Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - We Took Over the Podcast!

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

With David on vacation this week, Marques and Andrew are confined to the producers table and Ellis and Adam run the show. We talk about a ton of small news from this week and last week. What starts as a discussion about Apple Vision Pro accessories and a new Garmin watch quickly turns into messaging app update madness, a rant about Reddit, and Apple introducing new features and dropping a brand new app. Plus, Marques and Andrew try to get some trivia revenge. It's a fun one, hope you enjoy! Links: Christian Selig Apple Vision Pro Stand: https://bit.ly/3uIq9vB Fuji X100VI Studio Video: https://bit.ly/3Ia1vHp Garmin Forerunner 165 Music: https://geni.us/A2E5 DC Rainmaker Review: https://bit.ly/3uxAsmo OnePlus Watch 2 Forum Post: https://bit.ly/3uMuttR Signal Adds Usernames: https://bit.ly/3uHtuLA WhatsApp Adds New Text Formatting: https://bit.ly/3wz6izr iMessage Adds Quantum Encryption: https://apple.co/4bKuUFI Reddit Sells its Data: https://bloom.bg/4bYrVtw Reddit Top 75,000 Users Stock: https://on.wsj.com/3T86Fdh Walmart Buys Vizio: https://bit.ly/4bJPy8X Apple Music Adds Monthly Recaps: https://bit.ly/3T4wHy1 Apple Makes a Brand New Sports App: https://apple.co/3T8sPfu OpenAI Sora: https://bit.ly/42QHjnx Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Instagram/Threads/Twitter: Waveform: https://twitter.com/WVFRM Waveform: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David Imel: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It requires an explanation for audio listeners. Oh yeah. Yeah, so for those of you who are not watching us with your eyeballs, Adam and I are at the big table. The big boy table. Marques and Andrew are at the producer table, and this is because last week... We had a mutiny. Full- on revolution.

Now we played a game of ping pong, two games of ping pong doubles ping pong. And in those games, there was high stakes. There was a bet that if Adam and I won, we would get to sit at the big table and host the podcast. And here we are. At first I thought we were joking.

So did I. Same. We started playing like really well. It got real serious. We can't lose. So did I. Same. And we started playing like really well. It got real serious. I was like, it's fine, Andrew. We can't lose. We're playing so well. And then we blew kind of a big lead at the end.

Yeah. So here we are. I definitely got to work yesterday and they were like, so you're excited to host the podcast tomorrow? And I was like, oh man, we're doing that. I was like, oh, okay. I'd say we let them win because then it just, it's less work for me to do this week. Oh my God. Sure. my god sure fair and square so this week we have a lot of topics we have a vision pro stand a new garmin uh signal whatsapp i message all had updates ai reddit training deal walmart buys vizio

apple added a ton of things. Sora, we never spoke about last week. Yeah, we didn't get a chance. We didn't talk about it. So there's like a lot of things that we have to get into this week. But first, Apple Vision Sand. Apple Vision Sand. Is that how we sound? Yeah, it's weird, right?

I've never seen it from this perspective before. It's really good. I will say you definitely have it down better. I felt like I was just reading off the page here, but like you do a thing where you like look up, you look down, you look up. Yeah, you get into a flow of it for sure. Exactly. I'll get there in three episodes. Well, to kick it off, our good friend of the show, creator of the Apollo Reddit app, Christian Selig, posted a 3D printable Vision Pro stand that I thought looks really nice. And I just wanted to shout it out because this is an interesting time in the Vision Pro's life cycle.

There's not a ton of third-party accessories you can buy, but they are slowly hitting the market. And this one is free and 3D printable. And I thought that was great. But I did find a few other Vision Pro accessories, some of which are neat, some of which are hilarious. And I just wanted to show you some of them this week. The first one. I'm sorry, I had to.

The power of having all these buttons here, I'm so sorry. Really tempting. Do you see the temptation now? I'm trying not to press them all the time. But I just, i'm sorry oh my god well the first one arguably the least ridiculous is uh and you can buy this at an apple store too this is the belkin battery holder it's sort of like one of those uh cell phone belt see i would argue this is the most ridiculous because you could buy it at an apple store

really this is like they're like they're selling this officially yeah yeah a belt clip for a battery pack does the battery get hot like if it's in your pocket no but what if you have no pockets you know big brain yeah and no pockets with belt is a reasonable clothing situation to find oneself in i I think. Not that wearing an Apple Vision Pro is a reasonable decision to find oneself in. Fair point. But they only get weirder from that. The second one we found that I thought was just hilarious is an adapter someone's selling on Etsy to instead of the, what's the twin band called? The top band? Dual loop band. So instead of the dual loop band, there's not enough cushion and whatever for you there. This lets you attach a

second solo knit band to your existing solo knit band sort of as like a skull cradle. A top step. It's one of the silliest things I've like ever seen. This is good. This is good. This is good.

This is a good one. This is what Apple should be selling. Well, if you think that is good, if you want to go to the bottom of my list, you know, Marques has mentioned Apple Vision Pro puts a lot of weight on your cheekbones. There's a lot of vertical force going down. So with this product, you can wear a baseball hat

and then actually hook the Vision Pro onto the brim of the cap as like an additional support layer. This is awesome. This is the kind of innovation I want to see. And if you buy two of them, it's only $34 each. On top of the $3,500 for the Vision Pro. Yeah. But that's fine. And I don't know why you would ever need to uh the last one i saw is i like i this has to be something that existed before and they

were like oh this would work with vision pro um it's the weird timu link for like this sort of balaclava looking thing that i guess i have never seen this not get sweaty this is a thing i mean it's on timu so thing is you know really loose description nice nice but i feel like you'd get sweatier with this i putting more fabric between your face and the thing it's but it soaks up the sweat yeah maybe it's like breathable or something oh it says breathable is it though it's also two dollars and 24 cents i know i don't know how much i'm believing look at the third photo marquez just looked at and look at the with mask without mask oh my god it's just a woman sweating and then a woman not sweating but has a little cloth yeah but is also a ninja ridiculous it's crazy but um yeah shout out to Christian. Shout out to the Emerging Vision Pro accessory market.

Excited to see what else gets there. Before we launch into the real stories this week, we also want to mention David, who's in Japan right now, instead of being on the podcast, put out a video on the studio channel. What a loser. Who goes to Japan?

God. He's actually doing something really cool there that I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about, but hopefully in the next few weeks, we can mention. But he just doing something really cool there that I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about, but hopefully in the next few weeks we can mention. But he just put out a cool video on the Fuji X100 VI, which is weird because that's the successor to the X100V. So clearly they need to figure something out in the naming department there. But it's a great video.

It talks all about JPEGs and HEIFs and compression and color. If you like HEIF heaps that's your video if you yeah exactly if you're if you're a heifer uh no a good shout i like i love that video it's super good explainer i find the vision pro accessories fascinating yeah really okay because remember maybe this was like two weeks ago we were talking about this magical like three to five percent of the price of the object is where the accessory should be priced. The meta of, okay, not a lot of people have- We're talking about Apple markets.

Yeah, sorry. But not a lot of people have Vision Pros, but they have a lot of money because they're spending $3,500 on it. Why is a $2 Timu eye mask a real consider, like I'm shocked it isn't $20, to be honest. Right, right. It's just a fascinating dynamic with these.

I think because this was already being sold for other VR headsets. Yeah, I think it shows other VR stuff. This is just now they can add Vision Pro to the title, get that SEO. Also, just saying, according to Teemu, the original price is $16 and 58 cents so it just happens to be on 86 sale allegedly i just like how three of the things you posted were sold on timu etsy and ebay where do you buy stuff the belkin battery pack sounds like something that should be on like ebay like oh it's a 3d printed belt clip for your battery. I think it's...

Belkin's huge. Yeah, but why are they... I just feel like that's a weird accessory. Well, I mean, if you're Belkin... Oops, sorry. No, for Belkin, it's genius. Yeah, I was going to say, if you work for Belkin, you see that Apple is releasing a new product,

you're like, well, we're Belkin, so we need to make an accessory for it. What accessories can we make for the Vision Pro? They probably thought for a long time about this. They're like, can we make a second head strap? I don't know. Apple's is pretty good. Can we make a different, like an eye mask for it or something?

That's kind of weird. Well, we do make cases. We can make maybe a carrying case. Oh, Apple did that already, but you know what we can do? Bell clip. But what's crazy is that they had to go to Apple did that already, but you know what we can do? Belt clip. But what's crazy is that they had to go to Apple and be like, here's our idea. We want to sell a belt clip

for your absurd battery pack in your store. And Apple was like, yeah, that's a good idea. Apple's like, you know, we don't make one. We don't make one, so go ahead. Sure. That's just crazy. It's like Apple admitting that like, yeah, this is kind of inconvenient, isn't it?

