TBPN Live - Social Media Placebo Trial, Jetsons Nailed AI, Artemis II: Back To The Moon | Diet TBPN

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Diet TBPN delivers the best of today’s TBPN episode in 30 minutes. TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with ea...ch episode posted to podcast platforms right after.Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” the show has recently featured Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella.TBPN is made possible by:Ramp - https://Ramp.comAppLovin - https://axon.aiCisco - https://www.cisco.comCognition - https://cognition.aiConsole - https://console.comCrowdStrike - https://crowdstrike.comElevenLabs - https://elevenlabs.ioFigma - https://figma.comFin - https://fin.aiGemini - https://gemini.google.comGraphite - https://graphite.comGusto - https://gusto.com/tbpnKalshi - https://kalshi.comLabelbox - https://labelbox.comLambda - https://lambda.aiLinear - https://linear.appMongoDB - https://mongodb.comNYSE - https://nyse.comOkta - https://www.okta.comPhantom - https://phantom.com/cashPlaid - https://plaid.comPublic - https://public.comRailway - https://railway.comRestream - https://restream.ioSentry - https://sentry.ioShopify - https://shopify.com/tbpnTurbopuffer - https://turbopuffer.comVanta - https://vanta.comVibe - https://vibe.coFollow TBPN: https://TBPN.comhttps://x.com/tbpnhttps://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Well, I've been addicted to social media lawsuits. I cannot get enough of these lawsuits. I keep reading about them. And you're potentially filing your own lawsuit against the lawyers that were coming after these social media. Yeah, yeah. So there's actually a profile in the Wall Street Journal, in the exchange this weekend, the lawyer who beat Meta and Google. And it goes into some of his addictive techniques that are driving jurors crazy across the country. Attorney Mark Lanier.
Starting point is 00:00:29 He uses props. Come on. What's more than props? He also uses parables. What? Parables. Metaphors, axioms, all of the above. He moonlights as a preacher, and it shows when he's taking on the world's most powerful
Starting point is 00:00:45 companies. The 65-year-old came to court in downtown Los Angeles for closing arguments this month of one of the biggest trials of his career, armed with a parable of leavened bread. That feels like something that is designed to make. it hard to rip yourself away from. Exactly. So he knew he needed a simple way to show a jury that Meta's Instagram and Google's YouTube were designed to be addictive and were harmful to young people. So the veteran plaintiff's lawyer from Texas... We just say he looks fantastic for 65. He does look fantastic. And as much joking, I do think he's doing important work and I do think
Starting point is 00:01:19 there's a potentially really good outcome here that we'll go into. But we're still having some fun. So the veteran plaintiff's lawyer from Texas showed them two grocery items, cupcakes and tortillas. Social media, he told the courtroom was like the baking powder that makes a cake rise, exacerbating the struggles of already vulnerable teens. We have an interactor, an amplifier, something that blows it up. We have here social media that takes the vulnerable and goes after them in destructive ways. It's as easy as A, B, C. He's making the argument that social media is more like cupcakes than tortillas.
Starting point is 00:01:59 Both contain flour. Both are carbohydrate loaded, but one is bigger than the other, or puffier, I suppose. The simple image delivered with Lanier's slight drawl helped convince a majority of jurors. On Wednesday, the ninth day of deliberation, the jury found that META and YouTube were negligent in a case that accused the companies of designing their apps to be addictive and harmful to teens. And there's some interesting images both of him walking into the courthouse with a large box of papers. Clearly, very anti-tech movement there. He's saying, I reject technology.
Starting point is 00:02:34 This cannot be stored digitally. I'm using paper. Which, I don't know, this seems a little bit risky because we've been addicted to the printed word in the past. So much so that we face criticism from people that said, hey, printing is unnecessary. They did. You're not environmentally friendly, but maybe he's going to defendants. Maybe he can flip over to be our defense attorney when we are attacked. There is a courtroom sketch showing linear questioning former TBPN guest, Adam Masseri, the head of Metis, Instagram.
