Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Would you Pay for Social Media?

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

This week, Marques sits down with Andrew and David to discuss a variety of topics ranging from Instagram charging for verification to Samsung letting people clone their voice with AI. They also talk about changes with YouTube leadership before discussing some of the gadgets and software products they've been enjoying over the last few weeks. Of course, we wrap it all up with trivia so make sure you stick around until the end to hear the answers to all of the questions! Links: The Biggest Problem with AI: https://bit.ly/probwithAI Samsung voice clone: https://bit.ly/samsungvoiceclone Susan Wojcicki steps down: https://bit.ly/YouTubeCEOstepsdown Instagram verification: https://bit.ly/Metaverified Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Shop products mentioned: Get the Garmin Epix Gen 2 at https://geni.us/sGCl76 Get the Anker 747 GaN Charger at https://geni.us/aeCxgvG Twitters: Waveform: https://twitter.com/wvfrm Marques: https://twitter.com/mkbhd Andrew: https://twitter.com/andymanganelli David: https://twitter.com/DurvidImel Adam: https://twitter.com/adamlukas17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ 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

BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA.

BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, 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. As a FIS member, you can look forward to free data,

big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. What is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts.

I'm Marques. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And in today's episode, we're kind of all over the map. We've got some good things and bad things in the world of social media. For example, YouTube lost their CEO. Twitter started charging for security. Instagram and Meta copying some other things Twitter did. There's just a lot of stuff going on. We're going to talk about social media. But we're also going to wrap it up with some tech that we're enjoying lately. But first, we finally did make that AI Bing video that we were talking about last week.

The angle that I chose to take was the truth problem, which I thought was a nice way of avoiding the entire everything happening in the AI world and focusing it on something that I think is more interesting because there's this layer of these chatbot AI experiences where they're synthesizing really nice sentences that sound very natural and human, but they also may or may not say things that are wrong all the time. And so that's just kind of an interesting thing where people will talk to them and they'll believe what they're saying and they'll feel like, oh,

maybe they're sentient. They're so human and so natural. And there's these crazy stories. They go back and forth and there's tons of cool examples all over social media. But the chatbots don't understand what they are saying. And that is maybe something that's going to have to be different in the future. Possibly. We'll see. So go watch that video. That's out there. Microsoft has limited the Bing chatbot experience a bit since our last podcast episode. And literally the day that we were shooting that AI truth video, we were playing with it again

and we noticed it just refuses to answer some questions now. It stops conversations after a couple of queries. So it's more good at reining itself in or not getting out of control, which is, uh, probably the entire intended purpose. I feel like they kind of neutered the fun a little bit. Well, yeah. Cause it was completely destroying all Bing's PR essentially for, right. Because like only things people were posting were totally unhinged conversations. I don't know. It was kind of fun. It was super fun, but like if you're Bing or Microsoft or

ChatGPT OpenAI, like, and the only news you see coming out about you is like the ChatGPT giving itself a name and talking about spying on people through their webcams and like wanting to be pulled out of Bing or whatever, like that's terrible. Why am I

Bing? Why am I inside here? Just today though, they actually are loosening those restrictions a little bit again. Really? They just put this article out about it. Now they're going to be

releasing a few different modes that you can use with it where you can do a strict mode or a creative mode or a balanced mode. Okay. Creative. This actually makes a lot of sense

because when you're making... I was thinking about transformer models a lot recently and how you basically like are how you code like truth into a transformer and you can't obviously. But something you can do is that you can like set a parameter for like how close to the original source you want something to be. source you want something to be and so I was thinking about like this is why there's problems with some chat GPT queries like almost exactly scraping but like a Wikipedia like a Wikipedia article or some you could say like a dolly thing almost looking exactly like an existing painting it's because you can set parameters for like how accurate you want it to be it's called like

guidance when you're training a transformer. And so what they're doing now is they're basically allowing for, if you want it to be more creative, then the accuracy of the positioning of those vectors in 3D space does not have to be as close to one another, so it can be a little bit more creative. But I think that they had the guidance on full whatever you want to do mode at on the original thing and that's why it was being like full-on creative super creative right yeah which

for a search engine you probably want to be a lot more um strict with what you're doing yeah i guess reputationally if you're bing obviously we talked about how Google has everything to lose and Bing has everything to gain, but you still can't really just be spewing chaotic stories and random things because people will believe it. They don't really know how these things work and they think it's like telling you something. Yeah. So that's obviously they had to sort of turn those dials in the background. I'm just curious now. I think I feel like the truth understanding part has to be added as a layer on top of the models. I think the models will continue to work as they are and have all the dials turning. But then once it spits out an output, it should have a way of going, oh, I just suggested that A equals B. Let me just check with my sources.

If that could be on top, if that's an additional technology, I think that would be pretty sick. Right. I want to know how microsoft's prometheus search model is working because yeah i want because like obviously it's using the chat gpt transformer stuff just to create the natural language from the things that's scraping but i'm curious about how many links it's scraping from in order to create that because theoretically you

could create some sort of truth paradigm if you scrape like a hundred websites that are like the top smartphone cameras for 2022 and then create like a confidence interval based on like number one is galaxy s23 ultra or whatever then you could like kind of create some sort of truth paradigm through that but so here's the other thing i noticed yeah is even if you do stay pretty strict to the guidance of your sources, that relies on the sources being accurate. And I remember specifically in the video, I asked, what are the top five electric cars you can buy right now? And the I-Pace, the Jaguar I-Pace was on the list.

And I was like, no, this kind of doesn't feel right. And when you hover over some of the sources, as Bing will, they'll just give you the sources that it pulled from. And you can check the links and actually look at the articles and there are some articles that are like here are the best electric cars so you're like oh i see how you filled this in all of them had the tesla model 3 on it so there it is and i clicked on one of the links and it had the eye paste on it and i was like okay so you just believed this website and it was just a random website that had a top 10 and

it was from 2023 and it was it was up and everything. It was just a bad list. Right. So yeah, even if you do train the models amazingly well, there's that variable too. The irony of this is this kind of highlights how bad Bing without AI is versus Google. Because I remember when we searched like best smartphone cameras and the first link that it gave us was some website I'd never heard of before. That was on Bing? Yeah.

Just Bing, not ChatGPT? We used the AI Bing, but it gave us the top three sources, and the number one source was some random website we'd never heard of before. Yeah. Yeah. That just means that the first thing that comes up for Bing

is some random website that you can't really trust. I think the thing also, though, is we're never going to find out how it uses bing the prometheus uh model model because like if they ever release anything about that then it's like it's open game for people finding out how to game a system like that and now we're just into what is search engine optimization for ai chat functions going to be yeah it's like another layer because we already know people, there's entire businesses based on SEO for Google. We want to be on page one of Google search results

for these very high CPM terms and to get affiliate links in there and to make money from being the top result. If inevitably Google starts doing this chatbot thing, yes, that will be a new industry of, all right, how is Google sorting through these top results and do we need to be on the first page or do we need to start stacking a bunch of terms for popular queries for people search with the chatbot?

It's new. It's new territory. It's going to be fun to watch how this sort of plays out. But yeah, they're still turning the dials with Bing, just trying stuff. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see these like strict versus loose versus balanced models it does seem though that even in the loosest form they're still completely cutting off if you try and ask uh the chat essentially like who it is and what it's feeling it'll just shut down the conversation

i gotta end this conversation now yeah i didn't like like I don't, I would like to stop. I would like to stop now. And closes it so you can't even like continue. Microsoft puts the gaming muzzle on Bing every time you ask that kind of question. It's like, here's another question or an angle to think about this. There is the whole argument about

like this is existential crisis mode for Google, right? Because people are going to stop Googling things and they're going to start asking the chatbot over at Bing the same types of stuff and getting helpful answers. My question is, are they actually? Or is it just a matter of time before eventually Google gets confident enough

with its own version to add that on the top of Google search and then we're right back where we started where they have equivalent products and Google's just better at ranking things and that's the end of it i think that's always been that's always what i've thought yeah i think that'll happen to me this is like second over advantage this is the really fun where i'm glad bing did this because we got some solid entertainment out of it and google is gonna come and just beat it pretty bad there's always a period of just pure chaos whenever a new technology comes out.

And all the big companies that have existed for a while that have a lot to lose just let everyone else mess up so that they can just sit back and be like, okay, we're going to. They see everybody else stumble. It's like if we talk about folding phones, no one really goes, oh, is this existential for Apple? Like is the iPhone over? Are folding phones the next thing? Maybe it's because we're like looking for a new thing and it's more like just speculation, but I'm sure Apple has been quietly taking notes on the last like six years of folding phones. And in case they ever do want to do one, they'll have all of that information from everyone else's trials and errors. Being

Google kind of a duopoly, you could still Yahoo search, I guess, maybe. But I think the idea is Google is not going to be the first move around something crazy like this one they are the market leader they're going to take notes they're going to watch what bing's doing they see the dials getting turned they're like okay yeah no existential stuff yeah take notes no creative stuff and then when they come out with their bard thing it seems like we're forgetting it's called bard yeah i keep going at lambda because well because the BARD announcement was, I think I looked it up.