Like, here's a belt clip. It's funny because Apple has the stuff that they sell in apple stores that's made by apple and they have third-party authorized things that apple brings in and puts in the apple store that they think people want to make and they don't make it themselves but they think people would want to buy it and so they can market up and sell it and there's lots of weird cases and accessories for their products and little stands and things like that. Like, I wish my iPad would just stand up by itself. But the Folio case is 80 bucks. So maybe I'll buy like a random other stand that they sell. Yeah.

So they, Apple allows it, I guess. And this is fine. It's like Belkin is one of those fish that like eats the algae off the shark. Like the shark's like, I won't kill you. It's exactly what it is. What is that called? The remora. I feel like you had a whole video about this marquez i do feel like that too oh yeah crazy uh but anyway adam we're watch guys we are what are you wearing today which watch watch check i'm not wearing a watch

dang love that and it's funny because you came to me and you were like how do you feel about talking about watches on the podcast and i was like yeah sure i assumed you would wear a watch i know ah nice okay well garmin has a new one the forerunner 165 which i actually kind of like it's pretty sick uh normally garmin watches are very expensive like the one that i wear right now is the phoenix 7 pro sapphire solar something edition add seven more adjectives to the name and it's like 800 which is ridiculous the one that andrew's wearing is a thousand the apple watch ultra is 800 right okay i think mine's i think the one i'm using currently is 800 because it's not the solar version but yeah yeah they're they're super expensive they're crazy expensive that's the point so like this

one that's coming out now is 249 for the regular forerunner 165 and 299 for the forerunner 165 music edition I think music something uh-huh um basically the music the only difference is you can put music on it I don't know why that's like a separate thing but okay but either way 249 299 is really good that's crazy yeah and it has like a 1.2 inch amoled screen which looks pretty good uh judging from the videos i've seen because i've watched a ton of youtube videos about this thing because all the reviews dropped yesterday i think the biggest differentiator in a lot of garmin watches to me are the ones that have the amoled screens and don't i agree they they just look so much better when they're amoled

yeah mine doesn't have yeah it looks so much better it does yeah thanks thanks for having me so so much better yours here but yeah so the amoled screen is actually like really nice and then this one so the forerunner series in general is forerunners. Oh, sorry. Hold on. Wait, wait, wait. Oh, no. Oh, wait. He's going for it. Nice. There it is. He's getting it. But yeah, so it's Forerunners. They have a bunch of different options. There's the 965, I think is one that they have. That's like the higher end one. Yeah, the Forerunner 965 is the most premium one they sell. And even that is $600. If you're not super into running,

it's really unlikely that you're going to buy one of these like higher end Garmin's or something. So this is pretty much, and I really like the marketing for this watch as well, because it says, go ahead, sign up for that race. That's like the tagline for this watch. And that is perfect for the kind of watch this is. This is for someone that's like kind of into fitness, but not really like they're debating running this year. They're trying to get into it, but they don't want to spend $800 on a watch

for something they might not even be doing in six months. So this is like a way, and not to say that two or $300 isn't expensive, but like the alternatives are 800, know like it's crazy so having the the features from the higher end forerunner series come down to something at this price point i think is super exciting uh like this one has body battery a garmin coach so they have like marathon training race adaptive training so basically that means that when you start a plan and you're like oh i want to do a half marathon in a couple months uh it'll set up a schedule for you and if you miss

those like run dates like i do all the time it'll just automatically adjust the runs that you should be doing to like keep you on pace and be like hey i see you uh skip the last couple runs like i'm gonna adjust the rest of the schedule to keep you on track um there's sleep tracking and a sleep score but the killer feature i think is this thing has an 11 day battery life in smartwatch mode and and it has an amoled display so that's like pretty insane 11 days yeah but that is uh so there's a youtuber dc rainmaker great great freaking youtuber uh he reviews all these watches but he in his review pointed out that he got consistently about four days and that's with one or two workouts each day i wonder if that's also with always on display it is i found mine always on display i can get like six days but if i were to even just turn on

like raise to wake it could go up to like 10 plus pretty easy yeah it's crazy and and two workouts a day like that's a lot. Yeah. Well, not two workouts, one or two hours of workouts each day. Although I'm sure for the review, he probably did do like two workouts a day just to like try out cycling and also running.

Here's my question. Does this thing have the same sort of ruggedness that the more expensive ones? No. No, so the one that like I'm wearing, the one that Andrew's wearing, these have a kind of metal top to them. Like, I don't even know if it's what it's called. So I don't want to say what kind of metal, but the top is metal. The rest of it is like a poly resin or something.

These are also plastic. So the glass screen is obviously glass, but the watch itself is more plastic, which isn't, that's more like a forerunner line thing. That's not necessarily this model. All of the forerunners are a lighter weight kind of resin. Yeah. The forerunner stuff is very specifically for running. And like-

Marques, Marques, do it. Yeah. Smooth. I'm leaving in those pauses i'm working on it but so like they definitely aren't trying to adapt to the like ruggedness of some of the more gps focused like hiking trail running kind of things um but that's why they can get the price down and so i think an amoled screen it's not going to be any less durable than like an Apple Watch or a Galaxy Watch or something. But yeah, it's not at the level of the super high end, like go camping or hiking or backpacking with these. To me, I feel like that was the thing

that would really set it apart from the Series 9, right? Like if you could take it outdoors and not have to worry about it. But I don't know, man, for that price. It's pretty good. Pretty cool. They're also still pretty rugged. The 4Runners, you could still slap them around.

You might crack a screen if you hit a rock or something, but hopefully you're not. I bet it's more durable than the curved edges on an Apple Watch that are glass as well. That's always a worry I've had. And I've cracked ones there before, too. Basically, long story less long this is like a pretty great entry-level running watch which is like rare because they had another another version I think it was the Forerunner 55 or 65 something like that that was even cheaper but it did not have any of these features so like it almost doesn't exist in my mind anymore like

if someone says I do want to get into Garmin, which watch do I get? I think this is the one. Cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Well, in other tech news, Google just launched a free version of the rebranded Bard, aka Gemini. The free version is called Gemma. Crazy. And that's all we have to say about that. But OnePlus has a smartwatch. They're back, baby. They're back. OnePlus is back. First it was a keyboard. Now it's a watch. What are they going to do next? Honestly, do they have a netbook?

No. They did have a TV at one point, didn't they? Yes. It might be 2024 and netbooks might be dead, but OnePlus. Bring it back. I feel like it's what's next. What's going on with this OnePlus watch? I want to read.

I want to just start this off with reading what they said in the forum post, because this is all from a forum post. Cool, cool, cool, cool. They said, I am thrilled to share some truly exciting news with you. After a three-year hiatus and a reflective pause following the OnePlus Watch 1, we are returning to the smart watch scene with the OnePlus Watch 2. Brave. plus watch too brave the one plus one or the one plus watch one excuse me uh famously not a great watch uh marquez reviewed it and i think your tagline was they settled are you excited for the for the second version of this me personally yeah i want to see it do better yeah okay yeah because

the first one so okay so first of all here's what we know about the new oneplus watch uh two colors black steel and radiant steel which is just black and silver estimated 100 hours of battery life okay which i don't doubt seeing as the last one marquez in your review you said it lasted like a week right before you had to throw it on the throw it on the charger yeah but the last one also did basically nothing ah Ah. So I'm curious to see how they're going to get 100 hours while improving the watch. Or if it still is going to do basically nothing. Not a great sign. Also, the other thing we know is that it's going to be unveiled February 26th at MWC in Barcelona.

And it also has a new tagline. So the Garmin one, I liked the tagline. Like, just do that race or whatever it was. This one is, they're changing it from Flagship Killer to Ecosystem Builder. Ecosystem Builder. Like the watch will build you an ecosystem? I guess so.

I don't know. It has a bad ring to it. I get it. They're trying to add to like the ecosystem of OnePlus products, but Flagship Killer just hits so much harder than Ecosystem Builder. That's not

threatening at all yeah like it went from flagship killer which was like oh like i'm paying attention to what you have to say now deadly to ecosystem builder that's like a slide on a deck somewhere yeah not great also like a watch doesn't feel like something that builds an ecosystem it's something that complements yeah that's another yeah that's a good point it's not the like building block of an ecosystem it's something that you toss in after the ecosystem is built already because i mean maybe i'm wrong maybe i'm wrong but based on the people i know no one is gonna buy you know a 200 smart watch and then it's like okay because i have this, I'm now going to get a $3,000 computer. You know, it's usually the other way around.

