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on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and

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Messenger. Hello

0:33

and welcome to our cast, the flagship podcast

0:35

of Saturday Samsung. The

0:39

show where Samsung executives who have been forced

0:41

to work six days a week until they

0:43

make more money just have ideas. I'm

0:45

your friend, Eli. David and Alex

0:47

are both on vacation, which I feel is very rude.

0:50

Liam also on vacation. So this is just

0:52

gonna be a wild episode. Allison

0:56

Johnson's here. Hi, Allison. Hello. The

0:59

song is here. Hello, let's do

1:01

chaos. We've just been left

1:03

to our own devices. I'm helpless without

1:05

Liam and David and Alex on the

1:08

show at this point. Anything

1:10

could happen. I haven't been left to my own devices

1:12

to run a roadchast in years. For

1:15

good reason, I think. So we're just

1:17

going to see what happens. Thank you two for joining me.

1:19

We're here for the ride. I'm

1:21

here for Saturday Samsung as

1:23

the as the local Korean gadget

1:26

reviewer on staff. I am so

1:28

here for Saturday Samsung.

1:30

We're going to get to what the

1:32

Saturday Samsung is. This I would say,

1:34

you know, up until now, it's been stuff. Samsung

1:37

will give you a free TV if you buy a TV.

1:39

It's a real idea generated by

1:41

Saturday Samsung. This week's

1:44

is, I think, bananas in a different way,

1:46

but we'll come to it. There's much other

1:48

stuff going on. The iOS 18.1 developer beta

1:50

with Apple intelligence. Some Apple intelligence features hit.

1:53

Allison, you played with that. The you reviewed the

1:55

Galaxy Watch Ultra or as I call it the

1:58

Apple Watch Ultra. There's

2:00

some other gadget news. There's a Pixel 9 event

2:02

coming up. We caused

2:04

an entire furious news cycle about

2:06

subscription mice. I'm sorry. And then

2:08

because we have been left to

2:10

our devices, I am trying

2:13

a new style of lightning round. Still

2:15

unsponsored. But it's, you

2:17

know. Get out of this, folks. David, David, and Liam are

2:19

not around to put me in a box. So

2:22

we're gonna try something new. Chaos.

2:25

It's chaos. I wanna start with, we

2:28

should just call it the chaos round. I think so. One

2:32

of the topics is a little serious. I don't know if we,

2:34

oh, we'll get there. We're gonna get there. We're

2:36

doing it live, everybody. Sure. Let's

2:39

start with, there's big news in the week.

2:42

Just outside of tech, it's the Olympics. It

2:45

feels like the

2:47

experience of watching, consuming

2:49

the Olympics is very different this year

2:52

than in years past. Every other year, we run a story

2:54

that's like, streaming the Olympics sucks. We

2:56

haven't really had to run that story this year. It's

2:59

cause it's on TikTok, baby. I have

3:01

not streamed a single second of

3:03

the Olympics. I'm telling you, I have not

3:06

streamed a single second of the Olympics. Normally,

3:08

I'm all over the gymnastics, but everything I

3:10

know about the Olympics has just come through

3:12

doom scrolling my TikTok feed and just going

3:14

like, oh, actually, that's kind

3:17

of really wholesome. I really love chocolate

3:19

muffin guy. And I can't

3:21

remember his name. Yeah, she was explaining chocolate

3:24

muffin guy. This is a foreign

3:26

concept to me. It's

3:28

just this Norwegian athlete who has

3:30

discovered the chocolate muffin from the

3:33

Olympic village cafeteria,

3:35

and he gets increasingly weird with this

3:37

chocolate muffin. It just appears in his

3:39

bedroom, and he's in a thong, and

3:41

you're like, what is happening? What?

3:44

Oh, that's what I'm gonna say. She

3:46

really loves the chocolate muffin. You

3:49

know what's happening. That's true. Yeah,

3:52

doom's trying, TikTok is

3:54

a weird way to feel about America right now. This is hard to

3:57

know how much American pride you have

3:59

depending on what you're doing. what TikTok scroll you're in.

4:02

Like at this moment, it's like, I have

4:04

immense pride in our gymnasts who have crushed

4:06

it once again. Oh no, he's talking again.

4:09

I have immense pride in this, like it's what

4:11

is happening. That's a

4:14

lot. We have an entire story about the

4:16

Olympics in TikTok. Mia wrote it.

4:19

I actually wanted the title to be the influencer Olympics,

4:23

but I think that's what people think that's Coachella. So,

4:26

but it is true.

4:29

Yeah, I thought it was good fun, but it

4:31

is true that the athletes are

4:33

young by and large, very young, except for the 51

4:35

year old Turkish man who got a

4:38

silver medal in shooting with no equipment whatsoever,

4:40

great photo. But

4:42

it's true that the athletes are by

4:44

and large, very young. The US women's

4:46

gymnastic team, literally after winning gold was

4:48

caught on camera talking about what TikTok

4:50

they wanted to make. Oh yeah. Which

4:52

is incredible. And so you just have

4:54

this like very native

4:56

population to this format in this

4:59

platform in particular. And

5:01

then there's just the universe of piracy that

5:03

happens on TikTok. If you want to

5:05

watch clips of cool sporting events, the

5:08

TikTok community has you covered and TikTok's lawyers

5:10

also apparently have you covered because they don't

5:12

seem to care about it. And

5:14

that's like one really interesting way of consuming

5:16

this, right? You're getting kind of

5:18

the raw feed by people who are on the ground,

5:21

who speak in the language of video, speak in the

5:23

language of social video. And then you're getting a bunch

5:25

of clips of cool stuff curated by a community that

5:28

does not care about NBC's exclusive rights

5:30

to stream. What I will

5:32

say is the commentary on

5:34

TikTok is much funnier because you just

5:36

have people filming their screen while they're

5:39

watching it. Like the men's gymnast, pommel

5:41

horse guy. I don't know any of

5:43

these athletes names. I know them by

5:45

their memes on TikTok, but just like

5:47

I was watching these two women watching

5:49

pommel horse guy and they're like, yes,

5:52

yes, Peter Parker. Yes, you better

5:54

work. You better work. Just having

5:56

this very sassy commentary about this

5:58

man. doing the pommel horse. And

6:00

I was just like, this is

6:03

I'm watching them watch their

6:05

TV screen. And they're

6:07

just better than like the NBC commentary people

6:09

who are just like, Oh yes, he's on

6:11

the pommel horse and he did the skill.

6:13

So serious. So serious. It's

6:16

like, it's like watching

6:18

it with your friends, except my husband doesn't

6:20

give a crap about the Olympics. So I'm

6:22

just like, Oh yeah, pommel horse

6:24

guy, you can get it. Clark

6:27

Kent of pommel horse. So

6:29

I often say that almost every

6:31

experience I have with tech talk should be

6:34

a PhD in media studies. What you are

6:36

describing as a PhD in media studies, right?

6:38

Like the layers of abstraction away from the

6:40

thing itself happening. And then

6:42

the entertainment that random strangers and the internet providing

6:44

you, all of that is just very

6:46

different. And it feels new this

6:49

time in a way that two

6:51

years ago, three years ago, at the

6:54

last Olympics, it was

6:56

a two years ago, three years ago, the

6:58

last Olympics first. Three. They were in 2021 because of,

7:00

you know, COVID. Events.

7:04

Yeah. Yeah. That's why the Olympics just

7:06

has always felt to me like this

7:09

big, serious, important thing. And like, that's

7:11

kind of part of the appeal, but

7:13

there's something great about like, yeah, having

7:16

it kind of distributed a lot,

7:18

like, you know, from people on

7:20

the ground and having more fun with it.

7:22

Like it doesn't have to be this like

7:25

big booming voice of like NBC

7:27

will deliver you the Olympics and that is

7:29

how you will watch them. Right.

7:31

If you put 18,000 teenagers in the

7:33

middle of France with cell phones, like

7:36

something funny is going to happen. Yeah.

7:38

That's it. That seems correct. You

7:40

just learn more about different sports because

7:42

I don't care about rugby. I love

7:44

Alona Marr. She's hilarious on tech talk.

7:46

She's just all over. My

7:48

entire feed yesterday was just lesbians crying

7:51

that Alona Marr was not a lesbian

7:53

because they were just like in love

7:56

with the women's rugby team. And I was like, and that'll be

7:58

it for the chaos for a chest, everybody. We're

8:01

going to end it here. But that,

8:03

right, the idea that different communities, different

8:06

groups can view the thing together

8:08

in a different way as a community is

8:11

new. That just is a new thing that

8:13

even sports Twitter doesn't accomplish. It's

8:18

the native video communication ability of

8:20

particularly the younger generation that is

8:23

interesting and new. That's one thing

8:25

that's different about these Olympics. The

8:27

other thing that's different is that actually NBC and

8:29

Peacock are doing a good job. I

8:31

must disclose, NBC

8:33

is a minority investor in Vox Twitter.

8:55

Just go for it with their app. It's also there's not

8:58

problems. Random ad breaks

9:00

in the middle of stuff. There's infinite

9:02

complaints about just how overwhelming it is.

9:07

They had every idea and executed

9:09

every idea. If you want to

9:12

just watch highlights of the sports, you can just

9:14

watch highlights of the sports. If

9:16

you want to watch the

9:18

traditional gauzy 1980s style prime

9:20

time broadcast with completely unnecessary

9:23

human interest interludes about

9:25

how the gymnast grew up knowing they would be gymnasts.

9:28

Those stories are always the same. When they were four, they were

9:30

like, I'm going to jump on stuff. Every

9:33

four years you can get that story from NBC if you want.

9:35

That's available to you. They have the gold zone,

9:38

which is basically NFL red zone for the Olympics,

9:40

that they're doing 10 hours a day. Inside

9:43

of the app, when you're watching stuff, you can just be

9:45

like, I just want to keep watching this

9:47

thing that we're whipping around to, which is fascinating. They

9:50

have multi view, which is the more standard, just like

9:52

here's four feeds at once. They

9:55

have Al Michaels doing AI powered highlights that

9:57

you can just listen to. which

10:00

is super weird. Like

10:02

it's just weird to have robot Al Michaels being

10:04

like, the gymnast jumped over stuff

10:06

again. But it's like all the

10:09

ideas. I had someone in my mentions, cause I

10:11

was posting my own threads and they're like, all

10:14

of this is stuff that a normal company would

10:16

like de-scope to hit the deadline. And

10:18

NBC just like did it all. And

10:20

then on top of it, they're like, all of it's like pretty good. Like

10:23

Goldzone is actually really funny. There's like

10:26

very funny NFL trauma inside of Goldzone.

10:30

So, you know, there's red zone, where you gotta quip

10:32

around all the games on Sundays. And

10:34

there used to be two red zones. There was the one

10:36

on DirecTV and there was the one that the NFL did.

10:39

Google bought the rights to Sunday ticket. They took

10:41

the NFL red zone and they shut down the

10:44

DirecTV red zone. So Scott Hansen,

10:46

who does the NFL red zone is like gonna do

10:48

it with Google now. NBC realized

10:51

they can't just have Scott Hansen 10

10:54

hours a day, 16 days in a row. So

10:57

they hire Scott Hansen and the guy who used to do

11:00

the DirecTV red zone to Goldzone. So they're

11:02

like back together, not as rivals, but as

11:04

friends. Like all, it's hilarious that they did

11:06

that. This is a PhD. But

11:10

they had to do it. Like somebody at NBC had to

11:12

be like, all right, let's do a red zone for Olympics.

