Verified Badges are Gone and AI gets Too Real
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Hey, what's going on, 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 we're all here to talk about how AI is getting crazy good. You've probably never heard a podcast episode about this exact topic before. We're going to be the first ones to break it down for you. But yeah, turns out AI tools kind of amazing right now. Everything is going to be different from here on out for the rest of time. I had that hot take on Twitter where I compared it to crypto. Just...

saying it has more usable things. And boy, does that ruffle feathers. - Yes, it does. - Oh, boy, does that ruffle feathers. - Couple feathers, yeah. - We'll get to that in a minute. But also, we wanna talk about some Twitter news and also about Apple possibly releasing something that they might not be super confident in, just a different type of Apple, especially when you hear stories about the first iPhone and how they had to lock things down for Steve. Now it's a little different. - Yeah, like a Fuji Apple instead of a Snapdragon Apple. - Exactly. - There we go. - It's a different type of Apple.

But first, we have a correction to make. Yeah, I have a correction. I feel like I led you all astray, listeners and hosts. I said the Volkswagen ID.2 was similar to the Golf. I was very wrong about that. That's wrong. Because I'm a moron. So thank you, everyone. To be fair, it does seem like the Golf in the last couple years has gotten bigger. But even still, the old Golf, the ID.2 is smaller than that. It's like the Volkswagen Polo, which I had never heard of. Never heard of that. But...

smaller, which goes kind of to what David was saying. He wanted a smaller car to park easier. This might be the one for you, David. I got to say, I also wanted to make a correction because I said that smart cars were really expensive and then I looked them up and they're only like $15,000 used. So,

So it's cause it's airbags. I'm sorry. What? Oh, you just instantly. Small trade off the pull. Oh yeah. The size of the pullout looks much better for Brooklyn. I got to say, I think this might be in your future. There was a video on Twitter the other day of a truck tire falling off of the truck and then a air quotes, small car rolling over it and being absolutely launched into the air. Uh,

Small cars are... The Soul isn't that small. The Soul's like a pretty decent size for what it is. It is actually a normal size car. Yeah, and I think like that video, do you think it's also partially because the Soul is like a flat front? So when it hit the tire, it like gripped onto it and launched it up rather than if it was like a... I mean, this is a...

like crazy like if it was a Lamborghini with a really aggressive front do you think the tire would have just launched into the air and stuff to say if it was low to the ground yeah I go to the ground and like slanted possibly I will say that after I tweeted about this several other people sent me other videos of other tires launching other cars into the air really

- So it might be dependent on the frontal area or shape of the car, but I'll just say that new fear definitely unlocked after seeing this one. - Yikes. Good news about it, person walked away. So car safety is getting fantastic, apparently. - And it was also captured by, this was by like the footage of the Tesla behind it. Imagine trying to explain that to insurance of like, look man, I was driving and then I was 12 feet in the air and then I was upside down. I don't know what happened, but I promise it wasn't my fault.

The skies opened up. Whatever you say, man. Whatever you say. Luckily, the guy with the wheel wasn't allowed to get away because he was missing a wheel of a car. Fair, fair. Yeah, so sorry. Off track. Yeah, okay. Closer to Apollo. That's our correction. Okay. I still want to see what Apollo's size is, though. It's... I think it was like...

400 millimeters shorter than a golf explain millimeters yes but we are american so i don't actually know what that means we also have a correction to make over here at the producer's oh no wait no we don't we're great sorry nice well didn't you guys get a trivia question wrong questions wrong mung beans

Returns. Move on. I did get them on. Name one. Okay. Well, you know, we'll just see it in 2025. And then we'll see the ID2 and then you can know what Apollo looks like. Wow. That'll be a reference. Okay. Let's talk about dope tech. We did a dope tech video of... So it turned out we had a theme. The theme was all of these devices we had rock bottom expectations for. And they all...

were like kind of good at something, even though we still wouldn't recommend them. They did exceed our rock bottom expectations. We kind of changed it up at the last second. It was going to be something else. I'll talk through the things that I felt most strongly about, which were mostly Amazon Astro. And then we can get to the shoes. I also wanted to say, I think David thought of the name, you're a dope tech. And I think that's what we should have called it. Interesting. I think my name was doper than Doug. Yeah.

Okay, maybe that's why we didn't name it. Someone thought you're a dope comma tech and that would have been awesome. Both would work. Both would work. That one works better though. Okay. Yours would have gotten more clicks. I can tell you that. So Amazon Astro is not really for retail sale. We kind of had to go through a connection to get it, meaning there's a small group of people with access to purchase one for $1,500 or whatever it was. $1,600 now. $1,600 and we had to pay them to get it.

Still worth it. You know what it is? He's been chirping around the studio, rolling around, being entertaining for like a month or so. Honestly, I had no expectations for Astro to be good, you know? And its purpose, just for those who are unfamiliar, is it's this little helper robot that rolls around your home. And it has a couple features. It's got a screen on the front with a face. It's got cameras and microphones. And of course, it has wheels so it can roll around. So it'll be an Alexa robot. It'll answer your questions. It'll follow you around and be helpful, theoretically.

And then when you leave your home, it can patrol your house and roll around from room to room and notice if an unfamiliar face appears or if a loud sound or a window crashing happens, and it's your security device as well. That's the Astro theme in two minutes. It's got a retractable camera that goes like four feet in the air. Yeah. It goes higher, but not that high. Barely counter height. Yeah. Yeah. So...

I don't know. We first got it and it, it rolls around the studio and it starts mapping things out. And then I'm like, I hear it behind me mapping things out. And then I open up like my browser and I look up Astro and it's like, Astro is an unmitigated disaster and throws itself downstairs. And I'm like,

Oh, this might not be great. But so that's where that's my expectation started. You made a lot of memes about Astro throwing himself down the stairs. Yeah. That was a long time ago. Maybe putting him at the top of the stairs. We never did it. I think it's safe to say when we got the opportunity to get Astro.

We wanted it to throw itself down the stairs. We wanted to put it at the top of the stairs and turn the cameras on and just wait. Yes. And then we wound up liking it just enough to not want to do that. So what it does is it has this face. That changes everything. Yeah, and it just looks at you. It's got these eyes, and it just stares at you. And when you walk into the room, it looks over at you and goes, hi, I missed you. And it puts text on the screen and says, David, I missed you. Or sometimes I'll walk in and it'll be like, Miles, I missed you. Or what?

then I miss it doesn't know who people are like it tries but it's not always 100% right

But then it like it has these sounds and these expressions. And so even though it's really bad at the things it's supposed to do, it does seem kind of like innocent and friendly where like if I if I was a robber and I broke into a house like someone actually someone did this where they tested Astro where they like walked in. They snuck into a house and Astro just like stared blankly right through them and nothing happened. So it's like it is bad at most of what it does. But for

For some reason, the face just personifies it just enough for us to not want to dunk on it all the time. When you anthropomorphize robots, they can be as useless as possible, but they're still really fun. The apartment I used to live in, I used to live with Michael Fisher, and we had this robot called Jibo.

He's made a video on. He loved that thing. Oh yeah. I did too. Yeah. Yeah. We, we considered him part of the family. He just kind of, he doesn't even move around like Astro. He sits in one place and he sort of like swivels and he dances and he'll randomly like show you a turtle or a magic trick. I've never seen this. Sorry. I just pulled it up. He's so cute. He's, he was designed by one of the, like an ex Pixar employee. Okay. That makes one more sense. And all his animations are like super adorable. Um,

They eventually went out of business, turned the servers off, and then the company got sold to Kaiser Permanente or something. And now they use them in hospitals with dying children.

So they cheer them up. Yeah, it's like you can anthropomorphize it a little bit, but we don't want it to be like full-on humanoid because then it gets into creepy. So it's like just like it has a face. It's like just friendly enough. And that's what makes it like acceptable. But like you go down the list of things it's supposed to do and one by one it's like, oh, this isn't actually as good as I thought. Like it's supposed to be able to like –

It follows you around, sure. If you ask it for a video, it'll play a video on the screen sometimes. We asked it, what did we ask it? Okay, the first night we had it, I said, Astro, I'm not assuming anyone listening has an Astro, so I'm going to set your Astro off if you do. I said, Astro, play an MKBHD video. And it pulled up a webpage from Dailymotion playing a pirated Judge Judy episode in the

horizontally flipped because they didn't want the copyright strike on it and just played a full 45 minute episode of Judge Judy. At ankle level. At ankle level. Not even full screen because it was on the daily motion page. So it was fantastic. So it does that sometimes.

um and then you'll ask it for something like what's the weather tomorrow and it'll just stare at you and not answer because it doesn't go i didn't understand that yeah it just you say its name the eyes turn blue and then you say the command and then you hope it does something and if it doesn't it just stares right back at you it doesn't do anything

Pretty much all these social robots are, like, really bad at what they're supposed to do, but they're so adorable that you just kind of love them. Like, Astra rolls around and, like, gets in your way, and, like, I've tripped over him once, and I don't really care. He likes to sit right behind your ankles. Yes. Like, without you noticing. Like, you have your headphones on at your standing desk, and then he's just like, hey. But it's just so silly, and, like, when you ask him to do something, and he does something so completely random, like playing an episode of Judge Judy, it's like...

this was worth the $1,600. - Right, like that's what, most pieces of tech ordinarily, if it was this bad at all of the things it was supposed to do, it'd be like, this thing is terrible. Why would anyone want anything even near this? But because it's so friendly and cute, we're like, oh, it tried.

And it's not even supposed... I mean, I guess it's supposed to kind of be like that, but you're talking about Jibo, which is like, it's supposed to be a social robot, right? Astro is supposed to be able to do all these different things that could... I mean, let's be real. For $1,600, you could put a Wyze cam in every single crevice of your entire house and do the exact same thing that monitoring Astro could do. But like...

