Anyone want to buy TikTok?

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Distillery, Litzberg, Tennessee. Back Daniels and Tennessee Honey are registered trademark. 2024, Jack Daniels, all rights reserved. Welcome to the Virtuaast, the flagship podcast of saying, we're gonna burn your house down unless you sell it. That's the metaphor I bring to you using my TikTok. If you don't listen to the Virtuaast cast, we will burn your house down. Yeah, that's your choices. You can sell your house or crayons will come to it in a torchut.

Yeah, I've got a lighter in everything. Hi, I'm your friend Neely. I'm good at crayons is here, Alex trans is here. Yeah, I'm here to hear all the scorching takes. Yeah, she's got a lighter and she's not afraid to use it. David Pierce is here. Hello, we were all so close to being in the same city for like 10 minutes yesterday and we managed to not record a first cast and it was very upsetting. Yeah, it's funny that we've gone 180. Usually

at least two of us are together. We were all very close to all three of us being together an hour or three of us remote. But it's for good reason. David has the rabbit R1 in hand. I can't tell you how much I want to talk about the rabbit R1 and all the things it can or mostly cannot do. So that's very exciting. We're gonna talk about that. We gotta talk about the electric G wagon. That's another hour of the Virtuaast. Apple announced new iPads.

Tesla had earnings. Elon threatened once again to turn every Tesla on the road in this sort of distributed AWS situation. Very weird. We've got a lightning round at the end, so we have to start. We have to start with breaking news. Joe Biden just before we began recording today on Wednesday, signed the bill that would force TikTok to either divest itself, to sell itself to some other company in the United States or shut down. Those are

the two choices. It passed as part of an aid package to Ukraine, Israel, there's some humanitarian aid for Gaza in that package. The House passed it as part of that aid bill. They extended the timeline and the divestiture, which was the big hold up in the Senate before. So now TikTok has nine months to figure out a sale process. And if they're making progress, whoever is the president has can add three months per the president's discretion, bringing

the total to a year. So by chance, basically, as a year to figure this out, the clock is now ticking. The bill is signed. It's the law. And no one knows what's gonna happen next. Yeah, I like, there's so many strange unknowns about this, things like who is going to be president when we hit the nine month gap. Like it's, it's, it's so obvious to me that a big part of the sticking point was to move this past the election, right? That whatever is going to

happen should have to happen after election day. And it'll either be our problem after we've been reelected if you're the Democrats or it'll be their problem. Yeah, if you're the Republicans, right? Like that was a Lauren's reporting, too, is that a lot of these senators signed on to prove this bill because it pushed it past the deadline because they gave them a little bit more space to do it. So yeah, no, I think it's, it's, it's such an easy maneuver at such an odd moment.

And we've talked so much about the politics of this, especially among young people in the United States and all the weird ways that's gonna go. And all of the stuff I've been reading recently has been very strange that like intellectually, overwhelmingly, it seems like if you ask people is TikTok sort of bad in whatever like mysterious way you want to define bad people say yes, like all

of the polls are basically like yes, most people believe TikTok is a net bad. But then I think the reality of like waking up in TikTok suddenly being gone is a is a thing in an election season that nobody actually wants to deal with. Yeah, it's very strange. I also don't think that part is ever actually going to happen, but we can talk about that. Look, I love eating handfuls of M&M's. It's been

night. It's just a thing I love. I know it's bad. I know I shouldn't do that. Super do it all the time. That feels like our relationship to social media is a country right now. It maybe took in particular, but in general, our relationship to social media is like, as making us feel bad and maybe it's measurable or maybe it's not or maybe this guy's just a grifter trying to sell a book. Whatever it is, some ambient sense of I shouldn't eat M&M's at midnight is there. And then everyone's

just like give them to me. Yeah. Like let me have them. The thing that's really interesting, right? It just got signed today. It was and it felt inevitable all week that this would get signed. That was the momentum was there. Lauren Feiner, her reporting suggested the deadlines were coming ever faster, like usually with bills or still lays and lots of other things. And this was just happening. And it actually happened. I think a little faster than we anticipated would happen. Like a day faster.

Now it's done. There's no more argument whether you should man TikTok. Like they did it. They passed the bill. Tribide and signed it. It's the law. I mean, I do think you could ask the question of is what Joe Biden signed intended to be a ban of TikTok? Like it's not nothing to me that in his statement about signing the bill and his excitement and enthusiasm for the fact that this got done after all this time, didn't mention TikTok once or any of this stuff once. It's

buried halfway down this long bill after I forget the exact heading of the thing. But it's like miscellaneous and then TikTok. This is not the point of the bill, right? Which I think is a strange thing that is going to play out potentially in some interesting ways as we go through the inevitable chaos of the next nine months. This got passed in service of passing something else. And I think what everybody decided along this process is passing this other thing is so important that sure

will ban TikTok. And so I think I don't know if that changes anything about the way this actually plays out. I think that the bill is still law. Like it did happen. But it's a strange way that we got here that makes me wonder like does Joe Biden actually want to ban TikTok? Or is that just a price everyone is willing to pay in order to get this important aid bill? Oh, it's 100% of price everybody was willing to pay, right? Like this was a really the whole bill was hard was a hard

fought battle for everybody involved. And this was just like, you know what? We just need to get this bill out the door if somebody wants to put this in. This is like so at the back of most of our list, it's fine. Which I thought was really, really interesting to go from like TikTok being like this huge center of discussion for everybody to being like essentially a footnote and a much larger bill. Yeah, I mean they did have the house to have the uptown vote on the standalone TikTok bill,

which had a much shorter timeline. I think a lot of people had problems with that shorter timeline. And that just sort of arrived in the Senate with nothing. So at least one part of our government had the straight up down vote. That's true, right? And after the House voted to pass that version of the bill, Biden said, I'm going to sign it. I'll sign it. You should get it to me and I'll sign it. Whether or not they skirted it through the Senate by attaching it to a bill that

everyone wanted to get done. Yeah, I mean like on the margins, but that's like how so many things get done. Totally. But I think you have you had the House just the straight up town vote and you had Biden saying I'm going to sign it. So the motivations I think are clear whether or not Biden wants to run around crowing the paint. I think it's very different, like politically very different. The White House, for example, announced they it's going to keep campaigning on TikTok.

They're just going to be like, I don't know if anyone's ready for that ratio. That is going to in the history of ratios on the internet every post the White House now makes every post Jeff Hayden makes on TikTok is going to get ratioed to Hellendack and it's going to be delightful. And that's fine. I was actually thinking about that as sort of it's like a perfect microcosm of this whole thing. And I think the thing that I have come around to is in the months that we've

been talking about this. I think at the beginning of all these conversations, I underrated how important TikTok is as an information source, particularly to young people. But now you see the stats that are like it is a it is a growing search engine. It's a it's a huge source of news, particularly for like Gen Z and younger. It matters a lot. And so for the White House to a want to ban TikTok, but also understand that if we want to reach people, this is the literal only way is actually like a

perfect summation of the TikTok problem. Yeah. TikTok is so important that you can ban it and yet you have to use it. It's so strange. But that is like that is where we are with what TikTok means to people, right? Somewhere in the TikTok office there's the knob that just throttles you and like shows you the CEO of TikTok is just like Biden hair, HQ. Yeah, they're engaged. It's going to go mute for more bit. Good night, everybody. So it's done, right? That the point I'm trying to

make is it's done. There are only three options now. TikTok has said it's going to sue. It's going to file some sort of legal complaint to say this is not allowed. We don't know what that looks like. They showed G2 actually put up a TikTok himself saying, make no mistake. This is a ban, which is interesting. We'll come back to that. And then we're going to go to court and want to fight for your rights as

Americans under the Constitution because you can't be silenced. Also a very interesting thing to say. And then he said, don't worry, TikTok will continue as before. Like we're keep running TikTok, running keep investing TikTok. Yeah, you just hold tight. I'm going to go defend the Constitution against the United States government. Yeah, it's super funny to see the guy who made like unalive a word because you're not allowed to say dead on TikTok. The bastion of free speech.

Like that's a really weird stance for him to take because it's not. It's it's PG rated social media, right? Like it's social media for kids, which is why the kids use it. And why part of the reason people don't want the kids use it yet. Like come on. I'm never going to look at a corner emoji the same way, right? After being on TikTok for a while. You went from very innocent to very weird, very quickly. So there's that element. There's also the fact that it's not the

user speech that is being regulated here, right? It's TikTok. The company distributes the speech of users and the notion that it's control of the algorithm presents some sort of national security risk that there is some longstanding issue with having foreign powers control, a significant part of our media. That's a very old policy issue. There's some issue with concentration of media ownership. So you just look at option one, we're going to file loss,

we're going to win pure coin flip. We just don't know how that's going to go. We don't know where TikTok's lawsuit is going to be. It could hinge all on free speech or it could just hinge on like a technical drafting error where the government did not point to the correct statutory authority from 1805 to an act. We don't know. Like we have to see it. So that's option one. We're going to fight a lawsuit and win. Option two is they shut down and leave. They could do that. That's the

ban, right? We've exhausted our other options and we're out of here. Goodbye, you banned TikTok. Weird. I think that is, that is a choice that by dance has to make under dress. That's the we're going to burn your house down unless you sell it and they could be like, we let the match. We let the match. We'll see later. We shut it down. Option two. Option three is

that they sell it. They got a year to figure it out. In option three, it has a bunch of weirdness in it because most of the companies that would want to buy TikTok, it feels like our own DOJ would prevent them from doing it for antitrust reasons. So that's option three. So it's not an easy road from here at all. I don't know what the creators are going to do. The creators have a year to figure

out how much they want to trust TikTok. While TikTok is trying to turn itself into the home shopping network anyway, and like it's not, and you know, universal music isn't on there anymore. Like there's a whole bunch of stuff over there that creators are going to have to react to. I think we're in for just a whole bucket of changes. Much in the same way that when you know, you know, you on about Twitter and sort of making changes over there, the social media landscape

just started refracting around it. Like things started changing all around that energy. I think we're going to see the same thing with TikTok. But there's only three options. They fight and win a lawsuit, which we haven't seen. We don't know what that loss will be based on. So we don't know. They leave or they sell it. That's it. Okay. I just want to float a fourth option, which is they stay and the app stores pay a fine, which in case you're wondering, I calculated,

it would be $850 billion. So that's an option. Just throwing it out there. That's what it did. That's just an 8.5 car projects for Apple. Yeah, it's like not even a big deal. It's fine. That's what I think. To me, the strange thing that's going to happen in the middle of all of that is just uncertainty. I've been reading and talking to folks about this just in the last few hours. There is this overwhelming sense from a lot of people that TikTok is screwed no matter

what happens because this is like, it just got completely thrown up in the air. Everything about TikTok and there is no indication it's going to settle down quickly. Even if it gets a new owner, there will be lots of changes. If it disappears, obviously, it'll be gone. If it fights a lawsuit, that's going to take a long time. So if you're a creator, if you're an advertiser, if you're anyone who has any kind of investment in this platform, the simplest thing to do is going to be

immediately start investing your time and energy and money somewhere else. That is just going to bleed TikTok so fast. To the point where even if a year from now TikTok sells to Oracle, are we sure TikTok is going to still be TikTok in a year? Because this stuff moves fast. Right. And then the actual mechanism of sale is confusing because it appears, by dance, would not sell the algorithm to underline TikTok. By dance has been pretty clear this whole time that it has no interest in selling.

