Netflix Angst, The End of the Internet, Q&A on Meta’s VR Glasses, Anthropic Alignment, You Can See Everything

Ben and Andrew begin with notes on the future of the podcast before turning to a raft of ominous Netflix shows and a question: what can Netflix fix, and what growth problems are more intractable? From there: A note on Elon’s investment in Skydance, Anthropic solves an NSA mystery, and reactions to a variety of ominous cybersecurity developments from the past several days. At the end: Meeting the Meta VR glasses in person, Anthropic’s branding spawns thoughts on alignment, why Apple has retained the “Siri” branding (so far), reading as an AI bottleneck, olive oil recs, podcast-listening speeds, and Andrew reverses his stance on the new Nathan Fielder movie.

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

• 0:05Andrew Sharp?

  Hello, and welcome back to Sharp Tech, presented to you for the first time ever by Stripe. I'm Andrew Sharp, and joining me on the other side of the couch, Ben Thompson. Our new studio. How you doing?

• 0:18SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, the accidental studio. Uh, the... I, I wanted to make a studio when I moved back here.

• 0:23Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 0:24SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And, but I, like... we really needed the extra bed in case, like, we ever had guests. So I'm like, "I gotta do the sofa bed." It's a very nice sofa bed.

• 0:32Andrew Sharp?

  It's comfortable. Here we are.

• 0:34SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's not the comfortable set, I'll be honest.

• 0:35Andrew Sharp?

  Hmm.

• 0:35SCRIBE_speaker_1

  But- But I did get all this sound stuff in here, and then, like, this works unbelievably well. Every time we are together, I feel the podcast is way better.

• 0:46Andrew Sharp?

  We both love it, absolutely.

• 0:47SCRIBE_speaker_1

  The only problem is, is you're really loud.

• 0:49Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 0:49SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So you need a very well... a very good acoustic space.

• 0:52Andrew Sharp?

  My mic has been turned down in order to account for my podcast voice.

• 0:56SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right. That's right.

• 0:57Andrew Sharp?

  Now here we are.

• 0:58SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, so the chance... So I, I'm super excited. Uh, the Stripe thing does make all this possible.

• 1:03Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like, we've spent a lot of money on this. I'm already having visions of actually a real studio- ... not just my office-

• 1:09Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... that's made into a studio. But, uh, it's super important to me that we are always getting better and-

• 1:16Andrew Sharp?

  Continue to grow

• 1:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... actually delivering.

• 1:17Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:18SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Or you're gonna hear some ads. But I think the podcast, which I've been super proud of where we are, uh, how good Sharp Tech has been, and yet every time we're together, I'm like, "That was-"

• 1:27Andrew Sharp?

  It could be so much better

• 1:28SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... "could be better on this show." Yeah, no, I know. So fine, let's be together, uh, almost every time.

• 1:31Andrew Sharp?

  It's a whole new era-

• 1:33SCRIBE_speaker_1

  There is, there is-

• 1:33Andrew Sharp?

  ... whole new studio

• 1:34SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... there, oh, there is one big problem.

• 1:36Andrew Sharp?

  Here we go. Okay.

• 1:37SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um, we have taken on a dependency on American Airlines.

• 1:40Andrew Sharp?

  That is-

• 1:41SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That is a big problem

• 1:42Andrew Sharp?

  ... the potential fly in the ointment.

• 1:43SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right.

• 1:44Andrew Sharp?

  Wasn't a problem today.

• 1:45SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yep.

• 1:45Andrew Sharp?

  You know, I did sit on the runway for about 30 minutes before I finally got to Madison, but I landed in Madison, had some Culver's. Here we are.

• 1:53SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right. Uh, you know-

• 1:53Andrew Sharp?

  Midwest living.

• 1:54SCRIBE_speaker_1

  If they could sponsor the University of Wisconsin, uh- ... athletic teams-

• 1:57Andrew Sharp?

  That's right

• 1:58SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... they can s- well, for the first one, we had to have our drinks, so.

• 2:00Andrew Sharp?

  Here we go.

• 2:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  We're like, uh... I've been watching a lot of America's Got Talent, 'cause there's this... Did you see the whole Nandini Rai thing? The royal thing.

• 2:05Andrew Sharp?

  Of course you're watching America's Got Talent.

• 2:07SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, I did not watch America's Got Talent.

• 2:09Andrew Sharp?

  This is the type of crap that you watch. This is why I'm afraid to recommend-

• 2:13SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No

• 2:13Andrew Sharp?

  ... things to you. It's sports and America's Got Talent.

• 2:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, no. No, I did not watch any of the shows.

• 2:18Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 2:18SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I watched the YouTube clips. No, there's this girl from Thailand who-

• 2:22Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, yeah. This is your favorite-

• 2:23SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, my God

• 2:23Andrew Sharp?

  ... celebrity right now.

• 2:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, yes, I do have celebrity crushes. Uh, the, so, I mean, not, like, crush as in obsessed with. She's, like, a 16-year-old girl. Let me be clear about that point.

• 2:32Andrew Sharp?

  Let's not get canceled on our first-

• 2:33SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, but she, like, she shows up, is unbelievable. Like, her performance is... Like, her stage presence.

• 2:38Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:38SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And then you realize she's been playing at, like, a night market in Thailand, like, every week since she was, like, 10 years old.

• 2:44Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 2:45SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And it's like it, it's not only is she unbelievably talented, but it's, like, such a, "Oh, no wonder." Like, like, she has all the pieces sort of coming together. Um, anyhow. On American Got Talent-

• 2:55Andrew Sharp?

  How does that relate to this? Okay

• 2:56SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... they always have those sponsored drinks. They're always, like, setting them just right-

• 3:00Andrew Sharp?

  Mm

• 3:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... and taking big swigs. Um, so-

• 3:02Andrew Sharp?

  Maybe that's our trademark, you know?

• 3:04SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah. Culver's.

• 3:05Andrew Sharp?

  Culver's. Not actually a sponsor, but certainly a, a, a sponsor in our hearts.

• 3:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah, I mean, I was gonna say, at this point, clearly, uh, we're for sale. Um- But we're actually not, 'cause we have an exclusive sponsor.

• 3:15Andrew Sharp?

  It is an exclusive deal.

• 3:17SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So, you know, what are you gonna do?

• 3:17Andrew Sharp?

  Well, and just from this point forward, to clarify to anybody who might be lost, who didn't see your Stripe announcement earlier in the week, Sharp Tech is now going to be a public podcast going forward. Every episode will be on YouTube.

• 3:31SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, that's not true.

• 3:32Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 3:33SCRIBE_speaker_1

  There's gonna be members-only episodes.

• 3:34Andrew Sharp?

  Well, I was getting to that.

• 3:35SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Okay.

• 3:35Andrew Sharp?

  There's also gonna be a special sort of bonus episode for Stratechery subscribers. That will be around 30 minutes long, will be released later in the week. Probably on Sundays is when we're going to publish that.

• 3:47SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And how frequently is it gonna actually be 30 minutes long?

• 3:50Andrew Sharp?

  Well, that's gonna be the challenge-

• 3:51SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah

• 3:51Andrew Sharp?

  ... isn't it? I honestly think the issue will be running up against my return flight to Washington-

• 3:56SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right

• 3:56Andrew Sharp?

  ... DC every time-

• 3:57SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Which is fine

• 3:57Andrew Sharp?

  ... we record it, but.

• 3:58SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, but to that point, we're gonna do the extra episode. We're not gonna release it the same day, give you a little breathing room, but we're gonna do that in person, too. Like-

• 4:04Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 4:04SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... we're all in on this. We wanna make... Again, we, we wanna make the best podcast possible. We are still... This is on video, but we will still be on audio. The, the feeds, we are super invested. Hopefully the... Our producer was very worried when we, when we had this idea, and he's like... But then he heard it, he's like, "I hate it when podcasts go from audio to video."

• 4:24Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 4:24SCRIBE_speaker_1

  By the way, it's so weird that he's actually, like, listening to us right now. I'm not used to that. I'm used to, like, an in-person producer. Hi, Jim. Uh-

• 4:30Andrew Sharp?

  Silent partner. Sure.

• 4:31SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right. Uh-

• 4:32Andrew Sharp?

  Third chair

• 4:33SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... but, uh, we want... This is... We're still a podcast.

• 4:37Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 4:37SCRIBE_speaker_1

  We're gonna have great audio. The subscribers only will be audio only.

• 4:41Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:41SCRIBE_speaker_1

  If you're not a subscriber, if you're listening on You- or watching on YouTube, you can subscribe.

• 4:45Andrew Sharp?

  Feel free to subscribe.

• 4:46SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right.

• 4:46Andrew Sharp?

  That's right. Get on the bandwagon. All right. Well, enough prelude. We can jump in. First segment here, the SS Sarandos has hit some turbulent waters over the last seven days or so. I'm sure you've followed all kinds of-

• 5:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, you're the one that said they were washed, right?

• 5:02Andrew Sharp?

  ... bad Netflix news. I did sorta call it in mid-July as far as the Netflix peak, and it's gotten so much worse from there. So we'll start with Rav. Well, not that much worse, but, um, certainly a lot of bad news and bad press over the last week or so. Rav says, "Andrew and Ben, Netflix-"

• 5:19SCRIBE_speaker_1

  They, they've fired executives. They laid off 6% of the workforce. Their stock's down 40%.

• 5:24Andrew Sharp?

  The share price has really taken a-

• 5:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I think it's gotten worse.

• 5:26Andrew Sharp?

  It has gotten worse. He says, "Andrew and Ben," this is Rav, "Netflix reported earnings this week, and the company appears to be at a crossroads. They laid off 6% of staff last week, which included relieving their head of content and chairman of Netflix Film."

• 5:40SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Relieving, by the way.

• 5:41Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah. Well-

• 5:41SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's a great verb- ... in, in this context.

• 5:43Andrew Sharp?

  Well, and I believe the chairman of Netflix Film had to fire the head of content, and then was fired himself, so been a messy week out there. "The Wall Street Journal cited data showing Netflix has fully saturated its US base, and has not added any subscribers this year. Engagement has notably slumped, and is missing targets by 10%. Their current podcasting and gaming initiatives are

• 6:09Andrew Sharp?

  useless. Meanwhile, Netflix has increased its standard subscription price four times over the past five years. They hiked it by 16% in 2025, and 12% in 2026. Given the slowing engagement, another increase will result in the dreaded customer churn." "So," Rav asks- What should Netflix do? The Warner Brothers acquisition was seen as a kill shot,

• 6:34Andrew Sharp?

  but in retrospect, that move was a desperate bid to reinvigorate their content and engagement. Should Netflix make a bid for N- NBC Universal? They wanted Warner Brothers because of HBO, but NBC Universal has something Netflix does not have: sports, Sunday night football, Big 10, the NBA, the EPL, and the Olympics all in a single package. NBC also has a fantastic s- park business, parks

• 6:58Andrew Sharp?

  business, which would put Netflix on the diversified Disney path. Alternatively, Netflix could keep investing in its own content and wait for Skydance to self-implode under its ridiculous debt load, and then vulture the Warner Brothers carcass. Speaking of which, let's take a quick second to acknowledge how atrocious the Ellison family's core investments have performed over the past year. Larry Ellison's Oracle shares are down-

• 7:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, I didn't realize the, I- I saw the numbers there- ... I didn't realize they were part of the email. But-

• 7:28Andrew Sharp?

  They're down 53%. David Ellison's Skydance shares are down 59%, and Jolyn Joo's Bryce Underwood shares- Those are down 99%.

• 7:41SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Are we, sir, not bankrupt?

• 7:43Andrew Sharp?

  I-

• 7:43SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No. Th-

• 7:44Andrew Sharp?

  Look-

• 7:44SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So the Western... Was it Western Michigan or Eastern Michigan? I can't seem to say

• 7:47Andrew Sharp?

  ... Western Michigan.

• 7:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That was like a government bailout of the auto industry. That, the Big Ten-

• 7:52Andrew Sharp?

  Supporting it for a little while longer

• 7:54SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... that's bailing out. Yes, that's the only reason there is a 1%, uh, or, or one basis point left or whatever might be-

• 7:58Andrew Sharp?

  Let me tell li- like 98% of the audience, that's a very specific college football joke from Rav, but also a very funny college football joke-

• 8:08SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yes, just look it up

• 8:08Andrew Sharp?

  ... about Larry Ellison's wife.

• 8:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, Jolyn Joo and Bryce Underwood. Yes.

• 8:11Andrew Sharp?

  Indeed.

• 8:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And then look at Michigan's record.

• 8:13Andrew Sharp?

  So bigger picture, I think Rav's email covers the Netflix status quo fairly well. We've both written a lot about Netflix.

• 8:20SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, the one thing I would push back on is-

• 8:21Andrew Sharp?

  Okay

• 8:21SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... he said given the slowing engagement, another increase will result in the dreaded customer churn. Will it? I don't know.

• 8:27Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 8:27SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's the question, right? 'Cause the, so the, the every time they were asked, and it, the Netflix executives are so funny. I think I've pointed this out before. Everything they do was always their strategy.

• 8:37Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:37SCRIBE_speaker_1

  They've always been doing this all along.

• 8:38Andrew Sharp?

  This was always the plan.

• 8:40SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Even as they're like, they're weaving all over the place, uh, and you know, we're never gonna do ads, now we're doing ads, like as being the most prominent example. But it, in this case, w- what was, it was actually kinda jarring-

• 8:51Andrew Sharp?

  Okay

• 8:51SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... where they've been asked about engagement for several calls now, and they're like, "Ah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." This time they're like, "Yeah, yeah, our engagement is a problem." It's like I'm not, th- unexpected straight talk was not in my w- is not what we usually expect from them on these earnings calls.

• 9:05Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:05SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And these are so controlled, it's actually an improvement now where their head of investment reads questions from analysts. Like it used to be they would do earnings interviews where one like journalist/analyst, often was like a journalist, was allowed to come in and ask questions.

• 9:23Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 9:24SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And it was like, and it was like super controlled. Now multiple analysts ask questions, but it's still read out by a Netflix guy.

• 9:30Andrew Sharp?

  Mm.

• 9:31SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like they, they, it's not a like earnings call where they get somebody in the room.

• 9:34Andrew Sharp?

  That's fascinating. How do they get away with that? Basically one person goes in and asks questions on behalf of the masses?

• 9:40SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, when, when, when your stock price keeps going up and to the right, you get away with a lot of things.

• 9:43Andrew Sharp?

  Sure. Okay.

• 9:44SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So, uh, the, no, but even now though, n- no one is allowed to ask questions. It is a, they send their questions, and then the Netflix guy reads the questions.

• 9:53Andrew Sharp?

  Mm.

• 9:53SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So these earnings calls are very shaped, very controlled how they communicate. This has always been the case. So in this, for them to come out and say, "Yeah, en- uh, engagement is a problem," and to be like pretty explicit about it means it's probably a bit of a problem.

• 10:08Andrew Sharp?

  It's a big problem.

• 10:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And, and, and you layer on top of this, the other thing that, that, that was very notable about talk- well, every time there were, the questions were about engagement, but again, controlled by Netflix, their answer was, "We raised prices and we didn't have higher than normal churn."

• 10:23Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:24SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Which is good.

• 10:26Andrew Sharp?

  Sure.

• 10:27SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Make no mistake, like Netflix's low churn is the key to this business.

• 10:31Andrew Sharp?

  It's the superpower-

• 10:32SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right

• 10:32Andrew Sharp?

  ... they've had for 10 years.

• 10:33SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And for, you know what? The saturation of the US market, that's been the case for a long time. Of course they're gonna have to raise prices in, in part to increase their revenue. But the problem is once the churn shows up, it's too late, right?

• 10:46Andrew Sharp?

  Mm.

• 10:46SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So the, the, the, yes, that's good it hasn't happened yet, but that doesn't mean everything's okay. And if that is your answer, you're basically saying, "Our last line of defense has not yet broken." But you're, the fact you're not listing other things is a problem. And then you layer on top of this, the part I, the, the call that made me a little raise my eyebrows-

• 11:07Andrew Sharp?

  Okay

• 11:07SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... was they had a big advertising miss. They were pr- I think it was $3 billion, they're gonna come in at 2.7.

• 11:12Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And they're like, "Well, we had really audacious goals, 100% growth. We're only gonna have 80% growth. That's still really good." It is really good, but except last year didn't grow as much, like 'cause they had to redo their whole stack.

