Does Marques Hate OnePlus?

This week, the crew chats everything from Super Bowl commercials to Ferrari interiors. After that, Shen comes back on the pod to talk batteries with Marques. Fair warning: before this episode is over pretty much everyone crashes out about something. Then we wrap it all up with some trivia. Enjoy! Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Links: 9to5Google - YouTube Music premium lyrics Verge - Ring Camera Super Bowl ad Verge - Discord age verification MKBHD - The Problem with these Smartphone Batteries Ferrari EV Interior Auto Focus - Rivian R2 first look Music provided by: Epidemic Sound Social: Waveform Threads: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Waveform Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/?hl=en Waveform TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Hosts: Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Intro/Outro music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Andrew Manganelli?

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, host Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring your fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting, and what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episodes and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Support for the show comes from Jira by Atlassian. AI is only as useful as the context it has to work from, but when that context is scattered across tools, threads, and DMs, that means your team and your AI agents end up flying blind. That's the problem that Jira solves. What's the goal tied to your project? What got decided last week in Slack? Atlassian's teamwork graph pulls all these pieces together, from Jira, Confluence, Slack, GitHub, and more, so nothing falls through the cracks. With Jira, you can actually share that context with the AI agents you already use, like Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot, assign them work directly, or connect your agents through MCP. Spend less time digging through endless links and DMs, less time chasing down what got decided and by who,

• 1:15Speaker 01

  and more time actually shipping. Learn more at jira.com. That's J-I-R-A dot com. Each individual piece is sick. The dynamic clock dude that like you do- Nice. Our clock's dynamic.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, what is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts, I'm Marquez.

• 1:40Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm Andrew.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  And I'm David. We're actually renaming the podcast this week to the Crash Out Podcast, because we've realized that everything we're talking about this week, someone is going to crash out about. We'll get there. We have, today we're talking about TV ads. You might have seen some if you watched like a big bowl event or something recently. We've got ChatGPT ads, we've got car ads slash teasers. We've also got our friend Shen on to explain batteries a little bit better, and we're going to wrap out with just Andrew crashing out.

• 2:05Andrew Manganelli?

  Just, that's it.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Just, just Andrew crashing out. It's going to be great. But first, make sure you subscribe. Make sure you follow on whatever podcast player you use. We're aware that many of you use Apple Podcasts or Spotify, but there are others. I use Podcasts on Android. And there are even others, yet others, that if you're using them, you should rate our podcast on, because that helps us out a lot. So, we appreciate that.

• 2:26Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Okay. It says here, first thing is weather apps. And usually I crash out about that.

• 2:32Andrew Manganelli?

  If you don't mind, this is not crashing out.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 2:34Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm just gonna really fast.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Crash is a nice shout out.

• 2:37Andrew Manganelli?

  Do you remember like, two weeks ago, we were talking about weather apps and I said the Google one is like, literally the worst and wrong all the time?

• 2:42Speaker 01

  But it does have the frog. I do like the frog.

• 2:45Andrew Manganelli?

  What's the frog?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Wait, does it not have the frog anymore?

• 2:47Speaker 02

  The little corner animated frog?

• 2:48Speaker 01

  I think that's if you Google the weather.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  What?

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Not like in-

• 2:51Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, I think you're right.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  It should be in the Google weather app, though.

• 2:54Andrew Manganelli?

  I don't think it was. Well, or maybe?

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Well, RIP frog.

• 2:57Andrew Manganelli?

  Lots of people, tons of great suggestions. Here's the two I landed on and I'll let you guys check them out. One is called, what? It just says weather. I think it's called Breezy, right, Adam? Breezy, you have to download it on F Droid, which is something that I just learned about.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Wait, this is not on the Play Store?

• 3:14Andrew Manganelli?

  No.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  No, you have to download F Droid from the Play Store and then in F Droid, search for Breezy.

• 3:18Andrew Manganelli?

  Here, I'll let you look at this.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  That looks nice.

• 3:21Andrew Manganelli?

  Solid UI, you know, it, it does have kind of the-

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Looks like the Google weather.

• 3:25Andrew Manganelli?

  The Google weather app on the bottom, but I, I believe you can change-

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Source?

• 3:30Andrew Manganelli?

  Source.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  That's nice.

• 3:32Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm not 100% sure about that, but it does tell me where the source is coming from at the bottom. One that you can change the source is actually an email we got from somebody who I believe is 14 years old and created this app that is on the Play Store and I think the App Store?

• 3:49Speaker 01

  What am I doing with my life?

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Overcast.

• 3:52Andrew Manganelli?

  This is, no, it is overcast. It's called-

• 3:55Speaker 01

  It's not called the-

• 3:56Andrew Manganelli?

  It's called Overmore.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Got it. I've been using-

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Overmore.

• 4:00Andrew Manganelli?

  Which looks great. It's super simple. It's like Material U based, like in terms of the, uh, the design and everything, but it looks great. It's been working well. I have multiple different sources right at the bottom that I can pull from. The only thing is, if you are in the US and go to it, just remember, it's in Celsius and it's just been so cold here. It took me like three days before I re- No, no, no, you can switch to Fahrenheit, but it defaults to Celsius, but it's been so cold here, seeing single digit numbers to me was like-

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:29Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, three. It's been three. Guys, it was zero the other night. Yeah. For, for everyone else in the world, that is negative 17.8.

• 4:39David Imel?

  It's Celsius.

• 4:40Andrew Manganelli?

  It's forty degrees Fahrenheit right now and it feels like I could wear shorts outside because I'm so

• 4:45David Imel?

  Beautiful day outside. That's how cooked we've been. Three degrees is the normal.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  It's literally freezing and I'm like, yes.

• 4:52David Imel?

  Nice, yeah.

• 4:53Andrew Manganelli?

  Thank you for all the weather suggestions. Now, I just need the weather to not suck so I can look at the apps more happily.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  It's getting better. The Groundhog, Paxitani Phil, which we didn't talk about last week and everyone was mad because we're the New Jersey podcast.

• 5:06David Imel?

  Oh, it didn't really matter to us.

• 5:07Andrew Manganelli?

  I thought he was Pennsylvania. He's in Pennsylvania.

• 5:09David Imel?

  He did shout out six more weeks of winter, for those who are wondering.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  But he lied about that, though.

• 5:14David Imel?

  Yeah, that lying frickin'.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:17David Imel?

  What you mean?

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Cause it instantly is forty again. It got warmer.

• 5:20David Imel?

  Yeah, but that's winter weather.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Nah, man.

• 5:22David Imel?

  When compared to what we had.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  If it was spring, you'd be like, it's still only forty? I don't know, man.

• 5:28David Imel?

  But it isn't spring. It's early February.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying. You would either say, well, it's about to be spring, or we got six more weeks of winter, then it's spring.

• 5:35David Imel?

  Though Ellis.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  If this was spring and it was thirty-nine, we'd be a little...

• 5:38David Imel?

  Though Ellis and I will both take every opportunity to remind people that we are from California. We have finally been accustomed to this kinda weather.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:49David Imel?

  And now that zero is the norm, forty feels pretty damn good. I'm feeling good about it.

• 5:55Andrew Manganelli?

  Kinda hits.

• 5:55Speaker 04

  I took my gloves off this morning, like on my walk and I was like, oh.

• 5:59Andrew Manganelli?

  This is a PG podcast, let's calm down.

• 6:01David Imel?

  I was in a t-shirt this morning. I went to my outdoor building, went inside the building, got a coffee and everyone was like, you're in a t-shirt. Are you getting an ice drink too? And I was like, yeah, I will.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 6:12David Imel?

  We love talking about the weather. You know what's related to the weather?

• 6:17Speaker 04

  No, we can do, we can, we can do better than that.

• 6:19David Imel?

  Oh.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  You know, a lot of weather apps make you pay extra for premium features.

• 6:24David Imel?

  That's what I was just about to do.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  You know what else does?

• 6:27Andrew Manganelli?

  Pretty much everything these days.

• 6:30David Imel?

  Every single thing in your life.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  But the headline we have to react to is that YouTube Music now requires premium for lyrics.

• 6:36David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  I...

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Don't care.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  But do you guys care about lyrics in your music app?

• 6:48David Imel?

  It's about the principle. I, so, okay, I did a poll about this on, uh, on social media because I was curious. Cause I was like, I don't really care. And when I look up lyrics, I usually just Google them. Yeah, but apparently a lot of people use lyrics in the app. I have many friends who, when we are driving, listening to music, they will grab my phone and look at the lyrics in the app on the phone. It is po- uh, popular for people. So, okay, here are the results of, of my poll. And I said, is this a lucrative, are lyrics a lucrative feature for you and something that you would pay for in a music app? Out of 691 votes, 71 people said they would not pay for it. But 18.8 said that they would pay for it specifically, just for lyrics.

• 7:32David Imel?

  And 19.6 said that they would pay at the right price.

• 7:35Andrew Manganelli?

  Just to clarify, you're talking about percentages, not people.

• 7:38David Imel?

  Sorry, percent.

• 7:38Andrew Manganelli?

  19.6 people.

• 7:39David Imel?

  Yeah. Oh, sorry.

• 7:40Andrew Manganelli?

  It says 9.6.

• 7:43David Imel?

  Yeah, 9.6.

• 7:44Andrew Manganelli?

  9.6. Yes.

• 7:45David Imel?

  Yeah, 18.8% said yes, 9.6 said yes at the right price. Honestly, 28% of people being willing to pay for lyrics in their music app was more than I thought it would be.

• 7:56Andrew Manganelli?

  Way more than I expected.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  I'm holstering so many panels jokes about being free on Google.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Okay, I mean, sometimes I open Spotify and I scroll down and I see the lyrics and I'm like, oh, that's what he was saying. I'm like, oh, cool. But I guess I'm not someone who looks up lyrics that much, but when I do, my instinct is to Google it.

• 8:12David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  So I guess.

• 8:13David Imel?

  It might be because we're old, though.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting.

• 8:15Andrew Manganelli?

  I mean, we've been doing it for a long time. I kinda like just pretending like I know what the lyrics are and mumbling through most of the songs.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  I just.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Did you say Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg?

• 8:26Andrew Manganelli?

  I don't know.

• 8:27David Imel?

  That's the words, right? That's probably the words.

• 8:29Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm even second guessing my mumbling, right?

• 8:31David Imel?

  Yeah, I mean, I also just like fake it till I make it and then eventually I get annoyed enough that I look them up.

• 8:36Andrew Manganelli?

  That's fair.

• 8:37David Imel?

  And then I'm usually disappointed because they're not as good as I envisioned they'd be.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, most of the music I listen to, I'm not like listening to the words specifically. Usually it's the beat and then the lyrics or words like happen to not sound nice, but I'm not like really.

• 8:51David Imel?

  I'm a lyrics guy for sure.

• 8:52Andrew Manganelli?

  I have kind of a funny story about that. It'll be really quick. Do you know the song Wonderful by?

• 8:57David Imel?

  I'm gonna go out on a limb and say-

• 8:58Andrew Manganelli?

  Everclear.

• 8:59David Imel?

  Haven't heard of it.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Oh, Everclear.

• 9:00Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay, there's a song called Wonderful by Everclear.

• 9:02David Imel?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:02Andrew Manganelli?

  And the chorus is like, everything is wonderful now, but the whole song is really sad and him like trying to convince himself. And I used to listen to it all the time because I thought it was, I'm just listening. My mom took my car once and came out and she's like, are you okay, Andrew? That song was like blasting in your car. Lyrics are pretty dark. Everything going good? I was like, yeah, I love, yeah.

• 9:23David Imel?

  There's a word for when the music feels happy, but the lyrics are really depressing.

• 9:28Andrew Manganelli?

  That's this song.

• 9:29David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 9:30Andrew Manganelli?

  It opens with, I close my eyes when I get too sad. I think thoughts that I know are bad. And somehow, none of that comprehended in my, I'm like snapping to it in the car.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  That's like all salsa songs. They're all about-

• 9:41David Imel?

  Oh, really?

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Really dark things and then the band just makes you dance.

• 9:44David Imel?

  The, the story around this is that Google is making lyrics a premium feature where you have to pay for YouTube Premium. They're really, well, you have to pay for YouTube Music Premium, but they're really trying to get people, they're really just trying to onboard people to YouTube Premium because YouTube Premium is barely more expensive than the YouTube Music, uh, subscription. Anyway, users who don't pay will get five free lyrics before they're asked to subscribe. And it's not like per month.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Songs.

• 10:10Andrew Manganelli?

  Words.

• 10:11David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 10:14Andrew Manganelli?

  Can I get the second word? Oh, nice.

• 10:16David Imel?

  I wish you would step.

• 10:18Andrew Manganelli?

  I'd like to buy a vowel.

• 10:20David Imel?

  Yeah, so they will get five free lyrics and then it'll be like, lyrics are premium. And it's not per month, it is, it is at all.

• 10:26Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh.

• 10:27David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 10:28Andrew Manganelli?

  Not to side with YouTube here, but if in a month you're looking up the lyrics more than five times, it's probably worth paying for the lyrics. That's it. I just can't imagine. I have not looked up lyrics five times.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  I guess there's more of the like passive discovery of the lyrics. Cause if I ever want the lyrics, I can just look up a lyric video on YouTube. But if I'm, I'm in the song and I just happen to scroll back and be like, what did he actually say? And the lyrics are just right there. That's the convenience that you're paying for.

• 10:54David Imel?

  But you know, Google made more money this quarter than they ever have, so I don't think it's a good excuse.

• 11:00Speaker 04

  What if Spotify started doing this, but like for hearing? Like, like you paid for Spotify and you got all the like instrumentals of all the music, but then if you wanted to hear the lyrics, you had to pay an extra fee on top.

• 11:12David Imel?

  Damn.

• 11:13Andrew Manganelli?

  It's a premium card.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Don't give them any ideas.

• 11:15Speaker 04

  Exactly. That's what's next, I'm telling you.

• 11:17David Imel?

  Well, then everything would just, it would just be a karaoke app for the free users.

• 11:20Andrew Manganelli?

  Well, now you have to pay for the lyrics though, which makes it way harder.

• 11:23Speaker 04

  No, no, it'd be a karaoke, oh my god.

• 11:26Andrew Manganelli?

  That's the only reason I assume people want lyrics is because they want to karaoke with the phone in their hand.

• 11:32Speaker 04

  Or they just want to know the music. I like the Spotify.

• 11:37Speaker 04

  I like the lyrics because I sometimes like to jump to specific points in a song and I like being able to know like, oh, if I click this word, it'll take me to, like as a transport feature.

• 11:47David Imel?

  Take me.

• 11:48Speaker 04

  It's kind of nice.

• 11:48David Imel?

  Interesting.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  The segue I was thinking of was like, that's why a lot of weather apps are paid is because the data you have to pay for. So a lot of people want like a free weather app, obviously, but if you have a bunch of sources and a lot of them are paid, you need to charge like a subscription to pay the subscription.

• 12:03David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  But anyway, that's just weather again. Sorry.

• 12:07David Imel?

  So anyway, I don't, I was surprised by these results. I really just didn't, I didn't think this many people would be willing to pay for lyrics, but apparently they are. So, um, you know, Google's going to make even more money, I guess. Speaking of Google.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Speaking of YouTube.

• 12:22David Imel?

  YouTube. Speaking of YouTube, getting put on everybody's iPods.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  There's now officially a YouTube app for Apple Vision Pro.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Wasn't there at launch?

• 12:39Andrew Manganelli?

  But there are dozens of them.

• 12:41Speaker 04

  Honestly? Brave.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was. It's crazy because you had to, it almost felt like they're withholding it on purpose. Like you had to go to the browser, which wasn't the end of the world. You just have a browser tab open, but you had to go to the browser to watch YouTube videos and you have to deal with all the stuff there if you don't have premium, blah, blah. Now you just have an app, all the discovery, all the doom scrolling, native.

• 13:00David Imel?

  Well, didn't Apple also make some workarounds like in the Safari app for Vision Pro?

• 13:04Speaker 01

  For fullscreen video?

• 13:05David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:05David Imel?

  They would make it so it basically just felt like YouTube.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:08David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  But now it's, yeah, you can have environments. You can have all the other fun stuff. Just, just YouTube.

• 13:13David Imel?

  R I P to Christian Selleck.

• 13:15Andrew Manganelli?

  I was gonna say.

• 13:15David Imel?

  Juno? Was it called Juno?

