Does Marques Hate OnePlus?

returning to South by Southwest on March 13th this year for another live episode of the waveform

podcast on the box media podcast stage. Last year, we had a ton of fun feeling some really smart questions from the audience. A couple of dumb ones. Look, yeah, okay, maybe one dumb one, but I think that actually came from David. Either way, it was a lot of fun and we're excited to do it again. It's all part of the Vox Media podcast stage at South by Southwest, presented by Odo. Visit voxmedia.com/s-x-w to pre-register and get 15% off your South by badge purchase.

So that's voxmedia.com/s-x-s-w. Topsy there. Each individual piece is sick. Good dynamic. We're the walk dude. That like, you do nice. How old is the box dynamic? Yeah, what is up? People of the internet welcome back to another episode of The waveform podcast. We're your host. I'm Markets. I'm Andrew.

I'm David. We're actually renaming the podcast this week to the crash out podcast because we've realized that everything we're talking about this week, someone is going to crash out about. We'll get there. We have, today we're talking about TV ads. You might have seen some if you watched like a big bowl event or something recently. We've got chatchip ads. We've got car ads/teasers. We've also got our friend Shen on to explain batteries a little bit better and we're going to wrap out with just

Andrew crashing out. Just just just crashing out. It's going to be great. But first, make sure you

subscribe. Make sure you follow on whatever podcast player you use. We're aware that many of you use Apple podcasts or Spotify. But there are others. I use Pocketcast on Android. And there are

“even others. Yet others that if you're using them, you should rate our podcast on because that”

helps us out a lot. So we appreciate that. Yeah. Okay. It says here first thing is weather apps. And usually I crash out about that. If you don't mind, this is not crashing out. Okay. I'm just going to really fast. Yeah. Nice job. Do you remember like two weeks ago we were talking about weather apps and I said the Google one is like literally the worst and wrong all the time. But it does have the frog. I do like the frog. What's the frog? Wait, does not have the frog anymore. The little corner

animated frog? Yeah. That's a few Google the weather. What? Not like it. Oh, I think you're right in the Google weather app though. I don't think it was. Well, or baby. Well, all right, P frog. Lots of people, tons of great suggestions. Here's the two I landed on and I'll let you guys check them out. One is called, what? It's just as weather. I think it's called breezy, right Adam breezy. You have the downloader to download it on Android, which is something that I learned about. Wait, this is not on a Play Store?

No. No. I have to download F-Droid from the Play Store and then in F-Droid search for breezy. Here I've worked out where you look at this. That looks nice. Solid UI. You know, it does have kind of the looks like the Google weather app on the bottom. But I believe you can change source source. That's nice. I'm not 100% sure about source. But it does tell me where the source is coming from the bottom. One that you can change the source

is actually an email we got from somebody who I believe is 14 years old and created this app. That is on the Play Store and I think the App Store. What am I doing with my life? Overcast. It's called over Moro. It's super simple. It's like material. You based in terms of the design and everything. It looks great. It's been working well. I have multiple different sources

“right at the bottom that I can pull from. The only thing is, if you are in the US and go to it,”

just remember it's in Celsius and it's just been so cold here. It took me like three days before. No, no, no, no. You can switch to Fahrenheit. But if you fall into Celsius, but it's been so cold here seeing single digit numbers to me was like, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, three. It's been three. But as it was zero the other night. Yeah. For for everyone else in the world that is negative 17.8. It's Celsius. It's 40 degrees Fahrenheit right now and it

feels like I could wear short sets. It's because I'm so awful. That's how cooked we. That's three degrees is the normal. It's literally freezing and I'm like, yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you for all the weather suggestions. Now, I just need the weather to not suck. So I can look at the apps more happily. It's getting better. I did that groundhog packs the Tony Phil, which we didn't talk about last week and everyone was mad because we're the New Jersey podcast. It didn't

really matter to us. I thought he was Pennsylvania. He's in Pennsylvania. He did shout out six more weeks of winter for those who were wondering. But he lied about that though. Yeah, that lie because they fricking which. Yeah. What you mean? Because it instantly is a party weekend. It got warmer. Yeah, but that's winter weather. No, man. I saw what we had. If it was spring, you'd be like,

“it's still only 40. Yeah. I don't know, man. But it is my spring. I'm early February. That's what I'm saying.”

You either say, well, it's about to be spring or we got six more weeks of winter, then it's spring. Though this was spring and it was 39. We'd be a little less than I will take every opportunity

to remind people that we are from California. We have finally been accustomed to this kind of weather.

I took my gloves off this morning. Like on my walk, I was like, huh.

I was a PG podcast. Let's come down. I was a T-shirt this morning. I went to my outdoor building, went inside the building. Got a coffee and everyone was like, you're not T-shirt. Bringing an ice drink, too. And I was like, yeah. I will. Nice. We love talking about the weather. You know what's related to the weather? We can do better than that.

“You know, a lot of weather apps make you pay extra for premium features. That's what it's just about to do.”

You know what else does? Pretty much everything. Everything. Everything. Everything. Everything all thinking are like. But the headline we have to react is that YouTube music now requires premium for lyrics. Yeah. I don't care. Do you guys care about lyrics

in your music? It's about the principle. I said, okay, I did a poll about this on on social media

because I was curious because I was like, I don't really care. And when I look up lyrics, I usually just do their cool. Yeah. But apparently a lot of people use lyrics in the app. I have many friends who when we are driving listening to music, they will grab my phone and look at the lyrics in the app on the phone. It is popular for people. So, okay, here are the results of my poll. And I said, is this a lucrative, our lyrics a lucrative feature for you and

something that you would pay for in a music app. Out of 691 votes, 71 people said they would not pay for it. But 18.8 said that they would pay for it specifically just for lyrics. And 19.6 said that they would pay at the right price. Just to clarify, you're talking about percentages, not people. Sorry, percentage point 6 people. Yeah. Oh, sorry. This is 90. Yeah, 9.6. 90. Yes. Yeah, 18.8, percentage said yes. 9.6 says yes at the right price. Honestly, 28% of people being willing to pay

for lyrics in their music app was more than I thought it was. Way more than I expected. I'm holstering so many panel strokes about being free on Google. Okay. I mean, sometimes I open Spotify

“and I scroll down and I see the lyrics and I'm like, oh, that's what he was saying. I'm like,”

oh, cool. But I guess I'm not someone who looks up lyrics then. But when I do my instinct to see Google it. Yeah. So I guess it might be because we're old though. Oh, interesting. I mean, we've been doing it for a long time. So I kind of like just pretending like I know what the lyrics are and mumbling through this song. That's really so good. I just crazy. This is like a crazy run. You say it's like her work is Zuckerberg. I don't know. That's the word. That's probably the word.

I'm even saying my mumbling, right? Yeah. I mean, I also just like fake it till I make it and then eventually I get annoyed enough that I like the most. And then I'm usually disappointed because they're not as good as I envision they'd be. Yeah, most of the music I listen to, I'm not like listening to the words specifically. Usually it's the beat and then the lyrics are words like happened to me. I sound nice, but I'm not like really I'm a lyric for sure. I have kind of a funny

story about that. It'll be really quick. Do you know the song "Wonderful by" I'm going to go out on a limb and say "Everclear" haven't heard of it. Okay, there's this song called "Wonderful by Everclear." Yeah. And the course, just like everything is wonderful now, but the whole song is really sad and have like trying to convince himself. And I used to listen to it all the time because I thought it was, I'm just listening. My mom took my car once and came out and she's like, "Are you okay, Andrew?"

The song was like blasting in your car, lyrics are pretty dark, everything going good. It was like, yeah, I love, yeah. There's a word for when the music feels happy, but the lyrics are really depressing. That's this song. Yeah. It's open to that I close my eyes when I get to do sad. I think thoughts that I know are bad. And somehow none of that comprehended in my I'm like just snapping to it. Like that's like all salsa songs. They're all about really dark

things and then the band just makes you dance. The story around this is that Google is making

“lyrics a premium feature where you have to pay for you to premium. They're really well, if you”

have to pay for YouTube music premium. But they're really trying to get people. They're really just trying to import people to YouTube premium because YouTube premium is barely more expensive than the YouTube music subscription. Anyway, users who don't pay will get five free lyrics before they're asked to subscribe. And it's not like permut songs. Yeah. Songly. Oh, thank you. I'm going to get

for five or five words. Can I get the second word? Oh, nice. I wish you would step. I'd like to

buy a valve. Yeah. So they will get five free lyrics and then it will be like lyrics are premium. And it's not per month. It is is at all. Yeah. Not to side with YouTube here, but if in a month you're looking up the lyrics more than five times, it's probably worth paying for the lyrics. Except that. I just can't imagine I have not looked up lyrics five times. I guess there's more of a passive discovery of the lyrics. Because if I ever want the lyrics, I can just look up the

video on YouTube. But if I'm I'm in the song and I just happen to scroll back and be like,

are paying for. But you know, Google made more money this quarter than they ever have. So I don't think it's the case. What is Spotify started doing this? But like for hearing, like you paid for Spotify and you've got all the like instrumental of all the music. But then if you wanted to hear the lyrics, you had to pay it extra. Damn, premium card. Yeah, there's good many ideas. Exactly. That's what's next. I'm telling you. Well, then everything would just it would just be a karaoke

app for the free users. Well, now you have to pay for the lyrics, though, which makes it weird. No, no, it'd be a karaoke. Oh, my god. That's the only reason I assume people want lyrics is because they want to karaoke with the phone in their hand. Or they just want to know the music. I like this one. I like the lyrics because I sometimes like to jump to specific points in a song and I like being able to know like, oh, if I click this word, it'll take me to like the

transport. Yeah, take me. It's got a nice interesting. The Segway I was thinking I was like,

“that's why a lot of weather apps are paid is because the data you have to pay for. So a lot of”

people want like every other, obviously, but if you have a bunch of sources and a lot of them are paid, you need to charge like a subscription to pay the subscription. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, it's weather again. Sorry. So anyway, I don't, I was surprised by these results. I really just didn't think this many people would be willing to pay for lyrics, but apparently they are. So, you know, Google's going to make even more money, I guess. Speaking of Google, speaking of the YouTube, YouTube,

speaking of YouTube, getting put on everybody's iPods. There's now officially a YouTube app for Appalachian Pro. Wasn't there a launch? But if there are dozens of them, honestly, brave. Yeah, it was crazy because you had to, it almost felt like they're withholding it on purpose. Like, you had to go to the browser, which wasn't the end of the world. You just have a browser tab open. But you had to go to the browser, watch YouTube videos and have to deal with all the stuff there.

“If you don't have premium blah blah, now you just have an app, all the discovery, all the doom scrolling,”

native. Well, didn't Apple also make some work around like in the Safari app for a vision pro.

