TikTok, on the Clock ⏰
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Wait, what did he do? What did Mark Ruffalo do? He's the Hulk. He's the Hulk. He is the Hulk. He's the Hulk? He doesn't look like the Hulk. I know nothing about Marvel. He does not look like the Hulk at all. He's not even green. He must be an incredible actor, dude.

All right, 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 David. And in today's episode, TikTok is in the news because it is maybe probably, I think, going to be banned potentially. TikTok on the clock. We'll talk about how that maybe affects us. Thank you, David. Shout out Kesha. I was hoping someone would make a pun. Uh,

Nintendo switch to may also be announced right after we record this that's just the way news works now we record on Wednesdays and Thursday goes absolutely insane a lot of switch to hype so we'll get there and then we're wrapping up today with a little game that Adam has has put together for us but first Tesla

Tesla did something they refreshed the Model Y did you guys see the new design I did for the Model Y so the Model 3 got that Highland refresh Highland is like the internal code name for it whatever Model Y we always assumed would also get a refresh along the same lines it's along some of the same lines but I'll let you guys uh react to the way it looks but it's called it was called the Juniper

This is all we really know, right? Is this like exterior? No, we got a lot actually. There's a bunch of new stuff. So if you go to, you'll have to go to like the Australian Tesla website. Oh yeah, it's not available in the US, it's available China, Australia, later Europe, later US eventually. But if you go to like the Australian Tesla website, it's all of the new specs, all of the new stuff, new suspension, new interior layout, slightly bigger interior screen,

bigger front screen and back screen. A lot of people are mostly talking about the aesthetics though. It's a new headlight bar and a new taillight bar that kind of looks a little bit more like that cyber cab than the Model 3 refresh. What? Okay, I'll try and describe my best. Yeah. The difference is now, I feel like all these new cars are doing these like super slim, really aggressive lights. And then this now connects them through the hood. Yeah. And then on the back is again,

almost the normal old taillights with then a large red taillight that connects them again through the trunk. So essentially it looks like it just has two big lights, one on the front and one on the back. My biggest issue with this, I usually like things that look aggressive. The Model Y was my favorite Tesla. Really? And how it looked. I just think it looked really good for the type of car that it was.

It looks sleek. It looks like modern, but not overly trying to be modern. And I feel like this looks, not that I hate it. I just don't like it as much as the old model. I think that's going to be a common reaction. You think it looks amazing? I think it looks great. Yeah. It has shades of the Prius, the taillight. You know the new Prius taillight? It's like this big bar. It looks just like that. I think it'll look maybe cooler. I want to see it in person because these lights always look different in person than the renders. But in general, yeah, it's like a slight difference.

aesthetic refresh. There's like some new wheels. It should be quieter inside, new suspension, slightly better range, a whole bunch of efficiency improvements. So it's just a generally overall refreshed Model Y. There's some reason some of the like

non-glamour shots of it of like getting delivered I think it looks so much worse that looks horrible right okay it's really bad we'll put this on the screen but this is one with the front plate thing on front plates look bad and I know in general but but for whatever reason when you go this like beauty glamour shot and then I think you can just see the front lines so much more and see the the dip in the head and between the lights in the light bar that I think is the only thing I'm

considering a miss because if you the Cybertruck has the same DRL across the front it's one continuous bar and the frunk opens with the entire bar it looks like with the Model Y they have attempted to have the same bar but the front trunk has the middle part of the bar yeah so there's a there's an interruption around the outside yeah so that's

That is maybe the only miss. I think something I was looking at, because obviously Model Y, whenever we talk about Model Y, we have to remember it's the best selling EV in the world. It's one of the best selling cars on the planet. And I found this chart of electric vehicle sales to date. And looking at the list, I was kind of surprised by some of the rankings. Like you can see all total sales from last year and this year. Model Y is number one.

Model 3 is number two. Not a shocker there. Mustang Mach-E, Ioniq 5. Cybertruck. Makes sense. F-150 Lightning. These are the ones we see on the street all the time. But then I was looking more into these, and there's a couple surprises, I think. One, I remember when I reviewed the Lyric, I was like, this thing isn't getting enough attention. It's really good. I don't really see any on the road. Now, it is one of the most popular EVs. It's top 10. Whoa. Cadillac Lyric. 28,000 sales. Isn't that super expensive?

It is pretty, I mean, it's a Cadillac, yeah, it's pretty expensive. But as far as adoption from people who are buying new EVs, which are kind of all expensive, the Lyric has risen above a lot of the others. The base is like 60K, which is not that bad. Yeah, exactly. It's above all of the Rivians right now. It's above all of the BMWs, all of the Kias. So it's out there. Honda Prologue is another one. This is a good one.

This is like so random. Yeah. Have you guys seen the billboard campaign for the Honda Prologue? I have seen a lot of lease deals on billboards for the Prologue. I don't know. Were they like dealership? I'm talking about like the Honda, like not for any sort of dealership. Like in the city? Yeah. Like, oh my God. Yeah.

I don't even really like billboards that much, but it's just the font, they chose this blue color for the car. I just find myself on Canal Street staring up longingly at this Honda Prologue billboard.

Yeah, you know what's weird is I don't really think it looks that good. Oh, I like it. Wow, we're learning that you and I have very different tastes in exteriors of vehicles, I guess. What I do know is that just like the Prius, when it got the refresh, people trust brands that they know. Oh, yeah, for sure. And so when the Prius came out, that was like one of...

the highest tracked videos on autofocus. Top 10, yeah. Yeah, and so I think it makes a lot of sense that when Honda finally comes out with an electric car, people are like, let's go. Totally fair. Except the Toyota, well, the

The bz4x the Subaru okay here's what's good it sold pretty well did bz4x and the Subaru Solterra are both better selling than Tesla Model S Like Model S is I in my opinion I mean if you can deal with a big car I guess people either want an SUV or or a small car they don't want a big car but yeah I think Model S is like a great EV and

I don't think the Solterra is a great EV, but it's outselling Model S. BZ4X is.

Unfortunately. What I'm interested in that graph you have is, so it lists the 2024 sales where the Cybertruck's beating the Lightning. But the Lightning still went from 2023 to 2024. It's like a 38% growth year over year. So I wonder what Cybertruck's growth into next year will be. Yeah. I mean, coming from zero, you're always going to have your initial big spike. And we know about all the demand that was talked about with Cybertruck. So all the people who wanted it early put in their $100 reservations and all that. Yeah.

And to be fair, the Cybertruck's first year did way better than the F-150's first year. Totally. So now it's a, how will it shape out over time? How will it sustain TBD? But it's having a great first year. Wow. Yeah. I saw two lightnings in Brooklyn this week, which was wild to me. Yeah, that sounds terrible. I saw my first Cybertruck with work truck decals. It was a plumber. It was like, it was a Cybertruck and on the side was like...

Joe's plumb. I don't remember who the plumber was, but I just remember being like, wow, you really are. You're getting in that white interior with your dirty. Yeah. It could have the new tactical gray, maybe allegedly. Yeah. I think, well, almost every Cybertruck I've seen for work was wrapped. Like I had one guy, one contractor working on my house also had a matte black Cybertruck.

And I remember seeing my driveway camera have a matte black Cybertruck in it. And I was like, that's not mine. I have a question about this Model Y refresh. Do we know if it is actually as shiny as these pictures make it look? It looks so reflective. Shiny? I mean, nothing's ever as shiny. You're talking about the silver? Yeah. Quicksilver. It's glistening. It is a beautifully rendered image of a car under...

