The Standup with ThePrimeagen - Our Spiciest 2026 Predictions

Episode Date: January 1, 2026

We each give our best and spiciest predictions for 2026 - Amazon, AI, Tech, Hacks, and so much more are in this episode. Hope you enjoy it, and enjoy the ad from our sponsor Code Rabbit! https://trm.sh/coderabbit

You guys ready to do this? Are you guys ready to have the greatest text predictions ever? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I'm sorry. Casey, are you okay? Are you on Twitter arguing right now, Casey?

Uh, no, actually. I was just going to post something that is relevant to my prediction so that I could reference it on this particular show. He's trying to find the... He's playing chess and we're playing checkers. He brought props, dude. Yeah, yeah. He's playing chess right now. All I got is a notepad up.

I'm going to make the most ridiculous predictions for 2026 and tech. And not only me, but also Casey Muratori, trash dev and Teage. We're going to be making the greatest tech predictions of all time at the end of it. At the end of this, one of you will call us Nostradamus because we're going to be correct. 2026 bingo card is going to be filled in and we are going to be future tellers. Yes. That's true. That's what we're going to do today. And so the thing is that he was going to say that.

Yeah, he did. Because you were on mute and you were actually saying the same thing. But the thing that makes this special is that we're not just doing any sort of prediction. I like some lame ones. Like Sam will say AGI in 2026. We want real predictions. Okay, we're talking about ones that are outrageous and outlandish and that people will find shocking, if not disturbing. So be prepared.

All right. Who's going to go first is the real question. Who's going first in this tech prediction cycle? I assume what we do is we each give one prediction. Yes. Then we each give another prediction. Not someone gets all three, right? Yes.

You don't want to do all three at once because I feel like that's a waste opportunity. We all give one. Yes. Yeah. I'm going to tailor my list based on everyone else's. I have a lot of choices here. I'm happy to go first with my most obvious one. Yeah.

Okay. Because it's obvious. You're killing me, merge cop. That little stunt of yours turned into a six-hour post-mortem. He's merging to prod! You have the right to remain silent. Come on, commish. That code wasn't clean and you know.

I don't got time for this. Them RCs are being vandalized across the city. The Diffler. No, no, no. The Diffler's a myth. The Diffler's out there, and I'm going to be the one to deprecate him. You need to focus on your Jira tickets, not chasing a ghost. No more cowboy coding for you.

I'm assigning you a partner. A partner? You can't do this to me. I am a lone wolf. I'm an I see. I do not need some deadweight. Junior Dev hold me back. Oh no, you're not reverting this one, Merge Cop.

He might actually teach you a thing or two. He did graduate top of his class with a flawless CI record. Merge Cop, meet your partner, Lieutenant Squash. Pleasure to knit your acquaintance. Merge Cop. Test. Functional tests. And to end tests.

Acceptance tests. Performance tests. Load tests. Stress tests. Math tests. System tests. Test, internationalization. Attention at all units.

There has been a reporting of a Diffler sighting at a local cafe. Copy. We're on it. It's our chance to get the Diffler. Get in! Compitability test. I just was supposed to throw more kinds of tests! Shot at Twish.

It's time to get the Diffler. Sanity tests. Snapshot test. Smell that. I've been telling him I need new bills. The commission said we had to move by the bull! Squish stay in the car. I'm about to get forced my fist in the Diffler's face.

We have to stick to the prize. to the process. What do you think you're doing? Building in public? Wrong answer to the player. I know my rights. This is just a side project. What is MergeCop even doing?

I'm working on my side project. I don't even need him. I'm using CodeRabbit. With something like CodeRabbit, it's like having a code founder, always watching my back. I'm not going to leak customer information. I'm always going to be up to date on coding best practices. You don't believe me? You can try it too at coderabbit.ai.

next week on merge cop on your dip. Oh, I know you're the tip. So my obvious prediction that I think everyone should be predicting now, not just because it's true, obviously, but because it's funny, obviously, is that I think 2026, it will, in retrospect, like when the dust has settled in, in, in, the year 2040 or whatever, when we look back at computing history and we're like, when did it happen? What was the year? Like what what was the year when it all finally happened? I think we're going to say 2026. And I'm referring, of course, to the year of the Linux desktop, the actual year of the Linux desktop. I think 20, that's a good prediction. I think 2026 will be the year that goes down as the tipping point, because 2025 Linux got a lot of momentum.

Some of it from Microsoft, like, by just the controlled flight into terrain that is Windows, the operating system, that's giving Linux a huge boost right now. I can certainly speak for myself and say that I have so many more Linux machines running now than I ever did, and it's all just based on fear of what Microsoft

is doing to Windows and it not being a stable platform, which was the only point of using it in the first place, right? The only point of paying for it is that it was supposed to be more stable, easier to maintain, you know, more turnkey and all that stuff. As soon as that stuff isn't true anymore, you know, if your driver compatibility is suddenly worse on Windows than it is on Linux, why are you there, right? And so there continued to be more and more reasons to leave,

less and less reasons to stay. And so I think 2025, it kind of picked up this momentum. And in 2026, in theory, we're getting like the Steambox, for example. Like our first sort of standard consumer Linux distribution pushed by a major, basically monopoly in the space. Like, they own game distribution in PC. And they are now saying, here is our official platform. And it's not Windows, right? So I feel like there's just a lot of momentum going into 2026, and I feel like this could be the year where adoption starts to really pick up.

So I'm saying when we look back, 2026, year of the links desktop. Love that. I love it. That is, I feel like that's a correct prediction. Yeah. I'll go next to. I've got one that I know, I know Casey will like slash. I was going to say let's go an alphabetical order, which is also you next.

Is it? Oh, yeah. Because the primogen teed and trash. And so I'm the primogen. The primogen. I like that. Okay. There will be a viral vibe-coded app that gets hacked.

But this time it will be unnoticed for at least one month. So people will continue to use it. So this time it won't be some security researcher, blah, blah, blah. This will be someone is secretly taking over. the vibe coded app for at least one month. That's my measurable prediction. Okay, but is there any like extra sauce you're going to put on this prediction? Like, uh, if you had any idea how computers work at all, a quick look at the logs would

have told you you would have been being hacked for like months on end. It would have been like, oh, I'm getting 5,000 requests per second from China. Yes. Yes. Sure. I think the, the hack will be so obvious. in retrospect that we will have to do

at least one episode of the stand-up about it. That's okay, but that's good. Okay, so now you actually put something on it. A hack will be so unnoticed and go on for so long that we will do an episode of the stand-up on it. Right, yes.