Starting point is 00:03:05 A jury ordered the company to pay $3 million each in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages. So I think it's $6 million across both firms, but it's split compensatory and punitive damages. A now 20-year-old woman named Kaylee, whose last name was redacted in the Kays. She had testified that social media use that started when she was a child dominated her life for years and contributed to mental health issues including anxiety just depression and body dysmorphia a very very sad situation very unfortunate for her of course in a statement Meta said it disagrees with the verdict and plans to pursue an appeal Reducing something as complex as teen mental health to a single cause risk risks leaving the many broader issues teens face today
Starting point is 00:03:47 on addressed not mutually exclusive but of course that is a reasonable position for meta to take. Google also put out a statement. What do you think? They're like, we're not even a social media company. We're a VR company. No, no, no. Google said, misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site. That's true. You got the wrong guy. Yeah, I think of YouTube very much as in the same world as social media, anyone can post, but it is severely lacking in some of the greatest features of that social media sites. Like, you, if you, when you, when you, when you, you actually become a YouTuber, you start putting out content that, like, there is sort of, I don't know,
Starting point is 00:04:28 like a group of made men on YouTube, like people that have ascended. They're now making content like professionally and they are in conversation with each other and they might be reacting to each other's content. And of course there are different communities. There's like the car YouTuber community. And then there's the game show community and there's the business community. And pretty quickly everyone sort of gets to know each other, but there's no DM feature. So even if I make a video. Which is a good argument for it not being a social media. Not being a social media.
Starting point is 00:04:58 Yeah, yeah. So like, you know, we at this point have done the Colin and Samir show. We don't really have a way. We can go on to the Colin Samir YouTube channel and leave them a comment and they might see it if it's from the TVPN account. But we can't like just DM them and be surfaced to the top of the inbox.
Starting point is 00:05:15 People have always wanted an inbox on YouTube. Yeah, that's a huge feature request. It's insane. It would be so cool to see okay, I got a DM from someone who has 100,000 followers, and I can click on their profile and see, oh, they're in the same niche, like maybe we'd want to work together, as opposed to everyone basically needs to flow over to Twitter or X,
Starting point is 00:05:34 and then DM there. The other thing Google has in this kind of position is that so much of the watch time on YouTube is happening on television, right? Something like 50%. Yep, very different. And so they can make the argument that this is just modern television.
Starting point is 00:05:49 So let's go through linear career because the Wall Street Journal has some interesting backstory here. He says Lanier has built a career in fortune representing plaintiffs against corporate giants. He won one of the first major wrongful death trials against pharma company Merck over claims that the prescription anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx caused heart problems. He also won a $4.69 billion dollar verdict in 2020, in 2018, for women and their families who said of asbestos tainted talcum powder caused ovarian cancer. cancer. Over his career, it seems like he's done some very, very good work and has won some massive, massive settlements against big companies with broadly damaging product. A lot to admire
Starting point is 00:06:34 about his career here. The social media trial drew more scrutiny than he predicted before he joined the plaintiff's team last fall and was brought face-to-face with meta-chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Suddenly, Lanier was at the episode... I believe that Zuck is actually mewing in this picture. If we can pull up this image. It does appear to be something along those lines. Suddenly, Lanier was at the epicenter. You agree, Tyler, right? You can tell his cortisol is not spiking here. That's true. That definitely seems, he seems calm, collected. But this is not his first time putting on a suit. This is not the first time he's been in court. Suddenly Lanier was at the epicenter of a broad public debate
Starting point is 00:07:10 about social media and how people stay connected or are disconnected on platforms offering nearly endless content curated by algorithms. Quote, nothing compared to this, Lanier said, reflecting on the attention to the trial over oatmeal toast and a Coke zero in downtown Los Angeles. Social media companies have largely been shielded from being held liable for third-party content on their platforms by Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. At trial, Lanier had to focus on the platform's features, not the content to make a case. And that's something that I want to talk about today and I wrote about it in the newsletter. The trial was the first among thousands of consolidated lawsuits filed by teenagers,
Starting point is 00:07:47 school districts and state attorneys against meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Snap, more are scheduled for this year. TikTok and Snap settled the first case. He's known for showing jurors hand-drawn roadmaps and illustrations on an overhead projector to guide them through his legal reasoning and evidence, including signposts and human figures that could have been sketched by a child. To visualize microscopic asbestos fibers in talcum powder, he brought a bail of hay into a courtroom and dropped a needle into the blades.