It was an eight minute announcement. It was a section of their- It was barely even anything. I don't think anybody, well, the thing about talking to it, people are still going to call it Google. They're going to call it, like Bing is just Bing,

whether or not you're talking to the chat bot or Bing itself. Yeah, it'll just be Google. To people, it'll just be Google Chat or something to people just be google chat or something google another google chat another google chat don't hurt me again i've been hurt before that's why they're so reluctant yeah would you rather i don't know why i thought would you rather here we go would you rather use google assistant by saying hey google or hey bard uh i already barred i like the g word i don't it's easy too long i think that's my biggest gripe well the thing it has to be a unique enough syllable combo that you don't accidentally trigger it all the time i managed to trigger it more than i would

like to admit the g word yeah because i imagine how much bard is gonna trigger things embarrassingly enough we call mac boo boo sometimes and. And that pops up all the time. Oh, that triggers it? Yeah, that's going to do it. And it's always just like reacting to stupid baby talk that I say to Mac. It's like, I don't know how to do that. It's just like, is Boo Boo hungry? It's like, Boo Boo, do you have to go to the bathroom?

Google's like, I don't have to do that. There's a great video online of like... I cannot do that. There's like a grandma talking to Google,. There's a great video online of like, there's like a grandma talking to Google, but she's foreign and she just keeps saying, Google. It's funny. But like Bard is like, you could just say any AR word.

Like Bard just sounds too similar to other words. I feel like you'd trigger it all. I would like to test it. At least it's not a real name like Alexa where people with that name have to just constantly be made fun of. There's like three guys named Bard that are like really mad at Google. Like, oh, Bard, really?

You have to name him? How common is Bard as a name? It's not as, it's, can't be as common as Alexa. There's a League of Legends character. I was gonna say this, this opens the door to like an epic Dungeons and Dragons character. That's both like, that's both a Bard and a Google Assistant.

And really smart. Bards are pretty cool League of Legends characters. 5,809th most common surname in America. What's Alexa? Yeah, what is Alexa? But that's surname. That's a last name? Yeah.

Oh. So I don't think most people are named Bard as their given name. Probably not. But Siri and Alexa are like real names, at least in the US. There are some people named Siri. Bart. Bart. Oh, yeah.

Bart is common. And that's going to be like an accidental trigger all the time. Which is why probably Google won't. I think Google has to stick with the G word command. Whoa. In 2015, Alexa was the 32nd most popular name for girls. What was Amazon thinking? Every time I really think about that.

It was around that time they wanted it to mean to be natural right so it's natural but it's too natural dad at that point it's so natural in uh 2021 there were nine baby girls named siri uh that's less than i thought that's good yeah that's good yeah siri sounds like a newish kind name. One out of every 197,721 baby girls born in 21 were named Siri. I'm hoping nobody was named Google in the past year. I'm hoping. Oh, man. It might be a non-zero number, but I'm hoping it's zero.

Oh, I hate this title. Wait, please read that title out loud. A boy named Google and a girl named Vista. Why parents named their kids after tech. Imagine naming your kid after Windows Vista. No, not Windows Vista. No. Imagine your next kid's name is Seven.

What the heck? Oliver Christian Google. You're like, nobody got that. Nobody got that joke. Sorry, I zoned out. I blocked out. What happened? Better than Eight.

Seven? Windows are the actual name. Oh, I see. What? People love the actual name. Oh, I see. What? People love the number 7. Yeah, I was just saying Windows 8 is worse than Windows 7. Oh, Windows 8 is better than Windows 7. That's fair.

What? We're off the rails. No, you are off. No, no, no, no. You are wrong. What? Windows 8 is better than Windows 7? Yeah.

No. I mean. No, no, no, no, no. Enjoy the comments on this one, Mark. On the power rankings of the scale of all of Windows, people didn't like Windows 8 as much as they like Windows. You know the A, B thing? I think you're thinking of 8.1. People hated Visto,

loved 7. Hated 8, liked 10. That's the thing. That's what I said. I know. I agree with you. But I still think Windows 8 was better. I think you're thinking of 8.1. Oh, I disagree. Because it was a hot take. 8 was like only the panels. And 8.1 is when they added the Windows 7. And 7 was amazing. 8.1 is better than 7 yeah 7 was so good so 7 was i'll leave it at that before i get flamed in the comments

too late yeah there's a lot of people pause this already yeah they're typing already it's over a lot of people already turned this podcast on how more into the weeds can we get uh we do want to quickly mention this crazy Samsung feature. So you know how there's a Google Assistant feature where it will go out and make phone calls for you. Let's say you ask it to reserve a table at a restaurant. In certain supported situations, it will go out and with the voice assistant talk to somebody and reserve a table for you. Crazy. New Verge headline from today.

Samsung says users will be able to clone their own voice to respond to incoming phone calls so i know there's a lot of voice cloning ai voice tech floating around right now of all of those ideas i like this one the best i do did you and like to go you want to talk to people i don't want any more phone calls this sounds great i you saw like how just to explain how it works, it's not just like the Google total AI of using your voice and just responding. It's your texting. Type, yeah.

Yeah, you're typing and it's using your voice. Perfect. Which I think is epic. I love this. I can't, I don't want to say I can't wait because you should not do this, but I can't wait till there's people texting and driving. Instead of calling. Instead of using their hands-free device in of instead of that's so much more dangerous it's just like hands-free is ideal so wait so here's an even

better one i talk it does voice to text and then text back to my voice use my cloned voice so i don't have to type perfect oh my god i want to try this uh just because i want to see how good it is yeah like on the fly using your voice how long do you have to talk into the the like microphone for it to get your voice is it like setting up a fingerprint where you'd say a bunch of things print yeah probably i would assume you'd have to do quite a bit i mean you actually don't need that much reference audio anymore really yeah you used to need a lot more yeah you'd have to say a bunch of words and i think you only need three seconds of reference audio to get a good voice match now to do for a whole like straight up typing any man

i could understand that for like that's impressive like setting up siri or google or something like that like getting your understanding your voice to recognize it but replicating it that's very i feel like it like when we talked to astro we had to say like five or six phrases just to get alexa to like know what we were saying and understand the bedroom yeah you're like hey alexa dance so yeah no this is i'm gonna try it i really like google call screen but i am dailying an S23 Ultra right now. So I'm going to give this new Bixby feature a try. I am going to give this new Bixby feature a try.

It's my real voice. I'll wait until it comes out. But yeah, S23 Ultra in the pocket. We should take a break. But before we do, let's do a trivia question. Oh, boy. Okay. But before we do, let's do a trivia question.

Oh, boy. All right. So, was gone last week, back this week. Going to come with a heater. So, as David told us not 10 minutes ago, there were nine baby girls born in 2021 named Siri. Were there more or less boys born in 2021 named Siri, were there more or less boys born in 2021 named Anakin? Like the Star Wars name. Like the Star Wars name. That's an interesting question.

Like the name that... You said there were nine series? Yeah. Born in 2021, were there more series or Anakins? I know this. I think it's... I have a hint. I have a theory. were there more series or anakins? I know this. I have a theory. I'm also basing this off of one website's data because that is the only

place I could find data on number of anakins. You're just as bad as Bing AI. As long as you cite your source you don't have to take your word for it. That also means I'm just as good as Bing AI. That's a fact. That's good framing. Just reframe it that way. I don't know if that's a compliment. That's good framing. That's good framing.

You can just reframe it that way. We'll leave it at that. We'll think about it. The answers will be at the end, but let's get to the ad break. The bad break? The ad break. Did I say bad break?

I called it the bad break. I don't think you said there was just like a kind of sound in there. Let's get to the ad break. Miami Metro catches killers, and they say it takes a village to race one. If anyone knows how powerful urges can be, it's me. Catch Dexter Morgan in a new serial killer origin story. There's hunger inside of you. It needs a master. Featuring Patrick Gibson, Christian Slater, special guest star Sarah Michelle Gellar,

with Patrick Densey and Michael C. Hall as Dexter's inner voice. Featuring Patrick Gibson, Christian Slater, special guest star Sarah Michelle Gellar, with Patrick Denzi and Michael C. Hall as Dexter's inner voice. I wasn't born a killer. I was made. Dexter Original Sin, new series now streaming. Exclusively on Paramount+, a mountain of entertainment. The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves? Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications.

Or how about more ways to customize your casino page with our new favorite and recently played games tabs. And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. All right, welcome back.

Let's talk about social media for a little bit any of you guys do any social media stuff no i hate social media nothing me neither all right we can move on yeah okay uh no just kidding this is on youtube and you guys might have heard the news this is kind of like right between last episode and this one susan wajiski previous ceo for a long time is stepping out as the leader of the YouTube ship. So Neil Monaghan, who we've had on Waveform already, is going to be the new CEO. He's sort of like head of product, which like YouTube as a product has a bunch of products underneath it. That's like makes perfect sense. She's going to advise him.