Well, I feel like saying greater than one month unnoticed, that's my measurable thing. I'm trying to do measurable predictions here. I want it to be known. So there you go. that's that's that's that's that's one of mine all right that's pretty good that's pretty good all right no no i'm next what i'm that up p a t r come on dude i'm there okay alphabetical order okay is challenging it's true it's true especially in javascript all right so i've been thinking a lot about this

and you know i i kind of made a realization about the a i i i i'm a realization about the ai industry is that there's some big players in it right now, right? So you got Open AI, obviously a big player. You have Google really just, I'm shocked at how much progress they've made in the last six months. They went from losing on the polymarket to absolutely dominating the polymarket right now. And so you see all these kind of companies cropping up like Anthropic, a company that's solely just doing AI. and you're just okay wow you know there's a lot of people popping up but i realize something there's a there's a name that is mysteriously missing from the list despite them actually having an ai product

they people just don't say very often or don't bring it up it's like ben brought up i've seen it said once or twice like apple's apple already gave up they already said uncle and they uh went and said hey we're going to just use jemini right so i see where this is going i see where we're going with this so i think i feel in it i don't see here here's my big one one. Here's my big prediction, which I think is going to happen. I genuinely actually think this is going to happen. I think Amazon is going to purchase Anthropic. Oh. I think it's right. Amazon owns bun. Yeah, they had owned bun, but I think that Amazon is purchasing Anthropic because they need to make inroads into this whole thing, because they already had whisper, right? They already were trying to do some level of this kind of coding interaction world.

they just never really got anywhere with it. I literally know nobody that's using any of their AI products. And so it's like they need to do something. They have one called Q or something, right? Yeah. They have something. They have like a coding ID. The crazy thing with Q,

the craziest thing about that is you can tell where all of the Amazon headquarters are where they have an office thing, because that's the only place when you look at Google Trends search data where people are searching for Amazon Q is literally in those places. You can find every single one. Yeah. So this is my guess is that Amazon to make bigger splashes and to get that, because they also, they haven't been doing like,

they haven't been doing the world's greatest on the stock market, right? They've been hovering around their price for quite some time at this point. Their year-to-date earnings is not good. It's not looking like a fantastic thing. It's only up about 4.68% or something like that. So they haven't really been nailing it. They kind of missed the boat on AI, at least that's the perception I'm getting. and so I think 2026 they're going to try to turn that ship around and they're going to come back hard.

I love that. Thank you. That also solves a bunch of problems for Anthropic because my understanding is they're hosting and infraside. They are not as good at doing that as like AWS would be. So it actually, like there's a, I like this one, Prime. That's a great one. Thank you. I mean, Teage, are you referring to synergies?

So because it sounded like you were referring to synergies that could be exploited. So let me put on my business hat. Yeah, there we go. I was like, why can I see the writing? He took off the top part of his head. He's putting on the business side. Wait, why is your hat green? I put on my business hat here.

It's an elf hat. There we'll call it synergy. And we'll circle back to this later. Thank you. I feel like there's no way anyone would ever want to be acquired by Amazon. It's just like a hard know. There's a lot of people that have been acquired by Amazon and have made a lot of money.

I know. I mean, that's like the main reason. By Amazon. Twitch is still here. It's true. I'm currently streaming on an Amazon acquired service.

Rather surprisingly, because I feel like it was not managed particularly well, which may have also been true prior to the acquisition, but it's still here. Oh, the management is horrible right now. I would most certainly say,

I'm not going to bring anything up, but let's just say that they have the single most controversial unbanning, I think of all time. Yeah. It's always been that way. They're a very, they're kind of like a,

this is going to be a horrible thing to say. They're kind of like a parent who is on an addictive substance, right? They do completely like unpredictable

behavior in a way that makes people scared and unhappy and then they do something nice. And it's really bad. Like if you just analyze that as a human relationship, you'd be like, I have to get all of these streamers out of the home. Right?

It's like what I'd be thinking, you know, because of like the way they behave and play favorites and all these other things. So it's weird. I don't understand why it is that way. Casey, chatter protective services. Yes.

Oh my goodness. I feel. like, yeah, I mean, streamer protective services, even, I don't mind changing the acronym. It really does feel a bit wrong, but anyway, that's the topic for some other, for some other cast.

So, all right, so Amazon buys Anthropic. Yep. That would be a big announcement, obviously, like what that got said. Yeah, I think what the price is, too. Oh, I never thought about the price. The price, I honestly haven't looked into Anthropic, but I know it would be at least 10 figures.

How many numbers did that price? I had to like process out of my head. I was like, wait, sorry, 11 figures, right? It'd be 10 plus billion, right? Yeah. Well, didn't they just acquire bun for like multiple billion? It's got to be more than 10 billion. Valuation.

Anthropic is also under a settlement to pay $1.5 billion in damages already. So I'm pretty sure 10 billion isn't going to cover it. Yeah. Well, I just said at least. Okay. Under 100 billion, prime. Over 100 billion. I would be shocked if it made it to 100 billion.

Okay. That puts a hard cap on it. I'm just picturing, like, you know that meme where it's the guy in the theater from the boys or whatever? You know when someone's mad or watching it? And the lights just flashing on his face. I'm imagining all the people from Bunn saying they change their Twitter profile, so I work at Anthropic, they're now switching it to I work at Amazon.

And they're just all upset about having to change it to Amazon. Like two months later to just like, oh, all right. And they're just all so sad about it. That's actually pretty bad. Because that's how I would feel, to be honest, if that actually is. Maybe they can buy it with Rainbow Six Siege credits, though. They have billions of those. What are your trash's predictions?

So I feel like everyone else's predictions have been way more realistic than mine. So maybe. But I got, I got, I got one that's kind of weird. Okay, I think we're going to have a reckoning of I am, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I don't know how to say this without like sounding terrible, but I think we're going to go through I've been like trying to debate how to say this in my head this whole time.