They would make a screen video. Yeah. Yeah. They would make it so it basically just felt like

YouTube. Yes. Yeah. But now it's, yeah, you can have environments. You can have all the other fun stuff. Just just YouTube. All right. P2 Christians. Yeah. It's going to sit June now. It was like, I don't know June. Yeah. Yeah. They killed it. If it was not called June, I apologize Christian. Well, that's exciting for the 12 people that use vision pro. And speaking of, I guess we're doing that. Pretty quick segment. I guess we'll try it. I would get back to you. I don't

actually. Yeah. I mean, we definitely will not try it. It's amazing. Maybe it's amazing. Maybe it's amazing. Maybe it's amazing. You know, what if it's amazing? It's just, I'll try it. I, I don't, okay. What if, what could they use it? Have added that will make uses. Gemini. If the vision pro is the ideal flight movie watcher, then the YouTube app is vision pro with premium

with a bunch of download videos is the ultimate flight theater experience. I have always wanted to

watch Scott the Was 30 feet tall. Okay. Let me have this. There's good videos on YouTube. You might want to watch you. You might have an hour and a half video on a studio channel. You want to watch it on a flight and you have this big screen for anyone that's fun. It'd be very funny if, you know, Google last week, they released that world model where you can feed an image and it creates a video game, basically. Oh, I'm Roger, Jeannie. I'd be very funny if they just had the feature in

YouTube, where you could just be in the video. But nobody used the app because nobody uses the vision pro. So nobody knew that'd be funny. I guess we'll find out. I guess we'll find out. I guess it's probably fine. Yeah. Anyway, we're going to find out about the ads and chat you. We do ads and chat you see. Okay. So anthropic, if you didn't know, a big competitor to OpenAI, recently released a bunch of Super Bowl ads. They released them before the Super Bowl and they

actually did tweak them slightly when they actually put them in the Super Bowl. The copy was worse

“in the official release, but I think that they probably just, I don't know, ran through their”

legal team and they were just concerned or something. Anyway, they ran four different ads. It was very funny. The ads were about OpenAI putting ads in chat GPT. And this is something that OpenAI is now having to do. Sam Altman did eventually say it would be a last resort. So that's also funny.

But anthropic put these four different ads out that basically emulated what it is like to talk

to an AI model. And it did it very well. So I'm going to give you an example. There was this ad where this guy is talking to a therapist. And he says, I need help learning how to communicate better with my mom. And then the therapist is just kind of like this creepy smiling like woman.

they're trying to emulate that. And she says like, that's a great thing to do. You should maybe go on a nature walk with her or talk about things that you have in common. Or if you can't men the relationship, go to golden encounters. We're, we're coogers or men with young cubs. It's like where you can spend quality time with other older with other older women on golden encounters. And all of the ads just kind of devolve into this. And then the person that's talking

to that model is like, what? Very funny, very good ads. This elicited a extremely funny reaction

from Sam Alman on Twitter. He decided to write an essay in a tweet, which is never a good idea.

But the first thing that he said was first, the good part of the anthropic ads. They are funny. I laughed. Very human thing to say. Nice. And then he wrote 11 pairs. Well, it's like an over statement for like this is poop. You don't write poop. You poop poop.

“And that's what he did. He pooped 11 pairs of scraps of poop.”

Do you think he might chat with you if he did it? That's what I'm saying. Yeah. I've seen everything. You're right. I also. Yeah. I had not seen these ads. Actually, I think you posted it. And your main thing was, why does this seems like it didn't get de-squeezed properly? Oh, yeah. For one of them, the one online before the Super Bowl. The only reason I watched these ads is because I saw Sam Alman

crashing out on Twitter. And I was like, these must be pretty good. They did, yeah, the first ad.

There was, there was one ad where a kid was trying to get jacked. And what I was like, how do I get abs just fast as well? Yeah. And first, I just noticed like, it seemed like they used like a 1.5 X animorphic lens, but they de-squeezed it to like 1.8. I don't know. That's all I know. That was the first thing. Sorry. That's the first thing I did. That would bother me a lot. Yeah, it was, it was weird. Anyway, yeah, he crushed. I was like 11 paragraphs saying,

basically, it was not what was going to happen. And that it was, uh, what was the word. You're saying that it was kind of misrepresenting the way that ads were going to be shown. But Ellis is about to, uh, is about to chime in. Can I say one thing real quick? I miss, I like when companies use commercials to take shots at each other. It's so much more fun. I liked the lights. The Samsung notch for hair. Yeah. Like stuff like that. See. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. And it's,

it's fun because they're ingest, but man it makes some people so mad. And that's hilarious. Yes, funny. And the topic typically does have really good ads, too. Like they've been leaning into like the film, look in the film aesthetic and everything like a little grain and everything. Like it looks like they hire people that knew what they were doing for. I mean, every company on Twitter now basically is just making commercials. Yeah. That's like their whole thing. They have shifted away

from just releasing products. And now everything has to be a little like movie trailer.

“I was a product launch. Yeah. I think also doing the film look feels more natural and human.”

And when you're doing creating a product that's as unnatural and unhuman as. Oh, yeah. Hey, you want to be as obviously they thought about this. Yeah. They know what you're doing. And traffic has a great color grader, by the way. That's all the same color. And it's very good. Let's say I. Damn. I don't know if I would mess up the 1.5x and a more fixed squeeze. I think that's exactly what it would be like. Yeah. That's probably true. That's probably true.

All right. All right. I am ready for your crash. Yeah. Before I crash out publicly about this, I do want to say yeah. Long time listeners, the show will know we have in the past done anthropic ads. We've read ads that they have done. This has nothing to do with why we're reporting on this. Also, in case anyone was even wondering, none of us have any AI investments. Okay. We're not invested in these private companies. I don't like that. Yeah. So this is not like about this is about.

Oh my god. Dude. That's stupid. 11. Okay. First of all, first of all, when Sam Allman in that 11 paragraph screen said, God, there was so much what he called Claude and a Thor or

“inthropic and authoritarian company. I was like, brother, like you need to look at like who's on the”

open AI team right now? Okay. That anthropic makes software for rich people when they're the same. They're the same price expensive software for rich people when they say it's like do you both offer a free tier? The difference in the pricing is that and maybe like when you're using it at a developer level, the tokens are like cheaper, yeah, or whatever, but it's like you both offer a free and a $20 tier. So don't don't go calling your competitor at expensive product for rich people.

Don't go calling a company in authoritarian company when like all of the techno fascists are aligned with you, bro. Okay. Yeah. And then it's like he keeps going on and on about how like, you know, these ads are not going to appear in chat. They're not going to like, like companies are not going

to have access to your chat, like all this stuff. The truth is, we don't know how these ads are

going to appear. They started rolling out yesterday, by the way. I haven't seen them. I haven't seen any,

to you the press releases of the companies who are buying these ads. Yeah. Okay. Target. This is an

“exact quote. I'm just going to read you the whole things that you can't be like, "Ellist, you're”

picking and choosing your words, man, you're an anti-AI Luddite." But quote, from Target, ads are served based on keywords in a guest chat GPT prompt, ensuring their relevant to the conversation. For example, a guest asking, what are some countertop cooking appliances that make everyday meals more convenient may see an ad for an air fryer? Here's one from William Sonoma. As an early participant, William Sonoma Anque will explore how advertising and chat GPT can reach customers

at the decision-making moments, helping surface relevant, high-quality products while preserving trusted and transparent user experiences. I don't want to be devils advocate because I you are a devils advocate. They're like your favorite team. They are. That's real. I hate them this season. Bye-bye, Amy. Go USA hockey. We destroyed Canada women's the other day. Are they in that nude TV show about hockey? Yeah, it's called The Olympics. I don't understand. I don't understand

that other. I don't. Yeah. In terms of the way these are written, it does. None of this is saying that it will affect the responses. It's saying that it will show an ad that's potentially based on their responses. Sure. But also, I'm just throwing that out there. In the past opening I, in some moment have said, when we run these ad, these companies will not have access to your options. And the companies are saying we're not only going to know what you want. We're going to know

when you're in the decision-making process. That's not exactly what it says. And I think there's a firewall between, so that's the specific verbiage is the companies don't get that data. They get to buy access to the people who are searching certain ways. They don't get to know what you're searching. Cheshire BT, open AI, thank you for all the stuff. Right. But similar to the way you would buy Google AdWords, you'd buy ads for people who are googling certain things. Right. Those ads will

show up for those people. Right. Never get to connect to those people directly or know who

searched what? The same way Target's going to pay Cheshire BT or open AI for a bunch of ads for whatever air fryer or whatever their products are. And anytime those get served, that connection will be made. I don't know any of that as Target's. I don't, I could be wrong, but I don't believe

“that's how Google AdSense works. I think there's a profile based on your credit cards and your”

IP address and all the other profiles that, or data points that data brokers pick up on you. And they know exactly what you, Mark has, brownly, have been searching for and buying and are interested in them. That may be fair, but I don't see that language in either of these responses from we're going to use Cheshire BT ads. Which is like, let's also just be real. This is total legalese and we don't know like what they actually want to do on the background of anything.

And I don't trust them. And yeah, and furthermore. That's fair. The guy who is trying to convince us of all this is like, and this takes a lot of skill man, because between like Elon Musk and Mark and Dresen, like we have some prolific liars among us these days. Like people who can just, again, poop out, non-truths. And Sam Altman is somehow the biggest liar of all of them. Like the list of lies that this guy has told over the course of his career are so huge and so crazy

and he still is just like, bro, just give me like all of the power in America, all the water in America, give me literally all of your most inside thoughts and feelings. And I'll just like fix everything, bro, because I'm Sam, mother, f*cking Altman. Go get another job. I don't know. I don't want this guy doing this job. And I get that like, I don't have like a say in that or whatever. But the guy who's job is to like take everything from everyone. I would like to be a truthful guy.

That's my crash out. Okay. I'm sorry. It's also just funny to me that every tech CEO decided that they have to have a big personality on Twitter. Like, I mean, Elon kind of started this CEO's used to be pretty quiet. They would maybe, I'm sure there's a lot that don't say anything on Twitter. Yeah, but for my like, there's a lot of that I'm going to get like

corporate savings from soon or ever. He never says anything. He sometimes does. That stuff. I mean,

it's not like this. It's not like this. It's not like this. But pretty much every AI company CEO has like a very loud voice on Twitter and is very annoying and just like, so probably because that's where all of their customers are. Like, as far as how competitive this environment is and how much of a connection you want to have your potential customers, how else are you going to talk to them? It's kind of like when how YouTube had that sort of what is it called, ad apocalypse or it's like,

“all the advertisers left YouTube and they realize that the only way to reach these people”

is to be advertising on YouTube. If you're an AI company CEO, how are you going to reach the most aggressively enthusiastic AI people on the internet? Probably by tweeting a lot of them and having

So I get why they're so loud on Twitter. But if you're annoyed by that, I don't think it's going to

make me talk. If you keep trying to reach those people. Well, yeah. I mean, this kind of reaction, though, is very funny because I mean, they just when they went and said like, we have more users in

“Texas than you have users total and it's kind of like, I think the best thing to say was nothing”

or you could have just said that was funny and moved on. I'm going to, I'm going to dub this the Stry Sam effect because, yeah, he, I was wondering why you typed it like that. I totally missed that. Yeah, because he, he just kind of like drew more attention to the fact that he was crashing out about it and then there were multiple articles written out about who was crashing out of it. I made a joke about one of you guys and you tweeted that long. What are you like,

I'm like, I'm like, that's right. You're saying something about me that was clearly dishonest. Anthropics is so happy right now. That's not as freaking out. The amount of people that didn't even know Anthropics name that new chat GPT and then saw a bunch of Google like Google words articles on the side of their home feed being like Sam Almond crashes out about Anthropics. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. I mean, the amount of marketing spend that they put

“into this was more than three real estate to Super Bowl. Yeah, three real estate, free real estate.”