I think you're right. But it's also interesting in the way that people fill out their ecosystem. Usually it starts with the phone. And then what is the second or third thing that you buy? And is that purchase directly impacted by the ecosystem? So like iPhone's the obvious one. I want to go buy earbuds. and is that purchase directly impacted by the ecosystem so like iphone's the obvious one i want

to go by earbuds okay the obvious one is the ecosystem earbuds and apple's built out this gigantic ecosystem of oh you want a smartwatch we got an ecosystem one oh you want a tablet we got an ecosystem one oh you want a headset we got an ecosystem one and i think one plus is trying to do the same thing okay you have a have a OnePlus phone? Great. You want a smartwatch? Here you go. We're going to build out our ecosystem a little bit. We've got a tablet. We've got other stuff.

So wouldn't the phone be the ecosystem builder? I think the phone is the hub, and all the things around it are ecosystem builders. Okay. Really? That's how it's interesting. Okay. You're like totally in the Apple ecosystem, right? Right now.

I mean, I guess you're wearing this garmin watch yeah i have garmin watch and i use windows at home but at work it's all apple stuff windows at home the world uses windows ellis adam and i chat on the msn messenger at home no you don't no one chats on msn messenger not i'm all. Well, I was just thinking, because I feel like I actually might have, I went at sort of a zigzag route through the Apple ecosystem, I think. Because I switched to Mac in middle school. Never looked back.

Never, ever, even once looked back. Switched to Apple in middle school. Got an iPhone. Switched off of Android in high school. Wait, so you had an Android phone? I thought that your first phone was iPhone. No, no, no, no no no oh what was your first android phone my first android phone i had i had two android phones the first one was a samsung with a slide out keyboard a slide up horizontal keyboard i can't remember what it was called doesn't matter the second one was a kiosera rise

that thing yeah that's yeah i still have the Kyocera Rise. That was really fun. Nice. And then I got a 4S. The good one. Yeah, but then it was like a long time. And then I think it went AirPods, then iPad. And then I started borrowing an Apple Watch from here,

but I still haven't owned one. I don't know. Maybe that's not that weird. Maybe that was like a totally boring story I'll just cut to the podcast. What an exhilarating story, but I still haven't owned one. I don't know. Maybe that's not that weird. Maybe that was like a totally boring story we'll just cut to the podcast. What an exhilarating story, Ellis. Wow. But anyway, yeah, we've got more great news

coming up. But first, and it feels so weird to say this. You gotta do the pause. You gotta do the pause. I don't even know, because I'm the, this is like my thing, you know? And now I've given it to someone else.

You've given up the power. All right. It's time for trivia. Oh my God. This is weird. Nailed it. You better not mess this up. It's me.

Sorry. I'm doing the first trivia question. What a smooth transition between the button all right so garmin the company we just talked about is most famously known for fitness tracking devices like smart watches oh i already know the answer gps you don't even need to finish the question created their name by combining the name of their two founders gary burel and min h cow i did not see that okay this is not what min h cow i don't know if i'm pronouncing that right but min h kao okay but

when they first started in 1989 selling a 2500 gps device they went by a different name that also combines two words this time what was the original company name oh you know how proud i am that you thought you knew it and i got the curveball like because that happens all the time to me we're like i know this i know this and then you say what i know out loud i'm like damn it's going deeper i thought because i found out a few months ago that Garmin also does flight control panels for fighter jets. And they sell really, really expensive military grade smartwatches that plug in with those flight decks. But so, yeah, that's not, not where I, that's where I'm at. That's crazy.

All right. Well, answers at the end. Answers at the end. Wow. Now we're saying this part, this is so end. Answers at the end. Wow. Now we're saying this is so crazy. We'll be right back. Autograph Collection Hotels offer over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Hand-selected for their inherent craft, each hotel tells its own unique story through distinctive

design and immersive experiences, from medieval falconry to volcanic wine tasting. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of over 30 hotel brands around the world. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Okay, welcome back. Since David is not here, I thought I'd take this opportunity to yell from the mountaintops about how much better every other messaging service is besides Telegram. Wait, this is anti-Telegram this is an anti well no telegram is fine it's an anti-david loving telegram segment david on the plane listening

to this right now when this is out he's fuming already he hasn't even heard it he's texting me like you uh so basically there's a bunch of updates to a bunch of different messaging services. And we're just going to kind of list through them because some of them are pretty crazy. So for the first one, Signal adds usernames. Crazy. Wild. Yes. Wait, what did they have before?

Just phone numbers. So before you had to know someone's phone number if you wanted to contact them through Signal. Now there's a username uh add in the obligatory david telegrams had that forever but yes now signal has it too um basically it's a username that you can use to initiate a message with other people once you start the message then they can see your phone number if they have it in their contacts already otherwise they do not see your phone number cool the have it in their contacts already. Otherwise, they do not see your phone number. Cool.

The username is also not displayed in the chat. So like if you pick, I don't know, Ellis the God 23. Ellis the God. Charlem Ellis the God. Charlem Ellis the God. Then they'll see that when they want to start a message with you. Okay. But then after that, once you start talking with them,

it'll just say Ellis Roben or whatever you put as your name in Signal. Okay. But then after that, once you start talking with them, it'll just say Ellis Robin or whatever you put as your name in Signal. Okay. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So like a lot of like reporters do this where they will put it in their bio and be like, if you have a tip, hit me up on Signal, 943-228-9666.

Okay. But now you can just have your username and just be like, hit me up. Let me know what you want to talk about. Cool. I don't use any of these apps. Well, no, of them which one i message yeah i mean i use i use i message we're gonna get to that we'll get to that juicy stuff there but i don't use any of the like third party encryption gotcha messaging apps okay yeah um whatsapp does not have this feature to my

knowledge and i message doesn't either which is pretty cool so telegram and signal are the only two right now well i shouldn't say only two there's probably a million but the main two that have uh usernames where you can start that contact so that's pretty dope that's dope um i guess can you do this with iMessage if you make a fake email and just talk to people through your iMessage email account because can can't you do that? Yeah, you can do that. You do that, right? I've definitely gotten like... Yeah. Okay. So never mind.

So you can do it with iMessage if you create a fake email. Yeah. A lot of the time when I get like fake... Spammers. Yeah. Like a fake USPS text over iMessage. It's got some like ridiculous email attached to it. Interesting.

Yeah. Okay. Next on the list is WhatsApp. They added new features literally this morning right before running in here. Thank God it wasn't a crazy update because we had like four minutes to digest this. I know.

But basically there's four new text markdown style syntax formatting options. You can now do bulleted list, numbered list, block quotes, and inline code in your whatsapp posting your boy in your whatsapp yeah literally it's pretty cool uh actually that's not too far off from what i'm sure they're hoping people will use this for because they have those like

communities and you can kind of post blog posts in whatsapp oddly enough so i'm sure that's probably a part of it no that's cool i there you know i my yes i just think you can tell a lot of really funny jokes with these things you know what i mean i'm weird like bullet or like bullet point list sounds awesome yeah yeah i don't know why i would be excited for that but like i'm like oh i would like to do that there's so many times where i try and send people things like these are a couple options. Someone just asked me the other day, what are some different TVs you'd like to use?

It'd be so much easier if I could just put out a couple different companies rather than just comma, and then when they go to look at it quickly later, there's just a bullet point list. The beauty of marketing, baby. Or what if we were texting each other and you were like, Ellis, do you want to go get dinner here? And then I responded with an inline comment that just said, no, you suck.

That'd be hilarious. I think so, anyway. That happened in real life, by the way. The last iMessage or the last messaging update is iMessage. Which adds, iMessage added quantum encryption, which is crazy. I barely, I understand how like you can get prime numbers easier when you have qubits and superpositions and stuff like that. That's more than I understand.

So you're way ahead of me. I don't understand exactly how it worked. The thing that really struck me about this announcement, well, two things. The first is that Apple really seemed to want to hammer home that this protects against future quantum computer capabilities. Like even if your hash or your password gets scraped now, and then five years from now,

a new quantum computer gets invented and distributed, it still can't be. I don't know how they protect against the future. Apple is doing some weird time cop stuff. But they did put a fun. This is the other thing. They did put a really fun Apple graphic in this announcement. Classic Apple.

They just went out of their way to dunk on like every other messaging app. It's so funny. I also never heard of Viber. That's a new one for me. You heard of Viber? You guys vibing? Viber was back in the day. I don't use it, but it's another one I've heard of. Yeah. So they released this graphic where it kind of shows the different levels of encryption. So they have classical cryptography, which is level zero and level one, which is no end-to-end encryption and end-to-end encryption by default, respectively. Then they have post-quantum cryptography, PQC, which has level two, which includes PQXDH, which is signals quantum protocol that they released a couple of months ago. And then they have all by themselves, far off to the right, level three, PQC key establishment plus ongoing PQC rekeying.

