Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - WTF Happened in 2025 - Waveform Rewind

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

It's the. last regularly scheduled episode of the year and the gadgets just keep coming! Marques, Andrew, and David get right into the Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold before talking about a new Instagram app and a new AI feature coming soon to a Gmail near you! After that, it's all about the EV world with discussion turning to the discontinuation of the Ford F-150 Lightning and then a quick recap on Rivian's Autonomy day. We close it out by recapping some of our best and worst predictions from last year. It's a chaotic one this week. Enjoy! Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Links: Verge - Twitter trademark story Verge - Instagram TV app Google - CC beta MKBHD - Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold video Rivian - Autonomy day This episode brought to you by: LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/mkbhd Coderabbit - www.coderabbit.ai/mkbhd Darktrace - www.darktrace.com/defenders Shopify - www.shopify.com/waveform T-Mobile - www.t-mobile.com Music provided by: Epidemic Sound Social: Waveform Threads: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Waveform Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/?hl=en Waveform TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Hosts: Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Intro/Outro 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

Support for today's show comes from DarkTrace. DarkTrace is the cybersecurity defenders deserve and the one they need to defend beyond. DarkTrace is AI cybersecurity that can stop novel threats before they become breaches across email, clouds, networks, and more. With the power to see across your entire attack surface, cyber defenders, such as IT decision makers, CISOs, and cybersecurity professionals now have the ability to stop zero days before day zero. The world needs defenders. Defenders need Darktrace. Visit darktrace.com slash defenders for more information. If you're tired of database limitations and architectures that break when you scale,

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we've all watched hot ones enough we should notice everyone but David has watched hot ones enough that we should the only hot ones episode I watched was the one where uh what's his name like you better be careful David is right there

Marquez has been on it twice I think I watched that one wait twice I watched one I didn't know you went on again unbelievable I talked so much about you on that episode That's crazy. He was like my good friend, David.

There was a whole section where Sean is like, I heard your friends with David. You should totally watch it. It was so good. All right. That's cool. I'll keep it up. Yo, what's up?

People of the Internet. Welcome back to another episode of the Wayform podcast. We're your host. I'm Marquez. I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And this week, we've got regularly scheduled. I said, Ellis is going to interrupt you.

That's right. Because. And I'm wrong, burgundy? And I'm interrupting you because this episode is not like normal episodes. Do you guys know why this is a very special episode? Is it because it's the last one this year? It is coincidentally the last episode of the year, but that's not what I was going for. Last regularly scheduled of the year.

Yeah, but that's not what he means. Hit it, Rich. Oh, no. Guys, this episode is being taped at 5 p.m., which means this is the first ever episode of Oh Way from After Dark After Dark

Thank you, Rich. You can get the once again. I was wondering why Rich is here. I was like, this is a long clip for That was it. Should we talk about why we're here at 5 p.m.? Yes, we should. That's a good transition.

Okay, so today I got to finally get some hands-on time with this thing right here, which is the Samsung Galaxy Z trifold. This morning, we went into the city, got some info from Samsung on what it was about, and got to shoot some footage of it, and then we got back to the studio, and the one that I bought from Korea had also arrived the same day, and that is this one right here. So, how much did it cost you from Korea? Do you know how much it costs? So I'm going to get my invoice later, so I don't actually know, but I hear it's somewhere

between $2,500 and $3,000. It's an expensive phone. But I've watched other people's videos on it, and I've seen photos of it, and it looks like such a chunk, and I keep thinking, oh, it's kind of a gimmick, like whatever, Samsung's doing the trifold thing, but it's obviously not going to be reasonable to use. And then I picked it up and held it, and I used it with the screen closed, which is basically the same as Z Fold 7, and it's fine, and then I opened it, and it's a whole tablet on the inside, and I'm starting to think this is actually kind of a nice, like a really nice phone this year.

It's obviously super expensive, but I'm holding up to the camera for the video viewers. This thing is a full diagonal 10-inch tablet on the inside, and I like it more than I thought I would. So are we going to get rid of short-form video now that we're going to be able to have landscapes in our pockets? No, because, like you said this before, you don't have to do that. You can put three short-form videos across it and play it like a slot-man. Wait, can you actually? I mean, you can. It's literally short-form slots.

And if you get all three screens showing the same short, like, it's a for you page, then you win. And you can't stop until that happens. Yeah, instead of it being like a seven, a cherry, like three or four things, it's millions of videos that you have to get lined up. So, yeah, you can do three things side by side. If you get all three videos being the same, then Neil Moynihan has to step down and you become the CEO of YouTube. His name is Neil Bohen, by the way, not Moynihan Station. Sorry, Neil. I love Moynihan Station. That's beautiful.

