Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson - New Features for ChatGPT and Spotify, Revisiting the CarPlay Discussion, TikTot on Advertising and Time Management

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

The voice and image commands announced by OpenAI (and the Google threat that still looms), Spotify’s new translation software, and a wave of CarPlay love among the emailers leads to clarifications and more talk of software and the auto industry. At the end: Kids in a world of advertising, and advice for budgeting time and money in early parenthood.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how you doing? I'm doing fine. The question is how are you doing after the onslaught of angry emails that you have endured over the last week? You know, I'm doing well. It's great to be podcasting again. I finished a great, greatest of all talk a few hours ago. And here we are again in front of a microphone. Just another segment tonight in this.

extended podcast we call life. And yes, were there angry emails over the last 96 hours? Maybe. Some might call it hate mail. I'm going to choose to call it passionate pushback from our lively sharp tech community after our car play discussion a week ago. And I mean, I thought I was worried about the, the angry emails after talking about Delta Sky Miles, but you got it a million times worse. So I guess I should thank you for that. Yeah. So people have that. look forward to later in the show. For now, we're going to start with two updates from the AI world. First, Averge story that's headlined. You can now prompt chat GPT with pictures and voice commands. And they write, chat GPT is rolling out a new version of the service that allows you to prompt the AI bot, not just by typing sentences into a text box, but by either speaking aloud or just uploading a picture. The new features are rolling out to those who pay for chat GPC. in the next two weeks, and everyone else will get it, quote, soon after, according to OpenAI. The voice chat is pretty familiar, they write. You tap a button and speak your question.

ChatGTP converts it to text and feeds it to the large language model, gets an answer back, and converts that back to speech, and speaks the answer out loud. It should feel just like talking to Alexa or Google Assistant, only OpenAI hopes the answers will be better, thanks to the improved underlying tech. The image search, meanwhile, is a bit like Google lens. You snap a photo of whatever you're interested in, and chat GPT will try to suss out what you're asking about and respond accordingly. You can also use the app's drawing tool to help make your query clear or speak or type questions to go along with the image. This is where chat GPT's back and forth nature is helpful. Rather than doing a search, getting the wrong answer, and then doing another search, you can

prompt the bot and refine the answer as you go. Parentheses, this is a lot like what Google is doing with multimodal search too. So, Ben, I have a take to run by you on all this, but first, just generally speaking, what comes to mind as you hear about these new features? Well, I have a little bit of a personal issue because I did get briefed on this last week. And I think there's definitely evidence that Open Eye is still working to build out their sort of consumer facing sort of arm. We've talked about how there's sort of a research organization that found themselves like with the opportunity to become a consumer tech company. And I'm not sure

if they're thrust to the forefront of the industry. Yeah, like like like yeah, like the devil was having trouble working and I was supposed to have access to it. I don't have access yet. We'll see what happens with that. But I think, um, you know, that aside, I think it's, it's pretty compelling. One thing that is striking again, before I get to the details is this is this is, sort of the iOS app only. It's not on the web, which is another, I mean, it makes sense because when you use your phone, you have, like the mic is sort of just right there. You're already used to sort of talking to it. And the camera's right there, which is obviously a very important aspect of what you can do. They did a demo of like taking a picture of like a math question

or someone on your kids like math homework and explaining how to do it. And you can put it in there, like explain this to me how to teach my kid how to do this problem, right? Which very compelling. I can attest to this as my kids have approached levels of math that I once did and have since completely forgotten. So that is definitely pretty cool. There's an aspect, you know, all this stuff, it's interesting to take different lenses to it. It's easy to get stuck on the sort of technical aspects of how are they doing this, what models are they using. But I think the consumer angle is the more important one, which is how long does it take? what's going to be the killer use case for people to adopt it?

One thing we talked about was open AI usage dropping during the summer and we theorized maybe that's because school is out. Guess what has happened in the last month? Open AI usage is sort of going back up. Now that's also, oh yeah, those numbers are the web. I mean, they're third party. So it's hard to sort of know for sure. And it's just sort of more trends than sort of accuracy.

But, you know, we don't know and we don't know apps. That's sort of independent. but homework is like the killer use case for this sort of stop. Honestly, yeah. Like seriously this afternoon, I was trying to think like, what would I ever use this for? And I was drawing a blank. But if you're asking me to help Charles with his pre-tale, maybe you should run your carplay opinions through chat TPT first to avoid getting yourself in trouble.

You know, this nerdy-ass computer probably loves carplay just as much as our nerdy-ass audience. So that would have been useful. However, the homework example is a really good one because in 15 years, if I'm forced to help with pre-calculus homework, and I can just like take a photo of the assignment and use the computer to like substitute its knowledge for my complete lack of knowledge in that area. Pre-cal, I might have a little bit. I don't know, but anything beyond that, absolutely not. that's useful. And beyond that, I'm wondering what the use cases will be. And when you talk about this product as compelling, part of me wonders, like, so what's the difference between this and Google Assistant, for instance, which is useful, but doesn't feel like it's really like crossed

over to the mainstream and really made like a big dent in how people use and interact with technology. But I could be wrong there. Well, it's a gazillion times more capable. That's the That's it. Okay. So that's the sales pitch. Google assistant and Siri and Alexa are all broadly speaking similar. And they're more sort of deterministic. Like you ask this thing and it sort of trawls and figures out what the answer is. This idea of sort of predictive text and it's sort of making it up as it goes along. But it makes it up and it's shockingly sort of, you know, when you realize what it's doing, the fact that it's as accurate as it is is quite remarkable. And you're just, you just get much better answers, much more capability for full-fledged sort of conference. as you could already do via text. And the limitation for Google there is cost. I mean, just like they could do this, but to have that be the default as Google assistant, it has to go up to the cloud. Like at this point, can't really run locally.

And so there's just lots of limitations as to why Google can't do it. But that is the opportunity for OpenAI. One of the other interesting things here is this is limited to plus customers, which is, I believe, $20 a month. That is because it's expensive. And it takes, it's expensive and it takes a lot of GPU capacity, which they don't have an astronomical amount of. No one does except other than potentially Google. And so that is, that is another limitation as well.

But it's also, you know, I think there's a bit where people who don't have plus, they're like, oh, GPT, that's pretty good. Yeah, I tried that out. And not realizing that in my estimation, there was a big leap from 3.5, which is available for free to GPT4, right? And, but that's the challenge. Like, this is the challenge anyone who asks to charge for anything faces. How do you get people to understand the value of what they are paying for without getting them to pay for it before they pay, right? Like, there's sort of a, you know, how do you sort of communicate that value?

And there's a bit, it might just be sort of a, there's a slog to it. Like, people see people using their phones and doing it and they want it. They want access to it. And so, again, the consumer perspective is sort of very compelling. From a broader competitive standpoint, Google has. has a new, you know, model coming called Gemini. That's supposed to be GPT4 level or perhaps even better. It's supposed to have multi-modality, this idea they can use different mediums.

And so there is definitely a competition in that regard there. And yeah, I don't know. I think it's cool. I think it's exciting. And the question for any new product is how does it actually become a part of people's day-to-day lives? What specific problems does it solve? There's a long, long history of technologies that are clearly useful technologies, but it takes time to sort of figure it out. And that's fine.

