Life is filled with crucible moments. Those turning points where a tough decision can change everything. Sequoia Capitals podcast Crucible moments asked founders of some of the world's most important tech companies to reflect on those very moments that define who they are today.
And in this season, Crucible moment is back with the founders of YouTube, ServiceNow, DoorDash, Natera, Reddit and more, as they share first-hand their triumphs, setbacks, and the often unexpected decisions that shaped them. Tune into the new season of Crucible moments now. You can catch up on season one at CrucibleMoments.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast, The Boog's Palma fan club.
Again, might be true. Like, legitimately might be true. I have one. I've brought a lot of dumb gadgets because of David recently. And I don't know that those were the right decisions. Well, you can't read. We should say that upfront. Neelash famously illiterate. Hi, I'm your friend Neelai. I love reading. And I think you should do more of it. David Pierce is here. Hi. Alex Cranes is here. I'm just thinking about reading Rainbow now.
You know, it's a, it's when you have a small child. You're like, in reading again, that's a real thing. And what Max wants to read with me most is Calvin and Hobbs, which is, I love it. The dream. That rules. Have you ever tried to read Calvin and Hobbs out loud to another person who doesn't understand the jokes from the literal 1980s? She's like, what's a telephone? Calvin and Hobbs is definitely a cartoon for adults. Like, it is not the jokes in it and like the messages in it.
I find like deep and important and profound now. And I'm like very old. And how, I don't know how to explain any of that to a child. Try, try. If you have a kid and you're like, here's what we can do. We can read comic books together. We were at, I already own all these books and we were at an estate sale like down the street from our house. And we bought the full collection again because it was so cheap. And I was like, this is what money is for.
Like, this is what I make it to buy all the Calvin and Hobbs books whenever they're available to you. Yeah. And so she was exciting because we bought all these what appeared to her to be comic books. I encourage you if you have children to try and just try to read any comic strip. Like, first of all, that's bananas. And then these are like the multi layers. Like I'm giggling. She's like, I don't, is the, is the tiger alive? I don't understand. Get her in on Kathy. She feels about Kathy. Oh, man.
She looks at me very seriously the day and she goes, my line never comes alive. And I was like, well, you're grown up kid. You're in first grade now. Yeah. We're imagination. Max. How about that? All right. There's a lot going on this week. It's kind of a, we're two weeks out from the iPhone event. It's, I keep joking. It's like summers over. That's where we are. I candidly have just like end of summer, whatever. Like that's my brain.
Like, what if I, what if I just shut it down for a couple of weeks before we ramp up into gadget season? But there's still a lot of news. A ton. And all of it is like policy news. Like the, the legal systems of the world just keep generating PDFs for me to read on a books palma. I mean, literally it's just everyone trying to do the work that they have to do so that they can have a long weekend over Labor Day.
Like I'm convinced that this is the same thing that happens like right before Thanksgiving. It's just a bunch of people who are like, I need a minute. Let me, let me file on my paperwork. Let me get all the work done. Let me push publish on the thing and then get out. Like nothing is going to happen on Friday. Nothing. Everybody's on vacation. They're like, I did it already four day weekend.
And you listening to this on a Friday. So get ready. We're going to recapitulate everyone else's makeup work today. Stop it. I do think like the theory falls a little short when we consider France because they don't do Labor Day. The same way that every day in France is Labor Day. That's true. They're like, were you counting on the buses today? A strike. That's not the French people talk. Can I just talk about the book spawner for one more second?
So governments around the world generate PDFs and it is our job to read them. And broad strokes. That's how I think of the virtual Cteens coverage. David made everybody buy a books, Poma. He came to your house and with threat of violence made you buy. It's going to be an Android phone. He just knocked on my door, but it was polite. But it happened. It happened. The other function of the verge, besides responding to government PDFs, is making people buy stupid gadgets.
I'm very confident in this dynamic. Like this is how it should be. So I buy a books, Poma. And I'm like, this is how I'm going to do PDFs because so much of my job is reading PDFs. But then you need another piece of software because it's not good at anything by itself. No. Because it's just a low and Android phone with an eag this way. So then you got to get Readwise Reader. And it feels like those two companies should just put it together. Yes. Those are the two things.
It's not actually the books, Poma that people want. It's Readwise Reader on an eag screen. 100%. It could not agree more. And like every time Alex and I both go through this, every time we talk to a company that makes ereaders, we say, when are you going to make a decent app for reading things? And every time we talk to a company that makes a reading app, it's like, why don't you make hardware? And at some point, somebody's going to do it.
And it's going to be great because you are exactly correct. Didn't Amazon kind of do it? Right. This is what I'm arguing for is lock in. But I'm just pointing out software. That's the word good is so, so, so important in that. Readwise reader, good software. There's good software out there. Omnivore, free app, good software. Make a, make a thing for it. I'm having fun. Or work together with all the companies making the thing.
Like if you buy the books, you would not know that Readwise Reader exists and is the thing that unlocks the hardware. Right. Right. I feel like they could just close that loop. Anyway, Readwise Reader, the thing that you do is you upload the PDF and it basically OCRs it into a format that looks good on an eag screen, which is great. Only that takes time. And I have no attention span and no patience. And I was like, screw it. I'm just reading this PDF on my iPad.
And that has happened like five times more. Yeah. Kevin, when our features editor is constantly dealing with this because we're always getting like galleys of books and stuff. And every time I get like a PDF of a book that's about to be released that I have to read for whatever reason, I first try to upload it to my Kindle where it doesn't work and looks bad. Then I try to put it in Readwise where it doesn't work and looks bad. And then I end up reading it like in Dropbox on my iPad.
And I'm like, how is this the best possible solution here? And yet it is. Every time. It's like, I've come this close from going from books to buying an iPad mini like pilots around the world. By the way, people now just send a screenshot to pilots with iPads. It's the best. It's my favorite. Very unexpected outcome of hosting a podcast about technology. But you look all the pilots look great. Everyone looks happy with their iPad. Okay. Let's talk about some actual technology.
So we got to talk about Telegram. There's a bunch of other legal stuff that happened this week. And then we got a true lightning round where we're going to try to get through them all to wrap this thing up. But we should start with Telegram, which is I would say not only the news of the week, but the ongoing news of time to come. Because the idea that's the social or messaging platform owners face criminal liability for what happens on our platform.
It might feel new and shocking because the French government arrested this guy. But it's also been building for a very, very long time that some amount of responsibility for what happens in our platform will be imposed. And our government has wanted to do this, right? And the Congress is like, Jack Dorsey, we're going to yell at you for a while. This one, I think, is particularly shocking because of just the facts of what Telegram is.
The fact that Pablo Duro of the CEO landed in France on a private jet in the French through. He immediately arrested him. Why land your plane where the people are going to arrest you? His sort of unrepentant attitude about what's going on on the platform. David, cut just up on the basics. Sure. So basically last Sunday, Pablo Duro of the CEO of Telegram was arrested. Like you said, after landing the PJ in France, just don't land your PJ. It's an on connecting. Don't call it PJ.
No, just don't land the PJ. It's a good, we can make shirts that say just don't land the PJ. That could work. Stay in the sky, Pablo. And all we knew at the time was that he was arrested. I believe the French authorities said like in conjunction with an investigation into crimes. It was very vague, but he was arrested. And over the next several days, it came out that essentially what was happening is that he was being arrested based on criminal activity that was happening on Telegram.
He was not as far as I understand being accused of doing the crimes, but of what the French government ended up calling complicity in the criminal activity that was happening on Telegram. He has since been charged with a bunch of things, most of which are complicity for things like money laundering and child abuse, child sexual abuse material, all sorts of other internet crimes.
And the overarching themes seems to be a lot of this bad stuff was happening in relative plain sight on Telegram and B Telegram not only knew it was hosting this stuff and allowed it, but actively resisted working with governments to help. Yes. I think, again, this is the very beginning of what I think is going to be a very long story, but I think in terms of like the basics of what we know, I think that's kind of where we are at this moment. Am I missing anything?