11:14

How will we do that? We should just get all the

11:16

red zone guys. Yeah. They're like, go

11:18

get some contracts together. Like make it happen. And

11:21

it all is kind of working. Like it's working

11:23

better than if I suggested

11:25

to you NBC was gonna

11:27

make an app full of Olympics content.

11:30

Your expectations would be very low.

11:33

And it's called Peacock, but they're actually doing

11:35

good. I

11:38

love that. I'm an Olympics lover. Yeah.

11:40

I love that. You're watching a Peacock or are you like full TikTok?

11:43

So I have to put an asterisk

11:46

that like I'm a winter Olympics girl.

11:48

And I don't know what it is

11:51

this year, but I've been like shouted down by

11:53

the summer Olympics people about how the winter Olympics

11:55

is not the real Olympics. I think

11:57

I just like got tired of it. So I've kind

11:59

of been missing out. on this

12:01

year's games. You can't, there's Snoop

12:03

Dogg. Like in between everything.

12:05

Yeah, oh well I'm getting the, yeah. And like

12:08

the genius decision to have Snoop Dogg and Flav

12:10

a Flav here. I'm like. This is what I

12:12

mean by NBC just went, like somewhat NBC is

12:14

like, is there a Snoop Dogg budget? And they're

12:16

like yes. In addition to that, there's Flav a

12:18

Flav budget. They just like went

12:21

for it. It's great. I

12:24

would, you should click around. It's

12:26

like actually like fairly entertaining just

12:29

as a tech experience to

12:31

be like, oh they like tried this out. Like

12:33

what if this was all happening? You can

12:35

kind of see there's news this week that

12:37

venue sports, which is the big mashup of

12:39

Disney and Fox and everything, ESPN. They're

12:43

gonna price it like $43 a month, which

12:45

is crazy and it's like, what would you

12:47

guess? That's Peloton money. Yeah,

12:50

only you sit around. So it actually might

12:52

be worth $50 a month. But

12:55

it's kind of like, oh, this is the bar. Like

12:57

if you wanna be anywhere close to that much money, you've

13:00

gotta deliver a user experience that

13:02

is at least this good. Because

13:04

if it's just like a minimum

13:06

viable product list of things, like

13:09

no one's gonna pay the money. All

13:11

right, so that's the Olympics, it's going on. I'm curious how people

13:13

are watching it. Send us a note. You

13:15

know, there's more time left in it. One

13:18

thing I'll say is it doesn't seem like the action

13:20

is on Twitter the way it is with other live

13:22

sports. It is on TikTok. And there's

13:24

something happening there that I think is just fascinating.

13:27

All right, we should talk about iOS 18. Alison,

13:30

you played with iOS 18.1, which

13:33

is the developer beta, not the public beta yet. But

13:35

I think that is getting pretty blurry in

13:37

that everyone is playing with it. I mean, no one was gonna stay

13:39

away from Apple Intelligence. So you played with it, what do you think?

13:42

Yeah, it's interesting. I think my

13:44

kind of big takeaway is like,

13:47

well, you get the visuals of the

13:49

new Siri, the like glowing border and

13:51

you can type to talk to Siri.

13:54

And there's a couple things that are new about Siri

13:57

that like it follows context

13:59

better. like between questions, which like

14:01

Google assistant has been doing for a

14:03

little while now, but, so

14:06

that's kind of like setting the stage. And

14:09

there's these other little things throughout

14:11

the UI that are like when

14:14

and if it all

14:16

gets put together, like that could be

14:18

really cool. But right

14:20

now it's just kind of like Siri lights

14:22

up and then you can rewrite

14:24

an email and you'll get

14:26

email summaries in your inbox. It

14:29

was just especially funny like when

14:31

you open the mail

14:33

app instead of the like each

14:36

email has the first couple lines of

14:38

the actual email copy, there's just a

14:40

little summary now and that makes a

14:43

lot of sense for like a long

14:45

email, but most of my emails are

14:47

garbage like promo stuff. So

14:49

it just summarizes the promotional stuff and

14:51

it's like lunch boxes

14:54

ship free. And

14:56

I'm like, didn't

14:58

need a summary of that, but thank you. That

15:00

is very much like what's happening with

15:03

Grok and trending topics on Twitter now.

15:05

Oh no. Where like the AI just doesn't

15:07

know that some things are jokes. And so

15:10

the trending topics are like

15:12

when I turned black in relation to

15:14

like people tweeting about Trump talking about Kamala Harris.

15:16

And it's like, no, that's not right. That's

15:19

not what people mean, that's just a joke. Yeah, you

15:21

didn't get it. Yeah. AI

15:24

is just so sincere about stuff. It

15:27

just like, it's funny. We

15:29

have to laugh about it. So are

15:31

those the only features that are out yet?

15:33

It's the summarizing emails and rewriting. Summarizing.

15:36

I've seen a lot of pictures of people

15:39

intentionally writing very mean notes and trying to get the

15:41

AI to make them nicer, which is fascinating. Oh,

15:43

the one I did, you

15:45

know at the end of Willy Wonka when

15:48

Gene Wilder does that like fizzy lifting drink

15:50

thing like you stole fizzy lifting drink. Yeah.

15:53

I got into a note and rewrite it

15:55

like friendly. And it was like, hey,

15:57

just so you know, you can't be.

16:00

stealing fizzy lifting drinks. Um, so

16:02

that's as far as I got

16:04

with that. Very amusing to me

16:06

personally. Um, yeah,

16:09

there's, there's little bits and bobs here

16:11

and there that are escaping

16:13

me at the moment. It's in the emails.

16:16

No photos. Um, in the photos app,

16:18

you can use like natural language

16:20

search. So you can be like, you

16:23

know, you could search for like food before or someone

16:26

that you've tagged, um, in

16:28

your photos, but you can be like

16:30

this person wearing glasses or the food

16:32

we ate in Iceland. And it's

16:35

like pretty good. And it comes up with

16:37

that stuff. So just getting

16:39

a step closer to like, I

16:41

just search for my license plate.

16:44

Cause I can never remember. So

16:47

like, I have this one picture of a chicken that

16:49

I saw while walking down a street in Brooklyn. So

16:51

would I just be able to, and I can never

16:53

like, no one believes me when I

16:55

told them I ran into a chicken on a sidewalk

16:57

in Brooklyn. I don't believe you now. One

17:02

photo of it. So would I be able to go

17:04

to like the photos app and be like, find me

17:06

the photo of the chicken walking on a side walk

17:08

in Brooklyn with my foot in there.

17:11

I think that's the most important

17:13

use case of AI, like

17:15

at all. Or

17:18

it will just generate that photo for you. And

17:20

you'll be able to lie to us. Chicken on

17:22

the sidewalk and then tell people that you saw

17:24

it and be a liar. So

17:27

when we saw it, WWC of

17:29

iOS 18 was AI everywhere in

17:31

every app and every corner. It's

17:33

just going to make the phone better. And then

17:36

that was like a one set of ideas.

17:39

And then the other idea was, and then Siri

17:41

will become your all knowing assistant. Is

17:44

that the experience of 18.1 in the beta right now? Not

17:47

yet. It's like, yeah. It's just a

17:49

little Easter eggs kind of threw out.

17:51

And then the thing that is missing

17:54

from Siri is like the

17:56

big stuff where it's like, the internet.

18:00

intelligence in the AI, I think, yeah. No,

18:03

the like, it'll understand what's on your screen and you

18:05

can ask for it, you know, you can be like,

18:08

email this photo to my mom and it'll

18:10

just go do it for you. Like that

18:12

is the stuff that's coming. And then the

18:14

third party app stuff because developers are going

18:17

to be able to hook into it and

18:20

let you do Siri stuff in their apps. And

18:23

that's the AI dream

18:25

on our phones. And that's

18:27

still the like, no, it's coming

18:29

because people have to develop it.

18:32

Is the, but they changed the user experience of Siri,

18:34

right? So now when you open it, like flashes the

18:36

thing, you can like, you

18:38

can type to it now. Yeah,

18:41

you double tap the- People have been able to. I

18:44

learned this and I didn't know it V. What's

18:47

the, how do you do

18:49

this? Oh, it's an accessibility feature where

18:51

you can type to Siri. So you

18:53

can do it even if you don't

18:55

have the beta. I just think it

18:57

looks a lot prettier in the beta

18:59

because this is another example of them

19:01

going like, oh, accessibility features, actually they

19:03

work for everybody. Why don't we just

19:05

like shine them up and make them

19:07

useful? Right, make it

19:10

glow. It is actually really interesting how

19:12

many accessibility features have just made their

19:14

way into the main Apple operating systems.

19:16

Yeah, and she ventures, there's other ones,

19:19

but tap to type to Siri is the big one

19:21

with 18.1 because

19:23

it's the thing that takes Siri from

19:25

being timers and music

19:27

player to chatbot,

19:30

to assistant, to intelligent

19:32

agent that is taking action across all of your

19:34

apps. And I, it seems

19:36

like they've added the stuff, but they haven't added any

19:38

of the backend to make it go yet. Yeah,

19:41

like I'm asking it questions and

19:43

it's still just Googling stuff for me. I'm

19:45

like, oh, okay. Well, I could have typed

19:47

this into a Google search bar instead of

19:50

a Siri text box, but. And

19:52

it seems they've added AI call recording

19:55

and transcription, which is the feature that I want the most. Yeah.

19:58

Because if you're a reporter. Not because I'm

20:00

constantly spying on everyone. I'm

20:02

Richard Nixon, everyone. I'm constantly recording everyone.

20:05

No, we're reporters. And AI call recording

20:07

and transfer are legitimately useful in our

20:09

jobs. And we've just been doing either

20:12

people are using their Android phones in our office, which

20:14

lots of people do, or there's a set

20:17

of weird third party stuff. But being able to just use

20:19

my iPhone, which is my main phone, would be really great.

20:22

So that's here now. Has it worked yet? Have you tried it

20:24

out? I have not, because I didn't put

20:26

my SIM card in that phone because of

20:28

eSIM because of nightmares. But

20:31

I did try out, so the

20:33

Voice Memos app will do

20:35

transcriptions now. And that's not an Apple

20:37

Intelligence feature. The recording a

20:40

call, I think, is Apple Intelligence. Could

20:42

be wrong. But the

20:44

transcription is good. I

20:47

am a Pixel recorder stand. I

20:49

always have a Pixel phone at

20:51

a press event. It

20:55

is just in my bag. And I put it

20:57

next to the iPhone. And

20:59

it was really good. It was up

21:01

there with the Pixel. So I am

21:04

personally excited about that. Yeah.

21:06

Yeah, I think that's the one. It's

21:08

always a grab bag of which features, the one

21:10

that hits. And I just know

21:13

that that feature for at least our little community

21:15

of reporters is going to hit the hardest. Uh-oh.

21:18

I can see people being excited. I'm so

21:20

excited. Can't wait to cancel my otter subscription. Oh,

21:23

no. Poor. I mean, talk about startups getting wiped out.