So there's a couple quirks about this. I'll go through. So the basic specs are actually kind of fine. They're just like a one-year-old flagship. Samsung is using the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy. So not Elite Gen 5, but 8 Elite for Galaxy. The only spec is 512 gigs of storage and 16 gigs of RAM. So that's pretty sweet.

The outside screen, like I said, is the exact same as Z Fold 7. Wait, real quick. Is there a one-turbide version? I thought on the Samsung Press Mobile something. Maybe that's not coming to the US because I was told

it's only one-spec 512. There might be somewhere where you can get a one-tabite version. Oh, okay. Even better. But yeah, the outside screen, the cover screen is just your classic 21 by... What is it? 21 by 9, I think.

It's a wide screen, obviously. That's 6,600 nits, 120 hertz. Why am I? It's hard to talk. I've been talking all day. It's been a long day. But then you open the phone.

Oh, on the back has the camera as same as a Z-Fold 7 as well. So 200 megapixel primary and then an ultra-wide and a 3X telephoter. So mid. Yeah, mid. But then you open it and it's like, it's a tablet. So do. It's all the things. You can watch full-screen videos.

You can game. You can have apps side-by-side and they're not actually cramped. That's huge. Yeah. You can type on a full-size keyboard. You have decks all the time. even without being connected to a monitor. You can also connect it to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard,

and use it as a second display. Can I ask a stupid question? Go for it. What does Dex not on a monitor even mean? Because isn't the whole point of Dex that it goes on a monitor? It's just like, it's just more computer like I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But on the screen.

Okay. Yeah. No, that's a very valid question. Yeah, so it's like full screen apps that give. What's a computer? Different, like, if you're in the files app, it'll show the full tree structure. and then you can resize windows

and you can keep them in certain areas. It's literally a desktop. Everything's computer. Everything's computer. I know. It's just an iPad. Well, it's a Samsung Galaxy tab. Oh, wait, that's kind of...

I've got three windows open here and then I go, you know what? I want to go to a new space. Whoa. And do three more windows and then move back. I'm going to say something real quick, those creases are pretty rough right now. Those are not good.

So the creases are rough, and it's kind of similar to the early generations of other phones with crease where when I'm looking at it and using it, the content is more than enough to distract me from the crease. But if I am analyzing the hardware, it's so obvious. The creases are two different sizes because there are two different hinge ratios because the left side is the inside fold and the outside folds around the inside folds. It's even bigger. So, yeah, there is a lot going on with the hardware engineering, but I found that actually using the phone and just watching

videos and typing and emailing and all that stuff is really solid. Question. Yeah. Considering the square aspect ratio of a bifold is kind of lame for watching videos and doesn't really do anything for you in my humblest opinion. How much of a 16 by 9 video fits full screen on this? How many black borders?

There's small black borders. So the whole thing wide open is 16 by 11. So it's pretty close to, like if you watch, I don't know if you can find a 16 by 9 video, but our videos are 2 by 1 and there's reasonable black bars, but it's way bigger than a slag. and if you go yeah 16 by 9 videos you're even smaller black bars top and bottom so it's like

it's most of the display though you'd say yeah it's pretty nice apps that use the whole screen like gaming or whatever the split screen keyboard is literally there's no keyboard on the middle panel that's so all Samsung's tablets do that too so they just treat it like a tablet it makes sense it's just really jarring to see a whole panel with nothing in it love the idea of like being on an airplane and being able to play like a PlayStation 2 game with a controller. Like is that not

awesome? Oh my God. That's sick. Is that not awesome? God of war? Yeah. I'm preemptively thinking about what the comments will be.

Like we just published our video my hands on with it. I think one common concern or question that I have is like all right, I already have a tablet. Like why is this better than a tablet? It's not.