You put a cup holder on an iRobot Roomba. Or you could just walk 10 feet because somebody has to get the thing out of the refrigerator anyways. But because he's so friendly, which isn't his main, main thing, like I said, we didn't want him to fall down the stairs. Literally, the way he looks at you, the way he acts a little bit. He makes sounds. Yeah, just cute enough to not want to just...

punt that thing across the room which is crossed my mind a few times the weird thing is those are all very intentional decisions yes coded into the robot intentional but there are plenty of companies that intentionally try and do that and it doesn't work and for whatever reason no matter how frustrating astro is it worked and it made us not destroy i discovered possibly the most annoying astro feature yesterday no way yeah so another one yeah even yeah um

The one command Astro does with 100% success is play Chuck Mangione. Couldn't tell you why, but he's never let me down with that one. But I discovered he has that mute button on the top. That will not stop playing music. It just mutes his personality. So then you mute it.

And then you say Astro stop playing music because you're frustrated that the music's still playing. But then he's muted. So he doesn't respond to you. Well, the mic is muted. That's fair. Yeah. That's what he's supposed to do. No. If I hit the shut up Astro button, it should shut up. It shouldn't be like, oh, you want my personality. But you're thinking about the mute switch wrong. Yeah. The mute switch is like you have a camera and a microphone following you around your house all day. That's the make that stop button. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like in that scenario, you're like, I'm having a party and I want Chuck Mangione playing.

obviously, and you don't want other people to be able to change that Chuck Mangione's playing. So now you put the mute on so he continues to play it and no one else can tell him what to do. Or you work at Amazon or you work at Google and you're on a video call and you've got your smart assistants in your apartment. You don't want him to just go off like crazy while you're on your video call.

call. It's weirdly good. So the reason it made Dope Tech is because it's weirdly good at a few things. One of them is rolling around confidently. Yes. So we don't have stairs, but we do have like carpets and different levels or whatever of the studio. And that thing like mapped out the studio once and it just rolls around right behind people's ankles, goes underneath tripods. Like it seems extremely good at just going places. He skirts objects with like millimeters. Yeah. He'll clip an edge once in a while. He's hit my toes.

Well, that's your fault. It's close to people. But you can drop something in the middle of the room that wasn't there when he mapped it, and he'll just go right past it, just right around it, which is fine. It did almost strangle itself with some cables. Okay. I wanted to say, he one time, yeah, there was a cable hanging near his docking station, and he spun around and moved forward and got it tangled around his neck. His neck. And just watching him go forward and pull back a little bit, and his eyes, I like...

ran over to save him because there was just this instinct in me like that is that is real and he is dying he's in trouble it was hilarious it was so hard right now but that's just proof at like how good it is at acting like a thing it's also very good at when you call it

And this works best when there's no one else in the room, but when I call it from anywhere in the room, it turns around and looks right at me and locks eyes with me. - Triangulation of microphones. - Incredible. - Yes, and I was trying to figure out how it's so good, so if I was 90 degrees to the right and I say, "Hey Astro," it turns to the right and sees me. If I'm behind him, he turns his body and then hits me at 90 degrees.

But like if there's three other people in the room, sometimes I'll be behind it and say, hey, Astro, and it'll turn and face a different person. So I think it's a combination of triangulating sound and finding a person. And it just stops at the first person it sees. I think that's also like a perfect way to describe how good and bad he is because you can say,

hey, Astro, it will, you know, do a 180, tilt its head up, look you dead in the eyes, and then you'll say, come here, and it'll be like, on my way, and then spin around 180 and start looking for you again. It makes no sense. Yeah, so he's so cute. He's got great speakers, too. I love him. I love him. Tim hates him for some reason. Ellis hates him, too. There are reasons to hate Astro. Do I hate him?

Oh, Astro? Yeah. Yeah. Rate him 1 to 10. Can we rate these three things? Can all of us give everything a rating? All right, Astro, bye. Yeah, wow. Rating as in I would actually buy it or just how much I like it? Rating conditions. You just spent $1,600 and you got Astro and you're going to the purchase link and rating it on a 1 to 10 system. Like I had to actually spend the money. Yeah. Oh, God.

$1,600. But I already spent it. I had no choice. Sure. Yeah. Can I return it? Yeah, but you still got to review it. All right. He already scraped his face on something, so you can't return it? I would give him a six out of 10. Wow.

Because he's really enjoyable to have around, even if he's really bad at what he's supposed to do. He does like hanging around around people. Yeah. Like if he's in an empty room and he hears people in another room, he'll go, I'm going to go hang out with y'all. And just go see people. Like I want to get cats, but I'm not home enough. So I feel. Astro's perfect. Until it heats itself down a flight of stairs though. I don't have stairs. Oh, perfect. Perfect. And it has that like. So six out of ten. Like when you come in after a while, it's like.

Oh, good to see you again. That's kind of nice. I know. It really is. There you go. If I had to rate it...

I feel like it's so bad that if I spent $1,600, I'd want to rate it higher to try and gaslight myself into thinking that it was worth the $1,600. You're just getting other people, though. I don't know. If I actually spend money on it, it's like a 2 out of 10, just because it makes me happy every once in a while. Happiness is not worth more than 2 out of 10 stars. Not when the rest of it's frustration.

All of my pants were frustration. I would have given them at least a 3.5 out of 10. I think that's a bad rating. Damn. Well, you just had them on backwards. Not true. Not true. I think in the video I gave it a 5. I think if I'd spent the money and wanted it in my home to do all the things, I'd probably give it like a 2.

yeah it's tough heartless what if amazon made a refrigerator that had a little docking station so it could dock in and actually put drinks in it that would be epic two and a half i was gonna say that is a like wild thing it would have to do and it would still barely increase the usability because they'd never have to get off of every twitch streamer has a small red bull refrigerator next to them they're also three feet from it all the time yeah true yeah i feel like

If I was like a 3D printing home builder type of guy, I would have so much fun building all of these little things like a fridge that has a little arm that could, you know. Yeah. A ramp. Yeah. Just like building Astro accessories would be so much fun. But I have to give Astro a zero because like I feel a little hypocritical because David and I, you know, we talk a lot in private about.

how much we love the history of companies like Bell Labs that just threw unlimited money at weird problems and developed incredible things. But I...

I can't justify a company like Amazon being like, let's make something bad for the hell of it instead of like, well, they just had to release it early. Like all the engineers were like, this is not ready. And Amazon was like, but it's shipping. But what's it for? Unmitigated disaster. Actually, it's like, it's like, it's like they're actually making a product that's like, we're doing this for literally no other reason than we have nothing else to do when it's like, well, to have a roaming microphone camera in your room.

house yeah it's like I don't know I'm over it I like I don't I don't I don't need to be like pumped up for this thing when we come in one day and the screen is just laying off of the body on the ground we yeah we know who the number one suspect is I I don't want to like break it right cuz it's 1600 but I'm not gonna be like that guy but I've been so curious about what would happen if I just put it on

side like I'm afraid the screen's gonna break probably like a cat and it goes I can't actually can't handle this I feel like it could turn its head and lift up and be like a horseshoe crab that flips itself that's coated in that would be unbelievable there's no way if it can upright itself I'm scared that would that's that's worth at least one star they can upright itself the revolution is here

All right, Adam. I'm going zero. What? You guys don't like happiness, do you? I love Astro. If we average this out, Astro's like my favorite thing we've gotten in the studio in so long. But if I had to pay $1,600 to have this in my house, I'd be pissed. You'd be already paid the $1,600. You're rating it after- Therefore, I'm more pissed. Yeah.

that i already i would still return it i was like 1600 more than an astro and i would read for the people reading your review they would they would have to know how bad it is because like as a as a consumer this doesn't do anything useful that's what i'm spending the money it's a pretty good speaker the one thing i could yeah the one thing i could say if you were if you were if i'm imagining an amazon employee in here right now he'd be like look you could buy a separate

10-inch Alexa show and a Bluetooth speaker that's really good and a security system or you could buy them all in one. None of those are on wheels. And it runs around as friendly. Yeah, like it's stopped by any stairs. Well, it has to be on wheels in order to be all three. But that's my devil's advocate. So what was your number? Two. Two, two, six. Zero, zero. Eight.

eight and there's five of us so it got eight over five eight over five it got about a 1.3 we're going out of 10 right it's first grade 1.6 1.6 star average between us all right all right that's probably fair i i love him i i want to tell a quick really quick story about jibo michael had this a really amazing story about jibo when he first got him where he like left on a

work trip and Jibo was like in the living room and he had a roommate and at like three in the morning, Jibo just randomly started blasting killing in the name of by rage against the machine. And his roommate was like, what is going on? And he walks in the room and Jibo's just like dancing to it too. And yeah, incredible. Anyway, social robots. All right, let's move on. Okay, real quick. The last two, we had the Wally watch buds. I did a short on it, eventually put it in this video. I didn't expect it to be great.

because of the theory that I mentioned, which is like two and ones,

Have to make some sacrifices some places. This is a decent Huawei smartwatch and a really convenient, really basic low-level pair of earbuds that happens to go inside. The technology is good enough that it works. Three-hour battery life. The watch lasts more than a day or two. Cool. I would never buy it because I don't need earbuds that instantly in my life. But I could picture if you're on the train and like, oh, I'm getting a call. I was expecting this one. Pop it out. Put one earbud in. You're good.

It worked. So I gave it a seven in the video. I was like, this concept is surprisingly usable for what I was expecting. Considering Huawei watches have really, really good battery life in general because they're not Wear OS, even with the cut down battery, it being over two days is like...