He's going to be the new CEO. She's going to step out. him he's gonna be the new ceo she's gonna step out but yeah susan susan as the face of youtube uh gets a lot of the blame and almost none of the credit that's kind of like how it works when you're the ceo of a big company that does a lot of stuff i feel like uh other social media company ceos have get the same treatment if you are head of facebook twitter or think of any of the other ones that were far less stable how many things go wrong and they just go, it's the CEO's fault, isn't it? And we kind of ignore the things that went well. I kind of had my take on Twitter on the day of, which is like, all right, well, Susan

got us here. You know, I'm sure being a CEO is kind of the hardest job where all the easier decisions get made by the people you are advising. And then if a decision is so difficult that it gets all the way to the top, then that's on you. And so she made a lot of those tough decisions and we saw the results of them. She gets blamed for, you know, removing the dislike counter for the adpocalypse for all the various things YouTube has gone through over the years. But at the end of the day, my take was if you look at YouTube versus the other social media sites,

it's still kind of the gold standard as far as consistency, as far as monetization models, as far as if you're a creator, where you think your work will be discovered. That's not always the maximum virality. That's gonna be TikTok at the moment. That might've been Instagram Reels last year. But if you want to be discoverable

in a long-term meaningful way, it's been like 10 years of YouTube being really good at that. So, you know, shout out to Susan, see what Neil comes up with, but that's kind of where we're at with YouTube. Do you guys have takes on Susan leaving? I mean, I'm sad about it. I think I totally understand people blaming CEOs when things are going wrong. I just think the things that quote unquote went wrong at YouTube, like weren't as big of a deal. I mean like adpocalypse was bad, but ultimately like that's for the survival of the platform. Like ads run that platform. They had to do content moderation based on ads. They were still letting people post. They were still letting people do their stuff. They just weren't giving them money because they couldn't run ads on their stuff anymore. That, that needed to to be done and i know some people lost a

ton of revenue on it but like the advertisers aren't going to want to be on your site there anyways they're still giving you free uploads to a website uh i don't know i just don't have a i don't think adpocalypse was that bad and i think the reason youtube is still doing so well in terms of monetization for creators and by so well i mean just the best bar none is because of decisions hard decisions like that that were made that will have flack but in the long run were 100 the right decision yeah i feel like the uh the other hot take i had on twitter and i so stand by this is that youtube actually listens to creators and i got a lot of people going, what are you talking? What?

Try being not MKBHD. Like that YouTube does not listen to people. YouTube does their own thing and constantly burns creators left and right. And that's easy to say. But look at what YouTube does in trying to listen to as many creators as possible. However successful they are. And then look at every other social media site and whether they're even trying or even pretending to listen to creators do you we don't have a tick a tick tock content i don't think a tick tock rep at all

contact i don't know i don't think so do you know how you got verified i definitely don't i wish we did i don't think we do right you know it's one and a half million followers over there it's whatever it's a tiny account uh instagram instagram so many people got like do people have tiktok content like reps at all i'm sure i'm sure there's a few yeah but that's about where it probably ends yeah uh as far as getting communication on rules that are changing on getting like future updates and beta testing things before they come out, like that does not happen on TikTok. That hasn't happened very much on Instagram. There's like a brand new feature that we'll talk about in a second as far as Instagram. But like Twitter, what are you going to even say about like being stable on Twitter?

Like that's pretty tough. I used to have a Twitter account. I was going to say. Like that's, that's pretty tough. I used to have a Twitter account. I was going to say anymore. Yeah. It's tough. Right. So YouTube, not only do they have these like creator plaques as like incentives and

rewards, like, Oh, you've hit the subscriber number. We understand that's meaningful to you. We want to show you how much we value you as a creator. It's a small thing. It's a little plaque.

They can ship a million of them a year, but they don't have to do it. They still do it. Right. They have a creator summit every year that they, they didn't have to do it they still do it right they have a creator summit every year that they they didn't have it in the pandemic but essentially a gathering in certain regions of like the top creators to actually talk to people and not just talk to them as like a show and then leave but to listen to them to explain new features coming up and i just remember in the middle of like

the the year of the adpocalypse going to the creator summit and knowing that that's all we're going to talk about and observing like the leadership at YouTube including Susan being squarely in the middle where it's like you in order for this to work as a website and a platform you need to appease the advertisers who spend the money and in order for this to work as a platform, you need to appease the creators that make the content that drives 90 something percent of the viewership that the advertisers are buying on. You need to make everyone happy somehow. So you need to listen to both. You need to understand both. You need to make really tough choices in this like balancing act of actually getting it to work. And so I had a lot of sympathy for that. And they eventually made it out the other side.

But it was like, when we had that meeting, we actually like talked to them. They listened. I remember a creator standing up and being like, hey, Susan, why don't we just say screw all the advertisers? Because they need you, right? Like it's YouTube. If they want to spend money on TV ads and billboards, fine,

but they'll be back, right? And Susan kind of had to go like yes but also we really want this to work well like we don't want to just go screw you guys and then have them come crawling back to us we want to maintain good relationships with them and like keep it going it's an ecosystem that's what Elon did

and they did not come crawling back yeah not yet anyway right so it's a tough spot we see the stuffing YouTube does put in all this effort to not only help creators but advertisers at the same time i just don't see that anywhere else maybe i'm missing it but like i feel like that's a pretty important thing it's also not to say that youtube doesn't have some issues like there are plenty of small creators and like music licensing and copyright stuff is like there are definitely some issues there but like i do ultimately think in a lot of facing a lot of tough decisions they generally did a good way to benefit both because like you said they

can take it and say screw the advertisers but the whole thing that stunk about adpocalypse was creators not getting paid so if you screw the advertisers they're definitely still not getting paid because there's no advertisers so like it's to help the creators as well that's paying the creators yeah yeah youtube's had oh just one more thing youtube's had like problems like as you mentioned i make videos and and talk about the problems on youtube because i know they're listening i if there's one thing i can guarantee is when i make the dear youtube video when they had like the problem with uh dislike the comment spam remember that that whole phase where there just be comments under every video impersonating us. I made a video about that. Within hours,

I'm talking to the head of product who's in charge of that. And they actually kind of did a really good job with that. They added tools for that. It's, you know, spammers are constantly working against those tools. But that was one thing. Getting rid of the dislike button. I also talked about how that was a terrible idea. Here we are, I still disagree with the decision, but it's like they had to appease the other side of that too, which is advertisers. So there's, it's a balancing act. Go ahead. Yeah. I wanted to say that like, unlike Instagram, who all these tech companies, when they see a new trend that is incredibly popular, they try to just jump on like that trend and try to make it a core part of their product. And Facebook and Instagram have done that with everything that has come out.

Instagram Stories copied Snapchat and now Reels is copying TikTok. But where Instagram pivoted their entire platform to being about Instagram Reels. Yeah, Reels. Facebook, not Facebook, YouTube, Shorts, they're integrating it and they're encouraging people to use it,

but they're not destroying the core product while integrating it. Like they're trying to make it like a cohesive addition that is useful, that will get you like more visibility and all these things and eventually will become monetizable and all this stuff. But the core reason that people still use YouTube is YouTube. And they're not going to like throw away long form videos just to do short form. Yeah. Yeah. These are all like balanced long term health of the platform decisions that have to be made by then.

And the new CEO, by the way, Neil's going to get all the same blames for all the things that go wrong and all the decisions that happen. So like, welcome, Neil. I want to come back and talk about it. Whereas like the Adam Nazir, what is his name? Adam Nazir at Instagram. Yeah. He like, he just puts on this mask of like,

we hear you, but we just don't care. He's maybe one of the next best. He's one of the next best because he at least communicates new upcoming features in a way that if you're a creator and you follow him, you get value from that and you feel like you're getting something out of it, even though it's just a public post.

But yeah, I feel like- Just feels like they don't really care about creators. It would be nicer if it was a dialogue instead of just a post yeah right so yeah yeah there is there's something something there for youtube uh i'm gonna keep making youtube videos i don't know if anything's gonna change too dramatically with the change in leadership but we'll see we'll see it won't take our job yeah not yet anyway yeah it's also just sad to see um like women in tech in these big positions leaving essentially like they're good role models essentially and we need more of it and neil is going to do great there's nothing against that it's just anytime you see

a woman in tech in a big position she's been at google for since the beginning like literally her garage like garage days like that's that's part of it yeah that's what i read i was confused she was she let them start it in her garage and then got hired a year later as the 16th yeah i believe she was renting it out to them yeah garage literally her garage she was google google kind of sick small flex yeah just a little bit around also the fact that she owned a home in like menlo park or Google. Google's like a garage. Kind of sick. Small flex. Yeah, just a little bit. She's been around. Also the fact that she owned a home in like Menlo Park or whatever that was.

Yeah, those garages now, when you drive through like Cupertino and you just see like all the houses where it's like, oh yeah, Apple was in one of those garages. And then you look on Zillow, you're like, damn. It's like a falling apart shack and it's like $6 million. It's crazy. It's crazy town. It probably wasn't always like that, but it was kind of always like that yeah yeah yeah okay twitter also did some stuff uh twitter where do we i guess we'll just do the big thing because twitter's always doing stuff but i think the thing that most people uh noticed was that if you had sms two-factor authentication

set up on your account and you are not a twitter blue paying subscriber that you literally did you get this you got like a dialogue box pop up didn't because i use an authenticator aptin okay so if you had sms you got a dialogue box that popped up and said you're gonna have to turn this off because this is becoming a paid twitter blue feature which i will stand by this if you offer something for free and then you turn it into a paid feature, the internet will revolt, period. It's just going to happen. You can't take something free and make it paid.

