Morning Brew Daily - Elon is Ready to Put a Chip in Your Brain & YouTube Hates Ad Blockers

Episode Date: November 8, 2023

Episode 187: Neal and Toby explain why Elon Musk's brain implant startup was approved to start surgical trials. Plus, how YouTube's problem with ad blockers may violate the EU Law and the spicy book that came out on Ray Dalio's hedge fund 'Bridgewater'. Also why Ram is rolling out a hybrid EV truck and Americans really do love drive-throughs. Finally where in the US is the best place to retire? Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. On today's pod, a first of its kind RAM pickup tries to bridge the gap between traditional gas-powered cars and electric vehicles. Then Elon Musk's Neurrelink is busting out the bone saw

and looking for volunteers for its first clinical trial. It's Wednesday, November 8th. Let's ride. Today is a big day in the history of literature because it is the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare's first folio, the first published collection of the playwright's works,

If you ever wanted to reconnect with your high school English teacher, today is the day. But Toby, this got me thinking. We're still reading Shakespeare today 400 years after he wrote these plays. I got to ask you, what books, if any, do you still think we'll be reading 400 years from now? That is a great question because you've got to go so, so timeless. And I think mastering the art of French cooking by Julia Child, because as long as we're not eating bugs in 400 years, so we're going to need to know how to make the perfect beef burgeon d'ion or roast the perfect chicken. What about you?

I think that is a hilarious answer. Because as we'll talk about in the first story, we're all just going to have brain implants anyway that we'll be able to download recipes. My answer is, Good night moon, because it'll be more relevant than ever for people actually living on the moon or the Great Gatsby, because we'll still be debating about that green light at the end of the dock forever. I have my thoughts. All right, before we dive in the news, we have a quick word from our friends at Brex. Neil, today I want you to tell the people about Brex AI. I'm happy to. Brex AI, which is already super integrated into its platform, can help eliminate

boring and tedious tasks like adding memos to expense reports or bulk approving budget requests. It can even answer employee questions saving your finance team from a barrage of questions like, can I expense clowns for my 26th birthday party? And the answer is no, Toby. Oh, come on. If Brex's AI sounds like it's up your alley, head to brex.com today for more info. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill 3-burner gas grill.

Or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor to your backyard. Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together. Shop spring backyard days for seven days. at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th. Exclusion supplies to homedipo.com slash price match for details. All right, let's dive into the news. Neil, so much of what we talk about on the show concerns the digital realm from the metaverse to AI, but today's top story takes us squarely into the physical, specifically into the brain. Elon Musk's company, Neurrelink, is officially looking for human volunteers to begin its first clinical trial. And by clinical trial, I mean it's looking for

someone willing to let a surgeon cut into their skull and remove a chunk of bone so a robot can go and insert a series of tiny wires and electrodes into their brain, at which point the missing piece of their skull will be replaced by a small computer that is supposed to stay there for years and analyze the person's brain activity, that kind of clinical trial. If after hearing all that, you say to yourself sounds fun, you do have to meet some criteria first. The ideal candidate is a quadriplegic under the age of 40. The goal of these trials is to show that that the little device can safely collect data, a key step in achieving Neurlinks' ultimate goal to convert a person's thoughts into commands recognized by a computer.

Neil, this is as high stakes as it gets for Elon. Tesla took years to get its cars into production. SpaceX blew up countless rockets before finding success, but you can't really mess around with people's brains. No, the science of this is absolutely wild. So when you think about something, your neurons fire in particular patterns, but we don't know exactly how thoughts translate to particular mapping of the brain. So we have to put sensors close to people's neurons. And the only way that you can do that is through this extremely, extremely

delicate surgery. We have to collect so much data on this. And then only then can people perhaps use their thoughts to direct action, like point and click on a computer, or the goal is to do something even way more complex than that. Yeah. If we look at the history of brain implants, there hasn't really been much progress over the last 20 years or so. The Utah array is still the gold standard, and that involves cutting a big hole in a patient's brain, and then gently hammering, yes, I said hammering a tiny flat square of silicon inside. It's around the size of a child's fingernail, so it's not very big. But that's been the closest way we've been able to get to the neurons, which you said is super important for mapping the brain.

But so obviously, Neurilink's taking a different approach. They're doing these really, really thin wires. When I say thin, I'm talking five microns thick, which is about one, one, 14th, this diameter of a human hair. So this is like the new era of technology. We're moving away from this clunkier, smaller implant in getting as close to those neurons. And they were like, a human could never perform this surgery. So they built this robot.

