CES 2026: Part Six (Thursday)

Media, enter the mind gym and pick up some brain weights. It's time for Better Offlines coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show, and.

I am your host ed Zitron.

We're back here in the plaza and beautiful Las Vegs Nevarda bringing you another episode. It is Thursday and we're still covering cees. We are still here with an amazing assortment of guests from the tech industry. We've got an open bar, we've got tacos, a place to sit down for members of the media, whether or not they join us on the microphone. And of course we've got some

You're never going to get rid of me. I'm like bed buds.

I love it with Cradley Booper and of course Matt Bender Mashball joins.

Us say hey three times in a row.

What's up?

And then the wonderful to Vendra Hadowar, Evan Gadget HEO, let's go. And you said you wanted to talk shit on Dell, so let's.

Give the man.

Give us the history.

So last year, Dell did this the dumbest thing I've seen a tech company do in a very long time. They were like, Hey, we all these brands. Yeah, you know and love XPS, that thing that's been selling for decades. People love it. Let's kill all that. Let's call all computers Dell, Dell, pro, Dell, Promax. Those names may sound familiar,

Yeah?

He did not have a good response to that. Fast forward a year, every other PC manufacturer shipment's growing, Dell down because nobody knew what the hell Dell was producing this year, especially the people who wanted an XPS. So they turned they turned around, they brought back the XPS brand. They're actually doubling down on it and all so fixing all the stupid issues we've brought up in our reviews over the last few years too.

So it's double vindication. What I guess back, what are the things that they've messed up? What if they fix have you seen the XPS lately? I have not.

So they did this thing. Sometimes designers go a little crazy. They're like, what if what if you couldn't see a track pad? What if it was just all wrisk pad? So they did that. They made an invisible track pad that works and it looks cool, but it's hard to use because you can't tell where it begins.

It's hard to use because a huge part of using a track pad is being able to see.

I feel it, at least feel I have a problem with my MacBook Probe.

The track put pad is slightly bigger than usual. It is nasty, clammy wrists get on it. But an invisible one I would snap that thing.

But also, at least with a MacBook right, you have an edge.

You can see what it is. You can see that.

You don't even need to see it. You need to feel it, right because you're not looking at the track.

I could see I could see an invisible track pad working if they made like the technology to just extend it so that area is a track pad.

I mean you're saying, is that's not the case.

A lot of it is a track pad, but the very edges aren't. Anyway, what they did with the new redesign. They put just little little notches so you feel it.

Wow.

And these are just like basic usability things.

To think about. They could have.

They could have done that first, but anyway, And also the function row on the Dell xps is for the last couple of years was this like capacitive touch thing. They weren't real keys. There were buttons that kind of changed when you hit a button and they disappeared in bright sunlight. You couldn't see them. So like your function keys, the volume button, all that stuff just disappeared. And I talked to that. I was like, did you guys not go outside? Did you not bring this computer outside?

Don't see you're talking to computer eduering didn't go outside?

But like wait, but did they say whether they did?

They were like it was COVID and we were designing, you know. It was like the excuses were it was kind of a rough time to design. I think sometimes some companies let their designers go crazy. Yeah, we're gonna out Apple. Apple. The thing about Apple is that they they at least tend to think about usability and practical functional.

The company best known for its usability. Yeah, like very consumer facing. They don't like changing things up other than liquid gloss, which fucking sucks.

You could argue about liquid glass. Yeah, but they're charging the mouse on the bottom. Oh that's like Johnny I bullshit, but Apple itself doesn't tend to do Yeah, so anyway, that's they're just keys. Now, they're just keys. And they these new the XPS fourteen and sixteen or a lighter than ever. This XPS fourteen is like about three pounds, which is pretty great. Yeah for a fourteens laptop. So yeah, total vindication. They fixed a lot of the issues. The

Well, there's a misinformation going on around Dallas well because everyone's saying, oh, Dell claim that they're backing off AI branding and people don't like AI. Apparently, David Girard, you chased this down, Journalius, Javid Girard, Jesus Christ. He apparently that was never said. And Dell is full scale AI like anyone who thinks that they're not. They have forecasted twenty five billion dollars of AI server sales this year. Do not believe Dell's lies. Do not let them lie

I've had some interesting conversations with people at Dell who were pissed off at Microsoft and pissed off about the AIPC push because it's literally all marketing bullshit, as you've covered extensively, that has not led to actually useful futures for people. So, yeah, Dell is invest in AI. What I have noticed is that they're not saying AIPC. They're not out there shipping saying like hey, we got the latest co pilot plus systems because nobody cared. Nobody cared about copilotplus.

They try, saying they try.

Just here they did, and now it's just like, hey, you know what's great a computer? A computer that works?

What if a computer? Yeah?

What if?

What if a computer was a thing that you could see the things at the keys?

You could see it, you could feel the track pas.

Basically, I will say that from my now you know, this is my first year at CESU, from my relative limited exposure to the kind of products that get shown at.

The ce S.

Somebody being like, hey, do you want a laptop that you have no idea where you're touching on it? Do you want a laptop that has a bunch of buttons but you're going to have to use it in pretty limited facilities to make sure that you know exactly what you are clicking. That's the new product is.

The whole world can be described by like, I think you should leave sketches, right, yea car sketches. I want a car where the steering wheel doesn't fly off. And that's basically what we're saying.

No, no, it's it's literally there's two cys is two I think you should leave sketches.

It's that.

And it's also a guy who just walks around going what the hell is that?

What the hell is that? Her niece smart.

Glasses that goes that's a flower paw.

Oh my god, who walks into his pantry and goes, oh, what the fuck do I cook?

The I've got too much shit on me sketch. Yeah, yep, I just can't serve. That's Victoria song.

Yeah.

The just too many wearables, too many wearables. Although we had a good chat with the guy from a Pebble who's back. Everyone likes Pebble good wearables. Actually, I said, I said smart rings were bullshit last year and I still believe that. Sorry, Victoria, but the Pebble smart ring kind of cool.

What do you think is bullshit about smart rings?

The form factor means they can never really do much. The battery life is always gonna be.

Sorry form factor you mean being ring.

It's a ring where it can never have like a big battery. It can never be that. So it's very limited in terms of what you can do. And all the rings we've seen, I know you've worn a couple of like they're just they're fine, but you know what's better. It's just a smart watch, is this not? As it doesn't feel a.

Push on you on that. I find smart watches very annoying, and I agree, like my weird, fucking like oddly dainty wrists. I mean that, like the see muscle there, thank you clothing, thank you Chloe, just destroying me.

Like my Apple watch for some reason, just doesn't get a full connection no matter how tight it's interesting and like this ring for the most part works, but even then, like it's I still don't get a full connection sometimes sometimes it doesn't really yeah, even then it doesn't recognize a full workout.

Sometimes it's it kind.

Of wearables are personal, Like that's the thing.

Yeah, we're all weird, Like what what we like to touch with textures we like?

I think I've learned. I just don't like ring stuff, you know, so like that's just.

It's hard to make a generous product in that way.

The thing is, too, you have to be the type of person who wears whatever that wearable is, like the non tech version of it too, Like I don't wear watches. I want to wear smart watch. I don't wear rings. I want to wear a smart ring. I don't wear glasses, So I want to wear smart glasses.

That's a big one too. Smart glasses also kind of bullshit. But the Pebble thing is kind of cool because the Pebble guy was always like, first off, their thing was eat ink smart watches, like back in twenty fourteen. Yeah, those are coming back. He's bringing back that's been so Pebble used to have these smart watches that lasted for weeks and just they were very basic. They could like upload notifications.

He used to kindle. Yes, so it's like that. It's like that, but watch.

Not really an LCD screen but more like papery.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's it's the Piper screen.

And I can read my book on my watch.

Well, I mean I don't think you.

Could read your notifications on your watch for sure. But he's bringing back that because what happened was fitbit butt Pebble Google butt fitbit, and he went to Google and just like, hey, you're my software, my Pebble software. Nothing's happening. Can you open source at and Google for once did a good thing. I was like, yes, the open sources so nice. Now now the pebblic guy can go back and make hardware using that software. So the pebble watches

But the thing is with the ring from what I pod, you have to physically hold it down.

Well, so the ring all it does, it does one thing you're supposed to do it really well, you hit a button on the ring. It takes notes.

Yes, do you have to physically hold it down?

Then? I don't know if we also we looked this up and I was saying that I because I as a comedian, usually my phone background says document everything. I record every single set that I do and stand up in my voice memos like I use the notes and the voice memos in my phone are the two things that like.

Yes, unlock my perfect for you, Perfect for Me supposedly will last two years.

Except also I love to like sometimes I'll just record a meeting and not tell the other person. Now that's legal in the state that I live, but it's a way for me to be like, Okay, I remember, like if I'm practicing pitch for a show that I'm trying to sell or whatever, I'm like, I just want to be able to be in the moment, but also remember how I did this and how they react to and what questionures they asked? Whatever, Anyway, this ring sounds like

So I did just look this up.

You just have to click it once to record it, and it's seventy five bucks. I hate to say it, I actually kind of want this because I'm not trying to surreptitiously record people. But I absolutely like, usually got an idea thirty seconds before I meant to fall asleep, I remember thirteen things I would like a reminder for. Yes, now, perhaps I wonn't be wearing a ring at that time, but for seeably I'll walk around be like, shit, I need to remember this, shit, I need to remember this.

Not going to the cloud, not going to the cloud, not.

Melting giraffes as a means of powering GPUs.

On which device on a ring on your phone?

That's kind of what I'm trying to work out, and we don't.

Yeah, I don't. We just got a whole LLM in a ring.

No, that's kind of what I can get there.

It's I'm asking such like podun kill bill, can you've plait a whole robot on that ring?

I actually will push back. That's not a podunk question.

That's a perfectly fucking reasonable one, because especially when we're being told we need eighty nine data centers, we must, we must knock down entire neighborhoods and put up a data center the size of I don't know New York City for meta. I understand the question. I'm going to assume that this thing needs you need to connect it to your phone, and your phone it has I.

Don't fit a whole AI on your phone.

Yes, yes, but I'm guessing it's a very simplified, transcription specific one.

But I do not know.

It might it might.

It might store the recordings on the ring in case you don't have the connectivity of your phone in the moment.

Now it says completely on device, you don't require an Internet connection.

Okay, perfectly, I'm about this ring right here, right now.

The show seventy five bucks March twenty twenty six, last two years now that's the thing. It's not rechargeable. So what once you once, once it's done, you send it back to them?