No, those are the basics. Obviously none of us are experts in French law. If you are an expert in French law, you know, hit us up. We love talk to you. But the pieces that puzzle that are really important here that I think we can understand and talk about credibly are one how Telegram works. Because a lot of people want to impute how other platform works on to Telegram and they're actually really different. So it's a very common misconception that Telegram is encrypted and it is just not.
It's not even like secret chats one to one chats. You can push a button and make them encrypted, but that is not the default. Telegram groups are not encrypted. Like there's nothing inherently secure about Telegram. Like I will tell you I know a lot of activists who know, who know that there is CSAM on I message that there is bad stuff on signal. And the defense is these are end to end encrypted. No one can see the data except the participants.
So Apple knows it's there. People have told them they have actually built some tools to try to detect it and got any L that essentially breaking encryption we've talked about that story length. But fundamentally it can't see it. So it has this out like these companies have these outs like people are using doing bad things on our platforms, but we can't see it so we don't know.
And you should find other ways to catch them right and this is a lot of the argument about end to end encryption is the cops want to see the bad stuff. And they want the companies to build them back doors to give the bad stuff to them. And so I think there's a temptation to assume Telegram is operating the same way and it is not.
Right. And I think that is actually the first most important thing is all the stuff is just happening out in the wide open in Telegram in these huge channels in these unencrypted chats telegram can see almost everything that happens unless you press secret chat which no one is pressing it only happens between people anyway.
And so it is a very unusual service in the sense that it knows it has the technical ability to know what is happening on service and lots of people can see what's happening on service. And I think have you all used Telegram a whole lot in business today today felt like the wrong day to start. No, I like I remember using it. I used it when I went to Taipei at one point just because it was easy to communicate with my friends. And when I got back.
COVID hit was living in New York and so all the protests that stuff happening. So there was a ton of organizing happening on Telegram. And the most miserable experience I've ever had using a chat program just awful because it is just like it's a chat room. It's just okay, you're now in a chat room and you're going to go to bed and wake up to 200 new messages in a chat room.
Yeah, so it actually you make a good point. Let me just quickly like explain the rough structure of Telegram because like you're saying the light it is actually instructive for what's happening here. So a lot about the story. Yeah, so there are there are basically three levels of Telegram, which exists. I would say somewhere in the like if you imagine the overlapping Venn diagram of like WhatsApp and discord and like we chat.
Like Telegram is somewhere in the middle of those three things. So all the way at the top you have public channels, right, which is basically like the equivalent of an Instagram feed, right.
You post something lots of people can see it. It's a it's essentially just a public like one way feed. The middle thing, which I think is probably Telegram's like most, I don't know if not most used and sort of most unique thing is the group chats and the group chats can have I think the numbers up to 200,000 people in them, which is a crazy number.
But is is a huge part of the reason that Telegram has been used for things like political organizing and for huge like government communications. It's because you can have that many people literally in a space together. It becomes object chaos, but it can be really useful.
And then at the bottom of that is one to one chat. So you can go all the way from you and I are texting each other to like one to millions inside of Telegram. And there's also like there's there's app stuff going on in there. There are all kinds of like plug any things you can do inside of Telegram.
It has some of that like we chat operating system e dynamic to it, but most of what happens. It's not a good looking app in the same way that we chat is not a good looking app, but like it does a lot. Yeah. And so it's very useful for those reasons. And so the reason most people use it. And for our purposes, I think the reason it's particularly interesting right now because of what's going on with Paul Duraf is really probably the top two things, right.
And so there's a lot of things where one person can communicate with a lot of people very quickly. And the sort of giant teaming group chats of up to 200,000 people. Right. So like there's nothing else that works quite that same way on the end. And to be clear, if you have a one to 200,000 person group chat, no, it doesn't matter if that's encrypted.
And so it's not like the other platforms that are used for political organizing. It's not like the other platforms that are encrypted or claim to be encrypted. But apparently, this broadcast medium. And then the other piece, which is tremendously relevant to all of this is that it has that has no content moderation, which is not like a technical decision. That is a policy decision. They've just decided. This is going to be fine. It's a free for all we don't care. We support free speech.
And the policy decisions aflo from that get all the way to like how do we treat governments and also just simply get things like ISIS, lives on telegram. This is just going to be the app that ISIS uses and people have known this for a long time. We are going to accept an enormous amount of pornography, including some of the worst pornography, including some child sexual abuse material, perhaps lots of child sexual abuse material. And everyone can just see it.
And researchers can just file report after report about this, the prevalence of this material on telegram and the company is going to do nothing about it. And then that brings you to the actual policy decisions, which is the way they've structured the data on telegram means that if a government wants to issue a warrant or a subpoena, they actually have to issue like 20 right in countries across the world.
In order to get the data and prove the case against the bad people and telegrams are proud of this and all platforms have kind of like their transparency reports or you know in other times like they've had what's called canaries. Where they they say so they have a sentence on the road so it's like we've never done this and then they silently change it to get rid of that sense so people know what happened but even I haven't disclosed anything.
Oh wow telegrams one is like we just never give it up any data. Everyone can see all the bad things are platforms they want to catch the bad people and we have made it so you cannot you can't do it right. It's so hard to do it no government has ever managed to this and I think that is the liability again I don't really know French law.
But I know how our government thinks about it and how researchers think about it and academics think about it and once you get to you know it's happening and you won't even help the cops stop it.
So you end up with maybe your responsible for yourself and that is that's a lot of steps you got to get through a lot of steps. I don't think there's any networks in the United States that are anywhere close to that even though the usual morons are screaming about free speech on telegram that's just not how it works here like no one is that stupid.
Here it feels like there was such an active effort to frustrate authorities from prosecuting just straightforwardly criminal behavior that dude landed his feet and friends got arrested. Yeah I think we have to find out the case we got to say again not next word in French law like there's a whole bunch of stuff but that you know the crimes are happening and you won't even help us stop it. That's where you get that collapse of liability to we're just going to rest the CEO of the social network.
And it goes back to the questions of encryption too because I think you look at something like I message right where apples stance right or wrong believe it or don't believe it is privacy is more important than everything else we can't see it neither can you right.
Yeah we know it's happening right you believe it's happening but there's no way for us to know what's happening right agree or disagree that is a stance that is a whole stance what telegram has said is is the opposite right like all the things you're saying about we can see it and we're doing nothing about it.
They've like touted this is part of the point over the years and one of the things that Pavl Duraf has said many times is like you can't build a private secure safe place for people to talk except for terrorists and like again bunch of really interesting arguments behind that sentence but it's not encrypted.
And this is the thing that it comes back to right is it would be a different argument if telegram were an encrypted app on which all of this stuff was kind of loosely known to be happening but you couldn't see it but like you can see it.
It's just it's just there there are all these researchers in the last few days who are coming out and saying like the the new defy AI apps is one that you see a lot on on telegram and will arie miss at the Washington Post or to great story about the researcher who was like I just went and found a bunch of them just right there they're just sitting there it's not like a secret this stuff is known and so it seems like that disconnect between it's just sitting right there.
The evidence is that is in front of us like all I have to do is look with my eyes and it's right there. And yet you are willingly obfuscating my ability to do anything about it that is I feel like the bridge that I've never seen another company cross this. Yeah. Well, there's the one example is like Kim com right where he was kind of egregiously ignoring the fact that his his mega upload site was full of pirated stuff and then one day they can't the New Zealand authorities came and said.
Yeah, you can't do that anymore and now he's being extradited like on his extradition tour every couple of years. Get sent to a new country to be extradited. So I think there's like examples of this before and Pavel I like why did this guy come to France because this is the biggest question I have. Why when I'm playing in France like he said before like I'm not going to go to places where they want to arrest me for this stuff and they hate what I'm doing.