Starting point is 00:08:21 Into the blades? The blades of grass. Oh, the blades of hay. Got it. Okay. Wow. Very, very interesting. He likes props.
Starting point is 00:08:30 That's it. He held up a jar of 415 M&Ms to show how a $1 billion fine would be a fraction of alphabets $415 billion in shareholder equity. He needs a bigger jar. He says he tries to avoid being flashy himself. He wears the same two unremarkable suits on rotation during a trial, and then I go burn them. What? He burns his suits.
Starting point is 00:08:53 My work here is done? I guess. He began gaining renown as a lawyer in an era when asbestos cases were swamping the U.S. course. He won a jury verdict of about $115 million in 1998 for 21 steel workers who felt ill after using machinery that contained asbestos. Lennyer and his wife, Becky, met in high school debate class. They have five children and 12 grandchildren. Wow. Overnight success.
Starting point is 00:09:15 They were known for years. for their child-friendly Christmas parties at their estate of more than 35 acres near Houston, which has a model railroad that can seat 120 people? Okay, this guy's got to win. I have completely changed my position here. You need a mansion section, an article. This is incredible.
Starting point is 00:09:33 I think we have a direct line to him, by the way. Okay. We want him on the show. Well, like, maybe we should go do a show from the model train. Yes, I'm so ready to be convinced of his position. I wrote a whole piece about how I disagree with the result, but he's winning me over. Disagree with this entire argument, but you're agreeing with this approach to life. Yes, 100%.
Starting point is 00:09:54 The theme of his cases against major corporations is responsibility and integrity or lack of it. Tech billionaires don't need his help, Linear said, but Kaylee would not have anybody else. Faith is much the same way. God's there to try to help people who need the help. Last week, Brandon Gorell summarized the ruling this way. He said in the case, the plaintiff's lawyer, Lark, Mark Lanier, argued that meta and YouTube built digital casinos that used neurobiological techniques similar to those employed by slot machines. The jury found that specific features of meta and YouTube are designed to be addictive.
Starting point is 00:10:31 And I want you to really hone in on these features. So infinite scroll creates an environment where there are no natural stopping points. Algorithmic recommendation feeds. Algorithmic recommendations feeds users highly engaging content. AutoPlay removes users agency in choosing whether to watch the next video. Notifications pull users back in by exploiting their need for validation. IG beauty filters contribute to the plaintiff's body dysmorphia. And features like the like button exploit users' biological need for social approval.
Starting point is 00:11:02 Okay, so you got a bunch of features. You know this stuff. Everyone uses social media. We all know about this stuff. The question is like, are the features addictive or is the content addictive? because social media platforms are, of course, protected from the content that it is posted on the media. And Lanier's entire argument is predicated on it being the features.
Starting point is 00:11:22 So, you know, we talked to Eric Goldman from Santa Clara University of Law, and he was saying that, like, yes, it's $6 million settlement right now, but this could be huge. The direct quote was whether we will even have social media in the future. Like, this could be existential. Yeah, and there's thousands of other cases like this kind of percolating, right? And so. And they could turn into a class action.
Starting point is 00:11:43 He's gotten $6 billion before. He could get $50 billion. I don't know. He could get a lot. Like, he's not a $6 million guy. He's a $6 billion guy. And so this is the precursor and it's going further. And whether it's a ton of different cases or one big one, like, it's a big problem for the tech company.
Starting point is 00:12:00 I thought it was an odd coincidence that we sort of had what I called the placebo-controlled trial for these exact features last week when SORA shut down. So, opening eyes nascent social network, SORA, shut down. The reaction of the news was funny to watch because a lot of people were like, yeah, I told you it was always bad. But when it launched, it was exactly the opposite. Everyone was like, it's too good. We won't be able to look away. It's simply too good.
Starting point is 00:12:28 Rune summarized this pretty well, I think, yesterday. SORA was peak moral panic. All of these breathless takes about making videos that are going to addict humanity and waste everyone's time. Meanwhile, we made some funny videos that were less funny as time went on, and AI Slop is just one category among many on Instagram Reels. Don't worry so much about making videos that are going to blow up people's brains without worry about making anything good at all.