• 13:17Andrew Manganelli?

  I think it was called Juno. Yeah.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, they killed it.

• 13:19Andrew Manganelli?

  They knocked that out a while.

• 13:21David Imel?

  If it was not called Juno, I apologize, Christian. Well, that's exciting for the 12 people that use Vision Pro. And speaking of, I guess we're done with that. Pretty quick segment.

• 13:33Speaker 04

  I guess we should, we'll try it and we'll get back to you.

• 13:36David Imel?

  I don't know. Yeah, I mean. We definitely will not try it by next year. Maybe it's amazing. Maybe it's amazing, you know? What if it's amazing?

• 13:43Speaker 02

  It's just, I'll try it.

• 13:45David Imel?

  I, I don't, okay. What if?

• 13:48Speaker 02

  What could they possibly have added that will make it?

• 13:50David Imel?

  It uses Gemini? If the Vision Pro is the ideal flight movie watcher, then the YouTube app with Vision Pro with premium with a bunch of downloaded videos is the ultimate flight theater experience.

• 14:03Speaker 04

  I have always wanted to watch Scott the Waz 30 feet tall. Okay, let me have this.

• 14:08David Imel?

  There's good videos on YouTube. You might want to watch Yodle. You might have an hour and a half video on a studio channel. You want to watch it on a flight and you have this big screen in front of you and it's fun. It'd be very funny if, you know how Google last week, they released that world model where you can feed in an image and it creates a video game, basically. Oh, Project Genie. Project Genie. Be very funny if they just had the feature in YouTube or you could just be in the video, but nobody used the app because nobody uses the Vision Pro, so nobody knew. Damn. That'd be funny. I guess we'll find out what interesting features it has. I guess we'll find out. It's probably fine. Yeah. Anyway.

• 14:43Speaker 04

  We're gonna find out about?

• 14:45David Imel?

  Um, the ads in ChatGPT.

• 14:47Speaker 04

  The ads in ChatGPT.

• 14:49David Imel?

  Okay. So Anthropic, if you didn't know, uh, big competitor to OpenAI, recently released a bunch of Super Bowl ads. They released them before the Super Bowl and they actually did tweak them slightly when they actually put them in the Super Bowl. The copy was worse in the official, uh, release, but I think that they probably just, I don't know, ran through their legal team and they were just concerned or something. Anyway, they ran four different ads. It was very funny. The ads were about OpenAI putting ads in ChatGPT. And this is something that OpenAI, uh, is now having to do. Sam Altman did eventually say it would be a last resort. So that's also funny. But Anthropic put these four different ads out that basically emulated what it is

• 15:34David Imel?

  like to talk to an AI model and it did it very well. So I'm going to give you an example. There was this ad where this guy is talking to a therapist and he says, I need help learning how to communicate better with my mom. And then the therapist is just kind of like this creepy, smiling like woman and she pauses for like three seconds before she answers him. It's all very like you can tell that they're trying to emulate that. And she, uh, she says like, "That's a great thing to do. You should maybe go on a nature walk with her or talk about things that you have in common. Or if you can't mend the relationship, go to Golden Encounters where, where cougars are matched with young cubs."

• 16:13Speaker 04

  Where it's like, "Where you can spend quality time with other older women."

• 16:16David Imel?

  Other older women on Golden Encounters. And all of the ads just kind of devolve into this. And then the person that's talking to that model is like, "What?" Uh, very funny, very good ads. This elicited a extremely funny reaction from Sam Altman on Twitter. Uh, he decided to write an essay in a tweet, which is never a good idea. But the first thing that he said was, "First, the good part of the anthropic ads. They are funny. I laughed." Very human thing to say. Nice. And then he wrote 11 paragraphs.

• 16:53Speaker 04

  Wrote is like an overstatement for like, like, this is poop. You don't write poop. You poop poop. And that's what he did. He pooped 11 paragraphs of poop.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  Do you think he did it or ChatGPT did it?

• 17:05David Imel?

  That's what I was gonna say. I assume everything he writes.

• 17:07Andrew Manganelli?

  I also, I had not seen these ads. Actually, I think you posted it and your main thing was, "Why does this seems like it didn't get de-squeezed properly?"

• 17:15David Imel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:15Andrew Manganelli?

  For one of them, the one online before the Super Bowl.

• 17:18David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 17:18Andrew Manganelli?

  The only reason I watch these ads is because I saw Sam Altman crashing out on Twitter. And I was like, "These must be pretty good."

• 17:24David Imel?

  They did, yeah, the first ad, there was, there was one ad where a kid was trying to get jacked and whatever.

• 17:29Andrew Manganelli?

  It was like, "How do I get abs as fast as possible?"

• 17:30David Imel?

  Yeah. And first, I just noticed like, it seemed like they used like a 1.5x anamorphic lens, but they de-squeezed it to like 1.8. Oh, no. That's all I, that was the first thing I noticed. Sorry, that's the first thing I noticed. That would bother me a lot. Yeah, it was, it was weird. Anyway, um, Yeah, he crashed out with like 11 paragraphs saying basically it was not what was going to happen and that it was, what was the word? He's saying that it was kind of misrepresenting the way the ads were going to be shown. But Ellis is about to, uh, is about to chime in.

• 18:03Andrew Manganelli?

  Can I say one thing real quick? I miss, I like when companies use commercials to take shots at each other. It's so much more fun. I liked the like, the Samsung notch forehead, like stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's fun and it's, it's fun because they're in jest, but man, it makes some people so mad and that's hilarious.

• 18:25David Imel?

  Yeah, it's funny.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Anthropic typically does have really good ads too. Like they've been leaning into like the film look and the film aesthetic and everything, like a little grain and everything like. It looks like they hire people that knew what they were doing for.

• 18:37David Imel?

  I mean, every company on Twitter now, basically it's just making commercials.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:42David Imel?

  That's like their whole thing. They have shifted away from just releasing products and now everything has to be a little like movie trailer.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Product launch.

• 18:50David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 18:51Andrew Manganelli?

  I think also doing the film look feels more natural and human. And when you're doing, creating a product that's as unnatural and unhuman as, as AI, you want to be as opposite as possible.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  They thought about this, they know what they're doing.

• 19:03David Imel?

  Anthropic has a great color grader, by the way. It's all the same color and it's very good.

• 19:08Andrew Manganelli?

  It's AI.

• 19:11David Imel?

  Damn. I don't know if AI would mess up the 1.5x anamorphic squeeze. I think that's exactly what it would mess up. Yeah, it's probably true.

• 19:18Andrew Manganelli?

  Alright.

• 19:19David Imel?

  Alright Ellis, I'm ready for your crash out.

• 19:20Speaker 04

  Before I crash out publicly about this, I do want to say,

• 19:24David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 19:25Speaker 04

  Longtime listeners of the show will know, we have in the past done Anthropic ads. We, we, we have read ads that they have done. This has nothing to do with why we're reporting on this. Also, in case anyone was even wondering, none of us have any AI investments. Okay? We're not invested in these private companies.

• 19:42Andrew Manganelli?

  I don't use that shit at all.

• 19:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, so this is not like about, this is about, Oh my God, dude, that stupid 11. Okay, first of all, first of all, when Sam Allman in that 11 paragraphs greed said, God, there was so much, what he called Claude and author or Anthropic and authoritarian company. I was like, brother, like, you need to look at, like, who's on the OpenAI team right now.

• 20:05David Imel?

  You also said Anthropic makes software for rich people when they're the same price.

• 20:09Speaker 04

  They're the same price, expensive software for rich people. And it's like, do you both offer a free tier? The difference in the pricing is that, and maybe like when you're using it at a developer level, the tokens are like cheaper.

• 20:21David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 04

  Or whatever. But it's like, you both offer a free and a $20 tier. So don't, don't go calling your competitor an expensive product for rich people. Don't go calling a company an authoritarian company when like, all of the techno fascists are aligned with you, bro.

• 20:36David Imel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:37Speaker 04

  Dude, and then it's like, he keeps going on and on about how like, you know, these ads are not going to appear in chat. They're not going to like, like, companies are not going to have access to your chat, like, all this stuff. The truth is, we don't know how these ads are going to appear.

• 20:50David Imel?

  They started rolling out yesterday, by the way.

• 20:52Speaker 04

  I haven't seen them. I haven't seen any. I keep looking for people reporting on how they're rolling out. I can't find them.

• 20:57David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 04

  I can provide to you the press releases of the companies who are buying these ads.

• 21:03David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 21:04Speaker 04

  All right. Target, this is an exact quote. I'm just gonna redo the whole thing so that you can't be like, Ellis, you're picking and choosing your words, man. You're an anti-AI Luddite. But quote from Target, "Ads are served based on keywords in a guest's chat GPT prompt, ensuring they're relevant to the conversation. For example, a guest asking, 'What are some countertop cooking appliances that make everyday meals more convenient?' may see an ad for an air fryer." Here's one from Williams Sonoma. "As an early participant, Williams Sonoma, Inc. will explore how advertising in ChatGPT can reach customers at the decision-making moments, helping surface relevant, high-quality products while preserving trusted and transparent user experiences."

• 21:44Andrew Manganelli?

  I don't want to be. Devil's Advocate, because I

• 21:48Speaker 04

  You are a Devil's Advocate. They're like your favorite team.

• 21:50Andrew Manganelli?

  They are.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 21:52Andrew Manganelli?

  I hate them. I hate them this season. By the way, go USA Hockey. We destroyed Canada Women's the other day.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Are they in that new TV show about hockey?

• 22:01Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, it's called The Olympics.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  I was saying that other.

• 22:06Andrew Manganelli?

  I don't.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:09Andrew Manganelli?

  In terms of the way these are written, it does, none of this is saying that it will affect the responses. It's saying that it will show an ad that's potentially based on the responses.

• 22:21Speaker 04

  Sure, but also.

• 22:22Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm just throwing that out there.

• 22:23Speaker 04

  In his thing, like in the past, OpenAI and Tim Omen have said, when we run these ads, these companies will not have access to your chats. And the companies are saying, we're not only going to know what you want, we're going to know when you're in the decision-making process.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  That's not exactly what it says. And I think there's a firewall between, so that's the, the specific verbiage is the companies don't get that data. They get to buy access to the people who are searching certain ways. They don't get to know what you're searching. ChatGPT, OpenAI, they know all this stuff.

• 22:55Speaker 04

  Right.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  But similar to the way you would buy Google AdWords, you'd buy ads for people who are Googling certain things. Those ads will show up for those people. I never get to connect to those people directly or know who searched what. The same way Target's going to pay ChatGPT or OpenAI for a bunch of ads for whatever air fryers or whatever their products are. And anytime those get served, that connection will be made. I don't get to know any of that as Target.

• 23:18Speaker 04

  I don't, I could be wrong, but I don't believe that's how Google AdSense works. I think there's a profile based on your credit cards and your IP address and all the other profiles that, or data points that data brokers pick up on you. And they know exactly what you, Marques Brownlee, have been searching for and buying and are interested in.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  That may be fair, but I don't see that language in either of these responses from we're going to use ChatGPT ads.

• 23:43Andrew Manganelli?

  Which is like, let's also just be real. This is total legalese and we don't know like what they actually want to do on the background of anything. And I don't trust them.

• 23:52Speaker 04

  And yeah, and furthermore.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  That's fair.

• 23:54Speaker 04

  The guy who is trying to convince us of all this is like, and this takes a lot of skill, man, because between like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen, like we have some prolific liars among us these days, like people who can just. Again, poop out non-truths. And Sam Altman is somehow the biggest liar of all of them. Like, the list of lies that this guy has told over the course of his career are so huge and so crazy. And he still is just like, "Bro, just give me like, all of the power in America, all the water in America. Give me literally all of your most inside thoughts and feelings, and I'll just like, fix everything, bro, because I'm Sam motherfucking Altman. Go get another job."

• 24:37Speaker 04

  I don't know, I don't want this guy doing this job. And I get that, like, I don't have like, a say in that or whatever. But the guy whose job is to like, take everything from everyone, I would like to be a truthful guy. That's my crash out, okay? I'm sorry.

• 24:53David Imel?

  It's also just funny to me that every tech CEO decided that they have to have This is the biggest problem. A personality on Twitter. Like, I mean, Elon kinda started this. CEOs used to be pretty quiet. They would maybe- I'm sure there's some, yeah.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  There's a lot that don't say anything on Twitter.

• 25:08David Imel?

  Yeah. But I like them better.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  I don't get like, corporate statements from Sundar ever. He never says anything.

• 25:14David Imel?

  He sometimes does say stuff. I mean, it's not like-

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Not like this.

• 25:17David Imel?

  It's not like this. But pretty much every AI company CEO has like, a very loud voice on Twitter, and is very annoying and just like, says a lot of stuff.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  It's probably because that's where all of their customers are. Like, as far as how competitive this environment is and how much of a connection you wanna have to your potential customers, how else are you gonna talk to them? It's kinda like when how YouTube had that sort of, what is it called? Adpocalypse? Where it's like, all the advertisers left YouTube, and they realized that the only way to reach these people is to be advertising on YouTube. If you're an AI company CEO, how are you gonna reach the most aggressively enthusiastic AI people on the internet? Probably by tweeting a lot at them, and having them read what you're saying and not, you know, looking at the other things other people are saying. So I get why they're so loud on Twitter. But if you're annoyed by that, I don't think it's gonna make him-

• 26:09David Imel?

  He didn't know I was gonna ever-

• 26:10Speaker 01

  I keep trying to reach those people on Twitter.

• 26:12David Imel?

  Yeah, I mean, this kind of reaction, though, is very funny. Cause, I mean, they just went and said like, "We have more users in Texas than you have users total." And it's kinda like, I think the best thing to say was "nothing", or you could've just said "that was funny" and moved on. I'm gonna dub this "The Stri-Sam Effect", because, yeah. I was wondering why you typed it like that? Oh. Totally.

• 26:38Andrew Manganelli?

  Miss that.

• 26:39David Imel?

  Yeah, because he he just kind of like drew more attention to the fact that he was crashing out about it. And then there were multiple articles written out about who he was crashing.

• 26:46Andrew Manganelli?

  If I made a joke about one of you guys and you tweeted that long about it, I'd be like, damn, I got him.

• 26:53David Imel?

  Andrew said something about me that was clearly dishonest.

• 26:55Andrew Manganelli?

  Anthropic is so happy right now that this guy is freaking out.

• 26:59David Imel?

  The amount of people that didn't even know Anthropic's name that knew ChatGPT and then saw a bunch of Google, like, Google Words articles on the side of their home feed being like, Sam Altman crashes out about Anthropic.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:11David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:12David Imel?

  That's it's a, I mean, the amount of marketing spend that they put into this was more than

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Free real estate.

• 27:16David Imel?

  The Super Bowl.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's free real estate.

• 27:17David Imel?

  Free real estate.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  I will say Twitter, Twitter is a very specific audience and a lot of them are the like silences complicit type. So if Sam Altman didn't say anything about those ads, it would also be really, it'll be fodder for them to be like, I don't know, see, I got him. So no matter what you do, you lose, but he chose this path. So that's his choice.

• 27:37David Imel?

  I guess so.

• 27:38Andrew Manganelli?

  Um, screw you, Ellis, for making it seem like I was kind of defending it. I promise that's not how I felt.

• 27:44David Imel?

  I know, I know, I know, I know.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Andrew loves Open Air.

• 27:48Speaker 04

  It's, it just feels to me like the entire premise of this company is like dog water. Like, seriously, like, like what, like, you've made a trillion dollars in spending commitments. And you're, and you, you genuinely are like, no, no, no. In the next like 10 years, we're going to 100x our revenue. Despite the fact that we like, won't tell anyone how we make any money right now. Despite like, despite the fact that we literally do not have electricity in the world to do what we're gonna do.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  It's all the trust me, bro economy.

• 28:17Speaker 04

  It's like, yeah.

• 28:18Andrew Manganelli?

  Data, data centers in space?

• 28:20Speaker 04

  Oh, oh, yeah. Data centers in space. That's killer.

• 28:24David Imel?

  Have you noticed Jensen Huang just like doing all these interviews on the streets of Taiwan?

• 28:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:29David Imel?

  I don't know why that keeps happening.

• 28:30Speaker 04

  I don't know why that keeps happening either.

• 28:31David Imel?

  People, he's just like walking down the street in Taiwan and someone, and then suddenly there's eight mics in his face.

• 28:36Andrew Manganelli?