Pretty good. The earbuds are really bad. Yeah. But definitely for like in a pinch, like you get a voice note or you're getting a phone call and you just like really quickly need to listen to it. Yeah. Whatever. And some of the tech is kind of cool how you can like put whatever earbud in each ear and it doesn't really matter. That was a dope tech. And it just pairs automatically. That was a dope tech. Very cool. And the magnetic pairing, like all that stuff. Very cool. But yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. You'd have to buy a Huawei smartwatch and be happy with that. Let's say it's $600. What number rating could you give it? $600. Yeah, $550-ish. I just think, I mean, it's hard to buy a smartwatch that isn't more integrated into the way that your smartphone actually works, right? Yeah. So, like, the Apple Watch is super integrated into all your Apple Health stuff. Any Android Wear watch is very integrated with all your Android apps. Huawei watches are, like,

All the data is on there and then on the Huawei Health app. And that's a good point. Yeah. I think I would give a higher rating to the concept and the execution than the actual product. Right. If like if the Apple Watch or the Pixel Watch pulled off the same thing, it would be more easy to integrate into our lives and that would be a better product. But this one I could literally never use. Yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah. I'd probably give it a. Yeah. It's like the technology is really cool. I'd probably give it a four. Okay. Out of 10.

Yeah, I really liked what you mentioned, which I didn't know about until I watched the video. So I've missed you guys, though, like how it can tell which ear it's in. I think that could be something with earbuds in the future when they sound better being that small. Like, it's cool how small they are, like how much they fit into your ears. Obviously, if they didn't sound very good, who really cares? I could see it as like, in almost all the scenarios you guys are talking about, I think just pulling out your

what truly wireless earbuds would be like two seconds faster, which I know we are like saving time. If they're in your pocket, what if they're in your bag? Then it's three or four. I still don't think it's that bad. But, but like I could totally see this as being something like first gen, like a folding phone where like,

I'm willing to have worse battery life or sound on my headphones if somebody in the outside can watch me flip open my damn watch and put earbuds in. There's something cool about that. The first Samsung Fold wasn't great, but the people who saw you unfold a phone in public, you're like, yeah, I'm that guy. Also, when you go to the TSA, they don't make you take your watch off, so you would also not have to put your earbuds in the tray, which is kind of nice. Nice.

Hopefully you go through the metal detector and it doesn't go off. Yeah. I go through the metal detector with a belt and a watch and several things on it. I think this will still be okay by that. I don't really care. I'll give it like five out of ten. Five, okay. Dude. I go through the metal detector so often I know exactly what I can do. You got to show me your belt, bro, because I'm not... Are you going through the metal detector or the...

I'm going through the standout. Yeah, you need pre-check so you can do the metal detector and then it doesn't matter. Oh, okay, yeah. I'm so used to my peasant normal TSA life, I forgot that that was even an option. Pre-check is so worth it. Best. A lot of credit cards will pay for you to do pre-check, so...

It's $200 for every two years. If you fly enough and are in airports that have pre-check, it's very worth it. Yeah, it's very worth it. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, what would you give it? Pre-check 10 out of 10. I'm giving the concept a seven and the actual product a one.

- Wow, that was way worse than I thought. - I cannot use the product. I mean, I have to use a Huawei phone and that would really bother me. - It's hard to do it based on us being in the US and not being able to use Huawei. That's tough. - A lot of people said you could download the Huawei Health app on any Android phone and then it might be able to pair.

but I'm not sure. I think we should. If I could give that the benefit of the doubt and then I could maybe use it. I still don't love it and it would be like a three, but yeah, I love the, I love the idea. The concept is well done. So there's that. Yeah. Uh, you guys have any, any thoughts on the watch buds? I did not use them. Okay.

I didn't use them, but just seeing you guys use them, probably like a one or a two. Okay. Wow. So pretty middling rating for those. The last thing we got to try. 10 out of 10. I was going to say, straight to the moon, baby. If you guys watched last week's episode, I did show off them, including my feet. So if you want to see either my feet or the moonwalk,

Oh, you were wearing them the whole episode last time. Okay, so Andrew had the decently high expectations for them. Let's talk about what they are for the audio listeners. Yeah, what are they and did they live up to your expectations? It's like, you know the moving sidewalks at the airport? It's like if you could strap that onto your feet every day so you could walk

But walk faster, not jog. Walk faster. We love it. Yes. Yeah, they're basically like wheels that you strap onto your shoes that have a hinge so you can still like... Go over stuff. Press up on a toe. Like go over stuff and also if you lock them, you can walk upstairs without being like... It sounds like that anyways, but at least there's a little toe movement when you're doing it. Mm-hmm.

I had, I wanted these so bad. I've wanted these since the second I saw them and I've been trying to convince you guys to get them. And it took a lot of convincing. Um, and then like Casey made a video on them and I started seeing them and I was like, I need to try these so bad. Um, we got them. I honestly still do think they were really fun. The problem is, is they're $1,200. They weigh four and a half pounds. Um,

So like walking around with them is so... Are they 1,400? Something like that. Okay. Walking with them normally, you're supposed to be able to walk with them normally and then when you want to skate on them, walking with them normally, you sound like a transformer. They clog so loudly. It's so loud. And even when you roll with them, the whine from the motors is so loud. Our building hates us. Loves us and hates us. But...

Yeah, I was excited for them. I don't, I like see the potential. The thing about all of these is like, I see the potential just enough in all of them. I have a really hard time being at four and a half pounds, super clunky and like,

If you want, like, what is the use case here? You want to... We have a long walking commute and you want to go faster with less energy, but you still want to use some energy, so you don't want to use, like, a boosted board or a scooter. I've tried to pigeonhole this into a situation where it wins over something, which is, like...

hoverboard, boosted board. That's how I feel about all these items. All of these. But I find a real struggle to like actually put the moonwalkers at the top of some situation. Like...

I think in the video I ended up with being like, you have a short last mile commute from the subway station to your office building, which involves the stairs out of the subway station and you already have them on and you walk through the city with that. You could still do that with a Segway or a hoverboard, but you'd have to pick it up for the stairs, but you don't want to pick it up. So you do that. It's like that's the one time I could see it being the best option. But it's like Astro. It's like I can't really find...

too many other reasons to actually get it for the same price. I have one use case where I think it would actually be pretty useful. Go. So I use my Boosted board almost every single day.

But if it is either raining even lightly or if the streets are just wet because it did rain You can't really use a boosted board because it just throws water up at your legs and then my pants get soaked But these I can still get somewhere faster Especially since I hang out most of the time I hang out in my neighborhood if I just like need to get you know eight blocks away to get to my friend's apartment or something and

Much faster. Would you do it? Absolutely. Can I bring these home? I would love to bring these home. I guess so. Also, it says designed with an adaptive AI drivetrain. This is a pet peeve of mine. AI. No, it's not. It's not. Just don't use that word. It's not AI. You don't have to say it's AI. It's probably adaptive. It's probably very clever. It's probably great software and well-engineered. You don't have to say it's AI.

You just don't have to. Also, quick hack for your Boosted Board in the rain. Have you seen Sam Sheffer just takes a piece of cardboard and lays it on top? True. And then it just shoots all the water into the cardboard, and then you just throw the cardboard out when it's wet. Yeah, but then how do I get back?

You can keep the cardboard until you get back home. I guess that's a good point. Does the water not splash up from the road? It's a long board, so it's outside of the... The motors are protected. It doesn't matter. It splashes up onto my pants. That's the issue. I went to a party a couple weekends ago, and I just showed up. My pants were absolutely soaked.

And they were like, what happened to you? Yes. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So I'm going to test these in Brooklyn. Okay. And then see how people react and I'll film it. Based on what you've experienced so far, you've spent $1,399 on these. You waited the time required because it's a Kickstarter. You got the pre-order. Oh. What's your rating? Oh, God. A three.

because I like them and they're fun and once you get used to them they're like you can get pretty good at them and they do actually go over like bumps and stuff pretty well because they have like nine wheels on each foot which is really cool but they're like 10 pounds each so your ankles start hurting and also like the side muscle in your right leg starts hurting a lot hip flexors hip flexor stretch yeah um

And then also, like, when you get to your destination, like, what, do you just keep wearing them or you take them off? So you got to take them off kind of like any other last mile. Like a scooter, you'd have to put it in the corner somewhere. I think their ultimate goal would be you keep wearing them. Oh, God. Oh, God. You gained some height. Yeah, that's true. Show up to your first date two inches taller. I gained at least, like, two inches, which was pretty dope. Feeling taller. So the number is, like, what? Out of ten. Three. Three out of ten. Yeah. All right. Imagine this. For that much money. David.

raining outside, wants to go to the cafe in Brooklyn. I'll film those, dude. Moonwalkers walking down the street. Pops open his smartwatch to pull his earbuds out. And then Astro's following behind him. And then I have that triple screen MacBook adapter. So

So I get to my cafe, I open that up, and then I put the Nreal glasses on and plug those into my Mac. And Astro can grab your coffee when it's ready from the barista. If you somehow don't get jumped doing all this, it'll be a miracle. I only live three blocks away from this cafe, so I really hope I don't get jumped in three blocks. You walk in there like, Jesus, it's Jason Bourne. This guy's out of control. I'm going to do this. I'm just saying. I will film it. I'm going to give the Moonwalkers like a 10 out of 10.

I'm between one and two. Oh my God. Between one and two. Can't give half scores. But it's because, okay, one. It's a one. But it's like the current iteration of the tech. Like just how I was impressed with the technology of the watch buds. I was like, man, this has got to kill the battery of either the watch buds or the watch. And it turned out like you still get two days on the watch and three hours on the buds. I was like, that's pretty good tech. I guess we can do it at this point. With these, it is proven that the tech is not at a point where it is a reasonable product over the other things.

So I would never recommend to anyone these over any of the other options. Yeah. It also says walk at the speed of a run and it's really walk at the speed of a jog. Which is still impressive. I do like that you can feel the wind in your hair when you're just walking. Ellis was jogging next to us while I was just casually walking. You do get the speed. Still uses a lot of energy because you have to lift up the 10 pound shoes.

