Would You Watch YouTube at 4x Speed?
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What's up, y'all? It's Kenny Beecham. On this week's episode of Small Ball, we get into maybe the wildest, craziest, most shocking week in NBA history. The trade deadline came, and it did not disappoint. Some trades I love, some I hated, and some made absolutely no sense at all. The league has been shaken up, and I'm here to break it all down with you. Man, what a time to be an NBA fan. You can watch Small Ball on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes drop every Friday. Ba-ba-party fall.

Hello, Apple invites. Wait, Apple rhymes with partyful. You could have just... Not really. Bye-bye, partyful. Hello, Apple. That rhymes way more than what you said. It's missing a syllable. It's missing a syllable, but it rhymes.

all right what is up people of the internet welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast we're hosts i'm marquez i'm andrew and i'm david and this week we've got a new apple app that actually looks pretty solid uh we're gonna talk about why meta is considering 2025 a make or break year first of

for some reason uh pixel 4a update that's doing way too much for some reason as well and what is going on in the episode and uh we've got a new app in the timeline app category adam is excited about um and then we'll end with a rant we'll end with a rant from andrew

But first, the biggest news of the week, the NBA trade deadline is coming up. Sometimes news transcends, you know, the niche that we're in. It really does. And I think we need to talk about Luka Doncic getting traded. Absolutely. Unforeseen. I know, David, you probably saw this news and were immediately like, whoa. Okay. Huge trade. Crazy. The only thing that I know about this is that they posted it on The Verge.

Which makes no sense to me. Yeah, actually. That's hilarious. But I didn't look into it. Perfect. I figured we would explain it to you in other terms. In tech terms. In like tech terms. And then hopefully you will understand better how shocked you all were. Because I remember where I was when I found out. I think I remember. I read it on the rhockey subreddit. Like I was just on my phone and it was like,

How would you describe the Luka Doncic trade in terms of hockey players? And I was like, wait, Luka got traded? Yeah. I know him as he's a really good Overwatch player. Just traded just means that they offered him more money so he went to a different team. That's signing. So there are contracts and company owners. So here's the actual, let me find the actual trade just so I can make. Yeah, while you find that, it seems like every niche of the internet is doing like a how do I explain the Luka trade in here?

in X terms. So it's that big of a deal? It's a huge deal, yeah. So we're going to try and do it in tech terms. Just one guy though, right? There's a couple other things, but the main meat and potatoes of the deal is like one player for one player. And we're going to talk about mostly those two players. So they usually do it. There's all sorts of packages. I feel bad for the other guy because they're only talking about the Luka guy. Does nobody care about the other guy?

Well, we'll explain to you about the other. His name's Anthony Davis. That's the first time I've heard of that. He's like. Sorry, Anthony. An amazing basketball player. Yes. He played in the Olympics for Team USA this year. Did they win? Totally dominated. Dominated. Yeah. That's cool. Great basketball player. OK.

The thing is, top level face of the franchise players typically do not get traded. Doesn't LeBron move around all the time? LeBron moves around on his own accord. He doesn't get traded. So he'll decide to sign a contract with the Lakers. And then the Lakers own his contract. This might be a good point.

The difference between trading and signing as a free agent. So your contract goes X amount of years, and if it's within that X amount of years, you go to another team, it means teams agreed on a trade. And you have to move? Yes. So your contract can be traded. Wow. But if you wait till the end of that contract and you go to free agency, then you get to choose...

if a team offers you money where you go. So this is a trade. Luca, did Luca know about this? He didn't. So nobody knew about this. So that's what, so what I'm saying is like franchise players, like some of the biggest names in the NBA, you think like Steph Curry, like when you think of Steph Curry, you think of the Warriors, the Warriors will not trade Steph Curry. All of the fans would be mad. Yeah. All of the teammates would be mad. Yeah. Wherever he goes, they won't like the fan. It would just be weird. It just wouldn't work. Right. Um, what,

What's another NBA player you know? Just like a big name. Kevin Durant, have you heard of him? A little. Giannis? No. What about... Jokic? Yaming? Yaming? Okay. So he was on the Rockets. Okay. And he wasn't... You know, he was a franchise... Sure. Franchise player. Let's go with that. Okay. Okay.

The Rockets fans love this guy. They wouldn't trade him. Even if you offered another great player, sometimes they'll offer two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight players, future draft picks, a whole bunch of other assets, and they still won't trade this guy. Luka's that guy for the Dallas Mavericks. Okay. So he's like Steph Curry. Yes. Exactly. Let's do the tech version of this. I think Marquez brought up yes, yes, no earlier, which is an old segment from Reply All. We're going to describe...

this to you in tech terms, and then we'll see if you can explain the severity of the trade afterwards and see what that means. Can I go first? I have a pretty simple one.

Okay, so the trade is Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis. There are a couple other small assets involved. I'm going to do Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis and a first-round pick because that is part of it. There was a couple other players. And I think what's important here is who initiated the trade. It was the team that Luka's on, the Mavericks. They want to get rid of him? They did get rid of him. That was everyone's reaction. So what would your reaction be is if I have an S24 Ultra and you have an S24,

S20 FE and Galaxy Buds. And I said, from the same year. So you're comparing Anthony, whatever his name is, to an S20 FE, S20 Plus? Yeah. It's not bad. And I come to you and I say, I want your S20 FE and Galaxy Buds. I will give you an S24 Ultra. Oh, what would be my reaction? Yeah. No. Really? Yeah.

Wait, oh, yes. Sorry, I was thinking the other way around. So like in my eyes, it's... Because the Galaxy Buds are not that expensive. They're not that expensive. They're fine. It's a nice thing to have. The S20 FE or I could even go S21 Plus maybe. Maybe S21 Plus. But like a phone that works totally fine.

for you. Yeah, but S24 Ultra is much better. It's good. We're getting to this point of security updates are seven years for Samsung phones now, right? So you're kind of as taking the old phone. Is the security updates like the contract, you know, seven years? I'm thinking of its age because Luca's 25, Anthony Davis is 31 or something. 25 years old? Yeah. So I'm giving you something that's

You know, it's going to lose security updates in like three years, but it's still a good phone right now. But you're giving me a phone that's better and also is going to get security updates for six more years than your time. No, I would get that. Sorry, you would get that. Yeah, I would get that. Yeah. I mean, yeah. OK, there's 25. Yeah. So he's unless he like breaks his leg. He's got a bright future ahead of him. I have another version of this. OK. Yeah.

I see that you have an M4 MacBook Pro. I would like to trade you my Intel i9 MacBook Pro and AirPods. What do you think? No. Come on. Why would I ever do that? It's pretty good. Although this trade would be... It's not. The i9 is famously a not good MacBook. The i9 is Anthony Davis. It's fine. It's great. It's pretty good. It's overpowered, but you got to cool them down. Yeah, it sometimes isn't the healthiest. Yeah.

And the battery's going to run out at some point. And it's probably got a lower future life ahead of it. If you put it in the freezer, it works better. Yeah. And when you first got it, it was like one of the best. Okay. I got one for you. Okay. The Fuji X100 VI. Okay. For the Sony a6500 plus a memory card. Well, the a6500 at least has interchangeable lenses. It does. But no. No.