  Well, it happens.

• 28:37David Imel?

  Doing a press conference.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  That's what happens. And if you don't say no to it, it's gonna keep happening. It's like that.

• 28:41David Imel?

  Why does he keep saying yes to it?

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Well, it's not even saying yes to it. It's someone sprints up to you with a microphone and asks you a critical question. Question about your company and no matter what you say, it will be published. So do you A. Ignore them and get in the car to which it looks like, ooh, he's avoiding it. He knows the answer is bad. Or B. Do you like try to answer because you think you have a good answer? And then suddenly seven more people with microphone.

• 29:02David Imel?

  That's the whole point of a PR.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Win. You cannot win.

• 29:05Andrew Manganelli?

  If I had that much.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  I think video and video. People are going to sprint up to you like, my life savings are in this. Tell me why you're gonna win. I'm like, okay.

• 29:12David Imel?

  Well, it is funny though, because he has been slowly walking back their commitments to OpenAI.

• 29:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:17David Imel?

  Like at first, it was like Nvidia is investing $100 billion in OpenAI. And then throughout these on the street in Taiwan interviews, it's been like, we never actually signed a piece of paper. We just said that, you know, over a number of years, we might invest up to $100 billion.

• 29:34Speaker 04

  Guys, money isn't real. I mean, the money in my bank account is real, of course, but like your money isn't real.

• 29:39David Imel?

  And then randomly Oracle put out a tweet that was like, we are committed to our investments. And it was like, nobody asked you.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:47David Imel?

  Another authoritarian news. Yeah, mm hmm. That's right. Uh, Ring, company owned by Amazon.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  This is funny. Okay, there's a couple. I.

• 29:57Speaker 05

  Was it funny?

• 29:58Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah. Can you explain everything? Because I did not watch the Super Bowl, which you all will find out from my crash out later why I didn't, but.

• 30:04David Imel?

  Wow. Okay.

• 30:05Andrew Manganelli?

  Yes, I some of these are Super Bowl things. I've kind of seen people talk about online, but I I would like the full explanation.

• 30:10David Imel?

  Okay.

• 30:11Andrew Manganelli?

  I only watched a halftime show.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Imagine during the Super Bowl of 2026, people are all wondering which companies are going to make a splash to make a big statement. Are there going to be any crypto ads? Are there going to be any AI ads like this? It's like Metaverse. CES is the same way or like who's gonna have a, what's the theme?

• 30:24David Imel?

  Wait.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Right?

• 30:25David Imel?

  The Super Bowl basically is CES.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, exactly.

• 30:28David Imel?

  That's crazy.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Exactly. So 2026 Super Bowl ads, there's a couple AI ads sprinkled in there and people are analyzing them. Oh, this is their big moment. Okay. So each one of these companies' challenge is to speak to the normies who don't pay attention to AI and paint a picture for them of why their AI is good. And it'll either hit your ear as a normie or it'll hit your ear as a critic who's been looking at this stuff for a long time. So Amazon Ring decides, okay, we've got an idea. We're going to show this really cool feature, this really cool thing that we've been doing, where if you lose your pet, then there's this neighborhood watch feature where you can go through everyone's feeds and it will recognize all of the Ring neighborhoods in your in your neighborhood.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Sorry, all the Ring cameras in your neighborhood, you'll be able to find your pet through them and you'll get reunited with your pet. Isn't that sick? A neighborhood watch feature from your Ring camera? That's turned on by default. On, isn't that great? It's on by default.

• 31:23Andrew Manganelli?

  It's on by default.

• 31:24David Imel?

  You have to turn it off.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  And I think for some people, it probably hit their ears like, wow, I've lost a pet. Wow, I have a pet. I hope I don't lose them, but if I do, this feature would really help. But for all of us, we're like, wait, if you can watch the pets through this feature.

• 31:37David Imel?

  And by the way, they're working with Flock, which is the company that makes those security cameras that are just placed everywhere and sold to government agencies and law enforcement.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  And, and we would know that.

• 31:47David Imel?

  People aren't gonna know that. If you can watch pets, what else can you find through this?

• 31:52Andrew Manganelli?

  Is the thing you like, search for, like, you say, I'm missing this dog. And then if it sees that dog, you see it or you, there's no way you can just go to.

• 32:01David Imel?

  I'm gonna try to re-watch the ad because I don't.

• 32:02Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm assuming.

• 32:03David Imel?

  It's not like I can comb through my ears, ring feed or whatever. But the idea is all of them are connected through this sort of database that lets you find it, even though it's not on your camera.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:14David Imel?

  Which means that there are other ways, probably for other potentially authoritarian figures to pop in there and find things on people's Ring cameras.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:21Speaker 04

  Or like the big Flock scandal that just happened recently where it turned out that none of them were not none of them, but a lot of them were not even password protected. And you could just go and look at any camera and like.

• 32:31David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 32:32Andrew Manganelli?

  One funny part I heard about, or not funny, but it was like, didn't they say like, one million dogs are lost a year? And then it said like, we've found one dog every day over the year. And it's like, the percentage on that is terrible.

• 32:46David Imel?

  350, 500, 1 million.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  I mean, it's irrational. This isn't missing pet. This is a.

• 32:50Andrew Manganelli?

  No, it's true. Listen, I'm all for 300 more dogs being found than something bad happening to them, but.

• 32:56David Imel?

  Yeah, listen, this isn't about the dogs.

• 32:57Andrew Manganelli?

  The ratios there are not real.

• 32:59David Imel?

  Now, to be clear, Ring.

• 33:01Speaker 04

  Alien dogs?

• 33:02Andrew Manganelli?

  I forget what Ring said.

• 33:03Speaker 04

  That's crazy. One in 300 people in America lose a dog a year? That can't be right.

• 33:08Andrew Manganelli?

  I'll find that.

• 33:09David Imel?

  So Ring does deny that the search party feature is even able to track human faces and biometrics.

• 33:17Andrew Manganelli?

  Of course.

• 33:17David Imel?

  And they say it is separate from the familiar faces facial recognition feature that they have on their.

• 33:23Andrew Manganelli?

  That's amazing.

• 33:24David Imel?

  Which is a made up fact.

• 33:26Andrew Manganelli?

  Even if it's true.

• 33:26David Imel?

  That a PR person would say.

• 33:28Andrew Manganelli?

  That they don't have access to the facial recognition thing. They have to know that people just don't trust this stuff.

• 33:32David Imel?

  No, of course.

• 33:33Andrew Manganelli?

  Like.

• 33:34David Imel?

  Ring is the company that just like gives this, like has given this data to law enforcement for.

• 33:39Speaker 04

  I think people do trust this stuff. I think that's, that's like. Like, I know so many people with Ring cameras.

• 33:47Andrew Manganelli?

  No, I mean, I'd say-

• 33:48Speaker 02

  The company is gonna do what's in their best interest.

• 33:50Speaker 04

  No, I think, and when I talk to people about the Ring cameras, and I'm like, for example, like, my neighbors had a Ring camera, and I've made me really uncomfortable because it was pointed right at my door, and I didn't like the idea that I was on camera every single time I was coming and going from my apartment. And I talked to them about it, and they were just sort of like, what do you think's gonna happen? Like, the footage is just, it's just footage, and I was like, where do you think that footage goes? And they literally, like, I've never thought about it. I don't think the average person, like, really understands, like-

• 34:18Andrew Manganelli?

  I think it's, maybe trust isn't the right word, because I think a lot of people in general know, like, most of these companies don't give a damn about me, and like, they don't trust them, but I think it's less of like, the the benefits for me are something that can make me not really think about the other things that could-

• 34:36David Imel?

  Well, and it's Amazon, which makes these products as cheap as possible, so that people just, like, buy them and make a bunch of, you know, put them on their house, because they're so ridiculously cheap.

• 34:46Andrew Manganelli?

  I've got a bunch of cameras at my house. Mine's a little different, because I'm not pointing it directly at, like, someone else's door.

• 34:50Speaker 04

  And I live in a New York City apartment, right, so it's like, it would be impossible to have a Ring camera on your door. I don't know.

• 34:56David Imel?

  Yeah, I just want to remind people, like, this is, this is Amazon, same company that made the Melania movie, which had a total budget of seventy, seventy-one, seventy-five million dollars.

• 35:06Andrew Manganelli?

  They didn't make it, they-

• 35:07David Imel?

  Well-

• 35:08Andrew Manganelli?

  Donated thirty-five million dollars, or whatever it was.

• 35:11David Imel?

  Yeah, seventy-five million dollar budget, forty million dollar acquisition fee paid by Amazon to Melania Trump's production company, and then twenty-eight million went directly to her for licensing. I think that it's pretty obvious, like, where a lot of this money is going, and I just, I would not trust a company that has security cameras all over the, uh, all over the country.

• 35:33Speaker 04

  The security camera company just gave a giant donation to the-

• 35:38David Imel?

  Yeah, anyway. I told you, Marquette said this was the Crash Out Podcast.

• 35:42Andrew Manganelli?

  This is a crash out. I watched, I rewatched, just rewatched the ad, it's like thirty seconds.

• 35:45Speaker 04

  You watched the Melania movie?

• 35:46Andrew Manganelli?

  I rewatched 25x speed right now.

• 35:50David Imel?

  Oh, nothing happened.

• 35:51Speaker 04

  Wow. Nothing happened.

• 35:53Speaker 05

  It's in my left ear.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  No, I watched the ad. There's not, there's not a lot of official UI. There's just kind of like a, a portal in the Ring app to be like, here's the pet's name. Here's a picture. Here's a description. And then the pet shows up at their door. So it's not like we know how this works at all. But I imagine from the advertising perspective, they're like, look, it's a great feature. Doesn't matter how it works. It's going to get you your pet back if you're ever losing your neighborhood. And then if anyone asks any questions, we just deny, deny, deny.

• 36:18Andrew Manganelli?

  Can I throw something out there? Like, this happens. If you're just in like the Facebook group for your town, or like the, what's the website? Neighbor, next door or something like that? There's so many things like that. People will just be like, hey, I lost my cat. Here's a picture of them. And someone will post and they're like, oh, I looked on my security, like, people care about each other enough to just say like, hey, I saw them out there. Or like, here's my security camera that saw what looks like your cat at blah, blah, blah. I'm over here. This happens without one company needing to own all of it.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Most of these technology products are just like, don't talk to people. Just let the technology do it for you.

• 36:55Speaker 04

  I saw, I saw something amazing on Twitter, which was a test to determine if a new technology is good or bad. And the test, and the test, the test is if it would make the plot of a Seinfeld episode not work at all, it's a good piece of tech. Like smartphones, Google Maps, like thing, like things that like would cause the central issue of a Seinfeld episode to like fall apart because the tech just solves the problem.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  This fits.

• 37:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  This is a good feature.

• 37:24Speaker 04

  Tech that would create the plot of a Seinfeld episode is bad tech. Think like polymarket or like, or flock cameras.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  I would say that they could easily, I've never seen Seinfeld, so I apologize.

• 37:37David Imel?

  No, it's like the greatest show ever.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  But I could imagine a show like that having an episode about losing their dog and taking a whole episode to find it. Is that crazy?

• 37:45Andrew Manganelli?

  I feel like the Seinfeld episode would be like.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that could totally work. Yeah. And then this just ruins that because you just, oh, I got a notification. He's three doors down or whatever. Like the band? The cool thing about Seinfeld, sorry, sorry. The, the, okay, little rant. The best thing about Seinfeld is that there's like three interlaced storylines that seem totally separate. And then they randomly come in contact with each other, like through the episode and they just sort of dance.

• 38:08Andrew Manganelli?

  The best thing about it is the sneakers he wears on every episode. Straight heat. Jerry Seinfeld's on it.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  What are they?

• 38:14Andrew Manganelli?

  Because he's a sneaker head.

• 38:15David Imel?

  Wait, really?

• 38:16Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 38:16David Imel?

  Has he been on the sneaker shopping show?

• 38:18Andrew Manganelli?

  I actually don't know.

• 38:19David Imel?

  Probably. I feel like someone is known for that.

• 38:22Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah. Interesting. It might be.

• 38:23David Imel?

  All right. That will be my introduction to Seinfeld. I'll look up his sneaker shop.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Dude, that show is so good.

• 38:27Speaker 04

  You know what else is gonna scan your face, but this time be truthful about it?

• 38:31David Imel?

  Yeah, one more surveillance state story and then we're done, I promise.

• 38:35Speaker 04

  You know what's gonna scan your child's face?

• 38:38David Imel?

  Yeah. Uh, Discord this week announced that they are going to be requiring face scanning or ID uploading for people that they think are probably children. So they, so they are going.

• 38:53Andrew Manganelli?

  What a way to phrase that.

• 38:55David Imel?

  They're gonna be, okay, basically they're trying to age gay, they're trying to get kids off of the like, not safe for work Discord communities.

• 39:02Andrew Manganelli?

  It's a good goal.

• 39:03David Imel?

  That's the, yeah, it's, it's this weird back and forth thing where clearly there have been many, many problems with like, there are many bad things about the internet that kids just have access to and that's sort of always been the case and so there are bad things that occur there, obviously. And so there's sort of this weird tension between like, how do we stop kids from accessing that without creating a surveillance state?

• 39:27Andrew Manganelli?

  I think the other thing is also, people accessing kids.

• 39:30David Imel?

  That, yes.

• 39:31Andrew Manganelli?

  Like, that in the same space is what's really bad.

• 39:34David Imel?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Age gating's.

• 39:35Speaker 04

  The Roblox effect.

• 39:37David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, is like a solution to this problem, but that is very difficult to implement without getting accused of.

• 39:43David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:44David Imel?

  For sure. Yeah.

• 39:48David Imel?

  Famously, people that use Discord, gamers, you know, people that are very online, not happy about having to scan their faces, which I'm not either. I don't think, I would never give, anyway, here's what they say. Uh, they say that for most adults, age verification won't be required as they're using account information, like the games that you play, when you're online, all of these random.

• 40:10Speaker 04

  Account tenure too. So if you've had a Discord account for like 16, I don't know how long.

• 40:14David Imel?

  Yeah, which I have, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so they're using a bunch of different metrics to determine whether or not you're in, they think you're an adult.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:21David Imel?

  And if they think you're an adult, you won't have to do any of these things. If you, if you have your Discord hooked up to Steam and you play Roblox all the time, uh, they probably are gonna make you, you know. It's on you, David. I don't think Roblox is on Steam. Oh damn. I don't know, though. It might be. I don't know.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Is Minecraft like the most popular game on Steam? It's gonna be a lot of people getting that.

• 40:40David Imel?

  I don't think Minecraft's on Steam either.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  It's not, oh.

• 40:42David Imel?

  It's on the Windows Store.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  What is on Steam?

• 40:44David Imel?

  Everything else.

• 40:45Andrew Manganelli?

  Everything else. Literally every other game you didn't just mention.

• 40:48David Imel?

  Fortnite is not on Steam.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  I'm trying, guys.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  If the game, I feel like if the game is big enough to have like its own following where it doesn't need to be on Steam, then it's not on Steam.

• 40:58Andrew Manganelli?

  Unless it's every other game.

• 41:00David Imel?

  Unless it's owned by Valve.

• 41:01Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 41:02David Imel?

  Like Counter-Strike and Dota, yeah.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 41:05David Imel?

  Just gotta mention Dota 2 again. So, anyway.

• 41:09Andrew Manganelli?

  Marquez.

• 41:10David Imel?

  Users who are not verified as adults will not have access to age-restricted servers, channels, and they won't be able to speak in Discord stages. They will see content filters from friend requests and DMs from unknown sources will be filtered into another inbox. Discord says that the face scan uses an on-device AI model to analyze and predict your age and never leaves the device. So that is something, if that is true, I think that we need like security experts to like actually try that out and dig into that.

• 41:39David Imel?

  There was a lot of backlash to this, and so Teamspeak, if you know that word, you're, you will not get age-verified on Discord.

• 41:47Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 41:48David Imel?

  If you don't know that word, you probably will.

• 41:50Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm saying, what's the meme of like, if you, if you recognize Ricky Martin at the halftime show, like it's probably time to get your prostate checked. If you know Teamspeak.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  That was Ricky Martin?

• 42:03Speaker 01

  God, that was Ricky Martin? I just, wow.

• 42:05Andrew Manganelli?

  You're good, youngin'.

• 42:06David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 42:09David Imel?