It's just that it can fit in your pocket. Yeah. That's like the main. Like obviously if you already have a phone in a tablet, this isn't for you. But the person who, wants to have a phone and a tablet but take it in their pocket with them yeah this does that i mean

you have to have a bag to carry a tablet with you basically and you yeah you don't with the 10 inch screen yeah that's pretty amazing so that's sweet um it has a cellular connection all the time which is nice for a tablet it's thinner probably than the tablet you're thinking of but the other thing is it's definitely a smaller battery than the tablet you're thinking of yeah most 10 inch tablets have like an 8000 million power battery roughly even samsung's like s10 tab s10 has a roughly 8000 million power battery. This has a 5,600 million power battery. Is that YouTube's desktop site? No, that's actually, I'm trying to find a 16 by 9 video, so that's your iPhone 5S review. Is that a 16 by 9 video? I'm, I was guessing we switched

to 2x1 when Brandon and Vin convinced us to, like 2018. That's pretty good, and then you can enlarge it and then it's, and that looks awesome. Looks pretty good. It's pretty, oh no, that's definitely cutting a lot off the sides when it's full screen, full screen. It is when you full screen but yeah what is the IP rating of this fringe 48 IP 48 which is also the same as a Z Fold 7 so you can drop some water on it next to it around it that's impressive for a gen 1 a dust particle or like piece of sand being folded in not once but now twice probably that probably don't get I am concerned about that that's going to be the longevity test for people that have this early yeah I think this is fair to consider it a first gen product

like it's a first-gen tri-fold so it's first-gen something i think i'll turn a location knock off rotation rock rotate rotation i turn rotation lock off i've said so many words today have you seen that trend that's been going around that's like uh it's on the tv and it goes rock sock rock sock yeah i feel like you could not do that right i'd be very bad at it right now mark i'm going to daily this i've been thinking about it so i imported it from korea so i'm not exactly sure what the bans or situation is going to be looking like, but on this, on this phone, I think I would like to daily it. I think I can get my E-SIM in there and try it.

Oh, it's not, landscape lock is not. Oh, wait. Yes, it was. Hold on. Almost did it daily it because we almost just lost it. Just dropped it on the floor. The amount of products that we've, like, taken out the box and dropped on this podcast. Linus, watch out.

All right. Cool. Yeah. I'm more of a fan that I expected to be. I really think there's a big difference between the on-screen. presence and the in-hand presence of this phone. Yeah, for sure. Which is so hard to convey in video because you're watching this on a screen.

So it's like it probably doesn't translate very well, but you'll have to take my word for it. I can't wait till there's another Chinese version of this, but it has better batteries and it's got like 12,000 million powers or something. Seems like that's in route. I mean, are we talking about this later? But isn't there some more steam for this iPhone fold this year? Yes, it's coming out next year. People think it's going to be like kind of a squat regular size phone and then it opens up to be wider than it is tall. Which makes sense because the whole idea with all these square folds is you don't really get a ton out of a lot of media situations.

Is that a new leak that just came out? I saw someone posing it, but it looks so poorly like rendered, it felt I just like glazed. So it like opens up into like an iPad mini like turned on its side basically. Kind of yeah, I think I saw somebody did a mockup of basically like imagine like the first gen pixel fold like that sort of passport size. but then you open it and it's a wider screen and that makes it better for watching videos on the inside which I could see that being a highlight you know of this film

okay a question for you guys about this fast forward 10 years are we using smart glasses or are we using phones like this that unfold into like a giant tablet this I mean we'll have smart glasses as well you said 10 years or 5 years I say 10 years let's do 10 years

I think that not everyone is going to, if you're, if you don't have a prescription, you'll use smart glasses as sunglasses. If you do have a prescription, people will start using smart glasses on the daily. But I don't think it's going to replace their phone. I think it's just going to be the meta-rayband style, you know, it'll have a display, it'll give you notifications, but I don't know, I probably won't wear it because I have perfect vision. I think, I think there's like a degree where like, we're, now that we're hitting like max dopamine technology, you know, We're finding that, like, outside of video games and vertical video,

like, people don't really spend, like, that much time using tech. So I think the value prop of a device that can't really do vertical video that well or game very well, like, I don't know if people are going to wear. No, no, smart glasses. Oh. Like, I don't know. I think, though, but I would argue smart glasses, that's kind of the point of it is it's just it's there when you need it.

And because it's so convenient that it's there, the times you do need it and you don't have to pull something out of your pocket or it's just like right there you can i'm trying to waste time pulling out i don't even i use wireless charging i'm efficiency major right here wow you can doomscroll instagram reels on the meta yeah on the highway that's right yeah oh god that's one of their use cases yeah i just looked it up um we went from not having any foldables to having foldables the way we have them now in about eight years. Has it been that long?

Like the Z-fold one is 2019, and we had foldables for maybe a year or two before that. So like 2017 to 2025. And it's progressed so much that even this triple folding, well, the trifold, is thinner than the Z-fold five. Wow. It was that thick for that long. Like when it's folded up?

