(Preview) A Summer Break Mailbag: Memory Mania, Vibe Coding, Mafia PR, Caffeine Intake, Garages, and How to Fix Soccer

Ben and Andrew begin with an extended look at the market for memory chips, including market history, the supply crunch driving up today’s valuations, the myopia from SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron, new entrants from China, and why the timing of Apple’s price increases are a bearish signal. From there: Both hosts share their daily caffeine regimen, garage takes, and lots of thoughts on vibe coding after Ben’s 10-day foray into AI-assisted engineering. At the end: Codex marketing and an imminent OpenAI super app, Sam Altman’s appearance in a game of mafia, could the EU push Apple to better business strategy, stock buyback clarification, ocean data centers, metricmaxxing, and an update on last week’s hydration break take along with a better fix for international soccer.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Andrew Sharp?

  Hello and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech.

• 0:08Ben Thompson?

  Apple's price raises this week are one of the more bearish indicators for Apple that I've seen in a long time.

• 0:16Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 0:16Ben Thompson?

  And the reason is that, number one,

• 0:21Ben Thompson?

  I don't think they saw this memory increase coming at all, right? Because they would have been, they would have made the moves that they made in the past. They would have locked up. Like, remember Jensen Huang being out there, like, you know, drinking soju with like the, you know, Samsung CEO or whatever, like all those pictures?

• 0:37Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, yeah.

• 0:38Ben Thompson?

  He saw it coming.

• 0:39Andrew Sharp?

  Yep.

• 0:39Ben Thompson?

  He was out there securing supply such that everyone else is having a hard time.

• 0:44Andrew Sharp?

  That's wild. Yeah.

• 0:45Ben Thompson?

  So, so he was.

• 0:46Andrew Sharp?

  We didn't see Tim Cook drinking soju.

• 0:47Ben Thompson?

  Didn't see Tim Cook out there securing memory supplies, okay? So, number one, I don't think they saw this coming generally. No, uh, number two,

• 0:57Ben Thompson?

  I made a steak dinner bet with John Gruber that the new Macs they introduced in March were going to include a price increase.

• 1:04Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:04Ben Thompson?

  How could they not, given what was happening with memory? It blew my mind they did not increase prices then because layered on that is one of Apple's brand promises is we don't change prices. Now, part of that is we don't decrease prices so you can always buy with confidence. Like, and I believe this, there's, there's never been a strategic resell because of the, I don't want someone in the moment of decision.

• 1:31Andrew Sharp?

  Someone who paid full price, you don't want to feel like they got chipped.

• 1:33Ben Thompson?

  No, no, it's not that. Someone is sitting on that page deciding whether to subscribe or not. I don't want even a hint of in the back of their mind, oh, I'll just wait for the sell.

• 1:41Andrew Sharp?

  Wait for the August deal.

• 1:42Ben Thompson?

  That's right. Like, like the once a year sort of thing, right? No, like, my price is my price. It's only going in one direction. It will increase at times. It is never going to be cheaper. Now, Apple, so Apple is not cutting prices for sure, but they also usually never want to change prices while product is in the market. You should be able to count on Apple prices are what they are. We don't like, you know, you go to Dell, a computer is a different price every single day, right?

• 2:10Andrew Sharp?

  Sure.

• 2:11Ben Thompson?

  That's fine. That's part of their promise, right? Like, you can customize whatever you want. If the price is whatever you want, who knows? If you need a computer, just buy it. Uh, Apple doesn't do that. So, by not raising prices in March, what that suggests to me is even in March,

• 2:27Ben Thompson?

  When all this agentic stuff was working, was in the market.

• 2:31Andrew Sharp?

  No appreciation for what was coming. Yeah.

• 2:33Ben Thompson?

  They seemed to be like, well, maybe it'll blow over, right?

• 2:37Andrew Sharp?

  It's pretty unbelievable. Maybe it's like the old cycles. Right. It's gonna be six months and.

• 2:42Ben Thompson?

  Right. We have a lot of inventory. Let's try, let's wait as long as, like, see if we can make it through. And they said on the earnings call that, oh, uh, this is definitely gonna impact, impact the second quarter a little bit, but it's definitely gonna impact the third quarter. I think they're like, like, we're still in the second quarter and they're like, oh, we're out there. Prices are up hundreds of dollars and it suggests to me, this is a company that still has no idea what's going on with AI.

• 3:10Andrew Sharp?

  What continues to win. You know what I mean?

• 3:12Ben Thompson?