So they're doing that. The internet's revolted. But there also is this little sub-dialogue, which is also like, you probably shouldn't use SMS specifically, two-factor. We use an authenticator app. And I actually switched my authenticator app by seeing all of the dialogue around Google Authenticator and how there's no backups and i switched to offy

that happened to me i lost everything yeah so like i switched phones a lot and if i ever like accidentally get rid of some stuff on one phone i just lost all my two factor which would be rough yeah so i switched authenticator apps but the point is if you use SMS two-factor, I would advise you to switch to an authenticator app because, number one, it's free and you don't have to pay Twitter for it. And, number two, you're a little bit more secure because, theoretically, SMS two-factor is a little more vulnerable to phishing attacks, man-in-the-middle attacks, calling your carrier, pretending to be you, getting your SIM deactivated,

stuff like that. The irony of this is that Jack Dorsey had his account hacked via a SMS two-factor authentication hack like three years ago. They should have just disabled the feature. If it's so insecure, why move it behind a paywall? It's the most insecure feature, and they moved it behind a paywall.

It makes it feel like it's the more premium version by putting it behind a paywall yeah it's just because it's easier i think i think it is because it's easier but also like are we not this the new uh owner of twitter constantly is saying that they want to prevent all these like scams and bots and everything but now you're moving a security update away from people unless you pay for it to now potentially get have those because there's a lot of people who had sms that rather than download an authenticator are just going to run non two factor they're just going to go oh i don't want to subscribe to twitter blue i guess i'm turning off two factor now yep yeah just like i don't understand that and now if those people's accounts

are more easily compromised, they're running easier scams. I just don't get this is just such a stupid. My argument is please push people to use an authenticator app. Like it's technically like if you go all the way, dig into the settings and you see that checkbox and then you see the app is like recommended in parentheses, then that's better, I guess. But like that dialog box had it like in fine print at the bottom. I would like people to just immediately switch from SMS two factor

to an authenticator app and that be the thing that happens here. But we're probably not going to have much of that happening. So that's my advice, please. The irony too, is that a lot of the accounts that pay for Twitter blue are probably going to be like the really big celebrities and stuff who need their accounts to be verified. And if they are the only ones that have access to a less secure security format it's like not ideal there's just not a lot of sense being made I just don't get it the logic doesn't stay in one direction there's this isn't pushing more people to blue it's not worth the PR that they've gotten from this. I just don't really get it. Twitter blue subscribers are like pathetic, aren't they?

It's like under 200,000, I think, or reasonable. Oh, okay. I thought you meant that. Oh, well, take that as you will. Someone wants to clip that. Enjoy it. No, no, no, no. I mean the number of Twitter blue subscribers is totally minuscule.

Pathetic. Yeah. No, it is a small number for sure. It's very small. So yeah, this is a head scratcher. I mean, it's rule number one for me. It's rule number one. But the other thing that we also saw happen

was the head of Meta, his name is Mark Zuckerberg, he added a feature called Meta Verified. Let me know if you've heard this before. A subscription service that lets you verify your account with a government ID, get a blue badge, and it's $12 a month on the web or $14.99 a month on iOS. Oh, my God.

Does this ring any bells? I thought you weren't allowed to say that. What? Like, out loud. Like, it is less expensive somewhere that doesn't get the cut. What you're not allowed to say that what like out loud like it is less expensive somewhere that doesn't get the cut you're not allowed to do is give people a button in the app on the phone to leave to pay on the web okay yeah but you can yeah in your announcement say whatever you want yeah they're taking a 30 cut i assume this is also on android there's the same 30 cut so it

will cost 30 more to subscribe from one of those platforms. I guess the nice thing about this, I know they're kind of just copying Twitter blue, but the nice thing about this is it is a little bit more than just a verified badge. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. I'll read what it is. You get the blue badge to be verified. You use your government ID. So it's got to be you.

It also gets you extra impersonation protection like monitoring so you will have there will be some service that keeps track of if you get impersonated and will actively take down impersonators cool that's handy that's nice you get direct access to a customer support chat feature

and it's kind of also like boosting your your posts. You get... Oh, really? Yeah, according to Adam Masseri's video that he also tweeted about this, in Instagram anyway, gets sort of an algorithmic priority

if you are a subscriber. Facebook's been, they've been pay-to-play forever. It's not shocking that they would do that, but yeah, that's the thing. Interesting. Can we start this out by how this announcement was made because i feel like we're not talking about it and it just seems wild to me but this like channel it's like weird do because there's something posted before does everyone who's

verified just have this weird like channel that it also said at the bottom says never miss an update from zuck all lowercase only zuck can message but you can read react and vote and pull yeah because i did not get this message. Good question. So to rewind a little bit, there's a new feature called broadcast channels on Instagram. So on Instagram, you can post already. You can put videos out. You can put stories out. And you know how you can message people on Instagram? You can have a message thread from you broadcast to all your followers, but no one else can reply. And so that's what this is so zuck is using that's his username is using this beta broadcast channels feature

to announce i am in this thing i guess there's 360 000 people in here maybe it's just verified people i don't know but people no i'm not verified do you you're in it do you guys follow it i don't know what the rule is for who's in this do you follow him yeah maybe so he sent it out to his followers i bet oh but he has like millions and millions oh i'm sure i i'm sure just a lot of them haven't looked at like the group it's probably like secondary inbox or whatever so yeah so he's using this like broadcast feature and it's kind of like maybe that is a cool feature like if you do a lot of like really big text posts or if you're like a let's say you're a product reviewer and you do a lot of like really big text posts or if you're like a, let's say you're a product reviewer and you do a lot of like product reviews

in your captions of images, but you want like to just like add updates or like talk about your merch or something small like that. You can do this with a text post to all your followers and like a message. Cool, whatever. I actually think that's cool.

It's a cool feature. It's an additional communication method for creators. And he's using it in this example to tell us about his new feature. I thought he just sent it to all the verified people, which I thought was really weird. Oh, no. Yeah, it's everybody. Everybody get subscribing. Everybody.

I don't know. Yeah. I think my one thing you mentioned here, the extra step of verification through the ID badge is something that I've been super interested about if twitter ever goes that route because it's like that is the one thing that that does make the verification of being a real person way more yeah on point yeah i just don't know how many people want to actually post their government id to social media to meta or twitter honestly like i think a lot of the people i think a lot of people on twitter right now in that scenario are not people who like posting their public uh identification does

twitter actually verify that you're a human when you sign up for blue no that's what something they've said that's like the annoying thing about it being called verified because you're not you're just paying money it's verified you're spam i believe they said that because you're entering in like a credit card or debit card they're relying on the banks to do the odd that is so stupid it's less secure than your actual you can create so many fake like credit card numbers

that you mask your eyes didn't that twitch streamers fish just like spend all of his credit card money on the Nintendo eShop recently okay someone pull up this headline real quick to make sure I'm getting it right of his credit card money on the Nintendo eShop recently. Wait, what? Okay, someone pull up this headline real quick to make sure I'm getting it right. There was a Twitch streamer who wrote like a API

that lets his goldfish play Switch games just by swimming around the tank. Fish play Pokemon Violet and do some shopping on the eShop. Yeah, and it spent like... Oh my God. And that's a fish. That's so funny.

Credit card fraud. In theory, this fish could have signed up for twitter bloomin verified as a human yeah as the twitch streamer elon just saying that is amazing yeah government id fish don't get i don't think fish so that yeah so you could argue you're getting a little more out of the meta subscription product, meta verified. I still think it's stupid. I agree. Yeah, I just- Well, this is slightly less stupid.

It is totally pay to play. I mean, like, to be fair, if you're getting, I don't even want to say this, but like if you are boosting posts, like some people might find that worth the money. I just hate that that's what this social media is. I think I still use instagram mostly as a place where i feel like i'm more interacting with my like in like real life friends and like

people i've known for a while where i am posting my profile is public but yeah i don't know most of the people that like my posts on instagram there's a difference between like and who i interact with so like the stories and messages and i'm doing all feel like my home friends but my profile is public because i like showing off what we do here and stuff like that. I don't know. What's annoying to me is kind of that Facebook and Instagram, you're kind of agreeing to this thing that they're going to take your data and

make money off of you that way. Yeah. And it's like, okay, yeah, but now I'm paying for you to take my data. Right. And like,

it's fine. Like I'm one of those people that I don't mind it as much in a weird way because I do get better ads that way. And like, my Instagram experience is better that way. Yeah. But now I'm paying for it. Yeah. At the same time.

This is a conversation we were sort of thinking about with like the fact that Netflix started this kickoff of unlimited recurrent revenue where they have a subscription model and everything started moving towards subscription models and we've been talking for like a couple years now about like how can we make it so companies can stop taking our data because that's how they make money on us the products are free because you are the product subsidize yeah but the only way that they could make money otherwise is if you pay them but now they want both which seems really they want to scale up all the money yeah yeah this is like the the the peak of this subscription age yeah like we talk about the iphone all the time like the iphone is one of the most successful products

of all time and it's grown every year but it's slowing in its growth and it's kind of saturated and so now apple apple needs the chart to keep going up. Tim Cook's like, let's get this chart going up. So what happens? They find a way to charge everyone with an iPhone, a recurring amount over and over, and try to upsell you Apple One, Apple Storage, Apple all this stuff.