But even like some of the other things, because I just Googled it because I was like, maybe it's just this picture. Like some of the other stuff also looks very reflective. Like maybe not shiny, but it's like reflective. Yeah, car companies love their metallic fleck. I think silver is one of those ones where in press images looks incredible and on the street looks very different. I've seen some good silvers and some bad silvers. The new silver on the Model S looks really good in my opinion. Quicksilver, I think is what it's called. Quicksilver, yeah, I think it looks really nice. Overall, I think we can all agree that it looks great.

yeah i think that's where we left off it's out there i want to see if we can get our hands on one in person though it might be a while because it's not in the u.s yet but yeah speaking of not in the u.s uh-oh that was pretty good um tick tock on the clock we so the story with tick tock is it's long and it's been about to get banned before can i throw a

disclaimer in here yes one we're going to talk about this being a U.S. thing right now I know we have a lot of international yes listeners by the way speaking of international listeners this will tie in India overtook the UK as the second highest country that listens to waveform wow funny enough you're slacking yeah come on your friends back

India also has had TikTok banned within the last couple years. So they might know what's going on here since 2020. It got banned in 2020. Yeah, I remember that. So any India listeners out there, if you listen to this and things sound eerily familiar, let us know what's going on over there. What's it like to have all that free time?

I think their government moves much faster over there. So TikTok may be on the verge of getting banned in the U.S. And there's a couple of different ways to look at this. One is we make content. Content creators, we upload things to TikTok. That's one version. The other is we are people that watch TikToks or may use TikTok to varying levels. I think some people have successfully gotten rid of it from their lives. I've never downloaded it.

Congrats. I've never downloaded it. You might survive the whole life cycle. Yeah. And so TikTok's obviously super popular. It getting banned. The story of it getting banned is, to oversimplify, it's that TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company, and the threat of a Chinese company potentially being asked of its government to supply it with data from U.S. users is enough for the U.S. to decide it's a threat and should be banned.

Can David do a two-minute TLDR timeline for us?

Timeline? How can that be two minutes? No, no, no, no. David worked very hard on the timeline. I can't wait. Let's do a quick how we got here because it didn't just start eight months ago when the bill first got introduced, right? It's been going on for a while. All right, two minutes on the clock. All right. Speed tour! This is intimidating. The story of the TikTok ban goes back to August of 2020, which is pretty...

October 4th, 1987. Yes, you're right. Okay. So Trump tried to force a sale of TikTok in August of 2020 via executive order. First, it was like, Microsoft's going to buy TikTok. And that was all the headlines. I don't know if you guys remember this. It was like, we're forcibly selling it to Microsoft. I didn't realize that was that long ago. Yeah, it was a long time ago. And then all of a sudden, Oracle showed up and were like, we would own TikTok. Yeah.

And that's just like the match made in hell because the most boring company on the planet with TikTok, it's just not, that doesn't mesh as well. Right. And,

Anyway, okay, but they did manage to get TikTok to route its US data through Oracle in 2022, which was supposed to be this like security safety net where Oracle would vet the algorithms and make it sure that it was secure from outside influence. I didn't know we trust Oracle like that. Oh, yeah. Okay. Unfortunately. Cool. They're so boring. In February 2023, the Biden administration banned it from all federal devices.

Then in March of 2023, there was congressional testimony about it that didn't really sway anyone's opinions. You probably remember this. TikTok's U.S. CEO, I believe. Oh, my goodness. This was when they were being super racist. I try to not remember that. Yeah. So that was chaotic. And then in May 2023, Montana officially banned TikTok from the state. But then a federal judge blocked the ban, so it couldn't actually happen. Why? Why?

Montana was about to be like, when you see those memes of society, if we could successfully move on, Montana would have been amazing. Well, the Zoomers were very angry. March 2024, the House of Representatives passed a bill to ban or divest TikTok. And then the next month in April, Biden signed the bill into law.

In May, ByteDance sued the US saying that it was unconstitutional and violated their First Amendment rights. In August, the FTC and the Department of Justice sued them back saying it violated the Children's Online Privacy Law, which just passed very recently. It's a very new law. And then on December 6th, a federal appeals court upheld the ban. So now what has happened is that they made their case to the Supreme Court very recently, like very recently, a couple of days ago.

And that was live streamed, I believe. So a lot of people watched it and just could get a sense of what the justices were feeling about the vibes. Most people are saying that it is very unlikely that they are going to stop the ban from going through. The day in which TikTok has to sell or divest by is January 19th. If you're listening to this on the day it was released, it is January 17th. So that is two days from now.

Another case of anything could happen. It's a wild card. In the last few days, we have had all of these things happen where there were reports that Chinese officials were discussing selling it to Elon Musk.

That was like something first thing this morning. I think that went out yesterday. Oh, was it? Yeah. But, you know, he would probably merge it with X and everything would be horrible again. I also heard that TikTok commented on that saying we can't be expected to comment on total fiction. Right. So that's which is a comment.

Yes. Yeah. So they did comment on it, but they did call it total fiction. That's how I will be replying to every question from this point forward. I love that. Yeah. You can't expect me to make a comment. All of this said, there's also reports that like apparently only 16.75% of their traffic comes from the U.S. But that's also like...

Because if you think about that as over 100%, it seems small. But look at our audience on Waveform. If you see 16%, that is a significant portion. It is. Long tail. I'm assuming that means the US is one of the largest. It is the largest by a factor of three. And if you're a company and you're like, we're about to lose 16% of something...

Yeah, you're sad. Yeah, the US is 100% of their US market share. That's true So another thing that happened could this plan goes into effect on the 19th? The inauguration is on the 20th. Yep. What could happen is that Trump cannot can decide to not enforce the ban but Apple and Google who still have to technically play by these rules

The law lasts for, I believe, five years. So if Google and Apple do not take down TikTok, then the next administration, if they are negative towards Apple and Google, could actually sue them for that. And the penalty is $5,000 per user that access to TikTok.

Damn. That's a lot of people in the United States. That downloaded TikTok. Yeah, yeah. Well, they accessed it. Through Google and Apple. Through Google and Apple. Let's go through. But I mean, if it's already on your phone, they're not going to charge you. It's if you're re-downloading it from the App Store. What I read was accessed. So I'm wondering if that means like opens the app? No, it should be. So like we can think of this in an example we've kind of seen, which was WeBanned the

the dji fly app right in the u.s you cannot get the dji fly app on the app store or the play store yeah i still have it on my phone i can still use it to fly because you've done it before because you can or through dji you can download it on their website but it's like they won't be it's not illegal for users to use it's a fine for i believe not just downloading it off that but i believe hosting

And I don't know how that works in TikTok, who's hosting what, but I believe if an American somewhere in the US is hosting the content on there, they could also potentially get fined. But like, this is kind of one of the outcomes we could see here is like, if the ban goes through, it's not going to be this like January 19th TikTok Y2K where everything just shuts down because it got banned. It would most likely be more along the lines of,

everyone can still access TikTok whoever has it and no one can downgrade it. It deteriorates over time because they can't update the app and the infrastructure starts deteriorating. Yes. The other one is it could be like the Y2K because there are some rumors of ByteDance just full on shutting it down in the US on the 19th. But that would be them doing it and I'm assuming attempting to strong arm or like

Call the bluff of the US right? I think that those are the those are the options They can either like go along with what the US wants to do or they can just shut it down and I think their their opinion if they just were to shut it down is that all of the young people would be very angry at their government and that might add pressure for them to Change it or not, you know all those young people. I'll hold it. Oh

Well, I don't know. There's plenty of people who can vote. TikTok had probably a pretty big deal in the last election. There was an internal memo at TikTok US headquarters saying they're not shutting down yet. That, you know, it's not totally resolved. There's a couple of different ways this could play out. Probably the most obvious one is like,

It doesn't quite get banned. It gets delayed. I think there's already a rumor of it could be delayed up to 270 days. I would not be surprised if we just see this get delayed and delayed and delayed and delayed. For us as consumers, it just stays around. Nothing changes. Exactly. Very possible.