  Teamspeak is like one of the OG voice chat gaming apps. I used to use it when we played Starcraft in high school. And it's basically not been updated in the last like 15 years.

• 42:20Andrew Manganelli?

  It looks way different.

• 42:21David Imel?

  Kinda sick. I mean, the website, yeah, yeah, it, it looks a little bit more like Discord. The problem with Discord now is that it's trying to become the everything app. Like every app, including Netflix, every app is trying to become the everything app. Because in order to scale infinitely, you have to just adopt every possible market.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:37David Imel?

  That's why Netflix is becoming a podcast app and a games app now, because they kinda saturated the, the, the watching content app. They're gonna drop the flicks. Yeah, there's gonna be net. This is gonna be the internet. Welcome to net. So, yeah, people are very angry about this. Discord knew that people were gonna be very angry and they anticipated to lose some users and say that they are going to have to use other tactics to get users to come back. Whether or not this ends up being a mass exodus and people actually move over permanently or just flow back, which is what usually happens with these social graph effects, not sure. So.

• 43:14Andrew Manganelli?

  Can I just, this is, I just think funny, it doesn't take away from any of the

• 43:22Andrew Manganelli?

  worries people has in here, but there's something so funny about Discord being for gamers and them not wanting their face, but then they'll go start a new character in a game and spend like six hours making it look exactly like them.

• 43:34Speaker 04

  That is very funny.

• 43:35David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 43:35Speaker 04

  There's, there's going to be a really sad future where we look back on this era and be like, damn, like Discord and like Sam Altman with WorldCoin, like, they were so nice, like, they let us scan our own faces instead of just like walking into Baskin Robbins and getting our face scanned without our consent for our ice cream ID, like.

• 43:53David Imel?

  All the flock cameras are already, they already know where you are at all times, anyway. Anyway, I did see a very funny thing. You guys know what Gary's mod is? This is another one, this is another one of those things where if you do know what that is, you won't have to do the thing. But I saw some people who were using Gary's mod characters to fool the face scanning technology and it actually worked.

• 44:15Andrew Manganelli?

  That's crazy.

• 44:16David Imel?

  Well, it does, and that's the thing, because they were like, they were like streaming the screen. I mean, depth in, depth in terms of like, the character looks three dimensional and it was turning.

• 44:26Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, because it's not using like an IR sensor on your regular webcam.

• 44:29David Imel?

  Cameras are all 2D, you know, they just like.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like, I, well, I didn't realize, I thought when I was doing, I remember when I was doing a face verification for it, but I had to scan my ID and then do the thing where I look left and right.

• 44:39David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  I think that's using the iPhones, well, maybe it doesn't.

• 44:42David Imel?

  The iPhone's IR, right?

• 44:43Andrew Manganelli?

  It might be iPhone's IR, but it might also not be, but Discord is presumably probably using it from a webcam, or I guess there is a mobile app, so maybe it could.

• 44:52David Imel?

  Probably a webcam.

• 44:52Andrew Manganelli?

  I doubt.

• 44:53David Imel?

  They're not gonna force you to use your phones.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  I guess that's just why I figured they would have to use real depth instead of just a image that rotates.

• 45:01David Imel?

  Well, they can't really, I mean, the iPhone, there's some phones that have IR, yeah.

• 45:06Speaker 04

  Look, there's, there's also a non-zero chance that this face scanning stuff literally does nothing. And Discord just needed to do something to like make themselves not legally accountable for like exposing minors to us. I'm not saying it does, but like, we're at the point now, where like, who's to say everyone isn't lying all the time? Mm hmm.

• 45:27Andrew Manganelli?

  I've been lying this whole podcast.

• 45:28Speaker 04

  I'm not even, Alex. Audio listeners would be shocked to find out, I am like a seven foot lizard sitting at the mic and have been this whole time. I'm 12. But you know what demands truth and nothing but the truth? What is that? Waveform trivia. That's facts.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  Well, good thing we all get the truth right.

• 45:45Andrew Manganelli?

  I was gonna say, when the correction comes next week, that segue's gonna hit.

• 45:49Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, maybe. Our scores. Yeah, no, that is.

• 45:56Speaker 04

  Look, man, I strive for perfection. I know, it's been a weird episode, but. It's only gonna get weirder, baby. It's only getting weirder. It's only February. Guys, wanna guess what this trivia question's about? Deal.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  It's about Sam Altman.

• 46:09Speaker 04

  Sam Altman has said in the past, specifically on his blog and several interviews, that with 10 gigawatts of compute, we would most likely have to choose between curing cancer or tutoring every child in America. We couldn't have both for 10 gigawatts of compute. The largest power plant by total possible capacity, again, this power plant only runs at 30% capacity, according to my limited understanding of industrial scale power and this Wikipedia.

• 46:40Andrew Manganelli?

  Best part of a trivia question?

• 46:41Speaker 04

  Running at full hypothetical capacity, how many gigawatts can the largest power plant in America produce? A gigawatt have to do with education.

• 46:52Andrew Manganelli?

  Wait, I'm.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Saying that the compute required.

• 46:54Speaker 04

  The compute required to train the model that could do either of those things required 10 gigawatts.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  I don't understand why these people ever make those, like, sometimes you see people ask like Elon, like, well, what do you think it would, you know, solving world hunger? And he'll go, hmm. And he'll try to answer, like, why would you try to answer that? Don't say, don't make a promise that you could solve cancer with enough power. That's an insane thing to say out loud.

• 47:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  But.

• 47:20Speaker 04

  Yeah. And you know, the thing is, is like, I've never been an evil villain, like a supervillain, so I can't truly put myself in like- What about when you were the Hamburglar for Halloween? That's true. I was a supervillain. Is the Hamburglar really a supervillain? I've always thought of him as more of like a Robin Hood, man of the people type figure.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  No.

• 47:37Speaker 04

  That's if, okay, so- Is Ronald McDonald like Big Brother or something? No, the Hamburglar's foil is Mayor McCheese, obviously. I'm so hungry. Okay.

• 47:48Andrew Manganelli?

  I thought they were up in paper.

• 47:50Speaker 04

  Oh, that's good. Anyway, what's the question? I think-

• 47:52Andrew Manganelli?

  I literally don't know.

• 47:54Speaker 04

  Oh, how many gigawatts? Yo, the- How many gigawatts? The hardiest, most powerful power plant in America. How many gigawatts does it break? In America, in the United States. While it's running at 30% capacity. I'm specifically referring to the Grand Cooley Dam in Washington State.

• 48:09Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, how many dam? How many gigawatts did the car in Back to the Future need?

• 48:14Speaker 04

  Flux capacitor.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Seven parsecs.

• 48:17Andrew Manganelli?

  No. Oh, no, 100 gigawatts.

• 48:20Speaker 04

  I have no idea. I don't remember. That quote is 1,000, how many? A gigawatt is 1,000 megawatts. Okay, and a megawatt is a thousand.

• 48:27Andrew Manganelli?

  1.21.

• 48:28Speaker 04

  Thousand. A thousand, thousand. A thousand watts? A megawatt is a thousand watts. No, a million watts. It's a million watts. A million watts? Yeah. Oh, okay. 1.21 gigawatts. So a gigawatt is a billion watts.

• 48:39Andrew Manganelli?

  The flux capacitor needed 1.21 gigawatts?

• 48:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:42Andrew Manganelli?

  Damn, he could have cured cancer instead.

• 48:45Speaker 04

  Dude. Yeah. So you're saying that that dam would let us travel back to the future? I'm saying that-

• 48:50Andrew Manganelli?

  Like seven times.

• 48:52Speaker 04

  I'm saying that musical comedian Reggie is one watt. Damn it. Reggie Watts, that's good, that's good. We should probably take a break.

• 48:59Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 48:59Speaker 04

  We're going insane.

• 49:00Andrew Manganelli?

  I think our audience needs a break more than we do.

• 49:03Speaker 04

  I'm sorry, guys. All right, well, we'll think about it. Answers will be at the end like usual. We'll be right back.

• 49:18Speaker 01

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• 51:31Andrew Manganelli?

  All right, welcome back, Marquez.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:34Andrew Manganelli?

  We've talked about a lot of deep stuff here, but I think I have potentially the biggest question possible for you.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 51:39Andrew Manganelli?

  Why do you hate OnePlus so much?

• 51:42Speaker 01

  It's a very valid question. You mean, you mean my daily driver that I've been...

• 51:47Speaker 01

  This has been a question I've seen.

• 51:48Andrew Manganelli?

  Keep your enemies closer, Marquez.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  No, we, we did a, we did a video on, on silicon carbon batteries and this, this video got a mixed reception. And obviously I have thoughts on it, but I'll have all, all the details here. Basically, uh, it's a story of like corporate risk assessment, which is not the most interesting thing, but it's very connected to technology because there are companies out there using silicon carbon batteries. There are lots of companies out there not using silicon carbon batteries in smartphones specifically. And we talk a lot about smartphones. So after the year and a half of me making lots of videos on smartphones that have silicon carbon batteries and me raving about them and being like, why aren't these other guys doing that? Decided to dig a little bit more into why those other guys aren't doing that.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  And also have been getting lots of emails, as you can imagine, from people going, "Hey, we're not idiots. We have thought a lot about this and there's a certain risk tolerance that this company has and a couple of concerns that these companies have about potentially using silicon carbon batteries."

• 52:49Andrew Manganelli?

  I'd say it got to the point where over the past year, you would mention it and we would have comments that are like, "Hey, moron, they're not doing it because of blah, blah, blah." Like, yeah.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  It's, it's come up a few times even on this podcast. We've mentioned like, oh, the, I think you mentioned it.

• 53:00David Imel?

  Yeah, the Google engineer at Google I/O last year pulled me aside and was like, "You guys keep asking why we're not using it and here are the reasons we're not using it." So I just was like, I just mentioned that he mentioned that to me.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:11David Imel?

  That's all I said.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. And also I had a bunch of versions of that over the last couple of years. So I'm like, all right, let me, let me just put all of this together into one video. Cause I imagine not everyone knows this stuff. Not everyone gets pulled aside by a Google engineer at I/O to hear about this stuff. So, um, so essentially put together a video on what some of those companies are thinking about silicon carbon and why they're not using it so that we can have the whole picture. I'm still going to love silicon carbon batteries and praise them. And that's why I'm using this phone and phones like it with incredible battery life. But there were a couple of things people didn't like about that video. Probably two main things. One was the thumbnail, totally valid. It was like a little bit spicy and I think this is an interesting enough topic without the debate about clickbait, so I just changed the thumbnail. But then two was that, you know, I didn't name drop the exact people who had been emailing

• 53:55Speaker 01

  me over the years or which companies who'd pulled me aside and said these things and it kind of felt like, oh, I'm like a mouthpiece for them, like I'm protecting them and justifying them. I'm actually like a secret silicon carbon hater or something like that. I think a lot of people didn't make it all the way through the video and just left with that impression. So I figured it was valid to sort of explain it all with someone who's actually willing to join the podcast and put their expertise in front of everyone and explain. So we have Shen joining us from HTC. We've, he's, I don't know if he's been on the podcast. He's been on the podcast. He's been on the podcast once before, okay, because we've, we've talked. I think twice. And so HTC obviously does lots of different devices now at this point in XR and obviously have done smartphones in the past, RIP.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  But they obviously work with batteries a lot, so he works with batteries and the corporate risk assessment profile of a company who has to decide what types of batteries to use. So I figured this would be informative and interesting. You don't have to hear it from me, but you get all the information at a deeper level. So let's play that quick interview for you now and then we'll come back right after. So, okay, Shen, thank you for doing this. I appreciate the time. I think we should just start off with what are your, what's your position? What are your credentials? Because people want to know how you know this stuff first. So who are you? What do you do?

• 55:10Speaker 07

  Okay, I'm Shen. I look after global product management at HTC. I've been here for almost 11 years now, but I've been running product for the past five and a half years here at our headquarters. So I look after product from conception to all the way to, you know, end of life. When we do, you know, we, when we, so.

• 55:42Speaker 07

  I don't work on phones anymore, but I work on a lot of things where things like batteries are important. So like XR headsets, right? Generally, what you'll find in the market is about two hours. And I would say also with things like smart glasses that we just launched, the compactness of them is also really important. And then one last thing is considering that they're right on your head. Yeah, we are actually generally more safety conscious than others when it comes to the battery safety itself.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  That is a, that's a really good jumping off point because obviously we talked about, you know, silicon carbon batteries, right, the lithium ion batteries we've seen for years. And I mostly was, you know, talking about them in the context of smartphones, but paint me a picture of what this landscape is like. We've had these batteries for a long time. There's been tons of advancements and I've started talking about silicon carbon batteries for like the last year or two in smartphones as a really big deal, like a pretty big leap. But obviously there's some risk assessment there. So what do you, when you look at just batteries in general, silicon carbon versus the typical battery? What, what are you seeing?

• 56:47Speaker 07

  So I'm still a massive smartphone fan. So things like silicon carbon batteries do get me excited, especially at the idea of capacity increasing so much.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:58Speaker 07

  But when it comes to the industry itself, I think because batteries are such a high energy density item, everyone is usually a lot more wary of them. The way, you know, the way a battery can usually go wrong is when it expands, it swells, thermal runaway, you know, usually maybe it's like shorts inside. And some of them don't even have to come from any structural, like dropping your phone, right? Like batteries that charge below freezing can sometimes have an issue where the lithium deposits itself as a metal and that's pretty much an irreversible process.

• 57:42Speaker 07

  It can cause, cause gas expansion and it can cause shorts itself. So there are loads of these different things we have to consider when looking at new chemistries. And so it depends on the kind of company you are, right? So I, I did see the video and I, I do agree with you. When you are kind of in. The top two or three in terms of market share.

• 58:13Speaker 07

  It's kind of your race to lose. Right, so you're more wary about a mistake happening. Especially when you sell tens of millions, hundreds of millions of phones a year.

• 58:24Speaker 07

  So you're going to be a lot more strict when it comes to safety standards. And sometimes it might not just, it might just be the thing that you don't want to really risk. And I'll also say, you know, when we look at something like silicon carbon. Or even newer technologies like silicon anode itself.

• 58:45Speaker 07

  While it helps with things like capacity.

• 58:49Speaker 07

  In terms of battery chemistry, you're playing a lot of other levers instead. So as you go with more and more silicon. It is, you're actually reducing the charge rate as well. So that is another thing you have to balance. And of course, things like longevity. You know, you mentioned in your video, and it's quite accurate. When silicon absorbs lithium ions as it charges.

• 59:15Speaker 07

  It swells up, right? And there are loads of ways, you know, people, there's like nano lithography ways of making sure those particles don't swell up as much. But at the end of the day, it's still swelling and that will cause, you know, companies to have certain concerns. And they'll want to test these for longer periods of time. So I expect it to be slower adoption there as well. And I would say. You know, a lot of different companies take things like battery longevity differently. Some will make this their number one thing. And you'll realize that they're the ones that don't really increase charge speed that much.

• 59:55Speaker 07

  Don't really experiment with new, new types of chemistry. And that's usually because they actually care about longevity a lot more than others.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  I know you won't say it, but I'll say that that's that's the thing we've seen from Apple for years. But I what is funny about batteries is like smartphones, I talk about smartphones so much like we get very few really exciting new things with smartphones at this stage, like they're such a mature category. So when we do get something interesting like, oh, a way bigger smartphone sensor, or, oh, this really big processor node shift, or, ooh, a huge increase in battery capacity. That's interesting. So like, we pay more attention to it, and we'd like all of our favorite brands and our favorite phone models we're considering buying to be at the forefront of that. But it's not always as simple as just switching to the new thing.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  I think one thing that was also mentioned in the video that was, you know, it's obviously very complex, and I did a lot of simplification, but is the testing process? And I'm assuming this is obviously very important to you because you're putting batteries on people's heads. Like, what is the process of testing, you know, charge cycles and for longevity? What is what is the process like at a big company when trying to assess if a new battery technology is potentially worth it?

• 1:01:12Speaker 07

  So usually when it comes to safety, we work with the battery vendor themselves to to come out with safety guidelines. And actually, most companies have roughly the same kind of guidelines, the same kind of tests. Some may just pull the criteria a little bit higher. You'll usually see battery specs, for example, like

• 1:01:33Speaker 07

  it'll retain 80% of its charge after 800 to 1,000 charge cycles.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, we see that.