If you believe by dance, divesting is not an option. Yeah. Because then we have to see if TikTok actually makes money. Right. I mean, like, yeah, do they want a bunch of American tech companies poking around the books of TikTok? Like, they certainly do not. Do they have to say just as a negotiating

tactic? We will never sell in order to ward off a ban. They sure do. But if you're just a responsible executive and now you're here and you have the three choices or a choice for to be fair to David, which is ask Apple $50 billion a year in funds for having to talk remain in the app store. Yeah, I don't know. Like, it feels like you got to run down two of them, right? Yeah, I mean, at some point your option is either $0 or $100 billion.

You just, you sort of have no choice but to take that. But if that is the game that you're playing, you have to play that basically until the very last minute. Look, the millionaire Chinese teens buy in G-waggons all over Los Angeles. It's got to come from somewhere. You know? Exactly. Like, the children of the CCP, they need their G-waggons. That's all I'm saying. I'm just putting that out there somewhere and like money talks and like, that's real.

And I think having some dollars is better than no dollars. Whether or not it's fair that the price is depressed because the thing has to be sold. Good question. There's just not a world in which the evaluation doesn't come down to. Are we going to be successful in court? What number can we get? Yeah. Because that middle road of we pulled out of the United States market and now we have nothing to show for all of our investment in building the TikTok user base. It's just seeing, that's a

lawsuit too. It's also just straight up bad business. Like, that is just straightforwardly like a stupid capitalism decision at some point. Notably the Chinese government not so capitalist. Putting that out there. Well, and again, like, there are the question of who ultimately makes this decision on that side. Very hard to know would tell you a lot about how this will turn out.

Right? Like if if Shuchu the CEO of TikTok is the person who ultimately makes the decision, that will be very different than if TikTok is connected to white dance is connected to the Chinese Communist Party, which ultimately means the Chinese Communist Party makes that decision. That would go very differently. Like, there's so many things we don't know still. It's an exciting time, honestly. Like, I love when a social media platform changes hands

or has this big moment. Because then you see things like Adam Asari today. Was it on Instagram, Nila? I think you clocked the video of him just explaining to creators how to get engagement on the platform. And it's like that probably wouldn't have happened if there wasn't a TikTok. Adam Asari being like, so, okay, you're at work. I'm going to set some goals for you. We're going to check it out in six months. It's the other guy. And you know, we'll see how it's

going. And it's like, dude, why does this all feel like work? Yeah. Like, actually, then it's like the bigger story here. It feels like a work for an awful lot of people across all of these platforms. Yeah. And like, maybe some people are going to like, I don't want to work for TikTok anymore because it came to nothing. And that will just create energy somewhere else. We'll see. One of the funniest memes to me on Instagram is all the people

who are like, Oh, I had a call with meta. And we talked about, you know, strategies for how to succeed. And it like, it has become a meme of people making jokes about it. But it started as a real thing. And it's like, it's a big win to have a business call with meta executives about your Instagram. Wait, wait, did social media become the new Mary Kay? Yeah. Oh, it's been there for a long time. I don't think people saw the hydro water bottles. Yes. The bottles just have a blue LED

in the bottom. And they're like, this adds hydrogen to your water. That's a lie. It's very bad. And if you don't understand why it's bad, I'm just telling you that water is made of hydrogen. Yeah, it's already in there. It's age two. There's two of them for every oxygen. Famously, you get two of them. Double your hydrogen. And it's like, what are you doing?

Like, how is this happening on this platform? And they're all selling them to a talk shop. And I just think that platform, the revenue pressure on all the social platforms is so high. But all these companies need to make money and show property that they're doing layoffs and they're just turning the screws. I'm like, can we, how do we make money? And they just landed on the home shopping network? I think it was headed towards a cliff anyway. Like, there was a bubble

in video creator economy. Taylor Orange has actually talked about it. And you can just see, like to me, the hydro water bottle is like, oh, that bubble's getting pretty big. Yeah. It's not good. All right. So here's the exercise I want to do. Three options, right? Law suites succeeds by Dan Spurns it down or they get sold. TikTok is a prize, right? It is the thing that no one can get. It is a scaled social network with

an active user base of young people. That's what everybody wants. It's really hard to get the way that TikTok got it, right? They acquired musically and then by Dan started spending billions upon billions of dollars on Facebook and Instagram ads to convert people into downloading the app. You can't really do that. You can't even run that playbook anymore because of Apple's tracking transparency. Like they made the ad changes. And so the market for app install ads

is basically gone. You have to pay Apple for them in the app's surround. A different conversation, but the point is you can't just run the playbook by Dan's did and they ran that playbook to the tune of billions upon billions of dollars. Right? So here's this thing that was really hard to do that the conditions under which by Dan's did it have dramatically changed and it was very expensive even when they could do it. It's what everybody wants. It will be expensive, right? This isn't

this isn't like Twitter fire sale. And even that was expensive as we've all discovered. Like that was a reprised. This is the thing. Like it is a scaled video advertising platform with a bunch of young people on it that love it that defines the culture all the time. So who can afford it? I just looked up the list of the largest American companies by market cap. All of the ones that are

measured in trillions or tech companies. So I figured we could just go down that list and then we can go to the companies that are measured in billions which are much more amusing to think about as owners of bite dance. But that's very fun. I think we should we should start with the tech companies because they seem like the most likely group to at least have some interest.

Clarifying question. How much should we think TikTok is worth? I have an idea in mind but I'm curious if there is a like assumed number that I have not heard for what TikTok is value that. Do we know? So the number that I have just picked out of the blue is $100 billion because that is more than double what Twitter was worth. Okay. It's a huge. It's a huge number. Most companies can't just do that, right? I would have actually gone a little higher. Like there was the estimate

recently that YouTube is worth $400 billion on its own. So I was going to say like 200. Let's go. Once you're up here, it's just like whatever number you want. Another hundred. I'm good with a hundred. No, no, no. TikTok doesn't have like the numbers of YouTube though, right? Like I'm more of the money. Yeah. No, you're right. I'm good with a hundred billion. This works. I'm picking that number just because it is this it's a small hard number. Yeah.

Right. Like 40 billion for Twitter was like over price but not even that in a lot of companies would just like do it. I don't think there's any world in which TikTok is in a in a regular pure market sense worth less than a hundred billion. So I feel I feel pretty good about this. And I'll just for some comparison as of December 2023, Apple had $73 billion in cash on hand, which is an insane amount of cash. Like Apple is one of those cash rich companies out there in that so much. So I picked

on because it's it'll be hard even for an Apple to pull. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, here's the list. The Apple and Microsoft jockeying back and forth for biggest market cap. So we'll start on Microsoft today. Microsoft actually feels like Microsoft should be in the running for TikTok. They have been in the running before when Trump tried to ban TikTok. Sachin Dallag got pulled into those conversations. He has repeatedly described it as some of the weirdest business dealings.

He's ever been a part of then it just won away. And we got Project Texas where Oracle took over the data blah blah blah blah, which came to nothing appears to have been mostly a front convinced no one of anything. No one cares about Project Texas. And Microsoft has been desperate for like a true consumer play for a long time. I mean, it wasn't it Microsoft that sniffed around discord in a

pretty big way. Like it wants something like this very badly. I disagree. This is this is like a big old hot potato Microsoft wants to know part of like the big power of Microsoft nowadays is that we don't talk about Microsoft that often. And and that would change immediately with a good question for all this is just does your CEO want to get hold in front of Congress to talk about content moderation right? And Microsoft no the answer appears to be no that said there is a lot of scrutiny

around Microsoft's deal with open AI. Like a lot of an interest scrutiny. This is going to come up. The idea of an interest scrutiny is going to come up as we go through this list. And there's I think Microsoft could run a play where they say look here's what we're going to do. We're going to do a partnership with like snap which can definitely snap is not on the list of biggest American companies by any by any means like not even in top 100. Like no, it's not even sniffing this.

You can say Microsoft you can see Microsoft say okay, we're going to do this weird kind of partnership with snap where they will fund them by ink tick tock will like be their backend provider will run AI and Azure for recommendations. And it'll be the same kind of structure as open AI. And if that's fine over here because it's all a great problem. I bet it's fine over here with open AI. I mean, Lena Con will drop kick that deal. I mean, but this is the this is the game right. All these

companies are that's an offer. This is a problem that needs to get solved. Someone asked to buy this thing. And if Lena Con is like I'm not going to let anyone buy it, then it is a ban. And so you have to at least run the process and you have to create some leverage somewhere. I think Microsoft has like

three meetings, but ultimately walks away. Again, they came close before also Microsoft doesn't have a dead-on and address problem because it doesn't run any social networks that's from Xbox live. And so it you know, they could just buy it. I don't know if they want to, but I think using this leverage to turn down the heat on open AI might be interesting. That's Microsoft Apple one or two the biggest companies in the world, Microsoft Apple, I was going to back and forth Apple.