• 11:23Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 11:23SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And so part of it is like, "Oh, we have certain partnership things that are not in place, that are taking longer. We wanna do it right the first time." All that is reasonable, except that we're in a call, investors are worried about engagement-

• 11:36Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 11:36SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... and the business model that depends on engagement, which is advertising-

• 11:43Andrew Sharp?

  Is not growing

• 11:43SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... is missing. Right.

• 11:45Andrew Sharp?

  Or well, it's growing in relative terms.

• 11:46SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's growing, but not as much as they thought.

• 11:47Andrew Sharp?

  Sure.

• 11:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yes. So.

• 11:48Andrew Sharp?

  Well, and going forward, I, I think it, it's interesting given the news with Netflix, 'cause clearly they're aware that not everything is okay and they're signaling that changes are necessary. I think it's a two, it's a two-track conversation. One is what can Netflix fix, and one is what can't Netflix fix. And as far as what Netflix can fix, they can fix the content issues. Like, the American content has not been good enough recently, and it seems like they recognize that and recognize that the brand has suffered because of the confusion at Netflix. I mean-

• 12:24SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Did you ever watch Stranger Things?

• 12:26Andrew Sharp?

  I did watch Stranger Things. It debuted-

• 12:27SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, I'm playing a Netflix executive where all they would talk about is whatever content-

• 12:31Andrew Sharp?

  That's all they can come back to

• 12:32SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... it's been a decade. Like-

• 12:34Andrew Sharp?

  The Queen's Gambit was really good and won a bunch of Emmys. I think that was six or seven years ago.

• 12:39SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yep.

• 12:39Andrew Sharp?

  And they haven't been able to recreate any of that success. And in terms of Netflix pricing power, I do think having some of those prestige shows... I, I forget who you pointed this out to. It may have been Greg Peters himself. But, like, HBO, one of the reasons they're able to charge what they can charge is because they have one or two tentpole shows that everybody wants to watch per quarter. It's not a-

• 13:03SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right

• 13:03Andrew Sharp?

  ... tremendous amount of great content-

• 13:05SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right

• 13:05Andrew Sharp?

  ... but it's enough great content to protect a pretty good business. Netflix could try to do that, but it seems like they've been trying to do quantity over quality in recent years.

• 13:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Recent years?

• 13:17Andrew Sharp?

  Well, I would say this decade-

• 13:19SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right

• 13:19Andrew Sharp?

  ... for sure because they started out with quirky, quality stuff that really caught people's attention. That's not where they've been living. The other thing that I thought was interesting in your update as a specific content issue is, uh, Bela Bajaria, the now fired head of content, one of the things that was part of her remit was growing the global originals program.

• 13:42SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right. Well, so there's a, uh... One of my favorite ways to insult people in Chinese is, uh, there's these things called, called chungs, which are, like, four characters that have, like, things will get-

• 13:51Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:51SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Have I told this one before?

• 13:52Andrew Sharp?

  Y- well, you've mentioned it in the past.

• 13:53SCRIBE_speaker_1

  All right, it is one of my favorites. Yeah, so, so they all have, like, four adjectives, and you drop one of them and say, "This person is very da, da, da, one, two, and three."

• 14:02Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:02SCRIBE_speaker_1

  You not saying the fourth is, like, a massive insult, right?

• 14:06Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 14:06SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Everyone... It- it's such a beautiful formulation of an insult. Like, very well done. The Chinese are great at stuff like this. So, so, uh, in this case, they, like, they wanna thank the former head of content. Really did a great job internationally. And it's like that, the, meanwhile the rest of the call's all about the US. It's like, uh, yeah, uh, what was unspoken was clear.

• 14:27Andrew Sharp?

  We're in rough shape.

• 14:28SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yes.

• 14:28Andrew Sharp?

  Well, and what's interesting is that, like, Netflix has done really well globally. That's a, that's been a huge part of their success over the last six or seven years, and it's success that other, like, peers have not been able to replicate in any way.

• 14:41SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, in part because they, they're, a lot of the challenges for a lot of the other companies is they're locked into all these distribution agreements.

• 14:46Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:46SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like, they, they work to distribute their shows. Like HBO, for example, with HBO would be only in the US, and so actual HBO content would be sold to other distributors in other countries.

• 14:56Andrew Sharp?

  And that has to be negotiated-

• 14:56SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So like Game of Thrones is like on-

• 14:57Andrew Sharp?

  ... one by one, right?

• 14:58SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right. Well, like-

• 14:59Andrew Sharp?

  Each market

• 14:59SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... well, if you wanna have a global service, you have to get out of those agreements, right?

• 15:03Andrew Sharp?

  Mm.

• 15:03SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And like, and, and, you know, go the other way. So it, there's always a tension with... This is the problem with sports rights, right?

• 15:09Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 15:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like, 'cause a lot, those are also sort of parceled out. And th- uh, a platform like Netflix gets scale by reaching... Th- because they came up by themselves organically, they didn't have a previous business model. It's not just the advantage isn't just that they don't have old business model assumptions, or they're not used to getting money from the cable bundle. It's also they can, like, rethink distribution from first principles.

• 15:31Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:32SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like, it's on Netflix, it's everywhere.

• 15:34Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 15:34SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And you still get some stuff like licensing, so, so some of their licensed shows are not always available everywhere. But, like, Netflix original content usually always is because it was-

• 15:43Andrew Sharp?

  And so that's why they're so much more dominant in, around the world than-

• 15:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right

• 15:48Andrew Sharp?

  ... any of the competitors.

• 15:49SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right. I mean, the, the content will differ a little around the world, but by and large, if you hit Netflix and... So you, you can have a global conversation or something can resonate globally. Like, they've dominated, like, K-pop dramas, I think.

• 16:00Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like, it's been a huge thing, and if you're into K- K-pop, K-pop dramas, K-dramas, Korean dramas-

• 16:06Andrew Sharp?

  K-dramas.

• 16:07SCRIBE_speaker_1

  K-dramas, is that what they're called?

• 16:08Andrew Sharp?

  K-pop, Demon Hunters, and K-dramas.

• 16:10SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah. Uh-

• 16:10Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 16:10SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... you watch the K-pop Demon Hunters yet?

• 16:11Andrew Sharp?

  Not yet.

• 16:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh.

• 16:12Andrew Sharp?

  Not yet. I'll get around to it.

• 16:13SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um, how about, I'll watch the Elizabeth Holmes naked dealer thing-

• 16:16Andrew Sharp?

  You can see everything? Great.

• 16:18SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... if you watch K-pop Demon Hunters.

• 16:19Andrew Sharp?

  I will make that deal, 100%. I'll sit through K-pop Demon Hunters.

• 16:23SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, I'm not signing up for it.

• 16:23Andrew Sharp?

  I'll start singing all the songs on the podcast.

• 16:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, we need to get to your review of that movie, by the way, the response.

• 16:27Andrew Sharp?

  We will.

• 16:28SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um-

• 16:28Andrew Sharp?

  We, we can mention it for sure. Um, anyways, I do think one of the things that's interesting is that Bela Bajaria, she was growing all this international content. You made the point American content done well will also do very well globally-

• 16:44SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, for sure

• 16:44Andrew Sharp?

  ... and they've neglected that.

• 16:46SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right. I mean, they'll always hype up a local show that goes big. By w- by local, I mean non-US.

• 16:51Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 16:51SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like a, like a Korean show or, like, a f- there's talk about some French show, or I, I think actually there, there's a few, uh, Latin American shows that, that tend to do pretty well. But the ones that everyone watch... Like, the old Hollywood being a US export-

• 17:07Andrew Sharp?

  Right

• 17:07SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... still lives. Like, it's so-

• 17:08Andrew Sharp?

  Like, that's still a real thing.

• 17:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right, so the US doing poorly, it d- it affects the whole business in a way any one unit elsewhere doing poorly does not.

• 17:16Andrew Sharp?

  Indeed, and it's important context for all the international success that has been celebrated here. Um, so content side, spending an unbelievable amount of money, empowering the wrong people, making all kinds of weird choices. The Narnia movie sounds like a complete disaster.

• 17:33SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yep. Uh-

• 17:34Andrew Sharp?

  So there's some stuff that they can clean up and just run their business better. What can't Netflix fix as we look at the future here?

• 17:42SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, they can't flix- fix the number of, the amount of, the population number-

• 17:46Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 17:46SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... in the US and other areas market. I mean, that, so you, you can grow three ways. You can grow your number of subscribers, you can grow how much you charge those subscribers, and you can show subscribers ads.

• 17:57Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:57SCRIBE_speaker_1

  This is why the ad business model is so amazing. Um, man, now I feel so... E- every, everything's gonna be interpreted the wrong way now. I've been defending the ad business model forever, and that is because you have infinite capacity to raise prices.

• 18:10Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 18:11SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So when you raise prices on Netflix the service, and this was sort of Raj's or Rob's concern, at some point people are gonna w- Like how much am I paying?

• 18:19Andrew Sharp?

  I would churn, yeah.

• 18:20SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right.

• 18:20Andrew Sharp?

  If, if, if they charge me $30 a month or whatever it is-

• 18:22SCRIBE_speaker_1

  On a very personal level, there's a lot of people that are annoyed they're gonna be paying for a subscription to get ads. But, well, one s- option is I just retire because this is tiring.

• 18:30Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:31SCRIBE_speaker_1

  But n- uh, number two is I just jack up the prices. I'm gonna lose subscribers that way. I want to reach more people, not fewer. And I, like I, it, there's like elasticity is a thing. And this was a whole issue we talked about with the AI companies. It was madness that they're gonna have a consumer business predicated on subscriptions.

• 18:49Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 18:49SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like it's actually incredible how far they got, but at the end of the day, people aren't willing, they don't wanna pay at all if they don't have to. And sometimes you're in situations where there's no real viable way to charge.

• 19:01Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:02SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Hello, YouTube. Uh, or sometimes there's, there's examples where just you're gonna raise prices, you're gonna lose customers.

• 19:08Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 19:08SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like there is elasticity. With ads, you could have raised prices infinitely with no effect on your customer base.

• 19:15Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:15SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Now infinitely is obviously overstating it, but you, this is like Meta's r- Like why is Meta still growing? Just w- they, there's not, they have the same problem. They've saturated everyone. Well, because their ads are like more and more and more valuable over time as they get better and better at targeting them, as they like the gap between them and everyone else sort of increases. And so th- that's why the ad story is so important.

• 19:37Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 19:37SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And this miss, again, allegedly for like weird partnerships that not worked out, whatever it might be, it's like that better be the case and these better come through because what's the growth story? If the growth story is nothing but raising prices, you're running into the RAV nightmare.

• 19:55Andrew Sharp?

  That's my question with Netflix, and I don't wanna underestimate them-

• 19:58SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah, and sorry, the other thing about the, uh, about the rest of the world to mention. The problem is the rest of the world, the prices are just way lower.

• 20:03Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 20:03SCRIBE_speaker_1

  But like how much is-

• 20:04Andrew Sharp?

  You can't make nearly as much money-

• 20:05SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right

• 20:05Andrew Sharp?

  ... in those markets.

• 20:06SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like I think... Yeah, exactly. So.

• 20:07Andrew Sharp?

  Well, and if the fight is for engagement and like, because engagement is elemental to the ad story. And if that's their path to long-term growth, then it looks to me, and it looked to me over the summer when I wrote about Netflix in July, it just looks like the company is at a fundamental disadvantage relative to the rest of-

• 20:29SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, so yeah

• 20:29Andrew Sharp?

  ... the internet.

• 20:30SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So this, so this gets it, this gets into the bigger issue that I was trying to get at with here. And it's funny, I thought like we talk about Netflix a lot, how much is there to say? And now I'm like, "Actually, no, we're only halfway through." I got a lot to get through here. So one of the issues with Netflix is, or the hope for Netflix, he kinda refers to this like wait for Sundance to like blow up.

• 20:47Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:49SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And I've made the point like Hollywood-

• 20:51Andrew Sharp?

  Skydance

• 20:51SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... it feels much, or whatever they are.

• 20:52Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 20:52SCRIBE_speaker_1

  What did I call it?

• 20:53Andrew Sharp?

  It was, uh, it's not Sundance. That's a film festival.

• 20:56SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, whatever.

• 20:56Andrew Sharp?

  Skydance.

• 20:57SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um.

• 20:57Andrew Sharp?

  Invented like two years ago. Who cares?

• 20:59SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah.

• 20:59Andrew Sharp?

  Whatever. Uh-

• 20:59SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, is it Skydance?

• 21:01Andrew Sharp?

  Yep.

• 21:01SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Okay.

• 21:01Andrew Sharp?

  Their stock is also getting hammered.

• 21:03SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah. No, it was listed in that list. Uh, I was too, too distracted by the, by the Underwood reference. Uh, Hollywood is not what is rational-

• 21:13Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 21:13SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... but to what I thought would be rational.

• 21:15Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 21:15SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like the, where the Sony strategy of we're just gonna focus on making content and sell it to the highest bidder. And everyone's, "Nope, we're gonna do our streaming service. Nope, we're gonna buy Warner Brothers," apparently with no like how, idea how we're gonna actually make this profitable. The, again, I think Fox and Sony have been the two really rational actors. Basically, Fox got out of the studio business, and then they're combining Tubi and Roku.

• 21:42Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:42SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Tubi, Roku. Is Tubi the one? Whatever. They, like the, the free services. They're all in on like live ad-supported stuff. Super smart. I think it makes a ton of sense. Sports is obviously a big part of that. And then you have Sony's in the opposite direction. "All we're just gonna do is scripted content. We're not gonna have our own streaming service." I thought everyone should have followed those paths.

• 22:00Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 22:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And basically no one else has. Every, like they're, so they're still in the game. And the problem is it, had everyone sort of bailed on that, then Netflix's content problem would've solved itself. I always thought Netflix doing original content was not what they were good at.

• 22:14Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:14SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It was a bridge to get to a world where they got back to getting all the good content from the people who are best at making content.

• 22:21Andrew Sharp?

  Right.

• 22:22SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And that has never happened.

• 22:22Andrew Sharp?

  And they have leverage in that scenario.

• 22:24SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So it, it's almost like they're, they're the tail end of a whip in a little bit where everyone is still being irrational, but they're good content makers.

• 22:30Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:30SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Maybe that's related. And Netflix is good at business, is like was waiting for them to show up, and they just never showed up. And that's how I interpreted the Warner Brothers thing, was like, "Look, everyone should be selling to us. Fine, we'll just go and buy you, and then you have to sell to us because we own you." And that's why I called it the Hollywood endgame. Like they were trying to force the endgame of what I thought should happen. I think that should still happen, but the issue is who knows how long it's gonna take? It's already taken longer than expected, and they need to, they're an ongoing concern. They need to keep growing. They need, if they wanna keep their stock price high, all these sorts of things that go into companies.

• 23:06Andrew Sharp?

  Would it make any sense for them to buy NBC Universal?

• 23:11SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Sure.

• 23:12Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 23:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I mean.

• 23:13Andrew Sharp?

  Well, they seem like they're out of ideas-

• 23:14SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah

• 23:15Andrew Sharp?

  ... as a starting point with that conversation.

• 23:17SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah. I mean, well, what's really interesting, the sports issue is super interesting. Obviously they've gotten much more into sports recently.

• 23:23Andrew Sharp?

  Well, and that's the real premium content.

• 23:26SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, that is also the, if you have one big event every month-

• 23:29Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 23:29SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... it's like that's enough to keep everyone signed up-

• 23:30Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 23:31SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... to a certain extent, but like as far as a churn avoidance. Sports does a lot for a billion advertising business. It's still the best place to advertise.

• 23:38Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 23:38SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And the, they're allergic to it because sports is structured such that the leagues are going to extract the vast majority of the value.

• 23:46Andrew Sharp?

  There you can't even lie to yourself and say, "Okay, eventually these costs are gonna come down-

• 23:51SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right

• 23:51Andrew Sharp?

  ... because people are gonna go out of business."

• 23:52SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Exactly, but that's always been the case.

• 23:53Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:54SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like the, the, the whole brilliance of the Rupert, when Rupert Murdoch got the NFL was he, I don't, I don't know that Fox has ever made money on the NFL. But we don't talk about a big three, we talk about a big four.

• 24:06Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 24:07SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Because of the NFL. And so Fox has made billions of dollars because of the NFL, even if like on the NFL package specifically, I would, I don't know for sure, but I would guess that they've never made money on, on that narrowly.