France like did he miss the Olympics maybe thought they were just distracted like they're coming off the Olympics he's like on a stop and get a bag and cigarette you know say how it goes. Two things about Kim dot com one we had the best headline in vert history Kim dot com mega uploaded to the United States. Yeah, it's very good on copyright charges which people thought was a body shaming joke and we're like no that's the name of the company.
I'm sorry it was just very funny that whole sequence of events were funny to copy it law the only one where we just accept the speech regulation. It is wild to me you're like you fired a bunch of Disney movies jail the entire national community is going to put you in jail all together at the same time everyone's like that's not a pro like you on musk is not like justice for Kim dot com.
Right and then it's like we're talking about ISIS and and CSAM and censorship we're having a free and so what are you talking about. So there's just a huge disconnect in how we perceive speech regulations even in this case what's to be a word are facing criminal prosecution around the world for you know for violating our speech norms one just happens to be Disney. I'm like Hollywood and that seems to be fine so that's just weird like just on its face out I agree there's a weirdness there.
But the other piece of the puzzle is that even in the States where we have strong prohibitions against speech regulations in the first amendment and things like section 230 which. Insulate platform owners for the speech that happens on platforms. We make a big exception for criminal behavior on your platforms like part of section 230 is no effect on criminal prosecution like it's the heading.
It's like you don't get insulated from crimes right if the people are doing crimes in your platforms and we can connect it to you we're going to you are the crimes that's you fast and sesta the exception to 230 that made basically made talking about sex worker legal in these platforms it was an anti trafficking law but it landed with basically sex workers can't do business some platforms anymore.
That is a criminal that's a criminal statute we're like you this is legal now you'll be responsible for this you'll be liable for this. And the platforms all take it out and most people are sort of find that there's a large controversy brewing about that we don't have time to talk about but that was the trade off that was made in that policy. Here I think there's just a deep confusion about a French law no no French law and be like how much do you have to know when do you have to know it.
Is Mark Zuckerberg going to go to jail because all of this stuff exists on meta platforms. But they actively try to shut it down they work with law enforcement so is it going to jail if you do slightly less than meta.
Do you go to jail if you're Elon Musk do you go to jail right like I don't think we understand the great Asian and then on top of that every country on the plan right now is grappling with how to regulate social media and the bad things that happen on social media and they're all going to come to different wildly different answers.
And I think all these platform owners are kind of like okay this is the tip of the spear like this is the beginning of the end even though it's so out of bounds even though it's so far feel like no one else is doing telegram is doing this way. Do you guys consider telegram social media I always considered it like a chat platform. What is a photo yeah it's basically wanted to just do that you what is the social media platform like it's it's Instagram me enough in the way that you can do it.
In the way that people use it in some ways that I think I think it counts. I'm all the way like anything where you can post. Yeah so like and that post might go to people you don't know is a social media platform yeah. And that's a very loose so you can you can find exceptions that one all over the place but that's kind of my my broad definition can you post I like that what can you post and can the person on the other like do you have to know the person on the other other end of it.
So like by this definition like discord is a social media platform right twitch is social media platform. Twitch is obviously it's in my mind obviously social YouTube is a social media platform by this definition.
So I think there's that's a that's a broad one but this basic idea of like if you run a platform or someone can talk to a lot of strangers what responsibility do you as the platform owner have and pretty much the only responsibility we've decided any of these companies truly have is making sure there's not copyright. Like is making sure that Hollywood and the music industry are protected that is pretty much it.
Right and then there's there's a litany of really bad things that they've decided that they will keep off on their own. And that is it that's the answer like across the world like that's the baseline answer is copyright infringement. And then and then there's TikTok which is like what if we did it anyway yeah but like I would just point out that that always is where these arguments break down if you're okay with.
Sending Kim come to jail for copyright infringement you might have to reconsider how you feel about the other stuff or you might have to reconsider a copyright infringement. I just think this stuff is so openly horrible that actively thwarting the authorities. It should probably light you in some hot water but I think the question of who who is you in that sentence right I think it is doing a lot of work in this question because like what we see.
Most of the time is companies get in trouble right like companies get fined or everybody like the government sends things to lawyers and and it's all this sort of entity to entity thing. And so I think the fact that it was like a dude who got arrested for it is so unusual. I mean it's like if if somebody did a bad tweet and Jack Dorsey got arrested like back in the day instead of him going to know different our lives would have been if.
Dorsey could have been arrested for bad tweets this is what I mean and I think it's it's within a utopia I think if you if you like there's that. The jails are just full of Jack Dorsey. But I think he on this extra edition to her. Yeah exactly send him around the word from jail to jail around the world. I think if you if you cast this out and in a certain way that it goes like you know we talk about chilling effects of laws all the time.
Yeah how are you going to feel right now if you're a CEO of a company that is dealing with any of this you're like oh my god suddenly. Not only is my company at risk but literally I personally could go to jail which I guarantee you is not something most people are thinking about. Yeah my access to high quality wine and cheese is at risk today. Exactly. We cannot go to France. I was like who are those CEOs it's like Mark Zuckerberg what Elon Musk they're fine.
Well it's a lot of them right like you know what is Andy jassy could do something bad happened on Twitch. But all of us yes you should for Amazon kind of like sooner. We should go to jail for what happens on YouTube is like a pretty weird jump right. At the same time all of those companies actively cooperate with law enforcement all the time for sure in ways in ways good and bad.
I think on our lightning round list is like Mark Zuckerberg sending a letter to Jim Jordan in Congress this week saying we caved to the Biden administration too much. I think that letter is like political theater but like that's what I mean by active cooperation the government on both sides. He's saying we cooperate with the Biden administration and I was cooperating with Jim Jordan saying we cooperate with the Biden administration.
Like the big companies in this country at least are actively engaged with various governments around the world in various ways. And I think that insulates them from Mark Zuckerberg getting arrested in France. Here you just have this other thing it is so different like architecturally and how the app works user experience wise and you know the one to 200,000 kind of opportunities you have.
Moderation wise and that they do literally nothing with the worst content anyone can possibly imagine and then policy wise in that they have structured it to make it impossible for the authorities to even arrest the people they can see with their eyes. In all ways middle finger to them in the process. You just stack all that up you know that is a lot of decisions that land you in French jail.
I wonder how it's going to affect Elon because he really been trying to take the same path with X that Darof has been doing of just being like the free speech absolutionist that I say I completely disagree with that. I understand the argument that's what you want us all thing. It's all about free speech and he fundamentally is very different and how he actually does that because he's always like oh you want me to take that down done.
But like yeah I mean his definition of free speech and we can you look at the tweet is. If people want speech regulations they should pass laws and that's how democracy is supposed to work and I will follow the law. And you're like you're that's the weirdest definition of free speech that exists because you're asking for government speech regulations and what they have followed historically has been draconian speech laws in other countries.
Yeah right like India has draconian speech laws X complies with them Brazil has new draconian speech laws and he doesn't like the government so you won't it's like. It's a weird balance of like actually I'll do whatever I want but like if I don't want to get into a fight with the government or I like the government there I'll do what they say. Which is just not a position right that is just pure opportunism and I think the noise around.
But if you look at his post lately you can tell he's like in an intellectual spiral because his position has no center right there's no there's actually no ideological commitment to anything so if you're like I would wish to defy the government but I might get arrested also some of the stuff is horrible also I'm still like I'm suing advertisers or antitrust there's nothing there.
Like there's literally no center there's no intellectual center to that position and you can kind of see him be like crap this is what free speech might actually mean I don't want to I don't want to over intellectualize elons you know ketamine musings or whatever the fuck it is but it's like you can you can see it's starting like the pressure welcome hell is basically I'm saying like the internal contradictions of owning a platform like X and all of the demands are placed on that I think it's starting to wear on a little bit.