well so if you're if you're a content creator yeah i think there's several stressful places to be in this one is if you work for tick tock right now you're like what dude what's happening where's my job i don't know if you're a content creator a lot of people because we saw this in a weird way with vine where vine got bought and then shut down and if you were just a viner you had to immediately find a way to either move your audience somewhere or

try to take your eggs out of one basket and spread them into other baskets. And a lot of them ended up on YouTube. You know, whatever you think of them, they're video creators. They're on YouTube now. If you are just a TikToker,

you've probably already been in the process of going hey audience on tiktok find me in this other place tiktok right now is oh yeah there's a lot of nerves going around and a lot of tiktoks are like please follow me on these links or yeah go over here yeah look for me on red note the weird thing with vine is that there wasn't really an alternative so when they went to youtube they had to completely change the kind of content they were making whereas right now zuck is like foaming at

the map of course he's like come to Instagram we have we copied your product and our competitor will get banned and we will win everything but the product is the algorithm for tick-tock yeah Instagram they copied the like four fold but it's the product is the content and the algorithm and if you have one and not the other it doesn't quite work but if you have both you have everything yeah

they have a lot of content already. They would love to have all those content creators come over from TikTok and continue adding content. And then they're always working on their algorithm. I think lots of people scroll Reels every day. And I think a lot of people who, if they find themselves suddenly unable to use TikTok, would probably start scrolling Reels a lot more. What's funny though is,

We've seen this, and this is like that Red Note has become like the most downloaded app on the App Store, which is a... Red Note is the Chinese version? Of like Instagram, actually. Of Instagram? It's more like Instagram because it has videos and photos and posts. Here we go again. And I think some of that is because people are mad at potential...

It's not popular enough yet, but people are mad at Facebook meta because of them lobbying for this ban and foaming at the mouth and mad that TikTok's leaving. One of the trends on TikTok was people saying, okay, so my options are go to Instagram or learn Chinese, and then it hard cuts to them practicing pronunciation. Like Mandarin? Yeah.

That is good. Oh, boy. That is good. Yeah, you know, at the end of the day, we don't exactly know what's going to happen on the 19th or the 20th. We don't know. We won't know until it happens. Yeah. Next week, we will have a lot more for you guys. Yeah. Yeah, basically. We'll keep an eye on it. Honestly, I feel like this is turning into, like, the couple years of...

I really should stop using so much social media. And they're pretty much just forcing me to do it anyways. So thanks, I guess. I'm enjoying my time. I mean, David, I'll let you talk about your use. I've used TikTok less and less over the years. Yeah. I don't know if that's because I'm...

old. It sucks way more now anyway. There's so much like earns commission bullshit videos and like so many ads. Reels is full of that. YouTube Shorts is full of that. I found myself scrolling both of them and being like, wow, this algorithm is horrible. What am I watching? This is bad. And I remember back in the day around COVID, like TikTok was really popping off and like the algorithm was amazing. Yeah. So

Me personally, I'm not going to miss TikTok if it goes away, but I'm curious what you guys think. I mean, I have never downloaded TikTok. Everything that I know about TikTok and the algorithm I've learned through osmosis.

So I've heard it is a better algorithm But I think that incentives on social media apps are like a really important thing to consider yeah, and when there's not money involved the product of Like the stuff that's on the platform is higher quality because people are just making it for fun or for popularity with the exception of YouTube I think yeah Straight line I think

- You have a point, but also look at threads. - Well, threads is a cesspool. - Threads, there's no money, but it's just engagement. - There's a lot of money. - Really? - They pay people a lot of money to post on threads. - Y'all are getting paid? - Y'all are getting scammed 'cause they did that with reels also and then just were like, just kidding. - They still pay people for reels. - Barely.

Yeah. No, didn't Adam Mazary like a month ago be like, we're really trying, but it's pretty hard. I get notifications every day that are like, we will pay you if you do Reels. And it's like up to $3,000 and then it's like you get nothing after this. For a while. It's per month. Are you sure? Yes, I'm absolutely sure. I have it on my phone right now. But on the scale of like how much some creators are making, I think...

like you could argue Snapchat creators are like going way harder because of the monetary incentives. YouTube shorts, there isn't really much money. You do have monetization now, but it's nothing like I would say they're going harder when it comes to like they're making more stuff. But I don't think the stuff is as good.

Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. I think David's bringing out that certain platforms, the big one being Twitter, like when you introduce a monetization element into it, it really encourages engagement farming. Yeah. It encourages whatever metric you're getting paid for. Exactly. Which is why, like, I think you could make the argument that like 75 percent of tweets are

Not worth reading right like like their replies their bots. They're like meaningless links They're like things that are the sole purpose is an impression, right? Yeah, but

- Well, that's why YouTube has S tier. - Well, I would also argue that, leave me losing my train of thought in the podcast. Everyone needs to know how smart I really am. YouTube is the exception because I think a YouTube video often requires, even if you don't want to call it more effort, like more time, and thus like the more compensation is often required to like consistently put in that time.

There's that and then there's how intertwined the algorithm suggesting content is with the reward because the reward on YouTube is so much more nuanced in that it's trying to reward a quality, satisfied viewer session. Not just max time or max engagement, which are a little more simple, but an actually satisfied viewer.

So if your video can tie into that algorithm and satisfy the viewer, that requires effort and making good quality content. Where if the algorithm's like more engagement equals good content, then you're not going to really be able to connect those things. Right. I mean, yeah, I mean, like on Twitter,

X, it's really bad because they're both like, we will pay you for impressions, but also you have to pay us to be verified. And if you are verified, all of your comments go to the top of the thread, which gives you more impressions.

So it just like, it incentivizes engagement farming. It incentivizes people to just comment stupid stuff or stuff that will make people angry. To just steal content. To steal content. All of that stuff. YouTube, you could also make the, um, you could make the, God, what word am I looking for? Argument. Argument. Thank you. Whenever I do this, Oh, you should leave this in the podcast too. We're all on it today. You can make the argument that, uh, it becoming very monetarily focused with like, um,

When people do sponsorships for like Squarespace or whatever that a lot of the times they just have to get the sponsorship thing out So they kind of just push out a video that isn't that good or isn't really worth it That's like why you see so many like what's in my bag for May of 2025 when they don't really want to do it I'm not calling you out Adam. Thank you Sponsorship

I feel personally attacked. It does make the content quality go down, but I think like you said, the way that YouTube has formed their algorithm to focus on quality of time spent, I think is a lot better than most of these other platforms. Yeah. And I think that specific example might be at a smaller scale. I just think there's so many users that are at a small scale who are looking at what is my best path to maximum revenue?

And if you're on Twitter and you're starting a new account today, your fastest path to maximum revenue is having a Twitter blue account and just spamming, just creating a character that is just grading and going around and being that character in as many places as you can and getting people to engage with that. And the more...

Frustrating that character is the more replies you get the more annoying you are the more you get revenue It's just a system that eats itself because that then they can say we have more daily active users And then they have a higher stock for it's like it's just it makes no sense. It's too simple of this

It can't be that simple. And I think that's true on threads as well. Again, you start from zero. You're like, what do I do? I'm going to go around replying to a bunch of accounts and this is how people will see what I do. Where on YouTube, especially because there are no video replies anymore, you can't leech as easily. You literally have to make content that people enjoy watching, sharing, and come back for more and on their own organically engage with, subscribe, comment, things like that. You can make an annoying grading character on YouTube and

And some people might watch it, but they're not going to feel as defensive or attached if you're not replying to something. Bro, tell that to Fred. Fred? I have no idea who Fred is. I think if we went back and watched Fred today, we'd be surprised at how tame it was compared to what you see on Twitter. What a take. I'm not sure I disagree with you, but just like, wow, when I woke up this morning, I never thought I'd hear you say that sentence. I have a thought experiment for you. Okay. Okay.