• 24:19Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:20SCRIBE_speaker_1

  But it made them into a real network, and then you get all the shoulder stuff, uh, uh, that, that comes from that. And maybe Nef- that's something Netflix is thinking about. Like w- How do we actually build an ad business?

• 24:29Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 24:29SCRIBE_speaker_1

  . An ad business that benefits the whole business.

• 24:32Andrew Sharp?

  And right now, I mean, if they're trying, 'cause they've hire- they brought on, uh, podcasts and cooking shows and, like, internet-friendly content to try to juice the engagement numbers, none of which was mentioned on this call. I mean, you listened to the whole thing, but I saw some notes that basically they didn't mention the podcast, they didn't mention the video game stuff and so-

• 24:54SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, actually, they, the opposite. They were like, "Actually, we're spending all our money on the important stuff. Don't worry. We have a little 5% up there, don't worry about that." So they were, like, very... I think there was a bit where people... That was, it was, it looked bad.

• 25:05Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 25:06SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right? It's like, you're gonna solve your problem with The Ringer?

• 25:08Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah, and, and it's one of those things-

• 25:10SCRIBE_speaker_1

  The Ringer can't solve its own problems

• 25:11Andrew Sharp?

  ... where like six months ago those were all points of emphasis-

• 25:15SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right

• 25:15Andrew Sharp?

  ... and now, it, so you-

• 25:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, exact- but their strategy has always been their strategy

• 25:18Andrew Sharp?

  ... you get the feel-

• 25:19SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's very 1984

• 25:19Andrew Sharp?

  ... of a company that's making it up as they go here.

• 25:22SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, it, it is really like we've, we've always been doing it this way, e- as it's like 180 degrees different than it was a little bit ago.

• 25:28Andrew Sharp?

  Well, and in terms of the broader ecosystem, the extent to which Netflix is dependent on engagement to sell its growth story feels to me like the extent to which Netflix's growth story just isn't as compelling as it used to be.

• 25:42SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, and that's just the... Well, the issue is it's the ad, it's the ad model.

• 25:45Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 25:45SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like, the, the, their growth more and more in the long run is about ads, which means about engagement.

• 25:49Andrew Sharp?

  It's the ad model, but also it's the way people are consuming entertainment these days. Like, Meta is a real competitor to-

• 25:56SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah. Well, that's-

• 25:57Andrew Sharp?

  ... what Netflix wants to be.

• 25:57SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I mean, honestly, that's the real problem-

• 25:59Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 25:59SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... is TikTok and Reels. It's devouring everything.

• 26:02Andrew Sharp?

  And, like, how many people are sitting down and watching Meta Reels every night? Actually, a staggering number of people-

• 26:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right

• 26:09Andrew Sharp?

  ... are choosing that over Netflix, and I think that's what they've been running into-

• 26:14SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah. I mean, I don't-

• 26:14Andrew Sharp?

  ... over the last couple years

• 26:15SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... I don't consume video content. Um, again, another great irony here. So I, I don't- But, uh, no, I, I was, actually, I discovered-

• 26:21Andrew Sharp?

  But here we are. Look at these cameras

• 26:23SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... I discovered, I know. I discovered the quality of the audio content in this room 'cause I, like, did, like, a, a podcast with my daughter.

• 26:28Andrew Sharp?

  Yep.

• 26:28SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, and which I, I never did publish, but I thought that it was pretty good.

• 26:32Andrew Sharp?

  Um, I loved it. She was great.

• 26:34SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And she was a huge Netflix consumer.

• 26:37Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:38SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And I didn't ask her about this specifically, but she talked about, oh, she has her little Reels time every night.

• 26:42Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 26:42SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And it's like, it, it just occurred to me right now, oh yeah, that's a perfect example.

• 26:46Andrew Sharp?

  That's when the light bulb went off with me. My wife has her Reels time-

• 26:50SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah

• 26:50Andrew Sharp?

  ... every single night, and she'll just sit over there on her phone. I'm like, "What are you doing?" And she doesn't know. She doesn't have a good answer beyond just watching Reels. So, uh, that's the challenge for Netflix, is a lot of people who used to watch Netflix are now watching Instagram and TikTok. Um, and that will be a headwind as they try to build out the-

• 27:07SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, it's a headwind if, if your growth story is all ads

• 27:09Andrew Sharp?

  ... ads business. Yeah, exactly. All right. One other note related to the streaming world, just because I came across it and was kind of, uh, gobsmacked. Uh, The Hollywood Reporter this week wrote, "Could a major deal between David Ellison's Skydance and Elon Musk's SpaceX be brewing? The media mogul John Malone thinks so. 'I think there's a deal coming there,' Malone said, citing an eyebrow-raisingly specific

• 27:34Andrew Sharp?

  $8 to $10 billion investment figure. 'I predict, big prediction, that you'll see a global output deal for Skydance with SpaceX and an investment by SpaceX into Skydance to de-lever Skydance and take a little bit of the burden off David Ellison's shoulders, because he's taking on a pretty big pile of debt.' What exactly would SpaceX get in that deal? That's less

• 27:59Andrew Sharp?

  obvious," The Hollywood Reporter notes. Though Malone, who was the architect of the Warner Brothers Discovery deal alongside David Zaslav, noted that Musk and David Ellison's father, Larry Ellison, are very intertwined. "Who helped Elon finance Twitter when he bought it? Larry Ellison," Malone said. "How did Larry Ellison come up with some of the money to put into the creation of Skydance? Tesla stock. And I would not doubt for a minute that before very long you're gonna see an announcement." And then Thursday morning there was news-

• 28:30SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, I actually didn't know this until this morning.

• 28:33Andrew Sharp?

  Elon-

• 28:33SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Been a little busy getting stuff set up. I was gonna, like... I, I, well, number one, basically whatever, uh, John Malone says is likely the gospel truth, so-

• 28:43Andrew Sharp?

  Exactly

• 28:43SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... I was like, that's-

• 28:44Andrew Sharp?

  That's why-

• 28:44SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... reasonable to believe it

• 28:45Andrew Sharp?

  ... I clicked on this story. I was like, okay, I guess if John Malone is saying it-

• 28:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right

• 28:48Andrew Sharp?

  ... there must be something real here.

• 28:49SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right. So, but that, that's gonna sort of poo-poo or the idea, say, well, yeah, they are buddies. But, oh, uh, there you go, news breaking on the show.

• 28:55Andrew Sharp?

  Elon, a billion dollars into Skydance, not $10 billion, but maybe that's coming. I have no idea what SpaceX would get out of this-

• 29:04SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Wait

• 29:04Andrew Sharp?

  ... investment.

• 29:05SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Is, is it from Elon Musk-

• 29:06Andrew Sharp?

  I think-

• 29:06SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... or is it from-

• 29:06Andrew Sharp?

  From Elon today.

• 29:08SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah

• 29:08Andrew Sharp?

  ... Thursday as we record this.

• 29:10SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah. Uh, an investment from s- from SpaceX would be -

• 29:14Andrew Sharp?

  Straining the bounds of credulity?

• 29:17SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well-

• 29:17Andrew Sharp?

  So-

• 29:18SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I-

• 29:18Andrew Sharp?

  ... this Ouroboros, like, I don't really understand what's happening

• 29:21SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... No. So, uh, the, the first time I wro- I, I've written about Tesla very little, and people sometimes wonder why. And part of it is just, like, writing about anything Elon related, even before, like, our politics went particularly crazy over the last few years-

• 29:34Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 29:35SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... was like writing about any hot button political issue, because the Elon zealots are just like-

• 29:42Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah. Six-dimensional chess, and you either see it or you don't.

• 29:46SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right. Like, they might be right, but it doesn't make them any less annoying. It, actually, the more right they are, the more annoying they are, which is, I guess, f- fair enough. But, uh, I wrote about Tesla, I wrote, it's a Tesla, when they opened up the Model 3 and they had all these orders overnight. They finally had an affordable Tesla and it just went crazy. And I talked about how they built, they built up the, um, the, built up the brand-

• 30:09Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 30:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... and how that sort of paid off. And the next week they did this crazy deal for, like, Elon's brother-in-law solar thing or something like that. And I'm like

• 30:22SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's insane. I don't wanna write about this. This is not worth it. Like, I will write about Elon buying-

• 30:28Andrew Sharp?

  This can't be my peak

• 30:28SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... like one every three years.

• 30:30Andrew Sharp?

  Exactly.

• 30:30SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I know, exactly. Um, so that was, that would... If SpaceX invested this, that would be, that would be the same wines.

• 30:35Andrew Sharp?

  Yes. I read it only to say that might happen, and at a certain point with Skydance and with Elon, I just throw up my hands. So the debt that Skydance has taken on is completely ridiculous, and I have no idea how they could sustain it over the next several years, but maybe they'll find a way. Maybe Elon will be part of that story. So, ah, time will tell in the streaming world here. For now,

• 31:00Andrew Sharp?

  to keep it moving, as I mentioned earlier, Ben, we are presented by Stripe today. Whole new era. I'm gonna read a note from Gurgly Orzas on Twitter. "This week, Stripe announced they are sponsoring the Mercedes F1 team, and they are becoming the first ever exclusive sponsor for Stratechery. The second one in my book is possibly a bigger achievement than the first. Mercedes has, and always had, dozens of sponsors. Stratechery has never had any." I for one, just for the record, am absolutely delighted to be one step removed from the Mercedes family these days.

• 31:36SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, as you know, I've always been a big Mercedes fan. It's always been my number one team. Um, no, there's, for me there's two ways I could take the Mercedes news. Number one, I could pretend like now my views are being influenced by Stripe and-

• 31:47Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 31:47SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... then be Mercedes. I went with that one. The other one was, uh, reiterating that Mercedes, they, they control the FIA. They manipulated the rules. It's unbelievable they get an engine upgrade and Red Bull doesn't.

• 31:59Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 32:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's absurd. Screw this T- no, it's all good. I've had a trail of independence. I go both directions. Uh, no, uh. Yeah, well, the funny about this is, uh, it is not Stratechery's first sponsor. So when Stratechery went independent, I had sponsors for like two months.

• 32:14Andrew Sharp?

  I didn't know this until your announcement post.

• 32:17SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yep. Uh, the... I know WordPress was one of them, which I appreciate them. Uh, and WordPress also, WordPress.com, sponsored another company that I'm just intrinsically not gonna, cannot be unbiased-

• 32:28Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 32:28SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... about. Uh, Googie Hokos. I work with them, used to work there. Uh, I think MailChimp did, who, again, another company I worked with and for. But if you go back, I should go back and g- like find the list of like... 'Cause I've... God bless them. Anyone who has sent me. But like at the end of the day, it's like I could not charge a lot for ads back then.

• 32:46Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 32:47SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It was a lot of work, and it was just the math, like-

• 32:49Andrew Sharp?

  It would not have been a business that sustains a family for you.

• 32:52SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right. Do you think y- you know, I've, I've since then, 'cause I've counseled a lot of people who want to go independent. And people will start with the, "Oh, I'm gonna do this and this and this." I'm like, "No, you're not."

• 33:00Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:01SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I'm like i- i- it... the cost, the payoff's not worth it. And it's gonna take you so much time and energy. You, like you, one person, you have to focus on one thing. And if you're small, it has to be maximizing your, your revenue per user through subscriptions. Like, be super narrowed, be super focused, deliver on that, become indispensable for a small number of people who will give you a lot of money-

• 33:25Andrew Sharp?

  And grow from there

• 33:26SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... in the long run, you might be able to do sort of other things.

• 33:29Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 33:29SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And you know, we are now 12 years past that.

• 33:32Andrew Sharp?

  And Stripe is-

• 33:33SCRIBE_speaker_1

  A little bit more capacity

• 33:33Andrew Sharp?

  ... an other thing.

• 33:34SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah. Um.

• 33:34Andrew Sharp?

  Here we are.

• 33:35SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So, uh, but yeah, so that's why. So I built on those super quickly. I'm like, "No, I just have to build, build this business." Um.

• 33:41Andrew Sharp?

  So 13 years later, why Stripe?

• 33:45SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, the, the Stripe part is easy. The, the, as far as choosing them.

• 33:48Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:49SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh,

• 33:51SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I can write about, like, why ads make sense. We have a lot of attention. We should capitalize that. We wanna get more attention, like just, you know, especially with the podcast. W- uh, Sharp Check has been very successful, very high penetration amongst Sub- Stratechery subscribers. Turns out our thesis about it driving new subscriptions doesn't really, doesn't really work.

• 34:11Andrew Sharp?

  It's hard if you're not gonna be free and public.

• 34:13SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right. That's right.

• 34:14Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 34:14SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And I, I think it's a good... I think the show is good and deserves to be larger and bigger and better. And so that's part, that's sort- sort of part, part of the calculus there. And Stripe, you know, Stripe helps make that possible. But at the same time, it is a big change. I understand people who feel, I don't know if they're betrayed or disappointed or whatever it might be, and I can feel that a bit too.

• 34:35Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:35SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like the... You know, particularly if I was gonna, you know, everyone has the dream of like, "Let me get, like, a luxury company to sponsor me," right? I have, like, I have an affluent audience. Rolex, how about you come sign up, right? Or, uh, or LVMH. You're like, y- your stock's down. Why don't you, you see the Stratechery audience can pick you up a little bit there.

• 34:50Andrew Sharp?

  Sure.

• 34:52SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um, but realistically-

• 34:53Andrew Sharp?

  LVM or not, I mean

• 34:53SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... yeah, I mean, realistically, you know, amongst the companies that would find this compelling, they're going to be close to or adjacent to what I cover.

• 34:59Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:59SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And the cool thing about Stripe and is, number one, unabashed believer in, supporter in, of Stripe. I mean, when I was proposing to you the companies, what, what was your line?

• 35:13Andrew Sharp?

  Uh, I would still be a lawyer if not for Stripe.

• 35:15SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah, that's our tagline.

• 35:16Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 35:17SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, I would still be a lawyer if not for Stripe.

• 35:18Andrew Sharp?

  Which, by the way, is literally true because what Stripe enables with the independent creator system and the ecosystem and the, and s- a subscription basketball podcast, like, I would not have been able to stay in the media-

• 35:34SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right

• 35:34Andrew Sharp?

  ... while practicing law full time.

• 35:35SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, Sports Illustrated is imploding with everyone else in media. You get laid off.

• 35:38Andrew Sharp?

  And I had a bunch of offers to do ad-supported podcasts, but had I gone that direction, it, it just would not have been sustainable with the workload I had at a law firm. I needed to be able to create my own schedule and sort of exist as an independent-

• 35:51SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right

• 35:51Andrew Sharp?

  ... publisher, which Stripe makes possible. Like, I would never be able to figure out payments without that sort of thing. And by remaining in the media, like, that led me here.

• 36:01SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah.

• 36:01Andrew Sharp?

  So it, I do owe a lot -

• 36:03SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right

• 36:04Andrew Sharp?

  ... to Stripe as a platform.

• 36:05SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So number one, it's like super genuine. And then number two, just the reality is, uh, because I've been so dependent on Stripe from the beginning, because we work closely with them, with Passport, and because I've had the good fortune to get to know Patrick and John sort of over the years, I've always, like... Actually, a, a subscriber, I was writing about A- Adyen, Adyen, see what I go, being biased.

• 36:24Andrew Sharp?

  Mm.

• 36:24SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, the European payments-

• 36:26Andrew Sharp?

  Sure

• 36:26SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... um, entity. And I th- you know, and he- I wrote something and he's like, "You're too in the bag for Stripe." And I'm like, "I don't think I was in this analysis." But then I think about it, I'm like- I try to be objective, but of all the companies in tech, there's a few that's just difficult.

• 36:41Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:41SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And they were on there, so it's like I love this company. How about I just lean into the conflict? Like guess what?

• 36:49Andrew Sharp?

  What?

• 36:49SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Everything I say about Stripe, take with a grain of salt.

• 36:51Andrew Sharp?

  That was a layer of the announce-

• 36:52SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's a romantic. I do really love it, so there you go

• 36:54Andrew Sharp?

  ... that was a layer I was not prepared for, is actually I'm gonna cover fintech more going forward now that I can do it-

• 36:59SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I, I-

• 37:00Andrew Sharp?

  ... with a clear conscience

• 37:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... think there's an aspect to that. Like I, like I, I can't say that for sure.