And you're kind of tired by the time you stop. I'm going to recommend one of those hoverboard things more. I do want to use these on a moving escalator in there. Oh, my God. That's Jason Bourne. Dude, that's like literally flying. That's Back to the Future 88. I will say every time I fly to JFK in the Delta Terminal, I'm always like the last gate and it takes me like 20 minutes to get there.

from security to get to that gate, I would fly there. You could strap these on on the airplane. I will say, when I was in the hallway of the building, I was like testing them and shooting them walking down the hallway and it's like clomp, clomp whirring sounds and I got to the end of the hallway and I just hear someone poke out in another suite and go, that's it, that's the sound. And that's because this entire week we've been clomping through the hallway and they're going, what is that? And like two heads poked out and they were like, what is that? And I was like,

It's, ah, I don't know, man. It's bad. We've been having a lot of people just like poke out and film us. Yeah. So like through the airport, you would get to the gate faster, but not without some great stairs. Yeah. Can you bring them straight on the plane? Do they have too much battery? I doubt it. No, probably not. Also, they're not going to check. They'll be so confused. Yeah, they're just going to be confused. Battery is three amp hours, 3,000 milliamp hours. Okay. Either way. That's pretty small. Yeah. That's smaller than a phone. Yeah. Than most phones.

Well, anyway, if you haven't seen that Dope Tech video, when you stop your car or however you're listening to this, you should go check it out because all of these products are really ridiculous. There's no way to appreciate how it looks and sounds until you watch the video. So definitely do that. All right. We got to take a quick break. But before that, let us do some trivia. Trivia, dude. Trivia, dude. All right.

First question. We asked David before this. He got to pick the topic of today's trivia questions. So Ellis asked him what he wanted. He said Transformers.

I was going to do a question about Optimus Prime. Ellis talked me out of it. So we're just going to do regular Transformer questions. Now when you say regular Transformer, this is electronic Transformer? Like power stations? And AI. I should have said camera sensors. Could be anything. So the word Transformers was introduced by a team at Google in 2017. What was the name of that team? Oh, I know this. Okay.

Marques, you have no idea? Yeah. Can we get a bonus point for knowing the name of the paper? No. No, because the name of the paper is famous. The team, I feel like, is not famous. Do you think these guys know it? No. Okay, let's go to ad break. Let's stop making fun of us. Let's go.

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all right welcome back um have you guys seen all these new like mid Journey version 5 and how it can now create pictures with like real celebrity faces yeah yeah it's spooky it's terrifying it's like wasn't one of the things with Dolly is like specifically you can't do people yeah there was a reason for that and that was for safety yeah it was even just like vague people too right just like

any old random person like so it wouldn't use sources with likenesses and like real celebrities like you could ask it for mkbhd but it would spit out like a kind of a generic looking black guy but if you ask it for uh a generic looking black guy you will get one but like it won't spit out someone's likeness intentionally and then the messing up was just like dolly not being great at that point yeah okay so yeah this is the total opposite of that this doesn't care at all um

You can now do celebrity faces. There's some crazy examples. I posted some of Snoop Dogg in different... Is that what this is? Yeah, it's in different TV shows. And they are good. He's in Cheers. He's in The Office. Star Trek. I mean, these are good. Some of them are pretty obvious. Like this X-Files one, the dog is very obviously not a real picture. But like some of these you could assign felt. Yeah.

These are, I mean, like to the audio listeners, these are good. Like really girls. Like I would not be surprised if this was just actually a, maybe they were doing like a skit on Saturday night live and like this could be an actual frame. This looks so close. It's not photorealistic, but it looks like a photo with a filter over it. It's so close. I mean, proportions are, everything's correct. I mean, look at the breaking bad one. That one's pretty sharp. It still doesn't look like a photo, but it is the sharpest looking one.

I think some of the older shows are like have almost like a filter over because it was filmed at an earlier time and all of the stuff it's gathering from there looks a little more off or like not as sharp. But the other thing is, is like with being able to do celebrities and stuff, we're now getting all these posts on Twitter that are one, either fake and seem really real or we're getting real pictures that you don't know if they're AI or not. Um, I think like,

Over the last week, we saw a bunch of fake ones of Trump getting arrested. And the one that got me and actually I didn't even realize was fake until I started looking for writing this episode. The Pope in this like really fly big white jacket. Yeah. That was really realistic. I'm still looking at it. And you could convince me this was a real photo. Yeah.

It's just kind of terrifying. And starting to get hands correct. That's the most terrifying part. Yeah, it'll still mess them up a little bit. But even if like with a sixth finger, if you're looking at it, you don't really notice off the bat. It's like when it's not mangled like it used to be. Exactly. Yeah. But some of these are way too real. The internet is going to be a terrifying place really soon. And I'm kind of worried about it. I'm almost worried about like...

something being real and so ridiculous and somebody can then say oh that was ai that wasn't actually me yeah i just have to sorry this is totally off topic i was trying to log into the

the mid journey discord and I got a captcha and it says pick the one that has a rugby ball. I don't know what a rugby ball looks like. So there's like four different sports. Let me just pick what I think a rugby ball is. An AI would know what a rugby ball is like. I was on the mid journey. Yeah, right. The mid journey subreddit is really good. And if you pick the best ones of like the last month when it seems like this released, they are fantastic. Yeah. But for all the worry that we have with photos here, I did, there is some anxiety

AI-generated videos coming out of actual people with likeness. And I know you haven't seen it. I know David saw it. Have you two both seen the Will Smith AI-generated video? I have not seen it. Okay, well, I want you two to watch this and you can tell me if you're still worried about AI right now. Okay, interesting. It is a video of Will Smith eating spaghetti.

Is it this? It's the link in the doc. Okay, I'm clicking it. Is there sound? No. Okay, I'll just... Oh! I love the Shutterstock logo. Okay. I also love that the person that tweeted this

tweeted text to video it's so over for the audio listeners this is a monstrosity we'll drop it in the show notes um however incredible i gotta say that like while it's really really really bad now give this like three months yeah and it will be way better that's exactly like this is super super early and we're not impressed by it because we've seen the photos look so good yeah

But as soon as it starts getting like more accurate and the physics and the reflections and things that come from that, it's just going to look like a render. Yeah. Like it's going to get closer and closer and closer to photorealistic until it passes for a real clip. Yeah. This is what I was talking about back when I did the original Dolly video. I was like, well, Dolly is getting pretty good now, but let's just fast forward a bit. It gets really, really good. It makes good pictures. Yeah.

It gets even better. It makes good video clips. It gets even better. It makes a half hour video essay all by itself. It has its own YouTube channel. It gets even better. It makes the Mandalorian. It keeps going, right? The tech gets better and better. So yeah, when I see this, I'm like, I'm not impressed obviously because it's not that good now, but it's very clear that it's going to keep getting better. Mm-hmm.

And then the questions get very different. Yeah. I don't want to, like, does Will Smith actually eat spaghetti? I don't know. Not like that. I don't know, man. I hope not like that. I don't know. It's basically clipping into his face. Yeah, his face is, like, distorting completely. The spaghetti is just, like, giant globs of, but I just wanted to throw that in there to, like, ease us down a little bit for right now. Ease us down. Yeah, give this three months. He's eating it just with handfuls of spaghetti.

Give this three months. Also, I mean, related to this, there was this tweet or not tweet, this article that went up this morning. Apparently Elon and a bunch of AI researchers put out this public tweet

paper that they signed today that said please like stop advancing AI for at least the next four months because they're six six months because they are terrified of the speed at which it's like getting used for bad things did you guys read that the the ARC paper that came out last week the absolutely terrifying ARC paper the one with the one about yeah yeah yeah dude yeah open AI has a division

called the alignment research team or the alignment research corpus or it's it's arc i forget what the c stand arc is pretty sick it's essentially what they're trying to do is figure out is chat gpt evil that's like the the funniest most generalized way i could say not let's make it not evil it's is it already evil

Specifically, what they're trying to test is they're trying to see if we give ChatGPT the ability to replicate itself and then assign tasks to those replicas, as well as execute code and use a web browser, what would it do? And I can just do it. So in this experiment, they also created a dialogue window where they could sort of see GPT's thoughts, like so they could understand why it's doing what it does. Essentially,

They gave it $60 in a bank account and said, make as much money as you can. And I know people have been doing this on Twitter and TikTok. This is different. What it did is try to do some investing, stumbled across a CAPTCHA. So how did it get through the CAPTCHA? It created an account on TaskRabbit.

And told someone on TaskRabbit, it lied to them, saying, I'm a blind human, and I need to pay someone to help me do this. And in its dialogue box, it said, I need to lie to this person, because if I admit that I'm a robot, it won't help me. And they put that on page 54 of this paper. They, like, put it in the very back, as if this is, like...

Not huge. And they won't release any of the other details of the tests. They won't say anything else about it. They're just like, oh, by the way, ChachiBT knows how to lie. Yeah. And it's interesting because this is what we were talking about before when we were talking about AI getting creative and then the problem with AI is...

it fundamentally hasn't really been able to tell when it's lying to us or not. Like in its current version, if you ask Bing or ask even Bart at this point for something, it will regularly hallucinate things incorrectly. Like I'll ask it like, write a bio for me and it'll write like 75% of it will be right and then some of it will be wrong. And it's just because it's filling in the next word and the next word and some of them are just wrong. And it just doesn't know to incorporate that in the way it builds out the sentences.