It's a good camera. Plus a memory card. Plus a memory card. Do I get to have a memory card in my own camera? No. You have to buy your own. Well, then it won't work. You have to buy your own. You have to buy your own. Oh, yeah. No. Wait, so why did they trade this guy? Okay, the word on the street, I mean, because nobody saw this trade coming. This was a very, you know, trades that are this big typically cost

leak a little bit like people start talking about oh this guy is not happy with the team he's on maybe they'll get moved nobody saw this coming the players didn't see this coming the coaches didn't see this coming the owners didn't really know about it the GMs made the trade what's a GM? a general manager grandmaster general manager of the teams

General manager. Which essentially they run the team and the organization. Okay. And they quietly, these two organizations had conversations with each other and no other team made the trade and that was it.

And typically, a big player like this, you shop him around. Like, okay, this is it. Everyone wants Luka. Everyone would take Luka. Is he the best player in the NBA? He's one of the top five best players in the NBA. And he's 25? And he's 25. Wow. And if any other GM had known that he was available, they would have offered Luka.

everything to get him. So was this like a backdoor deal? It seems like the only rumor is he was scheduled to get a $350 million Supermax for his next contract, and he's sometimes a little bit out of shape in the offseason. Which I understand because he is top 500 rank in Overwatch 2.

He's nasty at Overwatch, too. Wait, really? At Overwatch, yeah. Wait, he's top 500? How does this man have time for both these things? How are you elite at two different things? There's a lot of athletes who are really good at video games sometimes. That makes sense. There was a hockey player who got traded because they said he played too much Fortnite, but he's one of the best in the league. My argument would be Luka could show up with...

I'll pack a cigarette in his mouth and I would still take him because he's so good at basketball. So my question is, why didn't they shop him around? That is everyone's question. No one knows the answer. That seems sketchy. Yeah. Yeah, just one of those weird things that happens at the NBA trade deadline and, you know, more weird trades have happened. It's just one of those weird news headlines. Even if he got $350 million, do you think he could have gotten more?

So that's the supermax that you're eligible for when you play with a certain team for a bunch of years in a row. So he's been on Mavericks his entire career. How long is his entire career? Five years so far. And he would have been eligible for... He started at 20 years old in the NBA? Yeah, and a top draft pick and would have been eligible for the most expensive contract in NBA history. Which, honestly, you pay the man. He's worth it. But for some reason, they didn't feel like paying him. Wow. I'll throw one more tidbit out there. Hmm.

The Mavericks just announced that they're refunding season ticket holders who are mad enough. Holy crap, dude. They were like people with signs outside of the stadium. No way, really? Wow. Look, there's a reason the Lakers said yes.

Well, we got traded to the Lakers. Yeah. So the Lakers got Luca. And look, if you're the Lakers and you have Anthony Davis and somebody calls and goes, hi, we'd like Anthony Davis. You're like, no. And they're like, we'll give you Luca. Like he'll be on your front step tomorrow. Yes, of course. I'll personally do the Lakers still have LeBron. Yes. Yes.

And so you know who LeBron is. That's important. I think everyone knows LeBron and LeBron's one of the faces of the league and he's 40 and he's been one of the legends of the game forever. He's probably got one, two, three more years left and the Lakers looking forward to their future. We're like, when this guy's gone, who do we have? Yeah. Nothing. And the Lakers have always been a very famous team. They've always had some franchise face. Right. Whether it's Kareem or Kobe or Shaq, they

Now it's LeBron, and who are they going to have? Luka. This is like the Lakers looking forward and being like, who can we have? And then someone knocks on their front door and hands them a briefcase full of money. They didn't even go out looking yet, and it just came to them. So now, just to test your understanding, just to make sure you understand the trade, can you explain the Luka contract?

AD trade in Pokemon trading cards. Do I have to explain how the game works? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just have to. It's card for card. It's like trading Golem, who's very good, for, who else is like pretty good? I feel like it's almost like trading Pikachu EX. If we're talking just about like strength and battling, like Golem's, I would say like Charizard EX because Charizard's the big flash player.

flashy like bright card that everyone wants but in terms of battling it's not really that good right so much that's a great first level charmander you have to evolve golem a lot too you do but it's so much easier and gravel are not very good cards the new gravel is not maybe this is the best gravel has 40 damage this one way down they have so much health though and you just play drug it off i mean it's a hundred health it's not like a ton you know but anyway

I think that's a salad. I think that's pretty good. Okay, yeah, we'll say that. Well, and just real quick, any, well, okay, done with NBA. If you want to come back to the Tech Podcast.

We're here. We're back. Did you pull anything good in the new packs? Yeah, actually. Oh, did you? Yeah, so I did one of the... I saved up a bunch of hourglasses and did one of the 10 cuts at once, which was a bad decision. Don't do that. Delayed gratification, my friends, is worth it always. They have this option where you can just open 10 packs at the same time and it's just like super fast and it's lame. So I completely disagree. Wow. Because that is how I play basically every game.

I just hoard all of my gold until I can buy everything. That's so not fun, though. The progression isn't there. Yeah, exactly. It's like hard, hard, hard, hard, hard. Now you're super overpowered. And then I'm awesome. Yeah. Like doing all the side quests before you go after the first boss and then just one-shot them. Yeah. I don't know. I've gotten a lot of cool cards. I don't know this one as well. I think I got one good immersive...

Dragon type guy or like I didn't get an immersion or a kind of guy But then I also got one like that looks like a lawnmower and I just don't it's wrote on ones doing any in the fourth generation There's this Rotom Pokemon. It's an electric ghost Pokemon and he goes inside household appliances All the Rotom cards are bad But they're cute and fun. So I think that's the point of same. Oh

I'm just going to cut this off right here. Anyway, so yeah, Luca and AD got traded. A whole bunch more trades are happening. NBA deadline. All sorts of fun stories there. Anyway, this is a tech podcast, allegedly. Allegedly. There is an interesting tech story that I didn't find out about until today. That is plaguing Pixel 4A.

I don't know if you guys have heard of this. You know who you are. So Pixel 4a, a couple years old, but apparently Google has started pushing a software update to it that has dramatically lowered the battery capacity by up to 40%. Yeah.

Now, reading this headline seems kind of insane. Like, why would that happen? And so if you go back, it seems to read that there was some sort of battery issue starting to pop up with old Pixel 4As, and probably enough of them started to pop up that Google saw a trend slash pattern and just to be safe, decided to just...

Just nip it in the bud and dramatically lower the charging capacity for pixel for a is for everyone who owns them Yeah, which is a bummer if you own one because now your phone has a little over half the battery It just did the day before that update got pushed. Yeah But at least it won't explode now. Yeah, Google has been very vague about why they're pushing this update But they said it was apparently related to battery concerns But every single thing that they did indicates that these batteries were probably going to blow up

It would just be a safety concern. You just don't want a safety concern. Yeah. They noted it as an emergency maintenance release, and they cut the voltage of the battery from 4.45 volts to 3.95 volts, which doesn't sound like a lot, but that cuts the usable charge down by about 44%.

according to testing from Android Authority. Has anyone checked on the 5? I mean, the 4A 5G? Didn't it also come out at the same time? Yeah, but it might have just been that specific battery cell. They are also offering free battery replacements, Google Store credits, and a cash payment of $50. So it seems like they're really trying to motivate people to swap out their battery. Do we have a 4A?

Probably. I don't think so. I thought we had every pixel. Yeah, we do. Oh, we might. I'm going to go check and see if our 4A is doing anything weird. I loved the 4A. It's such a good phone. It was $350. Do you want to go look? I think it's on top of the cabinet or the bottom. I'll check after the phone. I'll check after. And if there is anything weird about it, I will insert a clip. It's definitely not on fire.