• 37:04Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 37:04SCRIBE_speaker_1

  But it's been in the back... Like there's a lot interesting around stable coins, for example, or Stripe with they're doing w- um, like Blink, for agents and all this. It's actually a very interesting layer.

• 37:13Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:13SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And I think there, and um, you know, we'll see. Maybe there's gonna be some information that, that we'll be able to uncover from Stripe with a closer connection. All this is to, to be determined. But there's an aspect of if something's uncomfortable, actually just go into it all the way.

• 37:27Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 37:27SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, and-

• 37:28Andrew Sharp?

  Well, here we go

• 37:29SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... we're kind of doing that right now.

• 37:30Andrew Sharp?

  Absolutely.

• 37:31SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So there we go.

• 37:31Andrew Sharp?

  And to your point, I don't have to fake my enthusiasm for any of what Stripe makes possible-

• 37:37SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right

• 37:37Andrew Sharp?

  ... which is pretty cool.

• 37:38SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, it's great. Yeah.

• 37:39Andrew Sharp?

  As, as far as the partnership is concerned.

• 37:39SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's good to have an ad that you work a company you believe in, so I'm very lucky in that regard.

• 37:43Andrew Sharp?

  Could S- could Stratechery have survived as a business model? Like would it have been viable without Stripe?

• 37:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, the only option, the only option... I thought about subscriptions for ages. PayPal was the only option. There was tons of problems with that. Like it was just, uh, I mean, that was the... There was people who, who had tried it, and that was part of it being a big disaster. When Stripe came out with subscription API, the, like to me it was very clear, like this is what the model should be. I started Stratechery with the goal it being the subscription business-

• 38:10Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 38:10SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... because of, because of Stripe. So-

• 38:13Andrew Sharp?

  There we are.

• 38:14SCRIBE_speaker_1

  There we go.

• 38:14Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah. And here we are now. Um, all right. Well, to keep it moving, we have some news in the cyber universe. Um, and I don't know where to begin. I'm just, there are-

• 38:27SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, this tweet is pretty good.

• 38:28Andrew Sharp?

  There are eight different cyber issues that-

• 38:31SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right

• 38:31Andrew Sharp?

  ... have been rearing their heads.

• 38:32SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I don't... How many, how many did you list here? Uh.

• 38:34Andrew Sharp?

  Uh, well, no. Here's, I'll just read, NSA this week wrote, "Effective immediately, all organizations using PHP for their systems-

• 38:43SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, by the way, did you see the thing about the, the, uh, the elliptical, uh, s- well, there's the NSA, another NSA story this week that is actually super interesting.

• 38:53Andrew Sharp?

  No.

• 38:54SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So, uh-

• 38:55Andrew Sharp?

  Elliptical? Elliptical trainers?

• 38:56SCRIBE_speaker_1

  There, there's elliptical curves. It's a ty- it's a type of encryption that is like a-

• 38:59Andrew Sharp?

  Not elliptical trainers. Okay.

• 39:01SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, it's not elliptical trainers. Uh, but basically you, you have, you need some seeds that generate curves based, and it's how you can effici- it's actually a very efficient way to encrypt things-

• 39:12Andrew Sharp?

  Mm

• 39:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... more encrypted than, than like, than using hashes. Uh, but the idea is you wanna be able to encrypt things, and you have a public key and a private key. You can pa- you have the, the other side and you can decrypt it, and it's easy to get encrypted, but hard to get decrypted unless you have the right key. Uh, but a particular style is called a- elliptical, elliptical, and it depends on certain seeds, like that, that, uh, generate it, whatever it might be. And, um, the seeds came from the NSA-

• 39:36Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, wow

• 39:36SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... for this type of encryption.

• 39:37Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 39:38SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And no one, there was like stories about like, oh, there was some funny catchphrase or something, but no one could remember what the seeds were. I was like, "How, how are these seeds cho- like is there something, like there's no obvious reason why it shouldn't matter what the seed is. The, based on the encryption works, but maybe they did s- there's something about this that we don't know. The NSA k- is like crack... So part of this is, uh, Bitcoin uses elliptical, uh, cryptography, or their, their, their, their elliptical curves. But they use a different set than what everyone else uses.

• 40:12Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 40:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And E- Ethereum's the same way. Why? Because they assume the NSA was like-

• 40:16Andrew Sharp?

  Ah

• 40:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... behind this. So it turns out, so, uh, Anthropic, cool AI story, doing random stuff, they like, everyone had heard this myth of there's like these joking phrases that were used, and they're like, "Let's back up. Let's throw away assumptions and have Claude, or some version of Claude, think through how these passphrases might've been made."

• 40:39Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:39SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And it turns out, if you take what was a standard pseudorandom number generator and combine it with a s- specific date and time around the time the seeds were generated, that's where it came from.

• 40:51Andrew Sharp?

  Oh.

• 40:52SCRIBE_speaker_1

  All that happened, the NSA just ran a program- ... that generated some seed numbers and handed them over. It was not, so all this assumption that it was like they were doing something dodgy, no, it was just there's nothing wrong with them. They were just- ... someone ran a program at a particular moment in time and handed over some seeds.

• 41:08Andrew Sharp?

  There you go.

• 41:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh-

• 41:10Andrew Sharp?

  Well, that might be-

• 41:10SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Funny AI story

• 41:11Andrew Sharp?

  ... the most benign update of the week, uh, because the other note on the NSA is-

• 41:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Sorry, we didn't finish the tweet. Yeah

• 41:17Andrew Sharp?

  ... "Effective immediately, all organizations using PHP for their systems are advised to be prepared for an update addressing two critical vulnerabilities. PHP is widely used for web applications. These vulnerabilities often provide a direct path to the server's file system or database. If an immediate update is not feasible, it is recommended that t- organizations take the system offline until it can be fully mitigated. NSA will follow up shortly with more specific guidance." So as I said, that's one of like a couple different threads that are pretty ominous this week.

• 41:56SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, you, you took care of this, right?

• 41:57Andrew Sharp?

  Uh, I have not taken care of anything, anything related to PHPs or security certificates. Haven't taken any of my websites offline. Sharptext.net still live. What do you think? Should I be?

• 42:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Sharp- sharptext.net is a WordPress site. Uh-

• 42:12Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, boy.

• 42:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... you are, you have a PHP, you haven't fixed it?

• 42:15Andrew Sharp?

  Uh, no. I, I don't, how, how would I fix it? Is this a bit? 'Cause you're scaring the crap out of me.

• 42:23SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, don't worry, it was fixed for you. Um-

• 42:24Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, thank you so much.

• 42:26SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, I didn't fix it. Uh, I, like any sane person who has anything exposed to the internet, uh, have contracted it out to professionals to take care of it. In this case, uh, Pressable, which is a WordPress comp- or an automatic company-

• 42:37Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 42:38SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... hosts your site. Uh, this is, as part of the disclosure process, it's actually been patched for a while, not, not just this week, I believe.

• 42:45Andrew Sharp?

  Great.

• 42:46SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, so congratulations on that.

• 42:47Andrew Sharp?

  Thank you so much.

• 42:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um, but yeah, it is... So it's kinda funny because there, there's a, there's whole lists of stuff that happened this week. Some of it is probably AI-derived, some of it might not be. In, particularly this, this PH- I, I, I don't... Well, there's another story. This certificate story.

• 43:05Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 43:06SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um, this one is particularly insane, which is, uh, I'm gonna come back to the PHP one. This other story, there is, there is a company from India. So there's certificates that are issued... The problem with encryption or whatever, there has to be something at the bottom. We've talked about this in the context of like smartphones, right? At the end of the day, you are trusting Apple because-

• 43:25Andrew Sharp?

  Sure

• 43:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... ultimately it has to, like all encryption has to go down to something.

• 43:29Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:29SCRIBE_speaker_1

  There has to be something at its root. And in the case of stuff online, how do you have a trusted transaction with like an Amazon?

• 43:37Andrew Sharp?

  How?

• 43:38SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, there is cer- there are certificates that are issued by these auth- like everyone agrees they're an authority. They're embedded inside your browser and inside like your operating system, and it s- and then you get... So I have a k- our websites have keys. Uh, there's a service called Let's Encrypt. It lets you get keys very easily, but it's all based on these like baseline certificates.

• 44:01Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:01SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That everyone agrees that if you have a key that matches that, it's secure. So when you go to an amazon.com, there's a little lock in your browser. If you go somewhere and it will throw up that scary screen, "This site is not secure," what it means is they don't have a, a, a certificate that is issued by one of these certificate issuers. So a certificate issuer in India, uh, it's not clear what happened. They're blaming software.

• 44:23Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 44:23SCRIBE_speaker_1

  But these are supposed to be 256-bit encrypted ha- like so 256 unique n- like digits-

• 44:31Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 44:31SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... or letters or numbers or symbols. Their, their numbers were like four.

• 44:39Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, boy.

• 44:39SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Or like 127. It appears-

• 44:41Andrew Sharp?

  A little easier to decrypt

• 44:43SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... it appears they interpreted 256-bit as a number between zero and 255 or something like that. It's unbelievable.

• 44:53Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 44:54SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um, it's, uh, it's, it's hard-

• 44:57Andrew Sharp?

  You're so visibly disgusted.

• 45:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's unbelievable. And the problem is-

• 45:02Andrew Sharp?

  So-

• 45:02SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So the, the-

• 45:02Andrew Sharp?

  What does that put at risk?

• 45:04SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, not... So a- all, you, number one, make sure your browser's up to date. Well, all the browsers and stuff have been, have been updated to, to exclude these.

• 45:11Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 45:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  But look around this of- how many things in this office are connected to the internet?

• 45:17Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, my God.

• 45:17SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like, I, I'm worried about running around with like IP addresses.

• 45:19Andrew Sharp?

  Honestly, like 150 different machines.

• 45:21SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um, which is not true 'cause I have like different view on stuff. But the ev- like all this Internet of things stuff out there, a lot of them will have like trusted certificates like deeply embedded in there.

• 45:31Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 45:31SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Are those gonna ever be updated?

• 45:32Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 45:32SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like, um, there's, uh, so like, it's just, this is per- this certificate issue is going to persist where people can basically impersonate-

• 45:43Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 45:43SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... that you're trusted. And it's just, it's gonna, it's gonna persist like forever.

• 45:49Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 45:49SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's gonna be this permanent damage done to the internet of these-

• 45:53Andrew Sharp?

  Because of one company's-

• 45:55SCRIBE_speaker_1

  These ideo-

• 45:56Andrew Sharp?

  ... incompetence

• 45:56SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... right. So you get back to this PHP issue. PHP, uh, they are, the PHP Foundation is, uh, issued a patch for everything, I believe, from 8.2 on. I think 8.2 came out in 2022. There are millions of websites, millions of things out there that have older versions of PHP, or even if they have a newer version of PHP, are they gonna be updated immediately?

• 46:20Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:20SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And this bug is so bad that if you go to a c- a site that has it, you can take control of the machine, like basically immediately.

• 46:28Andrew Sharp?

  Wow.

• 46:28SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like, it's extreme- that's why the NSA is putting out tweets about this.

• 46:31Andrew Sharp?

  Take your stuff offline if you haven't fixed it.

• 46:33SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And this stuff is everywhere.

• 46:35Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:35SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And a lot of it's old. And there's a co- it's really interesting because there is a, there's this, there's like a political and sociological and technol- technology story here.

• 46:50Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 46:52SCRIBE_speaker_1

  The internet connected everything, made everything global, and everything being connected and being global is what's gonna bring the internet down.

• 47:02Andrew Sharp?

  That's the vulnerability right now.

• 47:03SCRIBE_speaker_1

  The internet seeded AI. It gave all the content for AI.

• 47:07Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:07SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And AI is devouring the internet. There is this like, it, it, we,

• 47:14SCRIBE_speaker_1

  we overstretched ourselves- ... like as a species with the internet.

• 47:17Andrew Sharp?

  From dust to dust.

• 47:18SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So there was-

• 47:19Andrew Sharp?

  Here we go

• 47:19SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... there was, there was a big controversy a few years ago, or a lot of pushback, argument like, so the US is always, I think it's, I should have checked it, like UCAN or something. There's like a, a internet governance body-

• 47:31Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 47:31SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... that's controlled by the US, and there was a lot of like, I can't remember if it ever got, got, got changed or not or undone, but, um-

• 47:38Andrew Sharp?

  But that wasn't popular with the rest of the world.

• 47:40SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No. Right, right.

• 47:41Andrew Sharp?

  Okay. Sure.

• 47:41SCRIBE_speaker_1

  But then you see something like this, and you're like, "Was it a good idea to let the world issue certificates- ... that everyone is gonna trust on?"

• 47:49Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 47:49SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Is gonna, is gonna trust. And that is a very biased sort of American statement, but it, what I'm, what I'm getting at is the internet, the way that it is constructed, it entails so much trust for so many people, for so many entities-

• 48:03Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 48:04SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... and it might not work out. Right?

• 48:07Andrew Sharp?

  Well, and particularly so now that AI has emerged and can exploit any sort of vulnerabilities.

• 48:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So the AI comes along-

• 48:13Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 48:13SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... it finds these vulner- so no, so it's different one, to be clear. That's not an AI one. That is a sheer incompetence-

• 48:18Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 48:19SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... one. The PHP one, I would, I, I haven't looked at the details. I would imagine AI helped discover it. AI's gonna find way more. The, my big takeaway from this though, and this goes back to m- my sort of getting, having a vulnerability, um, again, stupidly my fault-

• 48:35Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 48:35SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... which was caught by Quad. I think everyone's like, "I don't wanna set these AI agents loose on my computer. I don't trust them." We're very rapidly approaching if we have not yet already gone over the line of you are nuts if you don't have-

• 48:50Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 48:50SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... an AI agent looking at all your stuff-

• 48:52Andrew Sharp?

  Because-

• 48:53SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... all the time

• 48:53Andrew Sharp?

  ... your agent is what caught the vulnerability.

• 48:56SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, just in general. You- there's, there's gonna be so many vulnerabilities, stuff's gonna be patched all the time-

• 48:59Andrew Sharp?

  I'm just saying that was an example of the AI agent, like, actually-

• 49:02SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right, for sure

• 49:03Andrew Sharp?

  ... securing your environment.

• 49:03SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah, no, for sure. And that was sort of on accident, but like I, we, you know, we have, I've, my, you know, I have a rack. Did you know? I'll show you the rack later. Have you seen the rack?

• 49:11Andrew Sharp?

  I, I went into the other room and saw the rack. It's a great rack.

• 49:14SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah. It really is a great rack. Uh, now again, all that is purposely kept offline to the greatest extent possible, uh, you know, all behind Tailscale. I, I don't want... Anything serving the public internet should not be at my house. It should be, like, that's what I pay professionals to do. Um, I will note, like, my version of Linux had the old certs.

• 49:32Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:32SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I'm like, "Oops." I didn't have, 'cause it w- I,

• 49:38SCRIBE_speaker_1

  uh, w- it was like, it was bad by me 'cause I think the, the fix by, I don't know, was issued, but I need to have the, I need to have a watcher going that is keeping stuff, a regular schedule-

• 49:48Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 49:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... which I had, uh, but regular updates, and then something that is deputized to keep track of this all the time.

• 49:56Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:57SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And this idea that, "No, I can't let it, I don't trust it," it's like, you need to stop trusting yourself.

• 50:05Andrew Sharp?

  Let go of the reins-

• 50:05SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right

• 50:06Andrew Sharp?

  ... because you're screwed otherwise.

• 50:08SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I-

• 50:08Andrew Sharp?

  Because there are-

• 50:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right

• 50:09Andrew Sharp?

  ... so many threats-

• 50:10SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right

• 50:10Andrew Sharp?

  ... and potential vulnerabilities.

• 50:11SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right. Uh, and so, you know, of course everyone can, should be proactive in looking for these bugs. Uh-

• 50:18Andrew Sharp?

  Right, and I, it's hard because it's difficult to podcast about it right now because there are so many different vectors that have been highlighted this week, and I... So many. There are, like, six or seven ongoing stories here, and so I'm hesitant to talk in, like, ambiguous language, like, "Oh, things are getting bad." It just, when you read some of the headlines, it does feel like things are beginning to-

• 50:41SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh-

• 50:41Andrew Sharp?

  ... crack to some degree.

• 50:43SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah. No, we, we said this-

• 50:44Andrew Sharp?