I will say Twitter Twitter is a very specific audience and a lot of them are the like silences complicit type. So if Sam Almond didn't say anything about those ads, it would also be really it'll be fodder for them to be like, I don't know, see, I got him. So no matter what you do, you lose, but he chose this path. So that's his choice. I guess so. Screw U Ellis for making it seem like I was kind of defending it. I promise that's not how

I know right now. I know Andrew like he loves open air. It just feels to me like the entire premise of this company is like dog water like seriously like like what like you've made a trillion dollars in spending commitments and you're genuinely are like no, no, no, in the next like 10 years we're going to a hundred XR revenue despite the fact that we like won't tell anyone how we make any money right now, despite like, despite that we literally do not know how left our electricity in the world to do

what we're going to do. It's all that trust me, bro. It's like, yeah, data centers in space. Oh, yeah, data centers in space. By the way, I have you noticed, Jensen Wong, just like doing all these interviews on the streets of Taiwan. Yeah. I don't know why that keeps happening either. People, he's just like walking down the street in Taiwan and someone and then suddenly there's

“eight mics in the space. It's kind of press conference. That's what happens. And if you don't say”

no to it, it's going to keep happening. It's like that. Why do you keep saying yes to it? Well, it's not even saying yes to it. It's someone sprints up to you with a microphone and asks you a

critical question about your company and no matter what you say, it will be published. So do you

a ignore them and get in the car to which it looks like, oh, he's avoiding it. He knows the answer's bad or b. Do you like try to answer because you think you have a good answer? I've been suddenly seven more people with microphone. I think you're going to sprint up to you. Like my life savings are in this. Tell me why you're going to win. Well, it is funny that because he has been slowly walking back their commitments to open AI. At first, it was like in video is investing

a hundred billion dollars in open AI and then throughout these on the street in Taiwan and every use, it's been like we never actually signed a piece of paper. We just said that, you know, just over a number of years, we might invest up to a hundred billion dollars. Why is it real? I mean, the money in my bank account is real, of course, but like your money isn't real. And then randomly Oracle put out a tweet that was like, we are committed to our investments and it's like, nobody asked you. Yeah.

In other authoritarian news. Yeah. That's right. Ring company on by Amazon. This is funny. Okay. There's a couple. I. Yeah. Can you explain everything because I did not watch Super Bowl, which you all will find out from my crash out later. Why I didn't. But. Wow. Okay. Yes. Some of these are Super Bowl things. I've kind of seen people talk about online, but I would like the full explanation. Okay. I only watch. I can imagine during a Super Bowl of 2026, people are all wondering which companies

are going to make a splash to make a big statement. Are there going to be any crypto ads? Are they going to be any AI ads? Like this 20. It's like, Metapur. Yes is the same way or like who's going to have

a, what's the theme? Wait. Right. Super Bowl basically is yes. Yes. Yes. Exactly. That's crazy. Exactly.

So 2026 Super Bowl ads. There's a couple AI ads sprinkled in there and people are analyzing them. Oh, this is their big moment. Okay. So each one of these companies challenge is to speak to the normies who don't pay attention to AI and paint a picture for them of why their AI is good. And it'll either hit your ear as a normie or it'll hit your ear as a critic who's been looking at this stuff for a long time. So Amazon ring decides, okay, we've got an idea. We're going to show

this really cool feature, this really cool thing that we've been doing, where if you lose your pet,

recognize all of the ring neighborhoods in your neighborhood, sorry, all the ring cameras in your neighborhood, you'll be able to find your pet through them and you'll get reunited with your pet. Isn't that sick? A neighborhood watch feature from your ring camera? That's turned on by playing the ball on. Isn't that great? On by default. And it did this picture to turn it off.

“And I think for some people, it probably hit their ears like, wow, I have lost a pet. Wow,”

I have a pet. I hope I don't lose them. But if I do this feature, it would really help. But for all of us, we're like, wait, if you can watch the pets through this feature. And by the way, they're working with flock, which is the company that makes those security cameras that are just placed everywhere and sold to government agencies and law enforcement. Yeah. And we would know that. We'd like people aren't going to know. Yeah. If you can watch pets, what else can you find through this?

Is the thing you like search for, like you say I'm missing this dog? And then if it sees that dog, you see, or there's no way you can just go try to rewatch the ad because I'm assuming it's like I can comb through my hair, combing feet or whatever. But the idea is all of them are connected through this sort of database that you find it, even though it's not on your camera. Yeah, which means that there are other ways, probably for other potentially authoritarian figures to

pop in there and find things on people's wrinkles. Yeah. Or like the big flock scandal that just happened recently, we're turned out that none of them were not none of them, but a lot of them were not even password protected. And you could just go and look at any camera and like, yeah.

Funny part I heard about or not funny, but it was like, didn't they say like one million dogs

are lost a year? And then it said like, we found one dog every day over the year and it's like, the percentage on that is terrible. 300. Yeah. I mean, the rational. This is a missing pet. This is a pet. No, sure. Listen, I'm all for 300 more dogs being found than something bad happened. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, this isn't about the dog. The ratio is there. Now, it says to be clear, really in dogs. I forget what ring that's crazy. What in the 300 people in

America lose a dog a year? I can't be right. I all find that. So ring does deny that the search party feature is even able to track human faces and biometrics. And they say it is separate from the familiar faces facial recognition feature that they have on there. That's amazing. But which is a made up fact, even if that PR person would say that they don't have access to the facial recognition thing. They have to know that people just don't trust this stuff. No, of course. Like ring is

“the company that just like gives this, like has given this data to law enforcement before. I think”

people do trust this stuff. I think that's like, like, I know so many people with ring cameras. No, I mean, I'd say the company is going to do what's in their best. No, I think when I talk to people about the ring cameras and I'm like, for example, my neighbors had a ring camera. And I maybe really uncomfortable because it was pointed right at my door. And I didn't like the idea that I was on camera every single time I was coming and going for my apartment. And I talked about it.

And they were just sort of like, what do you think is going to happen? Like, like, the footage is just it's just footage. And I was like, where do you think that footage goes? And they literally like,

I've never thought about it. I don't think the average person really understands, like, I think it's

maybe trust isn't the right word. Because I think a lot of people in general know, like, most of these companies don't give a damn about me. And like, they don't trust them. But I think it's less of like the the benefits for me are something that can make me not really think about the other things that could happen. Well, and it's Amazon, which makes these products as cheap as possible so that people just like buy them and make a bunch of, you know, put them on their house because

they're so ridiculously cheap. I've got a bunch of cameras in my house. Mine's a little different because I'm not pointing it directly. I like someone else's door and I live in a New York City apartment. Right. So it's like, it would be impossible. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. I just want to remind people like this is this is Amazon. Same company that made the Melania movie, which had a total

budget of $75 million, $75 million. They didn't make it. They, well, they donated $35 million

or whatever it was. Yeah. $75 million budget, $40 million acquisition fee paid by Amazon to Melania

“Trump's production company and then 28 million went directly to her for licensing. I think that”

it's pretty obvious like we're a lot of this money is going and I just, I would not trust a company that has security cameras all over the whole of the country. The security camera company just gave a giant donation to the, yeah, anyway. I told you that Mark has said this was the crash-out. Yeah. I watched, I really, I just rewatched the ad. It's like watching the Melania movie. Yeah. I rewatched 25x speed right now. I watched the ad. There's not a lot of official UI. There's

just kind of like a portal in the ring app to be like, here's the pet's name. Here's a picture. Here's a description and then the pet shows up at their door. So it's not like we know how this

feature. It doesn't matter how it works. It's going to get you your pet back if you ever losing your neighborhood. And then if anyone asks any questions, we just deny the night the night. Can I throw something out there? Like, this happens. If you're just in the Facebook group for your town or like the, what's the website neighbor next door or something? There's so many things like the people would just be like, hey, I lost my cat. Here's a picture of them and someone

“will post and they're like, oh, I looked on my secret. Like, people care about each other.”

No, to just say like, hey, I saw them out there. Like, here's my security camera that saw what looks like your cat at bubble block. I'm over here. This happens without one company needing to own all of it. Most of these technology products are just like, don't talk to people. Let the technology do it for you. I saw I saw something amazing on Twitter, which was a test to determine if a new technology is good or bad. I'm a test. The test is if it would make the plot of a

Seinfeld episode, not work at all. It's a good piece of tech. Like smartphones, Google Maps. Like things that like would cause the central issue of a Seinfeld episode to like fall apart because the tech just solves the problem. So it fits. Yeah, it fits you. Tech that would create the plot of a Seinfeld episode is bad tech. Think like polymarket or like, or flock cameras.

I would say that they could easily I've never seen Seinfeld so I apologize. No, it's like the

greatest show. But I could imagine a show like that having an episode about losing their dog

“and taking a whole episode to find it. Is that crazy? I think the Seinfeld episode would be like,”

yeah, that could totally work. Yeah. And then this just ruins that because you just, oh, it's a good notification is three doors down. Whatever. Like the band. The cool thing about Seinfeld is that there's like three interlaced storylines that seem totally separate and then they randomly come in contact with each other like through the episode and they just sort of best thing about it is the Seinfeld series. Where is on every episode?

Straight heat. Jerry Seinfeld's on it. What are they? Because he's a sneakerhead. Wait, really? Yeah. Has he been on the sneaker show? Is it a team? I actually don't know. Probably. I would have seen one on the phone for that. Yeah. Interesting might be. All right, we'll be my introduction to Seinfeld. We'll go get a sneakerhead. That's so good. You know what else is going to scan your face

but this time be truthful about it. Yeah. One more surveillance date story. And then we're done. I promise. You know what's going to scan your child's face? Yeah. Discord this week announced that they are going to be requiring face scanning or ID uploading for people that they think are probably children. So they,

so they are going, yeah, I raised that. They're going to be, okay, basically they're trying to

age gay. They're trying to get kids off of the like, not say for work discord communities. Is there a goal? That's like, yeah, it's, it's this weird back and forth thing where clearly there have been many, many problems with like there are many bad things about the internet that kids just have access to and that's sort of always been the case. And so there are bad things that occur there obviously. And so there's sort of this weird tension

“between like, how do we stop kids from accessing that without creating a surveillance state?”

I think the other thing is also, um, people accessing kids that like that in the same space is what's really bad. Yeah, for sure. Age gating is a roadblocks effect. Yeah, it's like a solution to this problem, but that is very difficult to implement without getting accused of, yeah, this for sure. Yeah. Famously, people that use discord gamers, you know, people that are very online, not happy about having to scan their faces, which I'm not either. I don't think

I would never give, anyway, here's what they say. They say that for most adults, age verification

won't be required as they're using account information, like the games that you play when you're online, all of these random account 10 year to so if you've contacted discord account for like 16, I don't know which I have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they're using a bunch of different metrics to determine whether or not you're in a, they think you're in adult. And if they think you're in adult, you won't have to do any of these things. If you have your discord hooked up to steam and

you play Roblox all the time, they probably are going to make you, you know, some new David. I don't think Roblox is on steam. Oh, damn. I don't know, though. It might be. I don't know. It's Minecraft, like the most popular game on steam. It's going to be a lot of people getting this game. I don't think Microsoft on steam either. It's not. It's throwing the window store. What is on steam? Everything out. Everything else literally, every other game you didn't just send you. Fortnite is not

on steam. I'm trying. Yes. I feel like if the game is big enough to have like its own following where it doesn't need to be on steam, then it's not on steam. Unless it's every other game is on steam. Unless it's own by valve. Like counter-strike in Dota. Yeah. Got it. Um, just got to mention Dota 2 again. So

servers, channels, and they won't be able to speak in discord stages. They will see content filters from friend requests and DMs from anonsources will be filtered into another inbox. Discord says

that the face can uses an on device AI model to analyze and predict your age and never leaves the

“device. So that is something if that is true. I think that we need like security experts to like”

actually try that out and dig into that. There was a lot of backlash to this. And so team speak. If you know that word, you will not get age verified on discord. Yeah. If you don't know that word, you probably will. I'm saying what's the name of like if you recognize Ricky Martin at the halftime show like it's probably time to get your prostate. If you know, team speak, how is Ricky Martin? Yeah, that was Ricky Martin. You're good. Youngen. Yeah. Wow. So you're good.

Team speak is like one of the OG voice chat gaming apps. I used to use it when we employed Starcraft in high school. And it's basically not been updated in the last like 15 years.