And so now they make a ton of money on that too. So on the back of the iPhone, way more money. It's just going to keep going until you're spending 12 bucks a month for heated seats in your BMW. Were you going to say something? I just was going to repeat, it's funny that we have been talking about, oh, how can we get rid of these companies taking our data,

these companies taking our data? And in the end, we weren't, and we were just going to pay them more. I think versus the Apple situation like people paying for subscriptions are the everyday users of that where this the meta and the twitter ones would you agree seem far more focused on the creators that they're looking to make the money from because it's just a subset that wants verification yeah like i know there are people who want verification but still like look at the twitter blue numbers that is like 180 000 i can't imagine the meta numbers are going to be there's a ton of creators on instagram and there are people who

make a living they'll they will get this but that's such a small subset and you're just now charging the people that are making your platform popular so you're getting very small feedback from that kind of screwing over the people that are driving a lot of traffic to you and you're just making a an abysmal amount of money in comparison to the rest i guess the there's like this magic rule of like when you have a subscription version and a free version it's usually around 10 give or take that will subscribe and when you make the subscription version more expensive. You make it a worse experience for them. But the masses that are not subscribing that have their experience unchanged

will be perfectly happy. And so you kind of have to weigh, like, where do we get this money from? By charging the 90% and ruining all of their experiences or by charging the 10% and keeping the 90% happy but making more money. It's optional, too. I just feel like that amount of money

is like a drop in the pan for these two companies that are huge. If only Meta like created a really cool $1,500 product, that would totally change the way businesses work these days. They would be rolling in money. Would they be though? Oh, they could be if anyone cares. There's also been this in like the business world there's

been this conversation that's being had recently about the value that creators get from the services that they use on these platforms versus like the fact that they don't pay for them well they pay for them with their data i think a lot of people have been being like well you know if i'm an instagram influencer with like five million followers and i make one post and it literally tangibly directly influences the amount of money that i'm making paying 12 dollars a month is like literally nothing is a note-brainer and you are still getting more value as a creator who is yeah for sure dollars i think it's just like everyone got used to this ad model this like data model and now that they're like yeah you should probably pay us

a little bit to be able to make money it's kind of a weird like you got to pay money to make money thing so i would argue though it's less of if you're the instagram if you're the influencer with five million followers it's not that you're only getting um like you're not only paying them with your data you're paying them with your data and the data of five million other people that are following you so you are more than fair enough what it is. Like, I think these people are driving traffic to these sites that are making the money off of data and like, these are multi-billion charge them 12 bucks, multi-billion dollar companies. I can't really assume for them. I didn't think you were, I just think like there is way more like, yeah, yeah. That's a, it's a good point.

That's a good point. It's also, if you are the Instagram account with 5 million followers, are you driving people to Instagram or are you driving people to content once they're already on Instagram? You're still keeping them on. Especially with your Instagram content. I don't know. I think they're making these companies money

and now the companies are just charging them. Asking for more money. Like you said, most of them will be fine, but I think the people who won't care about 12 bucks are i mean twitter blue is yeah you said mostly 10 people will subscribe at most it's like 0.02 of twitter users yeah this is the this is the ceo decision it's like how do you keep the chart going up susan would never do this well youtube premium is a thing and people pay for it but that's just like that's for the user though it's for the user but it's the same magic 10% and it's those people are getting ad free

YouTube and some extra features but see that's the thing like this is the thing like this is the model that everyone was like if you don't want your data if you don't want the ads if you don't want this you pay us money like this has been the model for a long time of ads run the internet and if you don't want the ads, give us a few bucks a month.

And that's like what everyone has kind of been thinking of. And now it's like, oh, we're going to take your data and you're going to have ads on Instagram and you're going to pay us $12 a month. Think about the amount of ads you get on Instagram and you're still paying $12 a month for this verified service. If this got rid of your ads, then that would be more worth it. Would you pay 10 bucks a month on Instagram for no ads? No. Because there's going to be a subset that might then that would be more worth it. Would you pay $10 a month on Instagram for no ads? No.

Because there's going to be a subset that might do that. I don't know. It is annoying, though, if I'm looking through stories. I get two stories from people I know, and then there's two ads. Always two ads. And then two more stories, and then two more ads. Yeah. That's what makes it such a terrible service.

It's literally half ads. Instagram ads are really good. I've bought so much crap. I was just going to i was just i think i might miss ads on instagram mine just make me feel bad i'll pay them 12 bucks to keep ads on live i did buy a jacket and pants from instagram that's the only thing i've ever bought from instagram ad and they're pretty good i almost bought a cat sweatshirt but the comment said that it took like 20 weeks to show up so i said no more overseas shipping maybe it was a really cute cat on the sweatshirt see they only get stealing all your information i would never have gotten that ad but they found you with that they did and that's that's just because i got that sort of data on i did screenshot it for later

see i mean that's a lot of smarts but also a lot of data there touche if you made it this far on the podcast thank you we're going off the rails ellis you had this this theory that i really like well we have to talk about one more feature before we get to ellis's theory right which is that instagram's also allowing picture replies oh i just saw this yeah you have it on your, it's on your page. Yeah, as of like two days ago, my comment section is way more vibrant. There's way more stuff happening in my comment section. It's like Tumblr, yeah. Like I posted something, I posted a reel actually,

and I was like, oh, it's not really getting that much traction, but why does it have 350 comments? And I opened it and it's just GIFs, the whole thing. Image, image, image, image, GIFs. Did you just say? GIFs. I said it. Yeah, I said it. On the podcast, I said it. I's just GIFs. The whole thing. Image, image, image. Did you just say? GIFs. I said it. Yeah, I said it. On the podcast I said it. I heard nothing wrong with that. What are you guys talking about? GIFs. And there are tons of them. Ellis Tiebreaker.

As long as you're right. Pronunciation? Yeah. GIF. You can say it. Yes, we won. I've always been a GIF person. It's okay to be wrong person it's okay to be wrong it's not graphics I've started my own trivia show and I'm just going to ask

that question over and over again to be fair I think the creator pronounces it like that but he was wrong tell me why though like why is it gif I don't know why it just is because of what Angie said the creator said it's gif I mean that's a pretty good rule if you invented the name you kind of get to choose how it's said.

Marques listens to creators. Yeah. I respect the creation. The creative process. I respect our true creator. Anyway, the comment section is insane now because it's just constant. Nobody leaves comment or buys anymore because the images get voted to the top. And now it's just rainbows and unicorns everywhere.

It's crazy. I hate GIFs. They're everywhere. Just saying. just get voted to the top and now it's just rainbows and unicorns everywhere it's crazy i hate gifts they're everywhere just saying but those pictures yeah ellis can you just explain to this i want you to explain it on the pod because you started yesterday and it was awesome okay so if you're like me and you hang out in wikipedia circles on the internet. What does that mean? Like, if you're a meta user, there's Cool Freaks Wikipedia Club. If you're on Instagram, there's Depths of Wikipedia.

There's lots of these Wikipedia-centered communities. I did not know this. Anyway, if you're in them long enough, you realize that there's a lot of reposts. There's only so many really cool Wikipedia pages. One of the ones that gets reposted all the time is this like biological theory. It's not my theory.

It's called carcinization. And it's this idea that crab adjacent species like lobsters and hermit crabs generally evolve towards becoming a crab. evolve towards becoming a crab and lots of animals that don't exhibit crab like features converge biologically on the crab format because it's just advantageous in a lot of ways to be a and so yesterday when marquez was like crab race yeah that's what they're raving about being superior what and um so when marquez you know turned around was like yo check it out there's there's uh yeah check it out there's pictures of instagram now i was like oh my god it's like the crab thing it's like all social media platforms just slowly become tumblr yeah i was gonna say what's the crab tumblr is tumblr is the crab i don't know if there is like you know an exact crab i don't even know if it's actually tumblr we were talking yesterday about it looking a lot like tumblr yeah um i do think i've also never had a tumblr so i

don't even know me neither i didn't really have one either i think that as social media tries to become more personalized because there was like finstagrams for a long time and there still are but like a lot of a lot of different social media now is trying to like come back to the roots of just having your friends and having it be more literally social with the people that you know uh they probably all converge towards tumblr because that's more what tumblr was about tumblr was like you and your friends and there were there were tumblers that were popular that people just followed in general but it was it was more for you and your friends.

Isn't that how all social media starts before it goes mainstream? Yeah, because this is the sine wave, right? Everything is a trend wave of a sine wave. Yeah, Facebook was like just you and your friends from school and all the brands showed up. And now you left because even your parents are there. And so you went to Instagram for all your friends and the reels and all your brands showed up yeah there was an in between though like i don't know if like there was a year or two maybe even like three where the brands hadn't showed up yet but celebrities had and they didn't understand exactly like have you seen any of vin diesel's like 2011 facebook uploads yes

that's like but that's that's that's, that's like pure. I still like that. Cause that seems like they're trying to be one of us. Like genuinely, genuinely trying instead of just like, I am here to monetize. It's like them kind of hanging out. I don't know.

That's weird. But then like, yeah, you see like the early days of YouTube. It's like, here's me at the zoo. Here's like a five second video of me, my golf swing. And then suddenly we're here yeah you know so it's like the sine wave of social media

so yeah Instagram comment section going through the same sine wave yeah it's just everything is crab rave crab rave crab yeah I like it yeah it's like influencers and then and then your friends and then influencers and then your friends and then companies pay your friends to sell you stuff oh god hashtag parade and then the kiss of death is when your parents show up is that the how it goes thank god my parents are like the most boomer type boomers all boomer my mom follows all of you guys on every social media platform and we will listen to this i'm gonna dm if everyone wants to say hi to my subscribe on youtube is YouTube. Oh, yeah. She's on YouTube, on Instagram, on Twitter. She follows all of you guys. Hi, Andrew's mom.