21:25

There's like two or three that are going to go

21:27

away, as soon as it sets. It

21:30

seems like the rest of the features are not

21:32

coming for a while, right? Like Mark Gurman at

21:34

Bloomberg said some of these might not

21:36

come until late 25 or even 26. Yeah,

21:39

I think the last thing. I'm so confused

21:41

on the timeline. But the last thing I

21:44

read, I think, was that they would all

21:46

come to developer betas by the end of

21:48

the year. But then as far as

21:50

being in the public beta, that's 2025. Yeah,

21:54

it's just a really long, staggered

21:56

kind of roll out, it sounds

21:58

like. Yeah, since the

22:01

danger with the Siri that can do stuff on

22:03

your behalf is quite high, you have

22:06

to make sure it works. We're also just not

22:09

sure how any of the

22:12

Apple private cloud stuff

22:14

is going to work. Right

22:16

now, is it clear that all this stuff is happening on the phone

22:18

or in the cloud or where? Or is it

22:20

all ... We know it's all happening on the phone. There's

22:24

a privacy report you can pull down

22:27

now that will show you ... I

22:29

think a lot of this is in

22:31

the cloud. It can't ... I

22:34

wouldn't say that for sure, but you can

22:36

pull this privacy report that shows you everything

22:39

over a certain time period that Apple Intelligence

22:41

has done on your phone. I

22:44

guess it's encrypted because it's just gobbledygook. I

22:46

downloaded it. I

22:49

was like, well, this is secure as hell because I don't

22:51

know what any of this is. Yes,

22:54

still unclear. Yeah,

22:57

I mean, I would just say the fundamental architecture of

22:59

this thing is very new and what

23:01

happens on your phone versus in the cloud, there's

23:04

some stuff that Apple isn't very clear that Apple

23:06

happens on your phone. Like Memoji and

23:08

some of the photo stuff happens on your phone. Some

23:11

of the other stuff, I'm assuming a lot of the Siri

23:13

stuff is going to go to the cloud because Siri goes

23:15

to the cloud right now. It

23:17

just seems like this rollout is

23:20

going to be a lot slower and more deliberate

23:22

than anyone anticipated based on WWDC. It

23:25

might roll all the way ... I mean,

23:27

late 2025 is very close to when

23:31

we would expect iOS 19 to be coming out. I'm

23:36

sort of curious how that will all play, but for now it seems

23:38

like they've sprinkled in some AI in

23:40

the places where you would expect it. Yeah,

23:43

it does seem pretty safe. It's like, okay, we've

23:45

been able to ... It's kind

23:48

of the table stakes stuff of write

23:50

me an email that's friendly or professional

23:52

or summarize this for me. That's

23:55

all kind of ... They're kind of laying the groundwork with

23:57

that stuff. Then we're going to get 18.0 for ... first

24:01

and then 18.1 seconds. So this is pretty far away,

24:03

it seems. Yeah.

24:05

It's always... All

24:07

right. Well, the AI overlords are coming

24:09

whether we like it or not. All

24:11

right. So that's iOS 18.1. It's interesting

24:13

that's out now and they're actually dual

24:15

tracking it, right? There's iOS 18 in

24:18

the public betas and 18.1 in

24:20

the developer betas. And you get the

24:22

feeling they wanted people to be talking about the AI

24:25

stuff because the Pixel Mine event is

24:27

coming very soon. And we know exactly

24:29

what Google is going to talk about in the Pixel Mine event. But

24:32

we got to take a break. Let's do that, come back

24:34

and let's talk about the Pixel Mine event. We'll be right

24:36

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25:37

All right,

25:40

we're back. So like we were just saying,

25:42

the Pixel Mine event is coming up. It's

25:44

August 13th, basically tomorrow.

25:49

I'm guessing we're just going to see, we've

25:51

already seen the phones. I

25:54

assume Google is just going to talk about

25:56

the software, which is the new

25:58

trend, right? The phones look the same. same as

26:00

ever. And now we're gonna,

26:02

we're gonna just make you care about

26:04

AI is how these companies are

26:07

going. Yeah, just hit

26:09

us over the head with AI.

26:11

And we've seen every color of

26:14

the phone, every size, like, it's

26:16

bigger, it's smaller, I don't know.

26:20

I'm, I'm just in this, like, all the

26:23

phones have turned into iPhone design,

26:25

which is like, fine. We've gotten

26:27

to this, like, the

26:29

edges are flat. They were colorful. Yeah,

26:32

I mean, sure. But

26:35

like, I'm good with this. We've

26:37

gotten to the same place with

26:39

the phone design, but Google's like,

26:42

I think it's like, Samsung and Google

26:44

are like, how do we make this not an

26:47

iPhone? And the answer is like a weird camera

26:49

situation. Yes. And it kind

26:51

of looks like Google's really leaning into the

26:53

weird camera situation. And I

26:55

don't know how I still feel about it. I

26:58

think these are the Rivian headlights of phone

27:00

cameras. Oh, that's it. Yeah. Do you know

27:02

what I'm saying? Yeah. Like,

27:05

you can love them, you can hate them. They're not changing them. It's,

27:08

you know, and you can try to

27:10

convince me that they look like snake

27:12

eyes. They don't, you know? No. Just

27:15

like you can try to convince me this phone doesn't have a weird forehead.

27:17

It does. It does. It

27:19

does. Super does.

27:23

But it's true. The colors are more vibrant, which is

27:25

getting away from what Apple is doing, or at least

27:27

that's what the leaks indicate. So we're

27:29

expecting a new Pixel 9, a Pixel 9 Pro, a Pixel

27:32

9 Pro Fold. I got these

27:34

names. And then

27:36

a watch, right? Yeah. Pixel

27:39

Buds Pro 2 and a Pixel Watch 3. So

27:41

that's a pretty complete refresh of the

27:43

Pixel line. It feels

27:46

like the Fold should be where the action

27:48

is, but I

27:50

just can't tell how much Google cares about these devices.

27:53

That's the question, isn't it? So

27:57

they moved the, like the Fold

27:59

was on the... the product cycle

28:01

with like, it was at IO

28:03

last time around, right, and then

28:06

they've like scootched it. So it's

28:08

more part of the like main

28:10

refresh cycle, which kind of

28:12

makes sense. It was like, is this

28:14

a flagship phone? It's like the most expensive

28:16

phone you guys sell, but it's a cycle

28:18

behind, you know, with the like camera

28:21

hardware and whatnot. So I think it

28:23

makes sense moving

28:25

the fold into this position, but

28:29

it's a lot of phones. I don't

28:31

know. Do we need this many phones?

28:35

Like, how do you think it'll compare to,

28:38

cause you know, Samsung, you said like their

28:40

foldables are just basically coasting at this point.

28:42

So are we at a point where like

28:44

the Pixel Fold is something

28:46

that is like, yay, competition?

28:49

Or is it just, it's

28:52

here? Yeah, I'm still

28:54

of the mind that the OnePlus

28:56

Open got it right. Like that

28:59

is how a foldable, like a

29:01

book style foldable should be shaped.

29:03

And then the Samsung is

29:05

just committed to this like remote

29:07

control shape thing. Every

29:09

year they're like, it's a few millimeter, like the

29:11

screen is a few millimeters wider and it still

29:14

feels like a remote control to use. So

29:17

I'm curious how different this new Pixel

29:19

Fold is. Cause there's a lot of

29:21

rumors that it's like thinner

29:23

and lighter cause boy

29:26

was the previous one heavy. But

29:29

I do like that, that like

29:31

wider aspect ratio for the cover

29:33

screen. I don't

29:35

think it needs to be like quite as wide

29:37

as the first generation Pixel

29:39

Fold. So we'll see.

29:42

Yeah. And then the

29:44

point of all this is going to be the software,

29:47

right? This

29:49

is pretty iterative hardware across the board.

29:51

Some minor camera tweaks, a

29:54

wacky camera bump. But

29:57

if you're not paying close attention, I think

29:59

it's going to be fairly. really hard to distinguish the hardware from

30:01

the previous generation. It's the

30:03

software that's the game. So you can see

30:05

they're adding Gemini sort of to the first

30:08

layer of the interface. They've got this

30:10

new thing called Pixel screenshots, which

30:13

is basically just Microsoft recall, which everyone

30:15

is scared about, only manual. So

30:17

instead of constantly taking screenshots, you have to manually

30:19

take a screenshot. Very good. A

30:22

very good differentiation. But I'm kind of into

30:24

it, right? You take a screenshot and you're like, what is this? Or

30:26

like save it for later. There's a

30:28

chicken walking down the street, just like hold on to that for

30:30

me. And

30:32

then of course there's circle to search, which Google is

30:34

adding to basically everything at this point. I

30:36

will, I will coyly say that a friend

30:39

of mine just put

30:41

like circle to search me in the face the

30:43

other day. You might imagine who that friend is

30:45

who was showing me an Android feature and he

30:47

dunked on me with

30:49

circle to search, which was pretty funny. But like

30:52

this is them saying, okay, there's a new way

30:54

to think about how this phone works. Right?

30:57

So you can just try, Gemini is like right here and

30:59

then you can just point at things or tell the phone

31:01

to look at things and it will generate information for you,

31:03

which is a very Google approach to it. The

31:07

question is whether that's enough to

31:09

make people switch, not even

31:12

from the iPhone, from their Samsung phones, which

31:14

obviously are dominant. And

31:16

of course, because it's Google, whether they'll stay committed

31:18

to any of these ideas for more than 20

31:20

minutes. And I, I

31:22

just don't know. It's just a confusing

31:25

time. I think even just circle to

31:27

search, like, and I

31:29

use it on the Samsung phones I've been

31:31

testing and the Google phones obviously, but like

31:34

there's just kind of a lot

31:36

of different ways to get at

31:38

circle to search. And you're like,

31:40

so is this replacing these like

31:42

Google lens is still a thing.

31:45

I can translate something, but like, did I need

31:47

to circle to search that? They

31:50

just have a lot of ideas. Yeah. It's

31:52

like, do you open up Gemini and like take a

31:54

screenshot of something or a picture of the inside of

31:56

your refrigerator? I don't know.

31:58

There's just a lot of like. input

32:00

methods where it just sort of

32:03

could feel overwhelming. But it's

32:05

like, seems like they're in

32:08

that position that we're

32:10

kind of talking about with Smarter Siri,

32:13

where it's like, okay, like you've made

32:15

the promises, this is gonna make our

32:17

lives easier, blah, blah, blah. Right

32:19

now it's just a bunch of like, you

32:22

can switch the faces in these

32:24

photos, or, you know, put

32:26

a rain cloud in the sky behind you.

32:29

And like, that was all nice and

32:31

everything, but like, let's see something. Like,

32:33

can they, the screenshot thing, sure, that

32:35

would be cool. I'm gonna take a

32:37

screenshot of a recipe and I

32:40

have literally have the same like

32:42

spaghetti and meatball recipe from America's

32:44

Test Kitchen bookmarked in my Google

32:46

Photos as a like favorite,

32:48

as if it's a photo of my child. Like,

32:51

I just look at it that often.

32:54

I'm like too cheap to pay

32:56

for America's Test Kitchen and

32:58

can't commit to writing it down. So

33:00

I don't know. I think there's a

33:02

real use case for help

33:05

me find this thing in a screenshot. I feel like,

33:07

you know, I work with both of you

33:09

very close in the audience, might not know what it's like to work with

33:11

you, but I bookmarked,

33:13

I favorited a screenshot of a recipe that I make

33:15

all the time versus there's a photo of a chicken

33:17

that I can never find is kind

33:20

of exactly the difference. Yeah.

33:23

A little bit, yeah. Yeah,

33:26

that's tricks. It

33:29

tells a whole story. I'm

33:32

just making my spaghetti and meatballs and being

33:34

like, where's that chicken? I

33:36

think about the Brooklyn chicken all the

33:38

time. It's been so long. I'm not

33:40

sure this chicken is alive anymore. I

33:42

may have the only record of this

33:44

sidewalk walking chicken. Like it's important to

33:47

me that this chicken lives in

33:49

my memory. Please

33:51

send us a note and describe

33:53

how your photo storage approaches. Describe

33:56

your personality. Because I think there's a lot in

33:58

there. It's a rich zone to uncover. On

34:00

a scale of like one to chicken. On

34:04

a scale of I'm just scrolling for a photo

34:06

of a chicken endlessly. I swear it's here. Speaking

34:09

of photos, Allison, you've been

34:11

covering what can only be described as the one

34:13

as a photo apocalypse. Somewhat closely.