When it's folded up, it is thinner than the Z-Fold 5, when the Z-Fold 5 is folded. It's thinner than the iPhone air. We put it up to Brandon's 5. The panels are three different sizes. Are they all smaller than it? They're all thinner than it. They're all thinner than it.

As thin as its thickest point. Yeah, if you can't fit it through a slot. That is one of the interesting things about this phone is each one of these panels is a slightly different thickness. 3.9 millimeters on the left, 4.2 millimeters in the middle, 4.0 millimeters on the right. To fit battery in USB Type C and, you know, speakers and all the things happening in this phone, that's just how it is. But yeah, they're all thinner than the iPhone era. And then you fold it up and it's thinner than Z-fold 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Kind of crazy.

I think I just realized a very small mistake we made in the video. I cut that out. I'm thinking the same thing. Because you said the middle panel for USB-C, but it's the middle panel when it's folded. When it's unfolded, it's the right panel. Yep. Oh, God. I caught that and cut it out.

Yeah. I never would have thought of that. Things are a lot harder to describe when you have 3D space. Audio people are like, I don't understand what you are. Well, yeah, audio people, when you're, unfolding it, it kind of looks I'm not doing that again? The phone's USBC port is on the bottom

when it is folded up, but because the bottom is actually the middle. The right most panel. Wait, never mind. It's the right most panel. It's the right most panel, which is the bottom when it's folded. What is... You ever bought like a fish from a fishmonger? It kind of unfolds like that.

Like you lay it down and you go one and then you got your fish. I believe you. I don't even fill it. Isn't there, like, is it on Reddit or something when you, like, retire a phrase because it perfectly hits, like you found the perfect description for that.

I think we can retire fingerprint magnet with this phone because you're Lord the amount of fingerprints on the surface area of this phone. It's crazy. You got to wear gloves. It's like this black and gray carbon fiber mimicking fiberglass composite.

It's smooth-ish. And I think it makes sense in here because you have to make something smooth with a little bit of a bezel that you can then safely close the outside screen over. So no real texture. But yeah, very much a finger per mat. Did you get the kickstand case with it?

The case that comes with it is just a sort of a back spine and back cover case. So that's the Samsung case. It also comes with a 45 watt charger in the box. It's crazy. Throw you a little bone for $3,000. Yeah. Yeah.

That wobble is crazy. The wobble is down at a table. I mentioned it in the video, every time I mention people are like, but you put a case on it. Okay, so fine. So you'll put a case on it, it'll be fine.

But this is one of the biggest wobblers of all time. The case that comes with is thin enough, it's still going to wobble like this. It was a lot less. I tried it. I actually think that they thought about that one. All right. They should bring back the bikini case for this.

The bikini cases. Actually, it was kind of iconic. It was iconic. Ellis doesn't remember it. Search Galaxy S8 bikini case. Was it S8? Galaxy S8. Can I hold it?

I, for one, and I'm excited for you to test this so that I can decide whether or not I definitely will not. I did it wrong and it yelled at me. Oh, I did want to see that. It yells. It vibrates at you. It vibrates strongly. Can I see that? I want it.

So if you, can I break it? Is it bad? I haven't. It's bad if you break it. Nothing's really happy. I mean, if you try to like smush it, it would probably not be good. It goes. No, you can do that.

you can do it the wrong way I'm yelling at me no it does when the screen is it only does it yeah uh stop okay yeah it doesn't like it doesn't like it it yells at you but otherwise yeah

very intuitive well I'm excited to see whether or not you actually get value out of this this is what I have considered like the dream device for a very very long time and if I could have something that I could just carry a little bit

a little keyboard with me and a little mouse with me and I could just write on Google all I want to do is write on Google Docs that's all I want to do without having to carry a laptop. So if this can do that, I'm very happy.

I just like that the light phone and this came out in the same year. Wow. Maximilist and minimalist. I do maintain like the most fun I've ever had on a foldable is e-reading with one page on each side.

And I don't know what that would be like. Because it looks like a real book. It feels like a real book. A real book couldn't even do this. Can this do three pages? Yeah. Yeah. Four-dimensional book right here.