We were talking about this before we recorded. I half feel like Apple invented these levels. These levels. Are you okay? All right. We're back. That happened. Yeah.

Sorry about that. all right we're back that happened yeah sorry about that for audio listeners um a light just fell and missed adam's head by like one inch oh my god yeah geez i don't know if that means the spirit the spirits are angry that we're hosting the podcast or that the spirits are happy we're hosting the podcast and like spared you oh that's a very good point um i i blame marquez i was like looking for the heads up button like wait where is it what's the heads up but i don't think we have that much more to say about the apple cryptography thing honestly the last time we talked about cryptography uh the the people on twitter and in the comments did a really great job of explaining the difference between end-to-end encryption.

So, yeah, moral of the story, Apple has a new quantum encryption standard that they're bringing to iMessage. So now Apple and Signal are the two that have quantum computing encryption. And we have to wait for an equally snarky graphic by Signal. Oh, I'm ready for it. Yeah, yes.

Sorry, I would like to point out something about this graph totally totally for it they put iMessage at the top with uh level three but until they add rcs support if you use iMessage and you text someone with an android phone that is level zero unencrypted SMS. Quantum encryption came before RCS. Just saying. How does that make you feel? We're still waiting for that RCS support. So I want to say that iMessage is both at the highest and lowest levels, depending on who you're texting.

That's by design. It's hilarious. It's your fault for having friends with Androids. Yeah. Get them an iPhone. Yeah. Well, buy all your mom and your friends an iphone buy them all iphones oh my god ai reddit training deal adam what's that reddit the social media app

last year blocked off access to their apis for third-party developers started a whole kerfuffle who blah blah uh we spoke about it here in the podcast. That's part of how we met Christian Selig, actually, where we spoke about at the top of the top of the episode. Now they have a new deal that they're working on where with an undisclosed company, they will allow them to scrape Reddit data for 60 million a year, which is crazy. That's a lot of money. 60 million a year. Yeah. Wait, so what does that mean with an undisclosed company? So they didn't say who the company is. This was, they were telling their investors, I believe.

Oh, but so, but this company is paying them 60 million. It's not like, it's not like that's the price. Like I couldn't go up to Reddit with 60 million and be like, I want to scrape. Maybe. I don't know. It's the highest bidder. Let's find out.

So I just found that really interesting because this is this was part of their plan from the start it was like i think the ai thing they probably well i don't know maybe they did see it coming i don't think a lot of people saw this boom coming but they definitely wanted to keep their data they realized how valuable that reddit data was so by blocking off third-party access last year dealing with the whole blowback and everything that when that happened with the protests and all that stuff now they're gonna api or not api ipo ipo thank you so many freaking acronyms they're gonna ipo which they've been saying they're gonna do since 2021 or something or 2020 but now they're actually knock on wood i don't have wood around me

gonna do it so now they're gonna be scraping or letting people scrape their reddit data which is really interesting i feel like the moral of the story is just know that reddit just cares about i read it and making money now and doesn't give a about any of its users except for all of the stuff that they post on there that now they can scrape for data for ai and except for the top 75 000 of of its biggest users, which Wall Street Journal reported this morning that they're planning to save some of their IPO stock for those users. Cool. They've been trying to IPO for three years. It's such a show over there. seems like last year they had a total revenue of like 800 million dollars about that um to just

like give it to all of your fans and supporters and then the reward being 60 million dollars which is a lot of money but not for like a reddit sized company it's like damn bro well that's 60 million a year i know but it's like yeah like you gave all of those developers and like loyal people on your site the finger for 60 mil it's like you could even crack 100 mil really damn that unnamed company

no wonder the company's unnamed they don't want to out who f***ed dog done I mean I don't know dude that's what I take away from this like like to do to to just just just give it to all the people who support you for for 60 mil well they're gonna give some money back to 75 000 of those top users who i don't know who's still there because the like most excited loyal reddit users i feel like left or like stopped using it in that way that's what i was gonna ask do you think so

obviously we have our stance on it and us being particularly concerned about privacy what fraction of actual because 800 however many million people use reddit every month how what fraction of those people actually care enough to stop using reddit because remember we talked about this last time you're upsetting the most important 10 of your audience and let's say you leave them you still have 90 of the people yeah yeah well your answer is that in 2023 the revenue was up 20 yeah like listen i think like i hate what they did with it reddit's still doing absolutely fine. And I'm sure to them, it doesn't make a difference.

I would argue that probably a lot of people moderating subs are not as well versed as the old moderators used to be who left. I mean, we gave up the MKBHD subreddit to just like, it's just an unofficial subreddit now because we didn't feel like dealing with it anymore. But they're fine. I always knew they were going to be fine. But it doesn't mean they didn't give a giant middle finger to all their like really loyal users and again they were a web-based uh website that didn't have an official app

until they bought a third party app called it the official app it is still terrible by the way it is an awful app and then just said oh yeah everyone so yeah is there like a reddit like competitor like is there another site that you can compare to reddit that that people could even go to no yeah it's the same thing as like the twitter competitor there's a competitor yes does anyone give a shit about it no i don't know if it still exists anymore but i funny feels like it was comparable no it was not no why not wasn't i mean there were no just like a random picture of the day that like a it was sort of i mean i never used it it was more of a gen z thing that i was a part of but my little brother used it i funny has been around for a very Z thing that I was a part of, but my little brother used it. iFunny has been around

for a very long time. No, no, no. Well, that's what I'm saying. It's like when I, you know, when my brother was like nine and had like a, whatever device he had,

like iFunny was the app for him and his friends. So it was like just the r slash funny subreddit. Yeah, exactly. But I think there's like a likes and points. I don't know.

I should, I should shut my mouth before the iFunny community comes after me. Lemmy. Yeah, I was going to say Lemmy. Lemmy is the one that everybody talks about potentially being the alternative, but. Lemmy. Never don't know. I should shut my mouth before the iFunny community comes after me. Lemmy is the one that everybody talks about potentially being the alternative. Yeah, it's an open source one.

You only hear about it when you hear about people being mad at Reddit. Is it on ActivityPub? I don't know if it's on ActivityPub. That was a joke. That was a really bad joke. Nice. Nice getting it. All right, you know who else has billions of dollars?

Walmart. Walmart, baby. Oh, man. Okay, Walmart. Thank you. Thank you. Walmart buys Vizio. Okay, so before we launch into this, I just want to say a lot of the cool stuff we're

about to say in this story came from some really good reporting in The Atlantic by Justin Pot and also some associated press reporting that I found in the San Diego Union Tribune. Just wanted to lay some credit where it's due. Get all our sources. So for everyone listening, when Ellis and I found out that we were going to be

doing this, we went crazy just fact-checking everything we put in the dock three times i know because we were so nervous it's terrifying so there's the sources yeah there you go uh yeah and uh just like really great research and reporting by them but um okay first of all 2.3 billion jordan jordan uh second of all that's so much money that's like a ton of money 2.3 billion and uh and i wanted to you know it makes you think because vizio is a budget tv manufacturer right and it's not like they've like skirted around and found this market as a budget tv like

they have made budget tvs since the. I don't really think they've gone into too many other product categories, too many other markets. Sound bars maybe? I don't even know. Yeah, but so this is like a weird time to enter the budget TV market, right? And that's because TVs are like

ridiculously cheap right now. Some are free. Exactly. They're so cheap that you can now. Some are free. Exactly. They're so cheap that you can literally get some for free. And this is a new thing. Like if you're 10 years old, I don't know why you're listening to the Waveform podcast, but if you are 10 years old,

then you don't remember that 10 years ago, 15 years ago, TVs were really expensive. Did you guys ever play Club Penguin? Yeah. Oh, you did. Okay, but you did ask me the other day and I was like i feel like do you remember what one of the most expensive furniture items in club penguin was

it was the big screen tv that was 5 000 coins you could get i'm pretty sure i don't someone will have to price check this but i'm pretty sure you could get an entire led dance floor in your igloo for about the same price as a single television. Oh, wait, let me fact check this. Yeah, fact check that. It is worth noting that, and this I did fact check, okay? This I did fact check, that a Puffle in Club Penguin was one-sixth of the price of a TV. You could purchase literal flesh for less than that of a TV. Okay. Anyway, TVs are cheap for a few reasons right now. One is they completely changed the manufacturing process.

They use this thing called mother glass, where they start with like a big giant glass sheet and they can stamp multiple displays out of that. That's crazy. So there's a lot less waste, which is great. Also, TVs have a lot of competition from the bottom side of the price equation because companies like TCL and Hisense can make really cheap TVs that are still really decent. And that forces the expensive guys like LG and Samsung to effectively lower them prices to compete.