34:15

You just wrote a piece about the

34:18

Samsung sketch a B and

34:20

they'll put a B in the photo

34:22

for you. It seems like the pixel

34:24

nine is just going to continue moving

34:27

inexorably down this path with

34:29

this feature called add me that will just add

34:31

you to photos that you're not in. Yep.

34:35

That's what it sounds like. I

34:38

mean, it's only from a leak. It's only from a

34:40

leak. Um, that was

34:42

in a YouTube video that got removed. It

34:44

was like an ad and it got, it was leaked to YouTube and

34:46

it got removed, but it

34:49

just feels like Google has to start communicating

34:51

about how it will keep our

34:55

information environment somewhat pure as it adds

34:58

these features that just pollute

35:02

it more than ever. Yeah. They were

35:04

really like tiptoeing up to the line. I feel

35:06

like last year and it was like, well, this

35:09

is just something that people have been doing in

35:11

Photoshop for a long time. And now more people

35:13

have the tools. And then I feel

35:15

like Samsung kicked the door down with sketch

35:18

to image. It was like, put

35:20

a chicken in your photo, put a

35:22

blimp like whatever you want to do, you can have

35:24

it. And then, yeah, I feel like

35:26

the, um, the floodgates are

35:28

open and I don't know how, like how,

35:32

uh, aggressive Google will

35:34

be. Like the add me

35:36

to the photo thing. It

35:38

seems like there could be guardrails on it

35:40

or it could just be like pure chaos

35:43

and it's an election year and

35:45

what could go wrong. So

35:48

many things could go wrong, but I also like,

35:50

it just reminds me of this one family portrait

35:52

I have. So like my family's half split in

35:55

the US versus, uh, Korea. And so we all

35:57

went to Korea to get this family portrait, except

35:59

for one. one cousin who couldn't go because

36:01

he was a dual citizen and his military

36:03

service time was coming up because all Korean

36:05

men have to do military service before they're

36:07

30. And he's just like, I'm

36:09

just not going to do it. So he had

36:12

to get photoshopped into the family photo. And if

36:15

you look at it from a distance, you can't tell

36:17

that he's been photoshopped in, but if you look up

36:19

close, you're like, well, lighting

36:21

on his hair is wrong. Yeah. Coming

36:24

from a different angle. You can really

36:26

like, you can just, he's just texturally

36:28

not the same as everybody else. So

36:31

you can tell, you can tell. And

36:33

it's just like this huge family portrait

36:35

and Steve who's

36:37

like been photoshopped in. So

36:40

like, not

36:42

really. Cause we can all tell he's not there. So

36:44

it's sort of like, I don't know. I feel like

36:46

my auntie would love to have him

36:51

in this sort of situation, but I also,

36:53

you know, having aunties with the power to

36:55

just add you into anything that seems also

36:57

dangerous. Well, so it's not, it's not like

37:00

an AI ad me feature, at least from

37:02

the ad that we see. It's

37:04

like a compositing feature, like a

37:07

very manual compositing feature where you take

37:09

a photo with us and there's, you

37:11

leave space for literally yourself in the

37:13

photo and then someone

37:16

else holds the camera and it

37:18

shows you the old photo and you

37:20

like go stand where you would have

37:22

been. And then you take a photo and

37:24

it stitches all the photos together. So

37:27

it's very manual in its way. I'm sure

37:29

there's AI in the background to handle

37:32

the stitching and alignment and probably

37:34

the textures and colors and lighting. Too

37:37

many fingers. Yeah. But the

37:39

idea that it's going to, it's not like deep

37:41

faking you to put you in the photo. It's

37:43

taking another photo of you in the same space

37:46

and then like making a composite, which

37:48

is still weird. Yeah. It's

37:51

one of those features that like as a parent

37:53

now I'm like, Oh, I completely

37:55

get that. Like best take

37:57

where it's like you try and take

37:59

a picture. where there's more than two

38:01

toddlers in it, like, forget it. Nobody's

38:04

gonna have a good time. But then it's

38:06

like, oh, you have all this data and

38:09

you can just kind of like AI

38:11

it together into one photo that looks right.

38:14

Though like you get to

38:16

be in the photo even though you took

38:18

the photo thing. I'm like, yeah, I'm following

38:20

along with that. I get that. So

38:23

it's basically so you never have to ask someone,

38:26

oh, hey, do you mind taking a photo of

38:28

us? No, you have to ask

38:30

them that, but in a

38:32

much more complicated and ethically challenged way. No, I mean,

38:34

it's in your group. It's in your group. It would

38:36

be in your group. So like, yeah, like you too

38:39

would take a photo and then I

38:41

would take a photo of you two and

38:43

then I would hand one of you the phone and

38:46

I would go stand next to where you had been

38:48

standing and you would take another photo

38:50

and the pixel would composite those photos together. So

38:52

it looks like all three of us are standing

38:54

there. I hate talking to strangers

38:56

and asking them to take a group photo for

38:59

me and my group. So this is really gonna

39:01

help me not grow as a person and not

39:03

talk to strangers more is basically. See, I love

39:05

being asked that question because then everyone's like, oh,

39:07

you know what you're doing, which is great. You

39:10

know what? People don't

39:12

know what they're getting into. I'm like,

39:14

so you've got the pixel phone. Tell

39:16

me about your choices here. They're

39:19

like, who's this lady? The

39:23

second someone hands you a phone and you turn it to landscape,

39:25

they're like, oh my God. We

39:27

got a player here. But

39:33

even that's weird. Like even the thing I'm describing

39:35

where it's pretty manual, right? It's not just AI

39:37

deep picking you, but you have to, you're making

39:39

a composite photo. What

39:41

is a photo? Like it's not a moment in time. That

39:44

moment quite literally never happened and we're all gonna,

39:47

we're gonna pass it off as a photo. And

39:50

I've been thinking about this parents thing because Allison, every

39:52

time you write about it, you put it in there.

39:54

Like the experience of being a parent is just

39:57

trying to, I

39:59

would like to. a statistical average of this moment

40:01

in time that makes me feel good, is the

40:03

goal of kid photography.

40:06

Yeah, the reality is too scary. Yeah, you're

40:08

like, if I could just round off the

40:10

edges and be like, this felt great at

40:13

several moments throughout this day, that

40:15

would be fine. I

40:18

don't actually need a pixel perfect recreation of

40:20

this moment in time. And it's

40:22

kind of weird. That is sort of the

40:24

goal, and I understand in particular, my parents

40:26

want that. But

40:28

it's right next to, are you showing somebody

40:30

an image of a thing that actually happened?

40:32

Or are you just creating an illustration? And

40:35

is that illustration like in the

40:37

age of influencers, Instagram, is that illustration

40:39

going to lead to all kinds of

40:42

weird outcomes, but what people's expectations

40:44

of their own experiences should be like, because they don't

40:46

know they're looking at something fake. In

40:49

the entire ecosystem,

40:52

we talked about a show in the

40:54

context of the images of the Trump

40:56

assassination attempt, the entire ecosystem of validating

40:59

these images, saying what's real, what's not, which

41:02

ones are AI, which ones aren't, is just

41:04

not ready. We've

41:07

talked about it a lot. There

41:09

are initiatives and alliances, and there's

41:11

labels on meta platforms that are

41:13

being applied seemingly randomly. But

41:16

none of it works. No one trusts any of it.

41:19

And we're just barreling towards this

41:21

future of completely synthetic images coming

41:23

off these phones. And

41:25

it doesn't seem like any

41:27

of the companies give a shit. Yeah. I

41:29

feel like there's this just

41:31

shared understanding we have, especially with a

41:34

phone camera. It's like you

41:36

just pointed at a thing, you were there,

41:38

you took a picture, it happened. You see

41:40

it on Instagram. It's like, we just have

41:42

this shared understanding of like, yes, that was

41:44

a thing that happened exactly,

41:47

more or less as we saw it. We

41:50

all understand that people pose for

41:52

photos with big hats on in

41:54

front of gorgeous landscapes or whatever.

41:57

But yeah, we're just like coming. straight

42:00

at that moment of like, okay,

42:02

we're going to have to start asking some

42:05

different questions when you're scrolling through Instagram or

42:07

just like shifting your mindset. And it's not

42:09

even like when I did the,

42:11

the sketch to image, um, I did,

42:13

you know, mess with a bunch of

42:15

photos, added cats and pirate chips and

42:17

like nonsense to them. And

42:19

I posted a bunch to my Instagram like

42:22

grid and a post and I went

42:24

through the, um, requirements they have for like

42:26

when you need to add an AI

42:28

tag. And it didn't

42:31

even meet them. It was like, you,

42:34

you can, you know, it was like something

42:36

about, it was my, like my own personal

42:38

photo and I wasn't, um,

42:41

the way it had manipulated it was like, yeah,

42:43

it's kind of up to you, you know, put

42:45

a tag on there or don't whatever. Like, okay,

42:49

that's fine. It's

42:51

all fine. Well, see, the other thing

42:53

I've noticed a lot of, um, is

42:56

even just the basic AI features and

42:58

phones now, they're over

43:00

correcting and over sharpening. And this is

43:02

beyond like, it looks bad. It's like,

43:05

if you zoom in too far on a

43:07

lot of modern smartphone photos now, you

43:10

will see that the text is all

43:12

AI wonky and like

43:14

signs in the background because AI has tried to denoise

43:16

and sharpen and you've gotten some weird stuff, like

43:19

really small faces far away in a

43:21

lot of smartphone photos now look incredibly

43:23

distorted and demonic because there's like

43:26

three pixels and it's like, well, what if I

43:28

put a face here? And it's like, I don't

43:30

really know what a face looks like yet. So

43:32

here's a face, a vaguely face shaped denoised thing.

43:34

I think Samsung phones are, are

43:36

more egregious with this than iPhones, but they're

43:38

all doing it, um, to

43:40

varying degrees. And that is already confusing people.

43:42

Like they're like, these photos are AI generated.

43:45

It's like, you're not wrong, but you're

43:47

also not right. Like that

43:50

moment in time did happen. And then,

43:52

uh, uh, you

43:55

know, a smartphone interpreted this demon

43:57

face instead of just

43:59

not having. information there. It's weird

44:01

when it kind of comes to the

44:04

surface where, what was the

44:06

photo of the lady trying on a wedding

44:08

dress? Yeah. Yeah.

44:11

In the mirror, she's making two different poses. Oh, yeah. And

44:13

everybody lost their minds and it turned out to

44:15

be like it was accidentally in panorama mode or

44:18

something like that. But even

44:20

that is like, this stuff has been

44:22

going on behind the scenes and just

44:24

sort of doing everything it

44:27

can with that data to make a photo that

44:29

it thinks you will like. And

44:31

then when it kind of goes sideways and

44:34

is obvious, then it's a real weird

44:36

moment of like, no, yeah, actually your

44:38

phone's been doing this. Like

44:41

you just, it just didn't look like

44:43

a demon until right this

44:45

moment. Yeah. I

44:47

think there's going to be some moment

44:50

where the

44:53

industry, probably not the industry, governments the

44:56

EU, they tend, they, they're always doing stuff.