Unless it happened in the last 30 minutes. Some other crazy things about this, this update also gets rid of the adaptive charging feature if you didn't have it on before. And if you know the battery indicator and the status bar, you can either just have the picture of the battery draining or the actual number. If you didn't have the number on before, it gets rid of the option to even have the number on.

which is crazy, which is just... Yeah, it seems like Google is very afraid of these phones. If you have a Pixel 4a, let us know if you got this update or if you've noticed anything weird about your phone. Yeah. And I'm curious to see what we see. Honestly, I know it's cool that they're doing a battery replacement. At this point...

For whoever's still using one, if there's like, if you can prove it, they should just give you the latest A model. Yeah. Like, this is probably not that many people, like a couple thousand maybe. Just give them the update. I don't know. That was a very popular phone. It was a popular phone. We're what? $40 million.

five years five generations past it and it was already the like more middle range one so maybe not I'm sure there's plenty but I think like at this point if you're giving $50 credit and batteries I think you should just give them a free upgrade yeah that's true so yeah if you're out there

Be careful. Stay safe out there, friends. Don't put your Pixel 4a in your pocket. Don't go to sleep if your Pixel 4a is plugged in. Next is something that's very dear to mine and Adam's hearts. Very much so. Do you want to talk about it? You psychos.

We are certified speed consumers. Absolute animals. Yeah, so Adam and I famously consume content at 2x speed. Famously? Yeah. Okay, nice. Maybe infamous. You never know. Depending on who you ask. Yeah. YouTube Premium is testing a bunch of new experimental features. Not on my account.

Wow. Do you have premium? Yeah, and I wish I had this feature. I didn't get it. I've been checking. Refreshing every day. Wait, you're right. I haven't seen it. No, it's a labs feature. You have to turn it on, which I did not do. Oh, got it. So, okay, there are many features. There are many features. One of them is that you can now watch videos in up to 4x speed. Jesus Christ. What are you guys doing? What is happening? On iOS and Android. 4x speed.

That is a little I've been trying to train myself for 3x like it's I've been working on it 2.5 I can still do 3x 3x you know how your brain takes in information and processes it right? Yeah, yeah, you know how it does that Famously I feel like what I'm consuming things at 3x is just it's like it's like it's like 5% too fast

for my brain to be able to understand what's happening before the next thing is coming in. Yeah. Do you know how to read fast? No. There's a way to read fast where instead of reading each word out loud in your head, you just let your eyes scan it because your brain will catch up and process it. That's how you got to start watching these YouTube videos. My brain doesn't work like that. Just stare at the screen, glaze over, and just let it all come in.

I was just editing a short and we're trying to get our shorts under 60 seconds. Yeah. And sometimes if we record the whole short and I edit it and it's all good and I get to the end, it'll be like a minute and four seconds. And the only way I've like trimmed all the air and I've cut it up perfectly. And the only way for me to get it under a minute is to speed it up by like 5%. Yeah. And I'll go and I'll highlight the whole thing and I'll, I'll,

I'll set it to 105% and I'll play it back. And it'll sound just a little too fast. I don't know if I want to publish that because it doesn't really sound right. It's just a little bit too fast or whatever. You guys are telling me you listen to videos at 250% speed of what they were meant to be watched at? And want more. And you want more? I don't know if I want more. I mean, it would be useful to have 300. You know what I mean? What's an example of a video that you would watch? Bro, the Met on YouTube is like four-hour videos right now. What?

So those videos I feel like aren't really meant to be watched the whole time. You kind of listen to it in the background. You watch some of it. You glance over. Maybe it's like a podcast. It's like on the Bluetooth in the car. Yeah. That's not a good example. When I'm researching something, I need to like watch as many videos as I can.

And I like just consume the information, you know? I'm like, take it in, take it in, take it in. Just leave it on 2X. And I have to watch multiple different videos explaining the topic to kind of get it in multiple different ways in my head. And so the faster I can ingest that information, the better. I get that. I guess it's just that those probably are not very visual explainers. Because I can process the audio at 2X. I absolutely don't think you can process. Well, you could pause it.

You know, so like, yeah, I'm just letting, then it's zero. Pause it and then it catches up. If I'm watching an explainer about something and I'm really confused about like a graphic on screen or something like that, I'll just pause it. And then I'll like wrap my head around it. Like, okay, go on. And then continue. I wonder if the amount of time you would have taken up

Watching at 1x or watching at 2x and then pausing for graphics? I mean, I'm not sitting there for four minutes looking at the graphic, you know? Yeah. Interesting. But that's how much time I save watching 2x. I guess just as a video editor, my feathers are ruffled. Okay, here's a question for you. Yes. Do you edit videos at 2x? I do. What? Yeah.

If you press L in Final Cut, it goes at 2x. Yeah, this podcast is only edited in 2x. Editing for podcasts, it's really good, especially editing a podcast you were part of because you kind of know what's happening. That's how I used to do first passes when I edited. A first pass, maybe. The main way I edit videos is like ripple trim back, ripple trim forward, and add edit.

So it's like it cuts out everything behind it, adds an edit, or cuts out everything in front of it. And so you're just like, oh, here's a part. Ripple trim back. Here's a part. Ripple trim back. Add edit. Move forward. Yeah. Yeah.

So how do you, I mean, you edit at 1x speed? I do. I edit everything at 1x speed very meticulously. And I make 8th of a second, 10th of a second, fraction of a second adjustments to cuts. I do that too. Yeah. Well, you could still do that after you have like the rough draft. First pass. First pass. He's saying like first pass. To find the takes. Yeah, exactly. Although I will say I probably never watched a video at regular speed before publishing it. So...

I think you should because of how many other people will. Yeah, that's true. Also, this has bitten me in the butt before because there's been times where you guys drop in a frame link of a video that's going live.

and I'll watch it on like 1.75x speed. For those that don't know, Frame.io is a service we use to like leave comments on each other's videos. And it's limited to 1.75. Yeah, it's limited to 1.75. Stupid. But even still, I've missed certain like weird cuts or things like that because in the speeding, it just won't play that back. Because when you're playing back at 1.75, you're going to miss frames. It has to skip frames.

So if there's like a flash frame or you like miss or like something extends for one or two too many frames into the next scene or something weird happens like that, you'll just miss it in the edit and you have to watch it at 1x to catch that. I feel like I always catch those in frame even after multiple people have watched and now I'm realizing because I'm the only person that I feel like watches things at 1x. I watch at 1x. I'm a 1x person. I'm too ADHD, dude. If I'm like trying to watch back a 17-minute video that I'm like trying, you know, it's like I'll get kind of

antsy and then i'll have to pick up my phone it also depends on the video like some people talk really slow yeah so when you put it at 2x speed it almost sounds like now they're talking well and when you're used to watching 2x content 1x speed feels like it's taking yeah and real real life goes so slow for me like you guys sound so slow right now that's i can't do it

Yeah. You know, fair. I'm broken, Marques. Fair. I just feel like you wouldn't watch a movie at 2X. You wouldn't watch a Kurt's Gazard video at 2X. No, I do. You watch those at 2X? Yeah. I don't watch movies at 2X. I watch anything that looks like I'm supposed to be taking artistic value from it. I watch those at 1X. Same. Okay. But if it's information-based. So, wait for 1X. 2X, baby. No, I watch Wait for 1X. 2X.

I aim to make videos as a creator that people watch as intended. Yeah, that makes sense. What if your intention is 2X? Then publish it at 2X. Oh, I see. Then just make a 2X export and upload that. And then just title it Watch This at 0.5X Speed. If you need to be real time. Lee, I want to do this so bad. Don't ever do that. Can I do a clip?