• 1:01:39Speaker 07

  Things like that.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:42Speaker 07

  So, but one other thing is when you have a new product, the way it fits in also makes a difference in terms of how you should test it. I'll give you an example. When it comes to battery tech, when it comes to fitting a battery itself, your manufacturers will always leave kind of an expansion space between the battery and the actual housing. Because batteries will expand. They'll expand with temperature. They'll expand over over time, right? There's always going to be a little bit of off-gassing potentially that can happen. And a lot of the time, that's within an acceptable range. And that's why you leave that expansion space.

• 1:02:25Speaker 07

  It's mostly when that expansion goes beyond what that expansion space allows that you'll see your phone kind of splitting apart. So we'll test for a lot of different things. We'll test for, you know, different temperatures. Even during shipping, we have a thing called thermal shock where, you know, something might go from minus something degrees to something that's really hot and really humid. So those are things that you kind of have to test for for all kinds of products. But I'll still say there are a lot of things that is really hard to test for. You know, there are, you know, twenty, thirty different combinations that are going to happen. But how do you test those over a long period of time? Right?

• 1:03:09Speaker 07

  If you're testing it through for, you can accelerate certain tests, but at the end of the day, you always realize you have a certain blind spot when it comes to real world usage. So that comes back to why I mentioned, it's all about how do you want to play that risk?

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, like I said, there's, there's a lot of variables and maybe if it's in something that's in used, it's used in less environments or less situations, then maybe you don't have to test for as many variables. But a smartphone is like, it's with you everywhere. Like, there's a trillion different things that can happen to it, from temperature to pressure and environments and stuff. So that's, it does seem, I don't envy the task. It seems like a very detailed, complicated one.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  My last question for you is just, what else do you think people should know about batteries in general? Like, there's, it's a complex thing. There's chemistry, there's physics, there's a lot involved. Is there anything that maybe is commonly looked over by, by people buying smartphones? Maybe in just when comparing one smartphone to the other? What do, what do you think people should know about batteries that they probably don't already?

• 1:04:10Speaker 07

  I will say one thing about. Kind of, I'll say one that's kind of more supply chain oriented first. Um, and that's specifically, usually with new tech, you have this one issue where not many people are making it. If, um, you know, from HCC's past, we have rules in place. Um, where we are required to kind of second source everything.

• 1:04:37Speaker 07

  And that's for a few reasons. Sometimes, you know, you don't want one vendor for a really cheap component to go out of business. Um, or to have an issue and then in impact your entire business.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:04:49Speaker 07

  Um, sometimes it's that, um, but sometimes it's also more malicious. You have competitors in the space that will attack your supply chain to try and stop you from going to market. That happens more than you'd expect.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  That is.

• 1:05:05Speaker 07

  So, yeah, so as a big company, um, you're, whenever you look at new tech.

• 1:05:14Speaker 07

  You're gonna wanna try and second source everything. I mean, in HCC, the only exception by default is the CPU. Right? Because, um, mostly in a phone, you're not gonna find a second source for like a Qualcomm chipset.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:05:26Speaker 07

  Um, but you can second source most things. And then if we have to waive it, anything for any reason. You know, that usually has to go, um, go through a, an approval process. So that is one thing to consider, which is at the scale of certain companies, they're gonna be required to second source those. Because they don't want their sales to tank because one supplier couldn't make batteries anymore for them.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Hmm. Yeah.

• 1:05:52Speaker 07

  Or any other component.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is really interesting you bring that up, because that's been a story sometimes, every once in a while in the past. There'll be a big enough noticeable difference between maybe a single component from two different suppliers. And that'll make a headline like, oh, I got the iPhone with the LG display, or I got the iPhone with the Samsung display. And you can actually measure a difference and it's, it's kind of rare that that happens, but usually. You know, people are pretty good about matching the things together, but that is, that is a fascinating story too.

• 1:06:18Speaker 07

  Yeah, I would say most manufacturers will have the same specs for those different companies.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:23Speaker 07

  Um, to try and make sure that it isn't noticeable. Um, but every now and then you will, someone notices it. So that's kind of the supply chain side.

• 1:06:35Speaker 07

  And then, yeah, I think the the one thing about batteries is coming back to there are so many different levers, right? And you might want capacity, but the next person's gonna want charging speed, right? You might be able to have both, but there's a trade off somewhere. That trade off could be longevity. You know, I don't think any any battery manufacturer will make something that is below what industry safety regulations are. But what I will say is those tolerances will sometimes change how they fit in a product, also impact how it's tested. And yeah, different companies will just have their different priorities.

• 1:07:21Speaker 07

  And at the end of the day, that is going to be one of the key reasons why they choose a specific battery over another. And it sometimes could even just be cost, right? Memory is going up crazy, right?

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:35Speaker 07

  We've been having meetings about memory for all of our products, like almost any product with a process is going to have some sort of memory in there. And we're trying to figure out, okay, what else could we do without having to increase prices for certain things? And sometimes, and I'm sure someone in 2026 will end up making a decision that they're not going to invest as much into the newest technologies because they don't want their retail price to go up.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I I try to, this has come up now that we've like started to make our own products where we realize how many decisions go into these products and every lever is just a trade off with something else. I am rooting for silicon carbon batteries to be like, we haven't had thankfully any issues with them. Longevity seems to be totally fine so far. But you know, batteries, even just within batteries themselves, have different levers. It feels like an oversimplification, but a lot of things come down to just like capacity, charge rate, and longevity, pick two.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  You know, that's and there's that's even with price and like all the other things like there's tons of different levers that will flip based on what your priorities are as company. But yeah, I'm

• 1:08:48Speaker 07

  The most annoying thing is you might not know what that lever will look like. If you pull the other two, you don't know what that longevity lever is going to look like until you've seen that thing run through its entire life cycle. So I would say like, those that aren't using silicon carbon batteries, I wouldn't say any of them are rooting against it at all. Right? If as long as it nothing happens to it in whatever the you know, timeframe they're observing it. Like, I'm sure it's going to be within those discussions. I'm sure it's in their discussions now. But at the end of the day, when they make that decision of which which one they use, they're choosing the levers that makes the most sense for them.

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  Awesome. Well, this has been super helpful and insightful. And I'm sure we'll have you back on the podcast at some point, maybe even back in the studio. But we appreciate the insight. So thanks as always.

• 1:09:43Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  All right. So that was it. Thank you again to Shen for spending the time. Obviously, he's a very busy person and being in charge of a big company like that, there are tons of things to consider all the time is cool, having the facts from him and the expertise. And again, the risk that we're talking about is not just like, the specific safety risk of one technology, but it's like a corporate risk, it's a financial risk, it's a longevity risk, it's it's all sorts of things that come with the choices, the levers you pull to use different technologies. So I thought that was interesting to hear.

• 1:10:14Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, I think one of the a pretty common comment was along the lines of like, well, Apple and Samsung aren't going to risk spending more money on it. It's like, yeah, that's that's part of that's the risk assessment thing is like it costs more money, potentially has way more money. You think about Note 7, I mean, how much money Samsung probably lost about this, like, yeah, all these companies care way more about bottom line and money than they do any of us and getting the best features. So yeah, I thought that was pretty obvious. But

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  I was I am reminded that the guy at I O that told me the reason Google didn't use him at the time. Again, this was a year ago, things might have changed since then.

• 1:10:50Andrew Manganelli?

  It was two years ago.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  Maybe it might have been two years ago. It might have been two years ago. Might have been to I O I O.

• 1:10:57David Imel?

  To Google, I O we go. What?

• 1:11:01Speaker 04

  Old McDonald, bro.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  That's what he said, yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:02David Imel?

  Yeah, like the Hamburglar, yeah. Uh, anyway, so he's, at the time, it wasn't, he wasn't saying that like, they're more likely to explode necessarily. What he had told me was that their longevity, they started to lose their charge, their total ability to charge to 100% much quicker, and after two-ish years, the degradation was a lot higher. I am aware, like, from two years from then, they've actually made the technology quite a bit better. They have made the, the chemistry a lot better, so that it, you know, maintains a lot of charge cycles. I think OnePlus has put out a lot of, um, kind of like, technical stuff about this, and how they're able to actually maintain like, a thousand charge cycles for silicon carbons, which is a lot better than some people.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's really important.

• 1:11:47David Imel?

  Stuff changes.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, this, like, assessment of the technology will be constantly changing, and then the way that these companies decide whether to use any of this stuff or not is also constantly changing. So as it gets better, like, okay, one of the big points in the comments was, well, we haven't had any issues so far with silicon carbon batteries, which is great, that's really good news for potentially getting them sooner in everyone else's phones. But yeah, this, this stuff is constantly evolving.

• 1:12:10David Imel?

  And it's newish to the point where, like, it's only been out for like, two years.

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:12:13David Imel?

  So like, yeah, we're not gonna see, if there are any problems, we're not gonna start seeing it until like, a year from now or so.

• 1:12:20Andrew Manganelli?

  And the variable of humankind is so much more insane than anything you can test in a lab. I mean, we've seen how many folds have been folded 100,000 times in a lab, and people are breaking them.

• 1:12:33David Imel?

  Broken within a week.

• 1:12:34Andrew Manganelli?

  Two weeks, yeah, we peeled the screen protector off of the first fold immediately, like, like, us as humans destroy things. And when it's something that has a little bit of a more dangerous potential, it's just like, even if that's so small, the news cycle of when, if that potentially happens is so big.

• 1:12:52David Imel?

  And we talk about, we talk about how like, you know, when YouTube makes a change, and it's like, oh, we're only testing this on 1% of customers, but then you realize what 1% is for YouTube.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:02David Imel?

  And that's like, a lot of people, it's the same with like, Samsung sells an insane amount of phones, right? So like, if 1% of their phones have battery issues, that's a way bigger story than 1% of like, the amount of phones that Google sells having battery issues.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly, and what Shin was talking about, like, if you're, if you're pretty confident that the issues with your phones are one in a million, and you only sell half a million phones. You feel pretty good about that.

• 1:13:25David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  But if you're Samsung and you sell tens of millions of phones, the risk profile is different.

• 1:13:30Andrew Manganelli?

  And are also like, yeah, you're just leading everything already.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34Andrew Manganelli?

  Why change anything? I'm already making plenty of money and people aren't switching off me. So why would I give them anything else?

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  Are you just talking about the S26 now?

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  I think that's, I think-

• 1:13:44Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, literally.

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  That was maybe the most impactful line that he said to me, which is like, it's your race to lose.

• 1:13:50Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  In all these other competitive markets where there is no true like number one runaway with a high market share. They're all very competitive and that's way more exciting. You get way more advanced product really quickly. And then, like I said in that video, here in the US where market share is kind of stacked for a couple of companies. They are, I mean, we see it, they are so passive about a lot of stuff. So-

• 1:14:13David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  That's their risk assessment profile.

• 1:14:14David Imel?

  The S23 is, the S24 is, the S25 is-

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  Probably gonna be S26.

• 1:14:19Andrew Manganelli?

  S23 plus, plus, plus.

• 1:14:20David Imel?

  New boxes.

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:21David Imel?

  Note 3 plus, plus, plus.

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  My thing too is like, I feel like if there's one thing I can trust and believe in, it's that these companies want to make more money. So if-

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a really good-

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  If there's an opportunity for them to use this new battery tech, they're gonna do it-

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  As soon as possible.

• 1:14:36David Imel?

  If they think it'll like drive the market share.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:38David Imel?

  I mean, the whole reason that Samsung is making a foldable, allegedly, making a foldable to compete with the iPhone foldable form factor is because they know it will make them money.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:14:48David Imel?

  Because they want, because people are like, oh, I love that shape, but I want to be on Android. Also Samsung has some pretty bad PTSD with the Note 7 explosion.

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  I was just thinking about that. That was 2016, right?

• 1:14:59David Imel?

  I think it was 2017.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  16, 2017, so almost a decade ago.

• 1:15:03David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  I always find myself saying like, hang on, you know what happened to Samsung? But for some 15-year-olds watching this-

• 1:15:08Andrew Manganelli?

  They don't.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  They actually don't know what happened to Samsung.

• 1:15:11David Imel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 1:15:12David Imel?

  A lot of people might not even know what the Galaxy Note was.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:15:16Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Part of the age verification is what happened to Samsung.

• 1:15:23Speaker 04

  There was a time where you had to choose between having an Android phone that came with a stylus or air travel.

• 1:15:30David Imel?

  That's true.

• 1:15:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:31David Imel?

  Yeah, because you could not bring a Galaxy Note 7 on a plane. For those that don't know, the Galaxy Note 7, notably.

• 1:15:40David Imel?

  Appreciate it. Started exploding a lot.

• 1:15:43Andrew Manganelli?

  Even that is, there's 96 cases total, I think.

• 1:15:48Speaker 05

  That's a lot, bro.

• 1:15:49Andrew Manganelli?

  It is a lot. It's a lot, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not really that much.

• 1:15:53Speaker 04

  I only exploded 96 times. It's not that big a deal.

• 1:15:57David Imel?

  That's the thing. Especially knowing that while you're sleeping, your phone could randomly explode like that. I would not, yeah. So they recalled it and then they just didn't end up replacing it, which was very funny. They did later release the Note 7 Fan Edition.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  For those who.

• 1:16:12David Imel?

  That was really one of Notes 7.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  That's really one of Notes 7.

• 1:16:15David Imel?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  Like I said, lithium ion batteries aren't perfect either.

• 1:16:19David Imel?

  No.

• 1:16:20Speaker 01

  It's just they have some level of risk all the way across the board.

• 1:16:23Andrew Manganelli?

  Can I throw something out there also just about the video? Just as an explanation, the reason we showed the Jerry Rick everything fold, like smoking in the video is because when we were looking over the script, someone at the studio was like, "Oh, I don't know what the term thermal runaway means." So rather than just putting this big explanation there, we just, I mean, I guess it's not a big explanation, but we're like, "We'll show footage of what a thermal runaway is. We don't have that silicon carbon." I totally get why people think that felt.

• 1:16:52David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:53Andrew Manganelli?

  Targeted, but that was not the purpose of it.

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  I think it all came, it all, the mentality that a lot of comments that we're seeing in some reaction videos people made, a lot of it came from the original thumbnail, which was people going, "Oh, this is a hit piece against silicon carbon." Which if you ignore every other video I've ever made, is a reasonable take. But now that the thumbnail has changed, the packaging makes a lot more sense. We are explaining the risk assessment, not going, "Hey, silicon carbon, bad. Lithium ion, good." So if that was your thought, now you know.

• 1:17:20David Imel?

  And the risk assessment, again, is mostly about pricing and longevity and less about exploding.

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:17:27David Imel?

  Which a lot of people thought it was about exploding, but it's not.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  So there we go.

• 1:17:31Speaker 02

  Can I say a random thing that Shen pointed out that I thought was interesting? Was the more he was talking about it, I kind of like in my head tried to visualize what these levers are that he was talking about that you have to like pull and push or whatever. And it just reminded me kind of like an exposure triangle, like with cameras. Like the more of one thing you do, the less of the other like charge cycles or capacity. And it's like,

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:17:53Speaker 02

  Eventually we'll have Sonys that can just see in the dark, but.

• 1:17:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it was also a good point because it's like an exposure triangle where you have to take 10,000 pictures before you can see the light meter. You know what I mean? Cause like he made that really good point that it's like, you can play with the longevity lever or the charge speed lever, but you don't know what that third lever is going to be like until you've had these batteries used for a while.

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  For years, yeah. Anyway.

• 1:18:17Speaker 04

  Thank you, Shen.

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  All in the name of shading light on things. Thank you again to Shen for, uh, for helping us out with that. And I think it's time for

• 1:18:24Speaker 02

  A second trivia.

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  More trivia.

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  Trivia, dude. So this is a YouTube question. Let's see who gets it.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  You too?

• 1:18:33Speaker 02

  I should get this.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  Like YouTube being

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  Cayman's pre-installed on which iPod? No, um.

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  Triggered.

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  I knew that one. Not including music videos. The top most YouTube video is a GTA 6 trailer, of course, but one company accidentally broke that record in 2024. Do you remember what company that was?

• 1:18:53Andrew Manganelli?

  Most viewed YouTube video that's not

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  24 hours.

• 1:18:56Andrew Manganelli?

  In 24 hours, that is not a music video.

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  That is not a music video. Accidentally.

• 1:18:59Speaker 01

  One company accidentally broke that record?

• 1:19:02Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  Cause it, oh.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  It wasn't.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  Was it?