44:59

They're going to say, if you

45:01

enable these features, you have to like

45:04

hard watermark these photos as

45:06

being partially generated by AI. Because

45:08

if we don't get all the

45:10

way there, then we're

45:12

going to end up in this extremely

45:14

weird moment where only

45:17

professionals with

45:19

like cryptographic signatures and their

45:21

DSLRs are

45:23

going directly to Getty or the source of

45:25

any truth. And I don't think

45:27

that's, that doesn't seem sustainable, right? Like

45:30

only if you buy this one, like a

45:32

camera and you have a contract with Reuters,

45:35

can your photos be trusted? Like

45:37

$10,000 camera. Yeah. It

45:40

just doesn't seem, that doesn't seem like what

45:42

anybody wants. I'm, I'm hopeful

45:44

that like consumers correct this

45:46

first, but I suspect that

45:49

some government somewhere is going to have to make a

45:51

rule and people are going to have to

45:53

comply because we're just headed every

45:55

time. I know that Google people are going to

45:57

yell at me because every time I'm like, what is a photo apocalypse is

45:59

here? because of some Google feature. They're like, no,

46:01

this is just what people want. And I'm like, people also

46:04

want sugar. Like, I love

46:06

cigarettes. Like,

46:11

what do you want me to do? It

46:14

always does feel like they have the best case scenario

46:16

in mind and that humans are not goblins

46:18

who do horrible things to each other sometimes.

46:20

They're like, oh no, everyone will use it

46:22

in the way that we intend, which is

46:25

the nice way. And it's

46:27

just like, no. You

46:30

only need one jerk. You only need one

46:32

jerk to ruin everything. Look

46:35

around. All right, other reviews. V, you reviewed the

46:37

Galaxy Watch Ultra this week. Yes,

46:40

yes. What kind of Apple Watch is it? A good

46:42

one or a bad one? It's

46:45

Apple Watch Ultra. That sure is what it is. But

46:49

actually, what it really is is that if you

46:52

took the Apple Watch Ultra and drew

46:54

it from memory, that's the Samsung Galaxy

46:56

Watch Ultra. Or if you

46:58

took the Apple font, it's

47:00

like the Apple Watch Ultra too. But

47:02

in an Android font is just basically

47:04

what you're doing with this. I

47:08

was writing the review. And then I was like,

47:10

you know what? It's actually just expedient if I

47:12

tell you what's different and bullet point everything that

47:15

is the same because there's too many things that

47:17

are the same. And then I started

47:19

doing the major things that are the same. And

47:21

then I was like, oh, but then there's this.

47:23

And then there's this. And then there's all these

47:25

tiny little features that only a psycho like me

47:27

would know and remember are on each of the

47:29

watches are there. Like, oh, you can run against

47:31

your last race performance if you're a runner. Yeah,

47:33

Apple did that and watch it West 9. And

47:35

now he's here on the Samsung. And why is

47:37

it here on the Samsung? Because I

47:39

don't know. It was on Apple. They have an

47:42

orange shortcut button that is

47:44

the quick button on Samsung and the action

47:46

button on the Apple Watch.

47:48

It's the same thing just

47:50

in a different font. And that's like you

47:52

could sum up the watches that. And also

47:55

it's a squirkel. And I don't like it. I

47:58

had mixed feelings. about the squircle going in

48:00

and then after two weeks of wear, I

48:03

don't like the squircle. It is just

48:05

too chunky on my wrist. I can

48:07

fit three chopsticks into the gap between

48:10

the watch and my

48:13

wrist and it's just

48:15

a chonker. It's a very chunky boy and so orange.

48:21

The Apple Watch Ultra was orange. This

48:24

is so radioactively

48:26

biohazard orange. It's a little upsetting

48:28

how orange it is. I

48:32

don't have it on me right now but

48:34

it looks like a Halloween watch. I actually

48:37

ended up appreciating the regular Galaxy Watch 7,

48:39

which I am wearing right now, a whole

48:41

lot more because I was like,

48:43

oh, it doesn't hurt me to wear it because

48:45

it's just too big. It's too big

48:47

for my wrist and the Apple Watch Ultra is

48:49

also big for my wrist. I can stick a

48:51

bunch of stuff in here. There's a gap. Something

48:55

about it being a square just made it a

48:57

lot harder for me to wear. When I was

48:59

testing the sleep apnea feature, it was just like,

49:01

nope, we can't get readings from you. I

49:04

actually had to wear the other one to get the readings

49:06

and test that feature out. It

49:10

makes it sound bad but it's actually a really great Android

49:12

watch. I would say it's one of the best Android watches

49:14

that are available. There's

49:17

a little part of me that hurts that

49:20

Samsung decided to bake an Apple Watch

49:22

in order to create this excellent Android

49:24

watch. It just felt wrong. It felt

49:26

wrong to me because I truly do

49:28

love how weird and unique the Samsung

49:31

smartwatches have been with their

49:33

rotating bezels and just Samsung

49:35

being weird about how it does

49:38

health stuff. The

49:40

ages metric is just completely bonkers. I don't

49:42

understand why it's there. I was definitely going

49:44

to ask you about this. By

49:47

the way, you said age and that stands

49:49

for advanced glycation end products. Yes.

49:51

Have you told me yet what that means? There's

49:56

a whole informational section that you can read

49:58

in the Samsung Health app

50:00

about what it is. And it's basically

50:02

measuring compounds when fats and

50:05

sugars in your blood oxidize.

50:08

How is it doing this? Samsung won't say.

50:10

It just says there's a new three in

50:12

one active biosensor with more LED colors and

50:14

whatnot. And there's a little

50:17

spectrum and it goes from low to high.

50:20

And if you're low,

50:22

I guess you're metabolically younger

50:24

than your age. And if you're high, I

50:26

guess you're not your metabolic age.

50:28

They're measuring this through the skin? Yes. Are

50:32

they, they're not like pricking you. The watch isn't

50:34

like taking your blood. No, everything is non-invasive. There's

50:36

not like a, there's not like a chemical sense.

50:38

It's like in your sweat. They're

50:40

just doing the thing that everyone does. They're just

50:43

shining light into your skin. And based on like

50:45

how it reflects back, they're just telling you things

50:48

that have not been FDA cleared. It's very

50:50

experimental. Like I did not know what this,

50:52

this actual feature was. So, you know, when

50:54

I was getting briefed on it and I

50:57

went up to Samsung and I'm like, so

50:59

what is this? And they were basically like,

51:01

well, we have this new sensor. So we

51:03

thought, why not throw this also in here?

51:05

This is the Samsung answer of all time.

51:08

And I was like, oh, okay.

51:10

So like, how, how do you intend people to

51:12

use it? And they're like, actually, we don't know.

51:14

Like we're just kind of, we just kind of

51:16

want to see how people use it. And so

51:18

a lot of the new features are quote unquote

51:20

AI powered and you're getting these AI insights and

51:23

they're telling me things that I don't know what

51:25

to do with because on the

51:27

one hand, the watch was like, Hey, you

51:29

have not been consistent with your sleep little

51:31

lady. You should work on that. And then

51:33

I refreshed the app and it's like great

51:36

job staying consistent with your sleep schedule. And

51:38

I was just like, so which is it? Which is

51:40

it? Which is it? I had one night where I

51:42

didn't like have my sleep schedule completely perfect. So I

51:45

guess that's what it was reacting. That's not helpful. And

51:47

then the age is metric. They're like, well, if you

51:49

want to improve your score, I'm smack dab in the

51:51

middle. So I don't know. I guess that means I'm

51:53

my age, uh, metabolically, who knows? Wait, I just wait.

51:56

Can I just stick with the age thing for one

51:58

second? So they have a metric. age,

52:01

which I think

52:03

most people know

52:05

what a metric called age is meant to measure,

52:07

which is your age. Yes. That's

52:10

a well-known label for a thing. And

52:15

then it measures, first

52:17

of all, let me just quote your own review back to you, V. Meanwhile,

52:20

the age metric is baffling, is what you

52:22

have written here. It

52:24

is baffling. So then it's shining a

52:26

light through your wrist, and

52:29

then somehow from what it, the

52:32

reflections of that light, it

52:34

is tracking how protein

52:37

and fat are oxidized by sugar, and

52:39

then telling you whether that's a low, medium, or high.

52:42

And then they're saying that is something called age. And

52:44

I just want to point out how deeply, meaningfully

52:47

confusing that is. It's

52:49

your metabolic age. So they

52:51

love to do these things. Get out of

52:53

here. Right. But there's no, but

52:57

it's like a new metric. Is

52:59

this a metric that exists in the literature? It

53:02

is a metric that exists in

53:05

research, and scientists are studying

53:07

it. But in a

53:09

consumer watch, it means nothing.

53:11

It means absolutely nothing

53:13

in a consumer watch. So

53:16

it tells me that I'm kind of

53:18

in the medium, neither low or high,

53:20

in the yellow section, so to speak.

53:24

So to improve your age's metric, here's

53:27

what you do. Does it know how old you are? Yeah,

53:29

I did put my demographic information

53:31

in. So presumably, is it

53:35

all related to your actual age? If

53:38

you're green, is your metabolic age younger than

53:40

your actual age? Yes, that's basically what

53:42

they're telling you. This is the idea. That's so

53:44

messed up. This is the idea. And then

53:47

how do they? Allison, it's not messed up. It means nothing.

53:49

It means nothing. So

53:51

it doesn't have to be messed up.

53:53

It's just baffling. It makes no sense.

53:56

I like new metrics. I'm

53:58

just trying to understand this one. So

54:00

someone somewhere is like a

54:03

25 year old has a metabolism

54:05

of X. And if you

54:07

tell us you're 25 by shining a light

54:09

from a smartwatch into your wrist, we

54:12

can tell you if you're old.

54:14

This is kind of a new thing that they're

54:16

doing in wearables. It's not just Samsung. Like basically,

54:20

Aura recently did a thing where it's like,

54:22

we can tell you what your cardiovascular age

54:24

is and whether it's aligned with your physical

54:27

age or not. And

54:29

so there's just like

54:31

this obsession with telling you whether

54:33

you are like physically speaking aligned

54:35

with expectations for your actual age

54:37

or whether you're quote unquote, physically,

54:40

physiologically younger than your actual age or older. I

54:42

feel like there's a lot of people in Silicon

54:44

Valley who are drinking the

54:47

butter of the young in order to live forever. And I'm not

54:49

trying to draw a straight line to the

54:51

Galaxy Watch Ultra. I'm just saying there's

54:53

a path, perhaps a winding path. There

54:56

is, but it's, I do, it's, I

54:58

do not want a smart ring to

55:00

tell me if my heart is dying

55:02

faster than I am. Listen,

55:05

listen, listen, there are, there are health

55:07

nuts who want this information. I don't

55:09

necessarily think it's actually good for their

55:12

mental health to have this information, but

55:14

the app was just basically like, Hey,

55:16

so here's how you can improve your

55:18

ages index of metric. That means absolutely

55:21

nothing. And you'll never guess what

55:23

the advice is because it's to eat

55:25

healthy, sleep well and

55:28

exercise. So I'm just like, Oh, thanks.

55:30

It's always that last one it gets you. Never.

55:33

It's always the last one. All

55:36

right. Like

55:38

all Samsung devices, this, this all, this works

55:41

best if you're in the Galaxy ecosystem. Yes.

55:43

I'm assuming none of it worse than iPhone. What

55:46

gets worse if you have a pixel or you

55:48

have a OnePlus? Well, would you like to have

55:50

your EKGs and a five detection?