This whole conversation will be a clip. Publish this at 0.5x. And say watch at 2x. And then tell people to watch at 2x. So this is like a 30 minute clip. Okay, so back to the story. So apparently they're going to allow 4x. I don't know what this is for. You would be a super human if you were able to consume at 4x. I feel like it's more for...

rushing forward in the video, but I don't know you don't just click around in that case. You can just hold. You can just hold. Hold space to fast forward. Yeah. But does that go to 2x? That does 2x. So, oh, it could do 4. Maybe it's for that then. Yeah, but it's only on iOS and Android for some reason.

Other updates that are in YouTube Premium and they are in testing currently are smart shorts downloads on iOS. So it automatically downloads shorts for you. How many? Great question. Probably like five.

I mean, there's value to like, I'm on the subway and there's no... Yeah, but that's assuming you're watching every 60 second clip to the full. But that's the thing about, it has to download every single one, yet the majority of things in a short feed that I actually watch to full is like 5%. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. So it's probably going to download like 100. So you can just swipe through. 100 is like 45 seconds of scrolling. 100 billion.

I would love to know just maybe not quite that bad but okay that there's also shorts picture in picture on iOS which is you know you know there's that meme of like of like watching subway surfers while doing everything else a shorts while you're doing something else on your phone shorts while you're on reels yeah that's a little crazy it's a little crazy

There's going to be high-quality audio for 256 kilobyte per second sound on iOS and Android. Somewhere else is shaking his fist at the sky. Why? Wouldn't he like that? I don't know. We'll find out. Okay. Also, Jump Ahead, which is this awesome feature where if it notices that most people sort of skip to a different part of the video, generally that's to avoid sponsors. One of the most useful features. It's pretty awesome. I gotta say. Yeah. It's basically...

almost every time I see the jump ahead button on YouTube and I click it, it's right at the end of the ad. Yeah. It's really good. Except for this podcast. Obviously. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I don't know why they're making these limited runs or why they didn't have that on web in the first place. Um,

Lot of these are all experiments. So I would just assume on web people don't double tap the screen to move forward they move the cursor the Timeline play it yeah, but the head but there's the jump ahead thing is like a little thing that appears in the corner But I thought it only happens on mobile when you start skipping like if you skip and in the first 10 seconds It realizes in part everyone skips then it does jump ahead unless you skip all the way

I'll have to see how it works today. All right. Well, we're going to take a 1x speed break. We're going to take... I don't talk in that slow. Let's take a quick break. But before we do, trivia time. Trivia. Trivia. All right. First question.

Do you remember what the code name of the Pixel 4a was? Not Shamu. That's the first thing I thought of. That's the one everyone thinks of. That's the famous one. Iconic. I remember some. Okay. But I don't know about this one. Code names are fun because companies don't usually talk about them. Yeah. And usually they're not actually related to the product, except for Shamu that was related to the product. Project Muhan is related.

Technically true. But it's like public. It's like being publicly used. Yeah, they are. Yeah, they called their project Infinity. Like an infinite canvas. Even though we don't have an infinite canvas in the world. But you can't prove it. Yeah, okay. That's a good question. Well, we'll think about that and the answers will be at the end, like usual. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

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Now, it's an iOS-only app that you can invite Android friends to participate in the experience of. Whoops. But it is an iOS-only app. And it is, in my opinion, the most Apple way that you could possibly do this. Yeah. It is an invites app.

So those of you who are my age probably remember Facebook events where you'd have an event you wanted to invite a bunch of people to and you have a bunch of Facebook friends. So what you do is you make a Facebook event and then you invite all of the Facebook friends to the event so they all know when and where it is. This used to be huge. Right? That's how people –

my age used to do this. If you were Andrew's age, you remember letters. Yeah, if you're older. If you're younger, you probably use this app called Partyful, which is a lot of the same thing. It's literally just for events, typically parties, sure, but you just invite anyone.

From their phone number or their email address, and then they get an invite. But it's cool because you can send text blasts in Partyful. So people can say they're going maybe or not going, and then you basically can send updates. So you're like, oh, we're moving to this location. Yeah, and it's been true about Facebook events and about all the previous events things where it's like you need to send a message to everyone who's there. There used to be a wall there.

Anyone who's invited could write on the wall and everyone gets a notification. If you change the time, you could, you know, everyone gets a notification blast. So Partyful is the newest, hottest version of that. There's an app. Yeah, so I'd never heard of Partyful until yesterday when we, and I realized when I tried to figure out what Partyful was. Too old. It literally says that it is the Facebook events for hot people. I don't know why it says that.

That is weird. But I realized why I never heard of it. That is true, though. Yeah, we're not hot enough, so that's fine. I literally just, as we were recording this podcast, got a party full invite, and the person was hot. That means you're hot. Dang, you're hot now. Oh, shoot. I think that's how it works. By extension. I think you're right. So that's the current state of the landscape. So Apple comes along, and they're like, you know what? We're a services company. We could make an app here. They make the most Apple possible version of this, which is...

The app is iOS only, iPhone only. Check. Anyone who has an iPhone gets a beautiful, glassy, well-thought-out experience, RSVP, notifications, comments, all that fun stuff. You can add an Apple Music playlist. Apple Music playlist. Just want an iPhone and iCloud Plus.

In order to create an invite. Well, to create an invite. To create an invite. But you can accept one without iCloud Plus. Yeah, if you go to invite a bunch of people, everyone who has that app will have a great experience. But if you want to invite a friend with an Android phone...

I guess you can, and they'll get like a web link or whatever, and they'll be able to RSVP through the web link, but they probably can't add to the Apple music playlist or anything like that, and they won't get notifications.

Probably as easily. They'll have to probably return to that invite link. There's just a few things that don't quite work as beautifully for the Android. We tested it yesterday because I'm on Android. Adam sent me an invite as a test. Yeah. It does bring up like a web page. It's in your browser. The thing that's annoying right off the bat is you need an Apple ID to sign into it. Wait.

Wait, really? I needed to log in. Or no, no. An Apple ID to RSVP. Really? And I have an Apple ID, but I think there are plenty. Maybe I'm missing something there, but when I said it, it said like log in to RSVP and you had an Apple ID sign in. If you're an Android and Windows user, you just can't RSVP to these events. It's just like accessing stuff in iCloud. Like, you know, when you're not on a Windows computer. I mean, when you're not in a Mac computer, you're on a Windows and you're trying to

access your iCloud, you have to do it in the web and log in through your iCloud that way. Yeah. Wow. Which is annoying. That's wild. Yeah, they definitely put their ecosystem in the front here. You can add to a Apple Photos library and everyone can add to it live. I think that's awesome. Works super well for your iPhone friends. Super well for your iPhone friends. Now, your Android friend took pictures at the event too, but...

I don't know. Nope. Don't want to see those, I guess. There's the Apple Music playlist that people can add to. Also cool. Also cool, but they have to, again, have Apple Music. That one's funny because there's plenty of iPhone users who don't have Apple Music. Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. Yeah, it's just one of those things where they were like, somebody else is doing this thing that we technically could take control of because we own everyone. It's so social.