Yeah. Okay Great So yeah That was our We have the Z-fold In-house For Real for real

On God underscore final dot MP4 Last week's episode We titled The Galaxy Z-Fold The Galaxy Z-Trifold Is Here For Real For Real On God

What are we supposed to Title this week's episode Underscore Final dot MP4 Yeah Yeah Yeah I think

Yeah That title That title went Hard last week CTR was fantastic It was really Speaking of The things that you can do

On the Galaxy Z Trifold If there is If there was this new Social Media app Coming out that is supposed to replace Twitter You could run it on one of the three screens Was that a segue? That's what I was trying to do

Oh Yeah C plus Yeah What? I expect that way Come on It was all right

Is Segway Wordle last night Yeah. No, Swaylor. I think it was Segway. It was either Segway or Swade. Segway, yeah. I think I'd guess to Swade first. Well, what is this social media?

All right, let me tell you about this. Yeah. Okay. Is it federated? No, it's not. And this is why I think it's point. This is why I'm like, if you're going to make a social media up in the future, just stop non-federing them.

Come on, guys. So what is it? Or in 2020. Okay, so a couple weeks ago, this startup popped up called Operation Blue. And effectively what they're trying to do is get the Twitter name back because they are making the claim that X abandoned the Twitter name when they switched everything to X, which I would, you know, agree with. I would disagree. Really? Dude.

I think they very hastily change some things like the URL and the logo to X, but for a long time, pieces of the UI in the setting still said Twitter. But that was them being, like, lazy. Yeah, I like agree with both of you I think it is still everywhere And it's still almost Considered Twitter for the most part But I think the owners of Twitter They said

Yeah, it's not Twitter anymore And like they make fun of people For calling it Twitter still and like Elon replied to you on X You said I'm still calling it Twitter And Elon said you won't Yeah well

Is that that's got to be used in the litigation We're still calling it Twitter today That's got to be used in litigation Yeah anyway so last week They filed a petition to the U.S. Patent Office to cancel X's ownership of the trademarks for Twitter and tweet. Trademark. Yeah, trademark.

Because X had made it clear that they didn't have any intention to use the Twitter name anymore. Okay. Right? X has now sued them, which they didn't need to do. They could have just filed a motion to cancel the trademark infringed the trademark cancellation. I'm sorry, what's X? You keep saying X. Okay, here's another problem.

When I'm trying to Google something on the X, platform it's impossible because you just write x in google after and nothing comes up twitter doesn't come up oh you're trying to search twitter and you're using like google space x yeah it doesn't do anything it's impossible space x.com does that work you could probably do site search space x is a different company yeah he's this shit look what you look what happened yeah it's bad yeah uh anyway they're suing trying to stop them from doing this they're arguing that as of december 14th more than 4 million users came to X by typing in Twitter.com.

I'm one of them, too. Everyone is all of them. This is so frustrating because I want to stick it to the man and call it Twitter, but I'm actually... You want them to lose the... Yeah, I want them to get f***ed,

and I'm helping them not do that. I mean, they were big about changing it to X, so, you know, commit, you know? This is such a weird thing, because, like, if you... Even if you... Like, if I own a trademark or whatever, and I stop using it,

Yeah. That doesn't mean people immediately sue me to cancel my ownership. If you have no intention to use it in the future, then they can file to cancel your ownership. Interesting. So it's up to them to determine if I intend to use it in the future. Yeah. It's like the guy who got Lambo.com. Yeah, actually. That's actually a lot like that. Wow. How long has it been called X? I think since 2021, right?

No, no, no, no. It was after I started working here. 22. I think it was 2023. Oh, wow. Okay. Well, anyway, this Bluebird startup has this site called Twitter. Dot New up right now where you can sign out. You can reserve your handle in case they ever actually do get the Twitter name.

That's brutal. Right now they don't have it. So it's kind of a if we do. I just don't think that they're ever going to make it be able to be exactly like old Twitter was unless they literally copied the source code. and the reason that old Twitter was able to be old Twitter was because Jack Dorsey did not care about it making money. That's the only reason that it was the way it was for so long. I don't know if he didn't care about it.

He just wasn't good at it. Well, he had like, you know, I mean, he had like majority ownership and like he didn't have to, he didn't have to like go by the whims of some investors, you know, to try to like insidify it. Well, until he sold it. Yeah. And then inshitiified it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I will say that there will never be another OG Twitter. Like that was an era that came and went and now there are things that are trying to be it and it's not going to happen again. It's not going to happen again. And it's almost cringy that this new startup is trying to be the new Twitter. Like I don't really think that's a good goal to have, but. I just got at Elon Musk on Twitter. Oh my God.