  And there's been sort of a groundswell

• 50:44SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... we said this was coming. It, it's gonna get worse and worse and worse.

• 50:47Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah. Um-

• 50:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like, until...

• 50:51SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And d- it feels like the end of the internet. Like, we, the, the internet, the old internet of I'm gonna throw up a WordPress site.

• 50:58Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:59SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I used to do it all the time. I've had a bunch of WordPress sites over the years. Uh, I'm gonna run my own email server. That, that's dead. That's been dead for a long time. No email gets delivered if it's not sent by, like, one, one of the big ones. Uh, this, this, the whole promise of the internet, of the-

• 51:13Andrew Sharp?

  Openness

• 51:13SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... openness, a million nodes, you can connect and be connected to anyone else, BBSs hosted on someone's, like, dri- you know, server in their basement. We are fortunate, everyone who's listening to this who knows anything of what I just said-

• 51:27Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 51:27SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... you should consider yourself fortunate 'cause it was a moment in time.

• 51:31Andrew Sharp?

  A golden era.

• 51:32SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It, it will never return. It will never-

• 51:34Andrew Sharp?

  Well, what do you... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait

• 51:35SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... it's impossible to return

• 51:36Andrew Sharp?

  ... wait. What do you mean by that? Like, what would a new version look like?

• 51:40SCRIBE_speaker_1

  There will be no new version.

• 51:41Andrew Sharp?

  We can't patch our way around?

• 51:43SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, absolutely not. Everything is g- so the, one of my favorite, um, oh, what's the, uh-

• 51:49Andrew Sharp?

  Honestly, I won't miss it too much at this p- the internet has been kind of a cesspool for a while, so it's fine.

• 51:55SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, so part of it has been an economic factor, which Aggregation Theory talks about, about the centralized controlling demand-

• 52:00Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 52:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... um, all that sort of thing. But there, the, it's not just the, uh, d- it's also just the very structure of the internet, of this relatively cloistered, very nerdy subset of the population that could figure out how to even get online-

• 52:15Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 52:15SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... in this, like, Garden of Eden-

• 52:18Andrew Sharp?

  Sure

• 52:18SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... sort of environment of-

• 52:20Andrew Sharp?

  Like-minded people. I mean, that happens with every social network as well. It starts out small, and then when everybody joins, it becomes more trouble than it's worth.

• 52:28SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right. And, uh, and, and what we're gonna get to, there's... I'm trying to remember. Who's, who's the, uh, who's the science fiction au- author that has written, like, 47 gazillions, uh, science fiction books, and clearly the most, one of the most well-known is about, about virtual reality? Um, this is driving me absolutely crazy. We're gonna... W- right now we literally have thousands of people yelling the name of this. Um-

• 52:48Andrew Sharp?

  I have no idea who you're... I'm not a science fiction guy.

• 52:51SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, this is so bad. Uh, virtual reality. I remember it had science-

• 52:56Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, William Gibson. Jim, third chair, just checked in.

• 52:59SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It is not William Gibson.

• 53:00Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 53:01SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It is not-

• 53:01Andrew Sharp?

  Good guess

• 53:01SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... Ready Player One. It is-

• 53:03Andrew Sharp?

  I was gonna guess Ready Player One.

• 53:05SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, it is, uh, one of the other... Class One, Jim, y- you gotta help with this.

• 53:08Andrew Sharp?

  Kurzweil?

• 53:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, it's not Kurzweil. He writes novels. This is unbelievable. Uh, this is great, great TV right now. I'm, I'm, uh-

• 53:15Andrew Sharp?

  Sorry. This is all happening live. That, that's, this is the new era here.

• 53:18SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um,

• 53:20SCRIBE_speaker_1

  no, not Asimov. Uh, the- Anyhow, he, one of the most famous books about virtual reality, which, uh, Jim is gonna think of and type it on the screen here if I, if I can come up with it, um, is, uh, it depicts this world that's like this cyberpunk world where people are, there's lots of nations-

• 53:40Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 53:40SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... or nation-type states, but they're fully distributed. And so if you're in a different area, like there's one that was like a Hong Kong one, and there's one that was like a, a vaguely sort of US one. But everything in between these areas, like they're super secured and super locked down. And y- if you're not a citizen or a member of that group, you don't get into their property. But inside it's beautiful and bucolic and-

• 54:04Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 54:04SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... all this sort of thing. But then everything in between, it starts out with this guy who's like a delivery driver, like driving around between these different things, and it's just like a hellscape.

• 54:11Andrew Sharp?

  So that's what the internet will look like?

• 54:14SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um, the... Yes.

• 54:16Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 54:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like, if you think about it, it's kinda like that now for social networks.

• 54:19Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:20SCRIBE_speaker_1

  The group chat is, like, the best social network ever.

• 54:23Andrew Sharp?

  Mm.

• 54:23SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's high trust. It's like, like what we u- like we used to act like-

• 54:28Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 54:28SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... you know, on soc- on social media-

• 54:30Andrew Sharp?

  Goofing off

• 54:30SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... but to an even greater extent. And then when you're out there, like, w- there's other group chats that are, like, all, they're, you know- Girding for war-

• 54:38Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 54:38SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... and then they venture forth on Twitter to do battle. And then you retreat to lick your wounds.

• 54:43Andrew Sharp?

  It does get pretty-

• 54:43SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right

• 54:44Andrew Sharp?

  ... dopey in out there.

• 54:44SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right. That-

• 54:45Andrew Sharp?

  That tweet goes viral, you're answering idiots

• 54:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... that is like the internet in general. Like, like you ... I ... So I'm building this sort ... Yeah, Neal Stephenson. Thank you, Jim. Neal Stephenson, I cannot remember what the book was. Uh, uh-

• 54:55Andrew Sharp?

  I hope that's gratifying to the thousands of listeners who were driving themselves insane s- saying the name to themselves.

• 55:03SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, Snow Crash is the name of the book, ah, where he coined the term metaverse.

• 55:06Andrew Sharp?

  That-

• 55:06SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's where the metaverse came from

• 55:07Andrew Sharp?

  ... yielded a decent movie, I'm told anyway.

• 55:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah.

• 55:09Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 55:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So, so, uh, Snow Crash was, was the novel I'm referring to. Uh, but this is gonna be the internet. Like, you're going ... Or, or, like, I'm building all, all, we have all these little apps we're doing for our company. Like, Tailscale is our wall. You're logged in and you're a part of it, and nothing is exposed to the outside.

• 55:27Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:27SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's like my little fortress here. And that is, like, the internet is gonna be little fortresses everywhere patrolled in a very cyberpunk way-

• 55:35Andrew Sharp?

  Zero trust

• 55:36SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... by, by these agents-

• 55:38Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 55:38SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... that are just always on, always alert, doing battle, and hopefully it never breaks through and you don't know about it. This idea of the old world where you're just out, again, a Garden of Eden. Garden of Eden went away, didn't come back.

• 55:51Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:51SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That was the internet that we grew up with. It's gone.

• 55:54Andrew Sharp?

  Well, uh, so you could still visit websites in this future?

• 55:59SCRIBE_speaker_1

  You can, but, like, the economic model's already pretty rough.

• 56:02Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 56:03SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right? You think about-

• 56:03Andrew Sharp?

  But that's what I mean in terms of, like, will we really miss what we had or what we have now because the quality has gotten pretty degraded anyways?

• 56:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's been my case about this for a long time, right? Everyone's, like, scared of the future, and I'm like, "You should be scared of preserving the present."

• 56:18Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 56:18SCRIBE_speaker_1

  'Cause, like, everything is at its worst right now. 'Cause y- the problem is you look backwards and you, you think about how it was, and you're like, "Let's arrest the decline."

• 56:28Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:29SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Because y- with the assumption that you're gonna go back, you're not gonna go backwards. You're, you, you're not going back. The only way through is forward. And don't freeze us where we are right now 'cause it's, like, the worst everything's gonna be.

• 56:41Andrew Sharp?

  Well, the worst does feel like where we are right now as far as a s- uh, cybersecurity community, so let's see w- we get-

• 56:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, it's getting worse

• 56:49Andrew Sharp?

  ... you know, do you think so?

• 56:50SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yes, absolutely.

• 56:53Andrew Sharp?

  All right. Well, fair enough.

• 56:54SCRIBE_speaker_1

  There's gonna be cyber incidents, like, just accelerating. And, like, all- what the ... what's downstream of these ones that are happening right now? Like, there was a, a, a rail- railway, railroad, there's, like, a developer site that was, uh, broken into this week. All the credentials of everyone who's, like, used that site-

• 57:11Andrew Sharp?

  Ah, and that's right

• 57:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... which are-

• 57:12Andrew Sharp?

  That was one of the stories

• 57:13SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... so there's ... Yep, so there-

• 57:14Andrew Sharp?

  Lot of user data, sure.

• 57:15SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, d- developer data. So y- you can use those credentials to break into other apps-

• 57:20Andrew Sharp?

  Hm

• 57:20SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... other websites if they don't rotate all their credentials, which is a huge lift, a big pa- pain in the rear end. Uh, and so all the, like ... And so it's gonna, like, propagate-

• 57:29Andrew Sharp?

  Okay

• 57:29SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... and get worse and worse and worse.

• 57:31Andrew Sharp?

  So what we're s- where we are now is the dike is slowly breaking.

• 57:35SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yes.

• 57:36Andrew Sharp?

  And at some point-

• 57:37SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yes

• 57:37Andrew Sharp?

  ... there's gonna be a flood of incidents.

• 57:38SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, there's just, like, some little waves going over the edge right now.

• 57:41Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

• 57:41SCRIBE_speaker_1

  The, the, the ti- the, uh, tsunami is still coming.

• 57:43Andrew Sharp?

  Well, that's all very comforting. One thing I will note is that Axios had a big story about banks freaking out because of agents accessing, uh, bank accounts. I think a lot of what's referenced in that story is people deputizing their agents to access their bank accounts. So the headline was very scary. I can put a link to the sh- link to it in the show notes. Um, but, like, I deputized Muse to access my bank accounts and-

• 58:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Look at you.

• 58:13Andrew Sharp?

  Well, of course. Like, it's ver- one of the most useful-

• 58:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  You, it is so great. You are either zero or 100 when it comes to tech.

• 58:20Andrew Sharp?

  I'm in. I'm in on Muse all the way, man.

• 58:22SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, we need your review.

• 58:24Andrew Sharp?

  What?

• 58:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, how was the, the, uh, Meta, the new VR glasses?

• 58:29Andrew Sharp?

  Uh, we did get a chance to try the Meta VR glasses when we were out in San Francisco last week. Um,

• 58:38Andrew Sharp?

  v- they are an amazing product. As a Vision Pro user, I think I still prefer the Vision Pro. And when I say amazing product, the resolution on the glasses are, i- it's, like, pretty breathtaking that they're able to have that resolution on a pair of glasses that are as light as they are. My issue is they actually feel, like, too insubstantial. They're in kind of an uncanny valley where it's like if I'm using this for entertainment, I want to have full blackout, have it be heavy. The fit wasn't great for me, at least in my demo. So I came in with very high expectations, and I wound up liking them and not loving them.

• 59:21SCRIBE_speaker_1

  You're such an Apple fan boy. It's unbelievable.

• 59:23Andrew Sharp?

  I'm not. No, I'm not.

• 59:24SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Are you like-

• 59:24Andrew Sharp?

  I'm not.

• 59:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No. You literally just said the words, "They weren't heavy enough."

• 59:29Andrew Sharp?

  I, look-

• 59:30SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Listen to yourself.

• 59:32Andrew Sharp?

  They, they f- they felt like they could fall off. I don't know. It, it was not quite as thrilling-

• 59:38SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I know what you meant

• 59:39Andrew Sharp?

  ... as I expected.

• 59:40SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I know what you had. I actually would have preferred them with a headband.

• 59:42Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 59:42SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Because they just stay on your ears, and they never did come off, but they always felt like they were about to come off.

• 59:47Andrew Sharp?

  And it feels-

• 59:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So it was more disconcerting

• 59:49Andrew Sharp?

  ... right

• 59:49SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... I agree.

• 59:50Andrew Sharp?

  And it's harder to immerse yourself, uh, in entertainment.

• 59:53SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right. So I think they said they're gonna have a, there, there will be an attachment, so to get, like, full blackout.

• 59:58Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:58SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I think the full blackout with the headband, once you get past that, just better than a Vision Pro in every single conceivable possible way. And the big one that's ... So they are very slightly lower resolution, which you can tell. The, the Apple Vision Pro is also not enough resolution. It's enough resolution, though, for text. I did the whole, like, Vision Pro on the back of an airplane would actually be amazing.

• 1:00:20Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:21SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, you know, it was, th- this was kind of a peak, you know, um, being out of touch point by, like, you know, I can remember when I used to sit in the back of the plane. Uh- ... these would've been pretty great. Um, but the, you know, not maybe I have plenty of room for my laptop, uh, the, the other parts of the plane. But the, no, the actual, like, I u- I have four mon- actually I usually have five monitors or w- sometimes 'cause I'm catching the TV, too. Uh, this idea that I can actually carry these with me and have multiple monitors on the road-

• 1:00:47Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 1:00:47SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... super ... The Vision Pro-

• 1:00:50Andrew Sharp?

  It's so big that you can't do that

• 1:00:52SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It is, it's unbelievable how big it is. It's like e- even worse than the weight.

• 1:00:56Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:57SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like, the smallest you can get it packed up does not fit in the-

• 1:01:00Andrew Sharp?

  That's true

• 1:01:01SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... oh.

• 1:01:01Andrew Sharp?

  Even in suitcases

• 1:01:03SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah. No, I know.

• 1:01:04Andrew Sharp?

  It's just a problem. Um-

• 1:01:05SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So, uh, so I think it's great.

• 1:01:08Andrew Sharp?

  So you approve of it on that basis, okay.

• 1:01:10SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I, no, I agree with you. It feels more precarious than it should. I would rather just, like... Th- they, they did get the moment, "Oh, they've been sitting here the whole time."

• 1:01:19Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:19SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's like if they had been sitting up there with like a headband-

• 1:01:22Andrew Sharp?

  Right

• 1:01:22SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... like like violet glasses, you might have noticed them. Uh, but I, the-

• 1:01:26Andrew Sharp?

  And it's-

• 1:01:26SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I would like it to feel tighter.

• 1:01:28Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:28SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Even though, to be clear, mine never came off.

• 1:01:31Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And I was so disappointed. Um, so I had to leave 'cause I, last second, I invited this Apple thing that I wrote about this week, Apple and, and Meta working together. So I had to leave you there by yourself. But before I went, I made sure to do the Beat Saber demo- ... to have the right down the score.

• 1:01:49Andrew Sharp?

  You're gonna... I didn't have any plans for any of this discussion.

• 1:01:51SCRIBE_speaker_1

  You are such-

• 1:01:52Andrew Sharp?

  Now you're gonna kill me

• 1:01:53SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... a chicken. Unbelievable. I'm like, "Tell me what your..." So we get into, for dinner that night. I'm like, "Oh, what was your score?"

• 1:02:00Andrew Sharp?

  I did not participate in the Beat Saber aspect-

• 1:02:03SCRIBE_speaker_1

  What?

• 1:02:03Andrew Sharp?

  ... of the demo. All the Meta people were great, so shout out to all those guys. I'm not a gamer. I don't wanna do-

• 1:02:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I don't care- ... that you go up there and you get a bad score.

• 1:02:12Andrew Sharp?

  Well, then I-

• 1:02:13SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's so funny. You're so good-

• 1:02:14Andrew Sharp?

  ... feel like an idiot

• 1:02:15SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... you're so good at podcasting-

• 1:02:16Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 1:02:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... because you're self-effacing, you let me make fun of you, all that sort of thing. Like, you pulled out this humor in Ben Golver that was so mean.

• 1:02:24Andrew Sharp?

  Right.

• 1:02:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Because he was, had like permission to be mean to you- ... and it was hilarious. You're so... Then, so it's like so jarring for me that suddenly you're too-

• 1:02:32Andrew Sharp?

  I'm not putting my head on the chopping block to get-

• 1:02:34SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Suddenly you're too embarrassed

• 1:02:36Andrew Sharp?

  ... my ass kicked in some kids game that Ben was very into. I'm not playing Beat Saber on the Vision Pro headset. Look, the other thing on the Vision Pro headset, uh-

• 1:02:45SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It wasn't a Vision Pro, but I-

• 1:02:46Andrew Sharp?