They've taken a lot of this manufacturing in-house, as Elon does at all of his other companies. I thought it was funny that they converted a former axe-throwing facility in Austin for their manufacturing base. So Elon's kind of doing the playbook that he's done at all of his other companies for this. And when you read about the meetings that they have, Elon comes in from whatever, you know, when he's running Twitter or Tesla and he comes in and says, faster, faster, faster, faster. He's really pushing the envelope. And that has led to a lot of criticisms that they've inflicted a lot of pain on animal subjects.

There have been monkeys that have died in particularly gruesome ways, according to reports from Wired and Reuters. and this company, Neurilink, has said that is acknowledged that it's made a lot of mistakes and botched some surgeries and animals in the past, but it has also come under fire from regulators for that. So they need to change their ways, so they're going to get completely scrutinized. Yeah, again, you mentioned the Elon Playbook, and yes, bringing manufacturing in-house is one of those key steps, but also kind of setting these unrealistic dates is another one of those. So I am interested to see if his management style can apply to such a heavily regulated

in such a high-stakes industry. So I'm not going to lie, though. I am excited to see what they come up with with these human trials because the technology itself is very exciting. And if we can get us, again, the gold standard is getting very, very close to the neurons firing. And if these wires can do that, then I do think there's a ton of promise. And I don't think people realize,

like the initial stage of this would be to help people who really need it. We're suffering from paralysis, stroke, Lugarig's disease. But I think when people think brain implants, they're thinking, okay, well, I'm a healthy person. I can just go in there and 15 minutes later get an implant in my brain and become a super cyborg. And, you know, who knows whether that's going to happen. That's the long-term vision for sure, yeah. Okay, for our next story, has this happened to you recently? You fire up YouTube hoping to watch a video, probably the latest MBD episode, and you get a message that says something about you violating YouTube's terms of service by having ad blockers.

You either can't watch the video at all or you have to wait for some time to go by until you can begin watching. This is an actual thing. YouTube has been testing cracking down on ad blockers since June, but recently ramped up its campaign to ban the use of ad blockers on its site. Considering YouTube is the most popular video sharing website in the world and the fact that many people have installed ad blockers on their internet browser, there have been pretty huge consequences to this. Tons of people are getting rid of their useless ad blockers and downloading new ones that are hopefully more effective. Ad blocking providers reported three to five times the number of typical daily uninstalls and installs last month, with 90% of people saying it was because of YouTube. Toby,

you can see why YouTube is cracking down because a lot of money is at stake. YouTube has made $22 billion so far this year in ads, and it has a paid premium tier that allows people to skip ads, but that's been a hard sell to people who have their ad blocker installed. So what's your read on this? Can YouTube outfox the internet nerds? it's hilarious that so many people are just uninstalling and reinstalling looking for one that actually works. And the reason is because there's always been a bit of an armed race going forth in terms of who is winning the ad blocker race. Most ad blockers work by looking for specific keywords in files that relay that there's an ad there. And then anti-adblock software checks the final rendered page

to see if any of those files have been removed and back and forth they go. So this has always been going on a certain level, but now YouTube is obviously ramping up. It's kind of in enforcement against these ad blockers because again the ad ecosystem is so important to supporting YouTube and YouTube's parent Google does have a kind of an interesting relationship with ad blockers throughout its history the Google Play mobile app store does not allow ad blockers for a decade unlike Apple which which does allow them but then you have Chrome which is Google's internet browser it says its mission is to support an open internet and it usually lets ad blockers proliferate doesn't do much to stop them so Google's kind of trying to play

sides of this, but I think when execs are looking at YouTube revenue and they're trying to pay out creators who, you know, use the platform to try to make money and they want to get the best content possible, which means they need to pay creators out, they're looking at ad blockers, and they're like, okay, this is something we finally need to crack down on, but I just don't know whether they can outfox the people that are creating new ad blockers in new ways. Yeah, and so the EU is actually fighting back on a legal front as well because there was a complaint filed last month saying that YouTube's detection of ad blockers goes against EU digital privacy law. And the reason that they say it goes against his law is remember those annoying cookie