That's not a condemnation of the technology. There's that famous Bill Gates quote, we overestimate what can happen in a year and underestimate what can happen in 10 years. That applies to all sorts of stuff. I think, you know, in 10 years' time, we look back and say all sorts of things are done completely different because of these GPS. GPT models, I think that's probably queer, is the fact that it's been a year and the fact that homework remains the most compelling use case, a condemnation. I don't think so, but I can understand why people have that sort of view of things. Yeah, well, and you talk about a year. It's been about a year since all this hit.

And it's been about a year since you and I started podcasting together. And by far, the most breathtaking technology experience that I've had during that time was using chat GPT. during those first couple of weeks. And so, like, the underlying technology remains pretty incredible. And if you're going to start introducing voice into this and introducing photos, all of that is going to continue to be incredible.

But as far as the take, I remembered, as I was reading this update from the verge earlier this afternoon, I remembered that back in January when Microsoft and OpenAI announced their partnership, I called Chat ChTPT. They've been partners for a long time to be clear. I think that was the new Bing came out.

Yeah, but it was a deep end like Microsoft. Oh, that's right. You're right. There was a new sort of investment in January. You're right. You're right. My bad. Right.

And back then when we were podcasting, I said that Chat ChEPT was like the Victor Wimbunyama of tech. And what I'm here to say today is that chat GPT is still very much the Victor Wembenyama of tech, but I'm not sure that's definitely. a compliment anymore. I think there are a lot of amazing features here, but I'm not sure how exactly they will be applied and how much practical value there actually is. So as a diehard basketball fan and one of the world's foremost tech analysts, what do you think? I mean, it's a good take. I like it. I share some degree of Victor Women Yama's skepticism. I think it looks great on a highlight reel. And I'm not sure how it translates to NBA basketball in the long run. But this. The question with all this stuff is a matter of timing. Like I, I, and maybe this is a bit of just, you know, pattern matching and basing on what's come before.

But every meaningful transition, we've gone, you know, it's like it's the famous sort of hype cycle where stuff comes along. It's going to be absolutely transformative. And then there's the trough of despair where all this isn't anything. It's not going to do whatever. Then there's a slow sort of growth from there. And that is what happened with the internet. That's what happened with mobile. Like in every case is like, oh, yeah, this is pretty cool.

it's never going to actually be used for anything and it's never going to actually make any money. And I think that the queer pattern is I don't think it's different this time. And by this, I mean, it is meaningful. It will make money. And the pattern is we have to find the native use cases that are only possible with this sort of technology. You get these demos that all end up being kind of the same thing because no one's quite sure what it's going to be used for. and, you know, this happens sort of again and again. But I don't, that's not a condemnation.

Like with the internet, it took the feed, as I've sort of talked about in the past. You, this idea of an infinite stream of content perfectly customized to you. That was not at all possible or viable in a pre-digital error. It was something completely new. And that's when people got addicted to their social networks. And that's when all the money started flowing in. What is it with AI that is going to be completely new? Is it, as this Verge article noted,

this is a better lens, like something, a product that already exists, that hasn't gotten maybe a huge amount of traction. Like, what is it the thing that just becomes so compelling and that was not at all possible previously that makes this become as big as I suspect it's going to be? Maybe we're still going to see. But again, the other bit about this chat GPT and the usage sort of bit is it has maintained shockingly high usage relative compared to, say, like a threads, right? Threads explodes to 100 million users and then it's down into the teens or whatever might be.

To maintain 50 or 60 percent of your audience is actually pretty remarkable given all it is just a chat pot, right? And now it's a better one. And look, I have real normy people in my life who extoll the virtues and values of chat GPT in their daily workflow. So it isn't to condemn the value of any of this stuff. I just couldn't resist returning to the Wemby analogy. And for anybody who hasn't been following along, I would just say there's a chance that Wembe is very good on defense and then closer to like Chris Stap's Porzengis on offense.

So still a very valuable player, but not necessarily. I think back in January, when we were talking about chat, GPT, and talking about Wembe, we were talking about the world takeover as a matter of when, not if. And now I look at it as more of an open question on both fronts and with chat GPT, I'm curious to see how all the puzzle pieces come together over the next few years

and how quickly the tech becomes so incredible that it creates use cases that we haven't even considered yet. The big question is when Google finally launches their new search. So they've had a new search product that's been in sort of like closed beta for a while now where this, you know, Google is or Microsoft's already doing with Bing. There's two problems. Actually, there's three problems.

Number one, no one uses Bing. Number two, Bing is terrible. And number three, the user interface is a little awkward, you know, with sort of the Bing experience. Google has a similar sort of product where it sort of on the fly determines if the right thing for this is a search results or if it's sort of like a chat sort of interface and sort of trying to prod you to understand more about what you're asking and giving you an answer. And by all accounts, I've not gotten access to it.

I'm waving my hand over here if someone that Google wants to give me access. It's quite good. And most importantly, it's in the interface that you're already habituated to use through 25 years of using Google. And so this is the, you know, the real challenge facing Open AI and facing JetGPT is not whether or not this. Well, I say there's three. It's not whether or not it's sort of useful. It's number, will people change their habits to actually go use ChatGPT, particularly once Google starts incorporating this functionality.

And then also it's the most frustrating thing about using chat GPT is it doesn't have current information. You know, now it's updated. I think it was recently updated. So it's up to like 2022 if you're on chat GPT4. But it that lack. And they briefly have like a browser plug in, but then they're sort of reworking that. And there's there's something there about how to do. And again, Bing does have that, which is, which is definitely good and useful.

But there's, you know, The big question is, does Google come in and say, you know, we don't care about our margins? We're going to dominate the space and not leave enough space for ChatGPT to be a destination. This is the hard part about being a winning consumer app is you have to be, you have to be a destination. People have to choose to go to you. I'm going to open up ChatGPT to get an answer to a question. And there's some number of people that have crossed that bridge. But there's a lot more that Google can prevent from ever trying if they make search

sort of that much better. And so that is a, that is a question. And that's why the utility question is real because obviously chat GPT is useful, but the bar is higher where it has to be so useful that people are willing to change their habits and go somewhere new. Right. Because there's no network effect here. That's the big limitation, right?

Usually with a consumer app, once your friends are on there or your network is on there. There's utility in going there that you can't get anywhere else. Chat GPT is competing purely on utility, right? And basically, their biggest feature is arguably their courage relative to Google or their, you know, willingness to eat some costs or Microsoft to eat some costs to sort of go for this space. And that is hard to be sort of sustaining. That you almost all, you need that sort of network effect. That work effect could be with other users. It could be with developers. Like this idea of there being a plug-in sort of infrastructure was very compelling to me for that reason. I think they haven't quite figured out what's the best way

for that for that to work. But again, this is why the fact they've actually retained as much uses as they have without any network effect, without any sort of ecosystem, just purely based on utility is actually quite remarkable. Okay. And final question here. As far as Google's product, the reason that they would be reluctant to bring it to market, I think you'll lead, You alluded to it a minute ago, but basically they have so many more users that the cost that Chats EPT and Open AI is dealing with would be multiplied by, you know, 10, 15, 100 fold because it's rolling out to like 2 billion people at once. Yeah, like a billion. I'm drawing those numbers out of thin air, but.