I think we're going to go through another wave of segregation between AI users, and non-AI users. Damn, they used to say the name of crazy. I was watching Teach his face. He was like, what are you about the same?

So there's going to be specifically human-only spaces. So I think like one of the big things right now is a lot of people are like relying on AI as a crutch for like personality, knowledge, whatever. And like nothing feels real. And I think it's only going to happen like in spaces like in San Francisco or something where like you can't come in. it's basically like a no device policy right i think there's going to be something like that entered in i don't know how realistic is but in my mind i would love to like like when cluelie came about and their whole commercial was like i'm going to wear these glasses and i can just know all this stuff it really just turned me off and i would really hate a reality like that um and if it becomes

and if devices or companies like that become even more bigger and more advanced this will be more more of a problem. So in my mind, I was like, okay, people are, like, especially the people that are hardcore anti-AI, I can see them, like, popping up, like, a human-only space, even for, like, hackathons or something, right? But, yeah, that's, that's one of my predictions. Great prediction. That's how I had a similar one where people put stickers on, like, projects or other things was, like, no AI used in this project, like, organic, you know? Ooh, anti-clinkers. I love it. No clankers allowed in this establishment.

Exactly. I think it's common. Yeah. For sure. 100% on your team. Like Steam. Steam already does this though, right? Doesn't Steam have some sort of, they had like a no AI generated art was used in this or no AI something was used in this, right? I think they're having some limited AI disclosure policies, but I don't remember exactly what they are.

I don't know if they're acquired or voluntary, for example. Okay. I know it's something. Okay. But they do, yes, you can put that on your page. Like there is, it has happened. Yeah. AI disclosure.

Like how much AI did you use? you can put it. Interesting. Okay. You guys want to do snake draft? Can we go back? Yeah. Oh, okay.

So it's not me. I love that trash. Is it me or is it not me then? It's me again. It's me again. I get to go again. Okay. I go,

I forgot to write this dude's name down, but the Palantir CEO, the guy that was like jabbing the sword. I predict he gets arrested this year for something because he just freaked me out. Okay. He's getting arrested. That's all I'm saying.

I don't know what. For what and why? But that dude creeps me out. He's buying an arrest this year. 2026 prediction right there. All right. Boom. Do you think he will be arrested due to use use of Palantir software that is able to track his like illicit child pornography, money laundering, drug deal, whatever it is?

Or do you think it will just be a regular arrest? I think he might stab someone with that sword. He was just jabbing around. Okay. If I had to guess. Okay. No complex Observation software

Murder Like that I don't know man Tres Holy cow trash Right now Go check Palantir Stock

It's going down You just crush their stock You just Yes That's as far as my If it happens We have to like Do some kind of

Watching party I don't know A watching party We watch We watch and perfalked Out of the on like loop on Prime stream or something? I was right.

Yeah, there we go. Can't wait. Okay, Prime, your turn. All right, all right, all right, all right. Here's my second one. Nice one. I feel like this one's a fairly obvious one, and I kind of feel like I'm cheating a little bit saying this one.

It's okay. But I am going to say it, and I'm going to say it with my chest, unlike trash. I'm not going to kind of feel bad saying, if I did love how you said segregation, then it turned into the actual. That's how I felt bad. I wanted to avoid that.

worried, but I didn't know how else. So he paused on it. Instead, you made everybody question what was about to happen. All right. Let's see you. I think, so this is actually along Casey's lines where he was talking about how bad Windows really has been doing and how good other services have been doing. This is really spawned from Cursor and its recent acquisition.

I think Cursor. is going to make a play into the repository hosting space. And the reason being is that I think that a lot of vibe coders, they don't know, let alone care about repos. They don't know what the heck GitHub is and what the difference between Git and GitHub is. I think you have no strategic moat in the DNA age of vibe coders other than they need version control to be able to walk things back

and to be able to store it so that other people can access it of some kind. And so I think that we're going to hit this thing where GitHub has lost a bit of of its stickiness in the next gen, the version two of programmers, shall we say, or version three at this point. And with the V3 programmers, since they don't care, and then I think cursor will deliver something that is objectively better. And I think when it does, there's so many assumptions and so many pieces of software about like using GitHub. A good example of this is in Neovim, and a lot of the package managers, you type in like, the primogen slash harpoon. And it's like, ah, I'm going to go check GitHub for that.

I think the moment this thing comes out, that people are going to flood to whatever this alternative service is so much that that service, by the end of the year, there will be package managers that default to cursor.hub.com or whatever it is. I do think that Microsoft in much the same way that they've primed people for an Exodus for Windows they've also primed people

for an Exodus from most of their software. Like in general, their posture towards their users is like openly hostile most of the time. And so what you basically create when you do that is this sort of powder keg that a competitor can come along in light, right?

And, you know, I think they've definitely done that for GitHub and probably for other services too. I'm imagining things like Microsoft Teams and Office 365, which we don't probably have a lot of insight into because I don't think any of us here has to use them. They're probably in a similar situation

where they're open to like collateral attack because they're just so abusive, right? I've got a prediction that's going to run a little bit counter to that one. Okay. Oh, no. This is more controversial. I'm just going to throw it out there. Okay.

Here's what I think. I think GitHub is going to split from the AI division and release at least one feature this year that Casey thinks is good. What? But to be clear, less than five. I'm not saying Casey's going to use GitHub. I'm just saying there will be at least one feature in a release where they're going to, they're seeing, writing's on the wall. They saw last time, holy cow, we wanted to make some pricing go down and things are bad. it's so bad that Palmer's going to get in there.

Not Palmer lucky, but Jared Palmer. They're going to just be like, we're so dumb. We're going to throw this all away. Time to get this out of the AI division and do something different. So there we go. I think they're going to try this year. Do I have a lot of hope for that? No, but I want to stake my claim out early that they're going to try and get out of the AI division and release one feature in a year, guys.

Come on. They can do it. I know it. there you go we'll come back dear we'll come back we'll see is it mean

yeah go ahead Casey hold on we got to pause like is anyone react to that because I don't have reaction to that but it's definitely anti it's definitely kind of going in the opposite direction as primes not really but I mean it's

no very opposite I'm like what do you think well I think cursor can still do the same thing I still think cursor should try and compete with GitHub I'm saying that's why I think on the Microsoft side they're going to do I'm just throwing it

out there that I think that your take is so much less likely but I will want to say that my next take by the way is going to be hilarious based on your take right there.