That's way different. Kind of sick. I mean the website. Yeah. Yeah. It looks a little bit more like

discord. The problem with discord now is that it's trying to become the everything app. Like every app including Netflix. Every app is trying to become the everything apps because in order to

“scale infinitely, you have to just adopt every possible market. Yeah. That's why Netflix is”

becoming a podcast app and a games app now because they kind of saturated the the watching content app. You know, drop the flicks. Yeah. They're just going to be net. It's going to be the internet. Welcome to net. So yeah. People are very angry about this. Discord knew that people were going to be very angry and they anticipated to lose some users and say that they are going to have to use other tactics to get users to come back. Whether or not this ends up being a

mass exodus and people actually move over permanently or just flow back, which is what usually happens with the social graph effects. Not sure. So kind of just this is I just think funny. It doesn't take away from any of the worries people has in here, but there's something so funny about discord being for gamers and them not wanting their face, but then they'll go start a new character in a game and spend like six hours making it look exactly like them. That is very funny. There's

there's going to be a really sad future where we look back on this hearing, be like damn, like discord and like Sam Altman with World Coin, like they were so nice, like they let us scan our own faces instead of just like walking into the basking robins and getting our face scanned without our consent for our ice cream ideas. All the flop cameras are already. They already know where you are at all times anyway. Anyway, I did see a very funny thing. You guys know what

Gary's mod is? This is another one. This is another one of those things where if you do know what that is, you won't have to do the thing. But I saw some people who were using Gary's mod characters to fool the face scanning technology and it actually worked. That's crazy. Well, it does, and that's the thing because they were like streaming the screen. I mean, death and death and terms of like the character looks three-dimensional and it was turned to me because it's not using

“like an IR sensor on your regular web camera. I think it was all 2D, you know, they just like,”

yeah, but like, well, I didn't really, I thought when I was doing, I remember what I was doing a face verification for, but I had to scan my ID and then do the thing where I looked left and right. Yeah. I think that's using the iPhones. Well, maybe it doesn't. The iPhones IR. It might be iPhones IR, but it might also not be, but Discord is presumably probably using it from a web camera. I guess there is a mobile app, so maybe. Probably web app. I doubt it's not going to force you to

use your phones. I guess there's just why I figured they would have to use real depth instead of just image that rotates. Well, they can't really, I mean, the iPhone, the phone that have IR. Yeah. Look, there's, there's also a non-zero chance that this face scanning stuff literally does nothing and Discord just needed to do something to like make themselves not legally accountable for like exposing miners. Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying it does, but like we're at the point now,

we're like who's to say everyone is in line all the time. I've been lying this whole podcast. Yeah, I'm not going to tell you. Audio listeners will be shocked to find out. I am like a seven foot lizard so they get the mic and have been this whole time. I'm 12. But you know what demands truth and nothing but the truth? What is that? Wave form trivia. That's excellent. Good thing we

always get the truth. I was going to say when the correction comes next week, that segment is going to hit

you. Yeah, they do. No, I think scores. Yeah, no, that is. Look, man, I strive for perfection. I know it's been a weird episode, but it's only going to get a weird debate. It's only getting it weird. It's only February. Guys, we want to guess what this trivia question is about. Because that's not salmon. Salmon. Salmon has said in the past, specifically on his blog and several

curing cancer or tutoring every child in America. We couldn't have both for 10 gigawatts of compute. The largest power plant by total possible capacity. Again, this power plant only runs at 30 percent capacity according to my limited understanding of industrial scale power and this Wikipedia. That's part of the trivia question. Why does it fall hypothetical capacity? How many gigawatts can the largest power plant in America produce? I don't need to go what I have to do with

education. Wait, I'm saying that the compute required to frame the model that could do either of those things that require 10 gigawatts. I don't understand why these people ever make those. Sometimes you see people ask, well, what do you think it would, you know, solving World Hunger? And he'll try to answer, like, why would you try to answer that? I don't know. Say, don't make a promise that you could solve cancer with enough power. That's an insane thing

to say out loud. Yeah. But, yeah, I've never been an evil villain, like a supervillains,

so I can't truly put myself. What about when you were the hammer? That's true. I was a supervillain. It's like a supervillain. I've always thought of him as more of a Robin Hood man of the people type figure. No. That's, if, okay, so Ronald, I'm like Donald, like big brother or something. No, the Hamburgler's foil is Mayor McKeys, obviously. I'm so hungry. Okay.

“I thought they were up in paper. Oh, that's good. Anyway, what's the question?”

I think I'm sorry. I literally don't know. Oh, it's my gigawatts. How many? Yeah, they'll go up. The hardest, most powerful power plant in America. How many gigawatts is there? In America? While it's running at 30 percent capacity. I'm specifically referring to the grand, cooling dam in Washington state. Oh, how many gigawatts did the car end back to the future need? Flux capacitor. Seven par six. No. I don't know 100 gigawatts. I have no idea.

I don't remember. That's as a thousand. How many gigawatts is a thousand megawatts? Okay, and a

megawatts is a thousand. A thousand. A thousand watts? A megawatts is a thousand watts. Oh, a million watts. It's a million watts.

A million watts. Yeah. Oh, okay. One point twenty one gigawatts. A gigawatts is a billion watts. The flux capacitor needed one point two one gigawatts. Yeah. He could have cured cancer instead. Dude. Yeah. Do you think that that dam would let us travel back to the future? I'm saying that. That's like seven times. I'm saying that musical comedian Reggie is one one. Damn it. Reggie lots. That's good.

“Good. We should just take a break. Yeah. We're going in. I think our audience needs a break more than we do.”

Well, well, we'll think about it. Answers will be at the end. Like usual. We'll be at the end. Support for the show comes from monarch. It's important to have goals. But if you don't have the right tools to make that happen, they're more like daydreams. Instead of just wishing you had that down payment or that you could be living debt free, you can take action and set yourself up for financial success this year. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool to make your life

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question possible for you. Why do you hate one plus so much? It's a very valid question. You mean my daily driver that I've been asking. This has been a question. I have to keep your enemies closer, Marcus. Now we did a video on silicon carbon batteries and this video got a mixed reception and obviously I've thoughts on it, but I'll have

all the details here. Basically, it's a story of corporate risk assessment, which is not the

most interesting thing, but it's very connected to technology because there are companies out there using silicon carbon batteries. There are lots of companies out there, not using silicon carbon batteries in smartphones specifically. And we talk a lot about smartphones. So after the year and a half of me making lots of videos on smartphones that have silicon carbon batteries and me raving about them and being like, why aren't these other guys doing that? Decided to dig a little

bit more into why those other guys aren't doing that. And also, I've been getting lots of emails as you can imagine from people going, hey, we're not idiots. We have thought a lot about this, and there's a certain risk tolerance that this company has and a couple concerns that these companies have about potentially using silicon carbon batteries. I'd say it got to the point where over the past year you would mention it. And we would have comments that are like, hey, more

on they're not doing it because of blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, so it's come up a few times even on podcasts we've mentioned like, oh, I think you mentioned it too. Yeah, the Google engineer at Google I/O last year pulled me aside and was like, you guys keep asking why we're not using it and here are the reasons we're not using it. So I just was like, I just mentioned that he mentioned

“that to me. Yeah, as well I said. Yeah. And that's why I had a bunch of versions of that over the”

last couple years. So I'm like, all right, let me just put all of this together into one video, because I imagine not everyone knows this stuff, not everyone gets pulled aside by a Google engineer at I/O to hear about this stuff. So essentially put together a video on what some of those companies are thinking about silicon carbon and why they're not using it so that we can have the whole picture. I'm still going to love silicon carbon batteries and praise them and that's why I'm

using this phone and phones like it with incredible battery life. But there were a couple of things

people didn't like about that video. Probably two main things. One was the thumbnail, totally valid. It was like a little bit spicy and I think this is an interesting enough topic without the debate about clickbait. So I just changed the thumbnail. But then two was that, you know, I didn't name drop the exact people who had been emailing me over the years or which companies who had pulled me aside and said these things and it kind of felt like, oh, I'm like

a mouthpiece for them, like I'm protecting them and justifying them. I'm actually like a secret

“silicon carbon hater or something like that. I think a lot of people didn't make it all the way”

through the video and just left with that impression. So I figured it was valid to sort of explain it all with someone who's actually willing to join the podcast and put their expertise in front of everyone and explain. So we have Shen joining us from HTC. I don't know if he's been on the podcast once before. Okay, because we've we've talked twice. And so HTC obviously does lots of different devices now at this point in XR and obviously have done smartphones in the past RIP,

but they obviously work with batteries a lot. So he works with batteries and the corporate risk assessment profile of a company who has to decide what types of batteries to use. So I figured this would be informative and interesting. You don't have to hear it from me, but you get all the information at a deeper level. So let's play that quick interview for you now and then we'll come back right after. So okay, Shen, thank you for doing this. I appreciate the time. I think we should just start

off with what are your what's your position, what are your credentials, because people want to know

how you know this stuff first. So who are you, what do you do? Okay, I'm Shen. I look after

global product management at HTC. I've been here for almost 11 years now, but I've been running product for the past five and a half years here at our headquarters. So I look after product from conception to all the way to, you know, end of life. When we do, you know, when we, so I don't work on phones anymore, but I work on a lot of things where things like batteries

“are important, so like XI headsets, right? Generally what you'll find in the market is about two hours”

and I would say also with things like smart glasses that we just launched, the compactness of them is also really important. And then one last thing is considering that they're right on your heads. Yeah, we are actually generally more safety conscious than others when it comes to the battery safety itself. That is a, that's a really good jumping off point, because obviously we talked about, you know, silicon carbon batteries, regularly lithium ion batteries we've seen for years.

And I mostly was, you know, talking about them in the context of smart phones, but paint me a picture of what this landscape is like. We've had these batteries for a long time. It's been

year or two in smart phones as a really big deal, like a pretty big leap. But obviously there's

some risk assessment there. So what do you, when you look at just batteries in general, silicon carbon versus the typical battery, what, what are you saying? So I'm still a massive small food fan. So things like silicon carbon batteries do get me excited, especially at the

“idea of capacity increasing so much. Yeah. But when it comes to the industry itself, I think”

because batteries are such a high energy density item, everyone is usually a lot more wary of it. The way, you know, the way a battery can usually go wrong is when it expands, it swells, thermal runaway, you know, usually maybe it's like shorts inside. And some of them don't even

have to come from any structural like dropping your phone, right? Like batteries that charge

below freezing can sometimes have an issue where the lithium deposits itself as a metal. And it's pretty much a irreversible process. It can cause gas expansion and it can cause shorts itself. So loads of these different things we have to consider when looking at new chemistries. And so it depends on the kind of company you are, right? So I did see the video and I, I do agree with you when you are kind of in the top two or three in terms of market share,

it's kind of your race to lose, right? So you're more wary about a mistake happening, especially when you sell tens of millions, hundreds of millions of phones year. So you're going

to be a lot more strict when it comes to safety standards. And sometimes it might not just, it might

just be the thing that you don't want to really risk. And I also say, you know, when we look at something like silicon carbon or even, you know, newer technologies like silicon andode itself, it, what it helps with things like capacity, in terms of battery chemistry, you're playing a lot of other levers instead. So as you go with more and more silicon, it is, you're actually

“reducing the charge rate as well. So that is another thing you have to balance. And of course,”

things like longevity, you know, you mentioned in your video in quite accurate, when silicon absorbs lithium ions as it charges, it swallows up, right? And there are loads of ways, you know, people, there's like nano lithography ways of making sure those particles are swept up as much. But at the end of the day, it's still swelling. And that will cause, you know, companies to have sun concerns, and they'll want to test these for longer periods of time. So I expected to be slower of

adoption there as well. And I would say, you know, a lot of different companies take things like battery longevity differently. Some will make this their number one thing. And you will realize that they're the ones that don't really increase charge speed that much. Don't really experiment with new new types of chemistry. And that's usually because they actually care about longevity a lot more than others. I know you won't say it, but I'll say that that's the thing we've seen from Apple

for years. But what is funny about batteries is like smartphones. I talk about smartphones so much, like we get very few really exciting new things with smartphones at this stage. Like there's such a mature category. So when we do get something interesting, like, oh, way bigger smartphone sensor. Or, oh, this really big processor node shift. Or, oh, a huge increase in battery capacity. That's interesting. So like we pay more attention to it. And we'd like all of our favorite

brands and our favorite phone models we're considering buying to be at the forefront of that.