  Or, sorry

• 1:02:46SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... hear you buy Apple.

• 1:02:47Andrew Sharp?

  Sorry. I, yeah. Um-

• 1:02:49SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Meta VR glasses

• 1:02:50Andrew Sharp?

  ... the Meta VR glasses

• 1:02:51SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... I think they are.

• 1:02:51Andrew Sharp?

  Um, they, they will have a lot more content-

• 1:02:54SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh

• 1:02:54Andrew Sharp?

  ... which is important.

• 1:02:55SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Their, I thought their eye control in the hand thing was way better than Apple's.

• 1:02:59Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like, the, just the, when you do, they did the same thing, like, you look around at the dots.

• 1:03:03Andrew Sharp?

  It's, I, I experienced it as-

• 1:03:05SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I think-

• 1:03:05Andrew Sharp?

  ... identical to Apple's.

• 1:03:06SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, so I always find with Apple, at least one of the dots I'll miss.

• 1:03:10Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 1:03:10SCRIBE_speaker_1

  'Cause I, like, it almost r- I'll just do it really fast. Like, the Meta one, like, it just, like, it was, I, I thought, it feels like technology is two years newer.

• 1:03:19Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:19SCRIBE_speaker_1

  But I'm sure that's exactly what it is. Uh, it hasn't come out yet, to be fair. It's not coming out till next year. Uh, but no, I think I will definitely get some-

• 1:03:25Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 1:03:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... just for the travel angle.

• 1:03:27Andrew Sharp?

  Right. You can't really travel with a Vision Pro. You will be able to travel with these glasses, and they will have a lot more sports on these glasses-

• 1:03:36SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, and I, I-

• 1:03:36Andrew Sharp?

  ... than Apple has had

• 1:03:37SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... the other thing that just came back to me, I was traveling, uh, because, oh, 'cause we had to record. Uh, we were gonna record somewhere, and then it didn't work out, so we ended up recording in your hotel room. And I'm carrying around my big laptop.

• 1:03:49Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:50SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And I'm like, I should have just carried my Air-

• 1:03:53Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 1:03:53SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... because this thing is such a ta- I'm so excited, but I do carry it when I travel because the extra screen. I do use a lot of screen space when I'm writing. I like to have lots of stuff up, referencing it. It's not ideal on that, but that's the biggest screen that I can get, so I carry around this big honking computer. Um, I'm looking forward to 100% being able to carry a small computer, and when I want, when I sit down to write-

• 1:04:18Andrew Sharp?

  Throw on the Meta VR glasses?

• 1:04:20SCRIBE_speaker_1

  100%.

• 1:04:21Andrew Sharp?

  Wow.

• 1:04:21SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I was, that's how, I wanna do that with Vision Pro.

• 1:04:23Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:23SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's just too big.

• 1:04:24Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And yet that's why you like it. It's so bizarre. Unbelievable.

• 1:04:29Andrew Sharp?

  Well, look, I I'm not gonna be walking around-

• 1:04:32SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Apple fanboy

• 1:04:32Andrew Sharp?

  ... watching stuff on my Meta glasses.

• 1:04:35SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh.

• 1:04:35Andrew Sharp?

  I may have to buy some myself, though. We'll see how much they are, but-

• 1:04:39SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah, we're, we, we are far afield. I w-

• 1:04:40Andrew Sharp?

  Completely afield.

• 1:04:41SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:42Andrew Sharp?

  Infront view Meta glasses review.

• 1:04:42SCRIBE_speaker_1

  You're, that's right. We gave Muse access to your bank account. That's how we got here.

• 1:04:45Andrew Sharp?

  I am all in on Muse, and th- these banks that are citing all the agents in their systems and everything, I think a lot of those agents are probably deputized by actual humans, and it's not some massive hacking scandal, which y- you might take away from the Axios story. So I don't put that in the same bucket as everything else that we've been discussing this week.

• 1:05:06SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Ah.

• 1:05:06Andrew Sharp?

  But we'll see.

• 1:05:06SCRIBE_speaker_1

  This is very unfortunate. That is my phone. We are not doing normal time. Uh, one moment. Great video for us right here.

• 1:05:12Andrew Sharp?

  Well, I'm thrilled that that wasn't my phone 'cause I was like, "Did I have an alarm set for some reason?"

• 1:05:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I'm like, "You know what? I should, uh, not have my phone with me." I should be off to the side, and then I had to go pick up my son. No, that was unfortunate.

• 1:05:23Andrew Sharp?

  Here we are. Um, all right. Well, should we keep it moving?

• 1:05:27SCRIBE_speaker_1

  We should keep it moving. Uh, I will attempt to not lead us astray anything.

• 1:05:31Andrew Sharp?

  Okay. Uh, Joseph says, "Ben and Andrew, putting aside the we're birthing a silicon god wackiness from Anthropic, I'm seeing a product distinction emerge from Anthropic as well. Claude is always Claude, singular, monolithic, omnipresent. You @ Claude in Slack, work with Claude in Claude Code, talk to Claude in Claude Chat.

• 1:05:56Andrew Sharp?

  Anthropic always has you talking with Claude. Compare this to GrokBot, Dots, and Muse, each with degrees of customization. Muse is the most personalized of them all. My muse is a robot dog named Murf who wears a call center headset and animates his little tasks. Adorable. While all the labs copy each other, this feels like the first gap in product philosophy.

• 1:06:21Andrew Sharp?

  Will people prefer one omnipresent agent, Claude, or a fleet of task-specific agents, GrokBot, Dots, et cetera, or singular, highly personal agents like Muse? P.S. In Ben's experim- in s- in Ben's experiments with Muse, has he updated his muse at all, or is he running the stock Jolly?" I don't know what that last, uh, post script means.

• 1:06:44SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I don't know what's called Jolly either. I called mine Muse.

• 1:06:46Andrew Sharp?

  I, I, so do I. Maybe that means we're just boring, old, white guys.

• 1:06:50SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I think that might be the case.

• 1:06:51Andrew Sharp?

  Keep it pretty simple.

• 1:06:51SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I do that all the c- all the time, whether it's customized things or, like, the, like, video games. Like, back in the day when you could, like, name the character, I just named it, like, whatever the character-

• 1:06:59Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 1:06:59SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... was supposed to be. Like, the, I, I'm- I want the experience that you created. I wanna go and experience it. I don't, I don't need to, like, personalize-

• 1:07:07Andrew Sharp?

  I don't want the pressure-

• 1:07:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... or insert myself

• 1:07:09Andrew Sharp?

  ... to reinvent this. Uh-

• 1:07:10SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right

• 1:07:11Andrew Sharp?

  ... Muse, by the way, very helpful organizing flights out here for our new era of Sharp Tech. Haven't let it book my flights yet.

• 1:07:18SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's gonna be so fun when you miss a flight and it's Muse's fault.

• 1:07:20Andrew Sharp?

  It could be.

• 1:07:21SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, so the beautiful thing about doing a podcast like this is everything is content.

• 1:07:25Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like, you're, you're gonna have a flight misadventure. It's gonna be-

• 1:07:29Andrew Sharp?

  That Muse will either res- resolve or compensate.

• 1:07:31SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right. And we're, we're gonna talk about it. It's g- It's gonna be fantastic. Um, so that is one of the good things. Uh, the, uh... Yeah, so I call it Muse. Um, the Quad thing, I, I do think there is an aspect. This, this fits the philosophy.

• 1:07:44Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:45SCRIBE_speaker_1

  They think they're creating God. God n- God is named Quad.

• 1:07:48Andrew Sharp?

  God is infused-

• 1:07:49SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I mean, I think Quad is named-

• 1:07:50Andrew Sharp?

  ... in all their different products

• 1:07:51SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... I don't know if they've said this. I s- I've always assumed it's named after Claude Shannon. Um, a very fa- you know, very important figure in sort of the history of computing. Um, but it does sound like God.

• 1:08:02Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:02SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I wonder if that is an a- I mean, honestly, it just occurred to me right now. I wonder if that, uh, uh, if that is a, if, if that is an accident. And yeah, it's like a s- and it does bug me because Quad is a... It's not just that your experience with Quad is different than my experience with Quad. Literally every token is, like, a fresh experience.

• 1:08:21Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 1:08:21SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like, that's the, the, the nature of LMs, is everything, the personification-

• 1:08:25Andrew Sharp?

  So it bugs you because it, because it personifies the technology, the machine intelligence?

• 1:08:32SCRIBE_speaker_1

  All the anthropor- anthropomorphization of this bothers me.

• 1:08:36Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:37SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And I like the idea of going in the opposite direction. And to an extent it is anthropomorphized. Like, yeah, make it personal. Like, I, I kinda like what Muse has done in this regard. There's a bit where we t- everyone talks about alignment and safety, and the nature of text generation is so h- like, that's, it's so tied to what it means to be human.

• 1:09:00Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I think that's why these things feel so human, because they're using the most human way possible to... That's all they work. They literally work on human speech.

• 1:09:08Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:08SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And I think part of my theory of this is, is they're dominating this higher level. Can they actually come back down? What makes us human is our more animalistic bits, our instincts-

• 1:09:20Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 1:09:20SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... our desires, our drives, which are linked to our cerebe- bellum, like our higher level intelligence. And that link, the AI's all on the top. It's all, like, the top part of our brain. It doesn't actually have the brainstem. And, like, that, that actually i- is the drive to do it. And there's an aspect of it's actually... ChatGPT was actually the greatest name because it's such a temptation and it's so easy for people to get caught up in feeling like they're talking to something real that isn't real.

• 1:09:47Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And it's actually responsible to do everything in your power to continue to remind people-

• 1:09:53Andrew Sharp?

  To signal, yeah

• 1:09:53SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... that this isn't real. Anthropic does the exact opposite.

• 1:09:58Andrew Sharp?

  Mm.

• 1:09:59SCRIBE_speaker_1

  They try to make it real. They try to teach it like it's real. Their whole view of alignment is not that they can control Quad, it's that they teach Quad to be good-

• 1:10:06Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 1:10:06SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... so it will control itself. And I just, uh, g- it's a fundamental, it's divide.

• 1:10:13Andrew Sharp?

  A corporate misalignment, ev- is what you're describing there.

• 1:10:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, in my op- I, I, I think so. I think we should be treating these and seeking to control them as tools, and there's good news in this regard. It turns out LMs are more understandable than we thought.

• 1:10:27Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:27SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, there's some really interesting paper about interpre- interpretability and just being able to analyze it and understand what they are.

• 1:10:33Andrew Sharp?

  That is great news. Yeah.

• 1:10:34SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It is great news, and it's so funny. Like, so many safety people, like, were so dismissive of this, of this paper immediately-

• 1:10:39Andrew Sharp?

  Uh-huh

• 1:10:39SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... 'cause it, it's a real s- blow to their view.

• 1:10:42Andrew Sharp?

  Sure. It undermines the narrative that we have no visibility.

• 1:10:44SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And it turns out this paper is so ins- is so useful that you can use it to d- make training better 'cause, like, if you understand how they work and the results are, like... The initial results look amazing.

• 1:10:54Andrew Sharp?

  Thank God. Okay.

• 1:10:55SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, so there's something real there about actually, no, these are more understandable. The reason we didn't understand them before is we just didn't ha- have the tools or capability.

• 1:11:03Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 1:11:03SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So they're, they're not necessarily the, as much of a black box as we thought they were.

• 1:11:06Andrew Sharp?

  That's fantastic news.

• 1:11:07SCRIBE_speaker_1

  The, the output is cleaner-

• 1:11:08Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 1:11:08SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... I think the word is the adjective. It is, it is good news, and that's what we should be driving for, is continually being able to control them. Nuclear, a nuclear bomb explosive force is higher than my fist. This idea of there's something that exceeds so our characteristic is not a strange concept.

• 1:11:29Andrew Sharp?

  Right.

• 1:11:29SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's just, like, we're... And part of this is I think Silicon Valley and the sort of person in Silicon Valley is so, their sense of self-worth and value is so wrapped up in being smart.

• 1:11:40Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:40SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Everyone in Silicon Valley has always been the smart one, and, like, that's how they, they're... And so th- th- this idea that something's smarter than me is so overwhelming, it's such a blow to the psyche that you have one side is, like, descending into nihilism, it's all over-

• 1:11:56Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 1:11:56SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... and the other side is like, "It's okay if it's God." "God can be smarter than me," and you end up in, like, th- these crazy places. And I just, I just think it's wrong. I, I think we need to be pushing towards making these tools, making them controllable, and part of that is helping people think about them in this way.

• 1:12:16Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 1:12:17SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Anthropic on every single of those points goes in the opposite direction.

• 1:12:20Andrew Sharp?

  Well, h- m- a counter, uh, to this conversation or, and, and that line of thinking-

• 1:12:24SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, the part of this conversation is that Opus 5.5 is unbelievable.

• 1:12:28Andrew Sharp?

  N- it's not just that, though

• 1:12:29SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... I'm using it all the time for everything. And there's an aspect of g- I... Quad is so much better at agentic stuff, in my experience-

• 1:12:35Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 1:12:35SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... because it just, it can multitask better. It can keep track of lots of different things, all the stuff that's going on. Like, ChatGPT gets so obsessed and focused about one thing, and, uh, I haven't, uh, actually, it just does so much more.

• 1:12:47Andrew Sharp?

  Well, and I agree with you. I think that people should think about Anthropic and whether they are aligned with humanity's best interests in terms of how they view these tools and how they're framing these tools for the masses to understand. I will note, though- That their Claude branding seems a lot more co- coherent than anybody else in the space

• 1:13:07SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It does.

• 1:13:08Andrew Sharp?

  So I'm honestly not really that mad at it as far as this question is concerned.

• 1:13:11SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, it's true.

• 1:13:12Andrew Sharp?

  'Cause like-

• 1:13:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like from like a corporate... Like, no, this is like what I said last week about when someone's like, "Oh, should Avade be replaced?" I'm like, "Are you f- are you off your rocker?"

• 1:13:18Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:19SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, we said that like with Facebook.

• 1:13:19Andrew Sharp?

  I'm like, "What the hell are these other companies doing?"

• 1:13:21SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right.

• 1:13:21Andrew Sharp?

  There are eight different products.

• 1:13:22SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Andrew Sharp?

  How do you keep s- track of any of it-

• 1:13:24SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yep

• 1:13:24Andrew Sharp?

  ... as a consumer?

• 1:13:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  100%.

• 1:13:26Andrew Sharp?

  Um, so and the Anthropic IPO may be coming over the next week or two here.

• 1:13:31SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah, I was at a panic attack that they, they dropped the S1 this week. I know. It's like there's this selective feeding of like different news organizations about this. Can we just drop the S1? Are you gonna go to market? Just release it. I'm not gonna write about to that. I'm not writing about a Wall Street Journal report about the S1 or a Reuters report about the S1.

• 1:13:46Andrew Sharp?

  It's not worth podcasting about.

• 1:13:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Give me the S1.

• 1:13:48Andrew Sharp?

  But boy, oh boy, takesmen, start your engines. It will be fun to sink our teeth into some real numbers from Anthropic. And, uh, again, I saw a note that it could come Friday. Who knows? Um, Kyle says, "Gents, another branding question. Is there a reason Apple sticks with the soiled brand of Siri? Apple Intelligence is genius, simple, and lends itself to all kinds of

• 1:14:13Andrew Sharp?

  advertising synergies. If it's a hit, Apple becomes synonymous with good AI. If not, well, they lose nothing. Moreover, 'Hey, Apple' is a fresh start with a beloved brand as the call name. 'Hey, Siri' is associated by millions of people as the certain pathway to frustration. What am I missing? Why not just let it be Apple Intelligence instead of Siri AI?" Do you have an answer for Kyle?

• 1:14:39SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, number one, Kyle, um, Kyle apparently is a bigger Apple fanboy than you 'cause he has confidence that Siri is worth being called Apple. Um, maybe having it-

• 1:14:47Andrew Sharp?

  That is the issue-

• 1:14:47SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... a different brand

• 1:14:47Andrew Sharp?

  ... that I see. It's actually bad for Apple's brand-

• 1:14:52SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right

• 1:14:52Andrew Sharp?

  ... to associate the m- broader company with its AI efforts.

• 1:14:56SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um, number two, uh, if you, if anyone do, I link to my ethics statement. By the way, we did get d- just get like this first day of school, we got new portraits put up, so I'm gonna finally replace my portrait- ... on my page from 12 years ago.