Think about what the experience of YouTube would be like if you got paid to comment on YouTube and got paid for it. That is what is happening on every other social media platform. Let me tell you, you people are commenting like you're getting paid. We just got used to it. We just got used to it. Yeah. Right. Like Reddit has these natural incentives of like,

karma and reddit gold which are not real things right but they are still good motivators it's enough to be a nuanced quality motivator because you can flex yeah right that's what it's for like you can flex it bad take down vote good take up vote okay i want more good takes and if you want a lot of good karma you have to put in the work to actually develop a good thing because other people are saying this is good content

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Anyway. So TikTok's going to get banned. Wait, can I insert my TikTok realization from the other day? Yes. Okay. So everyone who has been on TikTok for a while, aka the youngsters, will 100% already know this. But me as an old person just learned this the other day. I think TikTok...

The reason it's so popular and so irreplaceable is it was Twitter at its peak in like 09 and 2010. When something happened in the world, like an Apple event or a presidential inauguration, I would open up Twitter immediately on my phone to see what everyone was saying, to engage in a conversation. It's what's happening. That is. Yeah, that is what TikTok is now.

Now people don't open up Twitter or X or Instagram or YouTube they go open up tick-tock to see what people are saying about Set event long threads. You can see the event, but it's three days later. Yeah No, I like tick-tock is kind of like the up-to-date news followed by someone trying to sell me a weird weightlifting supplement

That was the thing for Twitter back in the day, too. It was like real-time news. There was people congregating and doing important work on Twitter. And the incentive was to be good at that to get more people to follow you. Which is basically the old Reddit model. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everything's bad. Anyway, as an old, that's what I realized. All right. I think we should all take a collective deep breath.

No, I'm glad we got on the weeds. That's what this podcast is for. No, I know. We just need to... Yeah. Yeah. To round it out, I think that TikTok was better because you basically couldn't make money on it. I think that's the only reason it was good. Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch 2. We miss Vine. I think we should take a break. If you liked that TLDR recap of TikTok, like and subscribe.

We should make an even shorter vertical recap. I don't know if you could do that. It's just that and 100 times speed in 60 seconds. All right, we got more. We got Switch 2 to talk about. We got way more to talk about. But before we do that, trivia. Is it annoying yet? Trivia, dude. I'm going to keep pausing for longer. Question number one.

Tesla unveiled the new Model Y codename Juniper, but did you know Juniper is actually an acronym in this case? In this case? I'm joking. Oh, I was like shocked by that. The Tesla Model Y is Tesla's first vehicle to use what technology in its cabin heating system? I have a guess.

It's wrong. Do you now? Is a juniper a tree? Juniper is a tree, but the tree makes berries, and the berries are what you use to flavor... Gin. Gin. That's correct. Juniper. One point. Leave that in the podcast. Are you paying attention? We're so on today. What is happening? Okay, we're good. Everything's fine. Answers will be at the end, like usual. We'll be right back.

Support for Waveform comes from NetSuite. So despite our best efforts, it's impossible to know what the future will bring. There's no crystal ball to tell you when the bull market might turn into a bear market or when rates will rise or fall. The best any of us can do is to be prepared for any outcome. And for that, you might want to try NetSuite by Oracle. Almost 40,000 companies choose NetSuite to help future-proof their business so they can stay on track no matter what tomorrow brings.

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all to help you close the books in days, not weeks, so you can spend less time looking backwards and more time on what's next for your business. So whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite can help you respond to immediate challenges and seize opportunities. Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash waveform. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash waveform. netsuite.com slash waveform.

Two influencers, both alike in dignity and some other stuff, on the internet where we lay our scene.

Let's talk about all of my favorite basics from Amazon that you need in your winter wardrobe. Some people think this is weird, but I get all my clothes on Amazon. This is what I would buy if I didn't already own them. I just got in a bunch of super cute packages from Amazon, so let's open them up. Their aesthetic is beige. It's serene. It's a little basic on purpose. And now one is suing the other for stealing her vibes.

There's a lot of things going on in the actual suit. But what it boils down to really is one of the women, Sydney Gifford, says that the other woman, Alyssa Sheel, just won't stop copying her. Coming up on Today, today, explain. This week on Prof G Markets, we speak with Andrew Ross Sorkin, editor-at-large of Dealbook at The New York Times and co-anchor of CNBC's Squawk Box.

We discuss the key economic trends he's watching for Trump's second term, the evolving landscape of the AI market, and the rumors that China is considering selling TikTok to Elon Musk. If China is prepared to sell to Elon Musk and only to Elon Musk,

What does that say about the leverage and influence that China must think that they have over Elon Musk by dint of his factories and Tesla business in the nation state that is China? You can find that conversation and many others exclusively on the Prof G Markets podcast. All right, welcome back. So, hello. Today, as we record...

It is January 15th, 2025. I feel like we need the newspaper that we hold up to prove what day it is. That's the day that it is today, January 15th. Word on the street is that the Switch 2 could maybe possibly be unveiled on the 16th.

So, if you're watching this when this comes out on the 17th, we look like we don't know what we're talking about or that we missed it or that we were ignoring the Switch. We didn't. We actually have thoughts on the Switch, but we don't have any of the information. Sort of. We have a bunch of leaks. We do. And we're going on some leaks from OnLeaks and 91Mobiles. The funny thing is, if you're watching the video version of this...

The B-roll on screen right now might be real from the announcement that we have not seen yet. Or the word on the street is wrong, and this will just be us trying to figure out what we think it'll actually look like, or reacting to the leaks or rumors. Believe what you want to believe. What if the event tomorrow is just another alarm clock?

Alarmo 2. Nintendo Alarm Clock. I forgot about that. They did make it. Yeah. So, okay. I'm not a huge Switch user. Do you guys use a Switch a lot? I don't use it as often. I have one. It's good for flights and that's the only time I've found a lot of use in a Switch but then I started using my iPad on flights. But it's very, it's an extremely popular console. Yeah. You can dock it with your TV. You can use it anywhere. So,

people were very excited about this new switch a couple years after the original and There are some interesting rumors about what might be new about the new switch first of all there was a switch OLED my thoughts on the switch were always like wow it's nice but the screen is not that great then they had a switch OLED which had a better screen it's not some incredible for a little bit bigger to one from I have the OLEDs yeah Yeah, new switch stuff. So there's a slightly updated design. It's again. I think slightly bigger and

And then as I scroll down a little bit here, so USB Type-C on the top of the console, which is better. And bottom. Top.

Top and bottom. Yeah, even, which is great. You have the choice. From what I'm reading is 8.4 inch screen compared to the 7 inch screen. That's a pretty solid. Yeah, that's super solid. Both thinner bezels and bigger footprint, I think. A little bit of both. There's these blue and orange accents on the Joy-Cons themselves on the like D-Pad. Yeah, so to describe what we're seeing in the leak is the whole console itself is black. And then the color pop you get is black.

underneath the joysticks but not only that but from and i believe this kind of looks like that the way the connections for the joy cons yes to the screen is a magnetic switch which sounds so good it's really cool and so the old switch joy cons slid down on a track yeah and that wasn't the worst but the problem was is when you were using them as individual joy cons

and you had to like slide this little LR button bumper on, you could slide that on the wrong one and it would get like stuck and be a huge, huge pain in the neck. Every Switch owner knows how annoying that is. So one thing with this magnetic switch is it looks like there's a little more room above each Joy-Con and it looks like there's a little better button layout for not having to use something like that bumper.

I didn't really like the bumper that you would attach to it to be able to play with a single Joy-Con. It was super cheap. It was super cheap, yeah. There's also some other leaks I saw that I don't have listed here where it looks like some of the Joy-Cons potentially have an extra ergonomic bump on the back of them. Have you seen that? No. Also, they are planning on probably switching them out for Hall effect games.