Yeah, I mean, and I think we should probably move on from this but the thing that keeps coming up to me is I read these stories and talk to people about this there's been a ton of good reporting on this by the way good good week for the journalists out there is how much that the sort of legal push against the tech industry is still going along the lines of we have to protect the children.
Like so much of this is about the seasam stuff that's happening on telegram and the laws that have been passed recently I think it was I think it was written that recent that passed a law last year that explicitly allows the executive tech companies to be held personally responsible for seasam stuff and child safety stuff on their platform in general if they're told about it and don't do anything about it like that's that's now a law that exists and and this idea of.
We have to protect children being like the most bipartisan thing you'll find anywhere on any line of political reasoning that's how we're getting towards all of this and it's just it's just fascinating that that continues to be the thing that is like the deeper this goes the more it's about child safety that's always the argument for censorship. That's always like the first line of arguments for censorship is we must think of the children well now tollywood first and then child safety.
It's never it's never not Mickey Mouse first. Yeah Mickey Mouse and then child safety almost always like there's a great Simpson's episode about that exact thing and then all the big fights in the the 90s over TV ratings and stuff like that where you had like Clinton yeah and then all these Republicans getting together being like won't anyone think of these babies right you can get anything done if you can convince people it's about keeping children safe.
Yeah and I agree with you and you know tip or gore put the explicit lyrics label on all the CDs and I was a good or super gore very weird tip or gore versus NWA just imagine how far we've come. It's super weird but the the reason that you do that is if you can make the counter arguments you more orally indefensible you win right and but here I just want to come back to it is really.
There it is the sea Sam is there it's very bad and so like sometimes you just have to say it's there and it's bad and you have to do something about it right and that's. I if you listen to the show or Dakota list red us for years like the free speech debate online has raged and we have struggled with it we've done endless episodes about it.
But like you need an ideological center right that's what I'm saying it's real it's there like I see this is there like you don't have to overthink it you just have to make it go away and hold the people responsible for it account and I think here it's like well that's an easy line there are lots of gray areas and lots of much harder lines that one feels pretty easy to me yeah alright we should wrap it up I promise we'll talk about doing other more fun crimes the next session will be back.
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It's games are happening like this more and more because of the change in technology the sky's the limit on scams so says Deborah backsy a mobile payments and fintech consultant of over 20 years never be pushed into a sense of urgency always sit back think twice. If something seems too good to be true or a little bit weird think about it but there are steps you can take to help protect yourself.
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Life is filled with crucible moments those turning points where a tough decision can change everything. Like Capitals podcast crucible moments as founders of some of the world's most important tech companies to reflect on those very moments that defined who they are today and in this season crucible moment is back with the founders of YouTube service now door dash
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The the the the the rock AI being so out of control that you can just make like Hillary Clinton do GTA is legitimately very funny. The deep fakes and what is a photo in lies on the internet and then I'm like it's also hilarious to have Elon Musk go in an I wasca journey the end of it have his deep fake characters say I'm starting in soup kitchen which is a real video I watched today.
I was like you're putting so brother it's all very good with it you on voice to it all of it's great don't look at it respect the truth photography is sacred set. I laughed I did love let's start with the big one David you you said this is the story of segment to it's a yelp sues Google for antitrust violations so OK. Did you guys think that you'll put already sued Google.
I definitely thought you can see Google like a long time ago yeah a yelp at this point is a front for showing Google right is basically it's I think everyone who works at yelp is just lawyers now. Yes so very recently earlier this summer couple weeks ago Google lost its antitrust search trial we're still in the remedies phase and then there will be appeals and then God only knows but for now it lost and so yelp clearly emboldened by that fact filed a suit of its own.
That basically brings up something that got thrown out of the last case against Google which I find really interesting and essentially the argument is that Google prioritizes its own stuff in Google search results and us d prioritizes yelp and trip advisor and other companies like it and has thus killed them.
This is an argument we've been hearing forever this is an argument yelp has been making loudly forever literally I assumed yelp had already sued Google apparently it hadn't and now what yelp seems to be thinking like Jeremy stop them in the CEO said. In as many words the winds on antitrust have shifted dramatically so this company clearly senses this is the moment to finally pick the fight it's been wanting to pick for many years which I think is very odd given that the
given that that particular fight has been thrown out of court in the same search trial that Google just lost so I'm confused but also I think it's fascinating and yet again like Google is just up against it man like the epic stuff is happening the search stuff is happening this is happened like it's just it just keeps happening for Google there's an ad tech trial yeah I say that like people notice Google has yet another antitrust trial coming up over its ad tech stack which is the money.
Yeah I mean wasn't this like Google strategy they would spend 20 years fucking around and then now they're in their find out phase and that's why they have all the lawyers that they pay a lot of money to yeah I mean there's something I I agree with Jeremy stop them in the winds of antitrust have changed I'll actually can point to a very very odd example of this Luther low who is yelps old policy person recently left yelp he's doing all this stuff he's a Y
commentator now and they did like a meet and greet and DC you know like a little thing and J.D. Vance before his vice president of made showed up at the meeting with all the startups talk about how he used to be an ad tech and he thought big tech was censoring everyone in the woke mob was out of control in the middle of all that nonsense he was like I
think Lena cons doing a good job yes weird like weird right like that's how much the winds of antitrust has changed he's like the only person that by administration is doing a good job is the economy because we should break up in and really his point was like because this
is how to control and like maybe that doesn't all put together like that puzzle you put all the pieces together like that doesn't look like anything but he still said it right like that's where the mindset is is these companies have too much control and we should take that
control away from them and do something else what does something else is I think all of us are very curious to find out it's clearly going to be something else but you look at Google which is just taking it on the chin lately right in the search case in the epic case
and the the judge in that case has been very loud like you did it I'm going to do something about it yeah and then the ad tech case which I you know I we don't know what's going to happen every trials kind of a coin flip but we're going to get a documents about
Google's money in that case like it's going to some stuff is going to come out because it's going to be the business side of Google talking about the money yeah and I I think Google's image is very cuddly is though the money just appears from the way and that's not true and that's also the trial let's not forget that Google wrote just without any questions just wrote a check for the maximum possible if you're going to avoid having a jury trial like
in this you know innocent until proving guilty but that's a tough one can we just sit on that for one second this is a real thing we have a picture of the check on the website I believe they just wrote a check to the department of justice for the maximum like a cashier's check yeah I believe it's drawn on Wells Fargo and they're like here's all of the money we could possibly we would like to settle the case like out of the blue yeah it's incredible just
to not have a jury trial and I mean it's at Wells Fargo so it'll take about what 12 years before it gets cash the block and solves this sorry sorry have you heard of lightning okay so back to help I think the winds have changed is an opportunity for maybe not to you know win like epic right you help doesn't have a fortnight in the background to fund all this stuff but I think maybe to claw at a settlement
out of Google yeah to somehow put some pressure on Google to open up and make this go away to appease the Europeans in some way whatever you think of Google's relationship the internet it is changing and I think that as we've said a million times that means the internet's going to change so you think you help wants to be to Google what like the Delta emulator folks have been to Apple yes which is just just sort of the one in there just like
trying it open slightly and they're in a position of weakness and gonna have to start to make policy changes that are good for you but also good for everybody. And so you help is like we don't we don't want to break up Google we just we just think this is a chance to like extract some of what we want from the company because they're going to decide it's easier to do that.
It's kind of necessary for you all but this point because they've been struggling for a while right like they they have an order to basically bullying restaurants and stuff and making sure that they're on their platform and everything. So we can do we can shake down millions of local restaurants where you can get a check from Google which is yeah. Yeah I mean it kind of feels like what it is for you. There are so many companies you can describe with that sentence good God.
Well so there are some of you is on thread say who posted that I've been more contancurously can I can I just describe my video current moment. Probably because I love that these companies are having these fights I love the internet's going to be potentially more open I love that the least we're in the season change all that's great.