“But it's not always as simple as just switching to the new thing. I think one thing that was also”

mentioned in the video that was, you know, it's obviously very complex. I did a lot of simplification but is the testing process. And I'm assuming this is obviously very important to you because you're putting batteries on people's heads. Like what is the process of testing, you know, charge cycles and for longevity? What is what is the process like at a big company when trying to assess if a new battery technology is potentially worth it? So usually when it comes to safety,

we work with the battery vendor themselves to come out with safety guidelines. And actually most companies have roughly the same kind of guidelines, the same kind of tests. Some may just pull the criteria a little bit higher. You'll usually see battery specs, for example, like

So, but one other thing is when you have a new product, the way it fits in also makes a difference

“in terms of how you should test it. I'll give you an example. When it comes to battery tech,”

when it comes to that fitting a battery itself, your manufacturers will always leave kind of an

expansion space between the battery and the actual housing because batteries will expand with temperature. They will expand over time. There's always going to be a little bit of off-gassing potentially that can happen. And a lot of the time that's within a acceptable range and that's why you leave that expansion space. It's mostly when that expansion goes beyond what that expansion space allows that you'll see your phone kind of splitting apart. So, what tests for a lot of different things

will test for different temperatures even during shipping. We have a thing called thermal shock where something might go from minus something degrees to something that's really hot and really humid. So, those are things that you kind of have to test for for all kinds of products. But I'll still say there are a lot of things that is really hard to test for. There are 23 different combinations that are going to happen. But how do you test those over a long period

of time? If you're testing it through for you can accelerate certain tests. But at the end of the day,

you're always realized you have a sudden blind spot when it comes to real-world usage.

“So, that comes back to why I mentioned it's all about how do you want to play that risk?”

Yeah, I mean, like I said, there's a lot of variables and maybe if it's in something that's in use, it's used in less environments or less situations. And maybe you don't have to test for as many variables. But a smartphone is like, it's with you everywhere. Like, there's a truly different things that can happen to it from temperature to pressure and environments and stuff. So, that's, it does seem, I don't envy the task. It seems like a very detailed, complicated one.

My last question for you is just, what else do you think people should know about batteries in general? Like, there's, it's a complex thing, there's chemistry, there's physics, there's a lot involved. Is there anything that maybe is commonly looked over by people buying smart phones? Maybe in just one comparing one smartphone to the other? What do you think people should know about

“batteries that they probably don't already? I will say one thing about, I'll say one that's kind of”

more supply chain oriented first. And that specifically, usually with new tech, you have this one issue,

not many people are making it. If, you know, from HTC's past, we have rules in place where we are required to kind of second source everything. And that's for a few reasons. Sometimes, you know, you don't want one vendor for a really cheap component to go out of business or to have an issue and then impact your entire business. Sure. Sometimes it's that. But sometimes it's also more malicious. You have competitors in the space that will attack your supply chain to try and stop you from

going to market. That happens more than you'd expect. So, yeah, so as a big company, you're, whenever you look at new tech, you're going to want to try and second source everything. I mean, in HTC, the only exception by default is the CPU, right? Because mostly in a phone, you're not going to find a second source for like a Qualcomm chipset. Sure. But you can second source most things. And then if we have to wave it, anything for any reason, you know, that usually has to go

go through an approval process. So, that is one thing to consider, which is at the scale of some companies, they're going to be required to second source those. Because they don't want their sales to tank because one supplier can make batteries anymore for them. Yeah. Well, any other component. Yeah. That is a really interesting to bring that up. Because that's been a story. Sometimes everyone's while in the past, there will be a big enough noticeable

difference between maybe a single component from two different suppliers. And that'll make a headline. Like, oh, I got the iPhone with the LG display, or I got the iPhone with the Samsung display. And you can actually measure a difference. And it's kind of rare that that happens. But usually, you know, people are pretty good about matching the things together. But that is, that is a fascinating story, too. Yeah, what's the most manufacturers will have the same specs for those different

companies to try and make sure that it isn't noticeable. But every now and then you all someone notices it. So, that's kind of the supply chain side. And then, yeah, I think the, the one

capacity, but the next person is going to want charging speed, right? You might be able to have both,

but there's a trade of somewhere. That trade of could be longevity. You know, I don't think any any battery manufacturer will make something that is below what industry safety regulations are. But what I will say is those tolerance is will sometimes change how they fit in a product, also impact how it's tested. And yeah, different companies will just have the different priorities. And at the end of the day, that is going to be one of the key reasons why they choose a

specific battery over another. And sometimes could even just be cost, right? Memory is going up crazy, right? Yeah. We've been having meetings about memory for all of our products. Like,

almost any product with a process is going to have some sort of memory in there. And we're trying

“to figure out, okay, what else could we do without having to increase prices for certain things?”

And sometimes, and I'm sure someone in 2026 will end up making a decision that they're not going to invest as much into the newest technologies because they don't want their retail price to go up. Yeah. Like, I try to, this has come up now that we've like started making our own products, where we realize how many decisions go into these products and every lever is just a trade-off with something else. I am rooting for silicon carbon batteries to be, like, we haven't had

thankfully any issues with them, longevity seems to be totally fine so far, but, you know, batteries even just within batteries themselves have different levers. It feels like an over-simplification, but a lot of things come down to just like capacity, charge rate, and longevity, pick two. You know, that's, and there's, that's not even with price and like all the other things,

“like there are tons of different levers that will flip based on what your priorities are as company,”

but, yeah, I don't think it is. You might not know what that lever will look like. If you pull the other two, you don't know what that longevity that was going to look like, right? Until you've seen that thing run through its entire life cycle. So, I would say, like, those that aren't using silicon carbon batteries, I wouldn't say any of them are rooting against it, that's all, right? If, as long as it, nothing happens to it in whatever the, you know, time frame

they're observing it. Like, I'm sure it's going to be within those discussions. I'm sure it's in their discussions now, but at the end of the day, when they make that decision of which one they use, they're choosing the levers that makes the most sense for them. Awesome. Well, this has been super helpful and insightful, and I'm sure we'll have you back on the podcast at some point,

maybe even at the studio, but we appreciate the insight. So, thanks as always. Thank you.

All right, so that was it. Thank you again to Shen for spending the time. Obviously, it's a very busy person and being in charge of a big company like that. There are tons of things to consider all the time is cool having the facts from him and the expertise. And again, the risk that we're talking about is not just like the specific safety risk of one technology, but it's like a corporate risk. It's a financial risk. It's a longevity risk. It's all sorts of

things that come with that the choice is the levers you pull to use different technologies. So, that was interesting to hear. Yeah, I think one of the, a pretty common comment was along the lines of like, well, Apple and Samsung aren't going to risk spending more money on it. It's like, yeah, that's that's part of that's a risk that's something is like him costs more money. Potentially has way more money. You think about note seven. I mean, how much money Samsung

probably lost about this like, yeah, all of these companies care way more about bottom line and money than they do any of us and getting the best features. So yeah, I thought that was pretty obvious, but I was, I am reminded that the guy at the IO that told me the reason Google didn't use them at the time. Again, this was a year ago. Things might have changed since then. It's two years ago. Maybe it might have been two years ago. It might have been two years ago. It might have been two years ago.

“My name is two IO IO to Google IO. We go. Um, what? Oh, McDonald. That's what he said. Yeah,”

oh, the hamburger. Yeah. Anyway, so he, at the time, it wasn't, he wasn't saying that like, they're more likely to explode necessarily. What he had told me was that they're longevity. They started to lose their chart, their total ability to charge to 100% much quicker. And after two issues, years, the degradation was a lot higher. I am aware, like, from two years from then, they've actually made the technology quite a bit better. They've made the chemistry a lot better,

so that it, you know, maintains a lot of charge cycles. I think one plus has put out a lot of,

charge cycles for silicon carbone, which is a lot better than some people. Yeah. So that's really important

“stuff changes. Yeah. Yeah. This, like, assessment of the technology will be constantly changing”

and then the way that these companies decide whether to use any of this stuff or not is also constantly changing. So as it gets better, like, okay, one of the big points in the comments was, well, we haven't had any issues so far with silicon carbon batteries, which is great. That's really good news for potentially getting them sooner and everyone else's phones. But yeah, this, this stuff is constantly evolving. And it's new-ish to the point where, like, it's only

been out for, like, two years exactly. So like, yeah, we're not going to see if there are any problems, we're not going to start seeing it until like a year from now or so. And the variable of humankind is so much more insane than anything you can test in a lab. I mean, we've seen how many folds have been folded a hundred thousand times in a lab and people are breaking

broken with an OE2. We see, we peeled the screen protector off of the first fold immediately,

like, like us as humans destroy things. And when it's something that has a little bit of a more dangerous potential, it's just like, even if that's so small, the new cycle of when if that potentially happens is big. And we talk about, we talk about how like, you know, when YouTube makes a change. And it's like, oh, we're only testing this on 1% of customers, but then you realize what 1% is for YouTube. And that's like a lot of people. It's the same

with like Samsung sells and it's saying amount of phones, right? So like, if 1% of their phones have battery issues, that's a way bigger story than 1% of like the amount of phones that Google sells having battery issues. Yeah. That's exactly what Shinn was talking about. Like, if you're,

if you're pretty confident that the issues with your phones are 1 in a million and you only

still have 1 million phones, you feel pretty good about that. But if you're Samsung and you sell tens of millions of phones, the risk profiles different. And are also like, yeah, you're just leading everything already. Like, yeah. Why change anything? I've already making plenty of money and people aren't switching off me. So why would I give them anything else? Are you still trying

“not that at 26 now? I think that's, I think that literally, that would be the most like impactful”

line that he said to me, which is like, it's your race to lose. Yeah. In all these other competitive markets, where there is no true like number one runaway with a high market share, they're all very competitive. And that's way more exciting. You get way more advanced product really quickly. And then like I said in that video here in the US, where market share is kind of stacked for a couple of companies, they are, I mean, we see it. They are so passive about a lot of stuff. So yeah,

that's their risk assessment profile. Yes, 23 is the S24 is the S25 is the S25 is the S25 is the S25 is the S26. So about three plus plus new boxes. Exactly. No, three plus plus. My thing too is like, I feel like if there's one thing I can trust and believe in, it's that these companies want to make more money. So it hasn't really good. If there's an opportunity for them to get their new battery tech, they're going to do it as soon as possible. If they think it'll

like drive the market share. Yeah. I mean, the whole reason that Samsung is making a foldable allegedly, making a foldable to compete with the iPhone foldable form factor is because they know it will make them money, because they want, because people like, I love that shape, but I want to be on Android. Also, Samsung has some pretty bad PTSD with the Note 7 explosion. I was just thinking about that. That was 2016. Right. I think it was 2017. Yeah, 2017. 2017. So almost a decade ago.

Yeah. I always find myself saying, like, hey, and you know what happened to Samsung, but for some 15

year olds watching this, they actually don't know what oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So yeah, a lot of people might not not even know what the Galaxy Note was. Exactly. Yeah. We pulled a lot of things, or the eighth verification is what happened to Samsung. So there was a time where you had to choose between having an Android phone that came with a stylus or air travel. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. You could not bring Galaxy Note 7 on the plane. For those that don't know, the Galaxy Note 7,

notably, appreciate it. Started exploding a lot. And even that is, there's 96 cases total. That's a lot. It is a lot. It's a lot, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not really that much.