55:52

You will not get that unless you have

55:54

a galaxy phone. Would you like to know

55:56

if you have sleep apnea? You will not

55:58

get that unless you have a galaxy phone

56:00

because that that requires the Samsung Health Monitor

56:02

app, which is separate from Samsung Health, meaning you're

56:04

just not gonna get that. And

56:06

some of the AI features are

56:09

Galaxy Phone only as well, which

56:11

actually I think that's great for

56:13

you because the AI was

56:15

very hit or miss for me. And

56:17

all the advice it gave me, it

56:19

would be like, hey, your age is

56:21

not ideal, exercise

56:24

more. And then the AI is like, you're

56:26

exercising a little too much. You should rest

56:28

because it's affecting your sleep. And

56:30

also you're sleeping well and not well

56:32

at the same time. So it's like,

56:35

cool, great, thanks. I feel like it's a

56:37

big ask to be like, you need a

56:39

new watch and a new phone. And

56:42

a new ring and all of that stuff.

56:44

So I did last week, we

56:47

asked listeners to send us a note if

56:49

they were all in on the Samsung ecosystem.

56:53

I would, I'm just gonna guess and say that

56:56

if I asked listeners to send us notes about

56:59

why they were all in on the Apple ecosystem, we

57:02

would crash the internet, right? Like we would just get a lot.

57:04

I like say in a breath, like,

57:07

I don't think CarPlay is very good in emails for

57:09

days. All

57:12

day long, people are like, how dare you? We

57:14

asked for Galaxy ecosystem users, we got

57:16

two emails. Just

57:19

putting out there. So one

57:22

person, Sean, thank you, Sean

57:24

for emailing. They wrote in, they're

57:26

upgrading from a Fold 4 to a Fold 6,

57:30

which is, you know, great. They're doing

57:32

it because the Fold 4 broke, the warranty

57:34

on the devices cashed, and they found a

57:36

way through the cell phone warranty to get

57:38

a Fold 6. Right,

57:41

they try to use this licensed

57:45

Samsung repair company, Ubreak iFix, that

57:49

costs money. So then they

57:51

try to use their Amex warranty, they were denied,

57:54

but an Amex called Samsung, they said no, and

57:56

then they went to cell phone insurance, which they

57:58

had, and that replaced the, the Fold 6. So

58:01

that is one way to stay in the Samsung

58:03

ecosystem, is a nightmare repair journey

58:05

because the seals in your Fold 4

58:07

broke. I would not say this

58:09

is the type of email we get when we ask why people

58:11

stay in the Apple ecosystem. So that's one.

58:14

We got another one. Thank you so much for

58:16

emailing from Israel. This

58:20

one says, you asked to hear from

58:22

a Galaxy ecosystem user, I am that

58:24

user, which is great. I truly

58:27

appreciate that line. They wrote to us, I'm typing

58:29

this in my Galaxy tab S8 Ultra. I upgraded

58:31

from Z Fold 4 to Z Fold 6. I

58:34

use the tablet form factor much more than

58:36

the phone fold factor, which means they have

58:39

both a Galaxy tablet and they are constantly

58:41

using their phone in tablet mode. This

58:44

is the most Android tablet usage I've ever heard of in my entire

58:46

life. That's incredible. You're breaking,

58:48

whatever you do, everyone's like, that's 90%

58:51

of the usage. They have a Galaxy Watch

58:53

5 Pro and they're waiting on their Galaxy

58:55

Watch Ultra. Then they have four

58:57

TVs, including a frame TV, their washer and

58:59

dryer Samsung. They have the air dresser, the

59:01

fridge, the oven, a robot vacuum, a smart

59:03

things hub, a Blu-ray player, you're my people,

59:06

and then it says, and something else I'm

59:08

forgetting, I'm sure. Are

59:10

they Korean? And then at

59:12

the end it says, my husband uses an iPhone and an

59:14

iPad. Oh,

59:19

wow. There's a case study. So my

59:21

family. I just want to say one,

59:23

thank you. I love this. I'm going

59:27

to write back, but you've neglected

59:30

to say why you've chosen that list. So I

59:32

would love to know why. And if anyone else

59:36

is out there and wants to send us a note with

59:38

their list of why, I'm dying to read them, because we

59:40

know so much about the Apple ecosystem

59:42

and how people feel about it. Trust me, we

59:44

know so much. You are not

59:46

quiet. I'm dying to know how people in

59:48

other ecosystems feel about it. And

59:51

it's really interesting to get these notes. So keep

59:53

writing in. I'm very curious. That said,

59:55

my husband uses an iPhone and an iPad is very

59:57

funny, deeply funny. There's

1:00:00

something going on. I love it. Someone

1:00:04

is very excited about RCS. Oh

1:00:06

my gosh. Oh,

1:00:10

that's so good. Yeah. I

1:00:12

mean, look, there's a

1:00:14

bunch of Samsung devices in this house. Somehow

1:00:16

I've ended up in the LG ThinkQ ecosystem because

1:00:19

that's our washer and dryer and fridge.

1:00:21

Oh boy. God only knows why. And

1:00:24

now I'm like, man, I better... I got an

1:00:26

update the other... I got a notification today that new

1:00:28

songs for summer were available for the washer and dryer.

1:00:30

And I was like, yes, this is the dream. Oh

1:00:33

my God. Wait, songs for your washer and

1:00:35

dryer to play? Every quarter LG

1:00:38

sends new little icons for the

1:00:40

seasons and then issues new songs.

1:00:44

Is this why they couldn't... They couldn't

1:00:46

make phones anymore. They've been like, we have

1:00:48

to divert those resources to the

1:00:50

washer and dryer. There's 50

1:00:52

engineers with Casio keyboards being like, and once

1:00:54

a quarter they send them to me. And

1:00:59

it's great. I truly love it. Incredible.

1:01:02

We can't wrap up the Samsung conversation

1:01:05

without talking about Saturday

1:01:07

Samsung. Saturday Samsung.

1:01:10

So if you don't know, this is what

1:01:12

we have started calling Samsung's relentless attempts to

1:01:14

sell more products, which are all

1:01:17

born of the company losing some money,

1:01:20

sales are flat, and they issued

1:01:22

an edict saying everyone had to come

1:01:24

to work six days a week until they recovered.

1:01:28

Crazy. And it's their corporate employees, which

1:01:31

means a bunch of suits are sitting

1:01:33

around Samsung headquarters on Saturday being like,

1:01:35

summer shit. They're not

1:01:37

making... They're the suits. What are they going

1:01:39

to do? So it's only weird promotions. So

1:01:41

we have covered you get a free TV

1:01:43

if you buy a TV, which is amazing.

1:01:46

We have covered you get a free TV if you buy a phone. Also

1:01:49

amazing. You would think it would continue in this

1:01:51

vein. But no, last

1:01:54

Saturday, I guess, burst

1:01:57

of creativity, and they

1:01:59

decided that... The best way to market

1:02:01

the Galaxy Z Flip in

1:02:04

America would

1:02:06

be to say that the

1:02:08

Z Flip, it's a folding phone. A little

1:02:10

flippy guy is ideal for

1:02:13

busy police officers to wear his body

1:02:15

cam. That's

1:02:18

so Samsung. It's very good. Oh, Samsung. It's

1:02:21

so bad. I

1:02:23

have put a folding phone

1:02:25

on my shirt. I think

1:02:28

I'm safe to say I'm one of the

1:02:30

few people who's tried that outside of these

1:02:32

police officers. It's a dumb idea. It's

1:02:35

just not a good idea. It just

1:02:37

doesn't seem secure. Also,

1:02:39

don't they wear vests? They

1:02:46

worked, so they didn't just issue

1:02:48

them T-Mobile phones. There's

1:02:52

a post on Samsung's website. It's titled

1:02:54

Samsung Technology is Helping Police Authority Protect

1:02:56

the Public Safety, which is a

1:02:58

lot. They partnered with

1:03:00

a company called Visual Labs, which is,

1:03:03

quote, a leading body camera solution provider.

1:03:06

Capitalism. And then two

1:03:09

police departments in Missouri did a pilot

1:03:11

program with all of this. They have

1:03:13

a customized Z Flip that

1:03:16

has slightly different buttons. The

1:03:19

phones can be set to automatically

1:03:21

begin recording the phone to text a

1:03:24

pursuit or if you're in

1:03:26

the car when the emergency lights are

1:03:28

turned on and then the video

1:03:30

footage is sent to the Visual Labs cloud. OK,

1:03:33

this is all very good. Looking at

1:03:35

this, that's ridiculous. It's

1:03:38

so bad. That is

1:03:41

so. Well get

1:03:43

ready because 25 more police departments

1:03:45

are going to start wearing Z Flip as body

1:03:48

Oh, Lord. Oh, and I was wrong. There's

1:03:51

a partnership with T-Mobile. So there are T-Mobile

1:03:53

phones. Like, what do

1:03:55

you what do you need the rest of the

1:03:57

phone on your person for? Like, you just. Need

1:03:59

a camera. I just like the idea that people

1:04:01

are going to flip it open and then make

1:04:03

a TikTok and close it up. Yeah. They're

1:04:06

going to start doing some dances. And

1:04:08

yeah. No, it's not OK. There

1:04:12

is a this whole process is great, but

1:04:15

there's just other benefits, which

1:04:17

are basically this phone has

1:04:19

a camera in it. So

1:04:21

one of the benefits is, in addition to their use

1:04:23

as body worn cameras, Z Flip devices

1:04:26

can help improve evidence gathering and transparency

1:04:28

by clearly documenting details of arrests and

1:04:30

other interactions. It's absolutely not. There's literally

1:04:33

a feature on this phone. That's just

1:04:35

a camera. Raw stuff that wasn't there.

1:04:39

Body cameras do not have that. This

1:04:41

is such a bad idea. Draw

1:04:44

in the drugs. Put

1:04:47

the cocaine here in the dash. Yes,

1:04:51

the Galaxy Z Flip quote, the Galaxy

1:04:53

Z Flip additionally functions as a digital

1:04:55

camera needed for taking pictures of crime

1:04:57

scene evidence and audio recorder for witness

1:04:59

interviews and a personnel locator for tracking

1:05:01

the officer's location through GPS. This is

1:05:03

just a phone. I just

1:05:05

want to be very clear. What they have described is a

1:05:07

phone. Have you thought

1:05:09

about using a phone? This

1:05:12

is body camera. Incredible. It's very good. Draw

1:05:15

the suspect in the bushes. I just

1:05:17

want you all to imagine the high

1:05:19

fives this Saturday afternoon. There's

1:05:22

like one slice of pizza left in the box. The

1:05:25

cheese is getting a little weird. And they're like, what if we just

1:05:27

gave it to cops? You know it

1:05:29

was like a lightning bolt moment. They

1:05:32

were out the door in their cars like, we did it.

1:05:36

Days over. Sales are up. We

1:05:38

sell 25 police departments in one of these big flips.

1:05:42

They still have 25 more phones. It's

1:05:44

very good. It is truly very

1:05:46

good. Saturday, Samsung. It never

1:05:48

gets old. All right, we should take a break. We

1:05:51

are cruising our way over here. We're going to take a

1:05:53

break. We'll be right back. Have

1:05:57

a question or need how to advice? Just

1:05:59

ask. Ask Meta AI. Whether

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1:06:58

right, we're back. It's time for the lightning round.

1:07:01

As ever unsponsored. I

1:07:03

feel like the rudest thing David did was leave for

1:07:05

the week and not pay to sponsor the lightning round.

1:07:08

Like, honestly, if you're going to

1:07:10

leave me hanging, bro, sponsored

1:07:13

by David Pierce, you know what I'm saying? Like, set

1:07:15

the tone. Sadly, he's still unsponsored. We're still in the

1:07:17

market. We get a lot of weird emails from people

1:07:19

who are like, I'll do my crypto

1:07:22

startup. We're not going to let you do that. Sorry.