Starting point is 00:12:52 The best Soros were up there with the best Reels, and the humor relied significantly on the voice of the creator. I completely agree. The funny soras that I get. Yeah, even the video we played last week of The Cat on the Porch. Yes. That wasn't one-shot it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:13:06 The prompt was not make something that will retain users. And it wouldn't have been funny. if the person hadn't been escalating like the scene every new prompt and then stringing them together. SORA absolutely used all of the social media best practices or addictive and harmful neurobiological techniques if you want to use the course language. SORA app was basically the same as TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube shorts, Snap, in terms of UI and UX design. It had infinite scroll. It had algorithmic recommendations. It had notifications.
Starting point is 00:13:36 It had a like button. And it didn't have IG beauty filters. but like the whole thing is a filter because I could go in there and say make me look like a bodybuilder and it did a good job and I looked great in the videos. It gave me crippling brought body dysmorphia.
Starting point is 00:13:50 Obviously. I dream for the day when I will look like my Sora avatar. What do they call it? Camio? My cameo? No, but they really did use all the normal tools and that was for familiarity
Starting point is 00:14:03 but also because they're moving quickly and the key innovation was not the UI design or the fact that it's vertical or algorithmic feeds. Like, we are in 2026. We're not in 2014 when we're launching Vine. So the key insight was purely AI generated content. And it didn't work.
Starting point is 00:14:21 The features were not addictive because the people that downloaded SORA did not become addictive because the content was a little bit too sloppy. Yeah, well, it was just one type of content. And it turns out people like a broad selection and they like variability. They might want to see, you know,
Starting point is 00:14:37 a video of someone skiing. and then some slop and then something their friend made and then some health content. And it's really the collection of that. The other thing I think that seems very obvious is if it was the product itself and the features that were addicting, there would be so many social media apps
Starting point is 00:14:53 that were effectively thriving. There would be like a bunch of Instagram. And this is where I get to the cigarette comparison. So there's a bunch of comparisons to the cigarette industry and I think it's really worth revisiting what is addictive about cigarettes? Because there are some people that say, like it's an oral fixation, like you just want to put like a stick in your mouth so you
Starting point is 00:15:11 should like switch to carrots. Like that is like maybe like one percent. Some could argue it's an addiction to looking cool. There you go. But but it is the nicotine. It is the nicotine. And that's why you do have a long tail of like 50 different cigarette brands and a thousand different e-cigarette brands. And nicotine gum is addictive. Nicotine patches are addictive. Nicotine pouches are addictive because they all contain the nicotine. If the court is asking us to believe that the like button, the algorithmic feed, that is addictive, then we should see addiction-like results from any app that implements that, because that is the case for all nicotine-containing products. They all addict people at, I mean, there are less addictive formats, but in general.
Starting point is 00:15:54 How many apps have you tried or test flights over the years that had any of these features that you used for 30 seconds? Exactly, exactly. Because what actually keeps you coming back is the content, which is created by the users. And so you're at, you want Lanier to go after every single person that has ever posted anything on Instagram and jail them, correct? No. I think that some creators do create very compelling content. Some of that content is, no, some of that content is amazing.
Starting point is 00:16:25 Some of that content is great. Some of that content is bad. There's a very, very wide range. So, yeah, but I mean, but it is true. Like, like, I think the court is correct and Lanier is correct that some people go on social media. make horrible content that depresses people that land on it. And it goes out saying that social media companies do have an enormous responsibility to manage recommendation feeds responsibly and route people in tough situations to helpful resources. So Google already does this very,
Starting point is 00:16:49 very well. If you type in specific keywords that seem like you're in a mental health crisis, it will not give you search results. It will give you a phone number for someone to call. And they know when to route the right people to that. And I do believe that all the tech platforms are thinking about this and implementing this. Maybe they need to be more aggressive. I think that the big thing that most people can agree on is parental controls here. And I think that that's like a much easier like middle ground here. And just in general, one other nice meet in the middle option is potentially just you know getting tech companies to give users and parents in particular, but users broadly,
Starting point is 00:17:25 more control over their experience. My mental health as a social media creator was at an all-time high before I understood the metrics. Because I was just like, oh, 300 views? I'm famous. This is amazing. 300 people sat down and watched my 10-minute video essay about a dying VR technology or something like that. It's like, I've done it. But then eventually you get and you're like, wait, like the last video got 400,000 views. Why does this one have 375,000 views?