I do not for one second believe any of this is truly idealistic right I think this is a version of capitalism at play where a lot of very self interested parties are looking out for their own self interest and they're colliding in weird ways great the reason I say it that way is because a long time ago I used to cover net neutrality like every other day.
And the big player in net neutrality was netflix if you will recall they Netflix and reddit were like out in front like black out the internet fight for net neutrality we don't let concast throttle us to slow your concast is investor in this company and boy did they not like my net neutrality coverage. Just put it all up there and then one year.
Redasting on stage of the code conference so I believe Peter Kafka and Peter said you even really quiet about not neutrality and redasting looks at it said yeah we're so big it doesn't matter anymore and I turned into the Joker that's honest wow. And like fine right like fine inside like the idea that yelp is idealistic freedom fighter or even delta even that's a smaller company I do think they are pressing the regulatory
and open up these platforms but I don't think that like they're the they're going to get theirs right and all that's are off and I think all of this change is like who's going to get theirs at the end of this and so like we're going to shake down a bunch of restaurants or shake down Google is kind of the best in my mind like the best way to understand like the
way it paid whether the legal system can shift the money around in a more echo real way at the end of all this totally remains to be seen I truly do not know in a funny way what you're arguing for is capitalism working as intended. Yeah that might be when fighting for money is what it should be what we've landed on is nobody can fight for money because Google took it all. Yeah that's true. And I think that's what I'm trying to tell you.
Yeah but if it was just a street fight for money let's find out is postmodern capitalism just Google opening its wallet. Yeah you have like sorry you come all the that's the horseshoe theory of Internet capitalism is Google is the planned economy director standing on the people. I'm not saying that's not what everybody wants okay so that's Google will see what happens in the album and Google but you can see like as we keep saying whatever happens to Google is the Internet.
You can just see the Internet sort of like fracturing around around that already. This other one I think is really interesting it's a weird ruling. Tiktok has to face a lawsuit for recommending the blackout challenge and this is a very very sad story there is a 10 year old who died doing the blackout challenge. The parents who tiktok you know one of those cases where it's like tiktok didn't make the blackout challenge videos they didn't.
They're not telling you to do it right that the people are seeing the content on the platform they're taking the action. Horrible extremely depressing thing happened and now we're going to try to hold tiktok level and throughout most of this we are not holding platforms liable for what the recommendation items do.
Except we just had a Supreme Court ruling which said maybe we should like more or less maybe we should so one of the weirdest things about this case is that it's it's like a it's like a puzzle the Supreme Court put itself in.
So the there were content moderation laws passed in Texas and Florida they went up to the Supreme Court the Supreme Court base list said no these are these are weird you're just obviously conservative states being that at Facebook but you didn't think about what you're going to do and then to other platforms smaller platforms you have to go think about this before you like go back and think figured out the one thing the Supreme Court was very clear about.
Was that it is protected first party speech when they curate other people's content right so section 230 says you Facebook are not responsible for a people post on platform for mostly. And so that's the way you moderate that speech and presented to other people is your speech so that's protected by the first moment you cannot. The government cannot set content moderation rules because the content moderation itself is speech right.
Okay that feels right generally that feels right that's how you get a marketer from platforms that's how you end up with a truth social and an X and then. And so that's what you get to the question over kindergarten subreddit rules you want to participate in right like that's how you get the whole range of expression the market sort of decide how much content moderation the court the third circuit valid in tiktok says well.
Give quote given the Supreme Court's observation that platforms engage in protected first party speech on the first moment when they curate conflations of other people's content via their expressive algorithms it follows the doing so amounts to first party speech under section 230.
So the algorithm is your speech that means reliable for your speech so if you recommend a bunch of blackout challenge videos that's your speech that's a choice you've made now your liable for your speech and it's calling that curation which is really fascinating so this is just like a long. A long chain of reasoning that ends with okay some of this belongs to you so the government can tell you what to do but it belongs to you so now other people can get mad at you for.
And that I don't know how that's going to shake out I don't know if tiktok is the right plaintiff for that their tiktok after all we just talked about save the children is a theme the tiktok versus the United States government versus China that's all in the mix there whether or not tiktok can like mount a challenge to this.
Kind of a huge precedent say these algorithms are not only your speech and can be protected from laws and can be protected from government interference but also now other people can sue you for your out of the. Yeah I mean that like breaks the internet right like because it doesn't just break tiktok which arguably should be broken because I hate its algorithm right now but it breaks it breaks Facebook it breaks Google because Google is using an algorithm to recommend search results.
Yeah you're showing me bad stuff is now legally actionable is off we go you know and like yeah fine but we we're I don't think we're ready for that world either so the other side of the coin the non Google side of coin also sort of a for grabs because what's happening legal system which just again say this to you I'm trying to have the end of summer here I'm trying to drink a peanut collada and the PDFs just keep coming.
Now stop killing me let's do one more PDF and then we got to get out of here the peanut the peanut collada is a way this one is a tough one because it's not actually all yet and I actually don't know if Gavin Newsom is going to sign this bill but the California State Assembly passed an AI safety bill what's going on in here David. So it's called the safe and secure innovation for frontier artificial intelligence models act which just rolls off the tone.
Is that spell anything or SSI F.A. I.M.A. no. No. No. All good laws are back. Everyone needs to remember this if your law is not a backron. It's not a good law. It's just it's so important. Yeah. I just asked Chagy be making a man. Yeah. Right. Can you like the insane things people have done. I think the people writing this bill weren't fans of AI. That's true. They weren't going to have to chat GPT do it.
This law they should have found a way to make it spell out artificial with all the letters and it would have been amazing but alas it is mostly just called SB 1047.
It's an AI safety bill that I would say concerns itself as we've been talking about in part with who is responsible for bad things that happen downstream of AI models and it changes the way that companies need to test and train these things it changes the way that they need to talk to the government like it's kind of sweeping like here's how we want to oversee and think about AI models.
There's been a lot of backing and fourthing open AI kind of came out against it and thropic was like we love it let's change some stuff. There have been a bunch of politicians who are against it a bunch of politicians were for it I agree it seems very debatable whether Gavin Newsom will sign this thing as it currently stands.
But it does still feel like a moment that it passed out of the assembly the way that it has. If he signs it does that just mean like Google open AI a lot of these companies relocate like well California still a huge market. Yeah well that but also one of the things a lot of the companies have said essentially is why are you making a law to make us do what we've already promised to do which is essentially make sure our AI is not going to destroy the world.
And I would argue that's a very funny line of reason to be like we said we're going to be cool wire you're going to make me be cool is is is an odd stance. But my sense is and again all of this could change especially as the law you know continues to change and depending on how it gets implemented is that a lot of these companies are going to not like it but we'll figure out a way to play along. I don't think this is the sort of thing that is like going to run anybody out of California.
Yeah and then a letter basically supporting it. And to your point they're like yeah but then you read the letter and we should definitely do something here's just aligned for my tropics letter we believe sp 1047 particularly after recent events likely presents a feasible compliance burden for companies like ours in light of the importance of a verdict catastrophic misuse. Yeah cool yeah there's a real chance we don't have to destroy the world so let's do a feasible compliance burden.
Whoops yeah I don't know how this plays you know the Biden had the AI order that just came out a bunch of companies that they were going to join the AI model board that makes sure they're safety testing and releases results.
This one feels like in particular Gavin Newsom has to make a decision and then that will decide whether a bunch of similar state laws get passed all around the country because once California does it it's like fine like Norton do it tomorrow right because now you're not making them do anything like you're just like off the races and then and then now it's your point of question is like whether Texas does or doesn't do it and it doesn't matter because all the researchers are in California anyway.
Right like and you have to sell to the California market and then there you go so I I'm very confused about this one in the sense that what you really need as a federal law and that doesn't seem like Lee and also election season and who knows what's going to happen. But it also seems like newsroom kind of want to sign it but he hasn't said anything like usually when you're the governor of the big state.