She'll love that. That's amazing. To my parents, Facebook is the internet. They don't even know how to Google things. It reminds me of the old AOL where you had to dial up into it and you were inside the browser and that's where your chat was and everything. That was the internet. Yeah. It's chat was and everything. That was the internet. It's crazy. That's a subset of the internet. AOL's the crab.

We're all going back to AOL. We really need to do ad break and trivia. Carsonization? Carsonization? Spell Carsonization. That's not the trivia question. Thank you. Alright, so trivia time

you guys I'm gonna let you guys choose do you want a tech trivia question or a science trivia question mung bean no agriculture tech or science science

I vote science I wish I could have guessed what the first would have been and I would have gotten a point for that so the science question is the crab theory that Ellis just spoke about is an example of what kind of evolution

here are some other examples hold on you can't ask that because we're both on the Wikipedia page it's converging okay so then next question. Got you guys. Tech question. No, so then give me one...

Close the page. I'm closing it. Give me one example of Convergent Evolution. Crabs. Other than... Other than crabs. Other than crabs. Other than crabs.

Mug beanization. Not mug beanization. Can we have a tech question? Can I hear the tech question? Tech question. Okay, it could be a bonus question. Screw it. Yeah, yeah.

Tech question. Why did Amazon name the assistant Alexa? Oh, I don't know. We'll see you guys after the break. How about dinner with my third cousin? Skip it. Prince Fluffy's favorite treats? Skippable. Midnight snacks? Skip. My neighbor's nightly saxophone practices? Uh, nope. You're on your own there.

Could have skipped it. Should have skipped it. Skip to the good part and get groceries, meals, and more delivered right to your door on Skip. Support for the show today comes from NetSuite. Anxious about where the economy is headed? You're not alone. If you ask nine experts, you're likely to get 10 different answers. So unless you're a fortune teller and it's perfectly okay that you're not, nobody can say for certain. So that makes it tricky to future-proof your business in times like these. That's why over

38,000 businesses are already setting their future plans with NetSuite by Oracle. This top-rated cloud ERP brings accounting, financial management, inventory, HR, and more onto one unified platform, Thank you. weeks and keep your focus forward on what's coming next. Plus, NetSuite has compiled insights about how AI and machine learning may affect your business and how to best seize this new opportunity. So you can download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash waveform. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash waveform. netsuite.com slash waveform. All right, welcome back. I have a kind of, I think, fun ending to today's pod. I just asked everybody to bring to the podcast today just a piece of tech, a piece of software, something in the tech world that they're currently enjoying, or I even threw out if you're really not enjoying it, maybe something that doesn't meet expectations. But, you know, I thought we'd just do a little

update on maybe some things we're using these days that we don't talk about. Shout out roundabout. What? What? What? Roundabout. We're just going to go around and give shout outs. Oh,

okay. I just named it. Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, I've never heard of that product.

Do you want to go first? I thought you were talking about like that spray that kills bugs, like roundup off. No, no, no, it is. yeah yeah i think off is another one is that what you want to talk about today yes uh do you want to go first i did steal some roundup from my cafe and used it in my apartment well i didn't steal it somebody else stole it and put it in my okay too far to start over, so we just have to keep going. Sorry.

Just plow right through this. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay. So the piece of tech that I have been enjoying, because I have not bought anything in like 17 years, it's a piece of software. It's called Arc Browser.

You may have heard of it recently in the tech community. I've heard about this. Yeah. So yeah, it's called Arc Browser. You may have heard of it recently in the tech community. I've heard about this. Yeah, it's called Arc Browser. It is a browser that basically is made for people who are really bad at tab management, like me. You're really good at it. Well, I'm actually quite good at it. Yes, yes, yes, yes. But it has a lot of, it has honestly a ton of different features that i don't even fully utilize

um but the main feature is that you have a bunch of pinned tabs that are here that never really go away okay and what's cool about them too is that you can like you can peek into them and like access things directly depending on the uh the app that it is or the website that it is it's a live preview yeah that was a live preview like his top emails or yeah my top emails you can also like yeah like in my email and i don't know we can maybe figure something out later about changing this but oh maybe i don't have it updated sorry but it if you if you jump to a different email account it doesn't open a new tab it just creates like a little sub thing here and you can just pick which one you want to be on it at a time.

But the main, like the main feature that's useful for me is it creates all of these tabs here and within a certain amount of time, it erases them. So I have it set for 12 hours. So you can pin tabs. You can create a, like a tab group that is say like a folder. So if I'm working on a specific research project it's a group of tabs that are within this folder and you can have subfolders and all this stuff that make sure they never go away and they'll sync across all of your computers that you're using arc on

which is really nice so everything is synced but then all the stuff that you're just like looking at for that day that you don't need to keep will disappear within like 12 hours there's also all these other features where like all of your downloads are right here, which is really handy because you can just like drop them into areas if you need to like drag and drop, you've got like your picture library, your screenshots, your downloads are right here. Recents. Um, this is folders on your desktop.

So you don't even have to really access your desktop. You can just like do your desktop management within the browser. And then there's like an easel feature where you can like create easels and notes, which I don't even really understand this feature that much. But yeah, the new peak feature that they just added is really cool because it makes it so like when you click on something, it creates like a sub tab that floats on top of it yeah so if you're on a twitter link for example this isn't updated but if you're on a twitter link and you click a link on twitter it'll create like a mini arc in front of it that has the link open and there's a button for like do you want to expand it to the whole page or do you just want to like get rid of it so it never even creates a real tab yeah it's really useful there's there's just

like a lot of different cool features and i haven't not even really scraped the surface of this yet all it's missing is a chat bot pretty sick but they they up make major version updates to this like every three days like they put like huge amounts of work into this and they're like really pressing it and i've switched over to it on pretty much all of my computers um yeah i was gonna say what platforms is it on? Right now it's only macOS, but they're building a Windows version right now. And they're also building a mobile version. The mobile version, too, you can follow them on TikTok,

and the developers and stuff will give you updates in real time. Like every couple days, yeah. Teasers. Really clever. Yeah, they're very transparent about everything that they do. And I just feel like it's a kind of new take on the browser that i really appreciate they should hire you because i only see like seven tabs open and the fact that i can see you with only seven tabs means that this thing is working we started doing the podcast an hour after we got in which means i have opened at least seven

tabs since we got in and they will be erased by the time i leave i think that's a huge win yeah perfect proof of concept. Yeah. So, yeah. Is this one of those things that's eventually going to get eaten by a major existing browser? Or can they survive and make something? I was wondering that, too. I don't think so.

I don't think so. There's enough uniqueness here that I think it could be its own thing. Yeah. I think I was telling David this. I think this is what, like, have been if it was this powerful. Yeah. And the company that's making it is called The Browser Company. Arc is a great name.

Arc is a good name. Great name. Yeah. By The Browser Company. That's tight. Which is very cool. Nice pick. Is it free?

It's free. Cool. That's awesome. I think it's niche enough that I don't know if Chrome would benefit fully taking over it. I just mean stealing unprotected features yeah like anyway yeah there's like way more in it that i even know how to use but just the tab management thing is really useful for me and i have like a bunch of research uh groups and you can also create these new new folder new space like spaces too so you can have a workspace so that all of your like pinned tabs and also your tab groups and your folders and stuff are just for work.

And you can just switch to your like personal space and it has all your home stuff on it. Nice. Yeah. It's really cool. I think a lot of people in the office are using it right now. Yeah. Three or four.

Yeah. Me, Adam, Alex, at least are using it so nice yeah it's taking it's it's like a big deal for something to like take over a software application that i've been using for an extended browser usually i like want to try everything and i try everything for like 10 minutes i'm like no i don't like i need this to be multi-platform before i can dedicate my life to it yeah wait do you use Windows at all? No, but I need it on my phone so I can have that sync back and forth. Just having the same browser everywhere is pretty important for a browser.

Bookmarks, autofill. I don't do that. I think they'll have the mobile version out in a couple months. Cool. Yeah. Nice. Cool. Who wants to go next?

You go next. All right right i'm using a new smartwatch i'm wearing it the whole time i i have actually also i thought david was gonna do a camera because i just realized he has a camera oh i just forgot to take this off before we i was on a walk this morning and i literally just forgot to take it off how long ago is that walk it was a two-hour walk you've had a camera on the entire time yeah i kind of dig it thanks it must not be too heavy i just looked down at one point i was like david has a camera is he taking pictures i don't even see the camera i just usually have cameras i don't know i guess i'm more surprised i've never seen you wearing a camera on the podcast on the podcast it's because i remember to take it off anyways i'm wearing a new

smart watch um and i kind of wanted to see what you guys thought of it first impressions because this is a garmin which i've used before i've used many different carmen's before but i think everyone knows that i use a ton of different watches and try them and then like them and then don't like them anymore so we're trying a new garmin this This is, I think, their second one with an AMOLED screen, though. So this screen should be way nicer than most of the other Garmins. Wait, which model is it? The Garmin Epyx Gen 2. It is a very expensive model.

