. Marques, you are in a cool second place.
with 18 points huge david in the lead with a shocking and intimidating 19 points hotter than that phone hotter than that phone indeed wait so how is indra carrying the one i have no idea uh i thought that was the way we told and the way we told andrew like hey you're not winning but no it used to be because i had one point yeah really i don't remember that i thought it was just colloquial all right yeah you're doing good man yeah
I thought you were behind by one point. Sorry. I thought it was. I'm sorry. So anyway, thanks for watching and for listening to this doozy of an episode. We covered quite a bit, of course, from the elephant in the room, the braided cables, all the way to the end to our favorite game. Let us know if you have any feedback, comments, questions, concerns. Make sure you subscribe. Make sure you like. Make sure you comment. Catch you guys very soon in the next one next week on your regular schedule programming.
And make sure you follow us on the new OpenAI AI-generated social media platform. If it happens. I won't be joining it. Yeah, neither do I. Okay. Oh, and thanks, Mariah. Thank you, Mariah. Bye. Thanks. Bye. Waveform was produced by Ellis Roven and Mariah Zink. Our intro outro music was created by Vane Still, and we're part of Vox Media Podcast Network. That was a different order because it wasn't the same as usual, and I can't do things like that. Bingo. Huh.