What are they called? Oh my goodness, Joysticks. Wow, what is going on today, guys? Joystick. We need more brain power. Yeah, the previous Switch had a massive drift issue where over a long period of time, it would start drifting to the left or right. So if you're playing Mario Kart, your character would just be going in a direction you couldn't really do anything about it. It's like those shopping carts you get where one wheel's messed up and you're always fighting against it. And then it was $60 for another pair of Joy-Cons, so it was very frustrating. So it would be very nice if these were Hall Effect instead.

Like, just imagine the Steam Deck where it has, like, the extra kind of, like, handles behind your, like, three fingers you're not using as Joy-Cons. That would be awesome for handheld, but it might not be real. Yeah. USB-C on the top and bottom is very useful. Previously on the regular Switch, it was just on the bottom because you could mount it into the dock, and then that would be the whole point of the console. Sometimes it's on your TV, sometimes it is handheld. But it was very frustrating if it was low on power and you were playing it handheld, because

because you either had to hold it or if you wanted to have it on the table while also using the Joy-Con separately, it was very difficult to do because you had to plug it in from the bottom so you kind of had to like MacGyver this weird angle and like break your USB-C cable in the process. So having it in the top and bottom, super sick.

It should be a lot more powerful, obviously. We don't know if they're going to debut any flagship games for the Switch 2 at the announcement, but... I'm not sure. One other thing is the stand on this looks way better. Oh, yeah. It used to just be like one singular kickstand out the back. According to these...

It looks like it's one giant U shape in the back, which will be so much more sturdy sitting on a table. The OLED kickstand was completely redesigned. Okay, I missed that. Yeah, so the original Switch had only one little L bracket that was plastic and really finicky that would pop out. The OLED one was a metal bracket that was actually pretty good. I liked it a lot.

a lot. The like Surface X, right? Yeah, the Surface Pro. It was very similar to like a Surface Pro design and I liked it a lot and it was also metal, which was really nice. This one looks even more different. It also looks like, is that an extra button on the Joy-Con? The back side of one of these leaks look like you have your...

your RL button, but there's almost potentially an inside one at the top of the back. Maybe. I'm always down for more buttons. It is very not Nintendo to kind of add a bunch of new stuff like this, but...

But like, if we're talking weird Nintendo controllers, the N64 controller made no sense at all. So I wouldn't put it past Nintendo to do something a little weird. Yeah. Nintendo has been bringing a lot more games onto the Switch. There's a lot more indie titles. There's a lot more traditional console-esque titles because for a very long time, Nintendo was sort of more focused on the cartoony aspects of video gaming, whereas now they're bringing in the more high fidelity stuff to Switch. Yeah.

So it would be beneficial to have these extra buttons because a lot of those high fidelity games use a lot of extra buttons. Yeah, I always picture the Switch as like the king casual gamer console. Well, that's what's awesome about it though is because like you could still pick do I want an Xbox or a PlayStation or a PC and then be like,

all three of those people also have a switch because it's cheaper and like it's got a bunch of other more casual games it's separate from steam deck audience yeah yeah i was gonna say is this one gonna be cheaper you think that's my two questions cheaper than the playstation and xbox yeah yeah but versus the switch one no so so my two questions are one do we think battery will be significantly different in any way and two will the price be significantly different anyway

I never think battery will be significantly different anyway because anyone ought one day use or whatever. But like that's not even what this really was. Yeah. I mean, when you scale the size of something, generally the battery life gets better even if the screen is bigger. So there is that. It'll probably be better battery. But as far as the price, I would doubt it because I would bet the components are much more expensive. Yeah.

You're adding magnetic Joy-Cons by itself. The Joy-Cons are actually good now. Potentially Hall effect. There's a giant OLED screen. There's a more impressive processor. What was the Switch OLED MSRP when it came out? $350, I think. That can't be right. I think it was $350. $350, yeah. $350.

So like are we thinking $399? I could see $399. I was going to say $500. No, that's too much. I'm taking the under on all of those. Yeah? I think the Switch components have been in production for so long and have come down in price for so long that that $349, they could have sold for $250 today and still made money on, but now that they've been making so many of them, they can relaunch this new one at $350. It has been close to eight years since the original Switch came out. $350 would be awesome. Yeah.

$299 was a great price for the first one. Yeah, that'd be a good sweet spot. It is 2025, so they could go crazy, but...

That'd be nice. I'm so sad that by the time this comes out, it will probably be announced. Everyone is yelling at us like, you idiots. Honestly. They're like yelling through the screen like, no. No. There's two scenarios. They're like, this is the most tame general Switch coverage ever, or this is the most tame general Switch coverage ever, and all of it's wrong because we saw what happened yesterday. I'm sorry, guys. Thanks for listening. Turns out it's just like a Switch OLED with like a different kickstand or something. Switch OLED 2. Yeah.

Okay, you ready for the Fediverse corner? We're ready. Let's get the cheese. What? Oh, God. This is the second time. I forget that every time. Okay. This week on David's Fediverse corner, we have two new updates to the Fediverse that we're going to talk about. Okay. First of all, there is a new Fediverse-oriented campaign starring Mark Ruffalo for some reason. What?

Yeah. Who's paying? What? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So there is this new campaign called Free Our Feeds and there's a new organization that is trying to raise $30 million over the course of three years to build out infrastructure on the AT protocol to make it more billionaire proof.

If you don't know, AT Protocol is the protocol that powers Blue Sky. The thing about Blue Sky is that Blue Sky is a company. The AT Protocol is an open source protocol that anyone can build on top of, but Blue Sky, the company, uses the AT Protocol to showcase what you can do with the AT Protocol, and that is what Blue Sky, the website, is. So theoretically, you could build out tons of different types of social networks on AT, it's just that no one has really done that yet, right?

People like Mark Ruffalo for some reason have decided that it is really scary and bad when billionaires take control of social media platforms.

And you've seen what's happened at every other social media platform. So they've been like, okay, we need to actually incentivize people to build on AT protocol, to build other networks and other infrastructures to make sure that even if Blue Sky the company one day got bought by a billionaire and they decided to do what they wanted to do with it, that the infrastructure was separate from that and there was always going to be these other platforms running on AT.

Okay, so there's a bunch of technologists underneath this organization that is trying to do this. They're seeking an initial donation of $4 million to start the process, and they hope to raise $30 million over the course of three years. I don't know why Mark Ruffalo is part of this. Me neither. But I appreciate it. Should I follow him on Blue Sky?

Definitely. Also, they want the AT Protocol and Activity Pub to be more interoperable, and they list that on their website. They really should be talking to a new social, which is the Bridgy-fed people who have been trying to make sure that these things can interconnect that we talked about briefly a few weeks ago. Oh.

And this is what happens with protocols, my friends. Organizations and standards bodies pop up because they think they can do it better than the other guy. And then you have 15 competing organizations or standards. Oh, that XKCD? Yes. I still think it's very good that this is happening. And I hope that they get the funding that they're looking for. Also, very good sign that this is positive is that everyone that's actually working at Blue Sky and on Blue Sky was like, this is amazing. And they were promoting it.

And the whole point is that there's being infrastructure built outside of the company of Blue Sky, you know, just on AT Protocol. And people that work at Blue Sky are like, it's good that people are building stuff outside of Blue Sky. Cool. That's Fediverse update number one. Fediverse update number two. You've heard of Instagram. I have. But have you heard of...

Instagram federated over activity pub? What? No. Okay. Did you say federated or fedgregated? Federated. Is fedgregated a word? Because I think we could figure it. Like irrigated, but in the Fediverse?

Just like added just ignore. Okay, keep going. Yeah Okay If you've heard of Instagram federated over activity pub that's called pixel fed So we've talked we talked in the activity pub and blue sky Fediverse episode about how there's sort of a parallel of most platforms in the Fediverse But there's just not a lot of people using them yet. I

When some decisions were made at Meta last week, a lot of people decided to flock away from Instagram and started looking for alternatives. The problem, there just hasn't been an Instagram alternative that has really taken off. And obviously, if you're leaving a platform now, you, just like Blue Sky, don't want to flock to something where a billionaire could just take it over again. So...