  But the Siri thing, like I said, that's 2024 technology. Now, we said in 2024, this stuff is so good, there's tons of products to be built on what exists right now. And that governs the fact, Apple is going to ship in 2026, what they promised in 2024, and it's gonna be great.

• 3:30Andrew Sharp?

  It's pretty good.

• 3:31Ben Thompson?

  It's because AI is amazing. It is also nowhere close to what AI is capable of right now in 2026, much less going forward. And the fact that Apple, it's not just that Apple missed the memory thing. Fair enough. The fact they didn't raise prices in March, when they could have at least preserved their brand promise that when we launch a product at a price, it stays that price no matter what. And they're having to out of band increase prices in this very awkward sort of way, suggests that they just don't know what's going on.

• 4:04Andrew Sharp?

  Flying blind.

• 4:05Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, it's not great.

• 4:06Andrew Sharp?

  Apple has become a bunch of normies out there in Cupertino. Look, you lost the bet with Gruber, so you do have to buy the steak. Do you think Gruber should have to give you like a third of the steak, like a good chunk of the ribeye that you buy him whenever this bet is finally paid off?

• 4:24Ben Thompson?

  Absolutely not. Uh, bet is a bet, number one. Number two, it's not enough to be right. Timing matters. Uh, and so.

• 4:29Andrew Sharp?

  Timing does matter. I don't know though.

• 4:33Andrew Sharp?

  I think directionally, you had some good instincts. Uh, Chris says, we'll keep it going. We went long on the first question, but let's bounce through the rest of the mailbag here.

• 4:41Ben Thompson?

  You always promise these fun like episodes.

• 4:43Andrew Sharp?

  I know. Well, look, that, that one was very interesting to me and obviously it's germane to the China podcast as well.

• 4:50Ben Thompson?

  Well, just on the China bit, remember DRAM is fungible, right? So if, no one's gonna let Chinese DRAM, well, number one, the Chinese can't make HBM yet. They can make like HBM one or two. We're on HBM four now. Like, so there's all that complexity that goes into it.

• 5:05Andrew Sharp?

  The concern would be that this allows them to climb the ladder and make better HBM.

• 5:10Ben Thompson?

  We just need DRAM, right? And so if the big three are gonna be super focused on HBM, China said, we can make DRAM. Like, and maybe our DRAM isn't the most advanced, or maybe it has bigger problems. How do you get more advanced and how do you solve your problems? You make a bunch of it. And like, and so a lot of China, you go back to our discussion of China building up their, their, their fab capacity before. It was, well, China's willing to bear the cost of selling old stuff.

• 5:37Andrew Sharp?

  Just eating it at the bottom of the ladder. Sure.

• 5:39Ben Thompson?

  Cause you have to move down the learning curve, right? And no one else is gonna eat it, but China will eat it and so they'll make it down. China now can move down the learning curve profitably. They can sell old tech at profitable prices because there's such a shortage in the market. And they're, soon enough, they're going to be good at memory and they're going to be competitive with these companies. And if Nvidia's not allowed to take it, Huawei will take it, other people will take it. Like the, the, we're, we're creating the conditions. This is the problem with cutting stuff off, cutting stuff off legislatively through expert controls, cutting stuff off from a business perspective. Cause you're trying to like capture the market. You are creating the conditions for inevitable competition.

• 6:24Ben Thompson?

  And I think the dice cast, like China is going to be a dominant player in memory. There's no question because the, the conditions could not be better to become one.

• 6:33Andrew Sharp?

  Right. Well, and you mentioned earlier that it doesn't really make sense for American companies to invest in memory, at least from an economic standpoint, but potentially from a security standpoint. It will at some point over the next five or 10 years here. Chris says, how much caffeine do you guys consume on a daily basis as you drink from a coffee cup? As I read the question, what's the pattern? Morning and afternoon coffees? What's the energy drink policy? My wife is making me quit having a Red Bull every single day. So this is top of mind funnel stuff for me. What do you think, Ben? I don't know how much of a caffeine guy you are.

• 7:12Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, you're, you're the one that needs to answer this question. I mean, one of my all time favorite segments on Greatest of All Talk was, you guys did a, you know, in the summer, it's a little more loosey goosey. It's kind of like a holiday mailbag, but every week when nothing's happening in the NBA. And so you have like your top five things and you did a top five candy bar or episode.

• 7:33Andrew Sharp?

  Mm hmm.

• 7:34Ben Thompson?

  And I, I've never been more flabbergasted in my life than when the episode starts and you're like, I'm not much of a candy guy.