No, there's two issues. Number one is the cost associated with providing the service, which is substantial. And then number two is the potential foregone revenue from people just reading the answer and not actually. clicking through results where there's ads. I think by baking it into the, and why this is a better approach for Google is to bake it into search as opposed to, you know, I think the Bard approach is a bit of a dead end. Baking it into search is they have control over what results show what. And so they can make sure the super high revenue driving results show ads in a compelling way

that will still sort of get them revenue. I think keeping control over that experience is a good thing. but it is riskier because some people might click on fewer ads if it's in there. And then also just the cost. The cost to serve lots of people is very, very substantial. You know, the other factor limiting both companies is GPT5, GPD6. I think they're probably mostly done. They're not going to be released until next year because the next year is all about sort of lobotomizing them,

making sure they don't say anything, you know, too true or whatever it might be. I mean, there's like these open-a-I calls, there's like a safety person there all the time, I'm just sort of like hovering. And, and, you know, it's like, you know, it's like, what, what it's not dystopian at all. And I'm like, uh, and I'm like, you know, what is safety? And it's like, well, you know, there's a long answer. I'm like, can true things be unsafe? Well, you know, there's it's a, yeah, it's a.

That is, you know, and that that's where some of the open source alternatives are. It's something we can all look forward to. There's a lot of philosophical questions that get in. into this, particularly as we get into a world of just providing answers. Yeah. Well, and I'm not going to project my own instincts onto all of society, but I'll just say that the more sanitized some of these tools become, the more antiseptic, some of the answers start to feel, the less interested I become in any of it. So who knows whether that will be true for the general population. But as the AI world turns, we have another update here. Also, from

the verge, they write, what if podcasters could flip a switch and instantly speak another language? That's the premise behind Spotify's new AI-powered voice translation feature, which reproduces podcasts in other languages using the podcaster's own voice. The company has partnered with a handful of podcasters to translate their English language episodes into Spanish with its new tools and it has plans to roll out French and German translations in the coming weeks. The initial batch of episodes will come from some big names including Dak Shepard, Monica Padman, Lex Friedman, Bill Simmons, and Stephen Bartlett. Spotify plans to expand the group to include the rewatchables from the Ringer and its upcoming show from Trevor Noah. So Ben, I saw some snippets of

this on Twitter, a version that Lex Friedman tweeted. And this, this, technology is genuinely incredible to me. I imagine the execution will probably be more uneven that it is in some of the promo videos I've seen. But what do you think of this play from Spotify? Strategically, what are they going for here? Well, they're taking content that exists and extending it increasing its addressable market. Like this is... Yeah, that was a stupid question to set you up. Obviously answer. Sure. But what's your reaction to any of this? But there's whole point about media is media is compelling from a business model perspective because you can make it once and then serve it sort of multiple times. That's also the challenge because then there's

like an infinite amount of media and there's huge abundance and all those sorts of things. I mean, the capability is pretty amazing, right? And it's just, this is what technology does. And the reality is it's not great if you're a trans professional translator, right? Like there's going to be of very high-end bespoke jobs, and there's not going to be much, much else. And it's not great if you're, you know, maybe there are markets, you know, people who are in these other languages will have to find their niches. And maybe it's understanding the culture, understanding the local context, focusing on sports that Bill Simmons isn't going to talk about.

One thing that is interesting generally is English is by and large the language of the web. and the web is dominated by America, not just in terms of companies, but also sort of personalities. And even people from other countries that have very large online presences, you kind of look at them and say, okay, I know you're technically, you know, like Danish or whatever. You're kind of like an American, right? Just sort of the boisterous, big takes, you know, like that's what resonates online and sort of gets traction. And people, if they want to have success, that's the. sort of model and thing that works. And to what extent is that just natural that's,

you know, in human interaction, that's what works? To what extent is that because all the vast majority of the major tech companies are American and sort of there's a co-development that sort of happens there? Right. I mean, obviously there's TikTok is a huge sort of factor here. And that's a sort of very Chinese sort of app and approach. So I'm not sure, you know, so there's lots of, it's a fascinating philosophical debate to have. The question is, does this actually change in the other direction because people could have, you know, we've talked about like streaming services having foreign shows and they can show it in the U.S.

And, you know, with the writers are on strike, which I, is that over or not over? I think it's supposedly over, but there's no actual deal signed yet. I think they're voting to ratify the agreed upon deal. That's the latest as of Monday night. But I can't give you a firm answer on that front. But if so, I'm sure we'll circle back later in the week and update everyone.

But the streaming thing is an interesting point where one of the, both cases for streaming in general is you can make a piece of content for one particular part of the world and then you can show it anywhere. It turns out most regions like content from their own region, right? Because it's not just language. Yeah, I also prefer subtitles. I think it's actually creepy when you have translated or dubbed over dialogue. So if it's from a foreign country, I'd rather hear it in that language with English subtitles. Right, but that's the podcast, right? It's just sort of in your ears, at least sort of in theory. But I do think, you know, You know, is this sort of homogenous sort of force on culture, is this going to make it only accelerate?

Or is it the sort of natural sort of cultural differences going to still be more important? I don't know. I think this is kind of an interesting philosophical point here. There's probably a sort of, you know, to go back to like my Sunday school roots, Tower of Babel sort of aspect here of, you know, we're going to all speak the same language and, you know, build a tower to the heavens or whatever. might be like, I mean, it's getting somewhat creepy in that regard. But who knows? It's going to be interesting to sort of watch. Yes.

Well, congrats to you. I remember more about pre-cal than I do from Sunday school. So the Tower of Babel parable is a little fuzzy for me. I will just say two things. The technology, again, the fact that we can do this is just wild to me. And I'm sure it will get better over the next couple of years. We'll include a link to the Lex Friedman preview in the show notes. check it out.

And then also this last line, Spotify plans to expand the group to include the rewatchables from the ringer. Ben, you are a pop culture agnostic, so you don't listen to the rewatchables, I'm sure. But I imagine a good portion of our audience does listen to the rewatchables. And I just want to say for the record

that I don't currently subscribe to Spotify premium, but I would pay $1,000 to hear French, Spanish and German translations of Chris Ryan's John Bernthal impression on the rewatchables. So for that reason alone, I support Spotify going this direction. And I'm going to continue to monitor this. So please, anyone out there, if they release Spanish versions of the rewatchables, please alert me. And we can follow up here on Sharp Tech.

Maybe get Ben to watch a movie for once. Who can say what the future holds here? but a lot of exciting developments emerging on this AI front. Hey, it turns out that Jordan Love might actually be decent, so I'm too busy rewatching Packer games to have time for doing that stuff. Yeah, there you go. Congrats. The Packers have another hit.

All right. So we have reached the point in the episode where it's time for me to face the music. Ann says, Ben and Andrew in the conversation about CarPlay, I strongly disagree with Andrews. point that the software is or will be commoditized. Navigation software while driving is one of the most important pieces of software I can possibly imagine having to work smoothly. To fumble with a complicated interface while driving can be deadly. My mom drives a BMW and I've been in the car car play connection cuts out for no obvious reason and BMW's pathetic attempts to steer its users

to I drive resulted in frustration for even a relatively technologically sophisticated passenger. The car drives well mechanically, but losing your navigation is so catastrophically dangerous it trumps any possibility of me buying a BMW in the future or even considering recommending one to others. Think of how long it took Apple to build a solid, usable Maps product. To imagine that a car manufacturer could build a remotely competitive product, reeks of hubris, and frankly, makes our streets more dangerous.