No way is my answer to this question. Zero percent than typical wants to sit in front of Congress and talk about content moderation ever. The funniest possible outcome of this whole thing is that Apple buys TikTok and makes it a feature of Apple TV+. That is the single best thing that could possibly happen. That this is their content play for Apple TV+. Oh, it would be Apple music. Yeah, Apple music. Right. Apple runs a music service. TikTok is using music. They have great

relationships with all the labels because they're the big hedgehog and Spotify. Apple importantly has an incredible relationship with the Chinese government that is extremely well managed by Tim Cook. So they're they're a known partner that would find a way to blah blah blah interoperate with by dance globally. You can see the arguments. I'm just saying I don't

know Tim Cook wants to sit in front of Congress and talk about content moderation. I think Nealight they're going to use that exact quote you just said when they pull Tim Cook in front of Congress for buying. You have a good relationship with the Chinese government is precisely the reason not to buy TikTok if you're Tim Cook. All right, moving on. I think we can all it would be the shock of all shocks of Apple West TikTok. In video, third biggest market cap in the country right now.

It feels a bit a field. No, no, no, Jensen's like he's a smart dude, right? Like he started that company from the ground up. He's still running it now. He made his big bet on AI. He'd like they think very measured over there. Like everything they do has a purpose and a point even when it's a screw up. So I'd be like very surprised. Okay, allow me to make the countercase. I love it. I'm Jensen one. I have somewhat intentionally somewhat accidentally stumbled into just an

unbelievable gold mine that is the AI revolution. This will not last forever. Other people are going to figure out how to make GPUs as good as mine. And I'm not going to be able to sell H100s for however much money I want to whoever I want forever. I need another move. That other move is TikTok. I want that someone is writing that memo in video right now. And then it's like question mark, question mark, question mark profit. You know, like this is the move that's as big as H100s. Like

I don't know about that. No, the other reason is there is a real version of this that is TikTok as training data. Yeah. Which I think is is not worth a hundred billion dollars but is also not worth nothing. And I think one reason a lot of these companies will take a good hard look at TikTok is not because they want to operate a social network forever but because operating a social network gets them basically an infinite supply of good training data for AI systems. For now, right? That's

just what it is. I mean, this is what Mark Zuckerberg has been talking about with Facebook. Like they're they're touting the fact that they have this vast supply of stuff. So Jensen swoops in and he's like, look, I'm already in the middle of geopolitical hotzens. Because I'm you know, I'm building chips with TSMC in Taiwan. And the whole universe is organized around H100 production in Taiwan. What if I had a little TikTok to the next? I could do it.

All right. That's that's end video. I I'm putting that sub 50 percent. Yeah. Way so. But I'm 10. But do you argue it? Alphabet or as the people know at Google? I mean, I think that no one wants them to buy it. If you want to ban TikTok, you let Google buy it and just slowly kill it and suddenly shut it down. Yeah. Like that's what will happen. That is effectively a bad. So no. Do you think I have a conversation? I think Google's totally having

that conversation though. Like they they love a social media platform that they kill a few years later. This is just like. But so to David's point, this is a rich source of training data for people. Yeah. I think that's why they're they're actually talking about it. It is a long time ago when I asked Sundar about the web and when SEO is done to the web and where you would start a new thing if you were a new creator, he said, well, we have we have YouTube. Right. So they know that all

the sort of organic content that is made by human beings is happening on video platforms. This is a rich source of that. They're already searching TikTok. You can search for TikToks on Google. Yeah. Don't forget Google has been saying loudly for two years now that one of the biggest threats to Google searches TikTok. Yep. Which is again, why they're not gonna buy it. This is the real Lena Con hands on hips. Yeah. Alphabet would do this. I believe absolutely yes. Alphabet

would do this. It would be sued to death once Lena Con is like already standing outside of the Googleplex and Mountain View with a lawsuit and just ready to like, Huck it into Sundar Peshai's office the minute this happens. I like if I'm if I'm Sundar Peshai, I would do this in one second. But there's absolutely no chance that they will. All right. So that's Google. And the next one is really interesting. Amazon. I think Amazon looks at TikTok slowly turning into the home shopping network

and moving an awful lot of records. And it's like this. We this is what we want. This is the future shopping. Yeah. Yep. Amazon has been gently trying to do this on Amazon properties for a while. They've had creator brand things that they've done. They've brought people in. They've done video stuff. None of it has really worked. But yeah, I think Amazon of these is the one that makes the most sense and also probably the one that is most likely to be plausible. Yeah. I

don't think they don't run a social platform now. Yeah. And then way shape or form. So the antitrust issues don't seem so bad. That said, you know, the Europeans just blocked Amazon from buying iRobot because they were worried about concentration in the robotic vacuum market. And Andy Jassy looked furious when he was talking about that on CBC. Just so mad. Yeah. He's like, we're well be on the law now. Like are we? Sounds like you're right by the law. But they don't,

but they don't have a social platform. And TikTok really is a big advertising play. And Amazon is actually one of the biggest advertisers out there. I can see it. I think this would probably turn TikTok into something worse. Oh, yeah. Yeah. This is like Google where you don't, well, if you're a TikTok huger, sir, you don't want this purchase. Yeah. Like where can you imagine if you just combine Amazon alphabet soup brands with TikTok shops, just general stuff. Amazon

basics. Just nonstop in your feet. I would 100% calling start calling that group of TikTok creators. Amazon basics. You know who I'm talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Like the Amazon basics. It would be bad for America. Okay. So that's Amazon. That feels very likely of this list so far. Microsoft and Amazon feel like the most likely to at least try. Then there's a matter which feels like a immediate hard now. Yeah. And I think the TikTok user base would revolt and leave if they tried.

Meta would do it. It wouldn't be allowed to do it. Oh, surely what? Microsoft was a killer. Yeah. He'd be like $100 billion. Like how many people do I have to kill? Well, just what it's done. It's done. It's been done. And then at that point, I think Meta would own the five most popular apps in existence. And also the regulators have a really good argument for Meta right now. She's saying you just made threads from scratch. And it's doing great by some fake accounting. It's bigger

than Twitter. And I would say fake because Twitter's numbers are fake. And then it's like sensor tower numbers. It's our way like no one's numbers are real. Yeah. You just mashed together a bunch of very truthy feeling numbers and I'd like to try to figure out the Twitter. Fine. But the argument would be, well, you can do it on here. You don't need this. So we'll see. So that's okay. That's all the companies with valuations in the T's. Notably they are all tech companies. Then you slide down

one notch. You go from six to seven. The valuations are now in the B's and the billions. And I would just say these are much funnier companies to consider. Broke shark halfway. Yes. That's the most likely honestly Warren Buffett. We're buffett's like social media. Let's go. Like Warren Buffett buying TikTok so that he could become like the ultimate TikToker in the way that Elon Musk bought Twitter. So he could just be the Twitter. Yeah. Perfect. When I think of Warren Buffett,

I think of the phrase burnout not fade away and buying TikTok. Really just light a fire baby. Just get out. You got one go driving his old car to McDonald's every morning. Just vlogging on tick. Are you kidding me? Come on. It would be great. I can see it. I don't know how it fits in the in the portfolio. It would be good. Eli Lilly. It feels like a no visa. Yeah. JP Morgan Chase. Why not have a bank own TikTok? What if TikTok was just payments process at the end of the day.

Tesla is here at number 12 on the market cap list, although that valuation fluctuating wildly with every breath Elon takes. That feels like an obvious no, although the man does love a social network. So I mean, yeah, is Elon Musk himself a totally bonkers possible? I will say Elon, he's doing my resume in Twitter and he's got Linda out there being like Twitter's a video for his platform. And then he on is the most text forward person in the entire world. That's it.

I don't think so. Yeah, he's done doing TikTok. This one's interesting. Walmart, which actually tried to enter the TikTok sweepstakes long ago on the list, the huge American company, would be fascinating. I think for the same reasons as Amazon. Right. Can we can we build a new kind of shopping distribution? I don't know. It doesn't it does not seem likely. It does not seem like that's what they have so many ambitions and a lot of money.

But like Amazon, I don't want it. All right. I'm just going to read the the next five and as an exercise for the reader, just like silently consider them and send us an email over which ones you think should buy TikTok of this list. Exxon mobile. Yes. Mastercard. Proctor and gamble. Home Depot. Costco. Bank of America. Okay. Costco is something. Costco. There we go. I just want to pause on Costco for one second. You know what is the brand that everybody loves?

Costco. Yeah. People love Costco. But if they have to start paying influencers a living wage, like they do with their regular staff, no. That's that's too much money. Yeah. Costco is like a well, you know, it's a well on company in that way. Then there's the two tech companies that skipped over here Oracle, which is already in the mix. You could see it right there already in the mix for a reason. And then Salesforce, which I think we should end with Salesforce because

that is the darkest outcome for TikTok. So Salesforce buys TikTok and tries to turn it into what LinkedIn became for Microsoft. Yeah. Basically. Yeah. Like Salesforce just goes all in on like business TikTok. I know. This is a future of American small business is happening on TikTok. Small business TikTok is still my favorite thing. Their pressure washer guys out there today. I mean, like it's spring baby lighted up. And then they're immediately making TikTok shop content where they're trying to

convince me to buy an extremely obviously cheap surface cleaner. We're like they plug it in and you see the whole thing dent in and they plug in the water. I'm like, what are we doing here? Anyway, sorry. I have a lot of things to talk right now. You might watch too many ads on TikTok. I just the whole thing is fantastic. You know that, right? Like you just scroll past them. I just scroll until I get bloopers from the office. So I don't even know what you're talking about. You started seeing

that they're doing the like the shimmer effect across it to prevent the content. It's very good. Yeah. TikTok. Honestly, Disney should buy TikTok because TikTok is the most impressive laboratory of copyright infringement that exists in the world today and maybe in world history. So I was actually going to bring up Disney as a as a wild card here. I don't think Disney can afford to do this. But I think like Disney kicked the tires on Twitter a bunch of years ago. Disney is interested in

a new media startup in a really big way. I think TikTok is probably too big to be that thing for Disney. But I if I'm Bob I grew up like I bet I bet there is a memo in that boardroom. Is Disney still interested? Because I think when they kicked the tires on Twitter, that was also around the same time they launched Fusion, which was like their their digital media play. Yeah. That was the wasting money of in Disney era. Yeah. I think they're beyond this point now. Yeah. I don't think so.