I take it back. I take it back. Well, you reserved it? And it said nobody had already reserved it? Nope. That's insane. This is one of those things where. the Twitter dot new thing is it's like I don't care this is stupid but it's really funny to watch

X like squirm a bit and be like no no just kidding we do really want it yeah I mean even though we've told everyone we don't I still use Twitter.com to go to X oh yeah so do I so yeah there's just too many there's too many microcosms of the internet at this point and being able to have like one central social social media site where things are happening is just not possible anymore isn't it I think you mean microcosm I think you mean micro contrast poor shot yeah they don't know that reference yet

yeah that'll be next week that's funny yeah I yeah well I don't know they're gonna try but I kind of think that we're just going to keep using the things we use which which way do you think that they're gonna rule what's your ruling I think because Twitter.com still links to

X.com they'll probably go well seems like that's still in use that might be enough but I'm not a lawyer so this is legal advice but I'm not a that's funny all right well let's take a quick break well we come back we still got more to talk about end of year type news uh but before we take a break yes trivia time guys let's get the energy up come on it's 5 p.m i know it's 5 30 it's 6 p.m we got it we got to get hype uh before i do

trivia i just need to issue a correction from last week because last week i got mad and called out a uh a company that sort of sounds like buy mommy for raising the price on my domain And this is really embarrassing because a very nice fan wrote to me who runs a website called Domain Details, which posts helpful information and stuff about websites and whatnot. And he explained to me that it actually wasn't GoDaddy that raised the price. It was the registry, which is really embarrassing. I don't know who does Vin. Donuts is the big one. Yeah, it's pretty embarrassing because we did like three hours of podcasts on how this all works.

and I still got it wrong. And if you want to know what a domain registry is, you can go to Domain Details.com or listen to our two-part series on how the internet works. Yeah. David and I and Adam go to Virginia.

We did. We shared two beds for three people. Yes. And they did have an indoor pool. Watch the episode to find out. It was really weird you all slept in the same bed. Two of us did. And if you want to find out

which two of us slept in the same bed, you'll have to go and listen to the episode. Yeah. We had two beds for three people. We only used one. I mean, this is Wayform After Dark. That's true. That's true.

Okay, guys. Next, we're going to kiss in the Vision Pro. Anyway, 6 p.m. What's the question? All of it. All of it's making it. Come on. Guys.

What three letters represent both a Chinese tech conglomerate and the initials of an American blues legend? I'm going to write down what I think it is. The blues legend, it's their initials. It's the initials of their stage name, not their birth name. I did not know that. Conglomerate? Or company. Is that going to help us at all?

It would. It would, because I know things. I feel like if I tell you which one, I mean, I did already say. You said conglomerate. Yeah. So it's a conglomerate. You know, that kind of makes it a little easy. But that's the question

That's just the question We'll be right back after the break What? We're going to be right back after the break. He's talking to you, Bridges? I'm not that. Of course he did, right Santa? You know, my elf Druski here

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Go to shopify.com slash waveform. That's Shopify.com slash waveform. Here you're first. This new year with Shopify by your side. Support for this show comes from DarkTrace. Defenders and cybersecurity are always where we need them, keeping our systems that run our daily lives safe from bad actors. At DarkTrace, they think defenders everywhere deserve a bigger spotlight for keeping the lights on.

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All right. So, Instagram launched a new app. Yeah, but only on fire TV. It's for TV, but it's not Instagram TV. Correct. It's for fire TV. Fire TV. So I'm assuming this just lets me doomscroll on my TV now.

Yes. Sick. I've been waiting for that. But worse. You know what's crazy? I have the YouTube app on my Samsung TV at home, and you can doomscroll shorts on it, and I have done it. That's all.

Oh, no, me too. Wait. Do you do, did you do it on purpose? No. Well, I didn't enter the carousel on purpose, but once I entered the carousel, I was like, I wonder if I can, oh, no. Hold on. And then you're like.

Yeah. Yeah. YouTube, I have a feature idea. Uh-oh. Let you rotate 90 degrees so you can lay down on the couch, use all of your landscape screen real estate and doomscroll that way. Whoa. Yeah.

That was really efficient. So new Instagram TV app, it's not the IGTV, though. We might be too old for this. You might be too young for this if you're listening. But Instagram did launch a thing called IGTV before Reels were a thing that failed spectacularly. But it was also like you had to turn your phone sideways. It was around the quibby days, if you know what that means. Remember when we asked the question?