GM, quote, working with Google to develop their own system gives me more confidence, but I'm wary of the precedent it sets for other automakers. All right. So for anyone who missed it on the last episode, we had a discussion about Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, the software that allows you to connect your phone to your car, controls the navigation. and we were debating whether that software was so valuable that it would eventually give tech companies leverage over the car companies. So I had to delete like three extra aggressive lines from. Oh, it wasn't enough to say that you're basically campaigning to make streets more dangerous? Yeah, there was blood on their hands was in there somewhere. I was like, tone this down. No, it's not blood on their hands, it's blood on your hands.

Yeah, look, I don't know. I'm not going to go into the arc. archives for the specifics, but I just want to say I've listened and I've learned and I can admit that I may have underestimated how strongly people feel about Apple CarPlay. So we can start there. Do you have any thoughts before I continue? Why would you want to use something else? I think is sort of my question. And this bit about maps, you know, we had a discussion on dithering yesterday about Apple Maps versus sort of Google Maps. And what are the challenges Apple have when they watch Apple Maps, was an inferior product.

It's like, why would Apple offer a product that was not the best is because the only way to get better is for a services type product with that is to actually watch is to actually have it out there, have people actually using it to get a data feedback loop. When does stuff go wrong? When does it not work? Make it better. You have sort of an iterative approach. You don't develop service type software like you develop like a chip or a car where you get the process right and then you reproduce it multiple times. And this is something Apple had to learn the hard way. There is a very famous sort of story in Apple lore about when they watched Mobile Me.

It was like there's going to be this online suite of products, calendar and mail and all this sort of stuff. And you could use the whole thing. It was a total disaster because they spent so much time in the fit and finish. They treated it like a hardware product. Like when Apple makes a hardware product, that phone has to be like it can't have flaws. And we're seeing some complaints about iPhones overheating and edges missile line or wherever might be. that's a big problem because the phone is already out there. It needed to be perfect from sort of the get-go.

And the good thing about software is it can be changed. And the thing with services is there's so many variables entailed that serving people at massive scale and covering the entire earth that you can't solve all the problems. You have to design for iterative constant improvement. And it was a big slog for Apple to actually develop that capability to develop in that way, which is very different than how you develop,

for hardware. And Maps came along a few years after Mobile Me, and it was a terrible watch, and it was a bad product. But to Apple's credit, they have iterated and they have a feedback mechanism so it gets better such that I'm reliably informed or a lot of people feel that in the U.S. in particular, it's very competitive with Google Maps. And in fact, is better because of the Apple bits and pieces, which is a better UI, a better sort of like look and feel. It definitely works better on CarPlay than Google Maps does. I still think it's a disaster in Taiwan, but hey, that's fine. I'm not necessarily sort of, you know, so that Apple is focused on.

I can attest to that as well. It works so much better now than it did when it initially launched and people were like, how could it possibly be this bad? Because Apple has such a sterling reputation with everything else they release, I remember just being like kind of flabbergasted at what a mess Apple Maps was initially, but it's definitely stabilized over the last 10, years or so. Right, but that's down to the nature of the difference between services and hardware. The challenge for the automakers is they launch this stuff as hardware. Like, you get the car and it

has like the maps of the software that's in and it generally sort of stays the same. And ideally, they will fix that so it has more sort of iterative improvement. But they're competing against Apple and Google who have hundreds of millions, if not billions of users already in this model. and they have a 10-year head start. And they have a product on the market that lets every user for free use the best mapping software in the world. And oh, by the way, it also has all your podcasts. It also has all your music. It also has all your communications.

Everything is already there and it's there for free. I agree with Ann. It's insane that companies are trying to fight this. It's not ideal. No one's saying it's a good thing that you basically have to have to have to, abandon this theoretically extremely valuable space here. And this is like, here's an analogy. The chip thing with China, right?

Everyone's losing their mind still about this sort of five nanom, seven nanometer chip and could they make five nanometers and all this sorts of thing. At some point, you can't live in a world of theoretically what would be best. You have to live in the world as it is. And the world as it is, is we've been selling semiconductor equipment to China for years. China has been buying up spare stuff for the last seven or eight years. You go back and read through semiconductor equipment supplier earnings. They call it inorganic growth.

They've had like 30% of their sales for the last six years has been China buying up extra stuff they didn't need at the time in anticipation of this ban. You don't get to undo that. It's already done to act like we're going to magically change the world such that they can't do seven nanometer at all. is nuts. And so when I write about that, like it's relatively speaking, it's not that big a deal. That's in the context of the world as it is. It's in a world where China already has all this equipment. They already have this capability. Unless you're going to go over there and bomb them, you're not getting rid of it. So deal with it and figure out how to progress forward. But no, everyone in Washington is like, oh, this is a disaster. I do X, Y, Z, blah, blah.

They're not living in sort of the reality of where we are. You have to move forward from where we are. This is the same thing in cars. Would it be, would automakers prefer it if they hadn't lost this screen to Apple and Google. If they had their own services, if they could, you know, sell upsell or whatever they might want to do and have sort of recurring revenue, of course, that would be great. Unfortunately, it's too late. CarPlay and Android Auto exist. They're on a lot of cars. And without question, I and a bunch of sane listeners, not you, will make car decisions based on whether or not there's CarPlay or Android Auto. Well, hold on, hold on. All right. So here is where I honestly just want some clarity because I feel like in some respects, we were talking.

past each other on the last show. If we go back to the question from last week, Adam asked, at what point does the lack of building this functionality internally make the big three car companies susceptible to pressure from Apple or Google? Or am I missing something about how this relationship would evolve? So the way I interpret him saying susceptible to pressure from Apple and Google is this creates leverage that Apple and Google can then use to extract their pound of flesh from the car companies, just like they have in other industries.

And so what I'm reacted to is I don't buy a car because of car play. And that doesn't mean that I don't value car play, but I just don't think that the value of car play is so extreme that it'll one day allow Apple to take 30% or some crazy of a car. 10% of a car. Like that sort of blueprint. Well, number one, no, put it past Apple. No, but number two, that's why we had the discussion last week about the reality of software is that Apple and Google commoditize your compliments.

That's right. Offering for free is perfectly fine. Number three, they absolutely could charge for it and I think would succeed. Now, the counter argument would be that Tesla and Rivians don't have car play. And, you know, Tesla is obviously the shiny example, is extremely successful without it. Over time, as there's more and more better sort of electric sort of options, and particularly as the. The other big Tesla advantage beyond just being a Tesla is the charger network. You know, as that becomes sort of commoditized and is available to sort of all cars, is that going to become a liability that they don't offer car play? I don't know. We'll see. But I just want to acknowledge that on one side. On the other side, if you're buying, you know, like I've got like a some GMC SUV for like, you know, in the U.S.

I was pretty impervious to what car I bought. Like I'm not buying a sports car. I'm not trying to make a statement. I need a purely functional vehicle. Just trying to buy American. Sounds like a statement to me. That's right. You know, whatever.