• 7:44Andrew Sharp?

  And I'm like, this guy has so much. I love candy, but I don't really eat candy anymore.

• 7:53Ben Thompson?

  Whatever it was, it was the biggest crock of BS I've ever heard in my life. No one loves eating terrible stuff more than you. And what was great about that episode is you basically undressed yourself in front of the entire audience. You had so many candy takes, you had so many anecdotes in recent memory about candy, that it was so obvious that you have a problem. And you like exposed what a lie it was.

• 8:23Andrew Sharp?

  It was like Hunter Biden talking about crack cocaine on that episode. I talked for about 45 minutes about all my favorite candy, memories of candy, and it was, it got pretty deep.

• 8:35Ben Thompson?

  A hierarchy of candy interspersed with like the right times to have the candy, proper storage for different types of candy. It was unbelievable.

• 8:42Andrew Sharp?

  That's right. You gotta keep certain candies in the freezer. No question about it. Um, on caffeine, I'm not as passionate. I am just as addictive.

• 8:52Ben Thompson?

  Okay. Not as passionate as addictive. I'll give you that. I was gonna say, if you're gonna try to spin the, I'm not a caffeine guy.

• 8:58Andrew Sharp?

  Deeply, deeply addicted. I consume a venti Starbucks iced coffee every single morning. And then I will go early afternoon with a grande americano from Starbucks. And then I will sometimes layer on a yerba madre drink in the late afternoon. They have these 20 ounce teas.

• 9:18Ben Thompson?

  Wait, so we, we already had the Sharp Tech discussion about two daily Starbucks visits. I didn't realize there was frequently a third. Holy cow.

• 9:27Andrew Sharp?

  Well, there is a thing, depends on the day, but every now and then I would say three out of the five workdays. I will go with a late afternoon yerba madre. Um, and in general though, the challenge with caffeine is I hit a point of diminishing returns. If I drink too much of it and my brain just sort of shuts down at a certain point. So I do try to moderate it and energy drinks like a Red Bull. Chris, I think your wife is probably right about a Red Bull a day being a bad idea. I'm not a doctor, but I think she's on the money with that one. So, uh, I stick to coffee for the most part.

• 10:02Ben Thompson?

  Yeah. Uh, the, one other thing, when I was considering moving back, um, you know, it was a very fraught decision. Very difficult for, for lots of different reasons. One of them was we would record Sharp Tech at night for you. Because you're on the East Coast in particular, particularly rough with Taiwan. And sometimes it's like, yeah, Andrew went too far on the caffeine. He's barely functional right now because he's like too on edge. And I'm like, I need to get back. So, uh, you could be aware.

• 10:31Andrew Sharp?

  That's a hundred percent true. There would be some nights where I'd be like just completely fried. And trying to solve it with more diet coke at nine 45 or 10 o'clock at night. Um, I feel great now as we sit here recording this. So I'm glad to have you back in the United States of America.

• 10:50Ben Thompson?

  Yes.

• 10:50Andrew Sharp?

  But you still, are you dodging the question? How much caffeine do you drink?

• 10:53Ben Thompson?

  Uh, I make a pot of coffee in the morning. Uh, absolutely love it. Uh, I'm not super fussy about my coffee. I buy very good beans. I grind them right before I make them, but I use like a coffee maker. Like I think I do the, the Mocha Master. I like, I like them, so about like five of them. There's a new one out there that is like a Mocha Master, but it uses all stainless steel parts on the inside. They're like no plastic, which is like good for like microplastics or whatever. It's still sitting in my garage. I haven't actually set it up yet.

• 11:23Andrew Sharp?

  The microplastics aren't really moving the needle one direction.

• 11:27Ben Thompson?

  I'm kind of in the same boat, to be totally honest. So I make a pot of coffee in the morning. And then I'm usually good for the day. I will occasionally get a diet coke, particularly if I'm running at night. And, um, you know, in the evening, I don't like caffeine past like noon because I don't want to have any, any issues sort of falling asleep or whatever, but I might not be theoretical. I'm not sure if I have issues falling asleep. I fortunately have the constitution of I don't really get addicted to anything. So like on the weekend, sometimes, you know, I wake up slow, whatever. I just don't have any coffee. Like one of my good friends, if he goes longer, like there's one, like he's like, oh shoot, is that night?

• 12:10Ben Thompson?

  It's like, I forgot to have my, I forgot to have my afternoon coffee. I'm like, but you're going to bed. He's like, I know I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night with a headache because I went too long. I'm like, oh my God, you over.