But, but the big reason TVs are so cheap right now, and this is something people don't think about a lot is because they scrape an unbelievable amount of data from you and that's how they make the money back just a frankly unbelievable amount of data um and that's why according to this blog called carpe diem which does like financial graphs and stuff like that uh tvs have decreased by an average of 97% since the year 2000. That's right, 97%. And another little fun fact I threw in here that's related is that Roku, a company that also makes really cheap TVs, usually partnered with other people,

makes four to five times as much revenue off of what they call a platform. Extreme platform. Yeah, so that's like ads on the Roku channel, licensing out the operating system, this, that, this, that, than they do on their actual devices. So it's way, way, way more profitable to be in the data game when it comes

to TVs than it is to... Which is why the telly is completely free. I'm still waiting for mine. Yeah. Where is it? I'm thinking about something right now. What's on your mind? They scrape a lot of data. Oh no. Find it.

No. Left. Top left. I mean that's a lot of smarts but also a lot of data. But also is that even what kind of data would a TV scrape from me? Let's say it knows everything i watch yeah and when you watch it and when i watch it and when i turn the tv on and off

do you have kids do you have a partner are you alone do you think they know that yes or do you infer that from the data do you watch love island at 8 30 p.m two nights a week you have a girlfriend that's except damn that's good damn that's good yeah okay let's say so is any of that information that they're scraping particularly sensitive well no there's different kinds of data so there's like ppi which is personally i or pii personally identifiable information and then pii2 something like that i forgot everyone's gonna yell at me i know they exist but i think it's that first kind of data that is not exactly like your social security and everything like that. Right. It's just regular data.

Where you live. What time are you watching these things? Are you home all day? Do you work from home? That kind of stuff. Yeah. Because I think about sensitive data. I think about what I buy, what I spend money on, my like the where i live and things like that and uh obviously

that stuff like a browser would know or like a someone you buy a product from would know but the tv it's like i don't really mind if anyone knows how much tv i watch or where or how much it's on or any of that stuff well it's not exactly's not, I think the crazy part is that because of your habits, like because of your viewing habits, then they're able to infer other things

that you may care about. That's true. That's really interesting. Yeah. Also, they'll know like what services you subscribe to. They'll know how

you use them. And I think, yeah, they can use that to infer a lot of purchasing data. And then also, don't remember, don't forget um you get

served ads on uh on these platforms um and that i think is the big reason that uh yeah you know yeah that's what i just say it's kind of an interesting point to think about in any types of like scraping data is like there are plenty of people who are just like, I don't really give a damn about what it is because a lot of it's marketing or whatever. And there are people who don't care as much and there's people who care more. I mean, the Reddit stuff and like scraping it for AI is like, I don't really care as much about what I post on there. It's just more of like there's screwing the people over and like making a bunch of money off of it. But like, yeah, it's very clearly this stuff is there scraping your data. is more of like they're screwing the people over and like making a bunch of money off of it but like yeah it's very clearly this stuff is they're scraping your data and that's how everyone's

making money these days yeah pretty much but do you remember the story of how target figured out that the girl was pregnant before her father that was all from just data yeah advertising stuff arguably target would know much more sensitive information about you than your tv yeah they did that just off of buying so target knows where you live target knows when you bought things what you bought your tv knows where you live yeah for sure you know yeah they could have where i live but they don't know what i bought when i bought it and in the frequency that i started buying it more they might see that i didn't skip a certain ad and can maybe think about that a little more but i just i feel like there's levels to like how

important the data is yeah this is a little bit underneath the one that i am most curious about do you know what would bump up targets uh ways to scrape data if they bought a television company and then scraped all the data from that yeah I feel like you just went into the point of where Walmart was like, how do I get more data? Yeah. It's let's buy a TV company. So it's actually not just about Walmart getting more data. It's about Walmart leveraging that data. So Walmart has this platform that doesn't get brought up very much.

That's called Walmart Connect. You guys ever heard of this? No. Exactly. So Walmart Connect is sort of like Spotify for all this time. But teach me a thing. It's for brands who sell things at Walmart. So if you're like a brand or a seller, you can go into your Walmart Connect and you can buy placements on the Walmart homepage. You can buy ads as part of Walmart's ad stuff. And soon, because Vizio has this whole TV streaming ecosystem, they'll be able to plug all of those ad spots and all of that demographic data into

what they describe as a closed loop ecosystem. That's a big part of the Walmart Connect selling point to sellers is that not only do you give them money and they place ads, but then they give you money and they place ads, but then they give you also Walmart customer specific feedback, which you can then use to do a stronger campaign and create the closed loop. And this is huge because Vizio, according to their last shareholder thing, had 500 advertising partners. 500 advertising partners which means all of those partners are now partners with walmart wow i guess it's kind of similar to like amazon in a way where if you buy enough stuff from amazon they know a lot about you and then if you're an advertiser who wants to sell something and you want to get in front of the right people, boy, does Amazon know how to get it in front of the right people.

And Walmart is that big, and they kind of have the same system going on where it's like, all right, yes, we have physical stores. But trust me, we know a lot about how to get the right product in front of the right people. And Vizio, boy, do they have advertisers that want to get in front of the right people and vice versa. They have a bunch of information, and we can use that information so it it checks out it makes sense and i think it puts a really cool spin on some of the stories we've heard over the past year with amazon and netflix adding ads to their user experience it's not just so they can make a few bucks so i mean i'm sure it is so they can make a few bucks here and there with ad time about the bucks but it's it's about turning into a business that is leveraging your data that is uh doing targeted ads that is effectively an advertising company it's it's

almost like they're taking a page out of google's book um in a really interesting who's also a ruthless advertiser that you never think about yeah well i think about it well yeah um but yeah so this story i just thought this story was cool it it it combines a bunch of different weird things about the time we live in i also just want to say um assuming you're not afraid or freaked out by the data being collected about you um this is a great time to buy a TV it just is like I don't know if the gravy train is going to keep going and for how long and I'm not saying

like go out and replace your TV we should all be trying harder to make our electronics last longer but that being said it's just a great they're so cheap they're so cheap it's dope well at least here they are I don't know about in other countries but in the US they're so cheap. They're so cheap. It's dope. Well, at least here they are.

I don't know about in other countries. But in the U.S., they're very cheap. That's true. I would say they're commoditized to the level of the smartphone. Yeah. Probably more so. Speaking of ads, we should get to some after we do the next trivia question. You nailed it.

There it is. All right. All right all right oh no i've been waiting so for this moment if you knew you'd only have one opportunity i don't even remember the last question damn okay i gotta think all right so we've been talking a lot about reddit uh data social media etc, according to Statista, has 800 plus million monthly active users. Oh no, he went into Statista. Yeah, that is a lot of users and a lot of data that they generate. And that's a lot of smarts, but also a lot of data.

Doesn't that make them like one of the biggest social media platforms? Reddit has 800 million? 800 million monthly active users you're right ellis that does make them i knew it i was about to google it and i was like wait i probably shouldn't google this does make them one of the largest social media apps or uh services in the world but it doesn't even crack the top five no really really 800 million Name the top three. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. How many of them do I have to live in China to use?

Zero. No. What? Are they all owned by one company? No further questions. Well, we'll be right back. We'll be right back. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite skater, or your style, there's something every NHL fan is going to love about BetMGM.

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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome back to the Producer Forum podcast with Ellis and Adam. Official name. Official name. Change. Trademark. Official name change. Trademark. We have some Apple news, though. Yeah, this is an entire, well, not entirely, but a big Apple section. Big Apple section. First, Apple Music monthly replay.

It's like Spotify Rewind. Spotify Wrapped. It's like Spotify Wrapped, but every month. Too much. You think so? It's too much. I have been listening to pretty much two albums since the year started. I've been on this like serious two album kick.

Yeah. So it would just tell me how much I listen to those two albums. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Which should be kind of interesting, but.'t know i could be wrong but my personally my listening habits don't change that much month to month i like the yearly recap because it's a year is long my winter mood my summer mood my fall mood i feel like doing it every month i'm just never gonna check this like i don't care i'll wait till the end of the year. Yeah. It doesn't. I don't know.

I mean, we saw it also like it is Spotify wrapped has a lot of really interesting, fun little data and they'll make your like aura or whatever. Yeah. This is not that. This is just like you listen to this song for this many minutes. So no complaints, no notes. I don't know. What are the two albums you've been listening to this year? Let me see. While you do that, I

want to do a quick interjection, and that's because Adam and I drive home together sometimes. Carpool, save the environment. And on our drive home, we've discovered we really, really like listening to this radio station in Jersey City, 91.1 WFMU. So if you live in the Jersey City area, or I think the transmission makes it all the way to Brooklyn.