Your mileage may vary. And what I wanted to have was I wanted to have CarPlay, adaptive cruise control, and that top-down reverse view, which I, which is incredible. And guess what? Great. It has those three things. After that didn't really matter, right? And Carplay is very, very sort of high on that list. And, yeah, if it didn't have it, I would, you know, in the future, you know, in the future,

that's a useful example because GM is one that claimed that's going to abandon it. There's no way I buy that car if it didn't have car play. None at all. I'm not using some automakers crappy interface, dealing with Bluetooth, Bluetooth leg, all that sort of stuff. Does it work? Yes. Is it nice to use? No.

My car here has a nice big screen, as a heads-up display, has all this sort of stuff, and doesn't have carplay. I spend most of my time looking at a little phone on the mount because it's better. It's just a better sort of thing to use. And it irks me that it doesn't have. it doesn't have car play. Yeah, no, that's fair. And I do not want to make it sound like car play doesn't have value to anyone out there. It doesn't have as much value to me.

And I'm skeptical that it has so much value that it would allow Apple to take over the car industry and hollow out the car industry. This is a classic business thing, right? If you have some sort of differentiation like a Tesla, you can get away with it. But that doesn't mean consumers like it, right? You talk to a lot of Tesla owners. They're annoyed. There's no car play. You know, our friend Marco is on ATP every week.

He loves his Rivian, but complains every single week. There's no car play, right? But they have sufficient differentiation. They can get away with it. But, you know, if you're a, you know, if you're a GMC or a Honda or a Toyota or whatever, like, what is your differentiation to succeed, right? I'll buy a 9-11 that doesn't have car play. Am I going to buy a Camry that doesn't have car play? Doesn't seem very likely.

Yeah, no. But to go back to the chip. analogy and China, my assumption would be that if Apple and Google went to these auto industry companies and tried to extort them, they would create a sense of urgency where they'd have to take the next five to 10 years and be like, all right, let's develop our own car plate type product and avoid just sacrificing all of our margins. And maybe that's not possible too. The history of companies trying to compete with these tech companies on software is dire. It doesn't. It's fair. And again, And it's not just a matter of building great software.

This is a services product that requires years and years of iteration and used to get better. So they're going to come to market with a late product by a decade compared to these things. They're going to have worse data to start. And they're going to have fewer users. They're trying to compete with America. No, it's much worse than that. Well, no, you're not much worse. But they're going to have fewer users.

So their feedback loops are going to be worse. So they're going to start behind with a worst product, with worse feedback mechanisms. And meanwhile, their competitor next door, let's say, you know, Toyota offers carplay and Honda does not, right? I want to get a Japanese car. I, you know, having my family forever,

whatever it might be, reliability, blah, blah, blah, blah. What is preventing you from buying an accordance of a camera or vice versa? Like, what is, what's the actual tangible difference here? Oh, I can get what, I can be a guinea pig for a beta piece of software that starts out worse and improves more slowly than the alternative. And also I have to, like my audio, I still have to use my phone for audio because it's,

yeah, through a Bluetooth stack that sucks. Yep. Well, you and Dumbin were whining about how bad Bluetooth is and we're being big babies about it. And apparently there are lots of people out there that share the sentiment. So two more notes on this topic that I found interesting. Anonymous says, I'm in auto part manufacturing. and I also worked for a niche vehicle manufacturing plant for Ford's GT supercar. When it comes to onboard software, the automakers don't produce any themselves.

It's all outsourced as part of the engineering. And so much so, they don't even own the IP and have no ability to modify the software. The way it was described to me is that module software does not get upgraded. It's not like an iPhone. It only requires an update if something is wrong with the unit itself or the way it's operating within the vehicle. Blackberry is actually a major player in the production of software via their QNX operating system. If you visit their website, it's geared for automated professionals at production. In fact, BlackBerry software is on over 200 million vehicles. General Motors

actually has a technical center in Markham, Ontario that's devoted to production of automated self-drive as well as in car software. So the more you know, fun fact, BlackBerry, is actually in this space as well. Life after death. There's an important distinction to make. There's lots of stuff going on here. So there's two different software stacks and cars. So like this last bit about, you know,

self-driving cars and car software, the software that runs on your head unit, like where a car player would run or whatever else, that is one software stack that can be optimized for the user interface and complexity and capability. Because if the software crashes, it's okay. the car is not going to crash. There's a different set of software that runs the actual car.

And that's a completely different software stack. It's a completely different way of building operating system. It's called real-time operating system. In a regular operating system, it will execute your command when it gets to it. It will change priorities and do this, do X, Y, Z. You don't notice when you're using your phone because it's so fast that everything seems to happen immediately. But in cars, if you do some sort of input to the car, the thing, needs to happen immediately. And so the way it handles the way data and commands move through the

system is fundamentally different. So number one, there's completely different stacks here. And it is appropriate and right for the car companies to focus on that reliability stack. And this is also, by the way, a reason to be skeptical of that car play presentation a couple of years ago, we're like, we're going to take over the entire instrument panel. We're going to do your spenometer and all that sort of thing. That means getting into sort of a real-time software stack. Now, there's been rumors about Apple doing that in the context of their own self-driving car. And maybe that is how their self-driving car ambitions are going to manifest as actually as a software product, as opposed to sort of building their own car. But it's a completely different sort of animal.

Like literally down to the core operating system is fundamentally different. You don't put iOS over there running your instrument stack. It's something like all the way down to the kernel. It's a different sort of, it's a different sort of approach. So, so you, So you have that sort of over there. And that is an appropriate place for car companies to quote unquote innovate, to sort of do work, to differentiate, to sort of figure out what works for their cars. And self-driving car is all into this. That's different than the head unit. Like that is, that battle is lost.

And yes, BlackBerry Q-Dex is in the area. And this is a bit of focus for Qualcomm and all these sorts of areas to be in sort of this space. But ultimately, I, you know, and there's an argument. by the way that, you know, this is like the EU and USBC. Like, is it actually great that we have these two dominant players that are the ones that actually control the head unit and were stuck with the least common denominator and every car basically has the same interface? It's not great.

It'd be great if we had competition and like if you actually bought a Tesla because they've invested a tremendous amount in that software and, you know, the sort of interface there. and that should be a differentiating factor. Unfortunately, the gravity of the phone and the reality of data feedback loops and long lead times for mapping software in particular is such that it's just hard to compete. It just works better.

It just works better, right? And now, Tesla, by all accounts, has pretty good mapping software. It's probably the fourth best after Google, Apple, and Waze, which is another Google product, but I think is somewhat independent of Google Maps? I don't know, who knows? But they've done a lot to get that feedback loop running from other Tesla's.

I wouldn't be, I don't know this. I'm just speculating. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla maps are much better in areas where there's lots of Tesla's. Because like, you know, but. No, of course. It makes sense. And that's something that car companies could do. They could leverage all their cars to get these better feedback loops.

But number one, Tesla is a software company from ground zero. That's what they're built on, right? It's a computer on wheels. All the, again, the history of these industrial companies getting good at software, particularly good at this kind. Like, they can get good at the must execute, must never fail software, right? Like, because they've actually been doing that for a long time. And it's a very, very different skill set than the consumer focused tech products that we just sort of accept it's going to crash every now and then.