• 12:20Andrew Sharp?

  That's what happens. Been there.

• 12:22Ben Thompson?

  Yeah. So I'm not, I'm not, I'm pretty sure I'm not addicted. I could go a week without coffee. I have. No issue. I greatly enjoy it. It's one of the pleasures of life. But that is, that's, that's basically it. I love coffee.

• 12:36Andrew Sharp?

  There we go.

• 12:36Ben Thompson?

  Have it in the morning, just regular coffee.

• 12:38Andrew Sharp?

  Relationship with it, healthier than me.

• 12:40Ben Thompson?

  I have, uh, Americano, uh, is my go to Starbucks Americano. Starbucks is a great store. I think I've given this take before.

• 12:50Andrew Sharp?

  You have.

• 12:51Ben Thompson?

  Not because it's great, but because it's the same every time.

• 12:54Andrew Sharp?

  Four word podcast here.

• 12:56Ben Thompson?

  We are pro Starbucks.

• 12:57Andrew Sharp?

  Save your bespoke coffee houses. Um, all right. Well, keeping it moving, we have Daniel who says, Sharp, I couldn't help but notice that Ben implied on the last episode that you have a messy garage. When you said you didn't want to charge your car, throwing a little shade at you.

• 13:13Ben Thompson?

  I don't think that's throwing shade. That's just a.

• 13:16Andrew Sharp?

  Well, I'll explain that. My summer mailbag question for Ben, he says, is what is his version of that garage? Is there something that Ben walks by at his house all the time and thinks, I need to take care of it, but he never touches it? Is the, if, if the answer is no, I won't be shocked, but it will be revealing in its own way, perhaps. Maybe he could use a backup antenna on his roof, or a third generator, or more storage space for generators. You always could use a backup generator for your backup generator.

• 13:48Ben Thompson?

  Well, it is funny. I did just buy a, um, uh, you know, we're going into this middle of nowhere. I think they, they supposedly have solar panels and batteries. Uh, and I guess there's a backup generator, but just in case, uh, I did get like this big like anchor battery. It's like this big. Uh, and it has its own solar panels, so you can charge it. So you can always have power, but I figure it's, it is a backup to the backup. I could have like an extra battery.

• 14:13Andrew Sharp?

  If you stay ready, you don't have to get ready. You're ready for anything as you undertake this fishing expedition. I love to see it.

• 14:20Ben Thompson?

  The, yeah, no, I, yes, I have, unfortunately, I have a lot of stuff that I want to get to. Where the problem is, I have ideas of how to solve things. I acquire the components to solve it, and then they are never actually implemented.

• 14:36Andrew Sharp?

  Assembled.

• 14:36Ben Thompson?

  Well, no, they are, but I need like a forcing function to, to get it done. Uh, so you're like, I have a bunch of networking gear, because I have a few ideas, some things I want to do. Then something will happen, and I haven't installed it yet. And then it's like a flurry of like a weekend of getting this all in, and then it's done. But I had the supplies on hand, so, so it does get done eventually. Um, I would say in general.

• 14:58Andrew Sharp?

  Halfway there.

• 14:59Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, organization. I love being organized. I love knowing where stuff is. I love being clean. And I hate organizing. I hate cleaning, and I hate picking up after myself. So there's a real, there's a real tension about what I enjoy and what I'm capable of accomplishing. And that is why, you know, I did, I don't like talking about like I hire people and have like assistants. That's why you hire someone. That, that, that's like, you don't, you don't fix your weaknesses. You make more money so you could pay for someone else to fix them.

• 15:28Andrew Sharp?

  Well, I'm glad that Daniel picked up on the garage comment during the last episode because what you were referring to there was not necessarily a messy garage at my house. But when I bought the house, the previous owner had converted half of a pretty small one car garage into an exercise room and put up a wall halfway through the garage. So the garage I have doesn't actually fit a car and is full of storage. Maybe my garage project would be knocking down the extra wall and just recreating an actual garage for myself, but it's pretty small. It pales in comparison to your massive Midwestern garage. So it's probably not big enough to fit like a modern SUV.

• 16:12Ben Thompson?

  No, I realize this is like the coastal elites don't appreciate a good garage.

• 16:18Andrew Sharp?

  Well,

• 16:19Ben Thompson?

  super important.

• 16:20Andrew Sharp?

  I'll tell you what, not having a garage has made me appreciate a good garage. I go out to Madison and I'm like, man, this is what I need. I feel like you answered this question in part on Stratechery this week. So I wanted to use this as an on-ramp to the vibe coding discussion. So tell people about your problem and your vibe coding solution to the problem.