So anywhere in the New York City general area, check out 91.1 FM. There's like always something good on. Always. It's so good. But the two albums I've been listening to, and I'm the host. I can talk about whatever I want. Oh, let's go.

I've been listening to Andy Schaaf's Norm. Terrific album. And I've been listening to the compilation of Live at Montreux Jazz Festival, Nina Simone. You would. Record. Nice. Both terrific.

I don't need to know how much i've listened to it though uh what about you i've been doing insano by kid cuddy insano okay no great album and creatures of habit by kilcho which is a random indie band really cool cool you guys want to shout out some music daft punk but i'm open i'm opening up my uh replay for february right now oh oh yeah walmart because i should say. Wait, you use Apple Music? Not much. Oh, okay. So that's funny.

I only use it in Vision Pro. So it's going to be real limited. And you're looking at this replay in the Apple Music app, right? It brings you to a website and then takes you out to the web apps. Exactly. Yes. For some reason, Apple Music replay can only be looked at in a browser. Don't know why. Wait, does Spotify wrap the no it isn't no no no it's you can do it in in the desktop and

the mobile app but i don't yeah that's the thing they just only do it in the browser which is fine marquez what were you listening to in division pro so i i get to the part where it says uh this is your replay jump in. So I click jump in and it's like, your replay is still in progress. Check back in early March. Oh, that's for February.

It doesn't give you a January one. I think there's a January button. I didn't look. Uh, okay. Wow. Well, big letdown.

Yeah. In other Apple news, there's an Apple sports app literally got launched this morning yeah and it's basically just a like score aggregator is what it seems like but and this is one thing we were talking about like in before we were recording um if you open up the app actually let me open up right now just to make sure so i don't get this wrong but if you open up the app actually let me open up right now just to make sure so i don't get this wrong but if you open up the app it gives you the game that's upcoming so and if you click that game the very first thing is betting odds on the game oh no stats no stats about players or anything like that just betting odds no which is even of stats no it does if you like click

into it but it's more like the first thing it gives you is the betting odds which i found very interesting look if you sports if you if you daily fantasy or whatever the kids are calling it these days like no shade you know what i mean i get it it's fun but it's also like apple what are you gonna do porn next like this is like the least apple thing i've ever that's more what interested me it's very unapple like to me to be like because that is like for adults betting is for adults it's like and apple is positioning itself always to be like safe for your kids like their whole ipad thing turn off the screen and everything and now it's just like nope here's some betting odds this is

unsavory but anyway besides, the app looks pretty cool. No, it does. I'm excited. I'm excited to not have to Google Philadelphia 76ers three times a day. Yeah, exactly. I know. I know, Andrew. Yeah, so I signed up for the MLS Apple TV thing that they had.

And I actually was really impressed with how they do the scoring and everything like it pops up on the dynamic island you can watch it there it's all really cool it also does that with uh other teams that i follow so like with nicks sometimes it'll just pop up on the screen and i'll not even know there was a nick game that day and i'll be able to like keep up with the score one thing that i mean first of all i should clarify this is only available in the u.s the u.k and canada why i i don't know it's unfortunate but we are in the u.s so i can talk about it um it doesn't have as in-depth stats as something like uh i don't know how to pronounce this fought mob f.o.t. what yeah it's an app that specifically has crazy stats for soccer or football okay um it's actually

the apple sports little dynamic island thing is faster than my tv like a couple weeks ago we were watching an arsenal game shout out arsenal um and the we're watching the game just sitting next to me and on my phone i see soccer scored soccer is like a good player and i was like oh and jess is looking like what what what happened and she's like looking at the tv and nothing happened yet and it was a full like 11 seconds before he scored which is crazy so i have to like literally put my phone upside down when we're watching the game because otherwise it'll it'll be spoiled okay i'm on fought mob right now and you are not kidding bro oh yeah it's crazy this is crazy i have never heard of a stat xg on target and then it's red seas x got i don't know what that means you know this

reminds me of what the what you said earlier about how the number this is going to take away from the like the number of times you google who's winning or what's happening in the game yeah it reminds me of apple's weather app which is it's not as detailed as the most detailed weather apps but boy does this take away a lot of google searches yeah for sure like if i just add my top three favorite teams i google the scores a lot yeah yeah who's winning the game who won the game last night yeah they play next when did they play this team a lot of google search it's all just there now. Something to keep in mind. Yeah, it's really smart. So some of the sports that they have currently are MLS, NBA, NCAA basketball, men's and women's, NHL, Bundesliga, La Liga, Liga MX, Liga 1, Premier League,

Serie A, all the soccer ones. Well, I shouldn't say all the soccer ones. A lot of the soccer ones. Wow, you mean football? Yes, football. Sorry. Come on. Excuse me. Football football there's also more leagues that are coming wait there's not even football uh because the season's the sea well that is a good question are they going to add football next season supposedly they're going to add it so the ones that where the season is over there it's not

included in the press release but it's upcoming when the season starts again so wnba mlb nfl those are coming word yeah so pretty cool overall like i just found it again very interesting that the betting gods was the first thing you see dude it's wild i'm not happy about that but you know i don't get to decide the world we live in and uh that is what it is i'm just like why are they getting a kickback from that do they get any money from betting apps doing great like why have that at the top is it just one more google search they can take away also i didn't realize that the odds were like the same for all the books like i would assume different bookies set different odds but i've never placed a sports

bet so i i don't even know if you like click the odds does it take you to whoever's odds they are or like is it just vegas odds it actually just reaches into your pocket and takes your wallet it does not say because if it was specifically someone i would say they're making advertising dollars off of that's fair whatever but it doesn't say if i click it nothing happens yeah ladies if your boyfriend sports bets ask him if he has restrictions because if you win a lot in those apps they put restrictions on your account they kick you off if he says no i've never been restricted he's losing your money shout out buddy healed my guys played four games for my sixers averaging 23 points yeah this is now a basketball podcast this is now a basketball podcast psych

adam adam ask who has him on the fantasy team you got buddy healed who's got buddy healed on 23 points. Yeah. This is now a basketball podcast. This is now a basketball podcast. Crazy. Psych! Adam, ask who has him on the fantasy team. You got Buddy Heald? Who's got Buddy Heald on the fantasy team, Marquez? Let me just check. Marquez just picked him up. Let me just check.

As Ellis was saying that. Let's see what that says. Be Heald. No games. No games today. It's all-star break. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I do, in fact, have Buddy Heald. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice. What place are you in in our fantasy league, Marquez? no games today it's all-star break oh okay yeah but uh i do in fact have buddy heels yeah yeah nice what what place are you in in our fantasy league marquez top two but not one top two i'm half a point behind alex okay you're sorting wrong that's no that's i you're sorting wrong i'm right behind alex okay but this is not totally a basketball podcast because last week we did not get the chance to talk about the stupid regular host somehow forgot to talk about OpenAI Sora.

So we're going to clean up the mess they left for us. Wait till you see the mess of this producer's table. Lights falling. Open AI Sora. It's a text to video AI. Yeah. Just want to say like all the coverage I was reading about this were like, yo,

like this is the first market. Like this is here. Runway has had text to video for a while. You and Brandon always talk about Runway. We don't just talk about it, we use it. We use it professionally. Specifically, like it has this feature? It looks more diffusion-y.

You know, than the examples that, yeah. It looks a little more spaghetti-y. But no, it's much more of like, well, first let's talk about the announcement. So on OpenAI's website, they made this announcement for this new thing called Sora. They are still red teaming it, which I think means they're trying to have people

do bad things with it. Yeah, it's like a security term. Yeah, again, we're not security guys, as you could tell from our cryptography, quantum computing here before i was almost killed by it but it looks really good and the cool things that they're sort of like pushing forward as big features and these are things that i have found runway to sort of struggle with custom resolution um so you're not just locked into like 720 or 1080 or 4k you can do lots of weird resolutions which sounds small but when it comes to machine learning is big like i i use this software called touch designer which has some ai integrations and i remember reading this

whole thing about this uh facial recognition facial tracking AI that someone built for it wouldn't work if you used a vertical webcam feed. Same exact thing, but as soon as you change it from a horizontal to vertical thing, it just broke. But so yeah, custom aspect ratios, custom resolutions, it can do multiple figures and subjects really well. Interesting. So it seems like it's pretty cool the part that i found really cool was in the sort of like tech paper thing that they published alongside and that was that um they already have gpt which we know is a transformer model and they already have dolly which uh okay i'm getting i'm getting a note from my producers here folks live live coming in breaking news will smith eating spaghetti i'm assuming we're gonna cut to that clip right here

i i guess so um does he make a sound in that video does he boy well it also came back because he did like a post recreating it in person. Yeah. Will Smith? Oh, you didn't see it? Yeah, he tweeted it. Will Smith posted a video that said, AI then, AI now, and it's just him redoing all of the scenes. And he unhinges his jaw like a snake in the video, right?