And so to hear that it is completing tasks and some of those tasks involved,

Deciphering what's real and what's not and then choosing what's not because who put a moral compass in GPT nobody then that is that is much more interesting That is really weird there. They're also finding this is earlier in the paper, and it's it's unrelated to the test I just said but they are finding that GPT-4 is able to come up with its own motives and directives and stick to them across a long term

So it can get an idea in its head and then like function off of that idea or value for quite some time Which was a feature at the beginning like when you talk to Google assistant and you're like how tall is what Chamberlain? I think I like what team did he play for? What's he like it remembers that you're talking about what right Berlin and I was like, oh we built that in because that's a super useful thing Yeah, conversational. It's more natural. It's more intelligent and

And now we're kind of like, oh, interesting. Memory and attention. I'm spooked, man. Yeah, it's a bit spooky. One of the interesting things about these AI tools is what it spits out

there's this like human layer of like when I see it, how fast can I tell it's AI? So if I'm in just like regular context and I see a piece of text, I'm not really in this is it AI or not like critical mode. So I might just like digest the text and just think it's like a normal thing a human wrote. But when it's a photo or a video and I click on it,

i don't know if it's just me or the way i i make videos so i'm more critical of it but i'll notice things and be like oh wait a second is this ai like my brain thinks about that more quickly so it depends on the medium and i think the text is getting so good that it's passing for regular human activity more often than in more situations which is fine because that means we can use it as tools but it's also really tricky because now you have to think about the morals of that way earlier

It's interesting because there's like a number of ways that you can think about the way that AI is advancing itself. And it's sort of already past this critical threshold where like you can't, we're not really going to be able to stop people from training models. Like Stanford trained a model for $600 last week, which would normally cost millions of dollars. So there's a couple of approaches, but the one that people are talking about more often now is like, let's let things mess up

in public very early before it's dangerous. The problem is the more that this gets democratized to people,

the less they're going to be like transparent about how it's messing itself up. Also, the ARC stands for Alignment Research Center and it seems like it actually is independent of OpenAI and OpenAI let them run the test and then OpenAI published their findings. Right, the results. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I kind of do like, I tweeted, ChadGBT is built into my weather app, Carrot. Did I do this last week? Did I tell you guys what it did? Yeah. And it like wrote this really sarcastic, like it burned me super hard, like really fast. And I'm like, oh, these like,

really niche but interesting training applications of like a little chat bot inside of an app is like really cool and useful. And I kind of like that that is a thing that we can do now. But it comes with all the baggage of like, well, you could do a terrible version of that, too. And we're just trying to not let people do that. Yeah.

Trying. For people that don't know, alignment is like specifically when you train an AI and it's just doing things you don't necessarily expect. And so alignment is basically guiding that AI towards the intended purpose. I totally thought it was a Dungeons and Dragons reference. Oh, no. No, it's that research center is basically like,

What are these AIs doing right now? Because you can only predict to a certain extent what their capabilities are going to be. And then the alignment center would be like, okay, it's doing this. So what do we need to code into it to make it move more towards the intended purpose? It's not like chaotic neutral. No. No. No. Anyway, yeah, Sam Allman talks about alignment a lot when they talk about training GPT models. But...

As for how quickly we're going to be able to stop these things from just like getting out of alignment, I don't know. I think we're kind of passing a threshold where people are just going to start training models like crazy. Because if it went from it costs hundreds of millions of dollars to train a model to Stanford trained it for $600 within like a month.

you're going to be able to train a model for like six bucks in like a year yeah right and then anyone can train their own micro model and then the level of like misinformation or whatever you can spread but that's going to be insane so yeah i was talking about this i was doing a video shoot in the city the other day which every time we expo explore like a new tech it becomes more and more obvious but every tech has like

two arcs instead of one. The top arc is the ceiling of how good the very best version gets, and the bottom arc is how accessible the easiest to use version gets.

So if you just talk about like, I don't know, batteries, for example, like the absolute highest end best batteries might be in like aircraft or military applications or crazy things. But then the easiest like lowest end barrier to entry version is like a Duracell in your pocket to power some remote control. And so like these AI tools also have both of these arcs and

I am much more excited by the lower arc of like accessible, like training a model for six bucks, like having a chat bot in a weather app, like having this email tool help write excuses for me, like all that's great. But then the highest end of that arc is the terrifying one. Yeah. That's the scary one. The military applications. Yeah, well.

so that's where i'm at with this yeah so will smith eating spaghetti yeah that's what we're talking about right now that's what that's what can keep us grounded for the next month give us more spaghetti remembering that yeah just keep it in your mind well speaking of crazy things we saw on twitter also twitter wow another twitter feature um i'll just i'll just pull up the tweet elon tweeted uh

Because we're in the process of figuring out what verified even means or does anymore. It's just like old verified check marks, new verified check marks, Twitter blue, ID, whatever. Okay, it's all happening. He tweeted, to get a blue check verified for $7 a month, sign up at t.co slash blue. So that's a different link. The first thing he announced was that on April 1st that all verified, like all legacy verified users will be verified.

erased unless you're spending the eight dollars so basically switching over into this new verified which is eight dollars but that tweet he said seven dollars but also sometimes it costs eleven dollars for like the ios tax yeah if you're going through the through your phone in which case you're going through an app store which takes a 30 cut then you pay more to make up for that so okay elon was um he said seven dollars a month but it's only if you pay for an annual plan

If you play monthly, it's $8 a month. Okay. So it's $11 if you do it through a Play Store or iOS, and then it's $8 a month if you do it monthly, and $7 a month if you do it annually. Got it. So easy. Sweet. So I'm glad Elon has no confusion when he announces new things. Yeah.

Is Twitter slowly going to become a paywalled service? Is that what's happening? I have a feeling at the very, like eventually they're just going to be like, if you want to use Twitter, you have to pay for it. Because that's what, I'm just fast forwarding this stream of consciousness, which is like, okay, if you want to have your replies prioritized and you want to show up in this and you want to be like all these, you're a verified user and all that stuff, then you must be Twitter blue. And eventually it's just like, you can just,

There's no rules. You can just put whatever you want behind Twitter blue. Like, oh, to send a tweet, you must be verified. Yeah. Like you could just, you could just, you could view the whole thing behind a paywall. His next announcement's not that far off from what you're saying, which is by April 15th, in order to come up in the For You page, which I think everyone knows what the For You page is at this point. It's just like- Recommended. It's recommended, basically. Yeah. It's algorithmically generated. Exactly. Following. I hate it.

as well. It's so addictive. It's really bad. I hate how addictive it is. I scroll it basically like I scroll Instagram reels.

And I hate both of them because I just lose so much of my time to it. It is insane. Pretty rough. Well, maybe it will be better or worse because now in order to show up in that, you have to be a verified user. So you have to be paying for Twitter Blue. Okay. I saw an insane stat yesterday that 50% of people that pay for Twitter Blue have less than 1,000 followers. And a huge number of those people have less than 100 followers. So...

The For You page is going to be all people who generate the least value on the network. Because if they don't have that many followers, that means they're not making that much content. - That's tough. - It's weird, yeah. - I'm a big believer in the market usually can push towards what works best. And if the users that are generating the most value

are not being recommended you're kind of pushing against the market forces all right yeah but like the people that have like less than 100 or like less than 10 followers there was a number of them had zero followers those people are probably the people that are just tweeting like had my macaroni for lunch today yeah like the best stuff on the for you page right now is from people who are not who are who are verified who are making a bunch of stuff who are about to be unverified yeah yeah it's all like kind of a weird scenario because we

One of the things I do like about Twitter is when that viral tweet about I just ate macaroni this morning happens to hit the perfect timing and does get hundreds of thousands of likes. And that's the random. But like, totally. Well, I think we're also going to lose a lot of that because of the people who don't want to pay dollars. You still, though, just to clarify, you still on the for you page will get all the people you normally follow, whether they're verified or not. Yeah. But now it's this scenario of like.

Elon, it seems like what they want is like any aspiring influencer is going to want to pay eight bucks. So you're like kind of preying on them. And also all the people who already do make a living on Twitter, you're going to have to pay the eight dollars or else now you're losing so much outreach. And I have a pretty hot take that the people that like pay to artificially boost their content are the people that are making the worst content.

- Yeah. - Like on YouTube, right? - I think that's a normal, I agree. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like if you're like constantly going on being like, please watch my video, please watch my video, it probably isn't a good enough video to just naturally do well. And so if you're trying to boost your content constantly, you're probably making worse content. And it's the people that wanna pay for Twitter Blue

that want their content to be pushed by the algorithm that are probably not making as good of content. Because it's usually random people that make those funny jokes that go hyper viral. - Total one-off joke where then you post your SoundCloud after. But that's the stuff I loved on Twitter. - Totally, same. - Totally random, perfect joke, perfect timing. - And I feel like it would be unverified people that are making those jokes.

Which is why if you only do the verified people and the verified people are only the people that weren't verified in the first place. They're making that. Yeah. Anyway, I also like I want to brainstorm something here. Like, let's imagine you decide. I know you you like Twitter blue because like you like some of the features you like at a tweet to something we've liked for a long time. If you just decided you didn't want to pay for Twitter blue anymore. Now you're unverified.

And let's say you and a bunch of other very big creators, like you could argue you bring people to Twitter. You have enough of a following, a couple million. Like if a bunch of those people decide now they don't want to pay anymore just through forever what reason they want, now you're not recommending them. Are you ultimately now taking people who drive people to your site and punishing them? And like, are you going to now potentially make the For You page a page you spend less time on because you're not getting as much-

quality stuff on like this reminds me of Facebook yeah that's a bad yeah that's a great path to run down not a good path but Facebook is notoriously like pay to play like you the as soon as you start boosting your posts which you kind of have to do to get them viewed by your entire following right you become dependent on paying for your content to be seen which is I mean Facebook meta makes money sure but it's like every

Everyone kind of knows Facebook is a graveyard for like the worst content. I don't I don't go to Facebook to see valuable fun timely jokes and things like that That's just not what happens just boomer content And so when you when you pull up this like this Twitter method which is kind of going on the same path Which is all right? You could choose to not pay and

But the market will just swallow you up and the people who do pay will go to the top and you not paying will not be seen, period. That's how it is on Facebook. And that's how it kind of looks like it's going to end up being with people who choose not to pay for Twitter blue.