I think Disney is in the business of getting young people to watch it stuff and that the answer to that is TikTok. I want everyone to pull over in a car and just imagine with a TikTok themed part of Walt Disney World, like close that loop. Every ride is 60 seconds long and you just leap somewhat on satisfying unless you do it a hundred times in a row. I don't think Bob I grew up

on soccer concept moderation for our Congress. I think that destroys Disney's brand. To be anywhere close to there is evidence the teenage girls are feeling depressed because of our product, not Disney's own. But it's interesting to consider because it is where you know, like Disney missed out on Cocoa Melon, which is a YouTube phenomenon and it's not Netflix phenomenon. They they don't have a

pipeline for that stuff and TikTok might be that pipeline. I just I don't think they have the money and I don't think they have the the mental stamina based on all the other things that are on Disney. All right. That's the list. There's other stuff you can talk about AMD and Pepsi and Netflix. But I feel like that's the list and you got to end with Salesforce because I just want everyone to

consider the darkest timeline. We'll see what happens. You know, a bunch of verge reporters are out in the world, kind of the pavement to see who wants to buy things at what Alex, he told me yesterday when I was like, Hey, let's go through the list. He's like, it's crickets because they're all afraid of Lena Khan. And I think that is that was how they were talking before Biden signed the bill. And I think that will change in the weeks to come. But there's going to be a lawsuit. We'll see how it

goes. Kind of a wild time though. Like if you've been paying attention to the verchast, you know that we generally think like all of social media in the internet is being like table flipped up people

and like things are shaken out in different ways. This is one pretty big table flip. Yeah. I think it's going to be really interesting to see how this radiates outward too because like there's been a lot of talk in the last couple of days about what this is going to mean for Instagram and for YouTube shorts and for snap. And there's this sense of a handful of companies in the US that really stand

a benefit from the downfall of TikTok. And I think where people go if they go and how those platforms start to change is going to yet again upend the rest of everything. Like if if TikTok suddenly floods into YouTube, it will change YouTube completely. Oh, there's going to be a land grab 100%. Yeah. Between like the QVC nature of TikTok and this, all those like edge case people, the people who aren't really really into it are going to be like, yeah, I'll just I'll go

somewhere else because at least I'm not getting sold to. Yeah. I mean, and this is a you recall what happened with Vine, right? The Exodus of Vine YouTube really changed the nature of YouTube. So you can just feel coming. By the way, I forgot I was just scrolling. I forgot the darkest time on option, which I'm just going to say and then we're going to cut to a break. Verizon, vice TikTok. That's it. We'll be right back. We're going to talk about the rabbit or one.

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So it would be fine. Four, three, gray scale TikToks for everyone. Extremely dark. We've been talking a lot about terrible movies on this podcast recently. Should we talk about Rebel Moon? Speaking of movies. That one's very bad. It's so obviously bad. I haven't even looked at it. I don't think this is a spoiler. I saw a screenshot of one of the final scenes where the ship is revealed to be a woman who is hog tied. Oh, good stuff. Doesn't seem like my bag. Also, that's

almost certainly a spoiler and I just don't care. So I'm sorry to everyone who... Now, I mean, it does make me kind of want to watch it, but just so I can be mad while watching it. That's how I felt about art. Just brave. Enough for the Zack Snyder talk. Yeah. Look, the man took his bag from 18T and he made a square movie in gray scale where Superman is super weird.

And you bring it up like three out of every four podcasts. The policy thing that we're not about, we don't have time to talk about, is soon a net neutrality will become the law of land again and everyone's gonna talk about net neutrality and meaning, but I'm just gonna be like justice league happened to you because you repealed net neutrality. That's a real, that was a real outcome of repealing net neutrality. You don't believe me, but it's 100% true. All right.

I'm gonna talk about the thing that I've been most excited to talk about all week. David, you went to a party at the TWA hotel at JFK in New York, which is a wild place to have a gadget launch. You saw, grab it, happen. There was a demo on stage, which we should talk about because I have a lot of feelings about it, I don't know. And now you are holding a rabbit R1. You have a room. Yeah. Show it right here. It's just so orange. It's my, I bought this with my own money.

Yeah. Oh, that's yours. It's our unit. It's not, they didn't do review units. This was, so what I went to was the pickup party for the first, I think it was 300 R1s that came out. So they invited up on to media, but we had to buy our own in order to get into the event, which is very good. I should say to people, but don't know how this process normally works. Often for reviews, people will ship us something and we'll test it and

review it and then we ship it back. That's usually how it works because if I had to buy every single thing that I wrote about, I would be homeless. So that's usually how it works. But in this case, we had to buy the things. So now I own this thing. Luckily, it was only $200. But so we get to the TWA hotel, which is amazing. I had never been. It's like, it's a very old terminal at JFK that has since been converted into this very swanky, kind of old-fashioned hotel. It's awesome.

Highly recommend I had never been there before. It will probably never go again, but it was super cool. You should only go if you're having to fly in or out of JFK. Yeah, oh God. It took me two trains in an Uber together. I don't recommend this plan otherwise. But yeah, so it was me and 300 or so other people, along with a bunch of rapid employees in this space. They had done lots of work to overhaul it. It had a big stage in the middle. They had a 360 photo booth and a speakeasy upstairs.

There was a bar with signature drinks. They were doing all kinds of murky stuff. It was very much like an old school tech party. I haven't been to one of those since before the pandemic, where it's just like a company with too much money. That's just like, what if we just blew a bunch of it on this large event space? And then Jesse Lue, the founder and CEO got up and spent like an hour

basically just doing demos. And he's been doing this for the last couple of months, kind of with increasing frequency, showing off how this thing works and what it can do and all this stuff. And he just sort of stood on stage and did a bunch of demos that were ostensibly live. And I have many questions about all of them. And then gave them out to that first group of, you know, 300 people. And so it was everybody there had like literally bought a thing to be there.

So the room was very excited. And there were a lot of people who had been in the discord for months, sort of reading about the humane reviews and figuring out what was going on and trying to get details on what this thing would do and how it would work. And lots of people, it was very funny like being in line for a bar while people are behind me debating how the large language model works. And there was a guy who was like, yeah, every time you ask a question, you're eating

into that $199 price. And I was just like, these are my people. It was great. I had a delightful time except that it was at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday night. I'm very old and I can't hang like that anymore. Yeah. So you've got the thing now. I have to think. It's right here. You've only had it for a day. I don't think this is a review. But I was watching the demo that he'd done stage. And two things struck me with that demo. One, there was a little disclaimer on the stream and he showed

himself turning out the Wi-Fi. The entire demo was done over 4G LTE, not 5G, the one that is famously claimed to have very low latency. Good old 4G LTE, which is an interesting choice, but that's $109 in bucks. And then he kept pointing out how fast everything was. At one point, he took a picture and the thing did the thing where the AI told you it was in the picture. And I was like, I don't think that uploaded over 4G LTE that way. Literally, it was the basics of it.

Didn't seem like it was making sense. So two things on that. One, none of it was fast. Like, go back and watch it again. He did a very good job of sort of talking through his demos so that while it was waiting for stuff to happen, it would work. And there were a few times where he would do something and it would pretty instantly do it. But what it does very well is it sign posts as it's doing stuff. So you'll ask it a question and it'll respond and say, let me go get that for

you. And then it's say, I'm going to get that for you. And then it gets it for you. And what you've what it doesn't do is just sort of leave you hanging in awkward silence for several seconds, which feels like an eternity. But it does take a while to do a lot of things. And with the photo, so having now tested this a bunch, what it does when you hold up the thing and say, look at this and tell me what you see, which is the sort of computer vision thing that a lot of these gadgets do.

It's not taking a good picture. It takes an awful picture. And I can show you the awful pictures that I've been taking. But it literally just uploads just the tiniest little bit of data in order to be able to answer the question, is there a crowd full of people or like a bagonia in front of you? Right? Like that is the fidelity that it needs. And that is all of the fidelity that it gets. So I actually think that particular one seems plausible to me.

I guess I do need to watch it again, because I was just struck by the speed at which things appeared to be happening over a 4G connection, not even a 5G connection, over a 4G connection. Like I'm not even putting this on rabbit. I'm just like, I've used LTE connections before. They're not fast, especially now, right? When all the bandwidth is being prioritized to the 5G

connections, all the spectrum is being prioritized over there. That was one. And then there's the other thing that struck me was how much stuff it can't do that we were shown at doing at the first launch event in CS, where that stuff is just nowhere close. Like everything? It's weird. And even after being at that launch event where he got up on stage, Jesse, and said, out loud, I am going to demo all of the things that it can do from day one.

And I have been testing those things, and it can't do some of them. So one of the big things that rabbit has been talking about is this thing called the large action model, right? And the idea is that it can actually like learn how to use apps on your behalf. That's like that's its whole pitch. It's not just like a thing for chat GPT. It's a thing where you can say, go do Spotify for me, right? Or like go interact with Photoshop for

me. That's literally one of the things they've talked about. Like you can teach it how to use Photoshop for you. That is not coming soon. It's not it's it's like a thing that somebody had the idea to do. It's like when we talk about car renders, right? It's like it's at the render stage as far as I can tell. And then there's a bunch of stuff that seems very basic. Like I gave Humane a lot of crap for not

supporting things like alarms and reminders and these very basic things. And you know what the rabbit R1 doesn't support is alarms and reminders. And I ironically like Humane like the deja vu of all of this is bananas for me like like Humane. Jesse stood on stage and put up a big slide with here's all the cool stuff we're shipping in summer of 2024. And it's things like alarm, calendar, contacts, GPS, memory recall, travel planning, Yelp, like basic things. These are these are things

that you should have from the beginning. And there's just not really a good reason not to have it. So right now, again, I've been testing this thing for a grand total of like 16 hours, some of which I was asleep, right? Like none of this is final yet, but like a lot of things about this device do not work very well. Yeah. And it only has four apps, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I will say the the biggest most complicated question about the rabbit is how this large action model works. And

thus what you're giving it access to. So when you log into the website, which is called rabbit hole, which I enjoy very much, the branding on this thing is on point. They've done a very good job. When you're playing music, there's a little rabbit guy with headphones on like it's great. Excellent branding exercise. Well done. But you log into rabbit hole and you go to there's a tab called connections and it like lists all the apps you can connect to. And right now it's it's

four. Like you said, it's Spotify, DoorDash Uber and Mid Journey, which is strange for but whatever. And then so you you click on the connect button and what it does is open up a virtual machine on rabbit servers through which you just log into the Spotify web interface or the DoorDash Web interface. So like I click on the DoorDash button and literally it opens the DoorDash website. Just the homepage of DoorDash.com on the thing and then I had to go click sign in. I had to enter

in my credentials and then I clicked continue like I'm signing into DoorDash normally. And then it closes that window because now it has stored my credentials. And what rabbit says is it doesn't store your credentials. It just stores like an authentication token so that you stay logged in. And to that I say like have you ever tried to stay logged into a service on the internet? Like it's not possible. You can't the keep me logged in button doesn't work. So there is something else

going on here. And there are a lot of people who are like, oh what you're doing is you're just exposing all of your logging credentials to a virtual machine that's just sitting on rabbit's computer. Like you're just uploading your life to rabbit servers. That's stupid. Well, there's also one set me on that, which is you have now logged into DoorDash on rabbit servers. And it's logged in. So it doesn't matter if you have the credential. Well, you're fair.