Why?

Because he is very much like I think this is true. We have too much shit to charge, Like I'm just tired of it. So he's like, Okay, what if a ring lasts two years and if you actually are still using it by then send it back and maybe get a replacement. Actually that is probably better than holding onto a charger that you will know.

I actually what happens a year and a half in though, if it's got less of a charge in that last thing.

It can record roughly twelve to fifteen hours of recording and it lasts for two years.

I'm sorry, I don't know if you're a journalist.

Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait it.

Runs out fifteen hours recording total. No, no, no, you can that's what it says here on the website. I mean I'm not to be able to offload.

Yeah, we have not gone to the specific leve it, but it definitely he wants to.

Hold twelve to fifteen hours total and then you can dump that.

Yeah, but you just we have the technology. Clear.

This is now I'm an article on not my outlet, but Android authority uh with. It's expected to last for up to two years with normal usage, and normal usage is described as ten to twenty times per day, recording three to six second voice notes.

I wanted to love this. I wanted to so bad. But if you're thinking a journalist and you do what what, so fifteen is equal like thirty thirty minute interviews, that's you're never going to record.

It's not for interviews.

Yeah, you're not going to record a full interview.

That was for you on the toilet. This is for you in the shower.

Do you have a lot of thoughts there?

It's toilet thoughts, it's shower thoughts. The storage thing we have the ability to date like that that could be solved.

But I'm just kind of like, if this is if this is meant to be for quick thoughts, fine, but I'm just like, as someone, especially because it does the transcription, I'm just like, that would be really useful.

But I guess you can do that with the Apple Watch down.

But also three to six second voice notes. I mean, is that really saving you the time that you couldn't just whip out your phone and type it yourself.

Yeah, I'm kind of like, actually does that up?

Yeah, I do actually think that being able to say like a very quick thing captain's log. Yeah, yeah, I do think that that is cool. The use case that I would be using it for is if I I am always like writing down in a conversation, if somebody says a very smart thing or like analyzing something in a really cool way, I'm always like, hold on, I want to write that down. And so if I could just be like, hey, can you explain, like explain to me why this movie didn't wasn't wasn't effective in the

Exactly?

That's what I'm saying. I would be doing that in my mind too.

If you give me a time frame like this, if you want this the last two years, you need to use it no more than sixty ten times you're going to have your phone, But every time I use it, I'd be like, oh, this was just number six, Do I really want to go and push it for the next note?

And that is how you know that you did not grow up with money.

I still.

That's a very clear class.

I will give them credit and that they specifically say this is not designed to record your whole life or meetings. It is very much a reminder thing. I can kind of see it. And they're all numerous times where I will just be sitting there and be like, oh, I have an idea, like what if Ben wois Blanc interrogated Cuba for example? But like the use ones too, but it's I also like typing, but again different if I can see different strokes of different folks, that's fine. And

So I can run this might be a Chloe Radcliffe approved device potentially.

How the way I do reviews is often I'm like out just like dictating thoughts into my phone. So that's like often the thing. The other thing I'll point out is that you know we the lifespan is the thing, like will people want basically a disposable device. But what if I think you send it back to them, it gets recycled, the battery gets recycled, good for them. Electronics recycling not that great, but matter than just need.

To put it in the mail.

Like it's just see the moment I'm told I have to mail or something, I just want to I want to jump off a fucking bridge.

Like I was just like, oh, you want me to go to the post office. Let me just let me, let me Dwyer mode.

You get a self self you know, label or whatever, you drop it.

No, no, no, no, you gotta print. You gotta print.

You know they have there's that startup that does the thing for returns right now where you get a barcode and you just bring it to like.

Yeah, and that ship. That's cool. Wait with like Amazon returns and as.

Long as you go to the ups store with coals as well, I think, okay, yeah that's Amazon.

There's also another company that just doesn't.

Amberjack.

Amberjack is a shoe company I used, and they have it where it's just you scan. It was like you can take it to coals or something, which is cool. Like it's weird, Like there are little things like that which are really useful.

Like I said, this is a dyspractic physical coordinational disability.

Putting together, like opening a package isn't fun. Packing a package sucks. Is like the pain box.

For me.

It's like if you're like, return this with a label, I'm like, you want me to touch the thing with the knife on it and the type.

It's also like that's where millennial breakdown happens. It's like, oh, this is a task, not so much that takes time.

Let me explain thispraxia though. Yeah, it's not like it's like a task.

It's picking up a box and putting tape in a straight line is genuinely difficult.

Like my brain.

It's in like the more complex it is, like it actually like is upsetting. Like it's meant like I'm sure the few dispractics who listen like yeah, fuck you dude, boxes suck, but it is really like that, and it's hard to describe because it sounds like I'm just being a baby. I wish I was. I wish this was just me being like ooh, coot put a book together. No, it's really fucking difficult. It's really it's so difficult for me. So it's like, oh, I gave you a label.

You gave me a death sentence.

To the point of what you're saying there, we have the technology.

Yeah, two weeks is cool.

You have a Cura code. You bring it to the story. They're like, I'll deal with this problem for you, which is can you walk away happy? Millennial?

Yes?

Yes, I was okay, I want to In defensive millennials, are you a millennial?

Yeah?

Yeah, yeah, in defensive millennials. I think the reason I don't want to do a task, for sure, you're not wrong, I'm not Yeah.

The things that the simple things that pile up that take five minutes to do.

Right, Yes, totally. But I think the reason that we this is sort of off topic and I'm finding it in the moment, so come with me on this, right. But I think the reason that we are so uh, that tasks are feel like so alienating and so off putting is because we we are Oh boy, she's taken a swing here, let's go to I think we are because of our generation's interaction with the Internet's like rapid

Ye, and your job is also not in your pocket all the time, That's exactly. And it's like also boomers and well Gen x is of course hearing this will say, well.

When I grew up, my parents just left me at home and we.

Have just entertained ourselves and we just also cynical, and of course we could buy houses and college actually guaranteed you a job, and college was cheaper and housing was cheaper. I guess not in the nineties, but even then it was easier to get a house.

And I mean, you're starting a millennia, you're starting a generational.

I don't fuck it.

Y boomers.

Booms got us here, by the way.

Yeah, GenX, we need you, we need you, we need but they.

Got us here because they're in action.

Yes, gen x Is are the problem. There, we are.

I think both of them had that hand. I think boomers in the sheety decisions, but gen x Is are the ones with their inaction when they chose, and they were gen X's who did.

Oh yeah, if even if you look at like the like how like the generations fall politically now, Like you know, the cliche is like all you boomers were the worst or whatever, But if you look, there's a lot of boomers who are very like anti Trump, and I don't see the same with gen X. In fact, gen X is the one that went the other way during the pandemic, like well everyone else was like, oh, I can't believe how Trump is doing what Trump is doing during the pandemic,

My shitty kid who I can't send off the school. I'm right wing now, I mean that's literally.

And also boomers will do the whole thing. We're just gonna get people. I'm gonna get some emails.

There are a lot of boomers who are like, back in my day, I could just walk into a star and say, good sir, I'd like a job nights like Kardia Jeb why.

But the same time, and there was a lots of like old people who were like, just go and get a job.

It's that easy.

The gen x is if you make a post of Blue sky En I've done this several times, just be like make fun of gen x as being like, yeah, I get home, my parents weren't there, so I'd make myself dinner and I'd entertain myself all day every day, and I was so independent. There will be gen x's who respond and be like, yeah, that's actually true, and you should like they get very personal about em I don't know, you lived through some of the best music as well, like fucking stop.

I mean we're right, yes, I mean all the super rich, fucking tech assholes are gen xers, Like.

Yeah, to your idea, what you what you were saying about back to me, back to the millennial. Correct. I think you're absolutely right, But also there's other aspects of it, and people talk about it. It's the way millennials went to school, because we went to school in this like real in America in this really optimized, like the sort of goals that you had to chase were very specific, whole gifted and talented crowd like we were seeing basically.

Which I was one, yes, the same, but that was not.

It really was not.

No, it was not you see.

Online like the the gift in tal adults. We're like, oh, that was kind of wrong. That maybe kind of broke us in terms of how we.

Do you mean through the world the high expectations based on us and the expectation of perfectionism or like how that metastasizes exactly.

All that, Like we were built for school and for taking tests and then sent to the real world.

It's like, oh, and do you think other generations? Oh?

Absolutely if you think about it, like why why did all the first internet culture come from millennials? And that's because like gen X was at the age.

That's there's.

I don't know because we're no, but I'm talking about like meme culture, and all lives.

Sorry, that's I think I know what you're saying, which is our lives were digital in a way.

There's not.

Yes here. Here's what's interesting is that we're getting too millennial focus because we're all millennials, I guess. But also, we knew what the world was very young. Okay, thank you, good to know.

Hollywood Castrian.

We knew what the world was before the Internet. We saw what the world became with the Internet, and we're expected to be as experts at it post internet, so we saw the full breadth of it. Yeah, so that's why like gen zers and young kids do not know the world before and it's kind of tough to describe what that was.

We also were children during nine to eleven and were in like children.

Teenagers, but yes, the world fell apart.

Ages are still children two thousand and eight as well.

Like I think that it's understated, like because two thousand and eight, I moved to America that year and it was very much like Welcome to America. No, it happened as I moved, not because I don't know. I moved and it was just like, oh, hey, you know the whole thing you were told about, you got to college.

We're aware of it every yes, and we know and we remember.

It could have been different. Yeah, I don't remember when.

It's frustrating as well, because by the way, Michael Dell gen X Yeah, just and we're and just.

To be clear, this is mister Dell of.

The company, one of the richest men in the world, by the way, like he's up there. He's also the guy behind trump Bucks.

How have I never heard of Michael Dell? Oh? Is he the guy who founded del Yes.

And yeah, he's It's weird because they went through this thing.

It's just one of my earliest computers were Dell, and I remember they were really big and then they sort of everyone else beat them in everything, and then no one wanted it and they had that really to me, they had that time period where they were the computer that at least I did, I automatically associated with, like the older crowd, older people because especially as like the gaming PC became big and then building your own PC became big, Dell was still out there, I feel like,

And then they bought Alienware, which was this insane company where they'd be these had a day my dad.

My dad bought me an alien where once, and I fucking loved it.

It was this insane like I don't know how like three foot tall giant thing with like a swinging door and a big alien head in there for like a teenage boy with no friends.

It was it was this was mostly what does the alien.

It's literally just a gaming PC, but it looked like a tube. It was more tubes.