Yeah. Very social thing. I think it's even a step further of we control everyone in our ecosystem and keeps them in there. And then this is one more thing that has that friction of your friends that don't have iPhones. Yep. Let's,

jam it in their face. Exactly. Think about the FaceTime experience. They finally added FaceTime on the web so you can invite Android users into your FaceTimes. Yeah. And it's like, okay, great. Now we can all join a video call. My aunt has an Android phone. What can she do? She can join. But she can't start a FaceTime. And also, it's going to be in the web browser and

probably won't have all of the same features, and I doubt she's going to have the Memoji face. There's going to be things that aren't quite as ideal, but it technically still works. When did they launch that? 2021. Have you ever...

with an Android user in that? Once. I'd never have. I tried it with my sister. Yeah. Yeah. Same reason there's green bubbles and blue bubbles. They can say it's there, but they don't expect anyone to use it. Exactly. And this is a very U.S. thing. Like, if in the U.S., this social peer pressure thing that happens with iPhones is so clueless

clear and so obvious and it's so obvious what they're doing here and many other countries are like well I guess I just won't use that dumb app then it's pretty stupid so this is yeah not multi-platform other features it has you can use Apple Maps to go directly to the party I believe you can add it to your Apple calendar and then also it

plugs into image playground, which I find image playground generally really stupid. However, people do put pretty dumb photos as their partyful photos, so I could see this being relatively handy. Did you see the picture that I added to this event? No, because I didn't join the one that you invited me to. You didn't join? No, he doesn't like me. Oh, you're not invited to the podcast. I'm sorry. No, I got invited. I just did an RSVP. Oh, really?

Really? Yeah. You probably have to go home. Wow. Adam made a podcast invite, a podcast event on the invites app. And,

And the AI-generated photo is a couple microphones. Three microphones. Don't pay any attention to how the cables seem to disappear into thin air. And slightly out-of-focus ones are a little bit convoluted with the buttons. They don't really mean anything. It's fine. It's working great. It doesn't seem to want to do anything. It's just spinning in circles. It gets the idea across. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you. Image Playground's kind of weird. And even with some past Samsung phones, they've done this where it's like the image generation is...

For an invite, I could see that being kind of nice. It's like, let's get a general vibe out here that doesn't need to be super specific. And I will say, as the person making the invite, it was helpful because podcast episode, what do you put for that? They had a bunch of balloons. They had all these other things. But I was just like, ah, whip me up some microphones. The equivalent of this is like OpenAI is partyful.

Gemini is Apple invites because open AI doesn't have access to things like your Gmail or your calendar or any of this stuff and

And it's like, it works on any platform and it works for everything. But then Google swoops in and is like, but we can plug in our ecosystem. And it's effectively the same thing. And I think you should just keep using Partyful because stop. You just don't want to isolate anybody and we need to keep these platforms open. And Partyful doesn't even have ads. Good luck. I was going to say, where's the Google version of this that does put in calendar, Gmail, Maps, Google?

I guess it does have Google Music, but Google could do all of this, and I'm sure most iPhone users have a Gmail account. That's a good point. But would they make it Android only? No. No way. I don't know what any of them are trying to do anymore. You know what? They'd make it Pixel only for six months. And then it would be available for you. That's way too long. Launches with the S26 Ultra. It's enabled by the Tensor G4. And then it would be available on Google Photos for everybody. Totally.

The new feature pipeline. Okay. Anyway, if you like this feature, you should let us know. If you hate it like me, you should let us know. I love it. That's all right.

You don't even have an iPhone. I love it because it gives me one more plausible reason to accidentally ignore an invite that I don't want to go to and be like, oh, sorry, I'm on Android. It just didn't really come through correctly. Sorry, I missed that. Bug or a feature. Yeah. Adam's like, I'm going back to Android. That is the greatest excuse ever. That and a child, but I'm not ready for having a baby yet, so.

Sorry, my baby can't go. You have a dog. A dog is a great excuse. Yeah, but people don't accept it as much as a baby. What? I can be like, oh, I can't leave the dog at home. They're like, okay, so go home early. I can be like, no, I'm not going at all. I have a baby. And everyone's like, okay, I understand. I say, okay, so go home early. Babies are fine. Yeah. What did they do in the Middle Ages, Adam? People still went to parties, okay? Did they? And the babies were all fine.

All of them. Famously. Famously. Famously. Okay, yeah, no, there's another app, though, or at least something that I haven't heard of but I think is an app that Adam's going to talk about. It is an app. I think you might like it, honestly. Yeah. Okay. It's called Tapestry. Tapestry. It is a new app that combines a lot of the things that I do on the internet into one timeline. I'm interested. Yes. Do you know how I know Marcus is going to like this? The two people I've seen talk about it are Adam and David Pierce.

The third trisecta is the only person missing. It's a Fediverse reader, by the way. Basically, yeah. It's like Surf. We talked about Surf a few weeks ago. Yeah, yeah. It's like Surf, but Surf, when you open it up, the homepage is more like a magazine. It's like a pretty kind of, like it's very inspired by Flipboard. This is just, it launches you straight into a timeline. A feed, yeah. Like a feed.

So you can just start scrolling and everything is color coordinated. So if you plug in your Mastodon account, it'll be purple. If you plug in your Blue Sky account, it'll be blue. You can add in... RSS feeds and YouTube channels. Yeah, regular RSS feeds. The YouTube channel one is low-key my favorite feature of this. Because YouTube is RSS. Yeah, it's RSS. And I don't think it's super unique to this...

It's not. Well, I mean just RSS feeds in general. You could just plug in a YouTube channel or whatever. But it made me realize how little I use my subscriptions box in YouTube. Because for

for the longest I just go and I like the algorithm is pretty good now at like giving me something interesting that I want to watch right on the homepage so now I can actually just add this into the thing that I'm using every day anyway I'm always on these like social media apps scrolling wasting my life so I could just put a channel that I actively want to keep up with in there and it'll pop up this could you can put Twitter in this right no I don't know I don't use Twitter no you can only put things that have open protocols what's Twitter oh really yeah

So, yeah, it has Mastodon, blogs that are open via ActivityPub or RSS or whatever. I was going to say, I want to put the couple Twitter beat writers in the NHL that haven't moved to Blue Sky yet. Throw them on that so I don't have to actually open them anymore. You'd have to use their API, which they shut down. I mean, this won't be able to work with Threads either. Not yet, no. Yeah, because Threads hasn't opened. If Threads ever decides to iterate... They won't. They won't.

They said they will. They won't. David, stop putting that into the universe. They will federate. Whenever. Anyway, this app, I've been using it since 24 hours ago-ish. Yesterday. Yeah, yesterday.

It's actually like I really enjoy it for two main reasons. One, the YouTube thing, like I said. You could just throw it in and then anytime a YouTuber that I care about publishes a video, it pops up in my feed like in real time. The second thing is because it's more of a reader type situation and I have my blue sky plugged in, I can't really interact with people, which I guess some people would see that as a con. You would have to like...

You click it and it opens up the blue sky app and then you can like interact with them or whatever. But I like the fact that it's just like a one way thing. Like I'm just keeping up making sure that I know what's happening. Yeah. And I'm not actually like going back and forth with people or anything like that. Like for that, I just open up the blue sky app and do that dedicated over there. Yeah. I ask if you like if you're on the verge or nine to five Google or something, can you get posts from one specific author? Yeah.

Oh, I believe so. If they have RSS feed turned on, it depends on the site, I guess. Because I was even wondering, like, Verge was popping up on here, but I was wondering about the paywall. So I was like, I don't know how that would work. This would most likely just show, like, the thumbnail. Well, the title. The title and the header image, right? And then you would go into it. That makes sense. But that'd still be good because...

if I went to like nine to five Google and being like, I just want to see what Ben Shun's writing about and like have his stuff pop up because the Verge posts so much or like any of those blogs post a lot. But if there's someone specific you're following. Well, that was going back to my YouTube example. My subscriptions box, I was thinking about the reason why I don't use it is because it is just plastered with IGN videos.