Perfect logged in access to DoorDash. Yes. And I think for me, I like I'm logging into all of these things because I have to test this thing. But like even logging into Spotify felt strange. Like this is like this is actually kind of a lot of access to information about me that you just have now. And that's odd. But anyway, the interface for that sucks. The system isn't very good. I have not yet successfully used DoorDash. Every single time I try to do it,

I like, you know, you press the button on the side and you say, order me some food. And every single time it says DoorDash may take a while to load on rabbit OS, which is very funny. And then it just immediately fails every single time. So what's happening in the background there from what I gather, the heart of the large action model is it's going to click around on the

DoorDash website for you. I believe that's correct. Yeah. I think the long term plan here is to have more let's say robust integrations that they can actually like, there's way to you do that with like structured data that you can get to some of that stuff. But that's the old way. Right? Like DoorDash has an API and we've built a weird interface for DoorDash on our little orange square. You don't need a bunch of AI for that. No, you don't. But it works.

Right. So this is like you're logged into DoorDash and we're going to show you pictures of the we're going to understand the DoorDash interface for you. And then we're going to let you're going to say buy me this food and we're just going to use the DoorDash website on your behalf. Like that's though, that that is my understanding of what the large action model should do. Yeah. No, that's that's exactly right. And part of the process that they make that they're in theory one day

someday when this launches going to make you go through is training the apps that you use. Like this is where you click to do X and this is where you click to do Y and you scroll down to get to the other thing. And that is that is how you teach these models how to do this stuff. And the reason they've worked with these four apps now is because their people have done that training with these four apps. So like literally deals with the four apps. The deals of Spotify and Uber and DoorDash.

You know, Uber and DoorDash are competitors. Like Uber eats exists. Yeah. I don't I don't know, but I sure doubt it. I have a more basic question. Okay. I know you've only spent what 16 hours with it. But in that time, have you had an experience with it where you're like, Oh, wow. I would willingly train this model when I get more access to it to have these kind of experience with another app. The Spotify integration is the one to me that I'm like, this is the thing I really want to work.

Does it? No, it's awful. It is so so bad you guys. I can't I can't even tell you how bad it is. Like let me just give you a bunch of examples. I say to the thing play my Discover Weekly playlist. And it plays every single time a song called Can You Discover by a Band's Discovery. That's good. I say play Beyonce's new album and it played like a lullaby version of Crazy and Love. And it's weird because it's not even like it's just searching and playing the first result. Because

if you go to Spotify and search Discover Weekly, it shows you your discovery weekly playlist. So in theory, that shouldn't be that hard a problem. It's doing some weird thing that I can't figure out yet. And almost always does it wrong. So if I ask like a very basic question, like, play just in Timberlake, that works. It'll play a just in Timberlake song. And I have done that many, many times. But anything more complicated, at least so far, it has fallen apart on me every single time.

I say this is what I don't understand about how it's working. If you're saying you can go to Spotify's website and type in Crazy and Love and it shows you the first result is correct. Theoretically, that is all the large action model was doing on the back end. It's looking at the web interface, it's identifying the search box, it's entering the string, it's saying here's the first result and it's double clicking on it. By the way, this is not some radically new idea. Like big businesses

deploy robotic process automation to run their billing systems on Windows 98. Billion dollar companies exist to deploy this at the end of the day. And Rabbit has more or less acknowledged that it's doing. By the way, there was this weird thing. I don't know if you saw that there's somebody who was called like Rabbit Scam on Ghibub Ghibub sort of said they had found a bunch of code showing that all Rabbit was doing was just lifting stuff off of web pages and running the same systems

that everybody else runs in order to like understand what's going on on a website. And they were like, this isn't as scary as you think it is. Yeah, that's what we do. That's our public code. So they're acknowledging that this is what is going on. But it's not working. Yeah. Again, if you're some mid-size hospital system and you hire UI path to show up and do RPA, and it's like, we're doing the lullaby versions, you're like fire them, it's like get rid of them,

right? UI path is a billion dollar company because it can do robotic process automation reliably at scale. Like why? Rabbit costs $200. Well, cost $200. But even the basic thing, we entered a string of text into a search box and we played the first result. Like the industry, the robotic process automation industry knows how to do that. So why can't it do that? It feels like it's doing something else. Is it like inserting a little clipy in there? Is it trying to like be smart for you?

It might be. It's also possible that it's doing something different with Spotify because Spotify, yeah, like has an actual sort of corpus of data that it lets other systems access. So I can't speak to Spotify in particular, but at least from the demos that I've seen, again, I haven't been able to get DoorDash to work once. But from Jesse's demo of DoorDash, that seemed very clearly to be the thing using the website because the way that he showed what was working was he kept refreshing

DoorDash.com on his laptop. And it would show that something had been added to the cart on the website. That's not like a thing that happens if you use like a third party API to do all of this stuff. That is just a thing using the web app for you. So this is the part that I'm just like most interested in because DoorDash is the slowest one. They said it's the slowest one. And there comes a point at which all this like just horsepower through the interface with computer vision.

It just hits the wall of like what if you just had an API? Right. What if you could just instead of trying to have a robot figure out what's happening on an interface made for humans? What if you just let the robot talk to the application directly using actual API commands? The example that I'll give people, one of my favorite companies that I wished had succeeded was Kavo, the universal remote company that I hyped up on the show over and over again, they were doing

exactly this to build the universal one. You plug all of your devices into the Kavo and the Kavo is doing computer vision to watch your Apple TV interface or whatever and click around on your behalf. So you could just say the name of a show and the name of a service and it was just like bang around your TV and use it for you. And this shit was awesome when it worked. It was very slow and it was extraordinarily brittle when it broke. Yeah, it never worked. Like the wind is very

generous. Yeah, sometimes it worked, you know. And it was cool. It was very cool in those moments it worked, but most of the time it didn't. Right. And then the thing that like really got you was it wouldn't even show you the clicking around. Like it would put up the Kavo screen and you'd hear like booping in the background. You'd like, can I just see if you're getting this right? I would love to check your work. And then you'd be like, that is not what I wanted to happen at all.

Or it was just error at. But the idea that like you've got a bunch of devices plugged into a central HDMI switcher and you're like, watch this show and it knows that's the Apple TV. And I like, I want to play PlayStation and it switches the input and bangs right. Like all that was awesome. But it failed because fundamentally the approach is brittle. Right. It's just, there are no ways for it to break when the computer cannot understand what's seen.

It's $190. But yeah, I can't overcom this problem or do they actually just need to build a bunch of APIs. And then you've got something that looks like a, I think you have in your piece. That's just a mid-range Android smartphone with weird apps. Yeah, the answer is ultimately both, right. And I think, I think humane has said this about what it's working on. Rabbit has alluded to this too. Like,

they eventually want to build big enough systems that others will actually integrate with. Because the reason to not rely on APIs is that your attorney startup and nobody cares about you and nobody will make the deals with you. So you do hacky computer vision stuff so that you don't have to get the deals. Because by and large, they can't really stop you from doing that. They can, they can get mad.

And they have some ways, but like, it's a more winnable game in that particular respect. But the way for them to do this, they all acknowledge is to eventually have those more official partnerships that just give them access to the Dordash API. And then like, this doesn't all have to be AI, right? Like, I actually think we like run into a trap when we assume that the only way to do AI things is for all of it to be AI. Like, some of it shouldn't be. We've solved a lot of problems,

actually. Like, we're pretty good at a lot of things that don't require pinging a large language models for order McDonald's. Like, that's like ordering McDonald's on the internet is like a solved problem. We're very good at it now. And so I think we'll land there with a lot of stuff. But one nice thing you can do with these models is you can hack together a kind of nana solution to a lot of those business deals without needing those business deals. And I think that's what all

of these companies are doing at first. The question is what I do, Ash, is going to say this is illegal scraping of our website. Like, there's another whole set of problems that you kind of look into immediately. I mean, the good news for Dordash is Dordash just wants you to order McDonald's, right? Like, and I think that's the assumption that they're making, right? Like, Uber wants me in an Uber and is very happy. Anything that happens that gets me in an Uber, same with Dordash and

me ordering McDonald's. Just spot if I want to stream copyrighted music to an orange rectangle. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. They did it. How are the list of things that are coming is Apple music. And it's like, is it? Is that one coming? Have you met them? Like, they don't like competitors. They're not, you know, even Apple music, which is theoretically, though, you know, horizontal play across the like, have you tried Apple music on Android? You think you're weird little robot

is going to be able to use Apple music. What that way? I don't know. We'll see. I'm very excited for you to review this thing. I think that that central question of like at $199 with no recurring fee, can you make this a business that needs to improve on some of the core AI features that is reliant on? Look at this thing. You're saying, um, much of these are solve problems, right? Okay. That's great. The things that are sort of easiest to do are solve problems. Order some

food, call it ride, play songs, all APS stuff. That means you're relying on the AI to solve all of the edge cases. Go to Photoshop, and draw a cropping square around a thing. Like, that is not a solved problem. You cannot API your way into doing that in a Photoshop in the general case. You can do it maybe in some specialized ways. Um, okay, you're now until $199 to $199 to note no recurring revenue. Can you make an AI that can solve for the general case of using

a computer? Is the question that this thing is asking? And I just like don't know the answer. I think the answer is probably no, but David, I just need you to do one thing for me. Can you hold it up to the mic and like click one of the buttons? I just need to know how clicky they are. Yeah. Cranches look do some ASMR shit. It's pretty quiet. Yeah. Oh, it's so quiet. That's nothing. Yeah. That's nothing. Pull over in your car. Turn off the engine.