His wrists are so muscular, God damn it.

They just get body shaving.

No, it's it's interesting though because hearing them, it just and as we'll transition into the next episode obviously, but it's like it feels like all these companies are having a midlife crisis, and I think you know what.

I mean, like maybe they are.

They are, well, that was the time the millennial midl like crisis.

It's like, give us room, very young, okay, but yes, and coming up now and add just for gen X's it's going to be for something called dot beers.

It's going to allow you to have a social network where you crow about how you were such an independent child and how you remember when MTV was good.

That is actively losing subscriber.

No, Genexas will email me now and be like, actually, you know what, I watched Liquid Television and I was cool.

We're back in the room.

We're back with a wonderful cast of course at Tristan stand up comedian Chloe Radcliffe, Matt Binder of Mashable, and Devendra Harda even Gadget and you know what I do Actually kind of like this gen X and midlife crisis happening with AI. It kind of makes sense because it's like, you look at all these companies and they're all like, fuck, how do we keep growing? The rock economy I've written and said about. But it's also a degree of like, wait,

Boomus.

It's it's all fomo. It's all fomo about what's next.

Fomo with disconnection from anyone like that. Yeah, I'm sorry. Oh it was a rough time during COVID. We didn't go outside. Fuck off.

You could still step outside, just once, just be like a scar.

You know, it's so funny. I spent all of COVID outside because that's where you didn't get the germ.

For a while.

It was better to be talking about it.

Yeah, it's where you're just taking a laptop outside or do you not have an overhead lamp.

It was that was very stupid.

But to what is happening to all these companies because I've I've been covering them since twenty ten, I've been following the tech industry forever. They're all desperate. They're all desperate of missing out on the next big thing. Because Microsoft missed out on mobile, they tried desperately to kind of get that back, like Windows Mobile, all these things making Windows eight, But no, that was Apple, that was smartphone, arraw, that was tablets. They never quite got into that. But

You wear them. Then that not everyone wears the same thing.

To map and this point, what's happened is that the world revolves around our phones because these are the most personal computers we have. It's my best friends, it's your best friend. It holds all your deepest secrets and inner thoughts. It connects you to the world. So how do you go past phone? The next stage of computing? To them is okay, a thing that processes data at obscene levels that we don't fully understand. But it seems like black magic, and that's what AI.

But it's so funny though, because they're like, well, what do we replace a device that's all about personal stuff and our communication with others and our ability to condense our thoughts and access media. We like, well, what if we took away all personal choice and data entry of any kind?

Would they like that?

But I actually what you were saying that, I just had a thought. These companies missed out on MOI mobile. Microsoft didn't miss out a mobile, They made a ship mobile phone by acquiring Nokia. And Windows Phone sucked. And it's like, why do people like the max so much? Because it because it was good, because the UI was good? Why a people like the iPhone because the UI was good?

It took so long for Android to even be half fast. It was the T mobile. G one was the first, and it was so far behind, and they were so far behind for long, and Windows Phone was an insane create it was just this like tiles. It was Windows eight but in a phone, and.

I will say it was cool. It was cool because it was different, but they again missed out on some practical functionality like Windows phone.

The bjorc is cool and different. But I would not blame, but I would not.

I would not be like playing be York at an NFL game like would in a commercial. I'm saying that, like there are journalists and specifics and it's like something.

But if if we're connecting with broad like middle, yeah, I don't think so.

Here sing surface now, which is at the NFL games.

Oh yeah, no, the surface.

It's so funny having surface things that, especially with Aaron Rodgers just smashing them.

But it's like they don't they like, well, what do we do? We'll do off spin. It's like make it good, make it good.

I can understand. We're gonna go into history here for the kids. But Microsoft was making mobile shit for a very long time, right, the the ipack as well, right, the ipack all that stuff. But it was BlackBerry era, right, Okay, rewind to like late nineties. It was like Personal Assistance, right PDAs. Yeah, the palm pilots all those things. Evolution of that was BlackBerry. Microsoft was doing stuff within pocket PC and like they made a couple of ones, but they never really talk.

And they were like little laptops, so they were they were like.

Little keys or like little BlackBerry.

Clones could but used like a little pen you could use.

Some of them had like a stylist two. But the thing is BlackBerry was hot because data was bad, and BlackBerry created the technology to have quick digital messaging to all your friends. Go watch the movie BlackBerry, which is not fully historically accurate, but gets the.

Tech I founded the show.

But the movie BlackBerry Wonderful Amazing has one of the guys from him. It's always sunny in there too, and he's just like wonderfully offensive and like really gives his nice check out that movie. But BlackBerry innovative innovators delaydelemma came for them because they didn't believe you could have a phone that was all screen and that was iPhone.

That's difficult, genuinely.

Do you mean like they had considered they were like should we make phone all screen?

Yeah? Because BlackBerry, and they were like, no.

No, we not make keyboard.

Who was Dennis for me in Philadelphia? Plays my friend Jim Person.

Want to blow up.

I remember when I was in high school, the big phone at the time where those like the screen that flips sidekick I think it was.

Called phones were so cool. Before the iPhone, phones had all this like cool stuff I had. I had a Helio Ocean which which flipped up vertically and also flipped sideways like sidekick. Amazing stuff. And then the iPhone came out and it was like, okay, all screen but also apps. Your phone is now a computer. It's not just like a limited thing with garbage version of the Internet. It's

But yeah, are they sure?

Like are they really convinced that what's amazing is that's not right? Because so Mashable published. I didn't do the interview, but we spoke to the Novo CEO and we asked him about people who are anti AI and AI skeptics, and his answer to that was basically, you can't avoid it. Just you won't be able to avoid it. And it's like, that's not the that's that. But it's also not like a ring door won't be able to avoid.

Yes, that's the ring.

It's the whole thing of people inevitable.

Right do you believe in this product? Well, you can't avoid what's coming. I mean, you know, we sell it, Yeah, likedn't sell it, But it's I think I I, having not read the interview, I could imagine being like sort of having the attitude of like, I don't who gives a ship if you if you don't believe in this,

Your job is literally to market it to it channel.

Like Apple, if when the iPhone first came out and people asked about the iPhone, like are people really good? Apple didn't go like it's inevitable. They were like, well try try it and you'll you'll see.

I will say, Steve Jobs famously an asshole.

You're holding it to back them up.

The messaging was you'll get used to it, like the Apple way was, you'll get you this we know better. But that's not what AI is saying. That it's happening. And the funny thing is about AIS was if AI was I can say to my computer load this, do this, and it actually did it every time, that'd be fucking sick.

Well that's what That's.

What Microsoft's pitching you. But the they are lying it just like I swear to fucking God, I thought public companies couldn't just fucking lie. But I can only do it about it.

If you're all in the same grift, it doesn't matter, right. And also what what we're learning is that rules don't matter, just don't apply to the rich and the powerful.

But here's the thing gravity does, and I think they will be punished all uh like when when the stocks in videos kind of down, today's kind of fun watch. It's also funny as well because none of it really clicks with what uses desire. Because what uses theizarre right now is I wish my phone just fucking worked. I wish every app didn't need to ping me fourteen times a day to say have you thought about using me?

I think just work? It is just just just do what I ask you to do.

What when you're saying that the companies themselves don't even fully believe what? What's what more is.

I've talked to a whole bunch of excators. I bring this question to every big company I talked to, and early on the Microsoft was doing copil, I was like, this thing doesn't work right, Like you're you're making me. You make me want to use copilot as like a search engine, but I cannot trust it. It's not always delivering correct information. If I bought a calculator that said two plus two equals five. I would throw it away

Anything but okay, and again just to play devil's advocate and that this is not this doesn't the views reflected here are not my own. I can you know, I look at what AI take, images take image production for example, what the images that AI could create four years ago versus the images that a I can still still images that AI can create today are unrecognizable. But Trinity, they're so much better when they were producing the dog shit

That's the thing though, this is one I've answered a lot.

This is one where I'm like, oh so that made sense maybe two years ago, so it made sense, like I would say, it stopped being rational to do that, like maybe I mean at latest March last year, so twenty twenty five, I would say, right up until I mis generation with GPT. That was when you sprank bonk. I know people are gonna say nano, but nano banana. I went in an entire day without saying nana banana, which is now on televisions.

It's just like bana is Google's image genera.

Like the best, the best one on the mods and.

People like, look, it can generate a picture of a woman for some reason that I'm using.

Like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like it's like tube generation.

Y oh god.

And they can't answer the basic question about the entire idea of imagery generation, which is what I But the.

Thing is it's not like it's but the thing is, it's not having these meteoric jumps yet four years ago sort of twenty yeah.

You're saying, you're saying, like the curve is leveling, Yes.

So we've reached the point of diminishing returns. Because the way these models get better is two ways. One you feed data enter them. Two you tweak the models. By they you basically tweak their outputs. You say, don't do this, do this. Yeah, things with images, you're right up against the wall. Now they've got about where they can get. And their thing they'll say, is like, look, we've made some realistic looking images. The problem isn't making one realistic image.

We are out of data. You mean, feed of things to feed into the thing, slap for slop slot, well, pig food for the slot.

For the pigs too, food they can make to poop.

But here's the basic question about image generation, Like, I don't care how much better it's getting. Yeah, I don't care. Who gives a shit about? Why does this exist?

That's the thing like with so much of this, like the like when we talk about like the calculator that you know has to get the math problem correct.

Well, there's the use case for that is it gets you.

Yeah, with AI generation and an AI video image generation and video generation, it's sort of just like Okay, you can do it, but what is the purpose?

Like like the guys are like, oh, you can make a wallpaper for your TV.

I don't.

I don't turn my keb on for a wallpaper. I don't care.

It's like who gives a who gives like the point for me?

Like like people like, oh, you can take a picture of selfie yourself and insert yourself and different. Well, for me, like when I want to look at a picture of myself, it's because I want to remember that experience that I experienced. But what if I put myself in an AI image generator and it puts me in front of the pyramids in Egypt?

Why the fuck do I care? I don't know no memory there of me doing that.

I saw a really evil one where it's like a guy showing his grandmother with de men. She like a picture of her with Jimi hendrakes parody. The following is parody. I think that person should be fucking told I.

Know, I'm so glad you brought that up, because I have.

You should be in fucking pret you disgusting, fucking months stuff.

Facebook consistently hammers me with recommendations of groups for people who are asking people to like clean up their family photos and stuff. And those groups are now full of people who come in and go, oh, my daughter or grandma or whoever in my family died and this is the only photo I have of them, can you make a color or fix it? And now all the responses are people putting it through the AI image generators, and they spit out things that don't really look like the

Generates yesifying that grandfather.

