Tomorrow - Blue Sky Ahead

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

This week, Josh and Rani discuss the inauguration's curious VIP situation, Netflix's numbers, and the near future of social media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey and welcome to Tomorrow. I'm your host Josh Wotopolsky. And I'm your other host, Roni Mola. As you could tell, I was recently ill, if not still ill, and I'm sorry about that. That's not true. Roni is working on her vocal fry. We've got many, many emails from men who said that the woman on the show doesn't have enough of a vocal fry voice. Yeah, so I'm doing my best to get some emails.

That's great. I love it. I love it. I love the sound of it. And I think you're doing a great job, Ronnie. And I'm glad that you're completely healthy and have not recently had a horrible cold that has completely changed the way you sound. I started wheezing off.

Yeah, it's fine. We can cut that. We can mute that. AI will cut that right out. We'll put in an interesting... They can just make the whole podcast for us. While you're coughing, AI is going to come up with an interesting anecdote in your voice that it'll sub in there.

Anyhow, a lot to talk about. A lot going on in the world of technology, and frankly, beyond the world of technology. Though, I will say, we are in Inauguration Week. That happened on Monday. That was only three days ago. I want to say that just happened. It's hard to tell because there have been 5,000 executive orders in between now and then, and America is no longer a democracy. But you know, whatever, I'm like, whatever. It's like, that's fine with me. You know, I think democracies are

overrated. Frankly, I hope the president, Mr. Trump is listening, also JD Vance, whom I love deeply. freedom and democracy stuff. Anyhow, a lot has happened this week. Big week for tech people. Big week for technology. Big, big, the guys, the nerds who were getting stuffed into garbage cans and getting their heads flushed in toilets or whatever people did to nerds, I don't really know because people are all homeschooled now.

So they're at the cool kids table sitting at the front of the inauguration. The Cool Kids table, for most people, is just the dining room table in their mom's house, because everybody's homeschooled in the new America. But many of these Montessori students, many of the billionaires were Montessori kids. I don't know if you're familiar with the Montessori system. Either great or evil method of teaching, not really sure. Definitely teaches kids to pour at an early age, I can tell you that, having witnessed it first-hand with Zelda. I hope that she'll become a horrible tech billionaire when she's a little bit older. Jones-London Is she a man?

Barker She is not a man, which obviously is a huge problem. Huge problem, but we're going to see what we can do about it. I'm going to give her a little fake mustache to wear. I think it'll be fine. It's a great mental image. I thought it was a little mustache. It's a very funny idea. Big tweak for the tech guys. They were all sitting at the cool,

but literally people like Ron DeSantis. I love this, by the way. This, at least, is very heartwarming. Ron DeSantis had to love this by the way, this at least is very heartwarming. Ron DeSantis had to sit in an overflow room during the inauguration. All the tech guys were there, Elon Musk obviously, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai from Google was there, is that right? Tim Cook was not there. No, he wasn't.

Tim Cook from Tim Apple. Tim Apple was not there. No. Tim Cook from Tim Apple. Tim Apple. Do we think that Tim Cook is like the only guy who's like willing to say, you know what, I'm good? Or? I think he has like a really like nice out, right? Actually, I don't know the reason why he wasn't there, but it wasn't definitely to be like

in protest. He wasn't saying that. You don't think so? I mean, he sent him like he did. Oh, the TikTok CEO was there. Right, yeah. The TikTok CEO was there. And he was in the, and the best part about it

was all these guys were in the main room behind Trump. And people like Ron DeSantis had to sit in like an overflow room, which I think is just like, I don't think there's a lot to be happy about here, generally speaking, for like humanity. But it is a funny to be happy about here, generally speaking, for humanity. But it is a funny concept to think about DeSantis, this political, you know, this wannabe political player getting pushed aside by the tech guys. Tech oligarchy, yeah.

Tech oligarchy. Cook had seemed joined at the church later. Oh, he was there? Okay. I guess like, guess like is like I mean the question we all have to ask ourselves is is would you rather have a I guess it's not an either or you know I think a lot of people you might say like would you rather have Ron DeSantis like close to Trump or would you rather have like Elon Musk or you know Sundar or or you know Mark Zuckerberg I guess like

there's no good answer here. It doesn't seem like any of those people have like normal ideas in mind, like they don't have like good things that are really good for humanity in mind. Like, none of them seem to be highly concerned with the fate of the rest of existence here, including Ron DeSantis. So it's hard to say who's who's worse to have on your, you know, on your left side or whatever. Anyway, but big week for the tech guys because they're now in the, they're now in control of the inner circle, they're in the inner circle of Trump's inner circle, and they're in control. It's so funny. It's so funny to me the way you hear these guys talk about the elites. You know, you hear the Republicans, they love to talk about elites, you know, and they're like, they have control of the media and they're in cahoots with the tech. You know, Republicans were relentlessly complaining for the last eight years that they thought Google was censoring them or whatever. And now they're immediately boys with these people.