Okay, nice, nice. Wow. So. Prime, you should just say your next take then. No, no, it's Casey's turn. All right, Casey, go ahead. So, This take is...

Wow. Sorry, Casey, your reaction to that was... Wow. Wow. So, this next take is perhaps we'll get disqualified for non-specificity. And I apologize for that, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about the space to give the, like, here is exactly how this will play out take. But my prediction is that in 2026, there will be a high... highly controlled implosion of open AI.

And what I mean by that is that, like, open AI will not, like, go bankrupt or whatever. Like, it will not implode in a way that appears to be an implosion. What will happen is there will be some kind of, you know, backroom thing where they figure out, like, what's going to happen with Open AI, because it's not really sustainable, but a lot of people

who are very powerful and control very large successful corporations need to make sure that it doesn't be seen to just completely explode, and also it has potentially valuable IP that they want or contracts that they want or whatever else. So there will be some kind of like transition of OpenAI from its current state

into some new state that is sustainable, and that will be done by, external people with lots of money or something. So like I said, very vague, but just like it seems like they've hit a price, a capital outlay point that is not sustainable. And so they will have to kind of just be owned by someone who actually makes money soon. I like that one. I think that that's fair.

I was actually, that was, I'm not going to say this, but I was on mute. I was actually going to have that as my, that was runner up to my third prediction was that Open AI will have to capitulate to the fact that they are in over their head and they have to do some sort of like transition where NVIDIA will effectively adopt them in or some other company will become owners of Open AI. Which I, and again, I guess, like I said, I'm not knowledgeable enough about like the inside info of like the, I don't, I don't have the kind of insider knowledge necessary to predict what this will look like. it could be that it's way worse than I'm thinking, and there actually will be like a severe implosion, that's possible because I don't know, but my assumption is that it's not really possible

based on how many deals have been done and how many players there are. Like, Open AI is currently losing the race for being the AI that people care about the most. Like, it seems like they're not going to probably win that race. But they're also not last or anything. So people who have been struggling more, like meta, like and,

Amazon, I would see them, you know, having a vested interest in acquiring that IP or something, right? Like to someone who's trying to play catch up. So it just doesn't seem likely that they actually implode in a real, in a real spectacular sense. So that's why I say controlled, highly controlled implosion, like an acquisition or whatever. Yeah. It is true, though. Open AI is like second place on everything. Like everything they do.

They're not the best coding one. They had the most emotional gooner like capabilities for a long time, but they neutered that with 4-0. Prime. Who do you think has a bigger like consumer subscription amount of people like subscribing to chat GPT? No, I know that they're winning currently by name. But what I mean is like they're not the best coding one. Everyone likes open and everything. Right.

Okay. Let's just look up the numbers of how many people visit chat tpt.com. versus like who are you going to compare it to? Well, I think Google Gemini is going to start doing a large. I think it's going to start eating into a lot of stuff. I think all the other ones are going to eat it away. And I think that like right now in business,

for business usage, Anthropic has succeeded and has now overtaken OpenAI as the number one used AI for coding in business licenses. Yeah. So it's like I think they're going to just start losing. Like an image generation in video, I think they're going to lose the Gemite. Like they're just going to keep on losing because they're just,

they're not quite number one. Yeah, I don't disagree with you on that, but I'm just saying, I think you're discounting how many people. They have huge name recognition though. Yeah, well, but I'm not saying just like, not just that people know the name. Everyone uses chatchipt.com is unfathomable. Yeah. Well, yeah, I know. I just assume that's just all

name recognition, right? Like, the norm is why chat dbt is the AIs that they're all talking about, right? Like, they don't have this concept that there's many AIs. Which I think, again, is why it's unlikely that they will just, completely implode because it's like they will have, there will be so many people like the only question is have they created a company structure so

complicated that no one can actually come in and legally salvage a bit. So it should be like lawsuits for like 10 years or something. So there is that which I don't know how to factor in. But like, otherwise I imagine you know, acrimony aside

somebody or some set of somebody's will come in to clean up the mess because there's too much value in the mess for them to let it go, right? Chad Chippy T gets six billion monthly visits. There you go. And they have an AI that's very good compared to a lot of the further down the list players. And so unless all of those players massively catch up in the next year, they're going to be a very attractive acquisition target even at a high price point and even in a messy situation. if you can basically then take that sort of as a

as a way to jumpstart your failing AI program at some other company like meta or somebody right yeah that might be harsh to meta I'm sorry I don't know the state of their AI just know that nobody seems to care about their AI right now so like getting something like a chat GPT seems like a win for them would be win they have like a model or anything what's what's up they were doing all the llama stuff they have open llama and all that stuff I don't know if they have a closed they have they have a gigantic investment in it and like a special like division entirely for it and all that stuff which i've

read about but like i again have no insider knowledge so i don't know like where they're at like for all i know 2026 could be the year of meta's brand new amazing AI model that they've been working on or something right uh but but i just have no insight into where they're at they could just be running around like chickens with their head cut off as well uh so to be clear i think open i i actually like casey's prediction i'm just saying calling them second and everything is crazy that's no not true Okay, yes. Not second in visits. I'm saying seconds in capabilities. I don't think, I think that the other models are superior to what they do. Well, and also just to clear,

I mean, since I haven't talked about that part of it, I'd also just clarify like, this is, my prediction is not a statement on the quality of opening eyes AIs either. It's more just the fact that the capital expenditures required for these things are just absolutely insane. Yep. And so when you look at, the kind of game they're going to have to play if compute really does continue to be the primary thing that gates your advancement, right? Either because you need to run larger kinds of inference runs or just because even if you don't, but you need to be able to try lots of different kinds of inference runs as your engineers try to figure out algorithmic advancements because

straight compute doesn't really cut it anymore. That still means the more compute you have, the more independent experiments on training you can do, right? And so when you look at the capital expenditures that you're going to have to make to compete in this space, the problem is just that all of Open AI's competitors, all of them, have way more flexibility. Like Google doesn't even lose money. They make astronomical amounts money today and they can do that CAPEX, right? So they can just outspend open AI. They know they can look from the outside and basically know exactly how painful it will be to open AI for them to buy this much power, for them to build these many data centers, for them to have this much advanced chip orders or RAM supplier, whatever it is that year in terms of what's the hardest to come by power.