But the first in the nation AI safety bill you're like pound of the pavement and here he's that he literally has not said anything to anyone like effects who gives him money for his presidential campaign and four years. Yeah I mean yeah I mean I also think like we're in a moment right now where all of the money on planet earth is being thrown at AI and there are a lot of very powerful very rich people who will be happy to yell about you being anti progress.
If you sign a bill that does anything perceived to be slowing it down and I think it was open AI that was like we need a federally driven set of AI policies rather than you know just a bunch of different state laws about how this and that's what will really foster innovation and this is like the same thing everybody says about everything which is like we would so so love to have regulation as long as it's like the perfect regulation and doesn't slow anyone down or cost us any money but it would be like so good like March.
So good like Mark Zuckerberg did this the crypto industry has been doing this forever everybody wants there to be rules until there are rules and then everybody's like well what if there was just like a simpler set of rules that I could just like that be fine by the way in case you're wondering what SB 1047 says. You have to make it possible to quickly and fully shut the model down you have to right you just need to unplug the terminator seems fine.
Yeah, you have to ensure the models protected against unsafe post training modifications which is hard and then you have to have a testing procedure to see whether model or distributors are especially at risk of causing critical harm. So this is a lot like some of that is pretty fuzzy some of it is like you just have to be able to unplug it. I think those last two are super fuzzy. Yeah, the like how do you prove this isn't going to destroy the world is actually a really hard question.
What is critical. I would argue that if you're watching a product and you have to ask that question we should ask that question a lot right like for doesn't come out with the 2025 Broncos sport and immediately be like will this destroy the world. Neilite, did you watch Oppenheimer. The probability is you're a few products in the world where like what is this going to destroy the world.
If you are really crushing as a project manager you're not going to ask those questions you're going to be happy you're hitting deadlines. You got user stories to collect you're not a time or the. I'm just like you know the tiktokers doing like bottled water. All right, by the way there's just a reminder for me mental note there's like two or three tiktok gadget companies and then we should.
I won't tell you who they are but if you have thoughts email us at the version there's one in particular where did they come from or the next anchor. Just a little Mr. Drop. All right, we got to take a break we're going to come back. Letting around part two the fun one. The fun one.
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It's happening. It's going to happen. But that's why who it is just immediate. It was incredible. If you can guess if you send us an email and you guess maybe something will happen to you will ship you whatever Liam bought from. All right, okay, we're doing it this way we're doing true lightning round unsponsored. No one can tell us what to do because I haven't paid us any money.
And what I'm suggesting here is you could pay us money. I don't know how that works and I probably still won't do it you say but you know. Live a life of possibility. I have one Vergecast listener slash startup executive who I will not name who asked me very seriously recently if we actually want people to sponsor the lightning round or if we enjoy this bit so much that we actually don't want people.
And I was like no to be very clear I like money more than I like bits we will take please sponsor the lightning round. I do and aside about the influencer car is I've been thinking a lot about journals or influencers the whole thing here's the problem that we have when you give other people money they do what you say. People come to our sales seem like will they do what we say and we're kind of like no.
Yeah, I can just like floppied now. There's a real problem with journalism as a whole right now fighting and uphill fight but there's always a chance. I do think our be as a for a sponsor of the lightning round might make it the greatest ROI in the history of the first. We will talk about whoever that sponsor is forever unless they suck in which case we will see you never know.
Life's a game of chance roll the dice people sponsor the lightning round alright true lightning round I'm going to read a headline we're all going to react to it we're going to move on. This is the idea yeah okay here we go Google Gemini will let you create a generated people again remember the diverse Nazis yeah those were the days we're back cool says they fixed it.
I would say you white dots you know what you all talk to length about what is a photo less week of reimagine the pixel yeah I had a bit of a freak out that I still am getting a lot of notes from people about and I feel very good about. This time goes on yeah I feel I feel by the way yes we're going to defend the sanctity of photography or the version. I feel nothing about that's I'm my only question is it feels like Google's attitude about this is slightly shifted.
Right like they diverse Nazis were a thing and they they killed it because now they're like actually killed it because a bunch of people were like we should be able to make diverse Nazis were weird. And they took it down is like we don't want to sell out we I don't know how Gemini is going to work now but reimagine they're just like yeah what a ride right like some more or less their attitude towards it.
Yep well I just it feels like something is shifted there I'm not sure what was good was it six months ago that the Gemini thing first happened yeah it was like earlier this year wild how much. This is shifted in six months.
There's more safety rules there like reimagine is not supposed to add a bunch of drugs to it's like I don't think that's what they want you can add people at all you can add people it won't touch people we don't know how this one's an hour so there's some shit I'm saying there's a shift it's not.
The next thing we're going to talk about which is just a free for all but there's some little shift inside the Google says okay the market is willing to accept a little bit more crazy and like here we are.
So you're free for all X.A.I's new Grock image generator floods X with controversial AI fix that is a very soft headline again that's okay here little it's like a little too nice no little quick how the internet works thing that's actually the SEO optimized headline goes to Google can I read you the headline that's on our website.
This makes more sense yes X is new AI image generator will make anything from Taylor Swift and lingerie to Kamala Harris of the gun yeah we should I don't know that's what Google wants. Kamala Harris of the gun is all anybody searching nowadays and some little on the other thing it's bananas like again I've watched hilarious videos of like Donald Trump in Hillary Clinton in an arm standoff on X and it in the underlying technology is called flux which is an open source AI system.
So even X added the controls you know sort of like open everyone's eyes to flux which is open source you should do whatever you want with it's like this by all accounts very good. It's very good you can just go watch the thing it's just very funny that Grock. Like Elon Musk Elon Musk I mean he wants to be a famous person right. He released his own completely out of control deep fake tool on his own platform in the number of deep fakes of him are out of control.
What was the one you were saying you were seeing before it's Elon Musk it's a long video okay where Elon Musk narrates his I wasca journey. There's a there's a nightmare dream sequence in the middle of it and at the end of it. He commits to do it like giving away free food everyone like soup kitchens and also says he's going to build the public transport system and this is perfect.
It is a perfect Elon Musk rule yeah that's amazing robot Elon Musk was I'd defects should be illegal like speaking of laws that are coming like a lot of people agree that deep things should be legal especially non-consensual pornography defects. This is going to be a weird fight it's going to be a word fight a bunch of. Scalch and Hansen does not want her voice being used by opening right looks just filed that complaint.
I don't know I do not know how these are going to go because it feels like we just let the cat out of the bag talk about feasible compliance let's do we go. Like we have a picture of Mickey Mouse smoking a cigarette on the verge of. So good yes next one smart home company brilliant has found a buyer David did you ever have a brilliant I did briefly.
I knew it I had I had one of the earliest earliest ones I met with our founders like before they even launched the product and they gave me a prototype of one. I put it in my wall and then I had a I had a balcony at my apartment and it turned on the balcony light permanently. It just it wouldn't turn up.
And that was that was my experience with the first brilliant brilliant stuff actually got very good there they made a most of their business like going into apartment buildings and stuff but just never really made it work. Yeah this is the what if you had an iPod touching a while the control lawyers mark up stuff yeah exactly.
And it and Jen to E are brilliance part home reviewer reported they were going to business which they kind of denied and then they want a business but rescued rescued by those white nights of American capitalism private equity. Our people we love them the company is now called brilliant next gen which is brutal. And it seems like what we know so far is that people who had brilliant stuff their stuff is going to continue to work.
What happens after that I don't know the the new leadership did say they're going to stop selling direct consumer stuff anywhere other than their website which I think is a pretty strong signal that they are going.
Further and further into the like selling into new construction business which makes a certain amount of sense a lot of these companies like Amazon has focused a lot on that with Alexa stuff there's been this big race to be the sort of default choice for professional builders I know that when I was still in the rental market when I looked for an apartment was a six year old unsupported iPod touch built right into the wall.