“I only exploded 90 times. That's not a big deal. That's what I mean. Especially doing that while”

you're sleeping your phone could randomly explode like that. I would not. Yeah. So they recalled it. And then they just didn't end up replacing it, which was very funny. They did later release the Note 7 fan edition. That was really long. And I know it says. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, lithium ion batteries aren't perfect either. No. Just they have some level of risk all the way across the board. Can I throw something out there? Also, just about the video, just as an explanation,

the reason we showed the Jerry Rick everything fold like smoking in the video is because when we were looking over the script, someone at the studio was like, oh, I don't know what the term thermal

because it's not a big explanation, but we're like, we'll show footage of what a thermal runaway is.

We don't have that. It's looking carbon. Yeah. I totally got why people think that felt targeted,

“but that was not the purpose of it. I think all the mentality that a lot of comments that”

we're seeing in some reaction videos, we made a lot of it came from the original thumbnail, which was people going, oh, this is a hit piece against silicon carbon, which if you ignore every other video I've ever made is a reasonable take. But now that the thumbnail has changed the packaging makes a lot more sense, we are explaining the risk assessment not going, hey, silicon carbon bad, lithium ion, good. So if that was your thought, no, you know. And at the

risk assessment, again, it's mostly about pricing and longevity and less about exploding exactly, which a lot of people thought it was about exploding, but it's not. So, so, there we go. Can I say a random thing that Shen pointed out that I thought was interesting, was the more he was talking about it, I kind of like in my head to try to visualize what these levers are that he was talking about, they have to like pull in push or whatever, and it just reminded me kind of like

an exposure triangle, like with cameras, like the more of one thing you do, the less of each other, like charge cycles or capacity, and it's like, eventually we'll have Sony's that can just see in the dark, but yeah, but it was also a good point because it's like an exposure triangle where

“you have to take 10,000 pictures before you can see the light meter, you know what I mean?”

Because like, he made that really good point that it's like, you can play with the longevity lever

or the charge speed lever, but you don't know what that third lever is going to be like,

until you've had these batteries used for a while. Anyway, thank you Shen. All in the name of Shen and I don't think, thank you again to Shen for helping us out with that, and I think it's time for a second journey. More trivia. Trivia, dude. So, this is a YouTube question. Let's see who gets it, YouTube, I should get it. Like YouTube being clear. It's pre-installed on which I'm, no, um, triggered by you, not including music videos. The top most YouTube video is a GTA6 trailer, of course,

but one company accidentally broke that record in 2024. Do you remember what company that was? Most viewed YouTube video that's 24 hours. In 24 hours that is not a music video. That is not a music video. I could say that only. I accidentally accidentally accidentally accidentally accidentally. It wasn't. It wasn't. Was it? Or was it? Really? Was it? I think I know. You think? Well, I'm trying to put the pieces together. It was very well-worded. Well-worded question. Thank you. It took me this whole, people go back 20 minutes and just look at me at the desk like this. And that was me trying to think about how to phrase this question. Well done. Accidentally. Okay. I think about that. Well, I think about that. Oh, and then,

control. And just at the end, like usual, we'll be right back. All right. Welcome back to waveform the wave form podcast as you know it, where we talk about EVs.

“Two EVs to talk about this week. The cheap one or the expensive one? Expensive one or the cheap one?”

Cheap is relative to the expensive one. Of course. Yeah, let's do the the cheap one. Okay. All right. Yeah.

Rivian R2 reviews dropped this week, sort of, including ours. Yeah. First drive reviews first drive,

first and final prototype evaluation. We don't have full pricing of all the trims yet, but you know, R video and a car-wide video and a jerry, everything video and a Doug DeMiro video, a bunch of scot to actually hang on drive these cars. R2, as many of you know, is the slightly smaller and roughly roughly half the price Rivian R1. It's the second generation product. It's their two or SUV. It's our Model Y fighter. It's their mass market competitor to like put them on the map

and save them blah, blah, blah, all these expectations for R2. I thought it was really, really good. I thought it was really impressive. The software was good. The steering wheel, haptics were like PS5 controllers with the like spring weight. Like real lagging. It was really really lagging. I'm just just saying. It looks like an R1. It's just smaller. It's nimblest. 2000 pounds lighter. It's simpler. It also was the highest-end trim version of it, so it's obviously

not going to be the base $45,000 one, but it was a dual motor all wheel drive, 600 something horsepower, 0 to 16 3.5 seconds. Very, very capable machine. We offer it in it. We drove it on streets, get roughly 300 miles of range. Lots of good things to say about it, but we don't know the price with the one that I tested. That won't come out for another month or so. Which everyone is now doing their theorizing about how much they think it will cost. But I'm curious if you guys are thinking

good things about R2? Well, with the RAM shortage, it's going to be way more expensive. I'm kidding. Every car has, I mean, I mean, there's a little bit of, yeah, there's a little bit of memory. Yeah, I'm curious. Do you know which trim you drove? Like did they tell you? Yes,

on shipping in 26. When they announced it, however many years ago, what was the price for the people

“that put in the pre-order? Andrew, I believe you did that, right? The pre-order, though, was like 100 bucks”

before which trim, do you know? Or was it like, you know, oh, you didn't get to pay. I thought the whole thing was under 60. That was what I was trying to ask. What was the number? I don't remember. I thought back in the day there was an under 60. What I mostly see is 45,000. This whole people are from it. This is their 45,000 dollar competitor. If I remember correctly, I could be totally wrong. Everyone was saying under 60 a few years ago, which makes most people

assume that higher trim would be 59. But that was like, you know, the like 59, 95 or whatever. That is under 60. I don't know. That was two years ago. A lot of stuff has changed.

These things never come out the price. And to be clear, the R2 is only coming in the R1S trim,

where it's smaller. I mean, it's a smaller SUV because there's no traction. Right. Which, yeah, this is like the common shape of vehicle that especially America just buys a lot of in general. I'm not a wise, most probably vehicle owner for a reason. Like, there's a shape in a two row SUV higher off the ground type of thing that people like. And this is competing directly with that. So that's out. That's, you know, not too many hot takes about it. I'm just more excited for one or three.

Dude, I want that. It's like a silver. This is cute. This is cool. Thank you. Dude, out through R3. The R3 is like a foot and a half to two feet shorter than the model 3. It'll be even

“easier to park in Brooklyn. Mmm. You mean length wise. Right. Yeah, front and back. And why?”

So you got to really get into that thing. Think about the R2 was they had like the decals on it as like they're like R2d2. Well, the like camouflage quote unquote. Like it didn't cover any lines. It just still looked exactly the same. It just looked like it had like a silly paint job on. Yeah, we all know. I mean, they showed me in that studio, like two years ago, whatever, what the R2 is supposed to look like. So this is now technically an updated final version.

But it's like, we already, we can see it. It's like, yeah, it has a couple stripes on it. Okay, whatever. But we know what the R2 is going to look like. So yeah, R2, they got very clever with it. I will say they had some nice Easter eggs. You can see some of them in Doug Miro's video, some of them in Zach's video. The charge flap, which is the back left corner, has a maze in it. People did screenshot the video and fill up the maze. It doesn't seem to be in any

thing. It just seems like a lot. Top posts on our subreddit just says, this maze fucking sucks. I, because I remember when I was there and I'm sure someone from Ruby was watching this. I was like, please show me all the Easter eggs and they're like, we can't. I can tell you, is there's a bunch? And I can't explain any of them or show you where they are. And we're like, all right, well, I found the maze. So can you at least tell me what the maze means when people fill it out?

And they're like, it's just a maze. It's just a maze. I was like, what do you mean? It's just a minute. You spent all this effort like building and designing your own maze and the molding to like hide in the charge port. What is it? They wouldn't tell me. So now that people have filled it out, it seems like it actually is just a maze and nothing special having to do it. Unless it's like a it's just for the whimsy topographical map or something. I don't know. The right nothing wrong with

something that it doesn't made anything. That's fair enough. Well, here's some things that did mean something. In the window lining of the windshield, there's a little smiley face that looks like a little yaddy smiley face. In the back windows in the window lining, there's a little climber. Do they mean anything? Well, it's an adventure vehicle. There were people so mad at the maze, just a maze. Well, it's not really a adventure theme until it means something. Underneath the

lining of the center storage, there's a little diagram of like things that can fit there. Like a water bottle and a little camera and a knife, which is kind of cool. Is there a speaker? They replaced it. They moved the speakers up until like under that front dad. They took them out of the doors

actually. They're still a flashlight in the door. You know, they know what we want. The most important

part. What I was a thing about the R2 is how do you take half the price off and still keep all of the character of the Rivian like R1 stuff? And I thought the flagship was obviously going to go and it stayed. So that was actually kind of impressive. They also announced an Apple Watch app that you can use to unlock the doors now. That's a fate. I mean, yeah. I think you eat better keyfabs because that's like my number one. Yeah, that is yeah. Two other Easter eggs. The molding

underneath the windshield wiper fluid canister in the car is a small skunk/frog hybrid animal

“because that's a skunk, which is a skunk. It's a frunk frunk. That means something. You should”

also know that that spot right underneath the front of the windshield where the windshield wipers are

owl. Okay, that's pretty sweet. I didn't know David's sort of working at Rivian with all these puns. I love it. They wouldn't show me your telling me about any of the rest of them, but that's as many as I was able to find. Wow. Okay, wait, this is just to be clear. This is going to be on all R2s, not just these models you reviewed. These Easter eggs? Yeah, these Easter eggs. I believe this should be on all of them. Okay, that makes me very happy. Yes. Yes. Are you getting into

R2 Adam? Hell no, I'm getting the R3. Me too, baby. Let's go. Let's go. You're you're buckled up for that six year weight. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm going to be. I'm going to be off my current car. So by then, I'll be ready. As long as you know, as long as you know, I paid my not yesterday. Well, there's another EVI I do want to bring up to you guys because there's so many weird interesting things about it that are connected to waveform. Number one, it's a Ferrari EV. We don't

“know what the outside looks like, but it's called the Lucie Lucie. I think Lucie. Do you have to say it”

like that? I'm not even going to be able to pick it up. It's always something I do only with

that Lucie. Number two. This interior was the first with assistance from love from which is Johnny Ives firm. So this is potentially the first car interior that Johnny Ives has gotten his hands on. And it's always funny listening to old, I think, I think Nealized brought this up on old Vergecasts, which is like all the Apple executives drive Ferrari isn't all they really want is them to have car play. And like Nealized now they finally got into work with Ferrari. So this is the first time they've had a direct hand in this, but

there are some videos out there. This like big teaser video or I really not a teaser. They show the whole interior of the car. And okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So many thoughts. Each individual switch and display and UI element is actually beautiful. Right. But then when in isolation. In isolation, like each button, each switch really clean, really nicely done. But then you zoom out to the whole

“interior and it looks bad. Yeah. Like I think pretty bad. It looks. It has this like retro look to it,”

which is really nice for my take last week that nostalgia is ruining everyone's taste. They went a little bit like confused with the nostalgia I think. It's hard to call it nostalgia when it's like, hey, the steering wheel looks kind of old, but also here's an Apple Watch Ultra's right next to it. Yeah. Yeah. The tablet looks like an Apple Watch, a giant Apple Watch Ultra. Yeah. How long ago

did the first Apple Watch come out? We're unlike the three now. So probably four. You know, he's

talking about the original Apple Watch Apple Watch. Yeah. Right. It's been like a decade. So this could still be reminiscent of older times. Yeah. It's just a weird. I'm guessing this is not going to be a cheap car. This is going to be a car that people as a Ferrari. Like people with a lot of money are yeah. I mean, it's a Ferrari. And I just don't know what type of a person wants this. And I say that knowing that a lot of people do actually want retro future. They just want an electric version

of an old car. A lot of people say this a lot. And I'm not sure how many would actually buy it. If it's like small phones where we all say we want it, but we don't buy it. But like the old remember the, the Buick commercial where they show the GNX over and over and over again, which is like super sick. And everyone's like, we just want that but electric. And then you show the new Buick. And it's like, I don't want that. So the old Volkswagen bus, everyone loves that. And everyone

wishes there was just an electric version of that. But then they had to go modernize a whole bunch of design out there. People want it less. I think that's still true. Like people seem to really like the idea of an old design that's just electrified 100%. But this is, um, yeah, it's, I really want to know the outside of the car. I mean, that's kind of like, uh, Hyundai, Hyundai, Hyundai is making the that card that it used to look five. No. No. What is it called? Oh, the N7074. Yeah, they did say

it's going to be production car. Like, and they aren't doing it. Aren't they? They keep saying

they will. Yeah, they keep saying they will never get an hydrogen. I had like hydrogen fuel cells.