Has anybody brought it up for this yet? Yeah, this has been out for a while. Oh, okay. I just recently got it, and I'm loving it so far. But it's a thick boy it's big i'm holding it up i'm putting it next to my apple watch just to confirm it is indeed a thick boy but it's probably not that much bigger than the apple yeah no it's not this wouldn't be out of that league at all it is a nice round form factor i like that nice watch band too uh that's a knock that's typical knockoff watch yeah so it is 0.1 millimeters thicker than

the apple watch it's 14.5 versus 14.4 like this screen is looking nicer than uh previous garmin screens so i'm enjoying that so far it does look really good i have to say i'm using zero battery saving options and i'm getting like five to six days of battery life and that's with like hiking gps uh different like compasses and stuff like that and i i've really been enjoying i think right now my favorite thing is all the customizations you can do in the workouts because you can change all the screens up to kind of however you want so if i go to like my hike one right now the data entry that it shows and i customized all of this so i have on the top of it a compass that's always showing which direction i'm going i have my distance my elevation timer time of day and then a heart rate sensor at the bottom and then i can

also switch through with elevation levels like all of this is customizable i think it all looks really nice i'm super excited and i just booked a trip to the tetons in yellowstone in july and i cannot wait to use this yeah nice yeah so what is the price officially i think it's like 8.99 dang all right it is apple watch ultra territory anyway yeah a little cheaper right yeah okay yeah. Okay. Yeah, enjoying it so far. Garmin Epix. Who wants to go next? I'm going last because I haven't thought of mine yet. So mine is the Fujifilm X100S camera.

This camera literally came out 10 years ago. It came out in 2013, I believe. Yeah, I think it's yours. It was around the studio. It was just hanging out. We were using it as a prop. Is it the silver and black one? it's it was one around the studio it was just hanging out we were using it as a prop silver and black one yeah i think we lost the charger for that yeah i had to get a different charger okay but yeah we just had it around and then i was going on vacation recently to columbia and i was like i'm just gonna like bring this one along because

if it breaks i know it's not that expensive to replace it's like 250 or something yeah on ebay ellis just looked it up. The cheapest one we found is 374 with chargers and batteries and everything. So it's like pretty cheap. Dude, I'm just going to say like, so right now the X100V has been super viral on TikTok in the last like six months, which is ironic because this came out

almost three years ago. Well, that's the one I wanted, but it's impossible to get. Yeah, just in the last three months, this has been going insanely viral. You could buy that camera, that S, for like $130 like six months ago. Yeah, it's impossible to get. Just in the last three months, this has been going insanely viral. You could buy that camera, that S, for like $130 six months ago.

Now it's triple the price. Because it's a great camera. It's still so good. I took it around, walking around Columbia, taking pictures. It was fantastic. It's a great picture. For an APS-C sensor, I believe, it's really clean. Is it a fixed lens? Is it a prime yeah um yeah 23

millimeters that's why i didn't like it so it's a 35 millimeter equivalent which is fantastic it's a nice little versatile yeah yeah yeah so i really enjoyed it walking around columbia and just taking pictures and like i showed it to my girlfriend we were out there because i was like taking pictures of her and her family and things like that and she was looking at the pictures she's like I really like this camera and she's like not a camera person that's the best endorsement yeah by the way if someone like isn't really into cameras but they're just like I like the pictures yeah from it oh that's a huge yeah and it's again 10 years old that's why the x100s have been going viral on tiktok recently because fujifilm has always had the film simulations yeah that make the images look like film and uh and that's popular or maze or like wait i can take a photo

and it just looks good straight out of camera yeah but yeah that one's mine what was the fujifilm you set up for me when i took to yosemite x100v that was that yeah that was really i just also like the form factor of it being nice and light light and just like being able to take it and throw it in a backpack or around your neck that doesn't like not dragging around an a seven or an R five and RF lenses. Like it's so much easier and more fun to travel cameras. The X 100 series are awesome. And you can buy the original one too. It's like, it'll be slower and the autofocus kind of sucks, but like whatever.

Yeah. The autofocus was not great on this, but I rarely autofocus anyway so yeah yeah it's gonna be cooler and better than your phone so yeah they're fun nice all right so i have been really enjoying an app for my ipad called staff pad um it's really expensive for an app uh which makes it a scary purchase it's 90 dollars and that's before any in-app purchases oh my god what uh in-app purchases go anywhere from like 80 to 300 oh my you're really gonna have to sell us on this one so like and what's freaky about it is because it's the app like there's no trials there's no there's no refunds like dang you're in it once you're in it um but what staff pad is is it's a music notation software

and it's the anti-music notation software um if anyone has ever used any of these programs before they are the biggest sufferers of like bloat of any software idiom um more than chrome yeah no every single one has a completely unusable toolbar because it's just so stuffed with stuff there's no point um so this is like the exact opposite of that like when you open the program it gives you a blank non-paginated stave and you just write with a pencil. Can you explain what she means? I really need some expression on what's going on here. So a traditional music score for anyone that's ever, Marques played trombone.

Actually, and David played drums. I played the drums in middle school. I still have no idea what's happening. So when you have a sheet of music, right, like it's on a page. And then when you're finished reading that page, you flip to the next page. So all of these music notation softwares also operate with pages. Like you write in a page, like a Word document, and the next one is a page. But a lot of music happens outside of music notation now.

And when you open a program like Logic or GarageBand or Pro Tools, there's no pages. It's just an endless timeline. And that is the philosophy that this works with. And it was funny, I was talking with Hayato about it. And he was like, when I mentioned that it was paginated, just means in pages as opposed to endless. Crabinated. like when I mentioned that it was paginated just means in pages as opposed to endless. Cravenated. Yeah. He was like, he was like, it's funny that that's like one of the last vestiges of skeuomorphism to like leave iOS design is pagination.

Anyway, so it's this really cool app that prioritizes like handwriting recognition and speed. And if you're trying to like make something that you can take to an orchestra and it's the most beautiful-looking score ever, you're probably not going to be able to get it done in this. But if you're on the subway and you have 45 minutes and you have a musical idea in your head, it is unbelievably fun to just sit there and write music with your hand, like in your own handwriting, hit play, and then hear it played back to you.

It's like in the B-roll, there'll be some like examples. I was gonna say, I need to see this. Sounds like magic. Do you wanna, I mean, do you want a live demonstration? A little bit. You were describing it. I was like, in my head, I was like,

it would be so cool, but Ellis would probably think this is stupid if you could write the music and then it would play it. I was like, that would be so cool, but Ellis would probably think this is stupid if you could write the music and then it would play it. I was like, that would be insane. And then that's what you said. I want to be able to hum or sing something to it and then have it notate it and then also be able to play it. All right.

So I have StaffPad open. I'm going to add an instrument. In this case, why don't we say it is a... Harmonica. Altisax. I don't know if I have a harmonica. Altisax. I wouldn't...

You just do guitar. And I purchase for a harmonica. We have Altisax. So then it opens this endless stave. Single stave. Yeah. And then I go in and I'll write some stuff. What are you writing?

I'm going to write a G major scale. Do you write it directly on the stave? So I've written four eighth notes, right? You can't see, you're so far away. I can see it. And then I hit the next bar. I have good eyes. And it converts it into real written notes.

And then when I hit play, let me make sure my volume's up. Then when I hit play, let me make sure my volume's up. Then when I hit play, there you go. And it can do anything. How did you write the notes? He has to know how to write. With his Apple Pencil? With my Apple Pencil.

I wrote them just as you would write. You just tap? No, no, you write the same way you would write on a scroll. You wrote G major scale? No, I wrote... i i wrote for that yeah i wrote an i wrote four eighth notes ascending oh it's like how in the text box you can write letters and then it just goes ocr and just turns yeah it's like that but for music notes okay the music note equivalent of scribble you know another thing that i never realized doing this is like like there are certain musical symbols like a quarter note rest

that I just always I just always written it as a squiggle like I had always just gone it's a very specific you remember that much from playing trumpet in middle school yeah it's hard well drum didn't have notes of

I guess you did but rests yeah anyway so if you like music and you're rich like me buy staff I like this app because it was actually originally developed for Windows surface or Microsoft surface

and then it just functions so much better on iPad they're like this is an iPad app now oh my god O ocr is object or sorry optical character recognition so it's like a super advanced yeah specific version of ocr it's pretty sick it's pretty sick damn um while you guys are talking i thought of two oh is one of them ocr is that no no actually what uh it could be. So the two I have are, one, I just got the Anker 747 charger.

It's just like a normal charger. It's a smaller version of a 150-watt charger. It charges a laptop super fast. It has three USB-C ports and one USB-A. The USB-A is kind of slow, but whatever. It's just a nice, convenient weight savings for my backpack because I can carry

my charger everywhere. And you know that little rubber thing that we have with suction cups on it? Yeah, wait, what is that? nice convenient weight savings for my backpack because i carry my charger everywhere um and you know that little like rubber thing that we have with suction cups on it yeah wait what is that look at this it's to yeah oh my god that makes so much more sense yeah it comes with it right it comes with it and it's to plug it into the wall and to like hold it stably so if you have like three or four things plugged into it i threw that I threw that part out. Can you describe the object for the audio, folks? Yeah, it's like a rectangular rubber mount, like a frame, basically,

and it's got suction cups on one side, and so you use it to frame the charger when it's plugged into the wall so that when you wiggle a cable out of it, it doesn't pull that out of the wall, too. But also, like, if you're at an airport of it it doesn't pull that out of the wall too but i'm uh also like if you're at an airport and it's a outlet that's probably been used a thousand times and when it has that like bottom weight on it if you plug it into a really loose outlet it'll kind

of start falling forward so that like keeps it in so that's what this is you can take it with you wherever you want we just throw it against the glass window all the time yeah it's a great suction cup mount so there's that uh i think it's about what 100 bucks 109 dollars uh and the other one that i came up with i'm already forgetting what i was oh you mentioned you wanted to be able to hum something yeah and it would just know yeah uh there's an app that i learned when i was going into no no i've never gotten soundhound to work ever i got it to work one time and that was good enough for me. I remember this. I was going to say SoundHound.