• 16:43Ben Thompson?

  Well, so I put this one, it's just super fun. Like, like there are a few people that like took it way too seriously. Like I make you pronounce this about the future of AI. And I was just like, like, there was a bit about like, look, there's, there's this delightful like aspect of AI. Number one, there's a bit where I don't think people fully appreciate like how good this stuff is. But then number two, it's like, I feel a bit like a kid again, back in the nineties, putting computers together, like acquiring different parts, like, you know, building, trying to do different things, having all these delusions of grandeur about all these businesses I'm going to start, like how many people put up websites and like all, all, all the bits and pieces.

• 17:22Andrew Sharp?

  And just loving the work. I love the piece on Wednesday because it was pretty whimsical and you felt the joy throughout and having a great time with computers. Like, that's the vibe coding experience that I came away with.

• 17:34Ben Thompson?

  Which is about organizing my garage. So, um, so. The issue I have is, uh, you know, I moved back and, you know, I took one week off of work when moving back, but then I had shipments arriving at multiple times. I had like one air shipment. I had one that came by boat. I had a bunch of suitcases that we brought, uh, like brought when we came back in June, then we went back in July to pack up and brought more stuff back then. Just a lot of stuff coming in. I'm also still working full time and I have a house with all this, you know, lots of good sort of storage opportunities, but the problem is that it's the first storage run is super important.

• 18:16Ben Thompson?

  Cause you have to figure out this is the court area. This is the like, uh, the fishing stuff area. Uh, this is the car stuff area. And so that in the future, when you need to find something, you know where it is. It doesn't help if stuff's put away and you can't find it. So the problem though, is there was so much stuff. The reality that I live in is the house looks relatively neat and organized. Because all that stuff was put on shelves with no organization. Because it's just like, oh, people are coming over. Like we, we're hosting, uh, let's get all this stuff out of the garage. We need to park the cars.

• 18:50Andrew Sharp?

  It's actually great. Your basement is spectacular and looks really clean and organized. And then I stepped into your office last time I was in Madison. I was like, whoa, there's a lot going on in here. So that's a job that still needs to be done.

• 19:05Ben Thompson?

  It's so messy because I don't want to put stuff away. Cause I need to figure out where it needs to be put away first so that I can find it in the future. So you could see I'm in this doom loop, right? Like it's just, it's just a total mess. Now I mentioned, I, I do have someone here that, that works with me, a friend from high school. And it's, you know, it's great. You know, my wife is back and forth. She spends a lot of time in Taiwan, part here. So when particularly when I'm here by myself, sometimes just driving the kid to school or like going to pick stuff up. So I, the, the, it's very beneficial. And he's the one who put all the stuff on the shelves in the first place. Cause it's like a panic. Oh, like, uh, we need to get this stuff out of here. Just do something with it.

• 19:43Ben Thompson?

  Of course, the answer is to have him organize everything.

• 19:47Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 19:48Ben Thompson?

  But if you organize everything, I don't know where it is. So like, like I need to be involved. So the reality is what the answer is, I need to not be involved. How can we get a situation where everything is organized and put away?

• 20:00Andrew Sharp?

  Centralized resource.

• 20:01Ben Thompson?

  But I can still find it. What I need is software. I need an ability to look something up and know where it is. So there's lots of home inventory products on the markets, right? There, if you want to, imagine having enterprise software for your house. That sounds horrible. There's like a gazillion little forms with a checkbox like because they, they're trying. This is the issue with software. So software, what's the magic of it? You write software once and then you can sell it to a gazillion people at zero marginal cost. The problem is to sell to a gazillion people, you have to cover a lot of use cases.

• 20:36Andrew Sharp?

  Needs. Yeah.

• 20:38Ben Thompson?

  The whole like, everyone complains about like, uh, I think there's a point that Steven Sinofsky is made before. Everyone complains about word has so many features. I only need these five features. Everyone feels this way. The problem is their five features are all totally different and they cover the entire gamut of features. The reason why there's so many things there or AWS is like the modern version of this. AWS is so complicated. There's so many services. Have you tried navigating their dashboard? It's unbelievable. Could they just like, why do they have, but everyone feels that way? But what they want are all totally different. That's what happens to these products when you're, but that, that's also very profitable because you, you get scale on this. You sell it to a bunch of people.

• 21:22Ben Thompson?

  Everyone uses word and complains about how cluttered it is, but it has the one feature they need. And then Microsoft makes a gazillion dollars on the way, right? So, um, yeah, so.