So I was like get these got these non iPod touch apartments on my face yeah but I think it's this company has always been I would say more sort of B to B then like a thing a regular person would consider buying like you go to home depot and you're going to buy a Lutron not this right like I think that's pretty clear. But it'll be interesting to see if they can get it right it or if this just becomes kind of a slow death for a smart home company.
Yeah I feel like if you have one of these in your wall your your run at the clock in that cloud service continue to work yeah that's right yeah alright ESPN where to watch feature. Finds worse to stream sporting events they basically TV guide but for streaming that has ever happened in my time is pretty funny I spent like a lot of yesterday trying to find the catch in this and I think there's like a big galaxy brain strategy but also this is just like a good nice thing for the internet.
ESPN released a thing that just gives you a list of all the games that are being played which is like a thing that every sports app has right except for Apple sports which doesn't but you can go and you can see where all the games are what the score is whatever and now it just has a TV guide thing where you can it'll say it's playing on MLB TV or it's playing on TNT or this MLS game is on Apple TV plus.
Like it just tells you where to stream sports which seems like a thing that should not be complicated or need to exist a picture of a pirate ship in a reddit logo anywhere in the shop. Yeah there's just one that says parentheses it's a Russian website against like half of these.
You will be extra night exactly but I like ESPN did this whole big media day on Wednesday this week and essentially made clear that it is making this pivot from being a cable channel to like a sports lifestyle brand that was a
official Axios explain it and I think that was really right there about to launch a streaming service that shows you all the ESPN stuff like ESPN the cable channels can be streaming service the part of venue sports ESPN's whole thing is there just like we want you to come to ESPN when you want to watch sports even if you go
somewhere else because they have the rights if you open the ESPN app first we win right is that's how you bet that's how you get into fantasy all this stuff and so ESPN is like deep in the weeds of like how do we become a destination for all things sports all the time. And this is both a very good idea in that vein and also just like a useful page that I am going to load every single day for the rest of my life.
I have a question was this originally supposed to be a venue launch party or something because wasn't venue like supposed to launch around now before Fubo killed it. It was a foot down another anti trust lawsuit in the back. Yeah the entire inner economy maybe but venue was supposed to have everything in it venues the opposite strategy right but the ESPN is trying to send you to every other service and then you was like we're going to buy everything in Fubo's dead and he is a lot of minute.
ESPN was going to be a part of this then you know you'd go and you'd look and be like oh what should I watch oh it's all on venue I sure she's subscribed to venue. It's a tea guy with the answer is a one channel. It's one channel every time. But you know what's so telling about the sports industry is it wouldn't have been that way the thing that is ostensibly the streaming service for all the sports is not actually the streaming service for all the sports this is why it's so terrible.
Yeah it was like 60% I think. Yeah which is fine and I think venue if it eventually launches will be a useful thing that I'm sure I will give too much money to.
But like the fact that you can go on here and it will tell you the game is on prime video or that the game is on Apple TV plus is like a genuine user interface victory and I also think it makes a lot of sense for ESPN as like a big how low are standards of fallen this is what I mean TV guide literally it looks like we're moving on David I feel like you're going to try to convince some people to buy this thing I'm telling you already
immediately send it I have it is you have it this thing is called nod note pin yeah and it's we're just in this phase of everybody launching little tiny voice recorders that then use chat GPT to summarize whatever they hear like they all have bigger ideas but that's essentially what it is this one is just cool because it's like a little it's a little guy it's
wearable it comes with a landured and a clip and something else oh and a thing you can wear in your wrist so the idea is like it's a it's a wearable you you tap it you talk to it it summarizes your notes is that anything but this is like this is the thing right like Microsoft recall is a version of this the
limitless thing which we've talked about is a version of this this idea of like how do we make it easy for you to input all of your stuff into an AI system and then it will make something out of that for you is like a big new product question for a lot of these companies I don't know if any of it amounts to anything I have just been sitting here like yelling thoughts into this thing all day and it just keeps transcribing them being like you need to remember that your meeting is in an hour
like is this useful what did I get from this this is like what were those journals of the pens in the the notebooks and the live scrap dots yeah and I wanted to be a live crack a live scrap person so bad so bad and now it's a little chat GBT AI bubble device I look forward to your review I encourage everyone to wait for the inevitable review
the good news is this is a thing AI can actually do which like summarize a book like voice to text to summarization AI is good at all of those steps unlike so many other things like I watched a very funny video of somebody reviewing the the brilliant frame a hour glat AI glasses and I got such flashbacks to doing the review of the human AI pen
really basic questions he was sitting there holding up like a I forget what it was a drink of some kind I think and it kept being like that's a bag of potato chips he's like no it's not and it's just like oh yeah this is where I is but summarizing text on point I look again I look forward to your view and if you don't have the chart of wearable bullshit in the review
and the maker of the books pauma has a new cheaper e reader don't get it you don't get it wait you're saying not to get it okay so it's $150 it's the books six go and it's their new small low budget cheap e reader that also runs Android so you think oh these are all good things oh it's cheaper than the books pauma
but I get a wider screen that sounds great then you look at how much RAM it has and then you look at how much RAM the books pauma has oh my god it's only two gigs of RAM don't don't I like I've had a couple of books products where they were they skimp on the RAM and you feel it
it's real real rough yeah that's the sort of thing that like on a Kindle you don't really have to worry about RAM because it's kind of only doing one thing yeah but like you're going to accidentally have three apps open at the same time on this thing and it is just going to set itself on fire
yep so don't like resist the urge I know books put more RAM in like it's not that you're not Apple it's cheap at this point we are just directly controlling books is business trying I'm trying to tell you what to do all right speaking of RAM it's nice nice sure the Dyson Airrap ID is a new smarter
hair cooler so I put this on here because one is Alex has mentioned to us many many times the Dyson supersonic that's the hair dryer and the air app legitimate gadgets like insane gadgets in the classic Dyson mold of we made a fan what can have a fan and remember when they got all the car like no fan you know they stopped fans they got to they do it like a hair serum now and I was like where is the fan in this hair serum yeah I'm calling it right now Dyson your way out your lane yeah fans only
yep I really wanted the car to have a fan anyway tell me okay so this is the new air wrap they've released a couple of different additions at this point this one's got a couple of different extensions one that like just is going to suck your hair slightly differently
I probably should explain what an air wrap does after saying that it sucks your hair yeah it's an error basically sucks your hair you're going one two directions it sucks your hair in one of two directions and and then you like you can put hot air on it or cold air on it yeah and it's magic and if you ever tried to curl your hair or have thought about it it's it's horrible and and this makes it easier it's for those of us who don't want to worry about having hot
metal near faces okay so I'm going to ask you this question on this one yeah the addition to this one is that it has blue tooth it's got an app what what the I think the app could probably be like you could just not get this and turn on use YouTube or TikTok I would give you the same thing but yeah it's supposed to kind of guide you through doing the hair and making sure you're holding it for long enough because a lot of people will just do it once
and it looks good it's just like the smart oven theory where you like you have a QR code of a hairstyle and then it just like does the settings for you yeah you're so yeah it kind of walks you through it I'm going to play with this app obviously but that's kind of the idea it's just supposed to help you make things a little easier through some Bluetooth and so yeah more gadget but honestly the the extensions for it are the cool
part they're doing like one for curly hair and one for straighter hair so curly hair people get like more diffusers and stuff which is very exciting and it's just as stupidly expensive as the air that was worth it so whatever I bought one for Becky because Alex has been so high on these things for so long and for in the spirit of knowing as how to use it I bought without the blue tooth the blue tooth
also if I bought Becky a blue tooth I should be like no thank you never I'm never using this functionality but for like a week both Becky and Max looked like like full Texas truth just big hair every day and that's how you know somebody gets one yeah and then the
weird thing is our air purifiers like light up every time we use it and someone told me it's because the hot air like the hair products use it like let's up their purifiers yeah that would be so your hair spray yeah you're not don't breathe that