But it's like, you know, at some point, these image generators are going to distort your memory of the actual person, because because if you only have one photo of someone and that photo was cleaned up quote unquote, but it changed how your family member looks, and you're constantly looking at that photo. It's gonna eventually actually fuck with your real memory of what that person looked like or sounded like, for like the voice cloning stuff. And it's like, I

Don't have an actual.

Photo in their brain of how they actually look they had the AI generated photo of them.

I completely agree, and I'm sure that this is already happening. And then I and this is where I get a little nihilistic. This ise where I get a little depressed. I wind up going my impulse as a millennial who experienced the world's pre in you know, or pre ubiquitous internet. My instinct is that like, their brains going to be fucked up by shit like that because and it feels good in the moment, And so they keep doing the drug And why wouldn't you if the drug dealer keeps

I think that's partially what we're doing right now, because people are using these tools and not fully thinking about it, and there are just so many philosophical questions about us, like how do we process information, we process memory, how does this work within our society? What's the anthropological impact of all this falsified information? Like there's immediate harms of nothing. We can't trust reality anymore, we can't trust anything because

I mean, I mean, but.

Another thing I've seen, And then this is the really really depressing one, Like someone will ask for something like they'll post the photo of their you know, child who died it like you know, nine months, three years whatever, and they'm like, oh, I'd love to see how they would look if they made it to like forty.

And it's like, no, don't do that, No, no, no, right exactly, don't do that.

You have the actual image or videos of them when they existed and who they were and what they were, and just keep that in your memory. Don't look at this person who never will or did exist right that they're generating.

It's just odd and the same, all.

Of that photo editing stuff, and in particularly the new things where you can be like, okay, add saw to the photo, make look like in America, give my grandmother giant abs, like all of the things that you can do with AI.

Now all right now, now, now you've got my.

Make my yoke my grandma a phrase to remember all of you.

Yes, yoke my grandma.

But here's the thing. I genuinely believe all of this is going away. No one, no one other than the.

Is really willing to fully go. I think all of this goes away. I think everything dies within two years.

First, So and and sorry that a couple dollars per imagery whatever is.

For them to produce.

Being paid by open AI, or it is.

For those paying for the GPS to run.

Yeah, right, okay, And that's another thing though.

Most of the AI generated stuff you see out there not professional work obviously, but like things people post on social media or whatever. They're just using like the free version of a lot of exactly because no one. No one wants to actually, unless you're using it again for professional purposes.

No one is paying its fo my grandma for free. No one wants to pay for the subscriptions.

And that's the thing. Open ai asked this big thing. People love to eam and be like what if they did adds? If you are someone who's emailed me about it that you're like, seventy five thousands, Wow, what if they did adds? Here's the problem the information and a great story this week was nine hundred million week connective users, though they bullshit those numbers. Eight hundred million of those are outside of the US, thus their lower value advertising clients.

So yeah, most of them are free. They're just and the most exciting. And the funny thing is is even the ones that hey are the most enthusiastic who cost you the most money. Open ai loses money even on their two hundred bucks a month one.

So the more the more you like something, the worse you are as a customer. It's usually the opposite.

It's usually like your power user of Facebook doesn't cost them that much because it's basic. It's just so the way a website works is like Facebook is.

No, all right, ed, I know I'm a lady, and I know I'm not in tech. No, I'm kidding.

So when you when you should be in a buck, so picture a computer.

No no, no no, don't maybe be sarcasting and be like do you do you know what CAMI is?

So it's when you run a website like Facebook, where you access a page with some videos. The streaming doesn't require it's like a CPU and like require storage and RAM like in a big server. That is intensive because they have shit tons of users. But because like shit tons of users, it's just because you have a lot of them. It's not because the process of serving you Facebook or Instagram is super expensive to do. It's expensive

Extremely expenctually an every bearing costs on the company.

Exactly because GPUs are extremely they are cost intensive. They require a lot of energy, but they also put out a shit ton of heat, which requires a bunch of cooling. And the bigger the data center, the more intensive the cooling. And I had someone email me the other day saying, really big data centers can cause like the giga what once can cause like weather effects with the amount of heats that.

This, and they're affecting the local communities.

And just to clarify what you were saying earlier about when you when you're saying the logical endpoint of your pessimism about AI or whatever hell you want to frame it, the logical endpoint is that all of this goes away. You're saying it collapses is from a financial standpoint, yes, but what that? But then the logical endpoint of that is that the company's anthropic open AI what I'm chat GPT go, Well, we don't have the money anymore to

And there's no economic reason to do it because the the vedrous point, the only reason they're doing this right now is because their.

Stock value is growing.

Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta they've seen their stock grow, not because of AI revenues, they don't talk about those, but because AI is so big, so huge and so yoke. Yeah, everyone's talking AI. But the moment and the thing is I've heard people say, oh, well, it's a chat GPT bubble, it's not an AI bubble.

Here's the thing. Oh yeah, it's a really.

Right how does somebody thread that needle?

Because they're fucking stupid. The argument is that, well, open ay is the worst business of all time. It burns money forever. They have no profitability, but all the other

The thing also though, is if AI was did disappear, what do customers? What do consumers lose out?

Like?

What what is the care?

Yeah, and the things that people may use in their everyday life, like like AI transcription or voice to text. We're at the point now where those models actually can just live on your personal computer. You don't need an outside server at all, You don't need a company to pay a monthly fee to.

You can just download a model.

It's a few gigs and you have your own voice to text and your own transcription. It's that other more intensive stuff that are just like little toys that no one really needs that will just go away.

To me, that that that is the logical outcome by ways, like the big AI will die off to a certain degree that will lead to widespread economic devastation. But yes, like that will be hard.

It's going to be great financial crisis in mind.

Could be worse than financial crisis, could be a depression level hit on the world economy. So that worries me, but in for when it comes, because all these companies but the idea of local, the idea of like local AI and stuff that's just like, Okay, my watch is a little better, I can transcribe to my computer that lives locally. That does happen.

That's already one piece of bad news.

Though, the only reason those models are being worked on right now is because the big ones, And once those big ones go away, they're not going to have any fucking reason to do them. They don't care about transcription, they don't care about the easeful stuff they care about.

They still need a reason to sell you a new laptop every y and I.

Someone think this is going to be enough of one, and I my thing is like, I'm not sure how we're going to intellectually reconcile with this, because this is the world panshitting competition.

It's also everything is so fucking stupid right now, like every every level. If you we've been in the CS bubble but looking at the wider world right now, yeah, so yes, it's so dumb, Like we Trump invading Venezuela was how we started this year. I was born in Guyana, South America. The country right next to Venezuela and it's probably right next on like because they just found oil. So xill I was like just out there taking all that stuff right now.

Put it back. We didn't find anything.

Things links are so stupid right now. So that's why I do kind of feel like, yes, we're going to see.

It, but this is and I know this sounds hard to reconcile. I think this is going to be stupid. Oh, just because hear me out. Every major CEO.

Has added AI has talked about a It's all they talk about is AI. Every major tech company AIAIAI and a bunch of people we work for, not me personally, but tons of people we work for. People have said that AI is the future. World leaders, AI is the future. Everyone said AI the future, and I think all of them are wrong. What are we meant to do with that information? Because this is Trump politics. Okay, there's voting, there's like a process.

This is like for now the sure But the foundations of economic movement, but also knowledge in the world and like consensus, reality and paradigms themselves have been based on the idea that the people running the money, people running businesses are somewhat intelligent that would not be fucking wrong. And what's become obvious is almost nobody knows anything ever. And I don't mean this in the cutesy like oh,

But it's not. It's not just say I I will tell you that. Like when I started covering technology and doing drenals, and I was mainly like writing about startups at the time, like, oh cool, these kind these guys, their ideas are so interesting. They've gotten billions of usually millions of dollars of investment. I was talking to you know, Kevin sisterm and the Instagram guys when it was just four dudes. I was like, oh man, they must be

My point is, imagine if the Great Financial Crisis. Yeah, Microsoft was in housing, Google was in housing. I was always in housing, Disney entered housing, everyone bought houses, and everyone was selling houses, and everyone was offering mortgages. I wanted mortgages, mortgages with the future of every single business in the entire world.

Everyone on LinkedIn was saying I'm a housing expert. Now that is it.

Except when they said housing, they meant cat litter boxes because I'm joking.

But it's like, yeah, what if everyone went was wrong?

Wrong?

Wrong in a way that's not political. It's just obvious that so many people we thought were smart were just like able to do mad libs.

I have a question about the leaders who have backed AI. Right, Okay, as I see it, there's two categories that I understand, and I'm going to ask about what is the middle category. The middle category category that I understand is tech ceo who has whose company has some vested financial interest in AI being successful? Right, totally get it? Absolutely, Like why would Google add Gemini shove their products great? Because they are like they are. They see a potential financial benefit we'll find.

Yeah, they were also Google's holding off. Google is trying to be cool and chill about it, and then opening eye kind of blew the doors open, and then they had to brush everything out.

Sure, yeahah, okay, that category. I understand. Then CEOs of companies who have been sold the lie of AI can make your whole company work better. That I also completely understand, Like, you know, Salesforce saying, I guess this is sort of

But even those don't truly make sense.

But keep going right, right, right right, And I like disagree with the efficacy, but I understand the messaging. They're what CEOs or what company have added AI trumpeted AI, you know, championed AI that are not in the category of their company is a direct financial benefit benefactor to the technology or or like a direct owner of the technology versus technology.

Disney Disney right right, right, being one of the most journalist outlets, and they will claim, oh AI will generate stories.

They don't.

And I actually pushed back on the things with Salesforce because there's a really cool thing, well, sales was it. I will choose another company. In my head, Salesforce is so special, but like a software company in this case. The really simple thing I'll say to that is even they don't make sense because it don't work. It don't do that like it don't it, don't do it. It don't do fingy like you say the whole thing copil Solon doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's never worked.

It works enough. No, it doesn't.

It is good enough for people to be using it. My issues are you're a computer should be you should be like I gotta push back. It doesn't.

There have been like eight different always in the last year where Microsoft's three sixty five co pilot can't do things like prepare PowerPoint.

Oh yeah, it's like specific failures, yes, but on the general failures.

Yeah, on the general what's like the general general.

What I'm saying is like, you ask Copilot or you asked Gemini, like a question, and it will get to your response. It is good enough.

It will.