Going to something that is on activity pub or the AT protocol is your best bet There is an application and service called pixel fed which is basically Instagram, but on the Fed averse It's been around for quite a long time old Instagram just photos. Yes. It's like old Yeah, and it's got sort of the old Instagram UI as well probably not a purposeful move probably just because they don't have a lot of funding and

But, you know, it's kind of, it's a nice experience. So a lot of people have been flocking over there and just in time, just yesterday, they officially launched a Pixel Fed Android and iOS app. So they're official apps now. You still have to like choose your server just like you have to with Mastodon. So it's a little bit complicated, a little bit confusing. But just like old Twitter that had all of those API tokens for third-party applications, there are third-party Pixel Fed apps now.

So hopefully there will be even more that are developed. Whether or not this has staying power like Blue Sky did when people were leaving X and now threads, I have no idea. But apparently their servers have been getting really hammered this week because people are like leaving Instagram and trying to find something different. I couldn't even log in yesterday. Yeah, yesterday I had trouble even logging into Pixel Fed. I was going to ask, is it not concerning, but...

this seems like a perfect opportunity for something like pixel fed to like pop off yes and a bunch of people were like i'd rather learn mandarin and go to red note yeah yeah i feel like it's like not great to be like here we are we can do it and they're like

What's this Red Note thing? Yeah, I mean, it's similar to... I don't think people are going to stay on Red Note, by the way. I think it's like a funny thing that's going on right now. It's the meme of the moment. Yeah, it's a meme. There were multiple little social media networks that would pop up over the last 10 years, and people were like, I'm here now, and then nobody would come, so they would just abandon it. One of them is actually Lemonade, which a lot of people are going to, which is owned by ByteDance. Let's go!

But like I hadn't heard that in so long and then everyone on TikTok right now, their like top link in their profile is Lemony. Guys, this is not going to go well for you. Yeah. Anyway, I'm on Pixel Fed now. So I'm federating some pictures over there. If you want to join me in the Fediverse. Is that the official way that you say that? I'm federating some pictures over there.

I'm distributing my pictures over a decentralized social network. In a decentralized way that you can find anywhere. In the Fediverse. Yeah, the Fediverse. We've got to shorten that. I know. The social web. There's an acronym there somewhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Juniper. Nintendo Switch 2. And that's been your Fediverse Corner update for this week, the week of January 15th. All right.

Look, I'm using Blue Sky, Threads, X, Lemonade, TikTok, Instagram. When is it? Are you on Red Note yet? That's bad. I'm not on Red Note yet. Don't get on Red Note. You gotta get on Red Note, man. Yet.

yet don't do it see my problem is if I don't someone's gonna take my username and then someone's going to be me on red notes for at least a few weeks it's probably already taken it's definitely gone by the time I say it out loud it's taken it's definitely already taken it was me then I have to get the underscore MKBHD official

talk to someone who might know a way to get the real market and then it's the whole thing yeah well who are you going to talk to a red no yeah i don't know anyone over there so it's unlikely i'm ever going to get my username that's fine that's fine that's okay you know what you might know what the answer to trivia i don't like where this is going okay trivia dude so second question

Nintendo has a ton of classic games, but what is their best-selling game that they ever made? Whoa. Singular game? Singular game. I will tell you right now, it has 64.27 million sales. Is that a hint? No. No. How would that be a hint? Just to get the number in your head. Yeah, no. So if you can tell me the name of the game, you will get a point. Hmm.

If it was bundled with the Switch, does it count as a sale? No, bundles don't count. Oh.

- Okay, we're back. And this is a new segment that I'm still working the name on. There's a theme there. I never know the names of these segments. I think we're gonna go with Crown or Clown. - Oh, I like that. - We usually get a great comment. - Yeah, there's usually a good comment that's like, no, you should call it this. And then we all laugh about it. - But the working draft is pretty good. That's fine. - Working draft, Crown or Clown. So basically, you guys have to all agree on the best thing that happened this week and the worst thing that happened this week.

So the best thing will get the crown and the worst thing will be a clown. But you all have to agree. That's the key point. So you can talk about something that we've already spoken about in this episode as being the best or the worst thing. Or you can bring something else in that's happening in the world that you think everyone should agree with you that it is the best thing that happened or the worst thing that happened. The best thing is the switch potentially coming out. I was like, I have a worst thing to pitch. I don't have a best. And I just thought switch to as well.

But it might not even happen this week. I still think it might be the best thing that happened this week. Even if it doesn't happen. Even if it doesn't happen. You're not wrong. There's not a lot of good that happened this week. And I think even just the hope of the Switch 2 might be the best thing that happened this week. But we can get back to that. Seems like there's a lot of clown things. I mean, that counts if you guys all agree on that. Well, let's get back to that. We'll get back to agreeing on that. Yeah. Can I throw my worst thing out? Sure. Okay. Okay.

Did any of you see this article headline that DJI will no longer stop drones from flying over airports, wildfires, or the White House?

The White House? Yeah. Wait. So I'm going to TLDR this, but if you had a drone from DJI and you tried to fly over not just restricted areas, it physically stopped you in the app. Yeah. For some reason, they're deciding to... They still have an intense warning if you get to these areas, but it's a warning that you can now skip and it's just on the drone user. Why would they do that? I'm not totally sure. I kind of...

The Verge article, and I kind of agree with this, is like there's been a growing distrust of drones and all of us New Jersey livers, the people who live in New Jersey, have seen some drone pandemonium over the last couple months. What is this year? I know. It's...

So that's been going on. But the reason this feels so tone-deaf this week is we just saw someone flying a drone in LA that came into contact with a plane that was dumping water on the wildfires and sidelined the plane, which is...

Like every hour that plane is out of commission, we're losing potentially hundreds of acres of land. And whoever that moron is that flew that out there, the amount of damage they did and they haven't found them yet is just immeasurable. And it makes me so mad that somebody is doing something like that. So, you know, there's more to this story. There's like...

a lot of things in that uh dji has been you know being on the safer side of what the faa rules actually are and first of all i think that's okay if you're on the safer side of things like there's nothing wrong with that you don't have to push the limits um but so that whatever they're doing is still within the the laws of f of the faa and and the us and there's still warnings to not do it but i think we all know that people are just going to skip those warnings thinking they're uh

And one of the things they do have is a better way of being able to track people

a drone and then where the controller is to be able to find someone possibly breaking that law but i don't know if that works with all of the drones that are under the 250 gram limit which is the like hobbyist versus like licensed drone pilot so i don't know all of this maybe because of the timing where it's coming out feels even worse but i just think this is really dumb i can't find a single possible upside

To letting people fly over airports? Yeah, I just read this article summarizing it, and it's like, this person asks, like, these geofences were voluntary. DJI built them. That's good. Which I think was a good thing to do. And so if you tried to fly in a place where they know that it is not legal, it just wouldn't let you. Good idea. Yeah.

They're voluntarily removing these geofences, which places the control back in the operator's hands. I don't see any upside to this, other than DJI being like, whatever you do wrong, it's not on us. My biggest issue with this is, like, if they're saying, let the people take the consequences...