• 1:15:05Andrew Sharp?

  Great.

• 1:15:05SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That everyone gets upset about 'cause I look like a child and a, a marathon runner, which I used to be.

• 1:15:11Andrew Sharp?

  Wow.

• 1:15:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um, but the-

• 1:15:12Andrew Sharp?

  I'll have to check out this photo. Yes, we got head shots taken.

• 1:15:15SCRIBE_speaker_1

  We did.

• 1:15:15Andrew Sharp?

  It was great.

• 1:15:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, but, uh-

• 1:15:16Andrew Sharp?

  Very exciting day here in Madison

• 1:15:17SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... you know, on that page, I- I talked about my-

• 1:15:19Andrew Sharp?

  And Culver City

• 1:15:19SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... my ethics, you know, which is why I don't look like a marathon runner anymore. Um, so the, the, the, uh, on there in my ethics statement, I, I talk about there's a couple companies I have talked to. Uh, like when I first started, it was, it was, do I have a multi-stool revenue? It wasn't just gonna be subscriptions. It was gonna be ads, it was gonna do like consulting-

• 1:15:35Andrew Sharp?

  Speaking

• 1:15:35SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... and speaking.

• 1:15:36Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:36SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, and I think I had a fifth. I remember I had five monetization ideas. I can't remember what the fifth one was. Um, and so I did a very small number of, of consultants. Uh, and the last one I did, I'm like, "This, I can't do this. It's too much of a conflict," which was actually with Google. And, um, you know, which I disclosed it, but I'm like, on one hand it's like, wow, I'm talking to very senior people at Google. That's amazing.

• 1:16:00Andrew Sharp?

  Mm.

• 1:16:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  On the other hand, I'm like, I think this newsletter thing's gonna work out, and I don't even like the, the sense of any sort of conflict here, so I'm never doing consulting with a company that I cover again.

• 1:16:11Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 1:16:11SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um, in that meeting, uh, it was like up in Napa Valley, this is like over a decade ago, there was a discussion about what, what they were gonna call their assistant, and I was a big advocate of just calling it Google. I'm like, Google is a great brand. People are associated with it. Like this, I'm... You know, I didn't love the Alexa or Siri thing. Um, and, uh, the... So they want... I don't know how much of an impact. I- there's obviously lots of people that, you know, there was a back and forth. Um, but I was on the, the, the Google side.

• 1:16:39Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:39SCRIBE_speaker_1

  They watch it.

• 1:16:40Andrew Sharp?

  Call it Google.

• 1:16:40SCRIBE_speaker_1

  They watch it. I've never told the ending of the story. They watch it and, uh, it was like, "Okay, Google."

• 1:16:45Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:16:46SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, terrible. Hate it. The actual experience of saying, "Okay, Google," like saying like a corporate name-

• 1:16:51Andrew Sharp?

  Talking to a multi-

• 1:16:53SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It-

• 1:16:53Andrew Sharp?

  ... trillion dollar company

• 1:16:54SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... it's not great. Like Siri or Alexa are both way better in my, in my estimation.

• 1:17:00Andrew Sharp?

  Mm.

• 1:17:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  For... And it's funny. It's, I'm kind of arguing the counter of what I just said as far as Claude. It's something about speech.

• 1:17:05Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:06SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right? Like saying, "Hey, Apple." Tim Apple? John Apple? Like which one is it? Uh, the, uh... Doesn't work. I think the Okay Google was a mistake.

• 1:17:17Andrew Sharp?

  That I did not consider that. So it's better for consumers and more natural for consumers in addition to being better for Apple to not sort of take-

• 1:17:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yes

• 1:17:25Andrew Sharp?

  ... the corporate risk.

• 1:17:26SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And Siri's a great name.

• 1:17:27Andrew Sharp?

  Mm.

• 1:17:27SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like I, I think there's a case to redo Siri. Um-

• 1:17:31Andrew Sharp?

  Is it a great name and such a bad product that they have to redo it?

• 1:17:34SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right. No, exactly. They have to re- they have to redo it because, um, they have to redo it because, uh, they're...

• 1:17:42SCRIBE_speaker_1

  They don't have to redo it. They might wanna redo it because of the, it's soiled.

• 1:17:45Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:45SCRIBE_speaker_1

  The actual quality of the name is phenomenal. It's easy to say for like lots of different whatever your language background is. It's very distinct. It's very noticeable.

• 1:17:55Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:55SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It reads well. It's better than Alexa. Like Alexa's kinda tricky. Uh, Siri is just, it's a great name.

• 1:18:01Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah. Well, uh-

• 1:18:02SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Which is probably why they're still sticking with it despite- ... despite everything.

• 1:18:05Andrew Sharp?

  It's, it's so bad that I can't imagine ever using Siri for anything after the last six or seven years, but perhaps Apple will get its act together. Um, Hey, Apple, I agree, would just be a bad idea for a variety of different reasons.

• 1:18:20SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Right. Right.

• 1:18:20Andrew Sharp?

  Apple remain associated with great hardware, and maybe the AI software will catch up somewhere along the way. Uh, couple more questions here. CK, "Ben and Andrew, longtime listener. I've been thinking about a major challenge in using AI agents, the sheer volume of reading they require. I work in tech in the United States, and while I'm fluent in English, it is not my first language. Reading comprehension has always

• 1:18:45Andrew Sharp?

  been a weakness of mine, even in my native language. Before AI, this never mattered much at work. Domain knowledge, math, stats, and coding carried me. Then I started working with agents. Now my day is reading, plans, reasoning, summaries, more plans. The agent produces faster than I can absorb, and honestly, I skim or skip most of it. That's the part that bothers me. I can tell the

• 1:19:10Andrew Sharp?

  quality of what I get depends on how carefully I read and push back at the planning stage, so my reading comprehension and speed, which I think often go hand-in-hand, are now the limit on how deep the work can go. For the first time in my career, I wish I were a faster, better reader. You two read and write for a living and use AI every day. Has the sheer volume of reading been a challenge for you? Is the problem that agents dump, dump undifferentiated pros on me and better tools would fix what I'm treating as a permi- as a personal limitation?" Ben, any thoughts on that question?

• 1:19:49SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah, it's a really in- it's a really interesting email. I mean, it, what I will say on it is I am an extremely fast reader, also an extremely fast writer.

• 1:19:58Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:19:58SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um, I prefer to consume everything via text. The i- the people, like I just don't watch videos. Like people share videos, I have to be, a video has to be shown to me like 50 times and then finally I will click through.

• 1:20:09Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah, you mentioned this last week. I've been sending you videos for years.

• 1:20:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah, rarely watching them-

• 1:20:13Andrew Sharp?

  Completely

• 1:20:14SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... to be totally honest. Um, the, uh-

• 1:20:16Andrew Sharp?

  Ignoring them.

• 1:20:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yes. Uh, abs- not ignoring them. I acknowledge they exist. I sort of gather what is happening in the video from all the comments around it, which I read.

• 1:20:25Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah, okay great.

• 1:20:26SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um.

• 1:20:27Andrew Sharp?

  A real word sell.

• 1:20:29SCRIBE_speaker_1

  There's a lot of reading - ... involved with the agents. I totally get what he's saying, and it's very funny 'cause the times I have to actually do work is often like late at night when I'm unwinding or like on the weekend.

• 1:20:40Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:40SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Where, you know, I might wanna have a drink or whatever- ... and I like d- just bat, as you said, Batty Steve

• 1:20:44Andrew Sharp?

  And it's just hitting you with walls of text.

• 1:20:47SCRIBE_speaker_1

  'Cause for sure reading it closely and catching the assumptions it's making makes a huge difference.

• 1:20:53Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:20:53SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like if I force my... Even still, I experiment with letting them do long runs if it matters. It's very short runs. They come back with every correction, every single... 'Cause you, like you can see the, "Oh, let me fix this line." It's like, oh, there's, you have a bad assumption-

• 1:21:06Andrew Sharp?

  Exactly

• 1:21:06SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... that is undergirding why this correction needed to happen. 'Cause like we're well, well past the typo stage. Like if it, if something goes wrong, what, what went wrong? Was it, is this actually a bug or is this the, okay, s- you know. And it's shifting more and more where if it screws up, there's actually something, uh, the thinking around it is, is mistaken. So you do n- for, CK's right. The closer you read, the better.

• 1:21:27Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:21:27SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I think the answer, I hope the answer is

• 1:21:32SCRIBE_speaker_1

  generative user interfaces that make sense for what you're doing.

• 1:21:36Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 1:21:37SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like I think text i- that what, what should be happening, and you saw this. I think OpenAI released something or they did a, a demo of like within Codex or within ChatGPT, it's generating an interface based on what you're doing on the fly, and you're actually like interacting with something. We're kind of there with voice to a certain extent. You can do all your work talking.

• 1:21:59Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:21:59SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Now, that takes longer because it has to read it all out. You have to be perceiving what they're saying. By the way, CK, I discovered is unbelievable. Did I say this last week? Uh, I was reading a book or I wa- I talked to, uh, to, um, Ari.

• 1:22:12Andrew Sharp?

  Ari, yeah.

• 1:22:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I was saying Ari Gold. Not Ari Gold. Uh, Ari Emanuel last week, and, uh, he had just came out with, with, with his biography. Of course, uh, I always read my books before I interview people. Which by the way, the number of times you talk to someone 'cause they had a book come out-

• 1:22:24Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 1:22:24SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... and they're shocked you actually read their book. I'm like, what are all these interviews? I feel bad for them. Imagine going on a podcast, you slave over a book. Well, I mean, Ari had someone help him write it.

• 1:22:34Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:22:35SCRIBE_speaker_1

  But in general you slave over a book and then you have to do a media tour and the people don't even do the honor of reading it.

• 1:22:40Andrew Sharp?

  And you get 20 minutes into the interview and it's clear that the other person hasn't read it.

• 1:22:45SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, uh, apparently that is normal.

• 1:22:46Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:47SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Like every time they thank me and c- like, "You're the first person I talked to who actually read the book," I'm like, "That is sad."

• 1:22:52Andrew Sharp?

  Well, I, look, and to defend the interviewers, think about how busy people are just mowing through-

• 1:22:57SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's your job

• 1:22:58Andrew Sharp?

  ... 300 pages. Now, if you're a talk show host, are you gonna have the time to like take down a 300-page book recording, uh, interviews with all sorts of other people all week?

• 1:23:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  This is why-

• 1:23:11Andrew Sharp?

  Uh, this is the last-

• 1:23:11SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... people charge-

• 1:23:12Andrew Sharp?

  ... defender of the media here on Sharp Tech-

• 1:23:15SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well-

• 1:23:15Andrew Sharp?

  ... Andrew Sharp.

• 1:23:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  If you wanna be able, if you wanna be able to charge subscription fees-

• 1:23:18Andrew Sharp?

  That's right

• 1:23:18SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... and have ads, you gotta put in the work.

• 1:23:19Andrew Sharp?

  You do the work.

• 1:23:19SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So, uh,

• 1:23:20Andrew Sharp?

  You do the work. You also read at a superhuman speed.

• 1:23:23SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, no, so here's the thing.

• 1:23:24Andrew Sharp?

  So it's a built-in advantage.

• 1:23:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So, so because I, I bet I've gone to a Brewers game before, uh, the night before, and so I was driving to the Brewers game and from the Brewers game down to O'Hare to-

• 1:23:32Andrew Sharp?

  Uh-huh

• 1:23:32SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... where I was gonna fly from. And I, uh, I needed to get this book read, and so I did the audiobook, um, which for this particular book worked great. But then on the plane I did the audiobook and I read it at the same time.

• 1:23:48Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:23:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It was unbelievable.

• 1:23:50Andrew Sharp?

  Mm.

• 1:23:50SCRIBE_speaker_1

  We landed, we hit, we hit the ground, and I was jarred. The whole flight disappeared.

• 1:23:57Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 1:23:57SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, it's like, it's like mainlining th- a book, like into my- Like, and you're just like, you know. No, I was-

• 1:24:04Andrew Sharp?

  You should try it. I've never done that before.

• 1:24:06SCRIBE_speaker_1

  You, no, you've gotta try it. It's 'cause like when it was both coming in through my ears and I was walking my eyes and you had to like stay, you couldn't flip over to social media or do something else or else you would get out of sync.

• 1:24:16Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:24:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It was nuts. You gotta, you gotta try it just to see if you get... It's like I was in a fugue st- fugue state. Is that how you say it?

• 1:24:21Andrew Sharp?

  A fugue state.

• 1:24:22SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I was like-

• 1:24:22Andrew Sharp?

  Sure

• 1:24:22SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... in a fugue state. Like I'm dead serious. It was the most incredible-

• 1:24:25Andrew Sharp?

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:24:26SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It was crazy. It was like one of the most craziest physiological feelings. I got off that plane, I was like groggy.

• 1:24:32Andrew Sharp?

  Wow.

• 1:24:32SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I was like, I was like I'd just been to this other dimension. It was nuts. Anyhow, CK, try that. Uh. Have, have, have, get a screen reader software that reads it and you, you, you read it and listen to it at the same time.

• 1:24:45Andrew Sharp?

  Well, look, I think it is... First of all, I look forward to trying it. The last book I read was Patrick Radden Keefe. He wrote a, a book about London that I read in about two days, a couple weeks ago. Fantastic book, but I read it the old-fashioned way. Could have taken that thing down in like six hours if I was listening on-

• 1:25:01SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I don't know if it... I think it's a little slower because I can read so fast I'm pretty sure I can read... I had it at 3X speed also-

• 1:25:07Andrew Sharp?

  Uh-huh

• 1:25:07SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... when I was listening. Um.

• 1:25:09Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, we got a question about that. Robert says, "Ben and Andrew, I was enjoying Ben's recent conversation with Ari Emanuel, but was taken aback to hear Ben mention listening to an audiobook at 3.5X speed- ... only for Ari to respond that he routinely listens at 3 to 3.2X. Really? I tried listening to the latest Sharp Tech at gradually higher speeds and managed to get up to 2X

• 1:25:34Andrew Sharp?

  before admitting defeat. My normal listening speed is around 1.3 to 1.5X. Am I missing some cognitive superpower or has Ben trained himself to process audio at increasingly ridiculous speeds? And Andrew, where do you stand on this? What's your regular podcast/audiobook listening speed?" I'm a 1X guy-

• 1:25:58SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I am-

• 1:25:58Andrew Sharp?

  ... so I don't know what my problem is.

• 1:26:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I am absolutely, 100% a 1X guy.

• 1:26:03Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:26:04SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And I also don't like the eliminate pause things that, like, I think Mark Orman invented this with Overcast.

• 1:26:10Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:10SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, you know, like it compresses all the space.

• 1:26:12Andrew Sharp?

  It's off-putting for me as well, yes.

• 1:26:14SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I... No, c- because I... But this is for things that I listen to for entertainment.

• 1:26:18Andrew Sharp?

  See, that's my thing.

• 1:26:19SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So-

• 1:26:19Andrew Sharp?

  I only listen to podcasts for entertainment. I understand a lot of people probably listen to Sharp Tech for information, and probably listen at 1.5 to 2X speed.

• 1:26:29SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's the difference.

• 1:26:29Andrew Sharp?

  No shots at any of those people.

• 1:26:31SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's the difference. So the, uh, the...

• 1:26:37SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I want the pregnant pause.

• 1:26:40Andrew Sharp?

  Great.

• 1:26:41SCRIBE_speaker_1

  All the people with, with erase silence just missed that. That's, by the way, that's why I, like, I know it drives you nuts. It's why I'm so obsessed about audio quality.

• 1:26:48Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  The higher quality audio that you have, the faster you can listen to something, and I know that matters to a lot of people.

• 1:26:54Andrew Sharp?

  Mm.

• 1:26:55SCRIBE_speaker_1

  In this case, first, I, I would not do 3.5X if I was only listening.

• 1:26:58Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 1:26:59SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's because I was reading, so-

• 1:27:01Andrew Sharp?

  And you were prepping for an interview and

• 1:27:03SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, so in- so I was listening, I think, on the road at two, maybe at 2X speed.

• 1:27:06Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 1:27:06SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So I can definitely... And that just, I have to listen to this. I have to get through it. Um, the 3.5 I think would be too much if I was just listening, but because I was doing the listening and reading-

• 1:27:18Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm

• 1:27:19SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... it was, it was fine because I had like the dual sensory it's, I can't explain- ... how crazy this was. But that, but so I think the 3.5X was only possible because I was reading at the same time. Or else I might not be able... I'm not sure if I would've retained much.