pop-ups that you get whenever you open a website. The reason for those is so that people can give access to their browser beyond like the normal scope. And YouTube does not have that cookie pop-up. And so the EU is saying, you guys aren't telling us that you're monitoring our browsers for ad blocker. And that goes against our privacy laws. So there will be a bit of a legal front to this battle as well. All right, Neil, our next story, we've talked a lot about how juicy celeb memoirs are a hot commodity right now. But what if I told you the most electric book to hit shelves this year is not about the

life of Prince Harry or Britney Spears, but billionaire hedge fund mogul Ray Dalio. You may know Ray Dalio for running Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, or his book called Principles that has sold millions of copies, but a new biography of him from New York Times journalist Ron Copeland peels back the layers of a Wall Street icon and what it finds ain't pretty. The fund, as the book is called, paints Dahlio as building an ego-maniacal cold of personality who focuses more on terrorizing his employees than actually returning capital to investors. One anecdote describes how Dahlio berated an employee for not hiring people fast enough, then made a highlight reel of her after she had a public breakdown. And others showed just how

far, Dahlio's famous idea of radical transparency extended in the workplace. Employees were encouraged to rate everything from each other to the toilet paper and bathrooms to the quality of peas in the cafeteria. When soon to be FBI director James Comey worked at Bridgewater as general counsel, he one time left out a binder with a high-level executive's name on it, then fired an employee who picked it up and leaps through it. Ray Dallio did fire back saying in a post on LinkedIn that Bridgewater obviously is not and was not as the book describes it, calling it another one of those sensational and inaccurate

tabloid books written to sell books to people who like gossip. Neil, the anecdotes I described above are just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many more juicy details that show Bridgewater might not be the best place to work. Bridgewater is definitely not the best place to work, and they will own up to that, and they send you through the ringer, and it's like, you're either with us or you're against us, you're going to come in, we're going to do this really weird culture, talking about a weird corporate culture, this radical transparency stuff is real and everyone rates each other and you spend more time in meetings talking about how someone performed in the meeting than actually any substance. But I just want to talk about Bridgewater as a hedge fund because

people might be wondering, I've never heard of this thing. But it is the largest hedge fund in the world by far. It has $168 billion under management, which is twice as much as the runner-up. And it made a lot of money during the 2008 financial crisis and kind of cut its teeth then. It rose 9% when stocks fell, 37%. And Ray Dahlia was seen as a bit of a seer for reading the economic tea leaves for everything from currencies to interest rate moves. So he was seen as someone who sees the bigger picture and became, you know, on CNBC all the time. Bloomberg interviewed him and he became this thought leader, and it seems like he really leaned into this concept of being a thought leader and wrote all these principles that govern work and life and

infuse them throughout his company to maybe detrimental effect, according this book. Yeah, he's obsessed with these principles. One thing that I thought was funny from the book as well is that they hired this legendary AI scientist, and he thought he'd be working on this economic modeling. Instead, he was put to work developing an app version of Dalia's principles and never worked on investing at all. So a lot of this book doesn't actually concern how Bridgewater invests its capital, which you might. No one knows. Yeah, no one, it's a very opaque kind of system still. What this book dives into is the management culture a lot. And obviously, there's, there's so many just crazy details. He had an obsession with authoritarian world leaders.

He desperately wanted to meet Vladimir Putin, also took a lot of inspiration from China. And one of my favorite anecdotes is that years ago, some staffers were looking at designing a software that kind of ranked employees to see how well they fared on certain categories. And two of Dahlio's employees ranked higher than him in this, quote, believability score. So what did Ray Dahlio do? He came up with a solution. He set himself as the new baseline score, so no one could ever rank above him. again. So it just goes to show you where this guy's heads at and how he kind of runs his company. So if you want to learn about probably the weirdest corporate culture anywhere, pick up this

book. And also, I just learned that it's been optioned for a movie as well for Amazon Studios. So I'm sure we'll be watching Ray Dalio at work in the film. That's our second advanced screening, I think, right there. All right, before Ray Dalio catches us talking about him, we're going to take a quick break. Toby, I think I might have the pickup truck for you. Stalantis announced its new RAM charger pickup, a first-of-its-kind vehicle that execsay is a game-changer for bridging the gap between traditional cars and EVs. The people who made the RAM charger want you to know this is not a classic hybrid car.