If the consequence is something that physically harms someone else or screws up a plane and potentially harms people, I don't care if that person goes to jail. I wish it never happened in the first place. And maybe I don't know how much damage a drone could really do, but it feels not worth the risk. What I don't understand is why did they change this? I'm with you. This is the dumbest thing that's happened this week. I can't understand any possible upside to this.

i think this who is just like you know what we need to do you know how we prevent people from doing illegal things you know how we voluntarily decide to do that new update we let them yeah yeah i think it's a bad look to play devil's advocate oh boy i'm sure there's let's go the only thing i can think of is that i get the sickest drone shot of the united oh god even saying that out loud feels i know i think they're just

Trying to because right now if something happens with a drone it was because their geo fencing thing broke, right? It's like someone went through it and then the blame is on them It's because the operator did something and didn't get stopped even though they were supposed to get stopped In that sliver of possibility yeah is responsible Reduce their responsibility they let everyone do whatever what?

they want. By making it also more trackable to who's the person flying, ideally. Great. So I'll know exactly who does all of these additional horrible things that will happen. Perfect. As long as it's not DJI, that's a win for DJI. I would love to hear from people who work with drones in their everyday job what they think about this because I would think it means

The people who are licensed drone pilots using these responsibly shouldn't care about this too much because they're following the rules. But now you have the potential of more people doing dumber things with drones to make you look bad. That'd be my guess. I don't know. I've flown a couple of drones here and there, but like nothing that intense and not

by an airport. Well, you guys think that was the worst thing that happened this week. Wait till you hear what Ellis has to say. I'm going to try my best to tell you guys this story, but because it was just sent to me over and over and over again by waveform listeners in Thailand, there's a disclaimer that I need to drop, which is

I've never been to Thailand. I don't speak Thai. I know very little about that country and their technology sector. So I did my best to research this, to get up to speed, to make sure I was getting my news from Thai news outlets that have competing points of view and biases, most notably Times of Bangkok, which seems to be like a more conservative paper over there, and then Thai Inquirer, which is more of like a...

Anyway, this is all to say, if I get anything wrong, that's on me, Ellis Roven, not Waveform, not my co-host. - It sounds like it's about to be a whole drop of that. - Let me know. - Suit for defamation. - Here we go, here we go. A few days ago, I started getting all these DMs that Oppo and RealMe are the same.

via an over-the-air update, started installing as a system app, meaning you can't delete it. It's baked into the OS, this app called FinEasy. FinEasy. And it's a financial services app, but most notably, you can get loans from it. You can borrow money on this app. This is already horrible. So mandatory bloatware through an update that you can't uninstall. Exactly. That could potentially trap you in debt.

People naturally started complaining, like, why is this on my phone? What the heck happened? Because it's a system app, it was granted access to user data automatically. So contacts. What? Yeah. So then get this, right? Not only does this app just appear, potentially trap people and do all sorts of bad things, the more Thai reporters looked into it,

the more no one knew who even owned this app. And when Oppo and RealMe were asked about it, they said, we don't know. They said, yeah, like we were just, we just signed a contract and we put it on the phones. We didn't ask any more questions. Signed a contract with who? It doesn't make any sense, right? So according to, and this is now based off Ty Inquirer's reporting, they found, by the way, Thinnisi's website,

taken down in the past few days. - No way. - Not around. There's an old archived website which shows an old address in Singapore and that website before it was taken down showed an ownership group of a company called Wealth Hope. If you went to Wealth Hope's old website, which doesn't appear to be there anymore, the support address, like the tech support address for Wealth Hope

was an at oppo.com email address. Bad. No, don't do that. So at this point, not that much info has come out, but you

You know, obviously there's speculation. Is Oppo trying to run an illegal bank in a foreign country? Yeah. Or did they just sign a deal with some shady group? Or like, how did they get? And it seems like the necessary steps are being taken. Oppo phones are banned in Thailand right now unless they specifically do not have the FinEasy app installed on them. The government is looking, the Thai government is looking into this. People are...

rightfully so upset and I felt like this was kind of an important thing to bring up on the show because it's a crazy story a few weeks ago yeah a few weeks ago November was a few weeks ago like eight of them yeah yeah my birthday was seven weeks ago yeah yeah so was mine

Isn't few three to five? My birthday is in July, so it doesn't really matter. That's what you is three to me. A few weeks ago in November, the United States, uh, went through something sort of adjacent where the consumer financial protections Bureau began to treat financial apps, uh, as being regulated the same way as banks, um, to which a lot of FinTech bros, most notably, uh,

known smart and awesome guy, Marc Andreessen, threw a big giant hissy fit on Joe Rogan. And so it seems like that is sort of central to this issue in Thailand, too, where FinEasy, not a bank, but can also trap you in debt. So maybe they should be treated... Bank? Maybe bank? I don't know. It does? Yeah. I just have an article here saying that Oppo and Realme said that it will not be pre-installed on new devices...

uh, from January 14th on and that tomorrow, which is the 16th, there'll be an OTA update that will remove it permanently. That is, that is correct. So hopefully, so it seems like this whole chapter will come to a close soon. That's wild. What a weird few days. If you go back through Twitter, um, you can find, you know, I found a few things. There were people saying like people finding, um,

beta versions of this app, like in code source, Android's Oppo source code all the way far back as May. People saying the source code was made by this company called HeyTap, which does a lot of like cloud services in China. None of that has been corroborated. In my research, though, of looking for things about FinEasy, I did find like the funniest thing ever, which is...

Which is, in the process of searching, I found this tweet from 2013. I was like, wow, this story goes all the way back to 2013. That's so crazy. The tweet was, miramos finisifurb. And that's when I realized this is not about finisi. The Spanish language speaker just forgot to put a space between finis, spelled incorrectly, the word e, which means and in Spanish, and furb. They meant to say, miramos finisifurb, which we're looking at finis and furb.

Wow. I just thought that was so funny. Nice. Okay. Well, if you've been affected, don't ask us for help. But do DM at Ellis Roven on Twitter and tell me everything I got wrong. That's true. In that story. Pre-installed apps that siphon your personal information and then disappear mysteriously is definitely bad. And put you into debt. And potentially could put you into debt. Allegedly. However...

My only asterisk is this appears to be more than just a this week's story, in which case, Eileen drones. That it's not the worst thing? Yeah. Okay. I think it might have spiked. It's now being resolved this week, allegedly, which could have some... Yeah, maybe this is the good story, actually, because it's... Oh, it's halting. Yeah. A horrible thing is going to end. Is this better than the Nintendo Switch 2 potentially being announced? I'm not sure. Similar vibes.

Some. I think that all that to say I'm leaning drones for the worst thing of the week. Does anyone else have anything else? Worst thing of the week is that I posted my freezer on Blue Sky that has a lot of film in it. People got really mad.

and they all said that i was full of hyper processed foods and i need to let you guys all know that well it wasn't just film what else was in your freezer four trader joe's meals okay thank you yeah i got harassed that's worse than the drones that's my vote i think drones wins and are we doing good fin easy finney's getting taken away well oppo real misers the hard thing about calling it is the good thing is

The people who are correcting it are the people who caused the problem in the first place. Yeah. But justice has been served in time. I'm happy that they're not dealing with it anymore. Picture being a company as big as Oppo and they're like, so that app that you installed in everyone's phone, who made it? And just being like, yeah.

Have any of you watched Severance on Apple TV Plus? I know what you're going to talk about. It's really, really good. Severance, a show that came out in, I think, 2020. Super good. They are about to release the second season on the, I think, 19th.

And so they're hyping up all of this hype for it, which is really cool. And at Grand Central Station yesterday, which would have been Tuesday of this week, Apple did like a little viral sort of like campaign where they put this glass box of part of the severance office where people could just walk around and kind of look inside and then

In the middle of the day, all of the actors and Ben Stiller showed up. And all of the actors went inside the box and just pretended to be working. And so people could just walk around. Where was I? It was at Grand Central yesterday. I know, but... And Adam Scott, too. You love him in Parks and Rec. Yeah. Yeah, but I think that that was really fun and cute and cool. Real quick. This is a David fact. Oh, about me. Yeah, because you like Severance.

And a lot of Severance was filmed. Oh, yeah. At Astoria Kaufman Studios.