Electricity is currently the thing, right? Ram. And not to mention lobbying. everybody, Google, Microsoft, meta, they have all developed very advanced lobbying capabilities in the United States. Open AI, to my knowledge, has very little, right? So when you're talking about we need to deregulate this zone so we can build a nuclear power plant here or whatever the long game is, right? They also can't compete there currently. So I just don't see them being a long-term independent player.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And so maybe, I mean, there are ways my prediction could be very wrong. Like they just never implode. Like, not only is it not 2026, but it's never. And that's if they manage to have enough sort of deal-making and, like, weird balancing act stuff to just keep people keeping them afloat without ever actually fully acquiring them. It could happen. but even then again like I said

it's like the idea that they're going to run as like this independent company I think is just kind of over all right case you get to go again now all right so the last one and this is by far my most important prediction the other two were about fairly

trivial matters such as the world switching to Linux and open AI having a controlled implosion of some kind this one is actually high stakes and very important Oh. And if you open up my Twitter feed right now,

you will see that I posted a tweet from January 21st of like this past January 21st, right? So almost a year ago. And what happened was I had attempted to say. to send Jonathan Blow a box of William Sonoma signature peppermint bark for Christmas. And I ordered

this well in advance of Christmas, like several weeks before Christmas. And to this day, they have still failed to deliver this box of peppermint bark. And I've posted many Twitter updates as they have falsely updated the shipping page

for this thing. I made a prediction last year that Jonathan Blow, who is currently working on Order of the Sinking Star, would ship that game, which at the time was still quite a ways out from shipping, and still sort of is, that he will ship the final version of that game out to customers and you can buy it on Steam and on console, whatever else, before William Sonoma figures out how to put one two-pound box. of peppermack in the mail. And currently, he's winning. He seemed to be on track. John has stated on this podcast that he has committed to shipping Order of the Sinking Star

in 2026. And even if that's not entirely true, because traditionally, John has often slipped games from like Christmas to the spring. Like, uh, Brayden

and The Witness, I think, both shipped in, like, February, right? Just right after in that, because you often don't want to ship back Christmas. So maybe we'll say this one's for Thakla fiscal year, 26, which technically ends in like March or something, right? So a year from March. But basically, 26, at least Fecla fiscal year will be the time that I am proven correct that William Sonoma will fail to ship one box of peppermint bark before John finishes the entire freaking game that took 10 years. The the peppermine

bark trailer did go pretty hard at the game awards though. That's a good point. Or order of the missing peppermint bark is the actual game name. I thought for sure, and I

came prepared, I thought we were going to be referencing the apple. Jane's, okay? I thought you were going to talk about how these are going to not be viral this year, but I'm sporting one right now. Okay, so, so, Tej, I felt like, oh my God, it's worse than I thought. It's worse than I thought.

Wait, that's $300 or $100? How much is that? I spent $149. What is going on? That's like a $10 cost of goods. Casey, look, that's a shoelace. It's just a headphones cable. Taped to my phone. Okay.

Oh, okay. I thought you bought it. I thought you actually bought it. I bought that. I bought that. I bought that. Okay. I did it.

All right. Hold on. My daughter is sneaking in here. Hold on one second. I thought you actually bought it. I was like, holy crap. I don't have. You didn't even have an iPhone, do you?

I had to tape it. All I had was green painters tape today. It's invisible. So here's what I will say about that. I definitely thought about that, but I felt like I couldn't use that as one of my predictions because I'd already made it. Okay. Like I already said that it wouldn't happen like six months ago whenever we talked about it. And so like, and we have a date on the calendar that we set at that time.

It was March or something. And so like when that comes around, believe me, we're doing a stand up on how nobody bought it. Okay. I'll be showing up with 10 of them on. I know trash you like this, buddy. When I say nobody bought it, I mean besides the hardest core apple shills. Prentices, trashed. That is still one of my all-time favorite episodes when Trash realizes he's wearing like three different apples.

I've been greened in the ecosystem. I can't get out. I'm stuck. He's still, like, as soon as we get off this, he goes and puts on his vision pro to walk around the house. He's afraid to tell us. But he just walks around the house with it. That's how I tell if my food's rotten or not through my vision pro. DJ, I purchased the idea that that thing cost $150

bucks that you're wearing. Yeah, I know. I know, I know. I was so excited that it's literally just a headphone cable. But the real thing is that much, right? But you're saying that, but what's the different? Like, how is that actually different than the sling? Oh, that cable is more expensive than what Apple had to make.

It's not made from renewable resources in a carbon neutral way. It's a cable that Mother Earth can't approve of. Yeah, exactly. That's the difference. The Apple one will be made from entirely, you know, the finest spider silk woven in like a magical factory that somehow has zero emissions. All right. Here's my last one. I have a few rapid fire ones.

I'd love to shoot at first. You can rapid fire. We can do rapid fire afterwards if you wanted to. I didn't even do my last one? Didn't you just do your last one before Casey? No, that was Casey. We're going back. You told us.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This was your idea. I forgot. I forgot. I forgot. I forgot. I forgot. Okay, so I think there will be a large, so we'll say greater than $1 million,

probably significantly more, but at least $1 million payout to a completely fixed, like, polymarket predicament. So someone will have complete control over the outcome and will and will just like put $500,000 on no and then not do it. And they're the one that's in control. And it will just be like, what can you do? You predicted it. You're an idiot because they could just not say the word AGI in this press release and they got a million dollars. Congrats.

So I think there will be at least one greater than $1 million payout. that is the person who fixed it is the person in charge of the prediction who also takes all the money so you're basically talking about this like politicians probably already happened to be like a boxing match yeah where they like where they rig the fight right yeah exactly are we talking about snake guys again yeah oh my gosh okay you're talking about poly market becoming like a like a the old school mafia fight fixing kind of a market where they just create they they have a finger in except because it's not gambling it's not going to be illegal to fix it or something.