• 1:19:07Speaker 02

  Or was it? Really? Was it?

• 1:19:10Speaker 01

  I think I know.

• 1:19:12Speaker 02

  You think?

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  Well, I'm trying to put the pieces together. I, it was very well worded, well worded question.

• 1:19:17Speaker 02

  Thank you. It took me this whole, people go back 20 minutes and just look at me at the desk like this.

• 1:19:23Speaker 02

  And that was me trying to think about how to phrase this question.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Well done.

• 1:19:25Speaker 02

  Accidentally.

• 1:19:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:19:27Speaker 02

  I think it was

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  We'll think about that.

• 1:19:28Speaker 02

  It was intentional.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  End is at the end like usual. We'll be right back.

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

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• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  That's J-I-R-A dot com.

• 1:20:27Speaker 08

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• 1:21:05Speaker 09

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• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  All right, welcome back to Wayform, the Wayform Podcast, as you know it, where we talk about EVs. Two EVs to talk about this week. The cheap one or the expensive one? Expensive. The expensive one or the cheap one?

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  Cheap is relative to the expensive one.

• 1:21:50Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's do the cheap one.

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  Okay, all right. Rivian R2 reviews dropped this week. Sort of reviews, right? Including ours, yeah. First drive. Reviews, first drive. First impressions. Final prototype evaluation. We don't have full pricing of all the trims yet, but you know, our video went up, CarWai video went up, Jerry Everything video went up, Doug DiMiro video, a bunch of us got to actually hang out and drive these cars. R2, as many of you know, is the slightly smaller and roughly, roughly half the price Rivian R1. It's the second generation product. It's their 2.0 SUV. It's their Model Y fighter. It's their mass market competitor to like, put them on the map and save them, blah, blah, blah. All these expectations for R2. I thought it was really, really good. I thought it was really impressive.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  The software was good. The steering wheel haptics were like PS5 controllers with the like, spring weight.

• 1:22:42Speaker 02

  Relax.

• 1:22:43Speaker 01

  It was really relaxed. I'm just saying. It looks like an R1. It's just smaller. It's nimble. It's 2,000 pounds lighter. It's simpler. It also was the highest end trim version of it, so it's obviously not going to be the base $45,000 one, but it was a dual motor, all wheel drive, 600 something horsepower, 0 to 16 in 3.5 seconds. Very, very capable machine. We off-roaded in it. We drove it on streets, got roughly 300 miles of range. Lots of good things to say about it. But we don't know the price of the one that I tested. That won't come out for another month or so. Which everyone is now, you know, doing their theorizing about how much they think it will cost. But I'm curious if you guys are thinking good things about R2 now. Well, with the Ram shortage, you know, it's going to be way more expensive. I'm kidding. Every car has.

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, there's a little bit of, yeah, there's a little bit of memory.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm curious. Do you know which trim you drove? Like, did they tell you?

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  Yes. So I am not allowed to weigh in on the prices.

• 1:23:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  But yes, I drove the highest end trim that they plan on shipping in 2026.

• 1:23:45Speaker 02

  And when they announced it, however many years ago, what was the price for the people that put it into preorder? Andrew, I believe you did that, right?

• 1:23:53Andrew Manganelli?

  Well, the preorder though was.

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  It was like a hundred.

• 1:23:55Andrew Manganelli?

  It was like a hundred bucks.

• 1:23:57Speaker 02

  But for which trim, do you know?

• 1:23:58Andrew Manganelli?

  No, no, you didn't pick it.

• 1:23:59Speaker 02

  Oh, you didn't get to pick?

• 1:24:00Andrew Manganelli?

  No. I thought the whole thing was under 60.

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  That was what I was trying to ask, like, what was the number?

• 1:24:06Andrew Manganelli?

  I don't remember. I thought back in the day, there was an under 60.

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  What I mostly see is 45,000. This, this whole, this whole promise of like, this is their $45,000 competitor.

• 1:24:17Andrew Manganelli?

  If I remember correctly, and I could be totally wrong, is everyone was saying under 60 a few years ago, which makes most people assume that higher trim would be 59. But that was like, you know, the like 5995 or whatever that is under 60.

• 1:24:31Andrew Manganelli?

  I don't know. That was two years ago. A lot of stuff has changed.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  Checks.

• 1:24:34Andrew Manganelli?

  These things never come out the price.

• 1:24:36David Imel?

  And to be clear, the R2 is only coming in the R1S trim where it's smaller. I mean, it's a smaller SUV.

• 1:24:43Andrew Manganelli?

  It's an SUV.

• 1:24:43Speaker 01

  Two or SUV, correct.

• 1:24:45David Imel?

  There's no pickup truck version.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:24:47David Imel?

  Okay.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  Which, yeah, this, this is like the common, uh, shape of vehicle that especially America just buys a lot of in general. And model wise, most popular vehicle on earth for a reason. Like, there's a shape and a two-row SUV higher off the ground type of thing that people like, and this is competing directly with that. So that's out. That's, you know, not too many hot takes about it.

• 1:25:07Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm just more excited for the R3.

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  Dude, I want the R3.

• 1:25:10David Imel?

  It's like a Subaru.

• 1:25:11Andrew Manganelli?

  This is cute. This is cool. Thank you.

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  Dude.

• 1:25:13Andrew Manganelli?

  Now do R3.

• 1:25:14David Imel?

  The R3 is like a foot and a half to two feet shorter than the Model 3. It'll be even easier to park in Brooklyn.

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:25:21Andrew Manganelli?

  You mean lengthwise, right?

• 1:25:22David Imel?

  Lengthwise.

• 1:25:23Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:23David Imel?

  Yeah, front to back.

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  And heightwise, you gotta really get down to get into that thing.

• 1:25:27Andrew Manganelli?

  Thing about the R2 was they had like the decals on it as like the like.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  R2D2.

• 1:25:33Andrew Manganelli?

  Well, the like camouflage quote unquote, like it didn't cover any lines. It just still looked exactly the same. It just looked like it had like a silly paint job on it.

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, we all know. I mean, they showed me in that studio like two years ago, whatever, what the R2 was supposed to look like. So this is now technically an updated final version, but it's like, we already, we can see it. It's like, it has a couple of stripes on it. Okay, whatever. But we know what the R2 is gonna look like. So, yeah, R2, they got very clever with it. I will say they had some nice Easter eggs. You can see some of them in Doug Demiro's video, some of them in Zach's video. The charge flap, which is the back left corner, has a maze in it. People did screenshot the video and fill out the maze. Doesn't seem to mean anything.

• 1:26:15David Imel?

  Just seems like a long.

• 1:26:16Andrew Manganelli?

  Top post on our subreddit just says, this maze fucking sucks.

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  I, cause I remember when I was there, and I'm sure someone from Rivian is watching this. I was like, please show me all the Easter eggs. And they're like, we can't, we are, all I can tell you is there's a bunch. And I can't explain any of them or show you where they are. And we were like, all right, well, I found the maze. So can you at least tell me what the maze means when people fill it out? And they were like, it's just a maze. It's just a maze. I was like, what do you mean it's just a maze? You spent all this effort like building and designing your own maze and the molding to like hide in the charge port? What is it? They wouldn't tell me. So now that people have filled it out, it seems like it actually is just a maze and nothing special having to do with it. Unless it's like a. It's just for the whimsy. Topographical map or something? I don't know.

• 1:26:59David Imel?

  There ain't nothing wrong with something that doesn't mean anything.

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  That's fair enough. Well, here's some things that did mean something. In the window lining of the windshield, there's a little smiley face that looks like a little Yeti smiley face. In the back windows in the window lining, there's a little climber.

• 1:27:15David Imel?

  Do they mean anything?

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  Well, it's an adventure vehicle.

• 1:27:18David Imel?

  Then why are people so mad at the maze? It's just a maze.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  Well, it's not really adventure themed until it means something. Underneath the lining of the center storage, there's a little diagram of like things that could fit there, like a water bottle and a little camera and a knife, which is kind of cool. Is there a speaker? They replaced. Sorry, I didn't watch the video yet. They moved the speakers up until like under that front dash. Oh, okay. They took them out of the doors, actually. There's a flashlight? There's still a flashlight in the door. You know? They know what we want. Doesn't cost. The most important part. Well, that was the thing about the R2 is how do you take half the price off and still keep all of the character of the Rivian, like R1 stuff? And I thought the flagship was obviously gonna go and it stayed. So that was actually kind of impressive to me.

• 1:28:03David Imel?

  They also announced an Apple Watch app that you can use to unlock the doors now.

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  Oh, that's nice. As if they, I mean.

• 1:28:09David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:10Speaker 01

  Drive, drive the car. Better key fobs, because that's like my number one complaint.

• 1:28:13David Imel?

  Yeah, that is.

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, two other Easter eggs. Uh, the molding underneath the windshield wiper fluid, uh, canister in the car is a small skunk slash frog hybrid animal. Because that's a.

• 1:28:29Speaker 09

  Oh, cause it's a trunk.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  Skunk, which is a trunk. It's a trunk, trunk.

• 1:28:34David Imel?

  That means something.

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  Got him. You should also know that that spot right underneath the front of the windshield where the windshield wipers are is called the cowl or cowling. And if you, uh, if you peek in there, there's also. A cow owl? Outline of a cow owl.

• 1:28:49Speaker 02

  Okay, that's pretty sweet.

• 1:28:50Andrew Manganelli?

  I didn't know David started working at Rivian with all these puns.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  That joke slipped into this car.

• 1:28:56Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 1:28:57Speaker 01

  There are more.

• 1:28:57Andrew Manganelli?

  They know their audience.

• 1:28:58Speaker 01

  They wouldn't show me or tell me about any of the rest of them, but that's as many as I was able to find.

• 1:29:02Speaker 02

  Wow. Okay, wait, this is, just to be clear, this is gonna be on all R2s, not just these models you reviewed.

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  These Easter eggs?

• 1:29:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, these Easter eggs.

• 1:29:08Speaker 01

  I believe this should be on all of them.

• 1:29:10Speaker 02

  Okay, that makes me very happy.

• 1:29:11Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 1:29:12Speaker 02

  Are you getting an R2, Adam? Hell no, I'm getting an R3X. Me too, baby, let's go! Let's go!

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  You're buckled up for that six-year wait?

• 1:29:18Speaker 02

  I'm ready. I'm ready. I mean, I'm still paying off my current car, so by then I'll be ready.

• 1:29:22Speaker 01

  As long as you know, as long as you know.

• 1:29:24Speaker 02

  I paid mine off yesterday.

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  Well, there's another EV I do wanna bring up to you guys because there's so many weird, interesting things about it that are connected to Waveform. Number one, it's a Ferrari EV. We don't know what the outside looks like, but it's called the Lusse, Lusse, I think, Lusse.

• 1:29:37Speaker 02

  Do you have to say it like that?

• 1:29:38Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm not even gonna attempt to pronounce it.

• 1:29:40Speaker 01

  It's always something Italian with them.

• 1:29:41Andrew Manganelli?

  Lusse, Lusse, Lusse.

• 1:29:43Speaker 01

  Number two, this interior was the first with assistance from Lovefrom, which is Johnny Ive's firm. So this is potentially the first car interior that Johnny Ive has gotten his hands on. And it's always funny listening to old, I think, I think Neel has brought this up on Olds Verge Casts, which is like, all the Apple executives drive Ferraris and all they really want is them to have CarPlay and like,

• 1:30:09Speaker 01

  now they've finally gotten to work with Ferrari, so this is the first time they've had a direct hand in this. But there are some videos out there, this like big teaser video, or really not a teaser, they show the whole interior of the car. And, okay.

• 1:30:23Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, okay. So many thoughts. Each individual switch and display and UI element is actually beautiful, right? But then when you-

• 1:30:37Andrew Manganelli?

  In isolation.

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  In isolation, like each button, each switch, really clean, really nicely done. But then you zoom out to the whole interior and it looks-

• 1:30:49Speaker 01

  Bad. Yeah, I think pretty bad. It has this like retro look to it, which is really nice for my take last week that nostalgia is ruining everyone's taste. They, they went a little bit like confused with the nostalgia, I think.

• 1:31:05Andrew Manganelli?

  It's hard to call it nostalgia when it's like, hey, the steering wheel looks kind of old, but also here's an Apple Watch Ultra right next to it.

• 1:31:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The tablet looks like an Apple Watch, a giant Apple Watch Ultra.

• 1:31:16David Imel?

  Yeah, but how long ago did the first Apple Watch come out?

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  We're on like the three now, so probably four years.

• 1:31:22David Imel?

  No, he's talking about the original.

• 1:31:24Andrew Manganelli?

  The original Apple Watch.

• 1:31:25Speaker 01

  The first Apple Watch?

• 1:31:26David Imel?

  Twenty fifth.

• 1:31:27Andrew Manganelli?

  Right? It's been like a decade. So this could still be reminiscent of older times.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's just a, it's a weird, I, I'm guessing this is not going to be a cheap car. This is going to be a car that people, it's a Ferrari. Like people with a lot of money are.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  And I just don't know what type of person wants this. And I say that knowing that a lot of people do actually want retro future. They just want an electric version of an old car. A lot of people say this a lot, and I'm not sure how many would actually buy it if it's like small phones where we all say we want it, but we don't buy it. But like the old, remember the Buick commercial where they show the GNX over and over and over again, which is like super sick? And everyone's like, we just want that, but electric. And then you show the new Buick and it's like, I don't want that. So the old Volkswagen bus, everyone loves that. And everyone wishes there was just an electric version of that, but then they had to go modernize a whole bunch of design elements and people want it less. I think it's still true. Like people seem to really like the idea of an old design that's just electrified.

• 1:32:29David Imel?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:32:29Speaker 01

  But this is, um, yeah, it's, it's, we, I really want to know what the outside of the car looks like.

• 1:32:35David Imel?

  I mean, that's kind of like Hyundai, Hyundai, Hyundai is making the, that car that it uses.

• 1:32:43Andrew Manganelli?

  Ioniq five?

• 1:32:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:32:44Andrew Manganelli?

  No.

• 1:32:46David Imel?

  What is it called?

• 1:32:46Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, the N74.

• 1:32:47David Imel?

  N74, which they did say is going to be a production car.

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  But then they aren't doing it.

• 1:32:53David Imel?

  Aren't they?

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  They keep saying they will.

• 1:32:55David Imel?

  Yeah, they keep saying they will.

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  Never get a chance to do it.

• 1:32:57Andrew Manganelli?

  It had like

• 1:32:58David Imel?

  Hydrogen.

• 1:32:59Andrew Manganelli?

  Hydrogen fuel cells.

• 1:33:00David Imel?

  Yeah, like a hydrogen.

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  That was years ago. I've been talking about that, like.

• 1:33:03Andrew Manganelli?

  I mean, that car is sick.

• 1:33:04David Imel?

  At first they're like, it's a concept. And then they were like, maybe we might do it. And they're like, but we probably won't. And then they were like,

• 1:33:10Andrew Manganelli?

  That's the right.

• 1:33:11David Imel?

  It's gonna go into production. And then we just haven't heard anything.

• 1:33:13Speaker 01

  I just think it would be such a huge PR win if a company would actually do what everyone says we want.

• 1:33:19David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  I just, there's probably some amount of surveys that they've run, or people who just say they would buy it, but wouldn't actually buy it.

• 1:33:26David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:26Speaker 02

  You know what's the best thing about this interior that I'm seeing? It's just that there's buttons and knobs.

• 1:33:32David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:32Andrew Manganelli?

  Agreed.

• 1:33:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. Turns out if it's just not an iPad, people get excited.

• 1:33:36Speaker 01

  Which is hilarious from Johnny Ive.

• 1:33:37David Imel?

  I will say, like, the giant Apple Watch iPad thing kinda just looks like a knockoff iPad. I don't know. All of this, and I'm not a designer, obviously. But a lot of this, to me, is very ugly.

• 1:33:51Speaker 01

  Each individual piece is sick.

• 1:33:54Speaker 04

  The dynamic clock, dude, that like you can

• 1:33:57David Imel?

  Are all clocks dynamic?

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  The torque meter that changes

• 1:34:02Speaker 04

  Aren't all buildings outside, David?

• 1:34:05Speaker 01

  The torque meter that changes based on what mode you're in is sick.

• 1:34:08Speaker 02

  I will say, if I was able to just like buy this tablet and stick it into my car, I would 100% do it.

• 1:34:14David Imel?