It was just vertical video. Yeah. Well, people sometimes, like me, uploaded horizontal to video on IGTV. But remember when we used to ask the question, is this like a product or a feature? Yes. In hindsight, it was so obvious. That vertical video was just a feature of Instagram and they should have built it in. But it really to them was so vastly different that it was an entirely separate product.

Yeah. Just crazy. Am I crazy? Because you guys have talked about this. You guys have talked about this a few times and I feel like I'm having like a Mandela effect because I only remember IGTV as being a button in the bottom of the Instagram. They put a button in the Instagram app that launched the other app and it launched the IGTV app.

I never pressed it. They eventually, obviously moved it in to just be a section of Instagram, but there was probably a couple months there where it was a whole separate thing. Yeah, they had a crazy launch party for that too. It was a whole thing.

The logo was kind of fire. Yeah. Well, now, yeah, it kind of looks like MTV. Oh, that's the other. I think that's the fake logo. Okay, so this app is currently only launching on Amazon. fire TV devices which is a very very niche collaboration look I think that short form

video is a scourge on humanity and is melting our brains however whoa this is my like hey subscribe to waveform shorts yeah well well you can't subscribe to the shorts you can only you can try you can subscribe to clips but that's not that's not we don't we haven't done a short that's not vertical a way year cool short for own content well that was embarrassing for yeah so however and this is only like a 2% however this is a like i still think this is bad but you know if you're watching it on tv there's a much higher chance that you're watching it with somebody else and i think that considering people send reels to each other so much because they want like we have a whole reels channel in

Instagram where we just send it. It's a studio channel where we just send it to each other. The social aspect of watching video together is very strong. And considering the content quality of many reels has gotten very high, I think having your friend, your partner, your dog on the couch with you, your cat, to watch your reels with you, there could be 2% value in that, you know? This social video watching experience. Yeah. Yeah. Just saying Lane and I should sit on the couch and watch. reel together I mean there is obviously to an extent people already do this with every other form of video just adding short form vertical video to the list of things that you

watch in your TV yeah I mean which fine if I'm gonna be forced to watch reels I'd rather watch out my TV with somebody than with then with then on my phone with I was just gonna say we're already forced to watch reels so would you rather have this split off into its own IG TV app that has reels yes right they'll never do that yeah at this point yeah it's better for us because we're less likely to open and therefore less likely to get addicted and we can go over there intentionally when we want that brain rot and then we come back but obviously that's the opposite of what they want they want they want us to just stumble into short form video and just start scrolling yeah which is hilarious

because you used to just swipe over on instagram and that would be your inbox now you swipe over it's just reels yeah convenient i mean if they swap them into separate apps i would download Instagram again, but I on download it because I was so tired of Reels and, like, looking through it, so... Does your brain feel better? Hell yeah. For a lot of reasons. Rinklier.

Much wrinklier again. Yeah. Well, anyway, OpenAI has also launched a new image generator model, which is best for enterprise use, they say. And I think the only reason that they're saying that is because they just did a $1 billion deal with

Disney. If you're We didn't talk about this last week, but OpenAI struck a $1 billion investment deal with Disney, where Disney now gets to use SORA very extensively, and there will be Disney characters in SORA. And I've already seen what some people are doing with it, and it's not good. It's pretty bad. The last thing I would want is my children's-based animated characters to the heathens of the Internet. The reason that Disney said they want to do this is because they are going to add

like short form generative video feeds to Disney Plus which if you really want... What does that even mean? They're going to do the SORA app to Disney Plus? They're going to have like generated Disney videos on the Disney Plus app that are generated with Sora. User generated?

I don't think so. Oh. I think like by Disney people. Yeah, it's horrible. It's really bad. So instead of hiring. animators to do that, they're just going to have SOR do it. Yeah. They're a lean team over there.

They're a lean team over at Disney. Really weird. This is a company that's known for A, like, bespoke making everything by hand, like with armies of artists and engineers and imaginers and animators. And B, suing the bejesus out of anyone who uses any of their IP. Yeah. Yeah. And now they, and now they've gone and done this. Yeah. So I think that open-air needed to make the new image model to compete with Gemini because Gemini 3's image model was really, really, really good. And that's the reason they did it. But the reason that they're saying it's best for enterprise use, I think, is just because they made this deal with Disney. And we also did not talk about this, but last week,

the day after they announced the $1 billion investment deal with Disney, they also sued Google for massive copyright infringement on a massive scale. Oh, I thought it was the same day. It was the day after. Basically, yeah, they're just trying to get everyone to pay them, you know, or, to work with them in different ways. Disney pay, like they're trying to get Google to receive a billion dollars. Like, what's the... Well, to work with them in some way, I don't know. I think they're like, these companies are just going to steal our IP no matter...