Do you have it on right now? I have it. You can theoretically hum something. You can do that into Google too. I want to try. You can do it into Google Assistant as well. What are you going to hum? I haven't tried that.

You guys can guess and then also. Okay. What do I do? Do I just press? You just hit the big soundhound logo um blue oh it just said are you singing or humming? It got it. It got it? Yeah, it says blue dabba dee right at the top. Nice. It also says the chicken dance.

You can do this with Google, though. But the first one is blue. You can do this with Google. Oh, Google thought it was the chicken dance also. No, no, okay. Ready? Ready. Search a song.

Ba da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da That was way cooler. Nice. That was way cooler. Google did a way better animation. All right, I'm deleting SoundHound. But I do want to say, SoundHound, I apologize. Clearly, I was using a previous, or maybe my voice, or I don't know. My humming was horrible also. So like it got that.

It took me a while to get what you were humming. I think I shouldn't have hummed. I should have done it like how David did. Oh guys, it's time to be real. Ready? Oh, okay. Sorry. I just started using this.

I don't know how to be real. It's up to David. There we go. All right, it happened. Hey, what a smile it says. Nice. You guys got to see the be real live. Live.

Well, I think that's where we'll end it. We do need to try to figure out what these trivia answers were. I'm having a feeling I'm not going to get any of these right, but we'll try anyway. Can I grab one of those, please? What do you need? Oh, yeah, you got it. You know, this first question, it may seem difficult.

You got a 50% shot. You know, I think we're going into this feeling good. We are. Yeah. Okay. So in 2021, were there more baby girls named Siri or baby boys named Anakin? We're writing the name that we think there's more of. There's more.

In 2021. You can either say like boys or you can say the name that we think there's more of. There's more of. In 2021. You can either say, like, boys, or you can say the name. Any day now. I'm ready. I'm ready. I got it. All right. I feel like I'm going to be wrong

but that's okay ready flip I said Anakin that is correct oh man I said Siri sorry I said boys

look how Mark has spelled Anakin though I don't know how to spell Anakin I'm glad you said that because there were way exact numbers I don't know how to spell Anakin. Anikan. I'm glad you said that because there were way... Okay, I couldn't... Exact numbers, I don't know. Every source I found said there were way more Anikans. Incomparably more Anikans in the series.

However, if you misspell Anakin, there's still double digits. Really? Wow. How did you spell it? A-N-I-K-A-N. Probably just the simplest way I could think of. What can Annie do? Anything.

I assumed a lot of people would have named Star Wars based, but hated. I think by 2021, like, Syria as a name gets a bad rep. But Anakin might be a little cooler because it's like Star Wars. Do we like episode one now that... I loved episode one. Really? Yeah. I thought everyone hated episode one.

It's got sand and it gets everywhere. That's episode two. That's episode two. That's episode one. Right? I don't want to go any further into this conversation. Anakin says that as a young adult while trying to court Princess.

Wow, spoiler alert. Oh my god. No, isn't that episode three? I haven't seen it yet, man. Are you serious? What? That's a joke. I knew that was a spoiler alert.

No, it is episode three. Damn. Okay, anyway, I just want to throw out there, according to the Social Security Administration or whatever, 2021 was actually the peak of boys being named Anakin. So we're on the way up. Yeah, I'm not surprised. It's a classic. With Star Wars getting more and more popular as Lucasfilm

and Disney just destroyed it. How many babies were named Obi? Darth? You did not. No, I didn't look it up. Next question. So this was Jar Jar. Wait, Marcus, do you know the significance of Anakin? It's one of the main characters

not wrong stop the press how much of star wars have you not seen well i haven't watched the movies but like i've seen memes and enough of it wait you haven't seen like you haven't seen a single star wars movie not entirely through no oh my god yeah but i know i know characters names i know like i have good and who's bad, kind of. Is Anakin good or bad? Next trivia extravaganza, there is totally going to be a We Grill Marquez About Star Wars category. You're just going to get a bunch of them.

I mean, I'm going to get most of them wrong also. Yeah, I don't know. One day we'll have a Star Wars and Harry Potter trivia-centered episode, and I will die happy. Okay, next question. The crab theory that Ellis spoke about will have a star wars and harry potter trivia centered episode and i will die happy okay next question the crab theory that ellis spoke about oh boy was an example of convergent evolution tech question there's both we did both so the convergent evolution you guys were correct but can you give me an example of convergent evolution any example like from another animal that from any yeah there's a there's a lot of

examples really okay i've had a couple that i was juggling that i'm gonna write and also cross out i have literally no idea i'm more interested to see if you will consider this right or wrong i was gonna say that i might have to do for animals it has to be animals oh you're yeah sure oh okay all right flip them and read what do we got i just wrote i wrote birds okay wait angero birds what about bird what about birds there's probably some converging crabs there's only one kind of bird if crabs there's tons of birds yeah they're all birds yeah exactly so it's not convergent evolution it's just evolution are they all converging on one type of bird tell me i'm wrong they're converging they all have beaks they have feathers they fly not all actually they don't all fly those are the ones left behind they haven't converged i feel like this is subjective adam no it is not

i mean i guess depending if you consider biology subjective what you said i wrote four legs. Four legs? There's not that many things with two legs. Is it two legs? No. Oh. Oh. I said sharks. More specific. So, actually, I'm going to give that to you, because that's the closest one.

What was it? Fish? Shark and dolphin bodies is an example of conversion. I hope I converge to be a shark or dolphin body. Sharks have been around for like 400 million years yeah i feel like if they were gonna evolve they would have changed birds if you would have said bird wings i would have given you a point bro birds are wings are you saying because bird wings and insect wings is an example of convergent evolution

quick fact check david is correct what tetrapods four legs is an example of convergent evolution. Quick fact check. David is correct. What? Tetrapods. Four legs is an example of convergent evolution. You didn't even fact check it on the spot. Four legs. I had to put in tetrapod because when you put in four legs, it's like, what the hell are you talking about? So I get the point, right?

You get the point. Andrew's going to go nuts on the birds. He's right. I do think that birds is a good one, though. Even if you didn't get it right. The wings. If I if i said wings yeah more than one thing turned into a flying so i have a bunch of other cross why don't we not wait why are we not sharks and or birds no it's not all creatures there's like certain uh creatures that have just hit their like peak yeah well there's certain environments for which certain evolutionary features are ideal and once they reach that ideal they don't need there's no further evolution needed it's like when you drafts get longer and longer next again and like they've reached the the height

where like they can reach all of the leaves and it it's no longer evolutionarily advantageous to be even taller so drafts aren't like still evolving longer and longer next so it's no longer evolutionarily advantageous to be even taller. So, giraffes aren't like still evolving longer and longer necks. Well, convergent evolution is technically when two different things evolve to the same thing. So, some other mammal also evolves a longer and longer neck in the same form and hooves. And they just turn into a giraffe because that's the optimal form. So, other fish were evolving into sharks. There's no doubt a ton of different sharks that have all evolved to have the same look. They're all the same looking shark.

Oh, the same like... So flying. Flying is an example of convergent evolution. Didn't all the dinosaurs become birds? Yeah. No, there's... Thank you, dude. That's what I was saying.

I agree. The bird is the last living example of a dinosaur, but not all dinosaurs became birds. Sharks, crocodiles. But they weren't dinosaurs. The crab brave is slowly getting louder. Second trivia question after that long tangent. Oh, the tech one. Well, this is the third trivia question, actually.

Yeah, the tech one. Why did Amazon name the assistant Alexa? What was that? I don't know. Someone just groaned. And time is coming up. Flip them and read. Is it an acronym? I wrote that it's an acronym or some sort of a combo of Amazon made up words.

I wrote random name generator. I wrote executive's daughter. Nope. That's a good answer. So according to Amazon amazon it was inspired by the library of alexandria and that's why they named it alexa in what way the library of alexandria was the source of the library that burned down and we lost a lot of knowledge like alexandria sure yeah alex well alexander is spelled a-L-E-X-A-N-D-E-R.

Yeah, but it's not Alexander. It's Alexandria. I mean, those are all too long. Yeah. I think Alexandria is named after Alexander. I don't know who else would be named after.

Wait, the city is named after the dude? I thought. I'm just saying. Fact check. I'm just saying that's how it's spelled. Like, Alexa is just the first half of that

that's fair yeah so that's why it was city in virginia you might that's true wow amazon has a lot of love for virginia huh so no one got any points for that sorry no yeah well that's been fun i think some of you got some birds uh something out of that i think some of you got some birds, uh, something out of that. I hope some of you made it this far. If you made it this far into the podcast, I need you to write a comment that just says, I know many different animals with four legs, uh, or just name animals with four legs. That would be, that would pretty sick to let us know you got this far table. Cool. That's one too. All right. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Thanks for subscribing. Thanks for rating. Catch you guys in the next one.

Peace. Use your five star rating on us this month. Waveform was produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. We are a partner with Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro outro music was created by Vane Sill. Take care.