Starting point is 00:17:52 I'm a failure. It is possible for me to create a platform that incentivizes addictive content. And that's like the retention curve. So retention editing makes it more addictive. You become addicted to the content, but it's because of the feature. Yeah, so I think that's like broadly, pretty good argument. The steel man that you can make for like Lanier's position. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:11 And then, I mean, there's other stuff. I think like just the nicotine analogy we were talking about this like, okay, so you have nicotine like broadly and then below nicotine you have like smoking, which is like definitely very bad for you. And then you have like, you know, pouches or stuff like this, which is like probably less bad. Like it's just the nicotine, there's no tobacco. So like maybe this is like less bad.
Starting point is 00:18:28 And so maybe the equivalent is like, you know, the cool snowboarding videos on Instagram are like the, you know, the cleaner like. nicotine stuff and then the like still addictive but not harmful yes and then there's your joy there's like you're gonna try and do a double cork 1260 and eat it's smoke it's smoked into the ground you would imagine even in the most strict ruling where every new social media platform needs to be approved you could potentially use all of those addictive features as long as the
Starting point is 00:18:56 content was not carcinogenic with inside that app yeah and that would be like a new nicotine gum basically yeah like basically I'm saying like right now if you're under a teen you can still like there's like parental controls and you can't be under 13 or whatever, but it's like poorly enforced. Like you can actually see a lot of the bad stuff if you're under 18 on Instagram or whatever. So I think I have a potential solution. Let's pull up this image of a cigarette package in Europe. Okay. So this is like typical cigarette packaging in Europe. John, you probably wouldn't know this because you're very American and you're very loyal and you don't, you avoid overseas trips as much as possible. So on any given cigarette
Starting point is 00:19:32 pack in Europe, you're going to see like a really terrible image as well. woman apparently is coughing up blood. Yes. And so I think what a potential solution that Meta could do is as soon as you open Instagram, it makes an AI generated image based on the last picture of you that you posted on social media. And it just makes you look terrible. Oh.
Starting point is 00:19:52 And it says like warning social media will destroy you. And then you can scroll past it. It could potentially show you with Tachnac. Are you familiar with Tachnac? Yeah. You go like this. Yes. Yes.
Starting point is 00:20:05 Yes. It's just a crazy image of you with Technic looking at your phone. And then so you can scroll past it. Yeah. Every time you open that app, it's a reminder. It's a new image. It's a new image of you looking the worst, wasting your life away. Are the AI labs lobbying to get this removed?
Starting point is 00:20:20 All right, we can put this away. Are the AI labs lobbying to get that removed? Because I think most of their timelines suggest that lung cancer will be cured by AI any day now. So potentially you could start smoking again. Has anyone come out as pro smoking? I don't think anthropics come out with their anti-anthropic, you know, has the joke that they make with journalists. They kind of got caught on anti-s sunscreen. If AI is going to cure liver cancer, it's game on.
Starting point is 00:20:46 It's game on. You can drink as much as you want because that's the thing, because you get liver disease if you drink too much. If I'm going to be able to vibe code an MRI vaccine to cure my liver cancer, I'm going to be booze it for sure. It's the only rational thing to do. Yeah, well, this is also kind of like when sort of a rational one. When companies are saying, like, oh, yeah, work-like balance is super important. So then their competitors will, you know. Yes, yes, yes.
Starting point is 00:21:08 People on Thorpec should tell people to open an eye to start drinking a lot because the AGI is going to cure liver. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. This is good. This is good. Let's revisit the Jetsons. Okay, revisit the Jetsons. I'm sure you've seen the Jetsons. Where is my flying car and three-hour workday?