It'll just be like, will so and so win a local election, right? And like for mayor. And then they will intentionally like go cheat on their wife to lose it on purpose and be like, hey, I, ethnic slur or something. Lose the race. Get $5 million. Retire to, you know, somewhere far away. Gotcha.

That's actually an incredible idea. And it makes me want to run for office. Like go out there and get a big polymarket going. Prime greater than $1 million payout. I have a better, there's a better payout than that. If you created the show or movie or whatever it is for Netflix, that is just that plot, a politician who is trying to lose to win on polymarket, but all of the things they keep doing, like cheating on their wife or whatever,

keep bolstering their poll numbers. That is like a surefire, like, you know, comedy blockbuster. Yeah, like, and it keeps trying to do stuff, like, getting caught with drug dealers. But again, that, like, bolsters his poll rating. It's always super cool and popular or whatever, right? And, like, it just keeps backfiring. And he's, like, trying so hard to lose.

So there you go. That's mine. Those are my top three. That's a good one. You may, for all we know, you may already have been correct. That could have happened and we just didn't hear about it. So really 26th the year,

we hear about it. Well, there's a good idea. You think someone would try it. Or whatever it was, the thing where they kept throwing the lady pleasure device onto the women's basketball court. I think there was like a polymarket bet of like, will a dildo be thrown in the basketball game?

And someone's like, yes. And it's me. I don't know it's been some amount of money. I just don't know to what extent has the money been. I want to try something like that so bad. Wait. What do you want to try so bad, trash? I just want to just a quick clarification.

All the above. Prime, quick, do your prediction. All right. I'm actually still struggling to this point on which one I want to do because I have two highly competing ones and they're both extremely related to each other. They both involve cursor. Okay, they just do both.

I know, but it's really, it's really hard. So the first one, here, I'll give the one that I'm going to throw away, which is after Microsoft loses the battle to GitHub, they acquire Cursor because they lost the editor war and lost GitHub. And so they re-buy

it all back to win. I figured that would, it feels like the best kind of two-part series one right there. But here's my alternative hypothesis. Is that right now, super secretly,

I think Cursor is developing a model that will not only rival but beat Claude as the premier coding model. And they're going to go from one of these, like, what is it, level five providers of AI down to a level four provider, which is they now are an open AI slash anthropic level company

as opposed to someone that's just redistributing these models. He's saying, you're saying Opus, not ClaudeCode. You're saying... Yeah, sorry, sorry, I said Claude's coding ability. Yes, it's going to rival opus, whatever their opus is, and they're going to beat Opus. They already have composer. They're already trying this.

Oh. It's not a secret. They're not a secret. They released this already. That was like two months ago. I haven't been keeping up on that stuff of things. Great prediction, bro. Hey, um, my prediction, Mom Donnie's probably going to win New York.

Um, I think of $100 million views for, uh, fair, right. You should just kept the, you should just kept the first one. Dog. Keep the first one. I keep the first one. Josh, take it out. Yeah. Microsoft after losing the battle to GitHub and DeVos code, its own fork. Hey, Teech. George Washington is going to found a company or country?

Do you think that they'll finally release the third avatar movie, and do you think it'll do well at the box office? Yeah, that's my prediction. That's my prediction as well, as well for me. Shalame is going to do a ping pong movie someday, too. No way, no. No, he's not. That's ridiculous. All right, Josh, leave it in, zoom in on Prime Space.

It's unreal how much TJ references this guy. Josh, please zoom in on Prime Space when you realize that I know. I think 2026

can be on the editor. All right, whatever. Trash, you're up. I tried. Yeah, so I was going to say the Microsoft really just guts their org and just replaces it with cursors team what my backup one is saying trash to be clear your prediction is they

they just like fire everyone from getham and just i mean they they they ultimately acquire cursor but like slowly you know how aquaure people start getting aqua hire but not like as a company they're just going to try and poach everybody no no they're going to just like take cursor over but then they're going to end up like just gutting like the existing employees got you placing about the cursor one my backup one is there's going to be another major major major outage in tech, like at the scale of Cloudflare, Amazon, whatever, where the post-mortem is going to be that they're going to say it was AI-generated code and they don't actually understand what it said or what it did.

Oh! That is a good one. That is a good one. Cremant. Boom. So there's only one reason I disagree with that. Come on, Casey. Give me it.

The reason I disagree with that is because the only people. People who will have that outage have, you're 100% correct, but they will have too much invested in having tried to convince you that AI coding doesn't suck. That they will never tell us that that is what actually happened. It's actually why Amazon buys Anthropic is they have such a down that they have to buy Anthropic to fix it. Trash, I actually had a similar one. I was going to say that Amazon through so many series, or technically it was going to be Cloudflare, because they've been down so many times. times this year was that I was going to say one of the major services was going to get it up only a three nine rating they are going to be down for like a hundred and eighty hours total

who oh were they I think we call it a nine five's rating in the business a what what what do you guys okay so do you guys know I have no idea what you just said but I will say okay do you know what five nines is yes yes yes so nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine Five. Oh, so you're saying five nines. People say five nines, they mean 99.999% right? Right? Yes.

It's the standard. How many standard deviations at, right? So in traditionally in the industry, when the thing sucks and never stays up, it's called nine fives, which is 55. 55.555.5.5% chance that the thing is running. Gotcha. No one's ever heard this before? Come on, guys. No.

No, no, no, no. For us, that's good up pancakes me. So we're not developers. We're not trying to throw shade at anyone. Nine fives is great, okay? Everyone's trying their best out here. Hey, man, it worked half the time. At one point.

It's better than a coin flip. I mean, 55%. The thing I was working on right before I left Netflix was a automation framework, and it had a one-nine uptime. At least you had a nine somewhere. We had a nine. 90 or 90%. No, no.

So one-nine would be 90. So it was like 96% of the time it worked. But that's a really high number for running tests on when you ran a thousand tests. That was pretty good. Trash, you probably remember that. That every time we did a TVY, PR, it was like 40 tests would just fail. And you're like, I don't know why. Yeah, that's like a big problem.

And you're like, four tests are failing. Run it again. You're like, they all passed. Yeah, it's quite a problem over there. All right. Do we have any, like, side quest predictions that are just like fun ones that you wanted to get out there. I have another serious one. Oh, go ahead. Oh, me?