Immediately, now we're hanging out with these people and they're our people. Everybody's spineless. Everybody has a very short memory for what has happened. I find it fascinating. You know, Semaphore did a thing at the end of the year, which I completely, I actually forgot that I had answered the question. They did this thing where they, what were you wrong about in 2024? And I said I was wrong about how quickly our people's memories would be erased from the craziness and the chaos of the Trump era, of the first Trump term. And it is striking to me, it is striking to me how much we seem to have collectively

forgotten about what was going on during that period and how bad it was and how we like literally had a pandemic that honestly seems like it could have been way less bad in America had we had like better leadership. That's my impression. Anyway, just like very chaotic, very awful time in the country. And I'm surprised that people don't remember as clearly as I do the absolute sort of nightmarishness of it. The funny thing about it is, people are like, well, the Biden term was like, not a lot happened,

or whatever. And it's like, yeah, that's sort of how it's supposed to be. This one's very exciting. Lots of executive orders coming down real fast. Yeah. Now we're back into MTV-style edits of government. It's like a smash cut. You want a WWE. Yeah, everything's a smash cut. Every scene has to be 10 seconds or less or else people

will lose interest. In the last 72 72 hours there have been. I mean, Trump literally, the thing that I find most striking, there've been a lot of different executive orders. I was looking and there's, he signed this executive order, which is, it's like, it repeals or repeals a 1964, 1965 federal government hiring rule. And the rule is you can't discriminate against people based on their race, sex, gender, country of origin, like the stuff that every job, the stuff that every job in the world,

or at least in America rather, has as a basic flat rule, which is you're not allowed to say, I'm not gonna hire you because you're black. Like, that's the rule. Or like, I'm not gonna hire you because you're born. It's supposed to encourage meritocracy, it's supposed to encourage people getting hired

for their new. No, no, I mean, but just on a basic level, just free. I mean, it is like the rule that is like, oh, you're from, you were born in China, like you've lived in America your whole life, well, I don't want to hire you because I don't like anybody born in China. Like that's literally things that used to happen all the time in America.

And then- Yeah, it was created for a reason. And the government was like, no, you're not allowed to say, oh, you're a woman. Like literally, it's like, because you're a, you people can say like, okay, I don't want to hire you because you're a woman. That's what people used to do. Right. Now they can say it again.

And then and then the government was like, no, that's not you can't do that. Like that's really discriminatory. Like that's not fair. Right. This is the so this is this 1965 like federal mandate or whatever it is. There are terrifying. Yeah, it's not even like... People talk about DEI, they're talking about these diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

And this is basic, don't be horribly racist and sexist overtly. This is like 60 years of basic human rights in America. It's funny to think that it's only 1965 or whatever. But this is basic stuff. And I feel like everybody should be much more disturbed by it. I understand that we can expect craziness from Trump or whatever. This is so far beyond DEI stuff. He's basically saying that thing that's commonly agreed upon in every workplace you've ever been in your entire life is now no longer, at least at the federal government level, which seems insane, is no longer agreed upon that. You can't just say, I don't want to hire you because you're a woman. Right? Again,

this is not like you have to hire a certain number of women. It's not like you have to have a certain number of LGBTQ plus whatever people. It's not a certain number of black people. It's not like that. This is not like some weird initiative that's trying to force people into making a more diverse workforce. This is like literally basic American like anti-discrimination stuff. And, you know, it's like kind of thrown in there with a bunch of other things.

I don't know why this isn't, I don't know why this isn't. There's too many things happening, too much shock and awe happening. I know that's what they say, I know that's what they say, but this is like- But this should be a bigger deal. But there's some stuff that's like fundamental, right?

Yeah, true. Like, so I'm just like, you know, it's, I get it. And maybe this is part of their plan is just to create like, you know, as many shock and awe moments as possible. You know, I think, like, I just feel like the average American who voted for Trump, whoever they are, should be concerned at this point, should start getting concerned, perhaps. Is it the time for them to go? Mom or sister or whatever doesn't, is more overtly kicked out of not, you know given the opportunity to apply for a job in the first place

Yeah, I just don't understand I don't know even sure how like we would I'm not are we at a point with the country where we're just gonna go Yeah, that's fine. Like we're done with like civil rights Like is that what we're just done with all of the civil rights like everything we're gonna roll back. Is that the plan? Like cuz I think it'll be really bad for a lot of people in this country. I'm not talking about the small- These aren't edge cases. No, this is- No, these aren't edge cases. I'm not talking about trans people in the country. Obviously,

whatever Trump's doing is going to be bad for trans people. But the trans population of America is a very, very small percentage compared to like, say, just women in America generally, right? So I would think like, if I can now, if you're now in a position where like, I'm assuming that once the federal government thing is like accepted, then I am assuming that you can use that as precedent, right? Like if you run a business, if you run a corporation. I don't know how all this works. I assume there's going to be a lot of, you know, back, like,

I assume they're going to fight this. I don't, you know, like, I assume he's gonna just make executive orders about everything because that's what he's doing. But I don't know. I don't know how it pans out. But it does make me think of an executive order that's a little bit more in our wheelhouse,

the one about TikTok. Oh yeah. Well, this is what I find interesting because people are like, you know, he basically has no way to actually, I guess there's some clause that he can have an extension with TikTok. Is that the executive order that he signed? Yeah, the executive order said, you know, basically gave 75 days and they could keep going for 75 days. And the idea is to come to some sort of solution.