Yeah, like a hydrogen. That was years ago. I've been talking about that. Like, and I mean, that course, like at first they like, it's a concept. And then they were like, maybe we might do it. And they're like, but we probably won't. And then they're like, that's the room. It's going to go into production. And then we just haven't heard anything. I just think it would be such a huge PR win if a company would actually do what everyone says we want. Yeah. I just, there's probably

some amount of surveys that they've run or people who just say they would buy it, but wouldn't

“actually buy it. Yeah. You know what's the best thing about this interior that I'm seeing?”

It's just that there's buttons and knobs. Yeah. Yeah. It's out if it's just not an iPad. People got excited, which is hilarious from Johnny Hive. I will say like the giant Apple Watch iPad thing

Obviously, but a lot of this to me is very ugly. Each individual piece is sick. The dynamic

block dude that you can use. The torque meter that the torque meter that you're in is sick. I will say if I was able to just buy this tablet and stick it into my car, I would 100% do it. So ugly. Oh my god. This is like so on the line of like good and bad that I feel like if I have any response to it, it'll be like you don't like it because you can't afford it. Or yeah. You don't know anything about Ferrari. Is he how like what I lose saying anything about this car?

The launch mode. Did you see the thing about the launch mode? Or you like you pull that handle in. Hold on. Do you put? Yes. And then everything like turns orange.

“Yeah. I mean, it'll stick in isolation. It looks off. Is this the key? I think. Yeah. The key”

of the mini like juice box fits in like the little piece. Like this is the key because later

down here it shows the key. That's pretty cool. Oh. There's a lot of scrolling on this website. Yeah. Something that I did think was cool is that they made like a book series about the development of this car. That's like four books that like Johnny, I've like developed with his team. And apparently they do that on every project and I think that's very cool. And you know, I'm happy for them. Remember one day announced CarPlay Ultra and all the things popped up

into the add and they were like, oh, this is so cool. It looks so pretty. And then all the car makers were like, no, we're not doing that. We don't know where we got that from. Does this

actually exist? Or are these just a bunch of pretty renders that they did and put on a website?

“This is the interior reveal of Ferrari has said that they're going to make an electric car. This is the”

interior reveal of their eventual electric car. They will at some point reveal the exterior and the price and the specs and all the rest of that stuff. But this is a car that they've said they're going to actually make. But none of these are pictures. They're like very dangerous videos. There are videos. I'll show you. I'll send you on Twitter or something. I've like an actual someone driving it or inside it. No, just they've like taken the interior and like put it in a studio and

they put it in themselves and they sound really nice and stuff. We got to talk about the Binnacle, man. What's that? What's the Binnacle? The Binnacle is what they're calling the game cluster behind this steering wheel. A Binnacle is you ever seen on like an old-timey boat. There's like that tower right by the helm. Yeah. It has like a compass and maybe like a claw. Oh, does it have one of those? No, but they're calling the gauge cluster the Binnacle and I like

say they were Binnacle. Because it's like Pinnacle, sort of. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, man. I like each individual piece. I hate the whole thing. I'm also very curious. Like there's so many screens that are sort of hidden in this car and I'm very curious if you're going to be able to see bezels. That's great. That's going to make a big difference about how tacky it is. It's just running Android bullet. Do we think that's really funny? Definitely is. It's almost positive. You would be rational to think

that such an expensive car has to use the latest tech and screens. But if you look at any other Ferrari, they also see these. They don't look great. Yeah. I would not trust Ferrari to go and write horse OS. It's not what I would want to use. Yeah. It's weird. Anyway, that ends my Ferrari crash out for all right. My turn. Yeah. And you brought you guys another gank. Buckle up, guys. Yeah. It's called how long can you listen to me crash out about. Super Bowl. Yeah. Yeah, my answer to you see like a

Olympic figure skating the other day. I've I have not had internet for a very long time. And that is the start of my crash out. Well, sure. But I want to open this with a question to you guys. Come. If at your house, a wire connecting to the telephone pole. Stop right there. Three of us don't have house. I know, but just imagine. Okay. Just imagine. Imagine. Uh-huh. You and your family live in a house. I'm a stop. You're right there. I do not have a family. A wire is down across your driveway. And you

contact the company that deals with that wire. Three of us do not have drive. Sorry. How fast do you

“think that company should come to deal with that wire? Is it a live wire? How am I supposed to know?”

I'm not an expert. Well, this is the internet went down. So it's not like a power line. Okay. So all wire has come down. A wire has come down from a telephone pole. Okay. And do you feel confident about that as a power wire or a cable wire? I don't know. Sounds like it's cable. Okay. I only know it is a cable wire because I'll paint the picture. The video showed me there's a transformer on the pole. Yeah. Okay. Well, so instantly. I'll explain a little further. This is the, this is on Saturday.

Remember, we're recording this one say that will help in this story. On Saturday, this big tree

Pine tree is swaying in the winds because we have had super, super cold days, lots and lots of

“ice. And on Saturday, we had one of the coldest days of the year, including wind gusts of like 40 to 50 miles”

an hour. Yeah. So like 11 a.m. There's two of these trees standing next to each other. And I noticed one is significantly leaning more than the other. I also have pictures that I'm going to. If you're watching, you can see this. So the point where there's this like bulge coming out of the ground, and I'm like next to the tree, that looks bad. And I realized that the root system is pulling up on the tree. So I immediately call our power company and say this tree is going to fall down

and is most likely going to hit a telephone pole within an hour. I'm sitting at my bay window. And I hear the gust of wind and I look out and I watch the tree come down and snap the telephone pole in half. Yeah. It hit the wires, not even the pole. The wires so hard. That the telephone pole

about a third of the way up snapped clean off the whole telephone pole flips upside down because

“the transformer and all the wires at the top is now hanging in the road. And a tree is across”

my driveway and across the road. So I do what I should have done. I first call the fire. I first call 911 because there's active wires down in the middle of the road. Then I call the power company, tell them what's happening. Then I call Xfinity. Did you two or one? I'm immediately. Also, so at the telephone pole, it's technically across the street, no sparks. But it's across the street. But there's a wire that comes and then runs into a telephone pole between me and my neighbor's

house to then split off how we get our utilities. So dispatcher obviously picks up. I talk to a real person. Power company. I talk to a real person. Xfinity, who's my cable company. I tell them about it. And through their automated services at 1-800 Xfinity is just you think it literally is like, would you like to report a down and potentially dangerous wire? Do you want me to text you away

“to submit this? And at this point, I'm like, I just want my power back. I will just take the ticket”

and submit it. So that happens. The power company fixes this telephone pole by 10 pm. It was still a really long time with being really cold at home because I had no power. But they get that stuff done then. The next day, my wire Saturday was the coldest day we had. It was the coldest day we've had. It was I could felt like seeing my breath inside of my house. We sent Claire and Lane to someone else's house and they stayed there. This is all going to end with me talking about customer

service and now every large company is a bunch of fucking cowards and that they use customer service to just deal with all of it. But okay, I'm going to try and go as fast as I can. Next day, Sunday, I realized there's still a wire across my driveway. The only reason I know this is not a dangerous wires because I personally talked to one of the power company people. They see, we did all our wires. The wire left down on your driveway right now is the cable companies and where you're

not going to be with it. Sorry. So then I call that day, Xfinity. I'm probably with Xfinity's horrific call answering service or whatever it is. It connects you to pretty much no one until you at some point can get to technical customer support. The people who are like trying to

help you troubleshoot your router and everything. First guy tells me, someone will be there today

between 6 and 11 and at that point I'm like, that feels like way too long for a wire to be down. So I get mad and then no one shows up that day. And so then I call the next day and they were like, oh no one showed up. They're supposed to be here 10 to 12. Call this later. If no one shows up, I call them later. No one shows up. They're like, oh, it's scheduled for tomorrow. And then yesterday, I call again. They're like, oh, 10 to 12. 12 o'clock. I actually did get an automated

thing saying like, they'll be a little late today. I call again at 5 p.m. Oh, the schedules for tomorrow. Now no one can connect me to the like actual person. The technicians that are doing the exterior things. Every time there's like, well, we're just technical support. There's nothing we can do. And I go, what's the line for customer service? And they say, it's 1,800 Xfinity. They're just

how I got to those people in the first place. I super TLDR. I'm not proud of how many times I

freaked out at people on the phone. I mean, I probably have spent 6 to 8 hours on the telephone in the last 3 or 4 days. Mark has given the other day at me like, the whole for me. Yeah, no, no, physically talking to people for that long trying to get anything done. It's just literally nothing can happen. No one can connect me to any of these technicians. None of these technicians are calling me to tell me they're just not going to show up that day. It's and it's

gotta be the worst customer service I've ever dealt with. And we all know that Comcast and Xfinity sucks. Yep. But this is not just them. Like, if you think about it, most places now, if there's

options that take you nowhere, hang the phone up on you all the time. And when you talk to someone, it's a call center that probably can't help you. And those poor people on that side are definitely just getting screamed at for nothing. Why don't you just change their behavior? We have plenty of options. Yeah. So I literally don't have any other provider option in my area except for, I think their spectrum and it offers 25 down as their max. Yeah. Um, so I don't have another option.

But California has a lot of laws around this. So I would kill from San Francisco and Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz. We had Cruz net. And we had gigabit before anybody else had gigabit because there was like 20 different options just in Santa Cruz, which is like a town of like not that many people. If I had to say that having multiple options creates competition, which then Mark has camera. Careful. Yeah. It's like, as competition is bad. Competition is bad. We need to own people.

Are you saying you could bust trusts? Is that what you're saying? Wait, what if we did? I, what have we had more than one option? Have you ever played that game? It's kind of old.

“You have to like, you own the stuff and then you can keep it. And then you own more stuff? Yeah.”

Wait, how do you win that game? You don't you just hate each other? Everyone gives up. Oh, I know how you win. You just make sure you're the only option. I think it's what mono poly because it means one, oh, no. That's why there's only one poly market. There are two. There's

coffee as well. I've never, I want to say I appreciate you guys because I'm still few.

I think about this and it's like helping me not look like as much as it is. It's great. Can I tell you some of the funniest things that I dealt with in these calls? One of them was me on the phone with somebody and then getting a text message from infinity saying service in your area has been restored. That really helps. Oh, yeah. I had one person say I kept just asking they're like, oh, the the appointment with the external technician is for 10 to 12 tomorrow and I was like,

can I get any confirmation for that? Can you send me an email? No, we're not able to do that. And then one of them said we can do that and I said, well, I haven't gotten it yet. And she said, is your internet working? I said, no, the wires down across the road. And she said, well, you didn't get the email because you don't have internet. And I was like, I'm calling you on my phone. Like this is this is the point where I tried to keep my cool for so long because I knew

and I was hoping someone could give me a number somewhere. But then they basically just lied to me.

And like basically call me an idiot and then I just start freaking out. And I was not nice. And I feel bad because it's not their fault because X-finity is using a bunch of labor somewhere else as punching bags to completely dodge any responsibility, which then just makes me even more mad.