He was like, hey, make me a chart of this data. Hey, that actually works. A lot of that stuff does. Maybe I'm not trustworthy, Like that's the thing that means it doesn't well, no, no, no, But there are variations of how badly.

But the thing is, if there's a variation of how well something works, that just means it doesn't work most of the time.

Sure, but hundreds of millions of people are still like using them.

Yeah, because they're being they're being pushed into by everybody.

But people like using the like for them, the degree of like as good enough as it can be for them. It's good enough. That's why we're pushing back though, and we're saying, like, you can't trust this data, you can't trust this stuff. They're not thinking about that, but they're just using it. So we'll continue this debate. It's not really a debate. We're shortly after this break. This next ad is for specifically boomers. It's called Where's My Pills.

There's someone called to be really angry at this one. They're in the draw mate, and we return to our scene. I'm now joined by Edward and Graso Junior of the Tech Bubble newsletter. Hello, my friends, Chloe Radcliffe, of.

Course the actress and stand up comedian who it's you, And of course Devinger Harder of Anger Jam.

Hello.

And I think we're in an interesting point in the in the.

Show where we're all like getting to the end and we're realizing we have to go back to the real world and there's this thing of this AI thing and this whole, this whole situation where and to get back to the debate we're just having. It's like, yeah, it kind of works, but I don't think that people realize that because it only kind of works when they start what it actually costs, which is like probably two to

Turn to dust.

Because imagine if the core fuel of a car of course, like double tripled cadrupled in battle in cost of course.

I okay, interesting proposition here. Do you think two questions? Do you think that AI companies will start charging subscription rates? Uh before the financial implosion that you predict?

Yeah? I think that. Well, you've already kind of seen signs, and they're very unfair with this.

No one likes this one. Both open AI and Anthropic of added priority processing to their API customers. API just refers to instead of you or me using like chat, GPT or claude, you as a company would connect your software with an API to their service and then run on top of it. Now, when you run something on top of these models, you're effectively just prompting them.

A API stands for a application big interface.

I there you go, Yeah, that's yeah. My brain couldn't think of the real one, so I can't.

But it's like those companies cannot survive with a product with a cost race. I had a reader listener and reader reach out and actually tell me that you need priority processing if you're above a certain things, just your cost double there automatically. And I think the the other thing that people will say is, oh, the cost of models is coming down. Classic talking point Jensen Huang and is Nvidio thing his press conference said, or the cost

It's actually more expensive.

Yeah. We can argue a lot about the air industry like that's yeah.

Sorry, some Indian thing.

I will say.

We are seeing the direct impacts of the rise of THEI right, go on, talk about memory and see the fucking HBI the memory. I'd love to talk about this.

RAM prices have increased by three to four times across the board, which is insane, and that'll affect everything that affects phones, computers, whatever, cause.

Like this every like everything because car is computer car.

So any device needs some sort of memory. What is interesting is like we are seeing the direct impact of that already Dell's XPS fourteen, which should be a computer that costs under fifteen hundred dollars because of what it is, and that's what the competition is. And that was about the pricing Dell gave me when I first wrote my post, they set sixteen hundred. Next day an update, that thing is going to start at twenty fifty dollars.

Jesus Christ, because because they're.

Not going to say why, but I would logically think like that is going to be the highest cost for a lot of new systems. That is insane. That is a it's a premium ultraportable. Sure that thing should cost under fifteen hundred bucks or about fifteen hundred dollars. So we are going to see similar premiums like that.

Are you sayings you need to get a new computer, do it now, because it's going.

Worse, Do it immediately, and maybe buy used or refurbished which is my recommendation for everything. But yeah, buying a new system this year is going to suck.

So we're going to do an episode on this next week with Steve Bug from Games and Nexus.

Nice.

So RAM in random axis memory a website is yeah, no, no, no, this is the thing.

No I want, I want this, don't.

The best lesson Sophie and Robert gave me is explain everything, because even if you think you know something, you don't. So RAM is when you quickly need information to do a task on a computer, so you couldn't access the hard drive. No matter how fast the hard drive is, it's not fast enough to get something immediately.

AI services are extremely.

Demanding on something called high bandwidth RAM, which is just allows you to keep a bunch of memory stuff in the RAM so you can constantly access it.

Because that's how LMS works. Someone's gonna email me and say a truncated that shut the fuck up. But it's Nevertheless, because of the demands.

Of Nvidia building GPUs, of Broadcom building their own bullshit GPUs, AMD building their own bullshit GPUs, the.

Price of RAM across the world has increased. Now eagle eared listeners may think I heard a story Edward about open Ai taking forty percent of the world's RAM. This story is bullshit, and everyone pushing it is a fucking liar.

If you look on sk heinez and so open Ai did a deal quote unquote with sk Heinex and Samsung, two companies out in Asia where they were going to get hundreds of thousands of wafers of RAM, just the things that you can't into RAM, which is insane on its own, But it was a letter of intent, which is a concept of idea. It's like, if you and I are email, why do we do this? It means

Just did you see the buying RAM, the new Nvidia supercomputer, the Vera Rubin thing. I hate that they're using these actual scientists to apply to these things. It seems so disrespectful. But one point five terabytes of RAM in this Vera Rubin supercomputer, and that's that's this. So it's like a one point five terabytes.

How many of that? How one point five terabytes per how many GPUs?

I'm gonna have to look into the specific HEREI there's a lot of chusing, and I believe it's in the fall that's in the full thing.

I'm sorry not to be a woman who doesn't work in tech about this. This very an so supercomputer named after a lady, and we think it's disrespectful. Yes, tell me the name again, Vera Rubin Viera Ruben. Okay, the Vera Ruben computer is a big box and it's really powerful. And inside there's a smaller there's a little shoe box that you can keep all.

The little yeah, and like little smaller computers are all tied together.

Yes, tie together. Okay. RAM is like one box where you have all sorts of random things that you might need. It's like a chick I know, I know, but I'm just I'm picturing it in my head.

If you if you imagine like city block, right, different blocks are different components. The RAM is the streets in between them to deliver information. Okay, So more RAM, bigger streets, high band with RAM, faster streets, faster traffic.

Right.

Okay, So that's the basic thing. It's just a shit ton of data. That's what I need.

Why, oh my god, it's one point five terribies but fucking rack.

O peract and there's a lot of racks in there.

There's a lot of racks in there.

Yeah, I fucking dicent will be full of like hundreds.

Racks on racks on rag literally. Okay, but hold on, why is RAM a limited?

There are only three companies in the world to make it, and you can have you go, But that's basically they're only three companies and nobody expected they were fine. We were fine, and nobody expected that. Why do you need so much? God damn ram? Nobody was prepared to do this.

Yeah, And is RAM a physical thing that somebody makes?

Yes, it's so the preparation, it's I'm going to fuck this up slightly, so deventure, please correct me if I get.

Say, I am not an architecture. So there's a company.

Called TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.

I think I get that.

Also, I respect companies that are just like what's your name business companies like fuck, yeah, just tell me what you do. They have these things with fabs and they basically build chips and there's a whole fucking supply chain of how chips are made.

You get wafers of RAM.

You caught them up sounds delicious, isn't you get? No, you get like a big sheet of you get a big sheet of memories. Yeah, and then you caught them up. Making chips is fucking cool.

But you're saying this wafer is a certain amount of chips. You print the sheet. You may make a sheet of a thousand chips, and then a wafer is one hundred chips.

A wafer is just the thing that you carp into chips. But really simple, just just you don't need to know that pit, just really simple. There is a limited amount of machinery to build RAM. There are what there's Skehix, Samsung and who else who makes them?

Marvel, Marvel's. There's like three companies who make RAM.

And we can't make more machines to make m It's.

Just limited space there spent.

It's going to take a long time to spin that up.

One important detail. So making chips in general requires something called a clean room. So think about any scientific process that cannot be interfered with by any contaminants.

Growing mushrooms in your garage, right, take it three.

Hundred steps higher where it's just like if a single speck of dust gets in there, you fuck up millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, Like, it's really you have massive things, and to run these machines requires very specific talent that we don't have enough of. But also there's only a so an amount of space in the world, so we're just we're at the limits. And while they're building more fabs where you build these things, there's only

And again, just to ask the stupid question when we say the price of RAM is going up. I could equivalently say the price per RAM chip.

Is yes, exactly, sure, great, And it's kind of it's like it's a very simple supply chain things like if the price of wheels went up, cause would become more expensive. I realized that it's a city, but like it's a very simple thing and it's affecting everything, and I'm that's what pisses me off.

Yeah, because like we can debate about like how useful AI is, but the direct impact to consumers right now, people building PCs, anybody buying a new computer, You're gonna be screwed in twenty twenty six. And I'm working on a piece right now about that because tell me, tell us more. Yeah, it's the same thing. It's AMD also announced their new high end supercomputer, you know, full I

And the solution can't even just buy be buy used and refurbished because those prices.

Those prices around and we're seeing the after effects of that. Actually, outside of this so weird example, but we're running out. We also don't have enough power. So gas turbines which they're using to power in these days send this, which you should not do but a doing anyway, are actually sold out for seven years, so they're buying old used gas turbines. I wouldn't be surprised if the used RAM market gets fucked too.

It's already getting bad.

But hell yeah, I mean, who do no one worries someone stopped making consumer ram, right of course Micron, Micron my dad, sorry, so.

And I feel bad and Micron owned Crucial, and I feel was like the first ramstick I bought when I was building a computer, and like I have memories attached to that. My bigger worry, though, is they're lighting up nuclear power plants for this bullshit. And that's where it's like.

I'm not worried about that. I'm worried more about the gas turbine.

The gas is bad. The gas is bad because nuclear power will get that's going to be a big fight. But I we should we should have invested more in nuclear power. It may be too late, but I don't know.

Hold on, Yeah, you're saying bad to light up nuclear power plants because these are old things that might not be in good enough shape. Well, it's just more like you're not saying you're not anti nuclear.

I'm not anti nuclear power. We need that power for other stuff and this power should be going to like residential uses. And it's literally gonna be sucked up by bullshit.

But it's still and you're and why are the gas turbines back gasses?

Because because gas turbines are basically calmode. No they're not the same, but like they have the same after effect of belching out gas. And Elon Musk's data centers are already ruining black communities because of this very specific thing.

They're poisoning water.

It's really fucking horrible. But also this ram thing I think is gonna be everywhere, and the PC industry was already in decline.

I believe they were now it was last year it was they actually got I thought they were having my bad No, but only Dell was down.