And they're not going to penalize the companies that host or distribute TikTok, Apple, or Google, or Oracle, or whatever. One interesting thing I think about this is that, as my editor, editor Nate Becker pointed out, they're probably not going to sell it. The idea is that, okay, we're going to have an American bidder and even Mr. Beast, everyone's popping out of the woodwork and being like, oh, I'm going to buy TikTok. This happened in Trump's first term. Trump said, okay, TikTok illegal. You know, you

got to sell it. And they actually came to a deal in which like, it was like Walmart and Oracle or whatever were going to be like American partners and Mike Dance was still going to have like a good portion of the control of the company. So it wasn't an outright sale. It was more of this like pivoting something or others. It's a not sale. And that's what's sort of likely to happen now. We have Bill Ford, who's a ByteDance shareholder saying today on Bloomberg, he was like, yeah, we're, what'd he say? He said, there are a number of alternatives we can talk to President Trump and his team about that are short of selling the company that allow the company to operate,

so to continue to operate maybe with a change of control of some kind, but short of having to sell. So like these ideas that they're going to sell, it basically the same thing is going to happen. That was going to happen last time, but we have such short memories that like, we don't even remember that this happened in 2020. Well, it's interesting. I mean, I also feel like, Well, it's interesting. I mean, I also feel like, um, the, this TikTok thing is an insane distraction. It's like,

I'm sorry. From the, from the, like, from what we were talking about right before this. From the jump, it's like, I don't care how much propaganda is being shown to people on TikTok. It is one social media app in a sea of thousands, hundreds or whatever. Let's just say dozens that are very popular. And and who cares? Like, this is not important. This is not important in America. It's not even important in tech, in my opinion, right now. Like, like I would be much more

concerned about what Mark Zuckerberg's algorithms are doing, to be honest. He's a U.S. citizen and his country is based in the U.S. How do they use your data? What are they doing with your data? Do we have any reasonable amount of information on that? We definitely have in many times in the past been treated to a surprise that Zuckerberg and co are using your data in ways that you don't want them to. And like, so to me, it's this, like, this is such a total red herring like distraction. And honestly, like feels almost manufactured to create a,

like, why are we talking about TikTok at all? It just does not it does not factor into modern reality in any way that is truly meaningful right now. Like whether the Chinese are taking our information and data and feeding us back propaganda or not as a TikTok user, I have don't feel that I've seen anything that is feels very propaganda ish, you know, like I'm not sure that like the drummer accounts that I've seen anything that is feels very propaganda ish. You know, like, I'm not sure that like the drummer accounts that I follow on TikTok that have these like crazy drummers who have like four kick pedals is like really influencing me

to like be pro China or something. Right. So you know who made a very similar argument to you? Like you made this argument last week. You're like, you know, we should like, what about Zuck? What about like all the other Chinese apps sell the other Chinese? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Genshin impact.

Yeah. Guess who made the same argument? Who? Um, one Donald Trump. That's right. He's right. I saw this quote and I fucking agree with him. I'm sorry. He said, he said they make your telephones and they make your computers. They make a lot of other things. Yes. Isn't that a bigger threat? I mean, it's, I hate to do it. I hate to say it, but every once in a while, Trump does say something that kind of other things. Yes. Isn't that a bigger threat? I mean, it's I hate to do it I hate to say it but every once in a while Trump does say something that kind of makes sense Clock and light twice a day. That's right. That's right. Even a even a even a broken clock tells the right time twice a day and and He's he's got a point. He's like they're putting chips in your phones

You don't act we don't actually know for certain. I mean, maybe Apple will say, well, they're not doing that. We know we've inspected the chips and then we know or whatever. But we don't really know if there's a backdoor for China in our phones. My guess is if the Chinese government wanted the manufacturers of electronics in China to create some kind of invisible back door for data, they could figure out a way to do it. My guess is they could figure out a way and they probably have. And yeah, I think it's like, I do think it's a bigger concern. It is, TikTok is not, it's not like how we all get information.

It's like how a small portion of the population gets some information. Mostly it's for people to watch. I mean, I'm sorry I don't want to be dismissive of national security concerns, but mostly it's for people to watch girls dance. I'm telling you, if you want that, it's there in high quantity. And if it's not that, it's other dumb shit. It is not, it is not like an important vehicle for information. And like, you're not going to convince me that

it's like, let's look at YouTube. YouTube is saying either like other apps are just as like, just as much like doing this as TikTok. And also like, it's not even that big of a deal in the first place, probably. We don't know. I don't know. but I also don't. It just feels like a total distraction. It just feels like not being able to get a job because you're a woman. The fact that on the one hand, we're talking about him cutting like basic civil rights.

And then in the same breath, we're like, it also TikTok. It's like these things are not comparable. You got like these guys, like this, this, uh, this Hegseth Pete, Pete Hegseth. Is that his name? Oh yeah. He's this guy. He's like, he's like about to become the, the, um, what head of the department of defense is that he's a woman abuser. He's like, he's like an alcoholic wife beater and like every time, every day they alleged, a legend, legend.

You know, and like every day there's like some new thing where it's like, oh, here's an affidavit from his like sister-in-law that says like, his wife was scared of him and had like an escape plan and a bag pack because like she never knew what was gonna happen when he came home drunk or whatever. And it's like, we're talking about this guy. And this guy also has only run,

he's like a Fox News commentatorator He's run businesses basically into the ground from what I can tell based on like this I'm not him being the head of the Department of Defense, but he doesn't have a disability and he's like white and not he's a white man He's a white man. Okay. All right. Well, he's yeah Physically seems to be you know Whatever like I don't know like I'm he's he's alive. I guess He's a white man who's breathing so I guess given the job. I don't know, you know, whatever, like, I don't know, like, he's, he's alive, I guess. He's a white man who's breathing, so I guess give him the job. You know? But, but, but, uh, anyway, I'm just saying, like, we're talking about this guy in one breath and then tick tock and the other, I'm, it just doesn't feel like it's, I know it's our job to talk about technology, but, um, yeah. And then, and then, and then there's like the, the, the Elon Musk of it.