“So honestly, anyone out there if you have X-finity and can change, do it because that place sucks.”

Even though everywhere else probably sucks, but what I would give I know what I would give I can't for Verizon, which is who are probably almost just as bad. We have Verizon as a Fios company. Yeah, I know. It's the Fios customer service is so laughable. Like the ways they have managed to screw me over. Do but I have an Andrew I have an X-finity story for you. But I think I told once a year ago on the podcast, but we know we're

just going to tell again because I hate it. Yeah. I was paying an insane amount of money for X-finity

gigabit, like $80, $90 a month. Oh, I pay for that for there. Like 1.3, 1,200. Yeah. I never, ever,

ever got more than 100 megabytes down. Ever. I'm most of the time I was in the low 30s and we would complain to X-finity every day. Like why are we paying all this money if you just cannot deliver the right service? And every day they'd be like, we don't know what's going on. It must be you

“somehow. Like you need to get a new router. You need to do this. We'd be like, no, no, no, no, no.”

Don't lie to me. And after months of this, we were talking to someone via the like live chat at X-finity. And they go, hold on, give me one sec. Test your internet speed now, gigabit. Gigabit, it was like crazy. We were like, wait a second. How did you do that? They were like, I can't really say. Yeah. And chat. Really similar. Four days later, internet speed goes back down to 30. What happened? We get back on the live chat. Talking, we're like, no, no,

you fix it. Someone fixed it last time. They're like, no, it fix it. Finally, we got them to admit, are we texted them? You have a button on your dashboard that says, give us gigabit. And you're just refusing to hit it because your boss said not to. And the guy goes, yes, period. I'm sorry, period ends the chat. That's similar. I'm not with all the proof, but I was similar, sorry, briefly in college. I had like horrible. There was like two possible service, whatever providers.

And I'm pretty sure it was Comcast was the first one. Now it was getting in Comcast with a wig.

had like internet outages. And I just called them and I was like, cancel my service. Cancel it now. Cancel it. I don't, I don't even want to bother like, working with you. Just cancel it. And they're like, no, please, please, please, we can upgrade you for free. Well, and that's when they start like, offering bargains. They're like, well, upgrade you for a discount. I was like cancel it. I don't care. And they're like, okay, we'll just put you on the highest tier plan. And we won't have to change anything else.

And I was like, fine. And I hung up. And immediately, my internet was like 300 up and down. It was zero changes to price or anything else. I was like, this could have been my situation the entire time. But they hold you in the little box as long as they can. Yeah. So it's real. So real quick, then, I, my neighbors who also are missing internet, when they called them, they said, oh, we don't see any other outages. It must be something in your house, but we can't get a home technician there to

Wednesday. This is on Sunday. What I'm screaming at someone on the phone saying there's wires down.

“And they know that they're telling me there's no reported outage. Right now, I think it actually”

got fixed. And I only know that because my neighbor texted me during this podcast saying, hey, our internet's back up. I think it might be working. Still not a single technician has called me or done anything. If I go home in that wires on the ground, boy, yeah, I don't know what's going on.

When I got my files installed, they didn't show up on like the first three days. They were said

they were supposed to show up. And I kept being like, hey, they said they were going to show up between these hours, and they didn't. And then when the guy eventually came, he's like, oh, yeah, like, if we take too long in another job, we just don't come. And I was like, but do you tell anyone who tells me? And they're like, no, my files. Okay, my files took nine and a half hours to put files in my house. I don't know why. Like, he didn't do anything. And then there's a bunch of other

stuff that happened while he was there. That was like so crazy. I was like this insane. But I will say I got a lot of really nice tools out of it because he left like half of his stuff in my apartment. Including his hard hat. So I have a Verizon hard hat. Now, which I'm like, really into. That's cool. Yeah, do you know the hours they gave me six a.m. to 11 p.m. And then say someone must be home when they show up. I was like, that is not happening.

You're fixing this. Oh, I'm sorry. So they basically have expected me to miss three days of work.

“Yeah, they often assume you don't have a job. They're like, you must just be home all day, right? You're”

good. You're home all day. Cool. Yeah. Well, I mean, anytime. Honestly, the job just use the internet at work. Idiot. I mean, I guess I was thinking of this scenario where if I didn't get to talk to the power person to know that that wire down was not electrically charged. At this point, I would have had to go to the fire department probably to come get it. But like, I asked every single person I talked to. Like, is this is this wired dangerous? And they're usually like,

yes, it's dangerous. Like, do you think you should get someone to come here right away? And they're like, like, as if maybe it's just the power or if it's just the cable line, then that doesn't have electricity flowing through. And I was like, do you trust me knowing if that's the power? I didn't tell

them. I knew. But like, I had people basically telling me, oh, you could cross over the power line.

Don't worry about it. Damn, which seems like an insane liability for you. So is your car not in the driveway? I, I knew it was safe. So I've rolled over it since then, but it's, uh, but that's only because of the power people. But I wasn't telling them that. I was trying to get them to clean up a wire or actually show up. Wow. Yeah. I feel like I'm tidaling this the crash out

“episode. Thanks very much for tuning into our crash out our weekly crash out pocket. That's why”

we're everyone crashes. I felt good. Do you actually like, seriously? Like, I, plus one. Yes. Wow. We're at it. I don't like any of your Ferrari's either. I'm sick, you're binical. I need Adam to sit. Adam who you're mad at. Rink it right now. What's up? But that's a story for another. I thought he was going to say all of you for a minute. This is an impossible episode to edit after that too. Wait, what did

WhatsApp do? It's really good. Oh, I can't get into this. Right now, tune in next week. Subscribe to find out what WhatsApp did. Um, really quickly related to what's that really quickly. There's a funny thing that happened. Where do you guys remember when Chagit BT was in WhatsApp randomly all of a sudden? Well, it was. I don't remember. Well, it was. Okay. I only remember Meta AI being in WhatsApp. Yeah. So also, Chagit BT was and then Meta was like, oh no. And then they

took it out because they, they were like, nobody else can have AI, AI's and WhatsApp now. Isn't that like an inconpetitive or something? Yeah. And then the European Commission very quickly was like, uh, uh, uh, and now they are passing legislation to force Meta to allow AI other human. No, they're saving our asses about everything Greenland. Come on. A lot of stuff. Competent government is crazy. It's crazy. Anyway, it would be great. Come get your boy, ex-finity over here in the age you

somehow join the EU so that our past is like under EU jurisdiction now like yeah, we're crazy.

They're just moving. That was a jersey now. There's new jersey. There should be like new Philadelphia, New Zealand. New New York. It's about time for, uh, some trivia for God. We had trivia. This is a crazy episode, dude. God. You know, I am feeling like I went a little too far. So because I said, you say I'm open, I'm going to change my trivia question. I feel like I

“get a certain point I got to draw the line. So, um, today's new trivia question. What was the answer?”

The answer was six point eight gigawatts, which is, um, so we can round it up to seven. So it's 70% of what Sam Alman says it would take to cure cancer or two to every child. Is that with the full capacity or the 30% capacity? That's full capacity. That's with the flux capacity. That's with the flux capacity. Very cool. How that translates to gigawatts hours? I, I don't know. But the trivia question I do know the answer to is, was inspired actually by something David

and Melcette earlier this episode, which was about the band, straight away manifesto. No, you're astounded. You too. You too. You too. Specifically, you too is now forever associated with Apple because they put that one album out. And there was a YouTube edition iPod. They got sold. There's, that's different than the red edition though, right? I thought product red. Yeah, YouTube Apple. Like this. Yeah. Home easy. It's like Tim Cook and so that guy with the shoes.

However, yeah, Samsung and YouTube's lineup share one thing in common. What is that thing? What do you, would you move it line up? That's it. That's the question. David, I'm not going to give you the answer. Stop staring at me like that. I don't know anything about you too. So that's going to be different. What I'm really confused about is, I kind of thought David would nail this one. I kind of thought this was like a David, David layout. I mean, there's a pun.

“I wrote down the only thing I know about you too. So please, I hope you're just as bono.”

I just don't know anything about you too. So is that it? Uh, uh, no, Dad. I drew him right in.

All right, David. Yeah, like see. No, I'm dead. Bloody Sunday. The answer is the edge,

which is the name of the lead guitarist in the band. That's cool. That's you too. And the thin phone. The S25. I mean, Viva Levita, you know, some people are not even close to the podcast and immediately because they know a lot about you too. They immediately went through and they're like, oh, yeah, the edge. I know this. They're all going to get you. You would have to both know a lot about you too. And be aware of the current lineup of Samsung Galaxy. Well, the edge line thing has been in the line for a very long time.

Galaxy XX edge, Galaxy Note Edge. Shut up to the note edge. But I was insane. I didn't know that his guitarist was the end of the edge. She heard that there guitarist was the end of the edge. I thought Bond would just play it all of the instruments. Is Bond a nice real name? Is Bond or Jovi? That's gonna trigger someone I can.

Next question, but first, quick up there on the score. Of course.

We did Mark has get that point. No. No. Mark has with 14, speaking of which. 14. David with 16. Whoa. Andrew's still carrying the one with 17. I think David and I points have changed. No, it's been a while. I think ever since I know you had a great. Yeah, ever since you complained about not getting any points. I don't think David and I have gotten any. Who do magic that's a hard?

Okay. The next question. Yeah. In 2024, one company accidentally broke the record for the most viewed YouTube video in 24 hours. What was that company? Let's listen to 2024. It was in 2024. David, can you put the put that down because you keep locking your face? I'm sorry. I know me too. Me too. I was wondering if they would remember because I completely

“blanked on it. I feel like I remember the story, but not the specifics. You know?”

Oh, that I'm wrong. I didn't even write anything. Hey, thank you for the memory. What are you got? Well, Mark has what you put? Rockstar? Like the energy drink? No, the Jager, Adriola. I don't even write anything. It's I panicked.

Xfinity. He's just thinking like, I put one plus for when when they ran Mark has his entire video as an ad.

I didn't know you're such a one plus show. That was like the one plus six or something. Yeah, it was a while ago. It was also like an answer. He published trailer for something.

It was a April Fool's joke that Discord did that it was a 17 second video that was on loop

in their servers and it accidentally crossed over it. And YouTube had to take away that it was like a pop-up thing. So it's like it's they basically bought it the views because like it was embedded into a more billion views in twenty four hours. Oh my god. It's done.

“Sorry. Whoa, YouTube. The worst thing Discord's ever done. Maybe next to this face recognition”

stuff is adding these stupid little pop-ups in the corner that you always have to be like,

I don't want to do a quest right now. Shut up. It's an ad or whatever. New feature. Wow, that kind of defines twenty twenty six. Yeah. Side quests is an ad or a feature. Do a quest to find out. It's trying to do it. Well, thanks for tuning into the crash out podcast. We appreciate your time. Next week we'll be crashing out about a slightly different set of things.

“Yeah, what's that? Possibly. What's app will be on the list of course. And then just keeps”

keeping touch with the news. Maybe we'll get an idea of what we're going to crash out to next. If you're still here. Could have spot-fold. That means we appreciate you already because you're probably already subscribed. But if you haven't already, get subscribed. See you guys in the next episode. Peace. Goodbye. Way for Mrs. Produced by Emily and Alice Rubin. We're part of the box media podcast network in our

chat show music was vansil.

“Yeah, my view only one in the server is not meant RedgeWatt's end door. Those who he is.”

He was that marked. He's a football player, right? No. Simon, you're part of the story, too. This is a swim flashback. Just to be honest, and then I hope this is stimmt. Paul, no, I can't. This story is so my safe space. Do you think it's all right? Yeah, exactly. This story is so deep. The one who just understands.

The game studio, job or music. Sting. Cras. I don't feel like I'm standing. Sting is a legend. Save. With this story. In one package to a fixed price.

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