But here's the thing, for reasons we discussed.

Surely won't everyone be down because more expensive and Apple smartphone sales, like every bit of this is gonna be bad, and they are already running out of ways to sell you a phone. My biggest example being like this, why else would they ship Apple Intelligence, which is the most mass radicalization event I've seen in tech. Just I've never met so many people like fuck ai them people who use Apple Intelligence.

Yeah, who are just like fuck this shit, I fucking hate this. Why I don't know why my phone is like sparkly rainbows and just wrong all the time and giving me a summary saying like eight uber's are coming your.

Way, the notifications are bad. Apple wouldn't be doing that if other people weren't chasing all this. But they're being forced into it, and you know are they being forced They're kind of being forced into it because like why could they not be like because everyone talks stock prices, yeah, shareholders, stock price. Everyone's like, oh man, Apple slow to AI. I guess Apple doesn't have the innovation.

You know. It's like someone didn't shit that pans yet.

Yeah, So Apple rushed out Apple Intelligence. They got out there, they announced this super smart sery thing which was not They couldn't ship it, so they took a hit for that. They took a hit for the intelligence issues. Again, they were forced into that in a way. And hey, I blame them for thre the issues. But if Apple left its own devices as a company that is really slow about pushing and trying to change new things, I think they would at least try to make it less error prone.

But and the point I was making was that Apple shoving Apple Intelligence in there was a sign that Apple doesn't really have anything else.

And I will say this, people get so map when I like my devices. People.

I get little emails of people being like fucking hill when I'm just like, yeah, I like my phone, and they're like fucking piece of shit.

But it's like Apple Phone, good use it. I don't know. I would love an.

Apple phone with great aspects of Apple Intelligence.

Other than the liquid ass the new operating system that is so bad it makes want to scream. But it's like, it's just because we're and it's not because of Apple being a bad company, sir. It's just there's only so much you can do with a certain form factor. Your phone can only do so much.

But there are things like, hey, voice memos instantly transcribed now, that is sick sick.

Voice notes getting TransCards, it's fucking great.

Can hit under calls now and those get trans that's happening because of an ARM device AI.

And it's so that's great and that shit's dope, but that shit don't make growth happen like you're not. But also everyone does that now and that's the problem. It's like, how do you sell a new phone?

So they're in this situation where how do we sell a new phone at a time when they're going to have to increase the prices on everything because RAM is more expensive because to make a new phone faster you need RAM.

But also to fit models onto your phone you need more to RAM. You need more RAM because those models sit in memory and have to sit there and work all the time. They can't just like come off the story, ste.

Do you remember in like twenty twenty twenty twenty one, the supply chain crisis that was caused by like basic goods being delayed. Yeah, this is kind of like that for computer and we're going to see how many things have computer in it, televisions, phones, cars, I mean even the thing we're recording on right here, that that has RAM in it, That everything has RAM on it that has any electronics these days.

That's my big worry of twenty twenty six is basically worse screwed when it comes to consumer But the thing is it will good for prices, screwed for prices, good for all sorts of things, but oh sorry, keep going well, companies may die out like think like things will just be bad, but yes, prices is gonna be where it starts.

And the other thing is is that we're at a point when they're they're as you've seen you are at the Consumer Electronics Show, You've had a very egregious example of how these companies do not have a fucking clue what to sell you. They're still they're half heartedly coming up with ideas like the death of a relationship. It's like, yeah, we're gonna go per recar guess we fucking hate each other. We're gonna go on what was gonna be so happy.

To grow the core thing they used to build, the thing is becoming more expensive in a way that you can't circumvent.

There is no way to fix this. Good example would be so in Video. I may have mentioned this is the previous episode I'm review here. So in Nvidia Crazy Thing, eighty eight percent of their revenue comes from selling these things for data centers. A much smaller percentage comes from selling GPUs for gaming devices, so an Xbox, for example. The problem is with that is they've already raised the

Buy a certain block of car and it has certain bits, but you customize it and they're like, yeah, man, sorry, we just don't do steering wheels here anymore.

They got real expensive. You're gonna have to buy them from the steering wheel guy who is now charging more.

That's already happened to some degree to stuff like light ar and things like. There was technology that was in Tesla's like this is Cordy pilot and self driving and then later expensive.

But it's the thing, though, this is a really simple thing though. This is just the like part of the motor. This is the core component of the entire computing supply chain everywhere that is going to go up. We're going to see, to your point of Indra, shit just get more expensive and see who can withstand that pain?

I mean, what do you what do you think the chances are that inflation actually causes some kind of spark conflagration before the financial collapse of the AIS.

Will lead to the Yeah, this is a form of inflation, honestly on the compute industry.

I'm saying, no, no, no, sorry, that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying, like you've talked about the financial collapse of the AI's system of borrowing money. Ye, yeah, yeah, that could go bad when if if keep going Yeah okay, this is like playing a clarinet solo in front of everybody. Okay, uh, that could that financial collapse could trigger if in video stops. Fuck, we were just talking about this last night.

Yeah, if in video stops.

Most of in Vidia's revenue comes from people borrowing money, yes, with borrowed money.

Yes, and if people if I mean, if if the bank's ever come calling for that borrowed money, they're doo dooo lens yes, or if in video stop, if there what is it? If their numbers go down, but if their revenue stop growing, if their revenue stop growing, Okay,

Just I think I get through it.

I think I get what you're saying. It will cause two gut punches. It will be likely before the AI bubble burst, we will have a thing where anyone selling consumer electronics or even enterprise hardware, so just consume electronics for the enterprise. Their cost go up, so they will probably sell less because their customers will be unable to afford as much, which will cause a bunch of tech companies to not make as much money, which will lower

And they go, what if I told you I had less money? Because it lost me? And at that point the world panshitting competition will end like.

It's I guess I listen to all of this and I actually get my gut, which means almost nothing because I understand almost nothing of it. But my gut says that the thank you, that the the inflationary effects are going to actually be more immediate than.

The AI body.

I agree fully, And I guess I don't mean like, duh, yeah, they're happening now, but I mean like some degree of severity that that people decide is not tolerable. Yeah, and it will happen before the AI Bob. Sorry, we bently brought you into the No, no, no, you're good.

I mean I think, I mean this raises me. The's something I've just been wondering where it feels like we just keep coming up into this problem where we are having uh, structural limitations imposed or you know, rushed up against because you know, the sector in one way or another is forcing allocation of resources, allocation of capital, demands of growth, allocation of energy to satisfy it. So you know, at what point does it end where you know, we

It is, and it's the demands of eternal growth. It really, it's just because here's the thing we talk about a lot this week about we just want to compute that works.

Yeah, that isn't going to grow the company guaranteed twenty percent year of a year, every single quarter. And it sucks because you should just be able to have a company that grows three percent every quarter. Yeah, the stock market should like that, but they don't. And as a result, when things consume, they must consume eternally to your point.

Yeah, I mean the best example of this recently is the instant pot, right, Oh yeah, everybody loves an instant pot. It's too good. It's so good.

Nobody needed to buy a new instant pots instant part when I hat of business well books, they got balled by private equity.

Too, but also they could they couldn't hit that mass growth because instant pot too good. It just works.

A pressure cooker is a pressure cooker.

Yeah, and they were one of the first digital ones. But it's still it works and it works.

Well.

Oh sorry, you couldn't grow fast enough, you're dead.

Yeah, And it sucks because I don't know that I have this somewhat. I don't know. Maybe this is not Night List.

Would they have died if private equity hadn't bought them?

No, probably not.

They were private, Yeah, they were. They were private.

They can just keep chugging along it.

They could keep it.

If you're a private company, you don't have shareholp. I guess you have investors beyond a shareholders saying you have to grow. You don't have fucking Jim Kramer up your asshole. And it's it's unfortunate, But I think that there is a level of this. I hones, stay, I'm glad you

That was a bit where it hurts. Yeah, they directly saw falling sales because and they could draw the line to the rebranding. Because of that, They're like, oh shit, what do we do? We got to refolk Is on consumers.

Which is so bizarre.

Though if only people loudly told them that this was a mistake from the beginning.

If only there were articles at engadget dot com that they could have read in detail last year. But it's like that's that's really like, this is very bad, this ram crisis, this is bad. It's so I'm because it's so scary.

What now then happens with because I think something that we've talked about also is I think, like you know, kind of like what you're saying off the top, the financial element of uh, the AI bubble is one that we can see it for what it is, but that there are multitude of ways in which they've been able to juggle, find some new frontier of.

Growth, justify and more.

These structural issues that we keep coming across feel non negotiable. So what effect do do you guys see them as being risk of some sort of breaking point? Yes, in terms of the AI infrastructure overbuild, in terms of adoption amongst consumers, I mean like like what like let's say, for let's say that nothing happens in terms of degradation of the financial conditions, Is the structural limitations that we're seeing there with the RAM sufficient to impose like a crisis.

Yes, is basically what I'm you're saying. It's so much more eloquently than what I'm what I'm asking, But that's basically exactly what.

I'm asking yourself. You were completely on the money.

You were also at here's the thing, and I think Davindri you are thoughts in this as well. It's you you can get more of that money can be found elsewhere. Singaporean boys that the country's fund I remember the name for that they invested. They're going to invest in anthropic More money can be found. There's a limit but we're not at it. Yeah, they're on limits to power. And

I was gonna guess.

Of course, you're constantly like the GB three hundreds four point five million dollars at how the hell did the economics work?

What do you mean data an ri t ed, I don't get this. People are saying that the cost of inference is going down, it's going up. Let's talk about high bam ri RAM.

You're constantly in my text with yeah, you just won't stop talking about models.

No, but it's just real simple.

And videos are.

Saying we're gonna build the biggest, fucking hugest tower ever and by the way, it's full of more RAM than ever. They haven't announced the price of then you big enterprise GPUs. I think they're going to be catastrophically more expensive because they have more RAM than ever. It's like everything, including the thing that needs debt, the borrowed money to keep going, is going to get more expensive. Consumer devices are getting

Computer that work?

But the thing is why would I upgrade? And that's actually like that sounds like a kids see things that that's actually a huge question because I'm like a tech pig, like I'm a hog. I love my laptops and my goot, my dud dad's and my gizmos and shit, and I'm like, I don't fucking need a new laptop. Why would any of that is going on?

That is a good problem Like that is usually it's good for consumers. It's good for consumers, it's a good it's you made a good product that lasts. Unfortunately, that is bad for your overall revenues. But that's good that you you were capable of doing that. I wish more companies were capable of doing that, Honestly. I'm also thinking about like where we are the climate crisis isn't isn't slowing down?