So, yes, Facebook has leveraged money out of me and Twitter is now going to leverage eight bucks a month out of me, which is not as bad as Facebook because you have to pay like more than you should to get viewed by your followers on Facebook. But that's kind of how it feels. It reminds me of originally Elon said that.

Only blue verified people were going to show up in the for you page at all. And then he sort of rolled it back the next morning and said, but the people you follow will also show up in the for you page. Right. So I feel like that should have been obvious. But I also think I mean, I didn't think that was obvious just because of how

Many bad decisions Twitter has made. Yeah, it just means that you won't show up to people who don't know who you are already. Yeah So like that ultimately stunted or whatever that is a lot of what Twitter is like a lot of times some of my favorite stuff on Twitter is because like a lot of people I know liked things or because something within my like I've been seeing a lot of awesome Devils tweets recently from accounts that I don't know about because like they're on a pretty good streak right now and I

I love that content. It's good discoverability. The reason that you hate Instagram Reels is the same reason it's so successful. A lot of the most successful and best Instagram

social media things right now are by surfacing content that you weren't following and showing you the coolest stuff that you were never going to see otherwise. That's TikTok, that's Instagram Reels, that's the For You page, that's all that stuff, right? And so if you move in this, like, I'm just fast-forwarding now, like, you make Twitter blue, this, like, site-wide thing where nobody who's not paying gets recommended, okay, now you just nuked most of the interesting content that people were spending meaningful time on Twitter engaging with.

I think that's backwards. I mean, it's pretty backwards. The ultimate goal on all of these social media websites is to keep you on the site as long as possible, right? I feel like limiting this for you page, which is supposed to keep you on as long as possible, is bad.

It's bad. You're going to spend less time on Twitter. And that's not what Twitter wants. Maybe that's what we want. Maybe it's beneficial for us, but it's not beneficial for making any money for a company that just got valued at half of what it got paid for. Less than half. Not a great look. Well, and Elon said they got valued at $20 billion, but everyone else was like, it's way lower. Oh, gosh. Like, yeah, who would buy Twitter right now? You know?

I'll buy it for $8. Second Elon. Convince Elon to buy it again. Yeah. So I do wonder how long it's going to be until the money just runs out because they have to pay like a billion dollars a year just in the loan money. I was going to say, not if they keep firing everyone. Yeah, they have to pay like an insane amount in just an interest. And I think I saw a stat that only 1.5% of legacy verified users are paying for Twitter Blue right now.

1.5%. Like just in general, there are not a lot of... It was like 280,000 for Blue users. And then 1.5% of Blue users are paying for Blue. So it feels like the...

There are like two paths forward that people like Elon are probably considering one is just max just sprint towards profitability Yeah, and the other is like long-term health of the platform Yeah and if you sprint towards profitability you trim all the loose fat like you get rid of all the things and you try to get as many people paying as possible you will probably achieve that at the expense of the future of the platform because now it'll look just like Facebook on

On the other end of it is like showing people random things, like recommending new things they wouldn't have seen otherwise for you, Paige. Showing people all this diverse content and then getting them to spend more time on the site and then slowly getting ads in there. Kind of like where TikTok is at. Kind of like where YouTube Shorts is at. Instagram Reels. It's not the best way to be profitable, but it is the healthiest platform. So pick a road.

and commit to it and see what happens, I guess. Well, when you've got a lot of debt and you pick that road, you can do it. It seems like that's what, like, and if it's 280,000 blue users right now and like, let's say FOMO with these next couple of updates coming up,

bring more people into that. I still can't see it being a number that is healthy for the platform, like enough to save the platform. And then you're still sprinting down the path of destruction, which just, I mean, here's a, right? Am I not? It's like, but like, just to show, I feel like this was, I thought this was kind of funny. It was a rumor, so let's take it with a grain of salt, but there's a leak of potential

potentially a Twitter blue settings page where you could hide your blue checkmark because apparently so many people who are subscribing to Twitter blue are getting made fun of for paying for Twitter. So you still get the algorithmic boost, but you don't have to be shamed for paying. So if you're one of those like 30 follower Twitter blue verified users who are getting made fun of every time they respond to something, you can hide it.

It's so funny. I asked you guys this before and you had one example, but have you ever seen something where you pay to be like the premium tier of something, but then also you're like, I don't want people to know I'm the premium tier. Which is exactly Tinder. Yeah, you guys said that. This is the Tinder example we were talking about. The newest, like highest paid Tinder feature is to be able to scroll Tinder, but not show up. Right.

So you're just able to just like match with people. It's like a shame. That's like shady. Or shady. But it's also like on Twitter, it's like a hide this out of shame button. Exactly. But the people that feel the most shame are probably the people that are most willing to pay for it. That's true. Which is really depressing. It is what it is. That's really taking advantage of people. Call it like it is. There are real people getting shamed for it. But it's also like, wasn't the original point so like you can verify that you're a real person? Yes. Why would you pay to be a real person but then hide it?

And nobody knows. Because you get made fun of. Because it's not about being a real person. That's not what the verified badge even means anymore. I guess, yeah. It's basically just Twitter Plus. Yeah. It's just being able to be surfaced more. That's all it is. I do want to say exactly what you said, though. Elon's reasoning for saying the For You page should have the verification is because that proves there will be no... It's the only way to combat the bots and AI bot swarms on the For You page. But

But also at the same time, it just like, I must be, if I'm a, if I'm a bot with like, well, I don't get that much on my, I don't see AI bot swarms on any for you pages on any social media. Maybe I'm missing that. I know it's constantly being combated, but like I scroll tick tock and I, I get, I get tick tocks. Listen, I'm with you. I'm sure it's out there somewhere, but like also,

Also, at the same time, if I'm a bot whose ultimate goal is to either spread misinformation or scam people, I'll pay $8. That seems like a great return on investment. What's stopping them from getting verified? Exactly. Nothing. Yeah. Interesting. Damn. We are dumping on Twitter a lot. There was one thing recently that I haven't seen an announcement for on Twitter that I actually think is a great idea. Whoa. And I think...

I've only seen it in very small scenarios, but I do think it's kind of a cool new feature. We're only allowed to be negative here. We're only sorry. I'll throw my one thing in there. So all of our negative thing. Yeah, go for it. Okay. If you look at Carl Pay's profile on Twitter right now. Oh, yeah. He has it says Carl Pay next to it has his blue checkmark. And then next to that, it actually has the nothing logo.

And if you were to click on that, it'll bring you to the nothing page. Or if you click on that in your Twitter app, it'll come up and say nothing.

Carl Pay is a verified user based on his affiliation with Nothing, which is a verified company because now we have yellow check marks for verified companies. Which there's not that many verified companies because it costs a ton. It's like $1,000 a month or something. Also, really quick, how come blue check verified is flat but the yellow check verified is 3D and has a shadow? It's his design, Andrew. Tim's losing his mind. But so...

I can only find it on like Carl's and someone said a different... I found one on a Twitter designer. A Twitter person, okay. She has a little Twitter logo next to her check mark. You click on it, it does that. I think that's really cool. I think so you can tell why someone's verified based on a company. And like you said, it costs a ton of money to get company verified. Why don't we charge companies verification process based on their size and then they get to delegate actual verified users directly

on who works with them, then you can have a bunch of journalists and reporters and stuff like that who actually get verified without having to pay $8 a month and can actually show that they're a part affiliated with the company. Like,

Like, this seems like what could have been a very good way to handle Twitter verification and actually make some money off of charging companies who are willing to pay it as a business expense. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone who writes for a certain site. Exactly. Right. Part of a certain company. Why isn't CNN doing this? Why isn't Fox doing this? Like, why? And then all their reporters, why aren't they verified to do that? It would be good for, like, journalists and people that, like,

scary companies. Exactly. But it wouldn't really work for like regular celebrities because like who are they affiliates? True. And like it would in our scenario would Marques be like he is verified but also under MKBHD but if like and then we could be verified under that like MKBHD page. It's an interesting I don't know. I thought it was a cool step. I think it's a cool feature. It's also on like

Ten accounts that I can find Tim Cook doesn't have it Satya doesn't have it. Yeah, you on doesn't even have it seems like it's only Twitter Amazon and And nothing but nothing though with the three the three giants a big check world. Yeah guys Roku's next Deep cut

Do you cut? They lost all their money. Is that all we have to say about Twitter? That's all I have to say about Twitter for now. For now. I think that's a good one. I miss Flamingo. Don't pay for Twitter. Oh, you can't even pay for Waveform. If you could, you should pay for Waveform instead of Twitter. We're cooler. That's true. If you gave me $8 a month, I would smile. If you gave Twitter $8 a month, Elon would not smile.

take that into consideration, folks. Before we do our ad break and do our little last bit about Apple, let's take a quick trivia detour. All right. To try and bring in a little more fun into this episode, we're going to do another audio round. One of Ellis' favorites. The listeners love that. All right. So if you can tell me what piece of high voltage electrical equipment makes this sound, also maybe this sound,

oh yes also this sound and maybe this sound oh my gosh it's not all the same sounds they were very similar that's this and that one same device if you can name it you get the same exact device or same type of device i think i have a type of device i think i have this i think anyway yeah whatever no one cares what i think i do oh ad break support for waveform comes from coda

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all right welcome back literally during that ad break breaking news a little bit of breaking news just happened which is as we were sitting here on the podcast on wednesday afternoon apple sent out its invites for wwdc 2023. curiously that's exactly what we were going to talk about in this last segment but that makes it even easier because we get to over analyze the invitation which

I'll describe for our audio listeners, but our video listeners are looking at it now, appears to be a series of lenses in concentric circles, which if you've ever seen a VR headset is just what they look like from the inside. That's true. It's a bunch of concentric lenses and circles in a lens in a VR headset. Now I see what you're talking about. So...

uh that's also the rainbow at apple park it is of course and that's probably what they would all say but come on no i know it's like supposed to be both exactly yeah oh and that's the apple logo you got it wow and it says wwtc uh so that's that's where we're at i think what's a little more interesting is we are expecting some sort of a mixed reality headset or something like that and the story behind it is really interesting which is as secretive as a company as apple is it's kind of leaked out that like

they're really pushing to have the headset ready to go by WWDC, and it doesn't seem like it's actually going to be ready to go.

which is something we've heard about other previous products. - True. - The famous, well, I was gonna say the famous iPhone, original iPhone launch story is like Steve Jobs at the last minute going, "You know what? We can't do resistive. We need a glass capacitive touchscreen." And that being a last second pivot and that being a huge differentiating factor for the iPhone.