1:07:26

That's just not going to happen. But if

1:07:28

you have a real company and a lot of money,

1:07:30

talk to us. Something

1:07:32

will talk to you. Not me. That's

1:07:34

the other side of the house. But someone will talk to you. All

1:07:36

right. Here's how I want to do the lightning

1:07:38

round this week. We have like three topics. Two

1:07:40

of them just have a lot of headlines. So

1:07:43

I'm just going to read all of the headlines and then we'll

1:07:45

like figure out what's going on.

1:07:48

The first one, though, is just one headline and it's our fault. Logitech's

1:07:52

new CEO, Hanukkah Faber, was on

1:07:55

Decoder this week. She's

1:07:57

the new CEO. She just started like late last year. We

1:08:00

had the old CEO Bracken-Derrill on several

1:08:02

times. One

1:08:05

of my ideas with decoders, there's more than five companies

1:08:07

in the world, and so we should talk

1:08:09

to all the companies and pay attention to them. That

1:08:11

generally goes well. And Logitech is one of those companies that I

1:08:13

think is under covered, right? They're just

1:08:15

around. You don't think about them

1:08:17

very much. And it turned out under

1:08:20

Bracken-Derrill, Kyle Lutchtak worked

1:08:22

was bonkers. He's like,

1:08:24

I have 23 direct reports. Everyone's

1:08:26

just allowed to do whatever they want. I buy companies,

1:08:28

I leave them alone. There's no overlap. It's like everyone

1:08:30

have a good time, which is how you end up

1:08:33

with them buying like 50 headphone companies. And

1:08:35

they're all just kind of like doing their thing. Like, I wonder

1:08:37

if they have a strategy. The answer was they do, which is

1:08:39

leave everybody alone, which worked just

1:08:42

to whatever extent. Bracken leaves Logitech.

1:08:45

He now works for, I think it's

1:08:48

called the VF Brands. They own Vans and Supreme

1:08:50

and the North Face. So

1:08:52

the guy who ran Logitech is now the CEO of Supreme. Incredible.

1:08:56

We're gonna see how that goes. I'm

1:08:58

gonna try to get him back to be like, so Supreme. That's

1:09:00

the whole thing. And they have a

1:09:03

new CEO, Hanukkah, who came from like Unilever

1:09:05

and Procter & Gamble. She has this background in consumer

1:09:08

goods and like marketing. Really interesting.

1:09:10

And I was like, are you gonna change this wacky

1:09:13

corporate structure? And that was what I thought

1:09:15

Decoder was gonna be about. Truly,

1:09:17

that's what I thought we were gonna talk. And then we did

1:09:19

talk about that for a while. And then she's like, I wanna

1:09:21

build a forever mouse. And this

1:09:24

keeps happening to me on Decoder where I'm like,

1:09:26

what? Explain. And she's like,

1:09:28

I wanna build a really beautiful mouse. It's like

1:09:30

very heavy, very premium. And it will just do

1:09:32

software updates forever. And that will be your forever

1:09:34

mouse. Like you'll just have it forever. And

1:09:37

I'm thinking, well, I've had this mouse

1:09:39

forever. Right. Same.

1:09:43

Right, it's like 10 years old. Are

1:09:46

people replacing mice? No.

1:09:49

Yeah, so very confused. Very confused.

1:09:52

And you can hear, if you listen to it,

1:09:54

the transcript reads one way. You've actually go and

1:09:56

listen to Decoder. I'm just

1:09:58

laughing. Like, I'm like, what are you... talking about.

1:10:01

I'm like, there's only two ways to monetize

1:10:03

hardware over time. It is

1:10:05

subscriptions or it is ads. And she's

1:10:07

like, yep, those are the two ways. I'm like, so

1:10:10

you're going to do a subscription mouse? And she's like,

1:10:12

I am. And I encourage you to go listen to

1:10:14

this, because I'm just losing my mind. What

1:10:17

am I subscribing to with a

1:10:19

subscription mouse? Right. So it's

1:10:22

AI software. No! What

1:10:27

is AI software for my mouse?

1:10:30

What, are you going to change the DPI

1:10:32

based on what I'm doing? No,

1:10:34

no, no, no, no. It's not even that. You

1:10:37

were like, here's an idea. No, no, no, it's worse than that. They're

1:10:40

putting the buttons on the mouse so that when

1:10:42

you see a field, like any text field on

1:10:44

your computer, the mouse

1:10:47

will do the prompting for you. Absolutely

1:10:50

not. So they've already rolled this out in Options

1:10:52

Plus. No. No.

1:10:55

This is a thing in Logic Mice today

1:10:57

for newer mice. Why older

1:10:59

mice are not allowed to have the software? I

1:11:01

didn't even get to, because I was just, what?

1:11:04

You can listen to me like, dewire

1:11:06

my brain in this conversation. So

1:11:09

I was like, so a mouse? And

1:11:12

she's like, yeah, this is how our video conferencing software

1:11:14

works. And I was like, but that's

1:11:17

a service. This is a

1:11:19

mouse. And she's like, yeah, a mouse, like a beautiful, and

1:11:21

I believe she said diamond in CrossFit mouse. So that was

1:11:24

decoder. These things happen to me in

1:11:26

decoder all the time. I got it. What I

1:11:28

was not expecting was the idea

1:11:30

of the subscription mouse has just

1:11:33

like, it's a news cycle. And

1:11:36

it was just like the new CEO riffing.

1:11:38

But now there's a full news cycle a

1:11:40

lot of selecting subscription lines. Oh, no. And

1:11:42

I will tell you, not since like

1:11:45

HP was like subscription printers, have people

1:11:47

been this unhappy about any idea that

1:11:49

I've ever heard? I

1:11:51

mean. There are YouTubers making

1:11:53

YouTube videos about it. I've

1:11:55

seen TikToks about it's like crazy. It's

1:11:58

like it's living its own little life.

1:12:00

People are. throwing away their Logitech mice.

1:12:02

Like, no, no, we're not throwing away.

1:12:04

This is really going to be my

1:12:06

forever Logitech mouse now. I'm never giving

1:12:08

it up. I will say the mouse

1:12:10

and my other computer there is easily

1:12:12

15 years old. Yeah, like you just

1:12:14

get one. It's kind of gross. I'm

1:12:17

not saying it's not a little gross. They

1:12:19

get disgusting, but like you're just in an office. You

1:12:21

find one out of a box. Someone

1:12:24

put it there 10 years ago. Thumbs sweat. You

1:12:26

can see my thumb sweat on this. It's

1:12:29

a radio show. Stop showing people your thumb sweat.

1:12:31

You're telling me. It's

1:12:34

just, you know.

1:12:37

Describe it for the audio listener. Diamond

1:12:41

next to me. I will tell

1:12:43

you, I rarely get deeply surprised

1:12:47

by what happens on decoder. It's

1:12:50

mostly a show about org charts, as the listeners know. And

1:12:52

then every now and again, these past couple of months,

1:12:54

the Zoom CEO came on and was like, we're

1:12:57

building AI clones of everyone to put in Zoom meetings.

1:13:00

And again, I just encourage you. You can just listen

1:13:02

to me try to respond to

1:13:04

that in real time. And look, I'll take the heat

1:13:06

on decoder. People are like, you're too nice, whatever. I'm

1:13:09

always trying to be better. I'm always trying to

1:13:11

ask harder questions. Just imagine

1:13:13

what it's like in real time to

1:13:16

be faced with someone being like, the future of

1:13:18

Zoom is AI clones in meetings. And

1:13:20

you have to acknowledge

1:13:22

that, not die, and

1:13:26

then formulate a series of follow up questions that make

1:13:29

any sense, that like tell a little story. It's harder

1:13:31

than it looks, is all I'm trying to say. And

1:13:33

they're serious. And you have to keep them there. Right,

1:13:35

and you have to keep them talking. It

1:13:40

is just much more challenging. And subscription-wise,

1:13:42

you can hear me just, what are

1:13:44

you talking about? Record scratch, yeah. So

1:13:48

I was not intending to cause a full news

1:13:50

cycle about mice. It was truly

1:13:52

not my intent, but I

1:13:55

hope I was- Yeah. ... that doesn't

1:13:57

do subscription mice. I tried very hard to

1:13:59

be like, I don't think- I think that's

1:14:01

a good idea. Please don't. Yeah. But you

1:14:03

know, Logitech has this really interesting problem. It

1:14:05

is interesting to think of their big problem,

1:14:07

which is if you believe

1:14:09

that AI is going to be important. And we've talked

1:14:12

about it in this episode. It

1:14:14

might be that you just talk to your phone a bunch more. And

1:14:17

it just does stuff for you. It might be that natural

1:14:20

interfaces, natural language interfaces, using the

1:14:22

cameras interface, all this stuff, starts

1:14:25

to take over from traditional PCs more and

1:14:27

more and more. This has been the dream for a long time. There's

1:14:31

a reason that Google and Microsoft or everybody else

1:14:33

calls AI a platform shift. And

1:14:35

if that happens, my sales go down.

1:14:40

If we use desktop computers left and we talk to our phones

1:14:42

more or whatever, maybe the PC

1:14:45

sales will go down and then my sales go down. And then we

1:14:47

just like, if you're Logitech, you're like, well,

1:14:49

how do I preserve the revenue? And

1:14:51

you're like, gold-plated, diamond-encrusted subscription mice.

1:14:53

And maybe that's not the right

1:14:56

solution. But

1:14:58

you can see the pressure. It was

1:15:00

a good conversation that I was not expecting just

1:15:03

that little bit to resonate as much as it

1:15:05

does. That said, we have to

1:15:07

find the brother laser printers of mice. Oh,

1:15:11

the other thing, there were TikToks about

1:15:13

subscription mice. And that put me into

1:15:15

people complaining about subscriptions TikTok. And

1:15:17

then I got to one where a very

1:15:20

nice young woman was like bitching about her.

1:15:22

A very nice young woman. It got

1:15:24

me to one where I think an influencer, she

1:15:26

was just complaining about her subscription printer. And

1:15:29

all the comments were like, buy a brother laser

1:15:31

printer. And I was like, I

1:15:33

did it. The Verge has accomplished its goal. One

1:15:36

thing we stand for. Yeah. Yeah,

1:15:40

buy one piece of hardware that lasts forever. I think the

1:15:42

Verge stands for that. All right, so that's lightning round one. It

1:15:44

feels like we're in a consensus that we're not going

1:15:47

to do AI-powered subscription mice. No. Don't

1:15:49

like it. Don't want it. Absolutely not.

1:15:51

The idea that your mouse is the one

1:15:53

that creates the prompt for open AI. It's

1:15:58

bold. You know, it's bold. That

1:16:00

sounds like a mouse wrote it. Yeah. If

1:16:06

you're a diehard options plus ecosystem

1:16:08

person, write us a note.

1:16:11

All right, so okay, here's the other two where

1:16:13

I'm just going to read a bunch of headlines for

1:16:15

Lightning Round. The first, very much related to

1:16:18

what we've been talking about with photos, there's

1:16:20

just a bunch of deep fake news this

1:16:22

week. Everyone knows it's a problem. We

1:16:24

know we got to stop it. And

1:16:26

then some people are like, screw it, we're doing

1:16:28

it anyway. And by some people, I mean Elon

1:16:30

Musk, who posted a deep fake video of comment

1:16:33

that violates exes own policies

1:16:35

about deep fake that were implemented under

1:16:38

his ownership. This isn't like

1:16:40

there was an old rule that disagrees with

1:16:42

and he's bulldozing it. He made a rule

1:16:44

about deep fakes, because everyone knows this problem.