Roll up the windows. Click, click, click. That sounds like that. That's not what we're doing without the clicks. They're pulled over now. Oh yeah. That sounds a bit. The people in the electric cars like what engine? No, but to me, the thing is like the big open question for me with both the humane pin and this was like, what is like the one thing that this is actually for? And I keep hoping it's going to be music and humane almost got there except for all the ways it was awful.

And this like I was excited because it's Spotify and Spotify is what I and hundreds of millions of other people use to listen to music. Just not there. But so far, it's a pretty good like question and answer machine, which I'm happy about. Rabbit has a big integration with perplexity, the AI search engine. So for like relatively real-time questions like the NFL draft is tomorrow as we're recording this. And I was asking you a bunch of questions about like who is like the to go where

in the NFL draft and it had good up-to-date information about the NFL draft. Like that's cool. A cue all the people saying, why can't I just do it on my smartphone? Like you super-route or can. But what's weird to me about this so far and again I have a lot of testing and stuff left to do is like this little thing, the gadget itself feels right for this moment in AI. Like it's pretty cheap, it's not that ambitious, it's sort of silly and fun. It's like worst-case scenario, it's just

like we'll look cool on my desk. Yeah, people pay a lot more for cool things on their desk, right? But they're also at the same time talking about this massive world-changing vision for where it will all go. And Jesse too, his credit is constantly sort of tamping that down saying we're just at the very beginning. We haven't solved most of these problems. He said something at the beginning of his speech last night that was like, I'm going to try all these demos and if they don't work,

I'll try them again and if they still don't work, we'll fix it. And I was like, what a perfect summation of the time we're in for AI. And so I think all of that is right. And I appreciate kind of the realism of what Rabbit is doing as opposed to humane, which is sort of brought from the Earth fully formed. We have solved this. But then there's still wildly overstating what this thing can actually do in a way that I find very frustrating. There's a bunch of comments

on your hands on post-soil. Why are you being nice to this and humane? It's like, well, one, it's not actually the review yet. Important note, like we're just holding the thing. And two, it's like, it's $200. Yeah. Yeah. And that's just different. But I am very curious to see as you go through this review process, how much it needs to lean on the computer vision piece because the more it has to do that, which is the AI of it all, the worse it's going to be. Yes. And I feel that very

keenly. All right. Some more things we should talk about in this session. Apple announced a May 7th event for new iPads. Two things about this one. It's just an informational. There's like tune into watch or stream. No one's going anywhere. And then they're calling it let it loose. And our friend Joanna Stern pointed this out. The S in loose looks like a G. So it's let it lose, which is if you want to think about what that means in the context of new iPads, I welcome you.

I personally believe Apple is announcing a lose. It's very weird. It's an hype. It's a huge like boogie board size. It's very cursive capital S. So it's like weird. And so in context, it looks like a lowercase G. Very good. It's pretty. It feels like we're going to get an OLED iPad. Right. That's the rumor. It feels like they'll just chip bump everything else. I'm trying very hard not to buy an OLED iPad. But you're just going to. Why? I don't use the one. So that I'm not

the only one. I like I need I need other people making bad. We're going to do a group. We're going to call Tim Cook and we're like, you get a group rate on ill conceived iPads. It just feels like this. What they actually need to do is announce you software for the iPad. Not new hardware. There were a bunch of people talking about this that I really enjoyed that was like after this came out of everybody was like, relax. The real iPad event is WWDC in June. Like this,

this doesn't matter. And I think that's probably true. Like the strangest thing about the iPad is the hardware has been really good for a really long time. I would say other than please move the camera from the bad spot to the good spot. I have very few issues with the iPads hardware and have not had issues for a long time. I have a million issues with what it's like to actually use the damn thing. That's why I'm kind of curious about one of the big rumors is

that they're going to do a new magic keyboard that's like aluminum or something. It's more like a just a laptop case. Yeah, with a bigger trackpad. That would be cool. David, I'm pointing out the 10th gen iPad move. They move the camera. I know. But they haven't. They haven't on the other ones. Move it on all the other places. They're going to probably do it on the pro and the air this time around. At some point they have to admit that the pro is just a weird laptop.

Yeah. Maybe this is the time. Like I've been using my ancient now 11 inch iPad pro is like a tablet. Like this. Like it's just like that. I want to use it as a tablet. Boy, do I want to read stereo for you in PDF form on my iPad is God intended. But it's just like the thing. It's like yearns to be in its life. Yeah, you're also you I've noticed you started sending a lot of Apple news plus links around which makes me think you you are becoming more of an iPad user.

I'm just over now. I'm a dad. I live in the suburbs. So much truck. I haven't sold the truck yet. It's heartbreaking. That's like my stupid truck. This is just me trying to not use Twitter and Wall Street Journal and condo NAS publications are Apple news plus. I got suckered in the deal. Great. Fine. Right. But do I love it? Do I think Apple news? I just I'm not going to pass any judgment. It's definitely so. I'm just going to ask anybody who has the product go and look at the

list of trending stories and be like, who do we think this audience is? You just make that distinction on your I don't I'm not going to pass any judgment. But I'm like that they're not getting younger. Is it what I would say? It doesn't appear that they're getting younger with time. But anyway, I yeah, I'm trying to use the iPad as a consumption device and the iPad pro in particular, it kind of yearns to be in a keyboard case. And I hope they just go for it. We have a weird mini laptop.

It's fine. You know, but the software has changed. So that's that's come in very soon. May 7th. A couple weeks from now. The Rayman Meta smart glasses got a big update. They have multi-modal AI now. They announced new colors and it's in various three designs that they have. I feel like I'm like about to buy one of these. You should. I'm also announced that it's making headsets with other people and attempt to make sort of Quest OS the open VR headset, which is not going to

be just talked about a lot. They're going to make it Xbox VR headset. It's a limited edition meta quest. So you can see Zuckerberg is like we're going to be the Android of the R. We'll get Apple's doing whatever it's doing over here. Can we call out the fact that this is so funny to watch Microsoft go from being like we're going to create the VR head like the VR space. We're going to do it all mixed reality. We're going to own this place to we're going to do a rebranded

meta quest. I mean, if you're Microsoft and you're out there being like the future is Xbox game streaming, you might as well with Mavit and like I like an Android phone right on your face. Yeah, take the free ads. I mean, and the way they describe it. It's so funny. It's like, it's a it's a quest three inspired by Xbox or something, which just makes me think like mm-hmm somebody at Microsoft like sent over the hex codes for the Xbox green and we're like do

whatever you want. Leave us alone. I hope it is like just huge. I hope it is so chunky like the original Xbox. It's just a full one like master. I hope it's like an old Xbox controller. Yeah, just over the top. So the OS the Quest OS is being rebranded, I guess, to meta horizon OS, which is just a lot of works. Yeah, it's weird. There was like horizon worlds and then there was horizon workrooms. So that was kind of always going to be their thing, but now they're trying to

make it even bigger. I will say horizon. Great name for an operating system. Yeah, great job. The names are insane. It's just a lot of words. So horizon OS runs on the Quest hardware and Xbox is making Xbox inspired. That's a lot. Good news though. More companies that are known for their good names will be participating in the ecosystem, including Assuces Republic of Gamers. Very excited for the names to come from them. Lenovo will make something and that will be it'll have Legion in

it somewhere. A word salad. Yeah, the Lenovo Legion Quest flip 13. Yep. And then all of these are going to run on Qualcomm chips. Qualcomm also well known for stretching the boundaries. So that's interesting. We'll see how that goes right there. The players. They have the momentum. The quest it's quest three itself got an update where the password videos of higher quality and looks better when you look at phones. There's momentum over there. I want to come back to actually the

Rayband glasses, which are hit. Like they feel like a quiet hit. I know a lot of people who have them are friend Joanna Stern. So she doesn't travel or go on field video shoots without them anymore. Wow. They're really good. I've got a pair. I should wear mine more. I'm legit thinking about going and getting prescription lenses put in it because I always have to put my contacts at it. It's like that frictions too much. But every time I wear it, I'm like, why don't I wear my

contacts more often? These like are awesome. They're cheap. The 300 bucks. I've got a friend who in the pandemic, she just became one of those people who doesn't live anywhere. She's just like literally last week. She's like, I'm working for them about and I was like, I hate you. You seem great. All of her photos are from the meta quest. Yeah. The thing meta got really right was it went the correct direction in terms of saying like we're going to pick a very small number of

things for this device to do. And it's going to do them pretty well. And then we're going to slowly add things that it can do. Like when it started, it was like, okay, it's a pretty good speaker system. If you like want to listen to music or podcasts or whatever, that's mostly what I use it for. It's become like when I'm out on a walk or whatever, I wear it and sit. I wear the glasses instead of headphones now, which is awesome. Pretty good camera. People really like taking photos and videos

that way. And now they're adding on. They're like, okay, now we can do they had the you could like ask meta AI questions, but now they're adding the multi-modal stuff. And so they're like, they're sequencing this stuff really smartly instead of like promising the world from the very beginning. And then not meeting people's expectations, which I think is really the key. These are better than people expected them to be, which is so, so, so rare in this moment with hardware. Yeah. And again,

the first thing they just had to be was some nice looking ray bands. Yeah. I mean, you get a pair of wave fairs. You get these other two designs. Like people just like those designs, whether not the battery lasts, the camera works is like, oh, no, just spare wave fairs. Like maybe it'll be cool. And now they're setting all this cool stuff. Well, it's like that old Mitch Hedberg joke, right? That like when an escalator, an escalator doesn't break, it just becomes stairs. Like that's these

glasses, right? Like the worst case scenario is you just have a nice pair of sunglasses. Yeah. And honestly, three hundred bucks for a pair of rib bands is like a little bit of a premium. And it's not crazy. And now the multi-multi-li, you can do the thing. What am I looking at? And it tells you, right? That's the big trick. That's the, it's emerging as the party trick of these AI devices. And it's as messy as anything else. Like V-song did a bunch of testing with it. And it was

like hilariously wrong about cars and all this stuff. And it's always like all these systems. It's very confident and just lies to your face. I actually, I'm starting to be of the mind that we need to push back strongly against calling any of this AI. We just need to call them language models. Because they just make up words. There's no intelligence artificial or otherwise happening here. That's going to be a hard fight. I don't think we're going to, I'm not going to win that fight.