Oh, well, right. No, right. The day of the inauguration, Elon Musk does like a Nazi salute on stage. Terrifying. Like at Sechal, like a literal Hitler salute. And I got to tell you something. Um, I'm not a historian. I'm not a historian. I'm not an expert.

Are you breathing person? I haven't studied I haven't studied all of the history of different salutes that people do. But I can tell you that when I see someone do what he does. 100 times out of 100, it's a Nazi salute. And I've only ever seen Nazis do it. I've only ever seen Nazis in America do it. I've only ever seen people like the Aryan Nation and the Ku Klux Klan and white power organizations do it. And every

single one of those groups, when he did it, was like, hell yeah. They were like, that's a fucking Nazi salute and the only people are supposed to say no the ADL I'm sorry the anti-def me sorry the Anti-Defamation League is that who it is think it is yeah which is supposed to be a like like a one of the key players in identifying hate and hate speech and hate groups in America is like defending it. And it's like, what do they have on the guy who runs the Twitter account of the ADL or whatever? Like, what do they have on the head of the ADL? I mean, I guess they're like,

I don't know if they're like, I don't know what their alignment is at this point. But what I do know is, I don't understand and I cannot believe that no one has asked for a clear explanation. Right. So I was in the throes of illness if I were a Jewish person if I were a Jewish person who worked at a mosque company Just to be clear. I'm a I'm Jewish. I was raised Jewish I'm an atheist, but I was raised Jewish and I certainly my entire family is Jewish and you know, uh, like When I see it But I see it it to me it feels like the most offensive thing hands down I have seen Elon.

I've seen or heard from Elon Musk in the entirety of his career. There has been a lot, especially in the last four or five years. You know, you have all these people going, what does Barry Weiss have to say about this? Like, I'm curious because we're all the outspoken Zionists talking about it. It's weird because I don't hear anything about it. I was just confused because I was ill when this happened and I see it on social media and I was like, oh wow, that's horrible. What is happening?

And then the discussion around it, everyone was like, oh, he's just awkward. He does this obvious thing twice a day. I'm just confused why it's why it's up for debate I think the bigger thing is why we're not asking him for an apology Why are we why isn't somebody saying you need to apologize for this really offensive gesture? Because they were having a debate about whether our government. How do we not? How do we not know what a what a Nazi? salute looks like You know, we also know that he's historically like played to those groups.

He revels in it. He loves it. I don't want to get into it. Look, I don't want to get into it. But the man was, he has a long history of it seeming to identify with groups that are yeah, you know, far right, Germany's far right party

has literal ties to Nazism. The right wing in America, the extreme right far right party has literal ties to Nazism. The right wing in America, the extreme right wing in America has literal, I mean, why do you think Trump pardoned the proud boys leader and the oath keepers leader? These are like white supremacist groups or at least supremacist groups in some way. They certainly are not like down with everything and everybody. You know, these are like not the best that we have to offer. Kind of feel like a frog boiling in the pot, except the pops like acid. Like we should know better.

It's it's you know, I've talked to you know, I don't want to go too far into politics on this. I'm just like confused as to why we're having this like media debate over it. Like this should be front page clearly. This should be clearly there's no misreading. There's no misreading. There's no misreading. There's no, this is not a, oh, we don't know what he's doing here. Yeah, I read in your Times piece about that and even that was like so clearly like edited to be. What's the debate? We don't know if that's a Nazi

salute, is that what you're saying? You don't know what a Nazi salute looks like or you don't know if that's what was his intention when he did it, right? If it wasn't his intention and he gave a salute that looked exactly like a Nazi salute, but it wasn't his intention to do that, if I really unmasked him, I'd say, oh, like I made a gesture, you know, some are taking it as a Nazi salute. That wasn't my intention at all. And I certainly would never do that. Like if he just said that, I'd be like, okay, he was being weird and awkward. It was, I guess maybe he didn't mean it that way. It looks like one, but he didn't even, he's uneven saying it wasn't

one. I'm reading the New York Times article about it from Ryan Mack, who's wonderful. The headline is, Elon Musk ignites online speculation over the meaning of a hand gesture. Obviously, he's framing it as what the online conversation about it is, but there's no definitive like, what the fuck? I love the little pussyfooting around everything that we have to do now because everybody's so scared of the backlash.

I mean, it's like- I mean, because people get fired for talking about him. I get it. I don't want to get fired. You know, actually, Elon's a great guy. And I like him a lot. He's very good. We love him here on the podcast.

We'd like to sponsor him. We love Elon. I don't know what's in his heart I'm not saying he is a Nazi I'm just saying I I've been alive for 47 years in America and lived in America the whole time and I've been raised to understand certain things in this country And I wasn't I wasn't I didn't go to liberal schools. I didn't go to some fancy college I have a very normal family.

My mom is a school teacher. My dad sold snack foods for a living. I don't come from a wealthy family. I'm not part of the elite. Whatever. You're in the media, Josh. I'm in the media, but only by accident. Only by accident.

And just to be clear, what I saw definitely is what Nazis do. Yeah, he was doing the thing. That's all I can tell you. He had the pulpit for it, and just to be clear, like what I saw definitely is what Nazis do. Yeah, he was doing the thing. That's all I can tell you. He had the pulpit for it and he did it. That's all I can tell you. There are a million ways to wave. There are a million ways to salute. This one is very, very clearly like identifiable as one that is bad.