• 1:27:32Andrew Sharp?

  Okay. Do you have a preference for how Sharp Tech is consumed?

• 1:27:38SCRIBE_speaker_1

  When I see-

• 1:27:38Andrew Sharp?

  Nice and long-

• 1:27:39SCRIBE_speaker_1

  With a long-

• 1:27:39Andrew Sharp?

  ... pregnant pause

• 1:27:41SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... pregnant pause.

• 1:27:42Andrew Sharp?

  S- there we go.

• 1:27:43SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, no, I, I've always gotten the-

• 1:27:45Andrew Sharp?

  I, I'm silently offended if people are listening... I record podcasts all week long. If people are listening at 2X speed, I do take it personally.

• 1:27:52SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's like I recorded this at 1X speed.

• 1:27:54Andrew Sharp?

  Deep down in my heart yeah, exactly. Uh, but again, a lot of people listen at crazy speed, so I'm-

• 1:28:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, if I fall, so if I fall behind-

• 1:28:01Andrew Sharp?

  I'm the weirdo, I think, at 1X

• 1:28:02SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... no. So I, I always listen at 1X speed. I do listen to every episode of Greatest Of All Talk, always have from the very beginning.

• 1:28:07Andrew Sharp?

  Great.

• 1:28:08SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And I fall behind sometimes, and then I reluctantly bump it up.

• 1:28:12Andrew Sharp?

  And you catch up.

• 1:28:12SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I do catch up, but I do bump it up to, to X speed.

• 1:28:15Andrew Sharp?

  Oh, boy. Wow- ... that wounds me. Honestly, that wounds me

• 1:28:19SCRIBE_speaker_1

  How are you-

• 1:28:20Andrew Sharp?

  But you have-

• 1:28:20SCRIBE_speaker_1

  How are you wound? I have been listening-

• 1:28:21Andrew Sharp?

  You have been putting in the hours

• 1:28:22SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... yes. I listen to every single one. I, I, you may not know this, I'm a fairly busy individual who's had a lot going on recently.

• 1:28:30Andrew Sharp?

  Yep, fair enough. Fair enough. A lot of cameras to set up in our new studio here.

• 1:28:34SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, it's getting hot in here.

• 1:28:35Andrew Sharp?

  Um, so couple more questions. Nick says, and these are follow-ups to last week.

• 1:28:39SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, yeah. There is HVAC changes coming. There's, we're, we're going all out here. But maybe I'll continue.

• 1:28:44Andrew Sharp?

  Uh, Nick says, "Guys, what is the olive oil rec? You mentioned a specialized olive oil order on last week's episode. Do you have an olive oil rec for Nick?"

• 1:28:55SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So I, yeah, I got this from my mom. Um, I for- sorry, I forgot to look at this question, uh, so I didn't have it prepped. It is, it is, it's actually from Arizona-

• 1:29:02Andrew Sharp?

  Okay

• 1:29:02SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... um, of all places.

• 1:29:03Andrew Sharp?

  Domestic. Love it.

• 1:29:04SCRIBE_speaker_1

  And-

• 1:29:04Andrew Sharp?

  Buy an American.

• 1:29:05SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, so it's interesting because... Walking your... See- ... the internet just sucks today. I need my phone to finish while you're in. It's like, uh,

• 1:29:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I don't know. It's-

• 1:29:17Andrew Sharp?

  Should we wait? Is it... We can debut the olive oil rec-

• 1:29:20SCRIBE_speaker_1

  We could

• 1:29:20Andrew Sharp?

  ... on next week's episode

• 1:29:21SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Next week's episode.

• 1:29:22Andrew Sharp?

  Nick, I promise there will be an olive oil rec. I will say-

• 1:29:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  But you want the robust one. Like, the, the, uh, I, I'm not a big fan of the other ones that they have.

• 1:29:30Andrew Sharp?

  I... It's very difficult buying olive oil because you just never-

• 1:29:33SCRIBE_speaker_1

  You don't know-

• 1:29:34Andrew Sharp?

  ... really know-

• 1:29:34SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right

• 1:29:35Andrew Sharp?

  ... what the quality is. It's frustrating. I'm willing to pay for good olive oil, but-

• 1:29:40SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, and, uh, I use... I'm a big fan of olive oil, like, especially for like grilling, stuff like that.

• 1:29:45Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:45SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Olive oil and salt is like the solution-

• 1:29:46Andrew Sharp?

  And quality actually matters-

• 1:29:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... to almost everything

• 1:29:48Andrew Sharp?

  ... with olive oil.

• 1:29:49SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It does. It does. Um, so yes, that is the, uh, I, I'll come up with a number. I might come up with it shortly.

• 1:29:54Andrew Sharp?

  Great.

• 1:29:54SCRIBE_speaker_1

  But, uh, it has to be ro- robust.

• 1:29:56Andrew Sharp?

  Okay, uh-

• 1:29:57SCRIBE_speaker_1

  For this particular, for this particular, um, whatever it is.

• 1:30:01Andrew Sharp?

  Another question. A Malcolm says, "Guys, I love the show, but just for the record, Google-"

• 1:30:06SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Queen Creek.

• 1:30:07Andrew Sharp?

  Queen Creek. There we go.

• 1:30:09SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, the worst... It's actually a very disappointing Queen Creek olive mill. Um, they used to sell, like, 1.5 liter bags-

• 1:30:16Andrew Sharp?

  Okay

• 1:30:16SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... with a spout, so which is perfect. I set it in the cupboard. And then you could go up and you could just press-

• 1:30:23Andrew Sharp?

  Like a wine bag?

• 1:30:24SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yes.

• 1:30:24Andrew Sharp?

  Wow.

• 1:30:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yes. You just press the button. They don't ha- now they only sell bottles.

• 1:30:29Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 1:30:29SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So I, which, you know, I buy-

• 1:30:31Andrew Sharp?

  I-

• 1:30:31SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... the biggest bottle 'cause I, of course, I wanna have a, a-

• 1:30:33Andrew Sharp?

  Not a problem for me because I've never experienced the magic of an olive oil wine bag.

• 1:30:39SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, phenomenal.

• 1:30:39Andrew Sharp?

  Sounds great. Yeah.

• 1:30:40SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I don't know why they took it away. It was, I was very sad. Um-

• 1:30:42Andrew Sharp?

  Queen Creek. Okay, I'll check it out. Always in the market for a good olive oil. Hopefully Nick is as well. Uh, Malcolm says, "Love the show, but just for the record, Google paid $2 billion for Sunday Ticket. That's still less than 1% of their 2027 CapEx." That is what I was referring to when we were talking about AI potentially squeezing sports rights in the future. All of the sports rights pale in comparison-

• 1:31:06SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right

• 1:31:06Andrew Sharp?

  ... to what-

• 1:31:07SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right

• 1:31:08Andrew Sharp?

  ... uh, to what these companies are spending on AI. So, a good note, though, because I didn't have that number offhand when we were recording last week.

• 1:31:15SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, hey.

• 1:31:17Andrew Sharp?

  What?

• 1:31:18SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Time for the last question.

• 1:31:19Andrew Sharp?

  Eli says, "I assume by now you've seen the rave, once in a generation reviews that You Can See Everything is getting. 100% worth seeing in a theater."

• 1:31:30SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So I have seen a review.

• 1:31:32Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 1:31:32SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, I've seen your preview post of your Sharp Text article this week.

• 1:31:36Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:31:37SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Which is your movie review. Um, you did say a certain part is spoilers, which I blew past 'cause obv- obviously I'm never gonna see this. Uh, it was such, number one- You're a great writer. Love it.

• 1:31:47Andrew Sharp?

  Thank you so much.

• 1:31:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um, uh, so love the review. Number two, you were so effusive-

• 1:31:53Andrew Sharp?

  Mm

• 1:31:54SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... I actually might go see it.

• 1:31:56Andrew Sharp?

  Well, well, well, look, I might be stuck firing up K-pop demon hunters-

• 1:32:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I think last week-

• 1:32:01Andrew Sharp?

  ... two years later

• 1:32:02SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... weren't you, weren't you, uh, weren't, would you say you would not go see it?

• 1:32:04Andrew Sharp?

  I, I owe an apology to Eli.

• 1:32:05SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, that was a great, oh, that was a great part though. Yeah, first paragraph you're like, "I lied."

• 1:32:09Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah, completely lied on the podcast last week. I said, "Eli, I'm not a Nathan Fielder guy. Don't really care about more Elizabeth Holmes in my life," this, that, and the other thing. Saturday rolls around, it's raining in Washington, DC, there had been 48 hours of people saying, "Oh my God, this movie is amazing." And if I'm being 100% honest, I went to the theater expecting to not like it and expecting to zag from consensus, and had-

• 1:32:38SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Oh, no, it was-

• 1:32:39Andrew Sharp?

  ... a great time.

• 1:32:39SCRIBE_speaker_1

  So wait, so what is this, am I guessing thing, accidental viral critical consensus, AVCC?

• 1:32:43Andrew Sharp?

  I th- I, yes, I did think that there was some viral critical consensus taking hold, and then I sat down-

• 1:32:50SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Or maybe you're just washed

• 1:32:51Andrew Sharp?

  ... well, maybe I am. I don't know. Look, I'm definitely washed in all sorts of different ways, but I sat down in the theater-

• 1:32:56SCRIBE_speaker_1

  You and Netflix

• 1:32:57Andrew Sharp?

  ... uh, that's my recommendation to the audience. Without spoiling too much, this is not a movie you should wait to watch on streaming, because watching it in a full theater, and the numbers on the movie have been insane, right?

• 1:33:10SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I mean, that's the funny thing, there's two reasons to see a movie in the theater. One is, like, the spectacle-

• 1:33:14Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah

• 1:33:14SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... and you want, like, the screen and the sound. And number two is you want the collective experience of watching something.

• 1:33:19Andrew Sharp?

  That's what's wild. And, uh, typically I'll go to the theater because I want the spectacle, and I want, like, the sound, and the big screen, the IMAX experience. It had been a really long time. DC people are buttoned up, and they're not really expressive movie watchers. It had been a long time since I'd been in a theater where people are, like, gasping, laughing together, everybody experiencing it together. That

• 1:33:44Andrew Sharp?

  elevated the experience for me. And also, it was not like the Nathan Fielder work that I had seen in the past. He was much more sincere in his approach. Um, and I think he was genuinely kind of vexed by Elizabeth Holmes, and it turned into a great time across three hours. I did not check my phone once.

• 1:34:05SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, what was Elizabeth Holmes' face like in-

• 1:34:06Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah, he's doing the Elizabeth Holmes eyes at me now. I just picked up on that. Um, so yes, I, I, my highest recommendation after completely dismissing it a week ago. You win this round, Eli.

• 1:34:20SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Uh, you, the, the, go read the article. It's a good one. Sharp text.

• 1:34:23Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah, we'll put it in the show notes for people.

• 1:34:24SCRIBE_speaker_1

  There is, there is a clear spoiler note in the middle, um, which again, if you're like me, you can just blow right by. Uh, the whole spoiler thing.

• 1:34:33Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 1:34:33SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Are, are we, w- w-

• 1:34:34Andrew Sharp?

  Are you pro spoilers or something?

• 1:34:37SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Well, what I like to do-

• 1:34:37Andrew Sharp?

  That's a hot take.

• 1:34:39SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No. Well... Yeah.

• 1:34:42Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 1:34:44SCRIBE_speaker_1

  It's your responsibility. Don't go online.

• 1:34:47Andrew Sharp?

  No. Uh, everybody's online all the time. And honestly, I actually think there's been something pretty impressive with You Can See Everything, 'cause there are some key spoilers, and people who have discussed the movie have been very restrained discussing the spoilers publicly on Twitter. A lot of use of the word redacted. And I think there's kind of a com- communal spirit where people who like the movie want to preserve the experience of discovery for moviegoers out there.

• 1:35:18SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I don't know.

• 1:35:18Andrew Sharp?

  And you oppose that communal s- the communal spirit there.

• 1:35:23SCRIBE_speaker_1

  The communal spirit is, like, get to a movie theater and see it right away.

• 1:35:26Andrew Sharp?

  Get your ass out there.

• 1:35:28SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right.

• 1:35:28Andrew Sharp?

  Fair enough.

• 1:35:28SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, I think it's, so w- it's funny, I, I was actually, as you were talking, I'm like, "Do I actually think that?" I was just sort of like, just throwing that out there. Um, because w- uh, the problem is w- I had to record everything in Taiwan.

• 1:35:41Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 1:35:41SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Particularly sports. And so I did have to train myself not to go online, and to, like, and someone like Duman, who I would always be in contact with, like, only happened once or twice that he accidentally spoiled something. I'm like, "You're, I'm gonna fi- you're gon- y- the shortest route to getting fired is you saying something about the boxer's game."

• 1:36:01Andrew Sharp?

  Spoiling the box games.

• 1:36:02SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That was it, yeah. Um, so, uh, the, um, so I got very good-

• 1:36:06Andrew Sharp?

  Duman's ultimate downfall

• 1:36:08SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... no, so, so there was an aspect where I did actually have to learn to not open Twitter.

• 1:36:14Andrew Sharp?

  Practice discipline, okay.

• 1:36:15SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Be, like, practice discipline, turn off notifications on the groups that are gonna talk about that. And even then, it would still get broken sometimes. But there, there's a bit where, this is my problem.

• 1:36:25Andrew Sharp?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:36:25SCRIBE_speaker_1

  I'm in Taiwan. Who am I to impose? There's, like, this imposition aspect.

• 1:36:31Andrew Sharp?

  Yes.

• 1:36:31SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Which I could play the opposite direction. Like, "Don't tell m- don't, don't, don't tell me what happened at the end of Sopranos. I don't wanna..." It's like, "Dude, relax. It's been 30 years." Right? And people will still, like, act like it's a thing.

• 1:36:44Andrew Sharp?

  There's definitely a statute of limitations. We probably will be spoiling You Can See Everything at some point over the next couple weeks, but people have the opportunity-

• 1:36:52SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Only if I see it

• 1:36:53Andrew Sharp?

  ... to see it this weekend, you know?

• 1:36:53SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, the statute of limitations is when I see it.

• 1:36:56Andrew Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:56SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Um-

• 1:36:56Andrew Sharp?

  Fair enough. Which could be three years.

• 1:36:58SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right, so you might be able to talk about it for a while.

• 1:36:59Andrew Sharp?

  Plenty of time.

• 1:37:00SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Yeah. Uh, no, I'd read j- I read the end. I read including the spoilers, so it's fine.

• 1:37:03Andrew Sharp?

  Yes. Um, well, on that note, Ben, we will keep things rolling next week. Email at sharptech.fm is the email address.

• 1:37:11SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Ooh, we have, like, two pages of, like, AI show-and-tell in this episode.

• 1:37:13Andrew Sharp?

  Do you wanna do an AI show-and-tell?

• 1:37:15SCRIBE_speaker_1

  No, it's okay.

• 1:37:15Andrew Sharp?

  Okay.

• 1:37:15SCRIBE_speaker_1

  We should wrap it up. We, w- we're running out. You said you gotta get to the airport and we gotta do a subscriber-

• 1:37:20Andrew Sharp?

  We're running over time

• 1:37:21SCRIBE_speaker_1

  ... only, uh, segment, so.

• 1:37:22Andrew Sharp?

  Indeed. So there will be a subscriber-only mailbag coming Sunday.

• 1:37:27SCRIBE_speaker_1

  In your audio feed, not on YouTube.

• 1:37:29Andrew Sharp?

  That's right.

• 1:37:29SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Go subscribe if you wanna get it.

• 1:37:30Andrew Sharp?

  We will be back on YouTube next Friday. Whole new era here. Great to be on the couch with you today, and I can't wait to do it again next week. Email the show, though. We need more email than ever.

• 1:37:41SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right. We're, and we're interesting content.

• 1:37:43Andrew Sharp?

  And we will be producing more content than ever-

• 1:37:44SCRIBE_speaker_1

  That's right. Absolutely

• 1:37:46Andrew Sharp?

  ... in this new era. All right, I will talk to you soon.

• 1:37:48SCRIBE_speaker_1

  Talk to you later.