And there's a lot of fights of one. I'm not going to win that fight. For you. But the conflation of can you talk with, are you smart? Is in a real weird moment on the internet right now? Turns out, we talk maybe a little smart. I talk a lot. I'm not sure I burn anybody. That's fascinating to me though. Put the just add all the stuff. You've got meta,

doing this sort of open stuff with Lenovo and all these other companies. You've got the glasses, which are sort of a sneaky hit that people like next to, okay, analyst reports, a vision pro demand is suffering. And it's like, did Apple just get out? Can I'm by a pair of revans? Yes. Yes. That's crazy. It's nuts. It's not crazy though. It was a $3,500 bet against a $300 bet. I don't even think it's that. I think Apple just miscalculated. Like the longer I use

these devices, the more I can't believe Apple didn't make the smart glasses. Like in the thing that Apple has traditionally done, which is like build a thing and then build the more complicated thing and then build the more complicated, like Apple is actually very good at lattering that stuff up over time. And in this case, just way overshot. It was like it was like building four generations

too soon and trying to convince people to buy it. And what if they had just built like the iPod version of it, which is just like a nice thing for listening to music and talking to an assistant, people would have gone nuts for it. And it is like it continues to blow my mind that Apple just I think picked wrong. They could still do it. We could still get the Apple vision error.

Oh, I'm sure we will. I'm sure that's where it's headed. But like what the human folks told me is they were like, okay, well, when we built this, we decided to build the hardest thing first. Based on the idea that then it's much easier to sort of ratchet our ambition down and sell cheaper, simpler versions of the thing. But it turns out if you blow the expensive one, you don't get the chance to do the next things. And I think Apple has kind of dug itself a whole

hereby so aggressively overshooting. I also like all these supply chain numbers should be taken with like a giant heap of salt all the time. But I will say anecdotally nobody talks about the vision pro anymore. Yeah, it is totally faded. I spent a lot of time looking at this subreddit. And it is a lot of people like, what are we using this thing for? Yeah. And then there's like one app comes out and it's a hit and people really like it. But it's a little little dire in there.

I'm just gonna say I was right in there. Yep, let's put that out there. It's a lot of heat for that one. It's better out here. Yeah, it's better. Right. The question is like, is it worth putting it on? Yeah. And there isn't anything that makes it worth putting on. There's a few things that sometimes. But even Mark German in his New Slaughter, he was talking to us in his reals. He's like, I'm wearing

this thing less and less. It's lonely. I don't want to watch basketball. I think it's weird. It's just like a weird moment in hardware where the big expensive stuff didn't go and the cheap stuff that's making small promises is gaining a new kind of momentum. I think I'm gonna buy it. I don't know why. I have too many glasses. I lose them. I have a rule to not buy glasses that are more than 50 bucks.

I'm not buying sunglasses and more than 50 bucks. Because they're gone. That's good. I might as well flush the $50 down the toilet. But there's a part of it. It's like, what if? The good news is these ones are very heavy. So it will be hard to lose them. They do. And the charging case is really nice. So you're gonna be like, oh, I can't lose my charging case because it's so nice. Then you'll never lose your glasses. Alex, you never underestimate me. I'm just filled with

optimism today. Yeah. Just all optimism. All right, we're gonna take a break. I'm gonna look on the metal website and see. See what I can do to my self. It's $300. We're gonna head back. We're gonna talk about Tesla and then we get all lightning round and we're gonna get out of here. We'll be right back. Vacations can be tricky. You already know how to book flights and hotels. But now the only thing you're missing is, you know, the actual travel experience.

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Wow, that guy means business. Just an amazing player. No, not him, the sports photographer behind him. Uh, what? He has a business bank account with QuickBooks Money, where he earns 5% annual percentage yields. So he's scoring big on and off the field. You might even say he's the MVB. MVB? The most valuable business. Making your money work harder. That's how you business differently. Into it, QuickBooks. Banking services provided by Green Dot Bank,

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Just go to constantcontact.com right now. Constant contact. Helping the small, stand tall, constantcontact.com. Okay, we're back. We have Taco Tesla, Tesla to earnings, Andy Hawkins had line for the preview of earnings was Tesla is in its flop era, which is a great investment. Just to recap, Tesla has laid off more than 10% of its work force,

like 14,000 people. A bunch of executives are leaving, including the guy who was in charge of the powertrain and energy division, and then they had a policy who's going to get so autonomy like improved. Also gone, a lot going on with Tesla. There's a rumor that they're going to cancel the cheap EV and then they kind of said they weren't going to cancel it, but it also sounds like what they're really going to do is make the model wide cheaper. They recalled all 3,800

cybertrucks, 3,870 cybertrucks. But they talked, Elon said Optimus would be a fully sentient robot that would, quote, expand the economy infinitely. Sick. They'll be selling that at the end of next year. Yeah. Sure. Classic Elon bump there. I think he even said in that sentence, I think he said, but I'm just guessing. It's like, great investor call. There's a new Model 3 Performance. Great. But they don't have his new cars. There's not really a

plan to have new cars. They're going to add some robotaxi plan on August 8th. And then there's this thing that they've been talking about, which he brought up again on the earnings call today, which I just want to talk about for five seconds, because it is bonkers to me. He was talking about how many H-100's Tesla has. He went on this very funny side about how he doesn't like calling them GPUs, nothing in graphics, but whatever. You can hear the investors being like, what?

And then he got to, we have all these H-100's and we are doing inference AI inference more efficiently, because we had to learn how to do it in the car, which is constrained. Great. That makes sense. It's a good argument. You can measure it. That makes sense. And then he's like, we've got this like AWS play, which they've hinted at before, but he was like, what we're going to do is run it on all the Teslas that are just sitting around. So quote, if you can imagine in the future,

perhaps there's a fleet of 100 million Teslas. And on average, they've gotten like maybe a kilowatt of inference compute. That's a hundred gigawatts of inference compute distributed all around the world. It's pretty hard to put together 100 gigawatts of AI compute. So in perhaps maybe instead of using a car 10 hours a week, we use it 50 hours a week while sitting there that leaves over 100 hours a week where the car inference computer can be doing something else. And it seems like it would be

a waste to not use it. My man is describing Citi at home for Tesla's. Yeah. What are those terms of service looks like? It's just like, do you want to run compute models on your car? Well, just like sitting the driveway, you're a car which by the way, famously runs on electricity. Where's that electricity? Where's that power real quick? Are you going to get a cheaper? See, by car, and now Elon can use it to do whatever inference to run, whatever robotaxing fleet that he thinks he's going

to need to run it. Also, I don't know if you know about AWS, they like knowing where the computers are. And typically those computers are not driving somewhere between 20 and 100 miles an hour. While they're being used. I've interviewed the C of AWS. I would say a core assumption of that conversation was that he knew where the servers were. And they were not ever at risk of crashing into other servers. This feels like such a classic Elon Musk thing. Because even as you were reading

that, it's like, okay, this sort of makes sense. Like, big fleet, lots of compute sitting around, what if we use the compute? And then it's like, you raise your hand and you go, like, how is any of that going to work? And it's like, ah, don't worry about that. That's fine. Doing it at the same time that like Chevy is getting a lot of flak because they've been using their computers to spy on people and report it to their insurance companies. Like, maybe not the

time to be like, yeah, you've got a computer in there and I want to use it. Yeah, it's like, it's mine now. Yeah. I just think this is the one where it's like, what you want to searching for is arguments that Tesla will have massive margins, software company style margins instead of car company margins. And the thing that's hammering Tesla right now is they have absolutely car company margins again because they dropped the price so much. And then I'm in a new car. So the

competition is here. And you can see the sales fell 55%. Like, they, they're just not doing it anymore. And so he's, he's concocting these arguments where a sentient optimist robot will expand the world economy by infinity. That's a pretty good margin. It's good. That's, I mean, if you know, more power to you, if you pull that off. And then he's like, and I'm going to build this like distributed data center. So now I'm running AWS instead of having to build a data center in Texas or wherever

you might need to build it. And it's like, this is the truth is outing here, right? Like, it is very hard to get from here to I'm running a distributed AI supercomputer in every Tesla in the world. It's this very hard. It kind of feels a little like a peloton moment for him. You know, we're peloton everybody and everybody got a peloton because they wanted one. And it feels like maybe everyone who wanted to test like got one. Well, let me just ask you this question about

this distributed difference computer. What happens at rush hour? Yeah. Right. The total capacity of the computer is like, blunts like hour by hour. Like, it's always five o'clock somewhere. Like every hour, there's just like huge dip in capacity. Like starts and it comes starts coming back online at seven p.m. Like literally the sun sets on Tesla's compute capacity across the United States every single day. Like, it's very hard to pull this through. I think it I think Tesla is going to like

fascinating moment. They I am not sure it five years now. It looks anything like this company. No, yeah, it seems hard to imagine. I mean, I think this company has already gone through so many weirder iterations than anybody would have expected and continues to sort of chug along. Like, Tesla feels very much like a cockroach at this point that sort of nothing could happen to Tesla that would surprise me. And also it will be the last company that exists on Planet Earth.

Oh, I disagree. But I like it feels like it's going to crap. Yeah, even like a bunch of Tesla fans are like, I don't know about this anymore. Well, that's I mean, that's one of the big questions to me. I was talking about this with Andy Hawkins

yesterday. Like this question of kind of the Elon Musk effect that the people who are predisposed to want Tesla's for a lot of the reasons that Tesla promotes them being good for the world and all that are also people who are likely to not be psyched about Elon Musk's shenanigans, particularly as he runs X. And so trying to figure out how to quantify how much of this is about the challenges in the EV market. How much this is about plug-in hybrids, which I

thought was really interesting thing that Musk said during the earnings call. He blamed a lot of the struggle on the rise in plug-in hybrids. And how much of this is just people voting with their dollars and voting against Elon Musk is really hard to know. And I think it's going to be super

obvious in retrospect. And I'm very curious how it's going to shake out. There's also the fact that if you're just going to buy a car and you're going out in the world and you're like, I'm going to buy a car and you don't buy a car based on id, then you go and you look and you say, okay, Tesla's have really bad reliability. They're really hard to repair. They're really hard to just get an appointment and oftentimes that appointment is horrible. The build quality is crap to the point

that like they keep having to do recalls on the cyber truck. Like those are all just signs of a badly run company. And I think I think this company had a lot of advantage because it was first mover. And Elon Musk is an incredible salesman. But now like the bloom is off that rose. Twitter X, whatever you want to call it, ripped that right off. And now it's like, okay, we see that this guy is just a really good salesman and he pulls it all out of his butt and he is not some genius.