Well, I was gonna say a lot of it was filmed at the Bell Labs building here in New Jersey Oh, and you love Bella. Oh really a lot of it Sure a lot of it was also filmed at Astoria Kauffman Studios Which is like a 15-minute drive from my apartment see it's they should just call this Dave er it's because it's all your stuff the Dave ritz I still think that Nintendo switch to Sorry, no

the oppo thing is the winner but i just wanted to call it that i thought that was a really cool it was a really fun little thing if i had any idea what severance was people oh it's a really good it's really good it's like it's like really as someone who doesn't usually say these words out loud it's pretty good i'll watch it i watch like two episodes i'll watch it when i'm done with one piece that's crazy yeah oh so never so you'll never watch it yeah market you had one more to throw in the room one more uh chat cpt is now a task manager app bad

Wait, that's a bad thing? You think that's a good thing? That's a potential crown. It's a good thing that only two people are agreeing with it. It's bad for you guys because you're going to spend more time setting it up than it's going to actually help you. It could be amazing, though. What if it's amazing? But what if it's awesome? What if I just hold down the action button on my phone and I just say, remind me to blah, blah, blah, and then I get the notification later? How important is your task apps to you guys? It's the most important. Okay, how much do you trust ChatGPT? From the demo I saw, with everything I have. Really? Mm-hmm.

From the demo? You saw a demo? Yeah. No, from the... I saw a demo of the Faraday Future once. No, there's a tweet. There's a tweet here. Look, the tweet, I'll play the video, is that you ask it to remind you to do something, and then at that time, it gives you notification, just like you asked for. Wow. Boom. That should work, right? Should work. And then they've built this whole UI around managing those tasks, so you can add subtasks or description to the tasks. Does it do things for you?

Well, that's the thing is chat GPT. You can ask it to do things and it might hallucinate or it might do the thing. It could be amazing. Give me an example of what you would do with this. At 1230, send a message or draft an email for my cousin to ask him about his new job and tell him that I wished him happy birthday. And then at that time, you get a notification with the draft of the email and you can just send it off or at the day you want, for example.

Or maybe you even ask it to initiate a call and it does something. Probably won't do that. But think about if it could. Potential crown is all I'm saying. Okay, so we officially need to crown and clown something. I just want to say, so far I love this game. We definitely need to clean it up somewhere. So we'll take your suggestions. But I think that was a good start and provoked a lot of fun conversation. So clown. Worst thing that happened.

I'm going with the drones being able to do whatever they want for no reason. The users controlling the drones. Yeah. That's the clown for the week. That's the clown for the week. Clown of the week. Clown of the week. The crown is going to...

It could go to Oppo's resolution of the horrible thing that started. Let's wait until it's fully resolved. That's a good idea. It didn't happen yet. Also, tomorrow. If they actually started it, I don't think that we should say good job. True. So it should go to the Nintendo Switch 2 potentially. But that also didn't happen. So nothing good happened this week. No, that's not true. So we could go with ChatGPT. We could go with the Model Y refresh. We could go with... Oh my God. I vote Nintendo Switch 2.

I think we have to go with Nintendo Switch. I cannot agree with a thing that didn't happen yet. Just the thought of the Nintendo Switch 2, you guys want to be the best thing that happened this week? It's the only thing that I'm holding on to, Adam. It's the only thing giving me life right now. CES ended.

That is good news. None of us got sick from CES. Yeah. Also good news. Oh, none of us got sick. Really good news. I think that's true. I just got sick regularly. Yeah, that's true. We got sick from CES somehow. But not from CES. Not from CES. You can't prove it. Yeah. Were you in Vegas? No. No, but the cloud.

I'm going with CES ended and none of us got sick from it. I'll give it that. As the crown of the week. We'll think of some better crowns for the future. For sure. But we all know who the real winner was, David. Well, we know. You're never getting me on that one. Okay. Well, without any further ado, we should do trivia. This is not going to end well. I have both the answers here.

Do you now? I think I did. They could both be wrong. You gotta play the trivia music. I think they're both wrong. You did. Wait, really? Are you good, bro? My headphones fell off for a second. Anyway, question number one. The Tesla Model Y, of which we just saw the new Juniper variant, which I love that name. The new Tesla Model Y, or excuse me, the Tesla Model Y in general was the first Tesla to incorporate what technology into the cabin of

- I don't think I'm right, but I don't know what else it would be. - I'm really mad. I wanted to write, what were we memeing on earlier where it was like, you can't expect me to know, what were we talking? - The planets? - Calculus? - I forget. - Can't expect me to know stuff about Thailand. - There's something about TikTok. I have literally nothing. - Wow, you literally did put nothing. - I don't know if-- - Oh man, that was, if that's right. - David and Marques, can you say your right answers at the same time?

Three, two, one. Heat pump. Heat pump. That was so easy. Is it really? Yeah. Model 3 doesn't have a heat pump? No, it does. It's just the Y got it slightly earlier. I haven't confirmed that, but the big thing is that...

resistance heating where your car is a toaster, is really inefficient in cold temperatures. The Rivian Gen 2 just got a heat pump as well. We love heat pumps. Do you know how a heat pump works? It moves heat. It pumps it. Up the jam. Picture a window AC unit and then just flip it.

So that the cold part is outside and the hot part is inside. I think that's so nifty. It is, yeah. How did they flip it? They added it to the 2021 Model 3 alongside the heated steering wheel. Fun fact. Very nice. Okay, without further ado. I'm glad I got the point, but I was trying to catch David, so I hope you don't get the next one. My lovely co-host, Adam Lucas.

Damn, put my whole government out there. That's literally not your government. That's true. Okay. So, after that correct answer, quick update on the scores. Marquez with four. Andrew with one. Two. David with five in the lead. David's carrying the win right now. I'm one point ahead. Okay. Nintendo has a ton of classic great games, but...

What is the best-selling game they've ever made? Not bundled with a console. Video game.

That's a huge difference versus what I was going to say. Playing cards. I know, and I just... Dang it. Wait, what were you going to say? He literally wrote playing cards. Oh my God. Which I think is probably right. Probably. I don't know, man. It depends if you count all 52 as individual games. No. The number eight is not a game, Ellis. It sounds like you don't have enough imagination, David. They sold playing cards for decades. I'm sure they sold 60 million playing cards. All right, flip them and read. What do we got?

Mario? That's not a game. It's a category. Marques, you're going to have to be a little more specific. We can't now. Mario 64. Is that a game? It was a game. Nice job. Andrew? I wrote Tears of Kingdom. Tears of the Kingdom? Nope. That just came out. I know. I'm thinking of the other one, but I don't remember what it's called. Breath of the Wild. Thank you. I wrote Mario Kart 8. That is correct! Correct! 8? 8?

Mario Kart 8 has been on three consoles. So it's been on maybe two consoles, the Wii U and the Switch. That's why I said you had to be a little more specific. I pictured Mario. Yeah, but Mario somehow is not even remotely specific to Mario Kart. Hot take. Really? Dropping a hot take right here. Mario Kart 8 is a cheap knockoff.

Sonic Racing Transformed Fight me about it. We might have to Sonic Racing Transform as a cheap knockoff of my racing Mario Kart 7 also Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Which is on the switch is just like an updated version with all the DLC of Mario Kart 8 which was on the Wii U Well the correct answer was Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Yeah, but oh no, that's he just said there's two different things No, I did not I said that the same thing with DLC and

That's crazy that you knew that and didn't read it. Huh. Interesting. Oh my god. We'll let it slide. We'll let it slide. That's a two point lead though. I won't forget about that. Just like you can slide in Mario Kart. That's it for this week though. Hey, let us know what better name you have for clown or crown.

And then if we read through all the comments and there aren't any better names, then we're going to keep calling it that. So no pressure, but that's on you. Is that a threat? Thanks for watching and listening. And of course, and subscribing. And for sure, using ChatGPT to do all those things in one single button click, which I'm sure you're doing. And we'll catch you guys after the Switch 2. Peace. Hopefully. Now you love the Switch 2. Now you're saying the best thing of the week.

I see. Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Riven. We're partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network and our tractor music was created by me and Syl.

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