  It's so ugly.

• 1:34:15Speaker 04

  No, it's sick as hell.

• 1:34:16David Imel?

  Oh, my god.

• 1:34:17Andrew Manganelli?

  It's, this is like so on the line of like, good and bad, that I feel like if I have any response to it, it'll either be like, you don't like it because you can't afford it. Or,

• 1:34:28David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:28Andrew Manganelli?

  you don't know anything about Ferraris. Yeah, like, what? I lose saying anything about this car.

• 1:34:33Speaker 04

  The launch mode, did you see the thing about the launch mode where you like, you pull the handle in?

• 1:34:38Andrew Manganelli?

  Hold on, do you put?

• 1:34:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:34:39Speaker 04

  And then everything like turns orange?

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  It looks sick in isolation. It looks awful.

• 1:34:44Andrew Manganelli?

  Is this the, this is the key, I think.

• 1:34:46David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, the key is a little mini like juice box.

• 1:34:48Andrew Manganelli?

  Fits in like the little piece. Like, this is the key, because later down here it shows the key.

• 1:34:53David Imel?

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:34:54Andrew Manganelli?

  There's a lot of scrolling on this website.

• 1:34:56David Imel?

  Yeah, something that I did think was cool is that they made like a book series about the development of this car. That's like four books that like Johnny I've like developed with his team. And apparently they do that on every project and I think that's very cool. And you know, I'm happy for them.

• 1:35:12Speaker 02

  Remember when they announced CarPlay Ultra and all the things popped up in the, in the ad? And they were like, oh, this is so cool. It looks so pretty. And then all the car makers were like, no, we're not doing that. We don't know where we got that from. Does this actually exist? Or are these just a bunch of pretty renders that they did and put on a website?

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  This is the interior reveal of Ferrari has said that they're going to make an electric car. This is the interior reveal of their eventual electric car. They will at some point reveal the exterior and the price and the specs and all the rest of that stuff. But this is a car that they've said they're going to actually make.

• 1:35:43Speaker 02

  But none of these are pictures. They're like 3D renders. There are videos?

• 1:35:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're, I'll show you, I'll send you one on Twitter or something.

• 1:35:50David Imel?

  Of like an actual?

• 1:35:51Speaker 02

  Like someone driving it or inside it?

• 1:35:53Speaker 01

  No, just the, they've like taken the interior and like put it in a studio and like people hit the buttons themselves. And they sound really nice and stuff.

• 1:36:00Speaker 04

  We gotta talk about the binnacle, man.

• 1:36:02David Imel?

  What's that?

• 1:36:03Speaker 04

  What's the binnacle?

• 1:36:04Speaker 01

  Dials are sick, man.

• 1:36:06Speaker 04

  The binnacle is what they're calling the gauge cluster behind the steering wheel. A binnacle is, you ever seen on like an old timey boat? There's like that tower right by the helm. That has like a compass and maybe like a clock.

• 1:36:17David Imel?

  Oh, does it have one of those?

• 1:36:18Speaker 04

  No, but they're calling the gauge cluster the binnacle. And I like saying the word binnacle.

• 1:36:22David Imel?

  Cause it's like pinnacle sort of?

• 1:36:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:25Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:36:25David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, I, I like each individual piece. I hate the whole thing though.

• 1:36:30David Imel?

  I'm also very curious, like there's so many screens that are sort of hidden in this car. And I'm very curious if you're going to be able to see bezels.

• 1:36:37Speaker 01

  That's a great.

• 1:36:38David Imel?

  That's gonna make a big difference about how tacky it looks.

• 1:36:41Speaker 02

  Is this just running Android?

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  Oh, let's do we think?

• 1:36:43David Imel?

  That would be really funny.

• 1:36:44Andrew Manganelli?

  Definitely is.

• 1:36:46Speaker 01

  I hope they're.

• 1:36:47Andrew Manganelli?

  It's almost positively.

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  You would be, you would be rational to think that such an expensive car has to use the latest tech and screens. But if you look at any other Ferrari.

• 1:36:56David Imel?

  Are they all LCDs?

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  They don't look great.

• 1:36:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would not trust Ferrari to go and write horse OS, you know, like that's not, that's not what I would want to use.

• 1:37:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I, it's, it's weird. Anyway, that, that ends my Ferrari crash out for.

• 1:37:09Andrew Manganelli?

  All right. My turn. Andrew brought you guys another game.

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  Buckle up guys.

• 1:37:14Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, it's called, "How Long Can You Listen To Me Crash Out About X-Ball?"

• 1:37:18Speaker 04

  Yo Andrew, did you see like Olympic figure skating the other day?

• 1:37:21Andrew Manganelli?

  I've, I have not had internet for a very long time. And that is the start of my crash out.

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  Well, sure.

• 1:37:27Andrew Manganelli?

  But I want to open this with a question to you guys.

• 1:37:30Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:37:32Andrew Manganelli?

  If, at your house, a wire connecting to the telephone pole.

• 1:37:39Speaker 04

  Oh, stop you right there. Three of us don't have a house.

• 1:37:42Andrew Manganelli?

  I know, but just imagine, okay, just imagine.

• 1:37:46Andrew Manganelli?

  Imagine, you and your family live in a house.

• 1:37:49Speaker 04

  I'm gonna stop you right there. I do not have a family.

• 1:37:52Andrew Manganelli?

  A wire is down across your driveway and you contact the company that deals with that wire.

• 1:38:00Speaker 04

  Three of us do not have drivers. Sorry, I'm so sorry.

• 1:38:02Andrew Manganelli?

  How fast do you think that company should come to deal with that wire?

• 1:38:06Speaker 01

  Is it a live wire?

• 1:38:08Andrew Manganelli?

  How am I supposed to know? I'm not an expert.

• 1:38:11Speaker 01

  Well, this is the internet, your internet went down. So it's not like a power line.

• 1:38:15Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay, so.

• 1:38:17Speaker 04

  A wire has come down from the sky.

• 1:38:18Andrew Manganelli?

  A wire has come down from a telephone pole.

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:38:21Andrew Manganelli?

  And do you feel confident enough that that is a power wire or a cable wire?

• 1:38:25Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 1:38:25Speaker 01

  It sounds like it's cable.

• 1:38:27Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay, I only know it is a cable wire because, here, I'll paint the picture.

• 1:38:32Speaker 04

  Andrew, in the video showed me there's a transformer on the pole.

• 1:38:35Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, so.

• 1:38:36Speaker 04

  Instantly it was a power line.

• 1:38:37Andrew Manganelli?

  I'll explain a little further. This is the, this is on Saturday. Remember, we're recording this Wednesday, that will help in this story. On Saturday, uh, this big tree in front of my yard, it's a very tall, skinny tree. It's probably like 50 or 60 feet tall. Pine tree is swaying in the winds because we have had super, super cold days, lots and lots of ice. And on Saturday, we had one of the coldest days of the year, including wind gusts of like 40 to 50 miles an hour. So like 11 a.m., there's two of these trees standing next to each other. And I noticed one is significantly leaning more than the other. I also have pictures of them, I'll give them to you if you're watching, you can see these. To the point where there's this like bulge coming out of the ground and I'm like, next to the tree. That looks bad.

• 1:39:20Andrew Manganelli?

  And I realized that the root system is pulling up on this tree. So I immediately call, um, our power company and say this tree is going to fall down and is most likely going to hit a telephone pole. Within an hour, I'm sitting at my bay window and I hear the gust of wind and I look out and I watch this tree come down and snap the telephone pole in half. Yeah.

• 1:39:39Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 1:39:40Andrew Manganelli?

  It hit the wires, not even the pole, the wires so hard that the telephone pole about a third of the way up snapped clean off. The whole telephone pole flips upside down because the transformer and all the wires are at the top. It is now hanging in the road and a tree is across my driveway and across the road.

• 1:39:58Andrew Manganelli?

  So I do what I should have done. I first called the fire, I first called 911 because there's active wires down in the middle of the road. Then I call the power company, tell them what's happening. Then I call Xfinity.

• 1:40:10Speaker 02

  Did you lose power?

• 1:40:11Andrew Manganelli?

  Immediately.

• 1:40:12Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:40:13Andrew Manganelli?

  Also, so at the telephone pole, it's technically across the street, no sparks. But it's across the street, but there is a wire that comes and then runs into a telephone pole between me and my neighbor's house to then split off how we get our utilities. So dispatcher obviously picks up, I talk to a real person, power company, I talk to a real person, Xfinity, who's my cable company, I tell them about it and through their automated services at 1-800-XFINITY is just, you think, it literally is like, would you like to report a down and potentially dangerous wire? Do you want me to text you a way to submit this? And at this point, I'm like, I just want my power back. I will just take the ticket

• 1:40:56Andrew Manganelli?

  and submit it. So that happens. The power company fixes this telephone pole by 10:00 PM. It was still a really long time of being really cold at home because I had no power. But they get that stuff done then. The next day, my wires-

• 1:41:10Speaker 02

  Saturday was the coldest day we've had.

• 1:41:11Andrew Manganelli?

  It was the coldest day we've had. It was, I could see my breath inside my house. We sent Claire and Lane to someone else's house and they stayed there. This is all gonna end with me- Talking about customer service and how every large company is a bunch of fucking cowards and that they use customer service to just deal with all of it. But, okay, I'm gonna try and go as fast as I can here. Next day, Sunday, I realized there's still a wire across my driveway. The only reason I know this is not a dangerous wire is because I personally talked to one of the power company people and they say, "We did all our wires. The wire left down on your driveway right now is the cable companies and we're, you're not gonna deal with it, sorry." So then I call that day Xfinity.

• 1:41:55Andrew Manganelli?

  The problem with Xfinity's horrific call answering service, or whatever it is, is it connects you to pretty much no one until you, at some point can get to technical customer support, the people who are like trying to help you troubleshoot your router and everything. First guy tells me, "Someone will be there today between 6:00 and 11:00." And at that point, I'm like, "That feels like way too long for a wire to be down." So I get mad and then no one shows up that day. And so then I call the next day and they're like, "Oh, no one showed up.

• 1:42:27Andrew Manganelli?

  They're supposed to be here at 10:00 to 12:00. Call us later if no one shows up." I called them later, no one shows up. They're like, "Oh, it's scheduled for tomorrow." And then yesterday, I call again, they're like, "Oh, 10:00 to 12:00, 12 o'clock." I actually did get an automated thing saying like, "They'll be a little late today." I call again at 5:00 PM, "Oh, the schedule's for tomorrow now." No one can connect me to the like- Actual person? The technicians that are doing the exterior things. Every time they're just like, "Well, we're just technical support. There's nothing we can do." And I go, "What's the line for customer service?" And they say, "It's 1-800-XFINITY." Which is how I got to those people in the first place. I, super TLDR, I'm not proud of how many times I freaked out at people on the phone.

• 1:43:10Andrew Manganelli?

  I mean, I probably have spent six to eight hours on the telephone in the last three or four days. Marquez came in the other day at me like locking- The hold for me? Yeah, I'm fixing- No, no, physically talking to people for that long, trying to get anything done.

• 1:43:26Andrew Manganelli?

  It's just literally nothing can happen. No one can connect me to any of these technicians. None of these technicians are calling me to tell me they're just not going to show up that day. It's in, it's gotta be the worst customer service I've ever dealt with. And we all know that Comcast and Xfinity sucks.

• 1:43:41David Imel?

  Yep.

• 1:43:42Andrew Manganelli?

  But this is not just them. Like, if you think about it, most places now, if there's customer service, you get this crappy answering machine of like, here's a bunch of different options that take you nowhere, hang the phone up on you all the time. And when you talk to someone, it's a call center that probably can't help you. And those poor people on that side are definitely just getting screamed at for nothing that they can actually do.

• 1:44:04Speaker 02

  Why don't you just change your provider? We have plenty of options.

• 1:44:07Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh my god. I literally don't have any other provider option in my area, except for, I think they're Spectrum, and it offers 25 down as their max. So I don't have another option, but uh...

• 1:44:19David Imel?

  California has a lot of laws around this, so.

• 1:44:22Andrew Manganelli?

  I would kill for one.

• 1:44:23David Imel?

  In San Francisco and Santa Cruz. In Santa Cruz, we had CruzNet, and we had Gigabit before anybody else had Gigabit, because there was like 20 different options just in Santa Cruz, which is like a town of like, not that many people.

• 1:44:33Speaker 04

  If I had...

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  I was gonna say that having multiple options creates competition, which then...

• 1:44:38Andrew Manganelli?

  Marquez, careful, careful!

• 1:44:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like... No, Marquez, competition is bad. Competition is bad. We need to own people.

• 1:44:44David Imel?

  Are you saying you could bust trusts? Is that what you're saying? Wait a second. Wait, what if we did that?

• 1:44:51Andrew Manganelli?

  I...

• 1:44:52David Imel?

  What if we had more than one option? Have you ever just played that game? It's kinda old. You have to like, you own the stuff, and then you keep...

• 1:45:00Speaker 04

  Is it a board game?

• 1:45:00David Imel?

  And then you own more stuff?

• 1:45:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:45:02Speaker 01

  Wait, how do you win that game?

• 1:45:04David Imel?

  You don't. You just hate each other.

• 1:45:06Andrew Manganelli?

  Everyone gives up.

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  Oh, I know how you win. You just make sure you're the only option.

• 1:45:10David Imel?

  I think it's called mono poly, because it means one owns everything.

• 1:45:14Andrew Manganelli?

  That's why there's only one poly market.

• 1:45:16David Imel?

  There are two. There's CallShee as well.

• 1:45:17Andrew Manganelli?

  I, I wanna say I appreciate you guys, because I'm still fuming thinking about this, and it's like helping me not look like as much of an idiot.

• 1:45:24Speaker 04

  Crazy. It's crazy.

• 1:45:25Andrew Manganelli?

  Can I tell you some of the funniest things that I dealt with in these calls? One of them was me on the phone with somebody, and then getting a text message from Xfinity saying, "Service in your area has been restored." That really helps.

• 1:45:38Speaker 04

  Oh yeah.

• 1:45:38Andrew Manganelli?

  I had one person say... I kept just asking, they were like, oh, the, the appointment with the external technician is for 10 to 12 tomorrow. And I was like, can I get any confirmation for that? Can you send me an email? No, we're not able to do that. And then one of them said, we can do that. And I said, well, I haven't gotten it yet. And she said, is your internet working? I said, no, the wire is down across the road. And she said, well, you didn't get the email because you don't have internet. And I was like, I'm calling you on my phone. Like this is, this is the point where I, I tried to keep my cool for so long because I knew, and I was just hoping someone could give me a number somewhere. But then they basically just lie to me.

• 1:46:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:18Andrew Manganelli?

  And like, basically call me an idiot. And then I just start freaking out and I was not nice. And I feel bad because it's not their fault because Xfinity is using a bunch of labor somewhere else.

• 1:46:31Speaker 04

  As punching bags.

• 1:46:32Andrew Manganelli?

  Complete, as punching bags to completely dodge any responsibility, which then just makes me even more mad. So honestly, anyone out there, if you have Xfinity and can change, do it because that place sucks. Even though everywhere else probably sucks, but what I would give.

• 1:46:48Speaker 04

  Change.

• 1:46:48Andrew Manganelli?

  I know. What I would give for Verizon FiOS, who are probably almost just as bad.

• 1:46:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, Verizon, as a FiOS customer, I promise you, the FiOS customer service is so laughable. Like the ways they have managed to screw me over. Dude, but I have an, Andrew, I have an Xfinity story for you. But I think I told once like years ago on the podcast, but we know, we're just going to tell it again because I hate Xfinity. I was paying an insane amount of money for Xfinity gigabit, like 80, $90 a month.

• 1:47:19Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, I paid way more than that for their like 1.1200, yeah.

• 1:47:24Speaker 04

  I never, ever, ever got more than a hundred megabytes down, ever. And most of the time I was in the low 30s. And, uh, and we would complain to Xfinity every day, like, why are we paying all this money? If you just cannot deliver the right service. And every day they'd be like, we don't know what's going on. It must be you somehow, like you need to get a new router, you need to do this. We'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, don't lie to me. And after months of this, we were talking to someone via the like live chat at Xfinity. And they go, hold on, give me one sec. Test your internet speed now, gigabit, gigabit up, gigabit. It was like crazy. We were like, wait a second, how did you do that? They were like, I can't really say.

• 1:48:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:06Speaker 04

  And chat.