And actually he's not running a very good company because he's running 12 at once. And no one can do that even Elon Musk. Alex is Alex Kranz the verge of the K. Yeah. I just email that. I'm here to debate you. Debate Alex with a K. Please. It's going to be great. It's funny. I don't think you're wrong. I just think I think the fundamentals of the auto business, yes, and not be a car company. And the thing that is happening is it's getting sucked

into being a car company because it is one and because it is made cars. And the blaming the hybrid saying it's super funny to me. Like yes, I own hybrid. But like you're basically telling your customers they're wrong. Right. And how do you get across? How do you get past the market, making a decision? I don't really regulate the market. Joe Biden will make hybrid illegal. It's like kind of the only answer to that. Or you can yell at everyone that they're wrong.

And like yelling at the market that it's wrong. Not that always famously works for everyone who does it. This is famously why beta maps beat VHS. Everyone knows it. I don't think hybrid. I think hybrid everyone I know as I know is it's like some short term solution to the infrastructure

being there. And like everyone prefers to drive around in the battery. My dad just recently bought a Prius after spending months looking for an EV because he just like they just couldn't find when they made sense and decided that in their lives at this point, like the next car should be an electric car. The car right now should not be. And I think a lot of people are making that decision. Yeah, that's a new Prius. They doesn't look like an angry robot anymore. No, it's kind of

great. Yeah. We'll see. All right. Lightning round. What you got to do. So while we're talking about Apple TV Plus soon to be augmented by the purchase of TikTok, there was a report this week that Apple has been negotiating with FIFA, which is the governing body of soccer around the world, to do a new global tournament exclusively on Apple TV Plus. I find this fascinating for a bunch of reasons. One Apple is like increasingly deep into the

sports world. They have this thing with majorly soccer. That's going very well. It seems in part because you know, Lano Messy decided to play for the MLS. But the numbers that have been thrown around are upwards of a billion dollars from Apple to be the one to stream this tournament, which is like we've spent a lot of time talking about Apple TV Plus as kind of a somewhere between sort of a lark and a side project that it was never going to be really material to Apple. It was

just kind of a thing it did on the side in order to sell more subscriptions to iCloud. Right? Like that was always the play. This seems to me to be the sort of thing that you only do if you're actually serious about turning this into a real thing. And Apple is just further and further

and further into sports in a way that I continue to find surprising and sort of fascinating. And they want to invent a completely new thing with some of the biggest soccer clubs in the world, which would be huge and is immediately the kind of thing that would draw potentially millions of new people to Apple TV Plus. But this is like there's no indication. I think it was a New York Times story that first reported this that this is like a done deal. But they want to do it next summer,

which means like this is a big thing that could happen very quickly and like I don't know. Apple TV Plus just continues to be a bigger thing than I think I've given credit for. I think it kind of makes sense though right now for Apple to do it because Hollywood is in a state of flux, right? Like streaming is completely changing the game there. Everybody's trying to figure out where the revenue streams are. And the tech companies are kind of leading the forefront.

The tech companies are running Hollywood in a way they haven't previously. And Apple is doing it really, really well. It's a smaller play than everybody else, but it's doing it intelligently. And it's like, yeah, this makes sense for them to go and just like take a couple of streaming services out. Yeah. Just body a few with money. And then snap up the the drags of that later,

right? Like make a deal with Skydance or whatever. But if that's the play, Apple could just walk into the offices of any streaming service it wanted to and just write a check for its valuation. And then some. Yeah, but they don't want to do that. They want to buy like they want cheap licenses and stuff like that. That's what runs these services. But this is what I'm saying. A billion dollars to create a new soccer tournament is not that thing. Like the MLS thing I understood that's a relatively

small, relatively safe bet. And they got to essentially take over that whole project. This is a much, this is like negotiating for NFL rights, which Apple like famously has not won because it's one. Yeah, but it wanted what has been reported is that it wanted like complete control over this thing. And you're not getting that from the NFL and you're not getting it from FIFA and they're still willing to throw billions of dollars at it. It's fascinating. But this would drive

subscriptions. Yeah, for shorts is like, yeah, Eddie Hughes smart. He's also a huge sports. Yeah, he is. And you know, sports are the stickiest thing. We'll see. I think Apple has to get good at broadcasting sports. Yeah, they're not great at it right now. So the more they get into it, the more they have to come. There's like the simcook one in the city in Congress and talk about content moderation. I don't know. The simcook want to sit in front of a bunch of soccer fans and talk

penalties. He's like, I don't know about that either. But does Tim Cook want to go like sit in a box at the World Cup? Like, yeah, absolutely. That's true. Alright, Kanzler, you got Qualcomm. They're back, baby. We'll see. We say that. Just immediate. Just immediate. Yeah, so Qualcomm has announced they they'd previously announced some new processors. And these are their kind of responses to the x86 processors from Intel and AMD. This meant to go in Windows

machines meant to compete with Apple. They're saying there is fast as the M3 and it's going to blow it out of the water. Joanna Nelius are a new laptop reviewer went and checked it some of them out in some very, very, very, very controlled demos. And she was like, there could be something there. She was seeing it was slower than the M3 in some cases faster and others. I mean, if it's even in the ballpark of the M3, that's a huge deal. Yeah, that's a huge deal. Right. And I think

there's there's some really interesting stuff, particularly around architecture. They're not doing the big little core deal that everybody else does where they're like, these are performance cores. And these are efficiency cores. They're like, yeah, these are all performance cores. Because they're just that efficient. That was me doing a Qualcomm impression. Sorry. So it's the the Snapdragon X Elite was the ones previously announced. And now we have the Snapdragon X

Plus. No good. Which is slower. Because it's not elite. They're going to throw a premium in there. No one's going to know what's going on. Yeah, nobody will know. I appreciate that when you when you try to match Apple's performance, you also try to match Apple's insane names. This is good. And it's it's all bad. They're all they're all the names are bad. But we don't know when these are probably going to come this year. We'll probably start seeing them in some Windows devices this year.

And I'm really, really curious to see it because like if ARM and Windows can work for once, that would be huge. Yeah. But they famously kind of like screwed it up the last time. And the time before that. And the time before that. And the time before that. Yeah. That's why I'm immediately undercut Qualcomm's like back at it again at the crispy cream. The Microsoft event is May 20 or 21st or something. And they're going to announce new surfaces that

we think by all indications are going to run these things. So we're going to we're going to see that sooner rather than later. But Tom's been reporting about how excited Microsoft is Qualcomm seems very excited. This could be something. Well, we've got Computex come in that's May 31st. Oh yeah. Oh, it's going to be like laptop explosion here. That's going to. Yeah. So so we're going to get a lot of laptops soon. And I suspect a lot of over going to have these these new

processors in them. Well, these processors be good. It's a big move away from Intel. There's a lot of laptops with these weird soundtracking chips in them. We'll see. Yeah, we'll also have to see because historically the laptop makers don't like to ship the the stuff besides Intel be to to reviewers to check out because they want you to check out the thing that people actually buy and that's usually the Intel products. Yeah. So it's it's going to be a fun one. All right.

Mine is very simple. So that says a new app. It's very good on mobile. They've sort of gotten rid of all the tabs and it's just all just widgets. It's cool. They said it's going to be faster. It's coming at May 7th. We'll see if in the lab structure. There's not the thing I actually want to talk about. They are getting rid of their desktop apps, which they've had forever on Mac and Windows. And they're going all to web apps. And you can now because it's web app, you can control yourself

right anywhere, which is interesting. I'm just pointing out that the move to distribute applications on desktop computers to the web instead of in native binaries is like full speed ahead. Like it's over. You know, Dylan Field to see how Figma was like, why would you distribute an app on a desktop computer any other way except the web. And like, yeah, there's a lot of tronets and other stuff where you package it up and it looks native. But I saw this and I was like, oh, this is just hat.

Like this is a huge shift in computers that is like reaching a point where it's it's like no even talks about it. Like it's just assumed that if you're going to make a new app for desktop computers, what you are actually shipping is a web app. Yeah. And I the thing I point to is the vision pro, the high end of computers, the cutting edge of what a computer can be mounted directly to your face. All of the most interesting apps on the vision pro, the Netflix app, the YouTube app,

whatever, are just custom web browsers. Yeah, we really called that by the way. I feel like we deserve credit for saying over and over that the thing that the only thing that might save the vision pro is web apps. Yeah. That has been absolutely correct. I'm excited for the use on this thing because the old app is indeed slow. Wasn't the old app supposed to fix the fact that the app before that was slow and bad? No. So they, this is a long story. We have Patrick's pencil on the

show, I think, to explain himself to us when they did. I know. And they had the old platform which they now call S1, which was like ancient and they re-architected everything for the future and the support at most and all the other stuff they wanted to do. And that's called S2. So that was just an architecture update. It was not a, we need to make it a faster update. So they

kept their slow app, but made it work on the new architecture. Yeah. There's a lot of arguments about like what the best writer and Sonos is now like, do you want to run SonosNet, which is like a custom 2.4 year-end time working. He's running on a Wi-Fi, which Sonos says you should do good times in these, in these subreddits. I just use Spotify Connect and it works fine. Yeah. That's fine. It was a hit of more complicated, interesting idea for me. I never ever touched

the Sonos app and I'm very happy. I've used AirPlay for years now. It's great. It works just fine. And you can group things in AirPlay. You can group unlike speakers in AirPlay, which is a very interesting, but I still got a soft soft for it. All right. That's a weird way over. We've touched on everything from web apps to the future of free speech in America. Busy week to whatever's going on with Tesla. It's a lot. It was a busy week. And we got more of them coming because we're

headfirst into developer hot fron season now. Yep. All right. I'm going to start to go find me for the so-let-i pad. You can hit me up. That's true. I'm not sure. Tell Alex all your favorite things about your Tesla if you have things you'd love to hear. Oh, we need to say as we utterly forgot to say this because we're so bad at this. We won Webby Awards. Thank you so much for all the people who voted for us and the people's shows of our chest. Thank you. The judges who gave the same award to the

Dakota podcast. We really do appreciate it. It's very cool that we have been doing a show for as long as we're doing it and people's shoulder voting for us with these awards. I truly appreciate it. It's sponsored lighting right? I need to generate. All right. It's time. All right. That's it. That's a rich cast. And that's it for the Verge cast this week. Hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866-verge-1-1. The Verge cast is the production of the Verge and Vox Media podcast

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