But it's worth it for the benefits that you get, right? There actually is a skill that goes into that. And the car companies have developed for a long time. It's madness, though, to think that that is going to translate into delivering compelling user-facing software, particularly for a company like, this is where I go back to the GM one, where you're, where's your differentiation? You're not Tesla. You're not Porsche. You're not Ferrari. You're a GM.

So you're just going to have crappier software and just be another car. No, it's not the issue of software. It's that you don't have sufficient differentiation outside of the software. To get away with having crappy software. That's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah, totally. And so David says, this is another note that I enjoyed.

Your take on CarPlay was insufficiently cynical. Always a subject line that will get me to open the email. Your take in the most recent Sharp Tech on car manufacturers not wanting to support CarPlay or Android Auto discussed it mostly in terms of getting recurring payments from users. But I suspect that manufacturers also want to control the software stack in order to improve their ability to build a profile of drivers that they can then sell to advertisers and potentially also to advertise directly within the car, for example, selling map search recommendations. Maybe I'm being too cynical there, but we've got lots of other examples of similar behavior out there, for example, with TV manufacturers and car privacy policies are awful even by current

standards of the day. So just a fun dystopian email there and a reminder that the big car companies are not necessarily the good guys in all this. Well, there's also stuff like selling your car data like insurance companies or where you can get a discount if you don't be whatever. Great point. Yeah. Which, yeah, number one is incredibly dystopian. And number two, giving my speeding predilection would be a disaster for me. So I'm definitely never turning that sort of crap on. Yes. So thank you for the reminder to be cynic. David. We always appreciate it. And Jorge, subject

line, my takes on Andrew's wrong takes. And he says, Andrew, I love you, but I have two young kids. I will gladly pay $500 a year for Disney Plus. I will gladly pay ESPN, an additional $500 a year for access to F1. F1 TV, by the way, is much

cheaper than that, just for the record. F1TV TV is a delight just for the record. I have walked away from car dealers who did not have car play. And then he links a McKinsey survey that found that almost half of car buyers would not purchase a vehicle that lacked Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. And then finally, you will love AirPods when Charles is pulling wired headphones off your head. Jorge on that last one has identified the best argument

for wireless headphones as I've been having some issues with the wired setup during bottle feeding with Charles. So thank you, Jorge. Your point is well taken there. Are you going to just show up on a Sharp Tech episode with AirPods in just to see if I noticed? Honestly, first of all, I was stuck at the Apple store among the throngs of people who were there on opening day. I considered buying

a pair of AirPods. They're so goddamn expensive though. And I know that I would lose them and I'll be annoyed charging them. So I don't know. At some point I will show up, surprise Ben and be wearing a pair of AirPods. And as far as the McKinsey survey is concerned, my biggest

car play mistake is that I did I didn't anticipate that over half of car buyers in America are such giant cry babies that if they can't efficiently play a podcast in their car, they'll buy a completely different car. You are insulting our core user base, number one. Number two, you're spending tens of thousands of dollars for a tool that you are going to spend hours in a year. Give me gas mileage. Give me storage space. Give me speed, God damn. This is America. Why don't have it all? This is like you get. getting on a podcast and saying, you know, that big wall, you should actually get a smaller TV. That's my answer to you. No.

Like, just always get the bigger TV. That's honestly Ben's number one rule in life and number one piece of advice that he doles out in various group chats that we're all in together. And look, I took that advice and I haven't regretted it over the last 12 months. So you got me there. If that's the analogy, then maybe I should just take the L. I had a great time reading everyone's emails over the weekend. So thank you to CarPlay Nation. And with that, let's get into some TikTok at the end.

Cindy says, regarding your August conversation about buying photo sharing tools for family, I just wanted to add that spending the money on tech for grandparents doesn't just apply when kids are little. As my kids aged through college and young adulthood, my mom emailed them on her old Mac, which either did not have text messaging capability or did, but she didn't know how to use it. My kids didn't use email regularly. They were part of the texting generation. So we bought iPads for both grandparents, and they now have robust text conversations with both kids, share photos, and my mom follows both on Facebook, which admittedly led to some interesting questions during their college years. Texting is easy and immediate, and both sides engage. At any rate, spending the money on iPads,

spending the money on iPads for both has definitely enhanced my kids' relationships with their grandparents and has been worth the couple thousand it has cost over the years buying them new iPads, parentheses privilege duly noted. Good follow-ups to the last segment we did a month ago. And I include it only to say that I am very much part of the texting generation. And I stay in regular contact with both my parents and my stepdad. and it's almost always through texting. So I appreciate that technology because it legitimately keeps me much closer

to my extended family. I don't know whether you have anything to add. No, there is an aspect of email. It's just like there's too much work. There's like a formality to it. Yeah, which is, you know, hilarious to realize that that's sort of the case. But yes, I am a big believer in texting.

And yeah, I've seen a similar thing as far as texting between, you know, grandparents and grandkids and things on those lines. Good of you know. Yes. Okay. So Chetton says, I'm curious about the different user demographics for Disney Plus versus other streaming services, especially in the context of Disney's younger audience and the recent push to drive users to its ad-supported tier. As parents, how do you think about the

prospect of platforms targeting ads to your kids? YouTube is the more relevant platform here. I'm sure they have a program for kid-friendly ads, but the broader concept of a child's mind being influenced by ads remains. Also, for the purpose of this question, ignore the fact that the content is certainly more problematic than the ads, especially on YouTube. So I'm curious, my six-month-old son is years away from having to worry about this, I hope. But how do you view it? How do you approach any of this stuff? Number one, it's illegal to advertise to kids. I think YouTube has gotten busted for having insufficient safeguards against this.

So number one, that's not supposed to happen. My main knowledge about YouTube kids, the app, is that it stinks. Like all the content that kids want to actually watch is never actually on there. And my solution to ads is pay for YouTube premium. Like I, sorry, I just think you're nuts if you don't pay for YouTube premium. And they keep jacking the price and I will keep paying it because it's such a phenomenally better experience that it's hard to imagine not having it. And I think to-

Shout out to Sidney. I mean, honestly. Privileged duly noted once again. Well, this is just a reality of advertising. If you are that bothered by advertising on the web, then pay up. Like, and that's going, this is going to become more and more explicit over time. That's just going to be the reality of, if you don't want, you like, you're not, this is why he has all these crazy regulations about having to offer stuff even,

because there's no economic rationale sort of other. otherwise. And, you know, this is kind of happened. This is the whole unity thing that we talked about, you know, last week. The reason they have to start charging much more explicitly for the use of their engine is because their ad business has been impaired by things like ATT. And yes, it's a multi-chain sort of chain reaction, but it's all downstream. If you're going to restrict advertising, you're basically going to make people have to explicitly charge and pay for things. And that's why, if you want to get the privilege arguments, being anti-advertising and having these catastrophic views of targeted advertising, which in my estimation is fairly harmless, is a mark of privilege because that's fine. I'll just pay for it to make it go away. And there was a lot of consumer utility and benefit that came from all this stuff being widely and freely available. But yeah, that's the answer. Pay up. Okay, so I'm curious, my instinct, and again, little Charles is six months old and is going to stay this age forever and none of this is actually going to really matter for me for like another 10, 15, 20 years.