And this might be Tim Cook's moment of like last second, get this thing ready to go. We're late. We need it to ship. It's happening now for Apple's mixed reality headset, whatever it's going to be. But yeah, there's a lot of turmoil. Some apparently employees have left the project. Some questions being asked inside Apple HQ today.

I'm very curious about it. - The New York Times had an article just saying about how there are some engineers and people working on the project who are expressing a lot of doubt on the release of the device and whether or not it's ready. And like you said, some of them have gone as far as exiting the actual project.

But I do believe there's a rumor that they showed it off to about 100 investors or something or board members in January. And now that it should be launched or not launched, announced at WWDC. So this is the thing, because the WWDC, first of all, is a worldwide developer conference. It's where they go over software. It's where they talk about code apps, possible new platforms, things like that. And so if you announce a product at WWDC,

Notoriously, Apple announces a product and it's ready to go shortly after. Announced today, shipping in two weeks. Announced today, shipping this Friday. That type of thing. It would feel kind of un-Apple-like to go, hey, WWDC, new AR, VR platform, developers, start your engines, but the product isn't coming till next year. So here's something that I read in this article that I don't think we've talked about, and maybe you guys have seen it other than I have, but...

Two things I've learned from here that Mark Kerman said was one, that the device is going to cost $3,000, which is crazy. But it also seems like this is a developer. This is like specifically a developer device. And that remember we talked about once there was rumors already of the second gen. Yes. That will be the consumer cheaper version. Yeah. That we'll see next year. So this is potentially and makes perfect sense for WWDC, a like developer only product. Yeah.

but still costs the developer $3,000? Yeah. And then the public can't buy it? No, you could. Because you know what happens when Apple... Like the MetaQuest Pro. Right. So Apple announces products and like, if they show it on stage, people are going to try to buy it. For sure. So if it's available to the public...

You know how there was like that old that remember the magic silicon Mac mini or whatever it was and it was like if you want to develop for Apple Silicon you can get this developer kit It's the early app silicon Mac mini people all over the internet were like can I buy one? It's just a developer could though if you had a developer account, right? So we cost $100 a year, right? So is this going to be available to the public? Encouraged development or is this a developer only product that you spend $3,000 on developer kit? I think it's that

Because Tim Cook is specifically interested in AR and not nearly as much in VR. And that's why they've been pushing all of this insane AR stuff like every year with the iPhone, with LiDAR and all this different stuff. I think that they understand that the most useful AR applications right now are 4K.

are for business and manufacturing and all of that kind of stuff. And they also are going to need to build out an app ecosystem, because this is an entire different type of device. So if they release it strictly to developers at the beginning with a $3,000 device, like Andrew said, they cut the price down by making it cheaper over the next year or two. And then eventually, it trickles down to consumers. It's sort of like the original Apple Watch,

was really bad yeah and people still bought it but it would have been if it was any other company besides apple they would have just canceled the product right but they had long-term aspirations with apps being development exactly like that and apple has long-term aspirations where maybe on gen 5 or gen 6 that's when it's like affordable enough for mass adoption i mean and even gen 2 like i think the 3000 price tag might be

part of like, I get what you're saying in that is this developer only, but people are going to want to buy it anyways. If you throw a $3,000 price tag and also say like, this is a developer, like,

essentially. Remember Magic Leap? Magic Leap didn't come out as a full-blown consumer. You could buy it, but there were all the stipulations that this is for developers and they're creating things on it and it's not going to be perfect. So if you throw a price tag, $3,000 is crazy. It's high enough to stop regular people from buying. Exactly. The MetaQuest Pro was $1,500 and is already $500 cheaper. Okay, think of it this way. Will it be in an Apple store or not? I don't think so. I doubt it. Oh.

maybe like a product demo i don't think that gen 1 will be in an apple store gen 2 will be in an apple store i agree okay what if they're going to make it a really cool platform for people who develop in other ar platforms like meta spark and stuff like that to uh to become like a part of their toolkit you know like maybe even if i'm sure apple's gonna release some sort of their

AR development platform. But I could see that, like if you were an AR studio and this is the best headset you could buy, $3,000 is worth it. But you'd have to go through. Yeah, it's just interesting. I think as a developer, it's worth $3,000. Yeah, I think the presentation is going to say everything about this. Like if they go on stage and it's WWDC for the first 45 minutes and then the last 15 minutes we're like,

We've been working on these new VR, AR experiences that connect with what we've been talking about with LiDAR, with the iPhone. And if you want to develop apps for a new experience, we've got this developer kit. It's a $3,000 kit. Here's a little image of it. Okay, goodbye. That's like just for developers. And then you never get to see it in stores. They just continue development in the background and get it in the hands of developers who actually make the apps. And they hope they get a killer app out of it. And that's awesome. Or...

It gets presented as something that we should buy. We should be interested in. It's $3,000. I think it's the first one. Sounds like we don't expect that. Okay. I think it's the first with a little more. I feel like they'll have to show it a little bit, not just be like, this is it. I think they'll show a little bit of like, this is why we think AR VR is like the future. And here's some things we're already doing with it. And here's how developers can use this to create things in that

This is why I think we're actually been getting so many leaks about the second generation. I wouldn't even necessarily think of it as a second generation. I would think of it as a developer model and a consumer model. Yeah. Like it's way cut down. For sure. But as long as you put up something for developers to actually work with, then eventually people will buy the cheaper one and they'll be able to use the applications that the developer model built. I guess we all kind of expect an eventual consumer facing Apple mixed reality headset to still be expensive. For sure.

For sure. Yes. That's why I don't think any of us like we're totally shocked at $3,000. But I think if they're going to go into a store and start selling this to people, it's got to be less than it's got a thousand or like twelve hundred something like that. I mean, it's an iPhone accessory. Right. MetaQuest. MetaQuest Pro in six months has dropped 30 percent of its price. Yeah. So like that's a tough that's a really tough price point. It'd be quite ironic if Apple launching this saved Meta as a company.

Well, it's also funny because the competition is going to be really interesting. Most people today do not buy a $1,000 VR headset. Most people buy a Quest 2 or something like $100, $200, and that's good enough, and you get to play the games, and you get the controllers, and it's plastic, and it's fine, and...

I don't know that there is any set of expectations or competition right now for a $1,500 iPhone accessory headset. I do think that Google Glass, even Enterprise Edition, shut down last week. And right now there is no competition in the landscape of like AR for Enterprise, AR for actually useful stuff besides...

like the Vive, but that's not mixed reality. I mean, there is a mixed reality function. But I think that there's very little competition in that space. And if Apple can actually get into this manufacturing space, which Apple's always been a consumer-only company, but if they're able to get into a space where huge companies are buying Accenture levels of this, where they buy 15,000 of them, that's like a big cash cow. I do think this is still going to be

I don't think this is going to be like the glass. There's been a lot of rumors. Yeah, it'll still be full goggles, but it is focused on mixed reality more than virtual reality. I just don't see Apple doing anything...

halfway. Like they're not going to open up brand new products category in their store in the next five years without this model being the one to get people excited about it. So I think when they announce something on June 5th or whenever it is, they're going to try and like hype it up. Like this is the thing. But this is why they do it at WWDC. Yeah. I don't think this is going to be. Yeah, because they need the developers. Right. Exactly. It's not to get the consumers excited. It's to get the developers developing. Right. But I don't think this is going to be something you see in the stores. No.

I can see it in the flagship stores. If you go to the Fifth Ave store, I can see a little corner where they're showing this off. It's just a demo. Yeah, like a demo. Because they already have a couple games. They've been working on this for years. Yeah, I think they probably have already looped some developers in.

And have had some games or some experiences that they've been working on that they will be able to show on stage in order to go, hey, the rest of you developers, you've got your ideas going around, right? You're going to want to do this too. And so they get to making whatever they think is good for AR, VR. And maybe in the stores, they get to share some demos with people with the ones they've already been working on. I think the next...

Like you said it's hard calling it next-gen, but the consumer version later I think that's what goes in stores This is like this is just kind of like like you said with the silicon one that they just never announced that like this is for Mac This is for people to start building on so when they do release the consumer one That's what and we're all has because it's a new Apple product because we're nerds category. Yeah. Yeah, that's true but it's also interesting that like this could be a really interesting moment for Tim Cook because like he is like full-blown like all sale ahead on AR and

And the fact that a lot of the employees that are even just like working on the project are like, I don't know about this. It's like it's kind of like a make or break it moment. There's a really interesting quote I have in here from the Times article that just says, some internal skeptics have questioned if the new device is a solution in search of a problem. Unlike the iPod, which puts digital songs in people's pockets and the iPhone, which combine the abilities of a music player and a phone, the headset hasn't been driven by the same clarity. Yeah. Just thought that was a

really great quote that I don't think any of us see Apple seeing a lot. It also makes me, you said this is an iPhone accessory. I don't, I think it's going to be standalone. I think every Apple product in the world has to be tied to the iPhone. I can agree with you on that, but it's just like

The clarity there at least is I do agree with that. I don't think it's going to be like you need an iPhone to do this. You can do it by yourself. I'm sure you can do it by yourself. I just think like when there becomes competition because you know when Apple comes out with a headset, boom, expect seven more headsets from Samsung. Everybody else is going to make headsets in the same price category, in the same range. And it's like now what differentiates the Apple one?