And I subscribe to IGN. I like their videos. They do make great content, but there's so many of them that it kind of, and NBA too. NBA is another one. They will post like a million videos. So I just lose everything. I gotta unsubscribe from the big ones. I unsubscribe from most of the channels that like mass post like that. Yeah. Because the homepage is so good at just showing me the ones that I would have watched. Also, I don't think they even mentioned that the name of this app is called Tapestry. Tapestry.

I did, but yeah. You said that? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. It is not a totally original name. It's made by the person or the app company that made Twitterrific. Yeah, Twitterrific, the client. Yeah. So they know what they're doing. Icon Factory is the name of the company. Yeah. Good stuff. Quite cool. I like it. These readers are cool and more people should federate anyway. I guess this was kind of like your Fediverse corner. Shoot. You took over my Fediverse corner. There's only room for one of us in the Fediverse corner. Yeah.

All right. One other thing to talk about. After a leaked...

memo from Meta or I don't know if I would call it a memo or like Meta has a private forum apparently and this was a post in the forum. Andrew Bosworth? Yeah. Andrew Bosworth posted I know man. I don't know. It's a long day man. Wrote a pretty long post about why 2025 might be the make or break year for the Metaverse. I thought it was kind of interesting because of how deep into the Metaverse

We are, sort of. I completely misread this title in the doc, and this whole time I thought it was about the Fediverse. So I was ready for David to go off.

And now I'm just realizing just now it's the metaverse. I'm going to read. I have a couple of questions about this that I want to post to you guys. And I'm going to read the opening paragraph of his post. I'm ready. So it says 2025, the year of greatness. Next year is going to be the most critical year in my eight years at Reality Labs. We have the best portfolio of products we've ever had in the market and are pushing our advantage by launching half a dozen more AI powered wearables. We need to drive sales, retention and engagement across the board, but especially in MR. Mixed reality. Yeah.

First of all, bars. Bars. At the end there. Andrew Barsworth. Yeah.

nice um dang but i guess he goes on then to talk more about like how a pivotal how much of a pivotal moment this is um how people should be doing the best work of their careers this year and then also how small teams can also succeed which sounds like uh hey guys i know we laid off a

And it just felt weird. And I guess my question is, we see meta so recently really focusing on this like AR, VR, XR, whatever you want to call it. They're super deep into Quest. We saw the glasses not too long ago that they feel like they're kind of ahead of the curve on Quest.

When he says this is make or break for the metaverse, what are we talking about? Are we talking about XR in general? Are we talking about the physical meta worlds? Horizon worlds would be it for them, like the virtual world. Or are we talking about goggles because maybe they're moving more towards glasses, which is way more focused on augmented reality and your own world with things on it. Yeah.

I was interested in this. It feels like when you just read the title, it's like Meta's freaking out about anything XR related, but I'm starting to wonder if it's more about like the creepy Mark Zuckerberg. He's talking about this. Yeah, Metaverse. He's talking about Mark Zuckerberg in front of the Eiffel Tower. No, I think it's a... The legless. It's kind of a combination of some of those things. I feel... So...

We have seen some advancements lately in the world of mixed reality. We just showed Samsung's headset, the Project Wuhan, which is, again, this weird thing where a bunch of companies feel the need to show us products before they come out or that in some cases aren't even coming out just to flex that they are working on this, it's coming soon. And I think that this is along the lines of believing that they will finally ship something that feels like it's

a usable, real pair of AR glasses. The Snapchat Spectacles are a developer kit, essentially, right? The meta glasses that they showed us, the glasses glasses, Orion, are not a real product, but they showed them off just to get them in front of people, look, we're doing this. Project Wuhan, Samsung, Prototype-y, coming later this year.

Again, there's a bunch of movement towards a bunch of companies all poised to ship something they just haven't yet. I think it's interesting you go straight to Orion glasses, though, because to me this feels like Orion is their focus, but the rest of Reality Labs and the Horizon Worlds-esque, VR-esque stuff isn't.

is like, this is our last year to prove that this might be a thing. Because Meta, before we saw Orion, was super focused on the digital world that you would be in and how it's so much better to work in this digital world. How it's better to do all these different things. It's how you're never alone. You always have the option to be with people and in this cool environment. And I feel like this post, to me, feels more along the lines of like,

Hey, all of this stuff that we've been working on for a while, we may have just, we may just totally pivot at the end of 2025 and kill the rest of

The metaverse as a place. I think the metaverse is more of an umbrella term. I don't know. I don't see Orion Glasses as the metaverse. You don't. Yeah, but it is part of the mixed reality thing. Yeah, it's like XR. The way I see it, they went all in on the metaverse. That's why they changed their name to Meta. And then when AI happened the year after, they were like,

I hadn't thought of that. Maybe that was, yeah. Well, no, but I hadn't thought of like they literally changed their name to Meta and now it's like, well, we might give up on the Metaverse. Are they going to change their name again?

Well, that's why he's saying this year will determine if this entire effort, a.k.a. naming our company Meta and tripling down, quadrupling down on this VR, AR, Metaverse thing will go down as the work of visionaries because they were early to doing this and they really committed to it or a legendary misadventure. The world would have gone without them and people didn't care about it.

Well, what they were trying to do before was make the next browser or the next Google. They wanted to be the next platform. Like internet. So Mark was like, oh, we can quadruple down on being the next version of the internet, and then we'll own the platform, and we own the OS that we can license out and all of this stuff. And I don't think anybody has used Horizon Worlds or cares about it. It really feels like they never fleshed that out to a level that people actually gave us. Do you not remember when we played the Cheetos Halloween game?

Oh, yeah. That was revolutionary. Right. Other than, you don't remember, there was like in Horizon World. Chester the Cheeto. Chester the Cheeto, like haunted house world. Because remember for the like eight months where every company was like, we have a metaverse division now. And people were buying real estate in the metaverse. Chief metaverse officer. Yeah. Disney had a chief metaverse officer and then they got rid of that role like eight months later.

I think that was back when Meta went around convincing everyone that they were going to be the company that made the Metaverse a thing. And now it's not so clear that Meta's the only one who will have a stake in this new platform that we're... But I feel like the Metaverse as a platform, Meta originally foresaw as mostly a digital world. Whereas now it feels like everyone's like, oh, AI is enabling all of these other things that are just...

XR experiences. Yeah. And so they're pivoting hard to mostly XR stuff because like the Ray-Bans are actually a hit. Like the Ray-Bans are actually selling units whereas the Quest, everyone knows what the Quest is for. It's for VR gaming.

So I think they're basically like, if we cannot make our original 2020 metaverse version of what we were going to do happen this year, we basically need to pivot the entire company towards XR. I think even the quest is starting. Like, they started making way better pass-through with it when they killed the...

the Quest Pro, they were like, "Oh, cheaper version, let's do a lot of the past their stuff, a lot of the functionality in their own world kind of things." So even that, the thing that was their moneymaker metaverse thing is even pivoting towards. Yeah. And they originally were doing that to compete with the Vision Pro, but now they're like, "Oh, it just turns out that people want this more than they want to be fully encased in a virtual world." Did they destroy themselves?