Right?

Like, we're all these companies that for so long we're talking about, Oh, where we have all these climate gold we're going to reduce energy, we're going to be more conservative. Once AI shit started happening, they shut up because all their all their stuff blew away. That didn't matter anymore because it was all AI all the time. And yeah, what what? The world right now is going to be more expensive when it comes to gadgets. The world in the future is going to be hard to live in

And we are now going to transition to our final thirty minutes of this episode. This next one is brought to you by gen Z dot Bears. Now you it's just a store where you can just buy zin to your door. I don't actually know what zin is.

Please, if you're if you're one of my three Zoomer listeners, please email me what zinc is and how you consume it, and can you tell me what's cool as well? I haven't known what that was for ten years. And we're back in the room. We're back in the room.

We've got the Vendra Hardawa from En Gadgets. We've got Edwin and Guiso Junior of tech Bubble newsletter have. We've got Chloe Radcliffe, actress star of is this thing on? I got targeted on an Instagram star is.

What's great? Was? The clip I got was like Cradley boot being talked to. H Sorry, I'm we'll learn it. We'll learn it.

Thank you, christ and going look you I'm and stand up and Cradlely Booper going what anyway?

Stand up?

Comedian Chloe Radcliffe and yeah, we're back talking about ram and the slowdown. And I'm gonna be honest, I know it seems bad now and it will be bad. The take industry needs this. The take industry needs to be punished for the growth lust because there is no there's no sustainable future doing this and this was also inevitable and I think it's scary.

So they're just I mean, so then is the you know, if we if ideally what it delays on the products that are the most RAM intensive to give infrastructure a chance to fill a backlog and to give the next generation.

There are rumors that they may revive old hardware. There's a rumor that in videos, RTX thirty sixty, which is a two three year old GPU, maybe back in market soon because it's using all older slower RAM too, so it's not using the newest, fastest stuff but less powerful GP yeah, way less powerful. But it's also like like two generations back. It is a sign that you have to bring back the past because the present is unaffordable

Yeah, I so we're never heard of that.

We don't know if this is true, but this is the really I thought that was confirmed.

So I okay, as my responsibility as my person I then think about how do normal people experience this, because normal people have heard AI a million times. We've heard ram is getting more expensive. But like I think I'm smart, and I didn't know any of this ship. I've heard these words, but I don't know the details. And so as a as a representative of normal people, as stuff gets more and more and more expensive, so far, the American population has just borne the load of more expensive life.

The people who can afford it eat the cost, but then we don't hear about the people who.

But there's there's also a limit finish oppression.

Yes, but I think the people who can't afford it eat the cost too, I mean.

Like in other ways. But here's the thing.

Really, here's the thing.

You're saying that for now there is a limit, And what it is is people are eating the cost inasmuch as they can. At some point, there's a limit because there are people who weigh like Apple's apop Max. I don't really think that that's like a regular person thing is like five hundred bucks, but those half ram in them. Modern headphones half ram inem Like, there are headphones that have RAM in them. Even cheap laptops have ram in them.

There is a point when people would just stop buying new electronics at all.

And I have a thesis. Okay, so there's a point where people will stop by new electronics at all, and then there is some further point at which people will draw a line at inflationary prices overall, whether it's an electronic, whether it's in whatever. Because I'm sure that RAM shortages are going to affect things that don't have RAM in it, because the things that are used to ship those things have RAM in it.

You know.

It's like I right, I can imagine that this impacts price overall. And what we have seen in trend lines is that once prices go up, they stay up, they don't come back down for the most part.

So yeah, that might actually not happen with RAM, I think, because if they My real crazy scenario and no one wants to think about, is AMD and video buying all this RAM what funck. They deal with it when no one wants to buy their bullshit anymore, All of these companies that have built massive allocations RAM won't have any usage.

Yeah, but other like consumer goods, I think once those prices go up.

There this thing is if no one's buying them, they will have to because what we're talking about here isn't just like the top crust, it's everything.

But so far people are still buying them. As we often people are tightening belts. But I think a lot of people are just spending way more money than they would have been and not saving and like because because.

You're living paycheck to paycheck with no safety net, right, But I.

Think a lot of people are paying the higher prices rather than not buying the items there.

Are, Yeah to a certain agree like sometimes you need it, sometimes you need it. I do think we get to look at this culturally too, because people don't just sit down and read business news and make logical business decisions as economists think. We do think we respond to culture. We respond to like that's how things are reacting. And I think it is interesting that the youngs, the gen zs and all are looking back to pre smart phone culture,

Okay. So this is I was thinking about this on the plane to cees as I was like sort of collating some of my thoughts about tech and AI and stuff. And I actually think I lay much more of the sin at the feet of the constant entertainment feed, oh than I do at the feed of AI. I think that social media and the constant input of entertainment has numbed us and has has uh reduced us people's interest in making statements or engaging with societal ills. Yeah, by

And a lot of people are trying to take a step back from this information over load, and I think we will probably see more.

I think we will see more of that. But so my thesis winds up being that I think the breaking point for people, for people living in this inflationary environment, I think that breaking point will be a lot higher than it would be without social media. I think the breaking point will take a lot longer than it would be without. It feels bad, but you can just pick something up and scroll through things that make your brain go big.

So I agree.

My thing is is they forced AI into every social networking app too. AI is everywhere, It's in your ear. I realize I'm doing my same bit I always do. But it's like when that disappears, gets weird, it kind of comes obvious it was bullshit that will filter into the feature kind of already seeing it, You're seeing you're seeing random people being anti AI.

Now people I never.

Talked about it, but two separate things, but it creates the kind of chaos that makes people be like, wait, why do I need new fucking up to want? Just go on e Bay and buy an hpoman from four years ago? I just buy an iPhone sixteen instead when I have or like what you have is fine, Like this iPad is over a year old and I will probably use it for another three years or more.

I don't know what they could possibly do.

iPad pro, by the way, a stunning example of a product. Apple spent years being like why does this exist? A super powerful iPad? Who will spend the money of a laptop to just get an iPad? And they spent so long figure out not what to do, like they had no idea what to do with anything. That's endemic of like another issue like them trying to push into bigger categories and more expensive products. But it's all kind of part of the same thing, like you got to push more,

But I think that the reason it broke people's brains was facilitated by the entertainment feed. And I want to differentiate that from a social media platform where you can go and you know, talk to your friends and family.

Truly, to me, it is they all kind of ended up becoming entertainment.

This is but it's why I'm specifically different why I am using the words entertainment because I think that how would you define that a constant flow of entertainment that is instantly and always excessed.

And this is this video or this text involved in this? Or is this only?

I think video is so much more poisonous than I ate text. But I will say I think text is uh. I think text does a very similar thing.

No, but video is much easier to cycle through and consume a bunch of information.

Fust It's not even it's not even just the cycle through. It's that like I open Instagram. I opened Instagram this morning to do a work thing, to like find a specific producer and look at who she follows and be like, do I know anybody who? She like it's like a it's a networking, it's a useful tool. And I opened it and it's some two hours later, truly, truly true.

And it's like a very funny going around and like looking.

But my brain, my brain is like I see, I see things.

Move, and that makes me like, I like, I'm so fucking glad. I'm autistic. I'm so fucking glad.

I see that.

I'm like, I got something else to do. I'm doing, I'm doing what I just it's so cool.

I don't I see that.

I'm like, yeah, trying to fuck this happened to me. I'm a like I'm a pig, but I'm not that kind of hog.

Yeah, yea, yeah.

Last night I was like I had hours free for for once, and see I was like I could watch a movie, I could do all this stuff. Sat down, started looking at TikTok and was like, you know what, this is comfy. This is nice. And also because my brain has been at like two hundred percent the entire so it just needs to like cool down.

But it is such a crew with the like with like the brain. Then I'm gonna put on a movie and cool down in front of the movie, which is one bigger Yeah.

And I think the the pressure is just increasing on people and will eventually pop. And I think the pressure is increasing from all sides.

I just think it's going to take a lot longer now than it would have with the technology we have.

I will say that.

The problem is the first of all, the real world was never meant to connect with finance this much. Most people were never meant to know what hb RAM was. No one was meant to know what a GPU was. Seven years ago. If you told you are somewhat to GPU was, they would call the police, like they'd be like, why are you saying strange words to me? You're a

It's just try banana now now, and it's just like, that's all I think of what this stuff is just harassing people. I think you're right in the It's going to take a little longer because people are so addicted to feeds, and the feeds are so intense it just numbs them. But I think that there is a degree of harassment from the AI stuff. That means that when this starts, the burst, it's going to be like fucking

The thing is, there's so much happening in the world, right Yeah, there's also the literal destruction of democracy right in front of us. Right there is war, we're being led by warmongers, and also the economy is collapsing. All this stuff is happening h I tend to look at like what what will be the broad societal ways, like we move through this and the only way is like we do have to like step away from the tech

I will also say, like I said this yesterday on the episode, it's like I am a rare thing of like the internet has allowed me to become a person rather than maybe.

Less just one. That's like I was a socially anxious kid, yeah, and technology and the internet did help me.

Like so yeah, and the thing is you just I think there's just a level of intentionality where it's like the feeds don't work on me. I get deep anxiety when I have an infinite scroll, Like I have the opposite it has the opposite effect on me. I'm like, why won't this end? I can't watch anything everything. I don't want to look at it because it's it's worrying me. This is bothering, which is literally everyone else is different.

There's are great. People are going back to personal music players, just like a thing that plays music, you know what? That is beautiful. And the younger the kids right now, the thing people are saying is like they don't know if they're trusting an image that's a I that's an inherent distrust in AI and calling it out as a cultural object. I think that's fascinating too. So we are seeing the signs that there is going to be some

Edge you get.

It's just we're gonna get just a guy who just like.

You know.

No, it's like, we don't have to go all the way.

It's the tweet where the guy's like, what's the highest number one million? It's but at the same time, my pushback. Sorry, this is not a pushback. I'm agreeing with everything, but it's the way through this.

Is to just be a little bit more fucking intentional with it.

I know it's don't look at this. You're gonna look at it. Don't hate yourself, but be aware that something's being done to you with it. And also remember you can call any of your friends using these things. You can talk to any of your friends if you're feeling lonely and said you signal.

They brought the landline back. One of the interesting products of like that was in the holiday season. I think it's more like uppity rich parents are doing this, but they're like, there's a startup that made handset and you can program like your friends to it. So your kids friends, it's a handset, they pick it up, they dial their friends.