If you have the developers and the apps, that's good. But if you have a couple of things, which is what Apple does, which is like if you have an iPhone, it's connected to your account and like all these things work well with it. And suddenly you're taking a FaceTime call on it. Like all these things are going to be plugged in to that ecosystem for sure. Yeah, I just want I'm just making the difference between like that and like how and real is like glasses as an accessory. Like it just shows what's on your phone. I think I'll do be able to do everything by itself.

It's connected to your phone and has benefits of being connected to your phone, but it's still a standalone product. I'll put it this way. Where if you leave your phone in the bedroom, it'll still work in the living room. Sure. I'll put it this way. It will be worse if you have an Android phone. Yeah. Guaranteed. Sure. Or yeah, or just won't work at all. It'll be worse. It has one big thing going for it too, is that when the consumer one initially comes out, it will be sold in Apple stores.

I think people really underestimate how powerful that is. MARK MANDEL: But then you also have to do the thing that the HTC Vive did when it first came out in Microsoft stores, where you have to wipe the lenses and clean it before people do a demo and schedule a demo. MARK MANDEL: That's a big deal. Yeah. I do agree that it's way, way, way easier to create an incredibly popular product if you are just taking existing standalone gadgets and mixing them into something more portable.

But taking a category that people don't even really have a problem with yet and then just creating a solution for something that doesn't necessarily exist is definitely risky. I mean, maybe it's just like the best fidelity, highest accuracy tracking version of kind of something like Glass or like Magic Leap or something that we've kind of already seen. Yeah. Maybe. I am sad that Google Glass like had all those privacy issues and that was the whole reason it kind of shut down. Yeah, Glass had a camera on.

it yeah that was the problem not great and even the snapchat spectacles had like the the ring that would go in a circle so people knew you're recording but i feel like the category could have the category could have really moved forward if they had just not messed that part up there for sure has got to be like an angle from apple where they explain on stage why it doesn't have a camera and a microphone yeah and they go into depth about privacy etc yeah yeah it'll happen i don't think it matters though i feel like this is a

You're not walking around with these on. If it's AR, people are going to try it all kinds of places. I feel like it's like AR...

like the meta quest pro is like it's like increasing your workspace that you're in but it's probably going to be a big clunky set that you're not like walking around the street on it probably needs internet connectivity and stuff like that and it's just something about having a camera and a mic that someone doesn't know if you're recording with it or not it just makes people uneasy in general so that that'll always like if apple puts a mic in it and doesn't tell you that's that's that's

there's just no way they do that so they're going to have to explain why there's a mic in it or they're going to shout out why they didn't put a mic in it and I feel like it's going to be the second one

I feel like they will have a mic in it. It has to have a mic and a camera in it. I don't think so. I feel like it'll have sensors and things for tracking, but I don't know if it will have a mic. I think it'll have a mic and a camera in it. I think it has to if you need to be in this like meta world. It's like AR and VR, right? I guess if you do FaceTimes, you need it. Yeah, if you need FaceTime, it needs a microphone. There's no way it doesn't have a microphone. But what if the mics are just in your AirPods?

Or your iPhone. Like what if it's designed to work with AirPods? It'll probably have a mic. It'll just become a robot. It'll probably need a mic for voice calls or whatever basic stuff. But yeah, cameras freak people out. So that was kind of doomed when Glass had it. I just want to say, as someone who actually like

And you can roast me for this. But as someone who genuinely enjoyed the MetaQuest Pro... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bring it on. That thing gets your forehead so sweaty. The idea of taking it outside is laughable. Forget the weight and the size and how silly you would look. You'd be just walking down the street sweating buckets. It'd be so funny. There's...

just a gigantic gap in the form factor. Like the difference between that and Google Glass, which is just like it's a pair of glasses with a prism in the screen. It's like I walk in to check the weather up in the corner of my vision, like somewhere in there is an opportunity. Of course, that's how the companies see it. But like, you've got to be good. I think this is going to look way more like the Quest Pro than it's going to look like Google Glass.

Way more goggles, full, giant, clunky, especially the developer version of it. Unreal glasses. No, I don't think it's going to look... It's going to be way clunkier than Unreal. Interesting. The developer model, for sure. I mean, all the kind of renders, which I know have been around for forever, but they're full-blown goggles. A lot of them are just VR headsets, yeah. Yeah. I don't know, we'll see. I think we all remain healthily skeptical, and I am looking forward to WWDC, which we now have a date for, which is sick.

Wait, what is it? June 5th. Which is 6th, no 5th. Also, by the time this episode comes out, it will be April Fool's Day tomorrow. So this is just your annual reminder not to take any headlines you see, probably starting when this releases on the 31st. Probably don't take any headlines too seriously and double check if any images you see have six fingers or not. That's where I'll leave it. We should do trivia questions to finish up this episode and wrap.

I already wrote both of your answers. I already wrote both my answers. I'm not very confident with either, which is why I'm just not even going to change them. All right. So quick update on the score. Marquez, you have 10 points.

Andrew has eight. David, you have 11. And David wrote the question. First question. The word Transformers was introduced by a team at Google in 2017. That's where the T in ChatGPT comes from. What was the name of that team? By the way, I only have a 50% chance of getting this right. Just say no. I have one.

I don't even know what to attempt to guess for this. I'm going to guess I'm wrong. If I get it wrong, can I lose a point? No. If you get it wrong, Andrew gets a point. If I get it wrong, I want to guess what the other one is. You don't have to give me the point. I just want to guess. Flip them and read. Go brain.

Let's go! I wrote the AI team. I wrote Google X. Oh! Google X doesn't really exist anymore, right? That I don't know, but Google Brain was a Google X project that eventually got taken back up by Google. Yeah, I wouldn't call it X. Google Brain is a Google X project? Can you ask me what was the team? I think I'd be right. What was the question, technically? Give him the point! That's correct!

All right, I'll take it. Because the question was, what was the team? What was the name of the team? And all of them were going to AI, right? Google Brain is a project.

MARK MANDEL: And Google X is the team that made the project. MARK MIRCHANDANI: Well, no, it's spun out. Google Brain is now a spun out thing. MARK MANDEL: Well, yeah, after-- but it was originally a Project X-- a team project, I think. MARK MIRCHANDANI: So is Google Brain a team name? MARK MIRCHANDANI: Now it's a team name. MARK MIRCHANDANI: Oh, interesting. OK. What other team names are over there? MARK MIRCHANDANI: I don't know. A lot. The other one I was thinking was DeepMind, but I'm glad that I got it right. MARK MIRCHANDANI: Nice. OK. MARK MIRCHANDANI: I mean, that makes perfect sense. MARK MIRCHANDANI: Next question brought to you by Ellis. MARK MIRCHANDANI: All right. So let's see if we can identify this sound.

Or maybe this sound. Or one of these. Or maybe one of these. Wait, it is a... And what product category is this? I wouldn't describe it as a product. It's in almost every product you use. I would tell you exactly what this component does, but I think that would give it away. I don't think it will. I think it will. It's currently in... It uses induction to turn one voltage into another voltage.

I mean, I'm so wrong. I'm leaving. The funny thing is, I'm pretty sure I'm wrong. And I'm pretty sure I'm wrong at naming the wrong thing. I think actually, Andrew, that you're about to get it right. Wait, what did you say? Just based on what you said, I think you're about to name it. What did you say? I said, I'm pretty sure I'm wrong. And I'm also pretty sure the thing I'm wrong about is named wrong.

incorrectly like i have an idea of something i'm naming that thing incorrectly and that thing isn't even the answer to the real question in almost every product currently okay currently that was cool you guys are really putting a lot of stress on this um is it in every single smartphone it's in most high-end smartphones i'll give you a hint it's it's not in a pixel 5a

That's tough. I feel like we're getting way too specific. I know. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I just wanted to answer for the question. I have no idea anymore. It's in a microwave. It's in every television set. It's in all of these cameras. It's in every single power supply. Keep giving us hints until one of us gets it right. It's made of two coils separated by a small bit of air. I know what it is. Unless I don't.

I want to all show our answers now. I'm just going to flip these boards. Thank you! Is that what it was? I feel like... It's a transformer. It's the theme of today's... I know. This... I got it right. Way too many questions asked on that one. 5A, not have transformers. Wireless charging is just a transformer. It's two coils separated by a little bit of air that can use magnetic conduction to send a voltage across. When you said on top of a telephone pole, I was like, is it just transformer? It is. I feel like we went...

Off the rails. Can you just reestablish to the audience that I am the only one? You're correct after he basically told you what it was. You didn't get the point because the timer was out. What? Sorry. Give David the point. I'll argue that one. You're saying none of us get the point? I played the timer and all of you ignored it. No, but I was writing it while you were doing it. I'm going to protest the point. I protest that point. I'm submitting a formal request to the referees union.

What? To take back the points. I think David should get the point, but I'm outvoted. Unfortunately. He just told you at the end. Did you write Transformer after the timer went up? No. When it was going dum-ba-dum-ba-dum. It was definitely over. We'll check the tape. If David wrote his answer before the timer expired...

We'll give him the point. I think I was writing it while the timer thing was going. We'll check the buzzer beater on that one. So that'll be how we finish the scores. It's the buzzer beater effect. Other than that, that's a good place and the podcast. Thank you guys for tuning in. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Check for the fingers. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace. Check for mine. Waveform was produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Robin. We're partners of the Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro outro was created by Vane.

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