Starting point is 00:21:21 So I'm going to be learning about the Jetsons. John is going to be revisiting. The 1960s version of the future is way more fun than our reality, but when it comes to innovations, we're catching up. Interesting. Let's see. Nicole says, I recently spent a weekend
Starting point is 00:21:37 doing deep investigative research into future technologies. I binged the Jetsons in my sweatpants. For the uninitiated, the forgetful, this space age family sitcom features George and Jane Jetson,
Starting point is 00:21:48 living the American dream in an apartment in the sky with their two children, dog astro and robot maid, Rosie. The show is set in 2062 a century ahead from its original
Starting point is 00:21:58 1962 air date. It's full of fantastical inventions such as flying cars, dinner generating machines, and canine treadmels, complete with fire hydrants. The upbeat vibe is markedly different from the apocalyptic, at times murderous, sci-fi of today. The 1960s were full of optimism about what the 21st century would bring, and some of it actually has come true. While we've still got a few decades before the Jets and family is meant to arrive, I dug into some of the show's technological hallmarks and determined how close we already are. Video calling. She says, absolutely. In Luebush,
Starting point is 00:22:31 of a home phone, the Jetsons had a video phone. It shows creators couldn't fathom mobile devices, but they were spot on about video calling. Now, to be clear, we are still working on, with one of our business associates, like a video call that doesn't stop halfway through and just cancel. So the Jetsons didn't predict the free tier of Zoom. Yeah, the free tier of Zoom was not considered in the Jetsons where you're talking to someone. They couldn't fathom. You're clearly going to go long on the meeting, and Zoom's just like, goodbye.
Starting point is 00:23:04 It's over. It kicks everyone out with no notice. Is that a new thing? I feel like it used to do a countdown. I think it did a countdown, too, but now it's just like, get out of here. We want to embarrass the host. So in the Jetsons, they could even create deepfakes to stand in for them on camera. Whoa.
Starting point is 00:23:22 That's cool. I didn't realize that. FaceTime's got it on that. This is good. Read this next slide. When George secretly attended a robot football game, his simulonelon, He's like, Jane, he had to work late.
Starting point is 00:23:33 He's like using a deep fake to lie to his wife. This is so 60s. Do not do this. Do not do this. This is dystopia. It's not all optimism. Flying cars and travel tubes, sort of. There isn't much walking in orbit city.
Starting point is 00:23:47 A conveyor belt brings George from bed to the bathroom to get to and from his classroom. Elroy Jets through a series of air tubes called the school homing network. When the wrong child shows up at the Jetson's home, Jensen sends, Jane sends him back with the push of a button. Push button jobs, almost. George works as a digital index operator at Spacely Space Sprockets for approximately three hours a day, three days a week. As a button pusher, he makes enough to support a family of four, even though a majority
Starting point is 00:24:17 of his day is spent with his feet up on his desk. Okay, they basically nailed this. There's some people out there that are basically bushing button pushers right now, vibe coding. Yeah. TBD on the revenue side. True. working three hours a day, three days a week. You know, we work three hours a day, five days a week,
Starting point is 00:24:34 and maybe the future's three, just Monday, Wednesday, Friday streams. We can live the Jetsons future. That'd be devastating for us. Yeah, until then, we'll be the working long side. Space colonization, nope. Yeah, they live above Earth with houses built on tall stilts. I like that. 36 years and counting.
Starting point is 00:24:51 We may not be living as exceptional a future as the Jetsons, but we've still got three and a half decades to catch up. By then, I will be twice as old as I am now. I've already witnessed the dawn of high-speed internet, the iPhone and generative AI, how many tech revolutions will we experience in another 36 years? By the time we hit the show's 2062 deadline, maybe we will finally live in space or make our current planet more habitable and make a comfortable living on a nine-hour work week. Tyler, what do you think?
Starting point is 00:25:17 Will we get space colonization? How do you define space colonization? Living not on the earth above the Carmen line for, like, that's your primary race. residents, like more than half the year. How many people do it? Anyone with like, if you can afford, like, a apartment for a few thousand dollars or, like, a house that's above $500,000 in America, you can choose to live in space. It probably depends on, like, the industry that, like, is chiefly, you know, benefited from
Starting point is 00:25:48 people living there. Andrew Reed says, the faster technology progresses, the harder it gets to print something in the office. We have experienced this. It's very true. The brothers. Aaron from Bach says, Reed's law. I know you may have wanted a better law, but I don't make the rules.
Starting point is 00:26:04 Hmm. The year is 2027. Gary Tan has just crossed one billion lines of code per day. Water to three-year-old Californian towns were diverted in order to cool his locally ran LLMs. Riots erupt. And protesters demand answers to one single question. What is he building? People are joking about this.