The way traditional plug-in hybrids work is that they offer a range of all-electric driving, and then when the battery runs out and engine starts powering the vehicle. The six-cylinder gas engine in the RAM charger, on the other hand, does not have any connection to the truck's wheels. It is only linked to a generator that can charge the batteries and sometimes send power to electric motors that drive the wheels. But it does have a gas engine under the hood. And if you're wondering, that thing have a hemi? The answer is no. Stalantis has been phasing out its iconic V8 hemi engines in an effort to slash emissions and hit targets. Look, we don't talk about every car announcement on MBD, but I think this one is very important because it shows a

change in strategy for automakers that as EV sales slowed down, the RAM charger is an acknowledgement that a lot of American consumers aren't ready to take the leap to a pure play EV for many reasons, the top one being concerns about range, and car makers may begin to lean into hybrid formats more to help people bridge the gap between the combustion engine and the fully electric. Yeah, people are still have range anxiety. They still think electric cars are too expensive, and there's just kind of a general stigma around electric cars still. So this is a great way. I mean, it's literally called a hybrid. It's the best of both worlds. I don't know about the strategy of selling both at the same time, because I feel like the fact that RAM is introducing

this after it already induced, it already has a fully electric pickup truck called the RAM REV. So now you're introducing this RAM charger into the mix and saying this is for people who aren't ready to go full electric, even though they already went full electric. So I am very curious to see which one outsells each other if one does or if they just kind of can coexist peacefully. I think it's an interesting strategy decision. I think Ram's been looking at the market and they see that cars, electric cars are just not doing that well, specifically EV pickups from Ford and GM. The sales have slowed down a lot, but recently Ford reported earnings and what is doing well is hybrid vehicles. So the number of hybrid sales in the first three quarters for Ford jumped 48%

from the prior year period. And last year, they declined 6%. So I think you're seeing this middle area where people aren't really interested in going full all in on EVs anymore and hybrid are seen as the bridge. Yeah. And if you look at how long certain types of cars are sitting on dealership lots, you really see where the consumer sentiment is at. It's September. It took car dealers over two months to sell an EV compared with around a month for a gas powered vehicle, only three weeks for a gas electric hybrid. So these things are literally selling like hotcakes because, again, It's that perfect Goldilocks middle ground for a hesitant consumer. All right, Neil, let's move on.

There's only one thing better than having a little cheat meal at a fast food place. And that's having a little cheat meal at a fast food place without leaving the comfort of your car. Drive-thrus, in my opinion, are the best part of getting a little treat. And in recent years, they're becoming more popular than ever. Drive-through traffic grows 30% from 2019 to 2022, according to a report from research firm Technomic. while the number of people eating inside fast food restaurants in the first half of 2023 fell by 47%. Now, drive-thrues account for two-thirds of all fast food purchases. There are a bunch of potential explanations for this.

The experience itself is becoming faster and smoother due to new technology, but also people just became a lot less willing to interact with strangers in the years since the pandemic. So you combine the more antisocial tendencies of customers with a renewed focus on optimal. the experience on the restaurant side of things, and you have a recipe for a drive-through Renaissance. Do you really think that it's because people don't want to interact with strangers because of COVID? People didn't want to interact with strangers before COVID.

I think it exacerbated it to a certain level. And I mean, we just got in the habit of no, you, everyone's wearing masks, like you don't go in and interact face-to-face anymore. So I do think once people got in the habit of it, they're saying, this is a great way to eat. I just don't see it across society otherwise. I think people are just lazy. And I think what happened is stores adapted to this change by creating way more drive-through formats, as we can talk about. But so many stores from Chick-fil-A to Taco Bell to Popeyes created store formats that are specifically designed for drive-through.

So I think it's kind of this chicken and the egg thing where it's so much easier to go through the drive-thru now because the infrastructure is there. And not that if the infrastructure wasn't there, people would still go in. I didn't know that drive-thrus kind of go in and out of style in society. the 2010s, there was a ton of backlash against them, and they started to get banned. Several cities banned them from things like pedestrian safety, public health, trying to reduce car admissions, and then accidents in lanes became so frequent. Some law firms were specializing in driving, drive-through accidents. But then all of a sudden, now we're back in the age of the drive-through. So to me, it's always just been this constant thing. Stores have drive-thrus, but it is

something that ebbs and flows given on societal trends. So I do think there is something in the post-COVID era that we all became a little bit more in social, a little lazier, and now drive-thrus are back on top again. If you're an urban planner, like, this is the worst thing in the world. Yeah, I've just like people staying in their cars. There's so many emissions being spewed out that people are still driving and hitting pedestrians. It's like, could not be the worst thing in the world. But you talked about ebb and flow. Do you think that the drive-through surge we're seeing now will kind of revert back and people will go back into stores? I don't know. I think the, the technology is getting so good. And as you mentioned, a lot of, of, of, of,