1:16:47

And then he posted this ad with Harris.

1:16:49

It's like Harris's campaign ad with the Beyonce

1:16:51

song, but they replaced

1:16:53

the voiceover with her saying Biden

1:16:55

is too old. Okay, you

1:16:58

know, like in many ways, this is like,

1:17:01

this is just standard political parody. Like

1:17:03

if I hired a Kamala Harris impersonator to do

1:17:05

this, would it

1:17:07

be a problem? I

1:17:10

don't know. But if you

1:17:12

already have the rule, it's like, don't do this. You

1:17:14

should not, you should not, as the owner of the

1:17:16

platform do it. So he doesn't care. He doesn't give

1:17:18

a shit. But that's where we are, right? It's like

1:17:20

already happening. There's already these like weird moments occurring

1:17:23

because just bad faith actors

1:17:25

on both sides, in

1:17:27

particular one side. But

1:17:29

it's already happening. Then here's the rest

1:17:32

of the headlines. Microsoft wants

1:17:34

Congress to outlaw AI generated deep

1:17:36

fakes. Google tweaks

1:17:38

search to hide explicit deep fakes.

1:17:41

So if Google de-ranks

1:17:43

your website or knocks your website for having

1:17:45

deep fakes on it, especially explicit

1:17:47

ones, search won't show them to people

1:17:50

anymore. They're just going to go away

1:17:52

from search. Congress

1:17:54

wants to carve out intimate

1:17:57

D A I D fakes, which is basically what

1:17:59

you would. So there's a

1:18:01

language conversation here about what you should call these. So

1:18:04

you might call these like AI revenge porn. Oh.

1:18:06

Revenge porn is like a very loaded word for a

1:18:09

lot of reasons. So now we're going to try AI,

1:18:11

intimate AI deepfakes. So

1:18:14

you carve that out from section 230. So

1:18:17

that means right now you post stuff to a

1:18:19

platform like Facebook or X or Instagram or whatever.

1:18:22

Those platforms are not liable for what you post. That's section 230. It

1:18:25

makes the internet go around. And they're saying, no,

1:18:27

actually, if you allow intimate AI

1:18:29

deepfakes, you are now liable for them.

1:18:32

But you and that basically means you have to moderate them. So

1:18:35

that's one idea. And then

1:18:37

the Copyright Office just

1:18:40

issued a huge report on AI and copyright, which they've been

1:18:42

working on for quite some time. And their

1:18:44

first chapter of this report was about deepfakes.

1:18:47

And they're there. You can read. It's

1:18:49

very long. It's very good. It's very

1:18:51

easy to read. We'll link to it in the show notes

1:18:53

here. But they're basically like, yeah, copyright law can't do this. We

1:18:56

need a new law. This is a disaster. Here's how we

1:18:58

think the new law should work. So

1:19:00

we're just at this moment where everyone is

1:19:02

seeing the problem very clearly. And

1:19:04

then lastly, in the Senate, the

1:19:07

No-Fakes Act has been introduced. It's not

1:19:09

close to passing, but yet another bill

1:19:12

to ban deepfakes, to regulate deepfakes. So

1:19:14

we're at this point now where everybody

1:19:16

sees the problem. Right? Google

1:19:19

as a platform is doing some stuff to stop it. Microsoft

1:19:22

as a company is asking Congress to outlaw

1:19:24

it. The government is like, we

1:19:26

don't have the laws to do it. Some

1:19:28

parts of the governments are saying we need to do it. It

1:19:32

feels like this is the first big

1:19:34

AI regulation that's going to happen. It

1:19:36

feels like it's also the first one that has to happen. Deepfakes

1:19:39

bad. Deepfakes bad. So yeah.

1:19:42

Yeah. It's like this Spider-Man pointing

1:19:44

at Spider-Man meme. We're like, what's

1:19:46

going on? Who's in charge here?

1:19:50

Elon Musk is making rules about deepfakes and then

1:19:52

not following those rules. Not following them. The government

1:19:54

is like, yeah, we don't know. I

1:19:57

agree. Deepfakes bad, especially the ones that

1:19:59

are being used. we'll

1:28:00

just synthesize the tabs and build a comparison for you,

1:28:02

which is legitimately very cool. Um, and at least you

1:28:04

get to have to load the web pages, which

1:28:07

is like a good step. Yeah.

1:28:10

Um, but you see the, the

1:28:12

web is just fully changing. Like

1:28:15

whatever you think AI is doing

1:28:17

to productivity or workers or whatever

1:28:19

right now at this moment, how

1:28:21

we think about the web and

1:28:23

in particular search on the

1:28:26

web, it's already, the past

1:28:28

is past, like it's gone. It's in the rear view

1:28:30

mirror. We might only be a little bit far away

1:28:32

from it, but it's not coming back. Like

1:28:34

we're, we're just in a mode where you're

1:28:37

going to sign up to use a search engine and maybe

1:28:40

we'll have a different set of sources than the next

1:28:42

search engine based on the deals they have made, which

1:28:44

is going to be really weird. It's

1:28:46

just strikes me every time,

1:28:48

you know, Reddit comes up as that, like

1:28:51

we're racing to have, you know, Google

1:28:53

wants to answer your question without you

1:28:55

clicking on anything. Chat bots

1:28:58

want to answer your question or like

1:29:00

robots can answer your question, but

1:29:02

then also like Reddit

1:29:04

is incredibly valuable and it's just

1:29:06

people talking to people. Like that's

1:29:08

the thing that, you know, we

1:29:11

want to get to in search now where

1:29:13

I'm like, you know, I have a question

1:29:15

about my plant or whatever. It's like, I,

1:29:18

I don't want the AI generated answer.

1:29:20

I don't want whatever blurb, like

1:29:24

I want to read an answer from a

1:29:26

person and it's just strange to me that

1:29:28

that's at the center of this. Like, what

1:29:30

if you could just talk to robots? But

1:29:35

the robots need to listen to a person who knows

1:29:37

the answer. Yeah.

1:29:40

I mean, and Reddit is itself being polluted

1:29:42

with AI generated texts. So that's

1:29:45

the next turn. And then on top of it, all

1:29:47

the new information is a bunch

1:29:49

of kids talking to Tik TOK.

1:29:52

Oh, and like, and we found,

1:29:54

we found out this week, uh, that Tik TOK is one of

1:29:56

the biggest customers of opening AI because they're

1:29:58

using all that for the recognition. algorithms and

1:30:00

sorting and try like, and you're like, Oh,

1:30:02

this is a weird little circle where it's

1:30:05

there are going to be more silos on

1:30:07

the internet than ever before, because the open

1:30:09

web did not make enough of the

1:30:12

people who make the original content enough

1:30:14

money. And

1:30:16

so like, no one wants to repeat

1:30:18

that. So now it's like, you got to pay us. And

1:30:21

like, whether that actually comes back to individual Redditors

1:30:23

who are contributing remains to be seen. But Reddit

1:30:26

itself, Steve Huffins, like, yeah, I'm just gonna block you. Like,

1:30:28

I got my money from Google and now everyone else is blocked unless

1:30:30

they pay up. And I think you can do it. Because

1:30:33

he just needs Google. Like, Google is going to send

1:30:35

Reddit a lot of traffic and that's fine. You

1:30:37

can block Bing and be like pay up or you're dead. And

1:30:40

I think eventually they're all gonna end up

1:30:42

paying. Because if you have an

1:30:44

AI search product that can't look at Reddit, I think

1:30:47

a lot of people are like, well, where's the good stuff?

1:30:50

And you're gonna you're just gonna end up in a weird loop. We've

1:30:52

been covering this a lot. Like we over a

1:30:54

year now we covered sort of the end of the

1:30:57

SEO industry and what that did to the

1:30:59

web and all this stuff because we wanted to mark like

1:31:01

this is what it looks like now. And

1:31:04

I didn't I honestly did not expect

1:31:06

it to feel as different as

1:31:08

fast as it feels today. Like the

1:31:10

the end of the search era that we knew is I

1:31:12

think just firmly here. And you can see even this

1:31:14

week, it's just like, here's six more

1:31:16

headlines that are just like, here's how it's changing.

1:31:20

Mm hmm. I keep thinking about a friend

1:31:22

who she was buying a

1:31:24

new mattress. And she's like, I just

1:31:26

asked Claude. Yeah, Claude did it for

1:31:28

me. Claude was like, Yeah, which is the which

1:31:32

one is that perplexity? It's

1:31:34

anthropic. Yeah. Oh, God. And

1:31:36

it's just like my eyes get wider. I'm like,

1:31:39

put the little mattress review calm

1:31:41

that it was scraping. You know,

1:31:43

I don't know. That's a whole minefield to know

1:31:46

my husband does it. My husband is like an

1:31:48

avid chat GP as a search engine

1:31:50

user before it even had this project. And he's

1:31:52

been using Gemini and all the other stuff. And

1:31:54

he'll be like, Oh, yeah, I just asked that

1:31:57

this is how I built some code for this.

1:31:59

And this is is how I like, cause

1:32:01

he just, Google just doesn't give him the answers

1:32:03

that he needs anymore. And so like, I've just

1:32:05

been watching them just completely shift how they use

1:32:07

the internet over the last year. And I'm just

1:32:10

doing the same things that I have always done.

1:32:13

And I just am like, this

1:32:15

feels like getting left behind. Maybe

1:32:17

I should try using it. Maybe

1:32:20

I should try using it more in the ways that they

1:32:22

do, but I just run into the same problem as you

1:32:24

do, Allison, where I'm just like, I just, I

1:32:26

don't like the source that they pull from in

1:32:29

these things. So I'm just like,

1:32:32

oh, that's, I don't trust randoblogsite.com.

1:32:34

Give me the other one. I

1:32:36

started randoblogsite.com. Not all

1:32:39

randoblogsite.com. Respect your

1:32:41

elders. Hey,

1:32:44

that was my first website. You

1:32:48

know, I've been using Chatterby for Olympics trivia

1:32:50

cause I assume that the, you

1:32:52

know, like, it's like, what's this cable on

1:32:54

the fencer is like, the answer has been the same for a

1:32:56

long time. So you just like,

1:32:58

I have Chatterby mapped the action button on my

1:33:00

iPhone 15 pro and it works. Like

1:33:03

it just delivers an answer to you. And you're like, I don't

1:33:05

even know that's right. Right. It's

1:33:07

a close enough. Yeah. And the stakes are

1:33:10

low. Yeah. I

1:33:13

hope that's true. You know,

1:33:15

you're not like judging the

1:33:17

fencing. Like judges are not

1:33:19

using that. Actually we

1:33:22

have a big feature we are on this

1:33:24

week about AI being used to judge gymnastics.

1:33:26

You should read that. It's very good. I

1:33:28

mentioned that because we are way over. Thank

1:33:30

you. We got to

1:33:32

wrap this up. Thank you for indulging in chaos

1:33:34

for our cast to be announced. And that was

1:33:36

great. That was fun. It was good times. David,

1:33:39

if you're listening, you're dead to me. You never come back. That's

1:33:43

the way it goes. Like

1:33:45

a goldfish over here. All

1:33:48

right. That's it. That's our chest. That was really

1:33:50

fun. Thank you for listening. Rock and roll. And

1:33:55

that's it for the bird's cast this week. Hey, we'd love

1:33:57

to hear from you. Give us a call at 8. The

1:34:02

Verge casts is a production of The Verge and

1:34:04

Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is

1:34:06

produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. That's

1:34:08

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1:34:11

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