And I've been brought up to believe that it's bad. I've been brought up in America as a U.S. citizen to believe that the Nazi salute is something when you see it, you should be like, hey, I don't like that. So if there's an alternative view of it, it's news to me, you know? But anyhow, I'll watch some TikToks about this. There's actually, speaking of TikTok,

there's fascinating stuff on TikTok right now around politics. I mean, for all of it being like a propaganda machine or whatever, I see a ton of political stuff on TikTok that's very anti-Trump and not nice to the incoming administration. Oh, because I heard just quickly that some people were upset with the message that was on TikTok when it did go dark briefly. Well, that was very annoying, actually. And then when it came back, they both were very praising Trump.

Yeah, well, first off, they turned it back on before Trump was president, I should say. And they were like, we worked with President Trump to get it turned back on. It's like, well, did you? Because he was not an AOC head of video about this on TikTok, of course, hilariously. It was like, yeah, he wasn't president at the time. So whatever you're saying is like basically theater. This is all theater, right? Like they

only turned it off because like they could not because they actually were forced to. Right. They were like, we're just see how America feels without like, you know, 10 minutes without it was like a few hours. So I've been making a, I decided I was like, you know what, I'm tired of lining these dude' pockets. Not that like, I personally do it, but like, I'm just, I'm just not going to go on Instagram or threads or X for a while. I'm just going to stay on Blue Sky and see what it's like. Yeah, I definitely have a, I definitely have a diminished excitement about, well, this is something we've talked about a lot, but I think, yeah, like I don't really

love the people who are running these things and I don't really feel like they have my best interests in mind. I understand that these things are distracting, but distraction is part of the problem, I think, for if you're like, you know, people talk about being woke or whatever. I think the waking up that people in this country should be doing is the one that they need to be waking up to the fact that they are so distracted and they are getting so played on their attention span that they are not seeing what's going on around them. And I think that like that is by design to some degree. And I certainly feel like now looking at like Zuckerberg and Musk and whoever

else hanging out with Trump, I'm not like this is not all going to work in concert, right? It's like, yeah, keep them dumb, keep them distracted, keep them needing their dopamine hit while we take whatever we want around them. And I feel like, look, I love billionaires, OK? I'm down. Become a billionaire. I think we should all strive for making tons of money in the capitalist system, right? What are we going to do? We can't fight it.

But there's got to be a line between being successful and being responsible for the destruction of democracy. I think there's a fine line. It's possible to be a rich person and not also be horrible and not be like, yeah, the guy who wants to take basic civil rights away from Americans, we should back him. There's a way to do to be both things. Or at least, even if they don't really believe that, they're just being complicit in it now by just being at his inauguration and just patting him on the back. I want to say, I said I love billionaires.

I'm fine with the idea that there will be billionaires I'm not like we have to kill will be billionaires No, I mean like we we we work at a news organization that is like about making money Like it about like how money gets made and what money does and where it goes and how like to kind of navigate it And like I'm yeah, we're not new. I'm not like I'm not like oh my god, like, you know Capitalism must be destroyed. I'm not like, oh my God, capitalism must be destroyed. I'm like, there's a version of it doesn't have to be like this. Yeah, maybe we don't be overly racist.

Yeah, to be honest with you, I don't understand. I know that the political position is that we have to have this enemy, that people need an enemy or whatever. And maybe if they're paying attention to some enemy that is a person from another country or whatever, they won't pay attention to you doing whatever you want. Harjes-Klein crimes. Kline Crimes. You're doing crimes.

Harjes-Klein Do you want to talk about something way less consequential? Kline I do. I do. Probably, you're talking about something more related to technology. Harjes-Klein I got something. Kline Good. Harjes-Klein Netflix. Kline Oh, my God. Great. Harjes-Klein It poses a very pivot. Klineppenberg I got something. Netflix! Hiller Oh my God, great. Flippenberg It poses a very pivot. Netflix is crushing it. Flippenberg Netflix is crushing it. They announced in their fourth quarter earnings that they

added 18.9 million subs, which is more than they've ever added before. Hiller You know what you don't hear about is a lot of those subscribers are undocumented immigrants. Flippenberg Then they don't count. They probably are, by the way. I'd love to know the breakdown of how many Netflix subscribers in America are undocumented. It couldn't last without them. Well, who knows? But what's funny to me, though, is that this is the last quarter that Netflix said it's

going to ever tell you how many subscribers it's adding. This is a statistic that people who follow the company have been looking at. Haven't they said that before? They announced it a while ago, and it's adding. Like this is a statistic that people who follow the company are looking at. Have they set it up before? They announced it a while ago and it's finally coming into effect next quarter. So this is the last time we'll know. So they went out and you know. I mean if I were if I were a shareholder I might be a little bit annoyed. Yeah. I mean the argument is like we're so big that like growth doesn't matter now we're

going to eke out more money from you and like grow. Sure. It does seem a little disingenuous. If I'm running Netflix and the business is doing well and I'm making money and I don't have to tell people those numbers, I certainly would not. In business, you want to share only what you feel is absolutely necessary. You don't want to give people every... Because the thing about it is, if you were to basically say, here's every single variable,

every number that you can look at in a business, someone's going to find something somewhere where you're like, hey, hold on. Actually growth is a great one. You reach a certain point when you're Netflix sized. Right, they're so big, the law members. Growth cannot be, it's not a sustainable idea that your growth is going to be exponential every quarter or whatever. At some point you start to taper off. and I'm guessing they're probably at the point

where they're like, hey, we think we've probably hit like we're getting close to in a certain addressable possible audience in America. Right? Like my guess is what happened is they stalled out pre ad tiers, right? They must have stalled out. Right after the pandemic, stalled out and they they're like, ad tiers, that'll get more people in. Right. Cheaper tiers that are ad-supported, and then they start to ramp back up. And now

they're like, OK, we think we've probably got everybody who's going to pay who will do the premium thing without ads, everybody who's going to pay, or most of the people who are going to pay who would want the cheaper tier, maybe we can add in maybe some other tiers. But at the end of the day, you've got like a limit on people in a country. Yeah, so they're going out on a record quarter. This is like, beatable for them. How many total subscribers do they have? So we have 89 million in US and Canada, if that's what you can mean, I assume so. 89 million? 89.6 paid members. I mean how many how many adults?