But I do feel like you're just going to be assaulted by advertising in all walks of life for the next 50 years no matter what. And so my approach here would just be to sort of embrace the abundance and assume that the next generation will develop sort of a thicker skin as it were and not necessarily have their brains rotted by advertising going forward. Like I'm not going to be able to protect my child from targeted advertising no matter what happens. Does that sound right? I generally think, again, I think the the scare monitor or targeted advertising is overwrought in my estimation. but yes, that is going to be the reality. And this is the reality of the internet broadly. I've written about this in the context of concerns about misinformation or whatever it might be.

The truth is, and you'll see it from, you know, there's definitely a generational aspect to it. There are sort of old people online that believe everything they see because that was sort of the world they grew up in. And that's not great. Then there's sort of like this, maybe us Gen Xers are kind of guilty of this that is so cynical and sees everything as being an op. And everything is, you know, and that is like this reaction to it. Then there's the millennials that think they're special flowers and their privacy is so sacred-sacked and can't be violated. Despite the fact they were broadcasting their entire college experience on Facebook and, you know, maybe that's what was spurred the overreaction. I just barely missed that.

Actually, no, I was squarely in that. And then maybe Gen Z and Jen Elfar or whatever is after that, his growing up very aware that the entire world is full of BS. and like everything has to be taken with sort of an appropriate grain of salt. And maybe that's a little disheartening, particularly if you're like sort of a boomer and you grew up in a world where everyone broadly had similar outlooks and read the same things and all that sort of pieces. But I think it's a very healthy and appropriate view to world of the internet where you're inundated with information. And even the stuff that is supposedly true and from reliable sort of outlets ends up in this world of infinite choice is incentivized into certain niches and points of view. and not, you know, or we have to, yeah, the question about AI or a question about Google, the answer to concerns about bias or whatever might be is just being skeptical of everything.

And that's a tough way to live, to be honest, right? There's a reason why we develop mechanisms of trust. No one can be an expert about everything. You can't do your own research about every aspect on earth. You do have to find sources and things you can trust. But you definitely also can't trust everything, right? particularly sort of today. And so, yeah, I actually am with you.

I am confident in and believe in future generations. And I see this in my own kids. And, you know, there's a, there's a bit where I feel like you, not to like wade into cultural war sort of aspects, but, you know, there's on one side, it's like, if we just tell people the right thing and prevent them from seeing the wrong thing, we will get the right behavior. And it's like, that's not how humans work. Like you're not actually, like, you don't get to control people by having the right words, right?

Like, like there's. Usually ends with the opposite of what you're aiming for in that scenario. Well, but then you have the exact same, but opposite reaction the other side, which is they're brainwashing us. You know, it's like, well, which is it? Are people like, like, like, you know, there's this embedded skepticism of, of human, you know, can, is there. propaganda, do people broadly and say, I think, sure, I mean, I'm an American. I'm sort of like, I broadly believe

things about America and the values that we hold as a country. And, you know, and most people don't even question those. They're sort of what it is. Maybe just by virtue of being in a very different cultural context, I'm more aware of those things that can also see. But we've talked about what's a problem with U.S. and China

is just, it's hard to grok what it means to fundamentally view the world in just very, very different ways, or to view communication or to view all those sorts of things. It's a tough thing. There's no question there is a cultural sort of conditioning that happens. And I understand why cultural was happened. At the same time, the way that happens is so requires so much depth and so much inundation that this idea that seeing a couple of targeted ads is going to have any sort of like meaningful impact on your wife and behavior. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. So, you know, I think by and large, there is an aspect that goes back to my bit about the car, makers and goes back to my bit about China chips where there is a degree of accepting reality that has to happen there. We are in a world of inundation of information. And I think by and

large, the solutions are not to try to go back to the world as it was or as we wish it were because that is impossible. The solution is actually to push forward to go to go faster, to get to the other side. And I think this next generation is by and large, what can you instill in your kids? You can instill in them. You can instill in them. skepticism and questioning and and and you know trusting their own instincts and and I think that there is you know that's that's going to be the answer and hope that because they're immersed in it they become inoculated to some of the most toxic aspects of some of the internet culture that we've seen corrupt other generations so that's the hope and no guarantees and you

know I think there's there's a there's a hard bridge to cross for parents and I'm encountering this with you know, that I have a teenager, where you got to let go and trust they're going to figure it out, right? Like, like, you know, there's, there may be things they, they learn or, or whatever they do that you, you don't agree with the way that it's presented or, or you think that, you know, it's, it's, it's more of an opinion than a fact. And you, you just got to trust that they will figure that out. And your importance as a parent has moved on from the, you had your opportunity to

propagandize them for the first, you know, 12 years of their existence or whatever it might be. And now you're their friend. And if they want to talk to you about it, they can talk to you about it. But the only thing you're going to accomplish by trying to lecture them and counterprogram them or whatever it might be is to alienate them. And your actual value to them and your satisfaction in life and sort of as a parent is going to be, you know, I think people err by trying to be friends with their kids when they're little. You are, you're, you're their parent and they need you. They need you to help establish boundaries for them. They need something to sort of push back on. They don't need to be your, your sort of friend. And that pays off when they grow up into be

responsible adults. And then you can be their friend when they're older, right? They don't resent you. They're not whatever might be. And that's when they don't need you telling them. That's when they don't need to tell you what they do, right? And you need to go through that transition sort of as a parent. And it's something I'm going through right now and it's tough. Like I was, you know, I want to give my point of view I just made her feel like, you know, I'm not stupid. I can figure it out.

That's not what I meant. I just wanted to mansplain a little bit. And you know what? She's right. Like now is the opportunity to let her be her own person. And that's something, that's just a transition that will happen. And, you know,

you got to let go. You got to just, it is what it is. Yeah, well, I won't have to worry about any of that for 20, 25, 30 years. I'm just going to enjoy this ride here. No, you need to worry about like the time to sort of like reason and like logically explain.

No, the reason you can't have that candy now is because XYZ, oh, see people do this and me with their kids just a little tear running around. They don't have the capability to do logic. They want the candy now. You tell them no. Full authoritarian regime. That's right. Until like at least 13 years old. Exactly.

No, I think that's a good policy. Right. We'll end with two questions that I think pair well together. First from Harry, he said. my one-year-old son started daycare this week in Israel. I was shocked to find out that the nursery will be closed on 27 weekdays between now and August, then for three entire weeks in August. My wife and I both work full-time. We don't have enough vacation days to cover all of these days and don't have any family or alternative child care arrangements. Inevitably, this means we will be

forced to juggle child care while working from a home. You've previously spoken about the need to have clear boundaries around work. Do you have any advice about how to handle this situation? And then Marco says, it seems like you both have kept your hobbies on top of work and kids. So how? I could just get home an hour later and use that time to go for a bike ride or sit at a coffee shop reading, but I would feel guilty not spending that time with my kids, which I absolutely love to do. Still, at the margin, I feel like I'm missing out on not doing some things I love. any help from the Sharp Tech team would be greatly appreciated. So one thing I'll say before I kick it to you, hiring a nanny to help us during part of the workday has been incredibly helpful.