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  I have a similar story.

• 1:48:08Speaker 04

  Four days later, internet speed goes back down to 30.

• 1:48:13Speaker 04

  What happened? We get back on the live chat, talking, we're like, no, no, you fixed, someone fixed it last time. They're like, they don't know how to fix it. Finally, we got them to admit, we texted them. You have a button on your dashboard that says, give us gigabit. And you're just refusing to hit it because your boss said not to. And the guy goes, yes, period. I'm sorry, period. And the chat.

• 1:48:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have a similar. I, not with, not with all the proof, but I have a similar story. Briefly, in college, I had like horrible, there was like two possible service, whatever providers. And I'm pretty sure it was Comcast was the first one. And I was getting like. And Comcast with the wig on was the second one. Yeah, basically. I was getting like three down or whatever. And it was, it kept going in and out, have like internet outages. And I just called them and I was like, cancel my service. Cancel it now. Cancel it. I don't, I don't even want to bother like working with you. Just cancel it. And they're like, no, please, please, please, we can upgrade you for free. Well, and they, that's when they start like offering bargains. They're like, we'll upgrade you for a discount. I was like, cancel it. I don't care. And they're like, okay, we'll just put you on the highest tier plan and we won't have to change anything else. And I was like, fine. And I hung up and immediately my internet was like 300 up and down.

• 1:49:22Speaker 01

  Was zero changes to price or anything else. I was like, this could have been my situation the entire time, but they hold you in the little box as long as they can. Yeah. So it's true.

• 1:49:31Andrew Manganelli?

  So real quick then, I, my neighbors who also are missing internet, when they called them, they said, oh, we don't see any other outages. It must be something in your house, but we can't get a home technician there till Wednesday. This is on Sunday, while I'm screaming at someone on the phone saying there's wires down and they know the, they're telling me there's no reported outage. Right now, I think it actually got fixed. And I only know that because my neighbor texted me during this podcast saying, hey, our internet's back up. I think it might be working. Still not a single technician has called me or done anything. If I go home and that wire is on the ground. Boy.

• 1:50:08David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:09Andrew Manganelli?

  I don't know what's going on.

• 1:50:10David Imel?

  When I got my FiOS installed, they didn't show up on like the first three days. They were said they were supposed to show up and I kept being like, hey, they said they were going to show up between these hours and they didn't. And then when the guy eventually came, he's like, oh yeah, like if we take too long in another job, we just don't come. And I was like, but do you tell anyone who tells me? And they're like, no.

• 1:50:27Speaker 04

  My FiOS.

• 1:50:28David Imel?

  Okay.

• 1:50:29Speaker 04

  My FiOS technician took nine and a half hours to put FiOS in my house. I don't know why, like he didn't do anything. And then there's a bunch of other stuff that happened while he was there that was like so crazy. I was like, this is insane, but I will say I got a lot of really nice tools out of it because he left like half of his stuff at my apartment, including his hard hat. So I have a Verizon, I have a Verizon hard hat now, which I'm like really into.

• 1:50:52David Imel?

  That's cool.

• 1:50:53Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah. Do you know the hours they gave me? 6:00 AM to 11:00 PM and then say, someone must be home when they show up. I was like, that is not happening. You're fixing this.

• 1:51:03David Imel?

  That is silly. Wow. I'm sorry about that.

• 1:51:05Andrew Manganelli?

  So they basically have expected me to miss three days of work.

• 1:51:09David Imel?

  Yeah, they often assume you don't have a job. They're like, you must just be home all day, right? You're good? You're home all day? Cool. Cause yeah, we'll.

• 1:51:15Andrew Manganelli?

  I mean.

• 1:51:15David Imel?

  Anytime.

• 1:51:16Andrew Manganelli?

  Honestly.

• 1:51:16Speaker 04

  If you have a job, just use the internet at work, idiot.

• 1:51:19Andrew Manganelli?

  I mean, I guess, I was thinking of the scenario where if I didn't get to talk to the power person to know that that wire down was not electrically charged. At this point, I would have had to call the fire department probably to come get it, but like,

• 1:51:33Andrew Manganelli?

  I asked every single person I talked to, like, is this, is this wire dangerous? And they were usually like, yes, it's dangerous. So like, do you think you should get someone to come here right away? And they're like, well, I guess if maybe it's just the power or if it's just the cable line, then that doesn't have electricity flowing through it. And I was like, do you trust me knowing if that's the power? I didn't tell them. I knew it was the, but like I had people basically telling me, oh, you could cross over the power line. Don't worry about it.

• 1:51:58David Imel?

  Damn.

• 1:51:59Andrew Manganelli?

  Which seems like an insane liability for.

• 1:52:01David Imel?

  So was your car not in the driveway?

• 1:52:03Andrew Manganelli?

  I've, I knew it was safe, so I've rolled over it since then, but it's a, but that's only because of the power people. But I wasn't telling them that. I was trying to get them to fucking clean up a wire or actually show up.

• 1:52:14David Imel?

  Wow.

• 1:52:14Andrew Manganelli?

  I feel it.

• 1:52:15Speaker 02

  I'm titling this the crash out episode.

• 1:52:17David Imel?

  Thanks for, thanks for tuning into our crash out, our weekly crash out podcast.

• 1:52:20Speaker 02

  The one where everyone crashes out.

• 1:52:21Andrew Manganelli?

  That felt good.

• 1:52:22David Imel?

  Surreal state.

• 1:52:22Andrew Manganelli?

  Um, [BLEEP] you Xfinity. Seriously, like I, I.

• 1:52:26David Imel?

  Plus one.

• 1:52:27Andrew Manganelli?

  Yes.

• 1:52:29Speaker 04

  [BLEEP] you Sam Altman too.

• 1:52:31David Imel?

  Wow, we're at it. I don't like any of your Ferraris either.

• 1:52:36Speaker 04

  And [BEEP] your binnacle.

• 1:52:38David Imel?

  I need Adam to say, Adam, who are you mad at? Ring cameras.

• 1:52:41Speaker 04

  Right now WhatsApp, but that's a story for another podcast.

• 1:52:44David Imel?

  I thought he was gonna say all of you for making this an impossible episode to edit afterward.

• 1:52:48Speaker 04

  That too.

• 1:52:49David Imel?

  Wait, what did WhatsApp do? Really quick.

• 1:52:51Speaker 04

  Bro, I can't get into this right now. Tune in next week.

• 1:52:57David Imel?

  Subscribe to find out what WhatsApp did. Really quickly, related to WhatsApp, really quickly, there's a funny thing that happened. Where, uh, do you guys remember when ChatGPT was in WhatsApp randomly all of a sudden?

• 1:53:11David Imel?

  Well, it was. I don't remember. Well, it was. Okay. I only remember Meta AI being in WhatsApp all of a sudden. So also ChatGPT was, and then Meta was like, oh no. And then they took it out because they, they were like, nobody else can have AI, AIs in WhatsApp now. Isn't that like anti-competitive or something? Yeah. And then the European Commission very quickly was like, uh-uh, uh-uh. And now they are passing legislation to force Meta to allow AI other.

• 1:53:39Speaker 04

  EU man.

• 1:53:40David Imel?

  No, they're saving our asses about everything Greenland. Come on, a lot of stuff.

• 1:53:46Speaker 01

  Competent government is crazy.

• 1:53:48David Imel?

  It's crazy.

• 1:53:49Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 1:53:49David Imel?

  It would be great. Come get your boy Xfinity over here. We need you at EU. Yeah, European Union, please. Come break up Comcast.

• 1:53:58Speaker 04

  Can we have the city of Philadelphia somehow join the EU so that Comcast is like under EU jurisdiction now like?

• 1:54:06Speaker 01

  That would be crazy.

• 1:54:07David Imel?

  They just moved it.

• 1:54:08Speaker 01

  There was a Jersey, now there's New Jersey. There should be like New Philly.

• 1:54:11David Imel?

  New Philly.

• 1:54:13Speaker 01

  Newfoundland.

• 1:54:13David Imel?

  New New York.

• 1:54:15Speaker 01

  It's about time for, uh, some trivia.

• 1:54:17David Imel?

  I forgot we had trivia. This is a crazy episode, dude.

• 1:54:24David Imel?

  God.

• 1:54:24Speaker 04

  You know, I am feeling like I went a little too far. Um, so because I said [BEEP] you, Sam Altman, I'm gonna change my trivia question. I feel like at a certain point I gotta draw the line. So, um, today's new trivia question.

• 1:54:37David Imel?

  What was the answer?

• 1:54:38Speaker 04

  The answer was 6.8 gigawatts, which is, so we can round it up to seven. So that's 70% of what Sam Altman says it would take to cure cancer or tutor every child.

• 1:54:49David Imel?

  Is that with the full capacity or the 30% capacity?

• 1:54:52Speaker 04

  That's full capacity.

• 1:54:53Speaker 02

  That's with the full capacity.

• 1:54:54Speaker 04

  That's what the flux capacitor. Very cool, very cool. How that translates to gigawatt hours, I, I don't know. But the trivia question I do know the answer to is, was inspired actually by something David Amell said earlier this episode. Uh oh. Which was about the band. Streetlight Manifesto? No.

• 1:55:11Andrew Manganelli?

  Three Doors Down.

• 1:55:12Speaker 04

  U2. U2.

• 1:55:13Andrew Manganelli?

  U2.

• 1:55:15Speaker 04

  Specifically, U2 is now forever associated with Apple because they put that one album out. And there was a U2 edition iPod that got sold. That's different than the red edition though, right? I think so. The product red. Yeah. U2, Apple. Like this. Yeah.

• 1:55:32Andrew Manganelli?

  Homies.

• 1:55:33Speaker 04

  It's like Tim Cook and that guy with the shoes. However. Yeah. Samsung and U2's lineup share one thing in common. What is that thing? What do you mean by lineup? That's it. That's the question.

• 1:55:50Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:55:56Speaker 04

  David, I'm not going to give you the answer. Stop staring at me like that. I don't know anything about U2, so that's gonna be tough for me. What I'm really confused about is, I kind of thought David would nail this one. I kind of thought this was a David, a David layup. Lineup.

• 1:56:09Andrew Manganelli?

  That means it's a pun.

• 1:56:12Speaker 04

  I wrote down the only thing I know about U2, so.

• 1:56:15Andrew Manganelli?

  Please, I hope yours just says Bono.

• 1:56:21Speaker 04

  I just don't know anything about U2, so. Is that it?

• 1:56:27Speaker 04

  No. Andrew?

• 1:56:29Andrew Manganelli?

  I didn't write anything.

• 1:56:30Speaker 04

  All right, David? Galaxy. No, Marquez. Bloody Sunday. The answer is The Edge, which is the name of the lead guitarist in the band. Oh. U2 and the Thin Phone. The S25. I mean, viva la vida, you know.

• 1:56:48Speaker 01

  Somebody out there who's listening to the podcast and immediately, because they know a lot about U2, they immediately went through and they're like, oh yeah, The Edge, I know. They're all gonna get this.

• 1:56:56Speaker 04

  You would have to both know a lot about U2 and be aware of the current lineup of Samsung Galaxy phone. Well, The Edge line thing has been in the lineup for a very long time. Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy Note Edge.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  Note Edge. Shout out to the Note Edge, man. That one was insane.

• 1:57:09Speaker 04

  I didn't know that his guitarist was named The Edge, or that their guitarist was named The Edge.

• 1:57:13Andrew Manganelli?

  I thought Bono just played all of the instruments.

• 1:57:16Speaker 04

  Is Bono his real name? Is Bono Jovi?

• 1:57:21Speaker 02

  That's gonna trigger someone, I can. Next question, but first, quick update on the score. Of course.

• 1:57:26David Imel?

  Wait, did Marquez get that point?

• 1:57:28Speaker 02

  No. No. Marquez with 14, speaking of which. 14. David with 16.

• 1:57:33David Imel?

  Whoa.

• 1:57:33Speaker 02

  Andrew still carrying the one with 17.

• 1:57:36Andrew Manganelli?

  I don't think David and I's points have changed in a very long time.

• 1:57:38Speaker 02

  No, it's been a while.

• 1:57:39Andrew Manganelli?

  I think ever since, no, you had a great, yeah, yeah. Ever since you complained about not getting any points, I don't think David and I have gotten any.

• 1:57:47David Imel?

  Voodoo magic.

• 1:57:48Speaker 02

  Questions are hard. Okay. The next question.

• 1:57:51David Imel?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:51Speaker 02

  In 2024, one company accidentally broke the record for the most viewed YouTube video in 24 hours. What was that company?

• 1:58:00David Imel?

  Was this in 2024?

• 1:58:02Speaker 02

  It was in 2024. David, can you put the, put that down because you keep blocking your face? Sorry.

• 1:58:09Speaker 04

  Oh, I forgot.

• 1:58:11Speaker 02

  I know, me too, me too. I was wondering if they would remember because I completely blanked on it.

• 1:58:18Speaker 01

  I feel like I remember the story, but not the specifics. You know?

• 1:58:23David Imel?

  Oh, that I'm wrong.

• 1:58:25Andrew Manganelli?

  I didn't even write anything.

• 1:58:28Speaker 02

  Anything?

• 1:58:29Andrew Manganelli?

  Flip and read, what do you got?

• 1:58:32Andrew Manganelli?

  Well.

• 1:58:34Speaker 02

  Marquez, what'd you put? Uh, Rockstar?

• 1:58:36David Imel?

  Like the energy drink?

• 1:58:37Andrew Manganelli?

  No, the.

• 1:58:38Speaker 02

  Nope. Andrew?

• 1:58:39Andrew Manganelli?

  I didn't write anything.

• 1:58:40Speaker 02

  You didn't write anything?

• 1:58:42Andrew Manganelli?

  I, I panicked. Xfinity.

• 1:58:46David Imel?

  He was just thinking about it. I put one plus for when, um, when they ran Marquez's entire video as an ad.

• 1:58:54Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, no, not that. That's a good guess, though.

• 1:58:56David Imel?

  But that was like the one plus.

• 1:58:57Andrew Manganelli?

  I didn't know you were such a one plus show, Marquez.

• 1:58:59David Imel?

  That was like the one plus six or something.

• 1:59:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a while ago. Also was not.

• 1:59:03Speaker 01

  Published trailer for something.

• 1:59:05Speaker 02

  It was a April Fool's joke that Discord did that it was a 17 second video that was on loop in their servers and it accidentally crossed over the line. And YouTube had to like take away that.

• 1:59:18Andrew Manganelli?

  It was like a pop up thing. So it's like, it's, they basically bought it, the views, because like it was embedded into it.

• 1:59:25David Imel?

  1.4 billion views in 24 hours.

• 1:59:28Speaker 02

  Oh my god. I did not hear that story. Whoa, infinite money glitch unlocked.

• 1:59:34Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah. The worst thing Discord's ever done, maybe next to this face recognition stuff, is adding these stupid little pop ups in the corner that you always have to be like, I don't want to do a quest right now. Shut up. It's an ad or whatever, a new feature.

• 1:59:46David Imel?

  That kind of defines 2026.

• 1:59:50Speaker 01

  Side quest.

• 1:59:50David Imel?

  Is it an ad or a feature? Do a quest to find out. It's 2026.

• 1:59:56Speaker 01

  Well, thank you for tuning into the Crash Out Podcast. We appreciate your time. Next week, we'll be crashing out about a slightly different set of things.

• 2:00:03David Imel?

  Yeah, WhatsApp.

• 2:00:04Speaker 01

  Possibly. WhatsApp will be on the list, of course. And then just keep in touch with the news. Maybe we'll get an idea of what we're going to crash out to next.

• 2:00:12Andrew Manganelli?

  If you're still here. Kudos.

• 2:00:14Speaker 01

  Quad fold. That means we appreciate you already because you're probably already subscribed. But if you haven't already, get subscribed. See you guys next episode. Peace.

• 2:00:22David Imel?

  Goodbye.

• 2:00:23Andrew Manganelli?

  Waveform is produced by Adam Alena and Ellis Rovin. We're a partner of the Vox Media Podcast Network and our track track music was Vain Sil.

• 2:00:36Andrew Manganelli?

  Am I the only one in this room who has not met Reggie Watts and/or knows who he is?

• 2:00:40Speaker 01

  He was at Mark's birthday party.

• 2:00:41Andrew Manganelli?

  He's a football player, right?

• 2:00:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:00:43Speaker 09

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• 2:01:22Speaker 10

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