But yeah, we'll start with TJ because he was the one that originally did it trash before he just rudely interrupted like that. It's about you, Trash. So I need, this one I'm going to need help because I'm obviously not going to do the work for this, but I know that there will be a few people in the audience who can help me out with this. Trash will have greater than

20 unique snacks on the stand-up this year. So please, someone do a spreadsheet and keep track of that for me. I will not be able to. I have a counter one. I have a counter one. I have a counter one. one. I was going to, so one of them was that trash will give up snacking. What? These are completely opposite predictions again. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because I thought that trash is going to get some sort of horrendous medical report that he doesn't want to share with people. And this, he'll be like, no, I'm just eating salad these days. Trash looks great, bro. You can't eat Twix all day.

He's going to have like T.E. He's going to have like a tooth problem or something. He's like, dude, bro, I got to stay off. I got to lay off the Twix mouth guard. This is me. This is me laying off the snacks, to be honest. So here's my question about why I'm confused about all the, like, Microsoft GitHub copilot and then, like, cursor, buy, whatever things that I'm confused about. So from Microsoft's perspective, and I don't really know because I don't know anyone in this org to ask, from Microsoft's perspective, isn't GitHub just kind of, unimportant to them.

Why do they care about, I didn't really understand why they bought it in the first place. But if they can end up in a situation where somebody else, like Cursor, has to manage all that stuff

and just has to pay Microsoft for all the cloud, compute, and whatever, isn't that just a straight win for Microsoft who then doesn't have to actually spend resources maintaining a code base for an online source code repository

that currently probably just loses them money or do you think they're making enough from like fees or private hosting to make it worth it? I'm assuming the enterprise plan goes crazy for them. You do? Okay. That's my assumption. The other thing, Casey,

that's just like as far as I can tell. From hearing this get talked about. I mean, I used to work at a company that was kind of competing against GitHub in some ways like at Sourcegraph. We did like code search. We didn't do direct hosting,

but we did a bunch of other features that GitHub did. Yeah. Right? But we tried to like, you know, make them fast or like correct. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

It's a lot of it's about just being able to vertically integrate all their stuff. Right? So it's like, oh, you host on this thing with your code here. Here's a one click way to like make this be on Azure with like, here's direct to get into VS code. Okay.

Right? Or like, here's a deep integration between Vs code to GitHub to Azure to GitHub actions to, right? And then like, you start at GitHub. Everyone's on GitHub. So then you're like, oh, I click this thing. And it's like open in VS code. Okay, sure. And then not, right.

So it's not necessary. Like, I think a lot of people are like the training data. I think there's something there probably, although like a lot of people. It's been reorg to core AI though. Right. Well, okay. So basically what you're saying is because, open in VS code, who cares?

Because again, VS code is free. But what you're basically saying is, okay, if we own GitHub, we can make it easier to deploy directly to Azure than to deploy directly to AWS, and that's a good thing or whatever, because that it means that more people will use our cloud hosting service, and that's what we actually

care about, which is what they actually care about. So is it basically that? Or do you actually think that they're making money on, like, Dhrash was saying the enterprise plans are actually valuable? Is that, you know, that's true? I think, I think they make money on GitHub. I don't know. I haven't seen anything like in a while or anything for that. It's just from what we heard like competing in some of that same space. A lot of it was just like,

hey, when we do the Microsoft way of we vertically integrate all of these, we run any part we need to at a loss at any time to force out all the competitors. And then we try and lock enterprise people in for a five year contract, make it impossible to get off and charge them absurd amounts of money. right? And it's like, okay, check our balance sheet what we make quarterly at Microsoft. And it's like, yeah, we'll just, we can do the GitHub thing. Like, it's important, though, because then now we can make it easier to do all of this other stuff. Same thing with VS code. Like the point of VS code is so that they can make it so that it's like you get to GitHub, you get to Azure.

Yeah. Yeah. And presumably they will also then be able to sell the AI. Like, if they owned something like, like cursor. they could then charge for the AI compute time, which is also what they want, right? Right. Yeah. And I don't know how much that's changed. I mean, it's been kind of a while since I like, you know,

maybe it's much more now about the data than it was before, right? Right, right. Right. But it's also about just being like in the spot to be like, they're going to suggest copilot as the thing. They're going to turn on co-pilot by default on your repos. And then that's what people are going to think, oh, I need co-pilot, that's AI review or AI completion or whatever. And then, boom, now the company uses it. No one gets fired for

picking Microsoft previously. Maybe soon they will start getting fired for picking Microsoft or whatever. But then that's like how teams is like what? How much bigger than Slack? It's huge. It's like double the size or some nonsense. Yeah. It's like similar situation, right? I think. So that's my understanding.

I mean, I'm totally on board with that. Like I said, I just wanted to understand it because I'm just like, why do they care? But yeah, if it's like if those are actually good fees for them, like, and all that. And I could see, I could see it being like, if people, if everyone wants to use something like Cursor as their IDE, it does, I guess, if Microsoft's plan is like, we want to make a lot of money off of something like copilot, if Cursor just decides not to provide co-pilot as an option, then that's kind of the end of it for them, right? So I can see why that would be valuable

to make sure that you kind of own the thing. That's the front end. I did have one more side one. I'll make one more side one. I think that somebody will release such an egregiously poorly vibe-coded application that a one or more founders slash C-suite will go to jail. Go to jail. Yeah, due to like the type of data breach and the type of data leak that ends up getting caused or the type of harm that gets caused by it.

That they are, because, you know, at some point, if you hurt somebody or you make material losses, you can actually, you know, find yourself in more than just a civil suit. And so I think that there will be a, some sort of damages so big that they will be thrown into some sort of jail. Now, this may be a 2027 prediction. Maybe I'm a little off on this one.