• 21:32Ben Thompson?

  It doesn't need to be this way now. What I want is I want software that will solve this problem. And I think the unique constraint is I don't have a large staff. I have one staff. And the brilliance of having someone that you pay is you could make them do stuff that normal people don't want to do. Who wants to go through and actually do all the cataloging, right? And do that sort of stuff. Well, if you're getting paid to do it, it's a lot more like acceptable to sort of get it done. And honestly, he's happy about it too, because instead of us doing a scramble to find something every other day.

• 22:06Andrew Sharp?

  Nonstop dialogue with you.

• 22:07Ben Thompson?

  That's right.

• 22:08Andrew Sharp?

  It's clearly better for him.

• 22:10Ben Thompson?

  That's right. So, but, but this is a unique dynamic where I have a human to do a lot of this work. So I don't need a lot of complexity. I want, I want to get a software that's perfectly tuned to someone like me and how I work and perfectly tuned to having an asset like this person to implement these pieces and making it super simple, super approachable, not having a single feature I don't need, only what's there. This isn't an inventory system. This is, these are important notes, I'll come back to this. It's not like a task management system. It's a look, look up something and find out where it is system and that's it. And it's tuned to, there is someone available and capable to do the grunt work and the

• 22:53Ben Thompson?

  other person involved in this transaction doesn't want to do any work at all. It just wants to be able to find stuff. So because of this, it's a very, the magic here is I can make software that is going to solve this problem and I don't need permission to do it. I don't need to hire a developer. I don't need to try to bend stuff on the market to fit into my niche. I can build a perfectly fitting piece of software to this exact need and that's awesome.

• 23:23Andrew Sharp?

  And what you're doing is you're, you're using QR codes, right? To categorize some of it.

• 23:29Ben Thompson?

  The details of the system, I don't, you know, basically the idea is I'm defining the house by, so I, you know, I have other properties, you know, here, probably my parents is like right down the street. I got their own place. I have some stuff stored there as well, of course. That's actually where the phishing software will go long-term. But I have, so I have the property and then within the property, there's rooms. Within the rooms, there's structures like a shelf or a dresser or whatever. And within the structure, there's an actual storage spot, which is like a single shelf or a single drawer or whatever. So the idea is, uh, he, my assistant now owns storage.

• 24:05Ben Thompson?

  I'm not gonna

• 24:05Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 24:06Ben Thompson?

  The storage, everything's gonna be organized and put away and I'm gonna have zero input into it. He does what makes sense to him.

• 24:12Andrew Sharp?

  So he decides and records.

• 24:13Ben Thompson?

  And

• 24:14Andrew Sharp?

  And we're set.

• 24:14Ben Thompson?

  And then after he's done, he's gonna go through space by space. And this is where the AI is super awesome. How do you catalog everything? Ninety-five percent of stuff, you take a picture of it, it gets it perfect. And then there's like the edge case where you need to make changes or whatever. There's a little bit of flow to the check it.

• 24:30Andrew Sharp?

  So you just take an iPhone photo and it just adds it automatically to the app?

• 24:35Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, yeah, and it fills in all the details. Uh, you could like, you could theoretically.

• 24:39Andrew Sharp?

  That's incredible.

• 24:40Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, and so, uh, it's a you organize everything. So the where the QR codes come in is he doesn't necessarily the QR codes at the start. But later, say you get, you have a new, something shows up in the mail, right? And he's like, this should go here. So he gets the thing, takes a picture of it, puts it on a shelf, scans the QR code of that shelf. And boom, it's in the system in that spot. And then, so you could always find everything. So you search for something, I need, I have right here, I have a, uh, windshield washer concentrate with antifreeze. That is like a specific kind of windshield washer concentrate for, of course, you know, the point of

• 25:15Andrew Sharp?

  Winter?

• 25:15Ben Thompson?

  Yeah, you get a nicer car, you pay up in all sorts of ways. One of these is you have to buy special windshield.

• 25:20Andrew Sharp?

  Okay, great.

• 25:22Ben Thompson?

  So I have this next to my desk because this was a test object, like taking pictures of it. Like, does it already exist in the system? Or does it not like, you know, does it have it sitting around? But the, um, the idea is, yeah, if I need this, I

• 25:34Andrew Sharp?

  I love that you're up late at night testing different objects for your new vibe coded app. How long did it take you to build the app?

• 25:42Ben Thompson?

  It takes longer than you think.

• 25:44Andrew Sharp?

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