And back to Cindy, privilege duly noted on that front. But beyond that, Ben, I'm curious. What do you think of these notes here? I don't have specific details. To your point, I think, like, if you can get some sort of help, even at the, you know, at the, you know, number one, there's tradeoffs. Right. So if you hiring a nanny means you're not putting more money, you're 4.1K, right? Or whatever it might be. Right. There's some sort of bit there. That ties into the broader point, which is life goes in stages. And there's broad-based rules and generalizations that are certainly true, but our rules are made to be broken at different sort of points in time.

So like from a money perspective, I think to your point, it's worth it to spend out. Are you giving up a couple years of compounding of your like your retirement fund? Yes, but it's okay. You'll figure it out when you get there. We're in survival mode right now for the next year or two. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so I think, you know, yes, there's like these broad-based sort of principles about how you should run your wife.

That doesn't apply to every moment or every time. Like it's more important for you and your wife to retire together and still love each other than to have a great retirement fund and you got divorced because it was too much and you couldn't handle it. Right? Like you got to like, you got to be. balancing and changing things throughout. But then number two, this applies to like your career.

Like my heart, you know, goes out to Harry. This is super tough. But there's also a bit where, you know, I think if you talk to a lot of people who are older like me that you reflect on this, the part when your kids are zero to five and it's maybe, depending on how many kids you have, maybe it's like a 10 year period. It's super hard. It's going to be incredibly challenging. But this is chaotic no matter what.

Yeah. And there's a bit where it often, you have this time in your 20. where you can really be a go-gitter, you have tons of energy, and you have really nothing to do, and you will have kids and become much more productive and realize all the time you wasted. But there's that time. Then you have kids,

and I think it's okay to step back a little bit. It's okay to get that promotion in three years instead of two, or sort of, or that's what I'm going to go work for a big tech company instead of working at a startup or something on those lines. And then what you will find out is when you have kids, you become unbelievably more productive because your time is so squash,

you have no choice. then your kids go to school and you have this newfound capability for incredible productivity and what feels like an unbelievable amount of time. And so that actually I think is the real sweet spot for your career is you're still young enough and vigorous enough and have the drive because you want to provide for your kids to really make a huge impact. And the kids have, you know, state provided babysitters for each part of the day. And so that's okay.

that's the same sort of thing. You're in different stages. There's a stage to step back and to get your kids and get good foundations and, you know, make sure you and your partner sort of survive that sort of period. And then it will pay off with the chance to sort of invest. And maybe you'll get to a stage where you or your partner can end up staying home or go back to work or whatever might be because you're so much more capable. You can make a lot more money. I don't know. There's like there's lots of ways this could play out. And I think people get really hung up on. big picture general the right way to live life and they get really nervous about losing ground and falling behind and there's times in life to go slow and there's times in life to go fast and there's like you have priorities that determine what you do and what is higher on the list and what and what is lower and for this time period your kids are higher and have faith you will get to a point where your career can go back to the top and that will be okay the other bit I would add about a other bit I would add about um about hobbies uh I I don't have hobbies I like I watch sports so and I actually was going to clarify on that point I think we may give the

impression of being more active than we are uh part of the way I've handled having a young child at home is to just surrender in some respects and then draw a couple clear lines uh where there are a few things that are really important to me which is like every few weeks I want to go out and see friends and, you know, continue to have a social life. Which I think is important, but like, you're talking like once every couple weeks. But I mean, you have the bad, you get to watch basketball for your job. So that, that's true. That's true.

But like, you know, getting out to work out for an hour every day. There are a couple wins here and there. But honestly, it's been easier to say, look, I'm going to be busy during the week. I'm going to be more available on the weekend, say to my wife that and just make it work that way and sacrifice. some of the hobbies that I would otherwise be pursuing. Yeah, I think you should accept giving up hobbies. Like, you know, and, but with the caveat. Again, for a few years.

Right, you will, they will come back to you. Like, you, you, like, you're going to have all the time for all the hobbies in the world. Uh, when you get older, I can promise you that, right? And, and again, I'm not saying this is there, you can make mistakes. I got super fat, right? Like, my first 10 years of trajectory, right? Like, and I didn't exercise enough and I was super sedentary and I was killing myself writing every day, doing all this sort of production. And I do regret that.

I wish I would have done a better job sort of in that regard. And now it's a much harder ho to sort of like get stuff back in order. So I'm not saying that I am a paragon of excellence in terms of getting this right. But there is a bit where, number one, we don't get it all right. But number two, there are sacrifices. But number three, that's fine. It's easier to embrace the sacrifice. I mean, I have no, I mean, I vaguely regret getting, getting overweight, but I don't, I don't regret. I certainly don't have any of kids. If anything, I just kind of wish I'd had more to be honest. You know, but, you know, when you're in the thick of it, it's like, oh, no, we're, this is enough for now. The fog of war. Yeah, man, absolutely. And again, life, this is the big thing. Life goes in stages. And the way it feels right now is the way it's not

going to always be. And it's okay to over optimize for now. And you'll figure out retirement in 35 years. And yes, there's compounding interest and all those sorts of things that sort of matter. But there's things that matter more now. And that's okay. This final note, James says my daughter is 13 years old going on 17. She received her first pair of Air Jordans last year and spent this summer researching how to find her next perfect pair. after listening to her talk about it for months, I finally had to ask her if she even knew who Jordan was. Of course, she had no clue who he was and answered that it was a brand.

Are you or have you ever been a sneakerhead? So an appropriate place to end our TikTok segment there. Number one, I would never describe myself as a sneakerhead, but I have spent thousands of dollars on Nike basketball shoes over the course of my adulthood. So, yeah, I'm probably guilty. I'm not a crackhead. I just, you know, a couple times a week. Just dabble here and there.

I'm not addicted. Look, the bottom line is I've had to curtail my sneaker spending to put that toward diapers, nannies, and all sorts of other stuff. So I am a former sneakerhead now. And mainly I read that because I've never felt older in my life than I did when I read that James's 13-year-old daughter didn't realize that Jordan and Brand was named after a real person. So it's a natural place for us to end. We're all just inching closer and closer to complete obsolescence here. But we're going to enjoy the ride along the way.

Yeah, TikTok is just a secret for us to complain about being old. You know, I did want to just to circle back to the question before. You mentioned how you're setting aside time a couple of weeks to sort of, you know, hang out with some friends and things like that. That is super important. It's important for you and it's important for your partner. just in general, there is a tendency, I think, particularly in the U.S. Although you do this in Asia too, honestly, you need to live your life.

Your kids need to fit into your life. That doesn't mean neglecting them by any means, but there can be an overcorrection to your entire life becomes organized around being your kids like doting servant. Number one, I don't think it's good for them sort of developmentally. like they need to learn like independence. Not maybe not Charles age, but sort of at at some point they should be able to amuse themselves and not just by using YouTube. Kids being bored is okay.

But then also it's really bad for you. And the best way to be a bad parent is to be super unhappy. Have your own mental health deteriorating. That's right. That's right. So do it do it for yourself and justify it by telling yourself you're doing it for your kids because that's actually true. There you go.

And get car play so they can. play whatever podcast they want as you're carding them around the city back and forth to soccer practice and God knows what else. But that is enough for today. Ben, let's come back later in the week. Email at sharp tech.fm. If people have questions, we'd love to hear from you about carplay or anything else that you'd like us to discuss on this show. And Ben, this has been a lot of fun. I look forward to coming back in a couple days. Sounds good. I'll talk to you later. Thank you.