Starting point is 00:26:21 Because what was the latest stat? It was something like 80. 78,000. 7,000 lines of code. day on, I think on Gary's list. On Gary's list. Which is his blog. It's a blog.
Starting point is 00:26:32 Sam says, I remember when this was announced, but didn't fully appreciate the size. That's a hell of a cluster. The Department of Energy will basically be a frontier AI company. Nvidia is collaborating with Oracle and the Department of Energy to build the U.S. Department of Energy's largest AI supercomputer for scientific discovery. The Solstice system will feature record-breaking 100,000 blackwells and support the DOE's mission of developing AI capabilities to drive technology. technological leadership across U.S. security science and energy applications.
Starting point is 00:27:02 Another system, Equinox, will include 10,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs expected to be available in 2006. Both systems will be located at Argon and will be interconnected by Nvidia networking and deliver a combined 2,200 ex-flops of AI performance. We've talked about nationalization before. We haven't talked about privatization. We could potentially spin this out, take it public. There's an option. So I was interesting this, I looked, this is going to be like somewhere around like a quarter of a gigawatt equivalent of 100,000 black whales. Half a half a metacampus, I think. In fundraising news, physical intelligence is in talks to raise $1 billion at $11 billion valuation.
Starting point is 00:27:44 I need to know. Why is Jeff Bezos here besides the fact that he looks fantastic in the tux? He might put in some money. Oh, no, no. The company has previously raised more than $1 billion in capital from investors, including Jeff Bezos. and Alphabet's independent growth fund capital G. So you could have put Peter Thiel because founders funds in. You could have put Lightspeed. Is that Danny Ryder? Could have put Carol or Lockheed or...
Starting point is 00:28:07 Yeah, Lachie. But Bezos in a tuxedo, seems to get the viral attention. You know, they're not a noisy firm. They're not a noisy company that's like posting vibe reels and going and picking fights all the time. So there isn't that much coverage of physical intelligence. But if you just look at the traction, look at the open source contribution, the data, the fundraising, like clearly something is happening there. And so I think it's worth digging in and paying attention to.
Starting point is 00:28:36 Last night, Bill Ackman hit the timeline. Whoa, I didn't realize. He said some of the highest quality businesses in the world are trading at extremely cheap prices. Ignore the mainstream media, one of the most one side of wars in history that will end well for the U.S. in the world. And we have potential for a large piece dividend, one of the best times in a long time to buy quality. Ignore the bears. And he says, and Fannie Mae and Freddie. are stupidly cheap, asymmetry at its best.
Starting point is 00:29:00 They could be a 10x, and it could happen soon. And of course, Giro tickets comes in and says, X.com, the market manipulation app that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are up 42% and 37% as of this morning. I think they've actually dipped back down a little bit. But Justin says, posting your opinion on a public website is not market manipulation. JT says, don't ruin the tweet. Somebody asked Grock, like, hey, break it down, like what is actually going on here with Fannie and Freddie? They generate $25 billion in stable annual net income from guaranteed fees, low credit losses, outside crises.
Starting point is 00:29:35 They're still in 2008 conservatorship and the stock trades for a total market cap of $10 billion. So there's a world where you're sort of buying maybe, I don't know exactly how aggregated this is, but maybe it's like $25 billion of cash flow at some point for $10 billion. That feels like a very good deal, get paid back in four months, five months. But of course there are a whole bunch of other political considerations. And of course he does. He does own. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in his Pershing Square portfolio.
Starting point is 00:30:05 Again, not illegal to share your opinion. Yeah. Artemis 2 is launching and Kalshi has it at 64% chance before April 2nd of this year. We're going to the moon. Four people are going to the moon. Everyday astronaut says I'm honestly shocked at how the general public has no idea. Artemis 2 is taking humans out to the moon and will be the furthest humans have ever flown. Every non-space nerd I've talked to has no idea.
Starting point is 00:30:32 We've got to get people stoked. This is what I'm going to be writing about tomorrow. NASA is set to launch four astronauts around the moon, the deepest human spaceflight since the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972. It's been an honor. It's been an honor. It's been an honor to be here. It was a rough couple days.
Starting point is 00:30:49 It's going to be a great week. Have a wonderful evening. We will see you tomorrow. Goodbye. Throwing smart. Drink smoke.

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