Court.

I think there is a court. I think I think there may be a court. It's a handset.

It's those phone numbers memorize.

Yeah, it's more like these are your trusted contacts. That's all this thing can call. It's back to the days where we were just like.

Get plugged into your wall.

Or is it? Because you can quite cynical about cs and my god, have we got another two hours today and four hours tomorrow and one hour on Saturday, so we will be there's also a degree of like, as much as we complain, I've got to hang out with my friends all we and I got to do it, and I got to record using a weird road cast to.

Pro too of the best thing. It's amazing and we can record the audio. I have one for Mattasowski producing a beat on that.

It looks like a.

Soundboard as well. You can do all sorts of noises. But it's like you can do really cool shit with the computer now and you can talk to your friends with it. It's but the reason that things are shit is the people that are making the interfaces, the social interfaces are getting in the way. Understanding that and starting from that position is what makes things better for you. They're not gonna make it better for you. They're fucking assholes.

In the you can pull.

Together a bunch of people just using text an email. I fucking just did it this week. There are great things you can do it text text, text, go meet in real life. You can take fucking photos on your phone.

Awesome. There are still good things to be done. I know this is so hokey, but I think it's hot. It's a good point.

It's not about being completely anti tech. It's about it's.

About being anti tech industry at the moment because it's like we like Pebble because Pebble's like, what if a device had a use case, and anyone's like, fuck this shit, what do you mean you won't grow by twenty two percent year of a year, every quarter, you piece of except these private doesn't matter and it's just by years at the moment.

That's my big that's actually my better off line twenty twenty by verb by reefer By.

You don't give these fucking companies another fucking dollar until they can prove that they can earn it, because that is the real problem. They want to grow forever. You want to grow forever and make useful shit. But the actual internals of the computer. I also will address something that people ema my occasionally, which is, oh, the computer industry used to be good whatever. I don't know if it used to be good, but it used to be bow. But there were beautiful things in the computer.

Yeah.

Part of how we got here is that we didn't ask cultural questions right. We didn't push back against certain elements. Like I was there when social media was just starting out. It was like, oh, yeah, look at this feed of information.

It was so cool.

But it was also we knew Mark Zuckerberg was a piece of shit from the beginning, but most there did not. Most people did not, but there were enough stories about oh, look at this kid who dropped out of Harvard and like did this thing, but there were stories about what he did before, how like the shitty sexist, like proto

It was.

It was just that farming. And then everybody copied that, and that broke us because they didn't want to create something good. They just wanted to create something that addicted us. It's like cigarettes.

It's that and the scourge of neoliberalism and the idea that everything everything, that the market is dominant. The market would never incentivize something bad. Again, Yeah, everyone took a lack.

Of regulations in the twenty tens that that didn't help. You talk about killing baby Hitler, that's great. I think baby Milton Freeman and baby we're on a bag and put them on the top of the pile. We got all sorts of babies, a lot of baby. No.

But it's But the thing is, it's like the incentives of the problem and the only thing we can do is consumers, is don't stop using tech. You I think that that's an unrealistic thing.

Like, Chloe, it's your luck, like you have to use tech, especially as a stand up you kind of I have to use social media.

You have to.

There's just no other way around it. Don't buy a new phone. I'm done buying new fucking ship.

I'm I'm going there.

You haven't seen how broken my phone?

No but going go and buy Chloe, Chloe, go on, buy a research. I actually think, I actually think I am done buying new phones. I'm going to buy the referb forever.

I buy my my parents refer buy phones every couple of years from Amazon. Perfect. Yep, it works great. They the hardware lasts and then they're still like.

Ship, No new ship unless it's cool, unless it's fucking new and cool and good Foxy. Yes, it's like really though, if you can buy new by used, go on eBay, go on whatever, Go on Craigslist, like go and buy from a regular person, circulate that money in the real world, take it out of the fucking stock market cash cat.

Okay, I'm going a lil insane, but it's like I stand by it because it's like all of the new price is it going to go up?

Yeah? And when it comes to social media, I think we can be more intentional. Right, It's like, for the longest time, people are making arguments like, Okay, I'm gonna stay on X even though Elon Musk bought it and destroy Twitter. I'm gonna stand on the stand. Now it's a freaking sea sam generating garbage.

Mae.

It's like, I think we can start to make those moral choices where it's like, career wise, I would be better off staying on X probably, but you have to have some sort of like moral center, and I think where we need to ask more of that as ourselves right now. So yeah, get off of X.

I'm honestly like, I want to stay on there for my fucking publisher and I might talk to them about it. Yeah, It's just like it's a horrifying pedo generator.

You don't want to be there, and they're literally nobody's doing anything about the pornography and the sea sam being generated on it and that just exists. And they just got a bunch of new funding. They got rewarded for this.

Well they did that so they could buy GPUs.

Yes.

Now, actually I want to end with a fun idea. Here's a fun idea that I think everyone's gonna love. So here is how Elon Musk ruins his life using AI. So Elon Musk is doing. They just raised twenty billion dollars. Most of that is going to go to GPUs AI.

For groc And where did they raise that from?

Vcs vcsh fuck? I forget, like who exactly why the venture capitalist is it? It's mostly vcs in debt and Nvidia. So they're doing that to build more data centers. They're losing over a billion dollars a month just on the current thing. They're going to build more data centers, which

Everyone there should be redacted. It's mostly just people generating horrifying things of women.

Here's the thing. Every time he does that, it's probably five to ten bucks. It's happening millions of times a day. This could actually lead AI could lead to the destruction of someone like that. And people say, oh, Elon Musk always finds more money. There are actual limits to Ed's point. There are actual limits.

The thing I would say for people, Yes, he is still he is the world's richest.

He's finding ways to do it because he's the richest man on paper. Yeah, and he got so much, like the Twitter deals thirteen billion dollars, there's fucking nothing compared to the bullshit data centers. I want everyone to just think about and laugh about the idea that this man is building big ass data centers to just under money.

He keeps talking about Mars. Let him go to my to Mars. Let him be hoisted by his own Yeah. If you've read the beginning of Red Mars, you know it's totally great. There's some ideas there.

Yeah.

Then that first prologue about what might happen to Elon Musk.

Yeah, that's so good.

Yeah, it's and I realized that it's tough, and I know it's we come to the end of this block. I know we've been quite cynical. This is so hokey, and I do this every CS. The best thing you can do when you hear this stuff, when you're like I'm upset with this is love your friends harder. Telling me I love everyone in this room, genuinely, so happy to have everyone here. But it's like that that little thing that you think is so immaterial. We'll save lives,

I've followed you work for like a decade.

Edward and Graso Junior an insanely talented man, and I love reading your work and I love having you on the mic. These things are actually very easy to do and easier because of digital There is never go you're listening to this, go and fucking do that too. Literally, anyone you know, family member, friend creator, Tell them you love them, love their shit, and why. That is actually something that digital communication allows you to do today that

Or if I want to chat you bt rapper to tell me what color my shit is and if that is gonna be indicative of a health problem.

You could just use Microsoft Copilot, which will be in a Windows laptop from a.

Year Microsoft three sixty five. Could hear the laptop around and take a photo and then also at the same time, look at the chap.

You got this.

We're going to see some cool stuff like these with these local lll ms. We're gonna go back to punk tech, right, people building their own cool little minds make little cool things like We're going to be back there, their own little gadgets powered by punk tech. I want to see that more.

And the thing is, I know it's fucking grim out there, and it really is. We are still One of the problems in society is we're hyper connected and full of technology. One of the cool things is we are as well, and there is a ton of tech that exists today that you don't need to worry about the future.

That will do what you want to do. By us, I just tell your friends and family you love them, to creators, you love their work, share their ship.

Give me a little compliments gift No I mentioned.

Give friends little compliments that you can do that in seconds, that it doesn't matter where they are in the world, as long as they've gotten into that connection. It's so fucking hokey, but I think it's easy to miss. And I think like we come to an end. As we come to the end here, it has come to the end of this blog. It's worth saying that. And you know what, I only have one plug something Devendra. What are you working on the moment? What do you want people to read?

And gadgets? Where where I'm doing this stuff? Check out our CS coverage. I also do a movie podcast, the Filmcast at the filmcast dot com. Can't wait to see your movie, Chloe, But maybe don't listen to my review. I don't know. I don't know.

Edwin Greiser Junior, what you're excited about writing? What are you writing at the moment?

Working on this very weird essay for for prim magazine?

Tell me.

It's uh, I mean yeah, it's I've pitched the same idea. You know, I supposed to do this. I pitched the same idea two places, but I know one is gonna one is gonna actually say yes, and the other one and it's uh. One of my favorite speeches is MLK is a Letter to Christians. It's from the perspective of Paul writing to American Christians and warning and kind of like sussing out the society they have in warning about it.

Going on now.

That sounds yeah, I don't.

I don't like researching it.

But.

It's been interesting.

It's a fun experiment. Yeah, so stuff like that. I've been trying to do a lot more fiction experiments because I've been doing more readings lately. So good, it's excited for that.

Fucking great, Chloe, Why are you playing? Wait?

Then?

I'm doing Cincinnati this weekend the ninth and tenth or tenth and eleventh, whatever. The Friday Saturday is Lincoln be in the then Washington, d C. The next weekend MLK weekend Thursday, Friday Saturday, and then that following week Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Not a weekend. I'm doing my solo show Cheat in Philadelphia. Come on out to that. After that Vermont for Collins. YadA, YadA, YadA, Road Fargo, and I.

Have been putting a link to getting a permanent discount to my newsletter. And in these things I've not done my paid newsletter. It's a chunk of my income. Please fucking God, subscribe to my paid newsletter. I really if I can in the years time, if I can double from here, I can just do this.

Yes, really happy?

Also subscribe their mind. Yeah, well I figure out a special we can do an a.

Better than one. Yeah, really though, if you're gonna put your money into anything.

Sean Paul Adams, who was a friend of the show, friend of the suite, He passed sadly last year. His son is epileptic, so we are honoring him by getting you to donate to the Pediatric Epilepsy Research Consortium. His family and friends would deeply appreciate you doing so, and so would I. Thank you so much. We'll be back for two hours. In a few hours. This has been incredible. I love doing this show.

I love you all. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Metosowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Mattasowski dot com, M A T T O S O W s ki dot com. You can email me at easy at Better Offline dot com or visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast links and of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot Where's your Head dot at to visit the discord, and go to our slash Better

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