Are in the US and Canada? Yeah, how many households are there in the US? Do we know in the US there are a hundred and thirty? million households, okay, there you go about okay, so they got 90 million open okay, but you're seeing us and Canada yes It's pretty low. So let's see. There's like four people in Canada. So 127 million households in the US. Okay, so right. So then you go, let's just say the majority of that 90 million, I mean, it's not all of

it, but like a lot of it is going to be US, right? So you start to go like, well, how many more households can they get in every household? It behooves them not to disclose this number any longer. At some point, it's going to be slow going, right? It's just going to be like a war of attrition. Basically, they're going to be like a little bit every quarter they're going to add. The big thing will be if they drop, right? The big fear is somehow they drop. No one threatens Netflix's dominance. No one. There's nothing that actually is an

alternative to Netflix. I mean, maybe... There are some alternatives. Maybe the Hulu-Disney combo is there, but are people doing that instead of Netflix? I feel like it's a lot of that and Netflix. What is the new cable package? The new cable package is you get Hulu and Netflix, and you're pretty covered. And hence, because they have this certain of their position, they've raised their prices both for the ad free and the ad tier. And all the streaming companies are doing this. Like originally

it was like, okay, we're going to keep the tier with the ads. You can watch ads and it'll stay cheap. But now they're both getting expensive. They're raising prices on both of them. I mean, you can get Disney plus Hulu and Max for $17 a month. Do you work for Hulu? No, I'm just saying I'm looking and then Netflix is whatever Netflix is But anyhow Netflix is not gonna report numbers. I think it's fine. Who cares. I mean they're doing they're doing great Yeah, what is the money hand over fist the real question is like can anybody get a word in edgewise I guess there's a little bit like death by a thousand cuts type of thing where you've got all these different services. I

Don't know. In a way, I do long for the days of cable where you just were like, okay, just I'm going to pay $200 a month and I'll have all the whatever is available. No, I hate ads. I really like it. Sure. But it used to be like you could pay for cable and you'd get the channels with ads and then you get a bunch of channels that don't have ads. Like you'd get all like the premium cable channels that didn't have ads. You know, the HBO didn't have ads. And they had the Sopranos. You know? I'll just keep stealing passwords for things without ads. Man. Anyhow. I blue-skied and also tweeted about, I'm like, I'm not trying not to use

Twitter, but I'm like trying to- I'm- I thought you were going to say, I'm trying not to use Skeeted. No, Skeeting is fine. What's funny is now my thing with Twitter is let me see. I don't really even want to share anything on social for the most part anymore. But now I'm a little bit like, let me see what kind of engagement this thing gets.

Just to remind myself that there's really no point. And I have to say the level of engagement by comparison to Blue Sky, when the follower disparity is like 10 times more followers on Twitter. And the disparity in engagement is striking. Right? Yeah, no. The engagement I see on Blue Sky is so much higher than my much larger follower count on X.

Yeah. I tweeted a thing about, or skeeted a thing about how we're living in a time, interesting to live in a time where Apple's becoming irrelevant, or at the very least, a normal company. Because Nvidia has now surpassed them in market cap. And frankly, when you hear people talk about technology and what's exciting and where it's going and who's on the cutting edge, it's not Apple. You're not hearing people be like, Apple's blown the doors off once again, or Apple's done something no one else could do. They've had a bunch of floppy products. The Vision Pro was a huge flop for Apple. Their music stuff has not taken off.

Their new phones are pretty boring. They put a button on. I know you love the button. Nobody really cares. The cameras are incremental. They added Apple Intelligence, which sucks. I feel like objectively sucks. So I checked in on the Siri, the Apple Intelligence thing. You and I tweeted about the same thing. About the moon? Yeah. You tried to ask Siri, what phase of the moon are we in? And it had to bring in ChatGP, the big guns. I literally was like, give me a full moon, just for the record. It was like a yes or no question.

Right. And I asked that. I said that this morning and it told me waning crescent. OK, so Tim Cook was listening to the podcast as we know that he does. Maybe because he didn't listen to my problem, which was like, I was like, are there any other holidays this month? And it also asked me again, if it could bring in chat TPT to figure that out.

Again, I'm on a stress that it should not be an effort at all to get answers to basic questions, and it should not even have to ask you if you need to ask, if it needs to ask something else. I turned off Apple intelligence. Somebody was like, you might as well just turn off if it's not even worth it. And I was like, you know what, man?

You know what guy on blue sky? You're right. Why am I wasting? I'm keeping it on for reporting purposes. Nah, dude. I'm like, what do I need this for? And you know what? Siri's been terrific.

She's been great. It makes me feel good that it's so stupid. I have a British Siri. I don't know about your Siri. I got a little British lady. Oh, yeah. I only have male assistants. You only have male Siris? Yeah, I mean, it just, it feels kind of screwed up.

Like female assistant. It does it. Yeah. I wouldn't know I'm a man. So, yeah, to me that seems like the natural, really breaking the patriarchy here. You know, like really making a difference. Like you're, you may change, you may change it. You may change the patriarchy for good. By setting that voice to a man, I think you're really sending a message to the powers that be that you're not going to take it anymore. It's for my sons.