By releasing a hit with the meta Ray-Bans? No, I think it just became more clear what people actually want. Yeah, I think it's one of those things where nobody knows what they want until they try it and they like it. So like meta is trying a bunch of different things and they have the meta Ray-Bans and they have the quest and they're going to make glasses and they're just doing a bunch of different versions of the thing and one of them will be a hit, hopefully. Yeah.

But enough of a hit to justify this crazy investment that they've been doing. Yeah, they want it to be. I mean, they want it to be the thing that everyone... Like, they...

every company wants the next iPhone, which is like probably pretty unrealistic, but every company is thinking that way. Like we want to be the ones that pioneer the next big thing. Yeah. And it will be worth pivoting our whole company because we are now the ones that control and have made this thing that we can profit from. There's a strong irony where Meta is constantly talking about making like Lama open source and how like open source software makes everything better, but yet they won't open up the threads API. Yeah.

So, you know, when it benefits you, I guess. Waveform's been around long enough to watch Facebook change its name and potentially regret changing its name. Bang. Meta is still kind of a banger name, though.

Okay. Banger? I don't know about banger. Could be a banger. Could be a legendary misadventure. Never know. Legendary misadventure is an awesome way of saying. That's a band name. Wow, we spend way too much money on this. And you're all getting fired. He's like, we are either the people who have charted history or we are losers. But we're going to say that in a much nicer way. Legendary misadventure. What would a success look like?

For them. We would all be in, people would be watching Waveform inside the Metaverse right now. Like that's such a hard. Hit products. Yeah. I know. Hit products or experiences that are sort of.

familiar to all. Yeah. Like success for Android was like a whole bunch of people using Android phones and now Google can build inside of Android and everyone gets these things. Hit for Apple with the iPhone was pretty obvious, like huge market share takeover in a bunch of regions and like now they're a services company building on top of the iPhone, like it's this thing that they control, it's a platform for them.

Success for meta is hit product that they can then build a bunch of things on top of slash around that they control. So is the product the headset or the Horizon Worlds? I think what we're talking about here is I really think they thought the product was Horizon Worlds slash the metaverse slash the digital world you kind of live in. You got to buy a product to access that. Yeah, but I think there's more money in that being...

The default like they want it to be the Android basically. I think they wanted it to be the new internet pretty much Yeah, the new Android where you spend all your time. Yeah. Yeah, but now Android XR browser sure literally Android Yeah, I still don't really know what it's for. It's uh, it's for all the headsets that aren't running Metas or apples OS's. Okay, but here's a question. When have you ever seen someone use a headset?

A list does not count. On my flight back from San Antonio on Sunday, I sat behind someone who was wearing a Vision Pro who was gesturing wildly for two hours on a flight. Interesting. I've never seen that before. That's the first time I've seen it. But it's a thing. Yeah. And I imagine that...

$3,000 headset will not be seen in the public very often, but way more of the cheaper $200, $300, $400, $500 headsets will start to show up over the next couple years. And if you're a company like Google or Meta and you know that that's true and you know that this hardware is coming down in price and here comes Project Wuhan and then there's going to be a bunch of other stuff, you want to be the ones that are on as many of these headsets as possible. Yeah. We've been on this –

Ride so many times like back in 2016. I was a VR reporter specifically and I just remember like BMW was like oh we are using HTC vibes to model the inside of our cars and I'm pretty sure they weren't yeah and that they had given one engineer a vive and said try this so that they can make a press release alongside HTC to make it seem like people cared about VR yeah and

And I just, this is like the fourth time that we've had this like VR. Actually, it's probably more than the fourth time. Yeah. I think I, and I resonate hard with that. The same exact thing happened with me. I visited Lucid and they were like, here, put this headset on. You see, we designed the cars with the headsets. I'm like, no. No, you didn't. You did not. Every company wants to seem, one, ahead of the curve or early to stuff. Totally. So if this seems like it might be the future, they'll just proclaim that this is what we're doing. Yeah. And, yeah.

Two, if you are wrong, then it's just legendary misadventure. You just move on.

I'm going to call every mistake I've ever made. That's the title of this podcast. That's the title. Waveform episode 272, our legendary misadventure. Anytime I make a mistake, I'm going to like miss an exit and be like, we're going on a legendary misadventure. It does sound like a choose your own adventure book that they just picked the wrong task for. Yeah. That sounds like you're blazing past the exit like, we'll be good. We'll be good. Banger. All right.

Yeah, cool. All right, well, we got a little more to talk about, but before we do that, we should take one more quick break. But before that... Trivia time. So, Apple Invites is for iCloud Plus subscribers? Like, you can only create one if you're an iCloud Plus subscriber, correct? Yeah. Interesting. What year did Apple announce iCloud? I don't know. iCloud at all? Yep. When did clouds start forming? When indeed...

When did Apple become a service company? Back when the atmosphere was invented. Remember when- When Steve Jobs invented the atmosphere? Remember when we first started having things in the cloud and people would just be like, oh, it's in the cloud. And everyone was like- They would always kind of look up. Yeah. And some- Yeah, it's in the cloud. Everybody knows you can't have clouds without air. So think about when the air came out.

Oh. Anyway. Which air? Five billion years ago. The MacBook Air? I was there when it was unveiled. We'll think about this one. We'll think about this one. We'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by MeUndies. Underwear drawers are like the Wild West. You never know what you're going to pull out or what shape it's in. So upgrade your collection with the buttery soft comfort of

Hey, this is Peter Kafka. I'm the host of Channels, a podcast about technology and media.

And maybe you've noticed that a lot of people are investing a lot of money trying to encourage you to bet on sports right now, right from your phone. That is a huge change, and it's happened so fast that most of us haven't spent much time thinking about what it means and if it's a good thing.

But Michael Lewis, that's the guy who wrote Moneyball and The Big Short and Liar's Poker, has been thinking a lot about it. And he tells me that he's pretty worried. I mean, there was never a delivery mechanism for cigarettes as efficient as the phone is for delivering the gambling apps. It's like the world has created less and less friction for the behavior when what it needs is more and more. You can hear my chat with Michael Lewis right now on channels, wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, welcome back. I want to present you guys with a rant slash take slash I'm probably wrong and recency bias has frustrated me, but I'm going to go on a rant anyways, and you can tell me how wrong I am. Yeah, love it. Okay, so I'm going to open it up with a comment. I think... Therefore, it's like you're presenting an argument to Congress. In the state of our current technology in the year 2025, it is harder to watch television than it was 15 years ago. Counterpoint. 15 years ago.

Counterpoint 15ish years ago. I'm stealing this counterpoint directly from David Pierce because he had this exact point on the Okay, sorry. Oh Yeah Okay, okay. So

It's just cable again. Yes. Which is annoying because we entered the state where it wasn't cable again and you could watch things on like a couple platforms and it's awesome. And now there's so many platforms that it's like it's basically cable then. But it is easier to watch because you can now watch it on more things. Like you used to have to have like a satellite dish.

to be able to watch certain channels. Yeah, I agree. I think I'm most likely going to be wrong about this, but I think the vast majority of different things has created also this weird competition inside of where everything gets posted that it's also caused issues. So I'm going to tell my story. Okay. Very specific.

In the greater metro area, we have a sports channel that hosts four different sports teams. It's called MSG Networks. It hosts the Devils, the Islanders, the Rangers, and the Knicks. There are cable packages around here. Generally, Fios, Xfinity, Optimum. And you have to have a... The MSG Networks is feuding with half of these cable networks. Oh, gosh. Yeah.