different chains are retrofitting their stores to be more drive-thru forward. Popeyes are cutting the size of dining rooms in half. Taco Bell is experimenting with just eliminating all dining rooms. And then Chick-fil-A plans to open a two-story four-lane drive-thru in Atlanta that can handle 75 cars at a time and also serve food on a kitchen conveyor belt. So I do think if we start seeing more stores retrofitted for drive-thrus, then I don't think it's going away. We're not going back. Anytime soon.

Finally, there's a list that just came out of the fastest drive-thrues. So Taco Bell is number one. You'll get your order with an average of four minutes, followed by Carl's Jr. and KFC. And the last fast food chain, the slowest one to get you your order, Chick-A. It's because there's the most people. It's not their fault. They're doing the best they can. Okay.

For our final story, let's talk about the best places to retire, which is something I know I think about every day. We didn't mention this on our show, but last week, Jeff Bezos announced he was leaving his longtime home of Seattle to move to Miami, queuing up all sorts of takes that Bezos was the latest person ahead to Florida to spend their golden years. He's moving to an island known as

the billionaire bunker with its own police force, neighbors like Jared Kushner and Tom Brady, and a median home listing price of $49.5 million. But for the average person, maybe Florida isn't the best place to retire. Maybe the best place to retire is Central Pennsylvania.

U.S. News and World Report came out with their best places to retire list for 2024, measured by criteria such as senior health care, retiree tax rates, access to the outdoors, and overall happiness. And the number one, you know, I'm laughing because this is just funny. The number one city in all of the country to retire was Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Good old Harrisburg. And Pennsylvania in general dominated the list.

Seven of the top ten spots were taken by Pennsylvania cities like Lancaster, Redding, Allentown, and Pittsburgh. And just one Florida city, Daytona Beach, made the top ten. Toby, what is going on? your state and how'd you let Pennsylvania steal the crown? This is absolutely shocking to me. It does make sense, though, because Florida's got this expensive housing crisis and then an increase in extreme weather, so it's just a little less appealing to seniors. But to me, this is U.S. News and World Report, trying to remain relevant, because remember, like, they're changing their

college ranking criteria. So I think they came out with a bit of an inflammatory list. I don't know. I am not investing in Pennsylvania. I'm still bullish on Florida. And I'll tell you what, actually, some of the biggest risers on the list were actually in North Carolina. So Winston-Salem jumped from 36 to 17, and Raleigh Durham crept up from 29 to 25. I would buy stock in North Carolina for sure. I would tell you. Absolutely. Because it's got all the things that they said Pennsylvania has.

It's got access to hiking and whatnot. It's got affordable cost of living. There's a bunch of sports teams there, and your grandkids probably go to school there because there's a million colleges in that area. So I'm buying stock in North Carolina. I am not buying stock. I was going to ask you where you're going to retire, and I didn't know you were going to say North Carolina, because I was going to say Raleigh-Durham area too.

Oh, actually? Because you got a quick drive to the beach, quick drive to the mountains out west. You could audit a class at Duke or UNC, easy access to golf. I mean, it's getting expensive, though. It sounds like we're retiring in the same compound in Raleigh, Durham. Wow.

Okay, we've got to, you have one more thing? I have one more thing. Go ahead. New York City was at six on the list, which I cannot believe. We've talked about the crisis of the cost of living. Florida is getting too expensive, and you're telling me people are moving to New York City to retire. Not me.

That's the top 1%. Yeah, I'm piecing out. But we should mention Pennsylvania, great place. I love Pennsylvania. Maybe, you know, Harrisburg and York and those places are fine. I don't think anybody would say, like, they're the best cities in the world. But they must have very desirable health care access and tax rates for retirees because there's no other way. Maybe they would rank on the huge list or not.

Shout out Pennsylvania. They're not exactly, you know, retiree paradise. Maybe they are. Okay, we've got to end it there. I just hissed off the entire state of Pennsylvania. I love you, Pennsylvania. Let us know where you want to retire at our email, Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits.

Emily Miliron is our editor and producer. Samantha Velas is our associate producer. Yucenoa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. Hair and makeup scores very low on believability scores. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production. of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil.

Let's run it back tomorrow.