This could be our way, really, to hear a guy doing stuff. That's good. I have had, just for the record record I've had many Wonderful male admins Assistant assistants, you don't call them assistants anymore, but actual human beings not like us not a Siri and And I gotta say, you know, I've way better than Siri much better than a much better every human even if they're bad at their job is better than Siri and it's like I I don't think you could encounter a person and have them ask them to do anything

and they would underperform Siri that's my that's my take you know anyhow this is this is now I'm just that's why your video is worth so much more than Apple well yeah I think this is but this is the thing is like Apple was like the era of Apple of their particular brand of innovation is I Mean this is it. I think this is an interesting thing that's happening with the evolution of technology But the type of innovation that Apple was creating in its like most boom Period like from the iPhone on you could say from the iPod on but let's just say like the iPhone really took it to another level, is all this like near me, close, personal technology. And the tech of the next phase, because we've gone into this distributed, everything is

online, everything is like touching these like different sort of distributed services, it feels like the innovation of the next moment is about compute power, it is about distributed power, it's about the undergirding, the plumbing, not the stuff up here, not the front-facing stuff. Nobody's really figured out what the next close-up computing revolution is, right? So it's not the meta wraparounds, Oakley wraparounds? I mean, definitely not. But I'm not going to go... I mean, people have heard me say far too many times that people don't wear glasses, so I'm not going to get into it. But no, I don't think we're all going to be wearing stupid-looking

Buddy Holly glasses like me. I don't think that's the future of humanity. But you saw the Oakley wraparounds, though, right humanity. But you saw the Oakley wraparounds, right? Yeah, I saw the Oakley wraparounds. Those are definitely cooler. If I want to look like a cool 80s Oakley snowboarder, that's definitely a vibe. And that's for some people, the Paul brothers, I'm sure they're going to go get those. I'm sure there's a certain segment of Theo Vaughn, whoever all these guy podcasters are, I'm sure, are psyched about the Oakley wraparound. This whole concept of face computing is a fad, in my opinion, and is not going to be the thing.

I don't think anybody's figured out what the next thing is. I don't think it's probably a single piece of technology, one thing. At any rate, but my point, I guess, is that like the next phase feels like a lot of the plumbing, the undergirding, the servers, the GPUs, the connectivity, the stuff that makes all of the other stuff work. Right now, like we've done a lot of work on, we've spent a long time on the stuff up front here, right? Apple's like, oh, look at our chips. They're so fast.

It's like, well, once you cross a certain bandwidth barrier, once you cross a distributed systems barrier, you get into a question about, does it matter how fast? Your phone could almost be a dumb client in the near future. It doesn't even have to do much on phone if your bandwidth and your distributed computing power is enough. And I think you see this.

Nintendo did some experiments even with the Switch where they're like, oh yeah, you can play this AAA game. We actually are going to like, it's like partially a streaming experience. And obviously there's all these new game experiences that are streaming. It's funny to think about people like both these rigs. Obviously it still matters for latency and things like that. But I think there's a future point where a lot of what you do near here can be distributed out somewhere else.

So anyway, that's my take on Nvidia. And with that, do you want to do Feature or Bug? I really do, yes. I guess I love I love our series known as feature a bug and I'm happy to engage in it once again All right, well, you know we talked about we talked about leaving us both kind of abandoning certain pieces of social media Is it is it a feature a bug that we feel somehow morally? Responsible for like being contributors to these systems that ultimately seem to be doing a lot of damage for like being contributors to these systems that ultimately seem to be doing a lot of damage. Oh god. That's a very heady feature or bug. I mean, it feels like a bug for their systems that that's how we feel.

It feels like a bug for them. It feels like a feature for humanity. A feature in the sense that like we have some sort of like say in the matter that like it feels like we're doing something important in so far as that is actually important. I mean, I do think it gets to a core point, which is like if everybody decided to protest, I mean, you know, one thing about that, you know, we don't really talk about very much, generally speaking, but like mass action, like large scale human action does have an impact on businesses. That's why unions work, right? Because that's why business, so many business leaders, especially at the highest levels in large industries, hate unions, right? Because union power is real. When you have a mass of your employees say, no, we're not going to do it. Suddenly

you run into a real, like when the UPS workers were going to go on strike or like the ship with enough leverage and enough people do it. Yeah. When the dock workers went on strike, right? It was like, oh, wow. Like things are going to change really rapidly in terms of how we get goods in America. The collective action, that's the word I was looking for, is real and is powerful. Now, so it's in a way a feature that a service like, say, Instagram could be deeply impacted by collective action. It is a bug that we cannot, that the humanity, even though we all agree on certain things about those

services that we don't like and we think are wrong, like there is not really a mechanism for collective action. So our individual action, in a way, is a feature of the reality, a feature of modern existence that we can protest by saying, we're not going to put content into Instagram because it's like, no, we don't feel like it's a good exchange of value. But it doesn't really matter unless everybody decides. So it's a bug. It's a bug.

I don't really know. I think I went on feature with that one, but it was a little too heavy for me. I don't know either. Public companies like Netflix getting to choose which KPIs it decides. Reporting subscribers for a long time and then saying, yeah, it's not important anymore and just getting to choose

what they report like that. Well, it's interesting. We have regulatory bodies in this country that tell companies when they're publicly traded what they can and can't do or what they can and can't report. I'm not an expert on regulatory oversight when it comes to that. I'm not saying you have to say subscriber numbers. Well, like, I mean, yeah, I don't know. Are they they're not required to report subscriber numbers, right? Is that just like in the interest of shareholder?