But I do think we'll see that. And this was kind of birthing my underlying conspiracy theory, which is that I think we will hit some sort of qualification or push for software engineering. And the AIs will be the ones that have this qualified positioning to like alleviate you so you can't be held responsible for the code you, release. That will be over multiple years, though. But I think the first step is that I think people get arrested and held countable for the code they wrote. That's that point. So 2026, someone will get

arrested. Has that ever happened before? Because this would be a gross negligence standard, I assume, because basically like, presumably you're not talking about someone who intended to do something. Yeah. Because like if you're just talking about an AI thing, unless you're talking about, are you talking about intentional, meaning someone told the AI to do something nefarious? You're talking about saying where they accidentally, like they asked to do something that they actually were trying to sell and that is not nefarious, but it was so poorly executed by the AI that, you know, somebody got killed or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm calling him the second one. They get, they get held like manslaughter or some sort of. The delete button doesn't actually delete data. They go to jail in the EU. Easy. True. I wasn't talking about the EU though. I mean, there are, yeah, I don't know. I mean, there are fraud cases, but they're usually you have to be intentional. Like, oh. Elizabeth Holmes is the person that's coming to mind. I'm trying to think of like C-suite people.

Jeffrey Skilling, Elizabeth Holmes, thinking of people who have actually gone to jail. It's rarely because of negligence, though. So like, I feel like that's a tough one, Prime. I feel like you're on an uphill battle on that one. I agree that they should go to jail a lot of times. They don't seem to go to jail a lot of times, though. So I don't know.

that is a far one that's why i didn't include my actual my actual list but it kind of is pretty sensational i got one someone someone actually legally marries in an in a i i legally which country yeah where america america so first america one of the 50 stages the lawizes legalizes ai marriage one of the 50 states which which state would it be california You know what I would say. California. California 100%. Yeah.

Specifically, San Francisco. Right. And then Mississippi will lower the legally required age of the AI to 14. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't even think about that. I just wanted to state that I did not approve that statement. I did nothing.

Holy moly. My next one, I don't know. if it's going to happen anymore. The stand-up live in a theater or big venue. For 2026? It's canceled.

So then I don't know. Yeah, you're going to have to cut out the, like, legally marrying in AI and then like underage AI in Mississippi. I apologize to Mississippi. No heart feelings. Dude, she's 4,000 years old, okay? My prediction is ruined.

I know. TJ is actually upset right now. He's going to take his Apple, his little Apple thing home. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm taking my toys away from you guys, okay? Wish you could be this cool. What, your prediction was we were in a theater?

Is that what you said? Yeah, we'll do an episode, like, live, but, like, at a, like, cool venue or something. We should do it and hang out with them. We're going to do that. We should go to Nashville and do it in a bar. Like, Nashville is super cool, and people show up to those kind of events.

And they do, like, shows in bars. Okay. Is there a lot of coders in Nashville? No. Yeah. They also have singers in other places. I know, but I want to do something fun. You know, like, do something that's like unusual.

Not like, we're in GitHub's old office before they got acquired by a cursor. Okay. Okay, whatever. I mean, I see what you're saying. The question, though, I think it's fairly important to pick someplace where you could actually sell tickets to it. Right. And if you pick someplace that, doesn't have much of a, you know, presence of people who would watch the show.

That makes it kind of hard. I already know we're going to do it in San Francisco, okay? I just, I just want the idea. We could also do it in New York. We're going to get eggs thrown at us, San Francisco. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. Wait, people throw eggs.

Oh, yeah, they do have a lot of wealth inequality there, so they've probably thrown this high cost items that people. I'm catching them, bro. I'm like, dude, this is free money. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Only the freest range eggs. They were like... We don't even have eggs like this where I'm from. Yeah. Each chicken gets its own like one quarter acre plot to live on and a little like housing. It's like a subsidized housing and a little like a little place where it can get avocado toast in the morning. It pecks at the avocado toast like to get the, you know what I mean? My chicken drinking.

I only like Ethiopian roast. Right, yes, absolutely, absolutely. Oh, goodness. What is this little timer for? Oh, it's to make sure that the chicken's tea has steeped the exact right amount of time before it gets it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Someone saying would be doing the stand-up as a session as a tech conf count as doing it in the theater? Like, you know, like for React Miami.

If React Miami, we said, hey, we're going to go there and do something or for some conference. Well, Teage definitely wouldn't, his prediction would be at least half right. Like he couldn't be accused of being wrong, but he might not be completely right. Because you're not booking your own venue. I'll make it more clear. We have a standalone. It's not part of, it's not under the auspices of anything else. We just say here's a date you guys can come.

And we do, and we record one with these four people. So Casey has to be there in person too. All right. What about is there going to be an opening act? Or is it just going to be a singular thing of standout? Oh, like a magician? They're having a magician. So probably it's going to start.

with a juggler, he's going to probably start with three balls, then he's going to go four, then he's going to go five, and he's going to tough to me. Six, seven, six, seven. Oh, no, I hate my, I just end of the episode. That's the end of the episode. Oh, my.

Dude, my son's clothes are size six to seven. He's like, I wear six seven. I'm like, I'm like, I'm, I'm, okay. That was good. That was actually good. Oh, my goodness.

I hate, I hate six seven, but that was as pretty good. Did you see it coming? Did you see it coming at any point or no? No, I saw you plan that. There's no way he planned that during the juggling joke. It came to him while he was counting.

It had to. There's no way. There's no way he thought that far ahead. The opening act is Teage playing the marimba. Let's be straight. It's he like just plays the arimba for a little while, like 15 minutes of marimba to like get the room set up. If we do one in person,

we're obviously going to play a song with us and some maybe other friends too. Like we'll do some other fun. parts of it. That would be exciting. Can I do my magic card trick that I wanted to do the last time we did in a... Yeah, you can do the magic card trick you want to do a family feud. We'll tell Casey about it. It's so funny. It's so funny. I've worked on this magic trick card like for a decade.

I have one magic trick and that is it. Okay. We can't tell you any more on air because he gets going to spoil the secrets. We'll tell you after. Wait, what was the trick we did at Theo's Place Prime where everyone was like, how do you do that? It was like David Kramer and everybody. I can't,

okay, we can't talk about it. Let's just be quiet. I don't know if I've done it before, but I just don't want to talk about it. Okay. Okay, okay, okay. All right, all right.

All right. All right. I think this has to be the end. Hey, thank you very much for joining us on the extended edition of this. I hope that you enjoyed it. And also,

thanks for hanging out with us for 2025. All right. This is the last one. So thank you. This is I hope, hopefully everyone had a. Bye, everyone. No blockers today.

Thank you for joining us. Have a good one, Bye. Bye. All right. Boot up the day. Fibreter errors on my screen. Terminal coffee and hair.