The only networks available in my home right now are Optimum and Xfinity. MSG Networks is not on either of those. So my options then start going to the internet. I think I have to be able to watch a sports team. There's so many different ways I can watch this now. You go on the internet and there's things called blackouts because they're local sports teams and they have these local things. So my options then started turning into...

ESPN Plus has hockey games, but since it's blacked out, I have to run through a VPN. Then ESPN is constantly trying to fix you being able to go through that. So my final decision after the last three years of trying to do this is I bought DirecTV Stream because DirecTV still has a partnership with MSG.

But now that I'm streaming and not just a cable plugged in, I'm watching hockey overtime last night at what feels like 360 P because for whatever reason, my 800 down internet is like, nah, this is a little tough to watch right now. Like,

Like no matter what, when you're streaming, it feels like you have the opportunity of buffering or low quality footage. Even though our internet's fast. Yeah. And in live sports or anything live, that's really annoying. Yeah. I can't just pause and let it buffer. I'm trying to watch something live.

So I'm just so frustrated at the point that I used to just be able to like plug my TV, like my TV just had a cable, a coax cable plugged into it. And I watched live sports because everyone just carried live sports pretty much. And now cable is like this insane thing of like, even if you have cable and has like the like VODs,

that half the time is like, oh, in order to watch that, you have to go log into Peacock now or like you have to, that's on Paramount Plus. We have all these different streaming things. Everything is so segmented and the fact that there's all those different segments, now those companies are like making deals with everyone and not having the deals. MSG just reported that they're,

possibly going bankrupt soon and they're still not agreeing to terms with Xfinity and Optimum to give people their packages so like they're literally dying and still not I have no idea it's so frustrating and I think whether I could watch it on my phone or my iPad or whatever I still think ultimately it's harder to watch I think that's a good take and I think you're right and I rescind my opinion yeah wait which side was David Pierce on

He was basically saying it's very annoying. It's more convenient now, but it's harder. His guest was saying it is easier to watch it in more places because you can be at a friend's house and as long as they have internet, yes, you still have to have the...

right cable bundle, but the cable is now not a cable. It is now a platform. So it's easier to do in that sense. But I agree with you that it feels like the platforms that are carrying certain types of content are changing way more frequently. There's having all these deals happen behind closed doors.

And it's like even shows that you're like used to watching, like, oh, it was on Netflix yesterday, but now it's on Hulu. Or Netflix gets like the exclusive rights to stream like a football game and then Netflix doesn't know how to stream anything. Yeah. And that goes down. Or Amazon Prime now has like MLB on Thursdays or whatever. It's,

It's impossible to just watch the couple of sports games you want. It's like you need to make a 40-step flow chart, but that flow chart needs to change every three days. Yeah. Yeah, it's classic fragmentation. It would be nice if you could just have one place to watch everything, but...

That's a monopoly. Yeah, it's fragmented. It's fragmented across a bunch of different services, and sports is a perfect example for that. I tend to agree. I happen to be able to get the channels that I need to watch, the teams that I want to watch. I have Verizon Fios, and I don't watch that many MSG games, but whenever I watch a team, it's typically.

on some channel. So, yeah. That is, I think that's fair. There's a funny meme that's like, oh, I can't watch that. I don't have this thing. And then the response is like, what do you mean, man? It's literally on Fubi. You can watch it for the trial on Hubu. Yeah.

If you go to DDo.net, you can see it on TB. Accurate. Yeah. Yeah, totally fair. I don't know where all these random streaming platforms popped up from. They all sound real. That could have been the trivia question of like, which of these are real streaming platforms? Because literally, it's like exclusively on Tubu and you're like,

When was Tubu a thing? Like, I've never heard of this. It's Tubi and Fubu. Super Bowl commercials, there's going to be a couple more that you've never even heard of. Oh, you're going to ask us. Fuito. Super Bowl. So that's my rant. I hope.

Some people in the tri-state area feel me on that one because this MSG stuff's been brutal. What happens if MSG goes out of business? Is MSG Madison Square Garden? Yes. Yeah, but they have their own network as well. Who would get those rights? They gotta sell that. I thought the thing I read was that like Amazon might pick it up or something. It's gonna be on FUBU. Freebie. Easy. Just have a trial. I kind of hope they go out of business. I'm just saying, but.

Yeah, it almost feels like it's at the point of like do you remember when Linus is like I pay for games and then I pirate them Yeah, because I want to support it or whatever not do that But the pirating aspect is easier actual just doing the what you're supposed to do. Yeah. Yeah. All right Wow, that's how we'll wrap this episode up. Okay, go Devils Giannis

Or whatever. I don't know. Is that who got traded? No. Honestly, close enough. Okay. Close. It's basically like that. Yeah. Okay. I'll take it. I think it's time for trivia. Trivia. So, quick update on the score. Marquez with five points. Andrew with two points. David in the lead with seven points. Oh.

Yeah. All right. First question. Do you remember what the codename of the Pixel 4a was? The 21st day of September. Do you remember? I wish we had codenames. Can we have codenames? Tebow. Tibby. Tibby. Tibby. Shubu. Shubu.

Two you. Two you. Why are they all... I can't even think of a codename because now all I'm thinking is like Treebeard. Trabob. Flip him and read. What do you got? You wrote nothing? Nope. I'm joking. You asked, do you remember what the codename was? So I wrote no. I don't. Good one though. I put Sailfish? Sailfish. Sailfish.

Close. It was Sunfish. At first glance, I thought you wrote Sunfish, so I was ready to give you the point, and then you said Sailfish. Google, Nexuses, and Pixels have always been fish. I kind of like the font you wrote in. Yeah, what is that? It's like tall. It's short and tall at the same time. It's David Sands. Sands David. That's funny because it kind of sounds like David's hands.

Which wrote the text anyway. Wow, but if you type it then it's not my hands Interesting. Okay David's keys. What year did Apple announce iCloud and we're calling it iCloud iCloud With iCloud you can get clouds in your eyes. I almost wrote sailfish again Looking for a year. I'll do closest Delta without going over. Oh

No? This is Delta without going over. Flipman Reed, what do we got? I wrote 2010. 2010. I wrote 2008. 2008, Marques. I wrote 2005. Was it 2009? Was it 2009? The correct answer was 2011. David gets the point. Did they announce it with iOS 5? Well, because that's when they...

Because that's when they added iMessage got added in 2011. So I'm wondering if iMessage only became possible because of iCloud. It was announced at WW 2011 during the keynote. I'm pretty sure that was around the same time. Yeah, that's when they announced iOS 5. Did they have cloud storage before iCloud? Like under a different name? Yeah, the dinosaurs had cloud storage.

But they started them in actual clouds. Oh, mobile me. Dang it. Mobile me. Anyway. Okay. That's it for this week's episode. Let us know again if you have a Pixel 4a. We're really curious. We really want to know. I want to know. I hope you're not listening on it. Yeah. Hopefully you're not like actively charging it. In your pocket. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. And we'll catch you very soon in the next one. Peace. Goodbye.

Wait for it, Mr. Produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Trovan. We're partners with Vox Media Podcast Network and are in charge of music with Vain Stone. And stick around because one day, all five of us will actually be here. Bingo! If the quarterback throws the ball and it doesn't get caught and it hits the ground, incomplete. It just restarts, yeah. If the quarterback...

Throws the ball and the other team catches it before it hits the ground interception Okay, yeah, I need that one somebody who's not the quarterback starts running and even the ball Even the quarterback running. That's what he did right there Yeah, if somebody drops the ball then the other team can pick it up pick it up. Oh fumble recovery Mm-hmm can go run interesting