Well, no, it's the updated AI that doesn't unhinge the jaw. It's not actually. It's him violently getting spanked. Yeah. Okay, I gotta watch this. It's just as crazy as you're imagining. Oh my gosh. But it's awesome.

That's a win for Will Smith and his his team i think right there truly there's a lot happening in his life and everything but that was genius but it's interesting so so gpt is a transformer model that's what the t stands for dolly is a diffusion model i'm pretty sure that's what the d in dolly stands for. Someone should double check that for me. But they're saying that Sora is a diffusion transformer or a transforming diffuser. It's like some combination of the two, which is interesting, right? And it took me a little bit to get it. But the gist of it is that transformers are really good at sequential understanding, and they can do this across really long sequences. And that's why ChatGPT can write you five paragraphs and the fifth paragraph still is related to the first paragraph. Language tends to work sequentially. Images do not work sequentially. They can have sequential elements in them, but they don't work sequentially. And that's why we use diffusion models, uh, for a lot of image generation stuff. Diffusion models are really good at understanding spatial relationships and building these sort of complex relationship networks where there's no, there's not a linear sequence to it, but there is still a connection of ideas.

there's not a linear sequence to it, but there is still a connection of ideas. A video is a bunch of images that don't have these sequential relationships, but then the images are arranged sequentially. So to generate a video from nothing, you actually need to deploy both kinds of models in tandem with one another. And there's a bunch of really interesting stuff

about how the sort of like token system kinds of models in tandem with one another. And there's a bunch of really interesting stuff about how the sort of like token system that a lot of transformers use doesn't exactly work for video, you got to use these sort of temporal tokens called patches. It's really interesting. I recommend and this sounds silly, but this is actually what I did, reading the open AI paper with chat GPT in another window. So you can get clarification on stuff. That's like a little too hard to understand. That's awesome. Um,

but it lied to you. I hope not. I hope not. It seemed like everything that I was reading was I could sort of, uh, fact check. I found this cool guy's blog. It's Jono,

not it's Jono with an H J O H N O. Dot com. Just some random dudes. Not our Jono. Not our Jono. Got it. Jono. I mean, J-O-H-N-O.com. Just some random dude's phone. Not our Jono. Not our Jono, different Jono. I mean, unless Jono is like secretly an AI wizard. But the thing that I'm really excited for with Sora is if they're able to develop like a platform for it

in the same way that Runway does. Because the Runway tool, you have like text to video. You also have image to video. You also have image to video. You also have video to video. And the video to video is like really cool. Like the example they have on their website, which I think illustrates really well, is someone set up a bunch of books standing up on a desk and then filmed a shot. And then using runway was able to turn those books into skyscrapers and have it be like a city fly-through scene. Interesting.

Then they also deploy the Runway models to do things like automatic background removal. If you've seen the Ellis vs. AI video, the scene where my hair is getting blown back and stuff, that we didn't use a green screen. It was just shot in a normal room. Oh, i was there and then we ai yeah i know i had the background out we sprayed water on your face yeah so i if

sora is actually all that and as good as opening i wants us to think i can't wait to see the platform that it is wrapped in thank you for letting me talk about that for 15 minutes straight america let's go quick fact checked dolly is not an acronym it's not an acronym we've definitely talked about this before it's just the combination of salvador dolly and wally damn nice well i will say andrew now that you're back in the pod talking um you mentioned the other day something really good that now i see in every like sora video which is the king on like random movements so like if you watch a video the camera will just like drift to the right and then out of nowhere just like really hard start drifting to the left it's like they haven't learned how to ease in and out yet which is interesting yeah it felt like

there was one specifically with a turtle and it was kind of like panning on this turtle and then just kind of like went left it looks like anyone who's ever video edited before the first time they add keyframe movements to something where there's not the smoothing it's just like left left left left right right right and like there's it's almost smooth but not smooth at the same time i don't know if you're into if you know keyframes you would see it in a second it's just very interesting because some of these demos are insane like it really replicates hand movement of like cameras that are holding or people holding cameras and the little jittery things that you get but then like that one motion it just really messes up every time i i watched every single thing i could find generated by sora and did

you like you should do a video on this. Yeah. No, I showed a bunch of them in the video that we made, but it is remarkable how good it's gotten so quickly and how well it is able to reproduce the parts of videos that you can ask for. Like some of the prompts are like, make this look like 35 millimeter film. Make this look like cartoonish or hyper super realistic and it does that stuff too which is yeah crazy and it does make me wonder because now there's a meme of people tweeting real videos with made by sorrow of like handsome man walks down broadway and it's just a video of themselves and it's like made by sora but it looks like you but now it's like how many these videos really could just cross

your twitter timeline or instagram timeline and just look like a real video and you wouldn't know unless you watch it a third time or a fourth time upon which it becomes very obvious when you see the things like the keying or like the legs overlapping or the hands turning into seven or twelve fingers or whatever but it's really fast it's scary like like mr cheta oh no oh no mr cheta was this thing that spread around twitter it's it's this it's really hilarious it's a picture of a rat and wearing like a tuxedo jacket i think with his arms he's standing on some carpet he's rat sized and he's holding out his arms like this if standing on some carpet. He's rat-sized. And he's holding out his arms like this. If you just Google Mr. Cheddar, it'll come up.

This is not the first time we've looked at this on the podcast also. Oh, yeah, no, we've talked about Mr. Cheddar before. But no one knew it was a mid-journey image until like months after. Not that, obviously, it's not a real rat, you know. Yeah, I feel like everything is believable wherever just crossed your timeline but the a lot of times the giveaway is fingers in a lot of these videos it felt like the giveaway was like real world physics it didn't quite get like there was the one of the birthday cake where candles are blowing in different directions which didn't make sense and there

was turbulence i think inside your. And there's another one of the cat in the bed with the person and the bed comes or the blanket quilt comes from behind her and just like flops over top of her with absolutely no movement. It's just like the way it moves is just totally wrong. You know what it doesn't have?

It doesn't have conservation of mass. Yeah. Like if you watch the iconic one everyone shared of the lady walking down the street in Tokyo. Walking down the street. Watch her legs. They like merge and blend into each other over and over again and just swap back and forth. I don't know if you noticed that. I did not.

Like that dance move with your knees. Yeah, exactly. Except her right leg becomes her left leg. Interesting. And then swaps back in. Like the, like you said with the hands like people will clap and the hands will just merge into one hand and then split back into two hands like that is weird the blanket will like become more blanket and less blanket

and it looks physically realistic but like also how did that mass come from and why is it moving weird stuff like that it is weird am i the only one that's like terrified of this you too okay i make videos so i'm pretty worried i'm terrified but i feel like i've gotten enough mileage out of the runway platform and it's helped me do work enough that i'm feeling excited but you're not also trying to like de-establish a government or something you know not that you know not that i know not to my knowledge it has looking at you belgium no we've talked about how the the photo making tools have gotten to the point where we can use them as a tool so it's like oh it's not good enough to replace me great but it is good enough to be used as a brainstorming tool or even like a rough draft

tool for me yeah and even to the point where like i said this in the video the the drone shot of big sir or whatever it was i think that's good enough for i think a lot of people looking for like licensed footage who are going to buy a drone shot of big sir like there's enough high resolution video of drone shots of big sir that ai just made another one for you and you don't have to now hire that drone pilot to make your own or pay that license fee to get that footage that already exists just for your you know internal powerpoint or whatever you're doing damn samsung was ahead of the game with their moon photos what what what do we think uses more electricity? A drone flying into the sky over Big Sur and capturing, or the server farm that would generate a video?

Have you ever flown a DJI drone? Those batteries go crazy. How did the drone pilot get to the spot to take off? Is his car electric? Did he take a plane? he fly yeah no he's a mountain man he crawled there he never leaves he's always there yeah yeah i don't know this thing just kind of like it's really cool but like the first thing when you were playing it for me when i walked in that morning you were like oh look at these like new videos that dropped or

whatever i did not realize they were ai at all i just i just thought you were watching videos and like some of them again if you really look like there's one with a guy reading a book remember you showed me that one and like at one point the page just kind of like flips up like one of those yellow notepad books but he's holding like a novel so it's like the page wouldn't turn that way so that's like a tell but at first that was like 13 seconds into the video there's a solid like nine seconds of just a dude reading a book and i didn't think anything of it and when i think about tech like tech theoretically with people working on it gets better and better and better which means that the tell for us right now which

is oh did you catch that with the hands or the legs or the book page, the tells are going to get smaller and smaller and smaller. Theoretically, right? One would hope. Until it's completely indistinguishable from reality, right? Which then what? What happens? Which then you look around and you're like, what about this one?