stuff I mean it smells great but don't have it here's I'm saying Dyson find more things to put fans in that's your lane and I I fully support it get to a car get to a hovercraft car this is what I'm I'm trying to this is why your first car failed it wasn't floating on a bed of perfectly produced air
next car they got this I believe in them to create hair do you think they were like electric motors are kind of like fans right their fans of that blades and they're like we'll do electric motors at scale I'm die James Dyson sir James Dyson come on the show I have only
one question for you it's not worth a full decar did you think electric cars are fans of that blades yes or no sir just a yes or no we're gonna get James Dyson on the show and we're gonna play can you put a fan in that we're gonna be that for one full hour of the first cast and it's gonna be incredible and I honestly believe you would say yes to doing that this is my new goal can you put a fan in that with James Dyson gauntlethrin yeah let's go snapchat finally launched an iPad app
good right huh the little like the 13 year olds they're like thinking that's now I feel like this belongs and our is this anything all of it's like it's a bunch of weird I I got you sounds like snapchat I like this is anything but the Instagram yeah and they're never gonna
get it and snap is like it clearly wants you to use it to like watch snap originals and stories and stuff I don't think this is gonna be like a super kick ass messaging system snapchat for the iPad not so sure all right speaking of Instagram another classic all-time headline on the verge.com Instagram adds what photos have always needed words it's good yeah I look at a lot of photos and think what it just had a letter on it basically you can now put text in the unskilled
Instagram editor which is fine because you could already do that obviously everyone has figured out how to do this anyway but the fact that Instagram is slowly becoming canva because Instagram is slowly becoming Craigslist very real oh that's okay so I the reason I put this in here is I was gonna ask are we headed towards a world in which threads in Instagram are just the same Instagram is gonna get texty and threads is gonna get photos and they're just gonna be the same
but what you're saying is threads is gonna become Instagram because Instagram is becoming Craigslist no threads isn't gonna become Instagram yeah I think they know that the point of threads is extremely leading questions about nothing and they're just gonna keep leaning right into I I come up with
list of questions to ask threads like every day that's like I was walking on the street and I saw a guy wearing headphones is anyone seen in one of these before it's like all day long I could be the most popular person on threads tomorrow you can just do it all day long you just like look at things like is anyone ever seen this before I saw one today today person posted they were on an airplane and you know sometimes they're airplane reporting and there's conversation coming off the plane
and I don't know who they were just like I've never seen this on a plane before and I fly all the time my plane is wet and all of the just like millions of replies of people being like you've never been on a plane before yeah a lot of people are
asked she was she was asking if she was gonna die and people were like no no but I'm just telling you the fact that like millions of people will fall for the worst engagement bait on threads means we've learned nothing you know how like we just did the like you're here
because you you think people are smarter than Photoshop you know and everyone's like we are you know this I'm like I'm gonna show you this picture of condensation on a plane and millions of people bringing you know one of our biggest tech companies algorithms to its
knees over the dumbest engagement bait in the world it is fun just as like an intellectual exercise to look around and just think like what engagement baited question could I ask you can just post a picture of anything but what is this yeah like my water has bubbles in it how did that happen
this is what we're doing from now on just I'm just get ready it's coming anyway my point is I think they know they want that thing they want a bunch of calm tweets during NBA games right like you that's not actually a visual communication
moment but it's a place for people to engage and they just want the engagement they put the answer whether or not that's photos or not I think they're happy with what they've got I'm just saying Instagram is becoming a marketing platform it already was a marketing
platform and increasingly what they're marketing is small business services so being able to just put the picture on your yoga studio with the text it's like yoga class like they're just going to do it and that I think that they're that's why I was like it's canva because that's what canva does for people great cool soon it will just be AI like generate me a photo of a yoga studio it'll be fine all right last one we've gone this whole time without talking about it we shouldn't talk about for
one second in the site around because I'm confident next week we'll have a full preview apples I've been 16 launch event is September 9th it sure is glow time right that's the that's the tagline that's got to be for the Siri right the the Siri effect yeah which I'm excited about okay I have I I see this going one of two ways and I'm curious which you guys think it is one this is just another AI show there's going to be some new hardware they're going to but all
they're going to talk about is how like the new whatever chip inside of the iPhone 16 gives you more AI stuff or this is going to be like a massive new hardware rev we're going to get the camera buttons we're going to get new designs new
colors all kinds of stuff like I could see this being either incredibly boring or incredibly huge cool exciting new iPhone year and I kind of feel like it's nothing between it all seems to me it depends on how exciting Apple really thinks Apple intelligence is I think it'll be between because that's
that's the threat that needle at wwdc or they took all the really cool stuff that was going to happen and they're like this happening AI to be like button cool new phones AI for the rest of the show that is true like wdc was actually like very good and totally overshadowed by the
weirdness of Apple intelligence yeah I I think you know they've got to talk about it it's the thing that's coming next year and this phone will be the bleeding edge of it I think the real question is whether they bring those features to the base model phone from lack of a better word right to see iPhone 16 get Apple intelligence or just the 16 pro because only the 15 pro is getting it right if the 16 is getting it the regular 16 that's the big upgrade
cycle and they're going to reintroduce all of the features because that's they know that general consumers do not pay attention to wwc right that's that's the tech audience that's developers Apple releases new iPhone it's going to have the features coming later this year you'll be able to tell
Siri to do whatever you can tell Siri to do that's your good morning America yeah we've seen some rumors I think that that was going to come for the 16 right I assume so that but I'm saying like that's my guess that like this is that's how they balance that out I'm excited for a bunch of stuff I think we're also expecting new watches new watches new airpods and actually new airpods and for Mac mini maybe right is it in the most is it weird that that is the thing I want by a mind like I can
keep everything else the same for another year but I an M4 Mac mini to replace the M1 Mac mini that is sitting here I want it so bad if that is here in two weeks I don't know I don't want to pay you guys money all right we got to stop this was the lighting wrap we're going to full preview next week
when I go do some reporting think some real thoughts preview neck that's that's next week's episode yeah that's why we ended the lightning around the unsponsored lightning round Tim Cook you could have you could have you could have tried could have been you could have been you could have actually
planned that's the big announcement it on September his apples finally I've heard just here I'm going to put it up I've heard just real that's a deep cut that's the first cast I want to show that one big story we did a deep dive into open sea this week it is a great story of some incredible
quotes in it and also one of those one of those moments that like fills and at her and she parts with joy part of our story is we didn't know if open sea had gotten a CC investigation notice and they tried to front on our story by announcing the notice the day before it was always always win good
read that story we should also say by the way we're off Sunday and Tuesday the third episode of our productivity series is actually going to run September 8th so we'll be back Friday to do an iPad preview or iPad guys will be back Friday to do an Apple preview and then Sunday with that and then all kinds of Apple stuff the week after it's going to be wild all right that's it that's a rich cast and that's it for the bird cast this week hey we'd love to hear
from you give us a call at 866 bird one one the bird cast is the production of the virgin box media podcast network our show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James that's it we'll see you next week on September 28th the global citizen festival will gather thousands of
people who took action to end extreme poverty watch post-malone doja cat Lisa jelly roll in Rao Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty defend the planet and demand equity download the global citizen app to watch live learn more at global citizen dot org
slash box YouTube door dash reddit these are some of the most important tech companies in the world but they didn't start out that way in the new season of crucible moments a podcast by Sequoia capital host Rulof Bohta talks to the founders of these tech giants and others as they go beyond the
creation myths and reflect on the make or break moments that shaped them tune into the new season of crucible moments and catch up on season one at crucible moments dot com or wherever you listen to podcasts listen to crucible moments today