I think it's yes. For the interest of shareholders, that's useful information to know. Yeah, I think it still is, though. It's like I would argue it's still useful information. Well, it is useful information. Even if it isn't like, you know, attractive to Netflix. I would argue it's still useful information. Even if it isn't attractive to Netflix. It's obviously a feature for them that they can pick and choose certain metrics to share. But absolutely bug that they could say, we're going to disclose this until it doesn't boot of us to disclose it. Well, it's funny, but when you think about it,

what they disclose and don't disclose is irrelevant, depending on the mood of the market. Flippenberg-Klein If you're saying Tesla and your stock is dependent. Frankel I was going to say, if you're Tesla, which we didn't talk about at all, but Tesla's been... A lot of the news about Tesla lately has been, oh my God, this has been forever, but they're so overvalued that the stock price cannot possibly be commensurate with their ability to generate revenue. People are just simply investing because of a feeling that's valuable. Fibes. It's a vibes-based investment.

I'm not saying that's good or bad, but the entire market is vibes-based. Really. That's why people get scared, and they all start selling things, and then you have a weird trend that screws up the economy. It's like, oh, everybody got spooked by something. The reality is, again, none of this is investment advice. If you look at the stock market over time, it goes up. It just does. It's just growing in terms of volume and value. It's just interesting. Should Netflix? I think it's a feature because it's all fantasy, phony, meaningless, ultimately. Flippenberg I think it's a bug. I think they should keep reporting more metrics. Once you've started, you have to keep going. Kline They're going to have to report some metrics. I think it's a feature for them as a company. They can just can it. That's a bug. I think they should keep reporting more metrics. Once you've started, you have to keep going. They're going to have to report some metrics, but I think it's a feature for them as a company that they can just can. That's my opinion. Also, I think we live in a simulation, so

it doesn't really matter. You can always just be like, well, once they decide to shut down the Nvidia rig that's running reality, it's not really going to matter, is it? Any other features or bugs? What about like billionaires being horrible? Is that a feature or bug? Is that like, is that how it has to be? Is that a must have? Oh, that's a good one. Isn't it right? Like we were saying before, like certainly there are billionaires who are not like also aligning with like, you know, the destruction of super price. I feel like if you're a billionaire, you're predisposed to poor behavior.

You're saying it's a feature of being a billionaire. Yeah, I think it kind of is. I don't think it's like absolute, but like I do think you're more predisposed to bad behavior because... That's interesting. That's interesting. It would be, I mean, I think I probably know the answer, but if you look historically at people who have a lot of money and who have amassed a lot of money

and power, do they lean? Do they ever, what's the percentage that lean, like, quote unquote, good or are contributing positively to humanity? And I feel like as a country, we can't even decide that as like, no, like for basic things apparently. Feels like a feature of being a millionaire that you become. It's not a bug. It's a feature that you become evil.

I don't know, but I mean, there are non-event millionaires. Yeah, that's sort of what I was saying, but in a less positive way. Right. It means fascinating to think about, really. You know, it's funny, I saw a clip of the author. You're a billionaire, everything's a feature for you. I saw a clip of the author, Doug Rushkoff, talking about a... I saw it on TikTok the author Doug Rushkoff talking about a, so I saw on

Tik Tok funnily enough, talking about, you sounded all smart and then you're like, I don't think I'm stupid. But he was talking about this meeting he had with a bunch of billionaires and he was like, they were asking about all sorts of things and then you quickly got into like where New Zealand or Alaska, like where is the best place to like have your bunker basically. And they were like, he said they were like when the event happens, and like how am I going to keep my security forces in line if like money doesn't matter anymore? Like how am I going to keep my secure, how am I going to make sure I have like good security? It's like, and it's like funny to think about, but is that, is the view when you get to a certain level

that you're like, this will inevitably come crashing down, humanity is going to devolve, and I have to, my main concern is, they're not like, I'm part of this thing. They're like, once it all collapses, how do I protect myself from it? Which side are they at? Well, they're scared. So maybe you just become increasingly scared the richer you get.

Like increasingly fearful of like the rest of us, the rest of humanity. Is it the richer you get or is it the deeds you've done? No, I don't know. I think it's like who's the most likely target, I guess, is the people with the most resources. Right? I suppose Anyhow, I'm I think we're gonna come out of this period and the billionaires are gonna become so nice and so helpful and so good But this period you'd be like the next four years

The event the event the only event that could possibly help anybody here is an alien invasion. I think we can all agree on that. I think we all generally agree the best thing that could happen for humanity would be an invasion, an alien invasion. I don't mean like people from Mexico, just for everybody listening. I'm not talking about the aliens you hear when Trump's talking. I'm talking about from outer space. I'm talking about Independence Day space. Talking about Independence Day level

alien in the good old fashioned. We got to get Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum to team up to take on the aliens and show us what it's all about. Whether you're a nerd from New York or army guy, an army guy from California, you can come together and shoot an alien. You know? It's beautiful. Think about it. Thank you. Thank you. That's my dream for this country. Is that we have a war with aliens. From space! From space! I want to be very clear. I feel like there's a movie about this. There are many movies about this. And America is always triumphant because that's how we

do it here. Never forget, okay? Never surrender. These colors don't run. I think that's our podcast. We'll be back next week with more tomorrow and as always, I wish you and your family the very best, even if there's a horrible, horrible invasion from space.