Nah, nah, nah. Are we in an AI? Did Vision Pro get that good that fast? Ellis Roven's in this one. So is Mr. Cheddar. Oh, no. Anyway, I think that's about... That about wraps it up, right?

That about wraps it up. Yeah, thank you guys for sticking with us. I know. I think that's it. That's all we have to do, right? We don't have anything else to do. That's it. All right, bye.

See you. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We have the thing. Oh, the thing. Okay. Oh, the thing. Okay. Oh, my God. I get to write on the whiteboard? Grab your pens as well?

Your markers? Also, country of Belgium, I am not planning your demise. I'm sorry. Sounds like what you would say if you were planning it. No, no, no, no. I love Belgium. The Antwerp Zoo, a place I've never been, I've heard it's great. I was just going to say, have you ever been to Belgium?

No. It's awesome. I'm sure I would love it. You would heard it's great. I was just going to say, have you ever been to Belgium? No. It's awesome. I'm sure I would love it. You would love it. Yeah. Chocolate. The flag is dope. Yeah.

Waffles. Antwerp. Brussels. Yeah. Lots to love about Belgium. Sprout. Flemish. Great language.

Anyway. Sounds like you're trying to think about the trivia questions a little harder before we go. You can talk too much about Belgium there. Yeah. Speaking of Belgium. Just kidding. All right. think about the trivia questions a little harder before we get belgium there yeah speaking of belgium i'm just kidding all right are you ready first question i'm so ready okay you've got the music for me yeah is it that one oh yeah it is that one marcus is way better okay all right we talked about garmin before damn They were named after the two co-founders, Gary Burrell and Min Cao. But they started in 1989 selling a $2,500 GPS device under a different name that combines two words.

What is that name? Good timing on the music there. Thank you. I just realized how hard it is to think and talk at the same time. Now I know why you guys get so quiet. Two different words. I want the name of the company. Yeah.

I'm writing it down. You should do a score update. Hold on. I'll potentially give you a hint here in case I did that poorly. Yeah, sure. It is the abbreviate, the two, the abbreviation of two words. It's not two full words. No, no, no.

I figured that. I got it. Okay. Pencils up. Pencils up. Andrew was talking. It's cool. Okay.

Concatany. There it is. What'd we say? I wrote global mapping or GM. I put low Q track, like location tracking. What is it? Pro-nav. Pro-nav?

Oh, dang. I've heard of that. What were the words? Professional navigator. Or navigator. Or navigator, yeah. One of them. Damn.

I tried to make it reasonable to think of. Yeah, yeah. I kept mentioning the GPS device to try and think of navigation maybe yeah damn okay that was a good one price is right rules my turn we're only playing delta all right well we still have a chance to get on the scoreboard yeah okay no worries this is the tough one but this is a fun one i think. I think you have a chance at this one. So, on the subject of social media, Reddit, data,

Reddit has 800 plus million monthly active users as of January 2023. Today, that doesn't even crack the top five social media websites by monthly active users. Name the top three. Oh, top three. Top three. Do we have to name them i just want to say okay again marquez is just naturally good at everything that we do and it's really annoying sometimes he has come into this producer role perfectly i'm just here slugging along hoping to not get drowned uh okay can we get one point per app sure wait do Sure Wait, do they have to be in order?

Yeah, okay Do they have to be in order? They do not have to be in order Okay, I only got two Can we get another? Yeah, extra points if they're in order Oh, okay, okay You already wrote three things?

Yeah So I'll give you one point per correct answer. All right. And a fourth bonus point if you have them in order. That's four points. I can take the lead here. Top three. You could.

Okay. Most used social media apps. I'm ready. Oh my God. By monthly active users. Sorry. I'll give you a fifth point if you name all of them. All of the top five.

All of the top five? Wait, you asked for top five? I asked for top three. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One point for correct answer. Five five fifth point if you name all of them all of what all every social all right we good yeah i think so all right flip them flip them and read them all right i wrote one facebook Facebook, two, WhatsApp, three, Instagram. No. In order?

Very, very, very close. But unfortunately, you named, well, I'll let Ellis go first. I put one, Facebook, two, WhatsApp, three, TikTok. Damn. So here TikTok. Damn. So, here's the catch. There's a tie for third, and Adam, you named both of the ones in a tie for third. Oh, WhatsApp and Instagram. I'm going to give you credit for naming the top three, even though that was technically 3A and 3B.

Okay. Wait, what? He only named three apps. He named three. Yeah, so I missed number two. You named number one, Facebook. Three billion monthly active users. You named number three, WhatsApp.

Two billion monthly active users. And you named number three, Instagram. Two billion monthly active users. What's number two? What you both missed is YouTube. Damn! Get out of here! You can't even send a DM on that website.

Oh, no. No. Where's TikTok? TikTok here. I'll pull up Statista since I mean, I feel like we all love the numbers. TikTok is right behind Instagram. 1.6. Oh, so no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You have to convince me YouTube is not social media. You can't send a DM. Marques, Marques, Marques. Marques, Marques, Marques. How many followers, how many subscribers do you have on YouTube? Almost 19 million. Correct. How much engagement do you get when you make a community post?

Depends, but about 1%. Doesn't sound like a social media site to me. How many followers do you have on Twitter, and how much engagement do you get when you post to them? It depends on the post, but I've... Well, hold on. Let's go to my Twitter now. I've gone viral. Sure, same.

That was good. That was good. Fun. Obviously, Facebook's huge's huge youtube second whatsapp and instagram are both owned by meta as well then you have tiktok and then you have a bunch of messaging apps wechat facebook messenger telegram do you is the one from china snapchat x is on there qq is on there pinterest is on yeah i was a little nervous if we were going to include messaging apps on this list so i'm glad that was a little nervous if we were going to include messaging apps on this list. So I'm glad that they did. That was a good call.

If you go actually into YouTube analytics and you sort external video traffic by social media websites, often the number one driving external website to an MKBHD video is people messaging each other on WhatsApp. Interesting. They send the videos to each other and that gets tracked by YouTube. Which now has bulleted lists and numbered lists and formatted text. Man, I don't think YouTube is a freaking social media.

I don't think the messaging apps feel like social media either. That's also true. It's a weird kind of thing. Also, seeing Twitter getting dumped on by Snapchat is really funny to me for some reason. People still use Snapchat. People still use snapchat people use twitter i do not as many no i love twitter still some of it some of the ratios are crazy sorry

we're diving off the deep end but like would you have thought like tiktok's huge right yeah would you have thought that i don't know telegram is half of the size of tiktok that seems gigantic no but i also wouldn't consider it a social media app would you have thought whatsapp is 50 more people than tiktok yes that one checks out tiktok's global now so is whatsapp isn't it well tiktok's not in china no yeah it is They just have a different version. No, it's called Douyin in China. Oh, yeah. Douyin is separate. Yeah, they have it separate.

If I include it, it's number two. Right. But it's separate from TikTok because TikTok proper is the one that's not in China. Well, I think Douyin has lots of rules and restrictions that are on TikTok. Yeah. Well, we learned something.

I would have thought that Twitter, Twitter, which is very unpopular and less than snapchat is also a third of tiktok damn really that's pretty huge i wouldn't have thought of that yeah would you have thought that pinterest is 75 of twitter oh i'm sorry what's twitter i would have assumed this is bigger than twitter yeah that's what i would have said too i'm still people love pinterest bro pinterest is crazy single celebrity on pinterest i'm not on pinterest so i can't but i guarantee you like when if pal tro has like a crazy pop in pinterest or something like that when when pinterest used to be big i remember it just being the one social media site i could never understand. I don't know why. And it wasn't from lack of trying.

I tried on that website a bunch of times and I just don't know why I couldn't figure it out. Yeah. I still can't believe that there are 800 million Redditors. When they say... Monthly. ...les Reddit army, they are not kidding. And Reddit doesn't get listed as a social media site

by Satista. So I can't do that from Reddit's own numbers. Why is YouTube a social media site by Satista. So I do include that from Reddit's own numbers. Why is YouTube a social media site and Reddit? I'm done. I'm done. Waveform is produced by Marques Brownlee and Andrew Manganielli. Great job, guys. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

And our intro outro music is by Vane. So. Nice. vein soon nice I think if it's falling Marcus is like