Like, you can go on Gemini right now and just generate Disney characters. So I think that they're like, all these companies are stealing our IP no matter what. We should figure out a way for this to work for both of us because otherwise, you know, it's just going to happen. Yeah. Sorry to depress you on a Tuesday night. Wednesday night. This kind of stuff hits way worse at 6 p.m.

Yeah. Well, in more positive news, that happens in the morning, Google has launched a new CC feature in labs. See, that's the kind of

high quality segues I'm looking for. Thank you. You're welcome, Adam. And effectively about this, I think you would actually like this Lab Marquez. I'm on the wait list. Oh, you're on the wait list. Yeah. Well, you do like it a lot. It plugs into your calendar, your Gmail, and your Google Drive to basically give you a morning briefing of everything you've got going on during the day, things that you might want to schedule, that you might want to take a look at.

It's basically a Gemini sort of Butler assistant thing, but in your email. I have a theory about this that's going to be extremely niche and only applied to a few people. Do it. So for those of you who are like me, who every morning ask, hey, G, how's my day? Or what's my day like? And then Google Assistant goes through and does the normal routine of like, here's your A, here's your B, here's your commute, or whatever, whatever you put in for it to tell you, it does that. This is that. And I think when the teams that make these two separate products realize, like, they meet each other, when these teams meet each other on Google campus one day, they're going to combine them.

and they will give me like an AI like good version of this at some point but they have to meet first so hopefully one of them is watching this podcast and they realize that they exist it's almost like they have a video conferencing app that's called the exact thing starling yeah um yeah so i don't know i mean i'm curious how it might use like your google drive to let you know what you need to do that day i can see the calendar making sense i can see your email making sense google drive seems strange unless there's some enterprise google drive feature with like due dates that i don't know about it could be fun if it knows like which video script google doc i've been working on and it's like oh you're going to need a link to this doc today yeah it'd be cool if it just like opened all the tabs you needed at once that'd be fire that'd be fire yeah star line is what i meant to say oh so i'm an idiot i was like star like I remember Starline.

Yeah. So it is in beta right now in Google Labs and for Gemini Ultra and paid users in the U.S. and Canada. I think Google is just trying to put Gemini in every little aspect of people's lives. Even people, like people who live in their email inbox, which is a lot of people. It's me. Well, you also live inside a camera. You also don't use Gmail. I don't use Gmail.com, but I use Gmail.

I thought you used superhuman. Well, yeah. Yes. Which syncs Gmail. Yeah. But I mean, like, well, you wouldn't get this feature, would you? Unless you're using... I think you get it as an email.

I think it arrives as an email. Oh, I thought it was like a pop-up in the email app or something. I mean, ideally, it's reading all the emails or whatever for my account and then just shows up as another email. Yeah. Maybe. What's interesting, if you want to talk to CC, you can email C. Or you can reply to one of the emails that sends you, and it will send you an email back. So it's kind of like...

And then turns into it. chat bot and then it's Gemini and then suddenly you're in the Gemini app yeah yeah now I'm confused that the AI's name is CC or you you CC it in an email the product name is called CC as a play on words to the fact that it's through your email okay but you're not actually CC you're not carbon copying anything yeah I thought it was closed caption no I thought it was the famous Yankees closed that's just so bad he gets it I don't know what that is um F1 driver anyway Speaking of things that are former, damn, you said former.

Yeah, that's sad. The Ford F-150 Lightning is discontinued. What? Isn't that crazy? Only as we know it, though. As we know it. So the Ford F-150 Lightning was one of the original, like, competitor EVs to Tesla. Tesla's doing their thing for a while, and then we got a couple big, like, new EV competitors.

There was, like, the Mach-E, there was. Oh, what was the other? I'm going to remember them, actually. F-150 Lightning was the pickup truck. And then Rivian R1T came along, and Jaguar iPase. I remember this era. Every new EV got compared to the Tesla. F-150 was one of them where we went, ah, that's good.

That's one of the things that Tesla doesn't have and that people are going to want. And they basically just made an F-150 with all the same benefits and accessories, and every module would fit. It's just with an electric power train instead of gas. And it's sold okay. I see them on the road once in a while, but it didn't. sell to the rate that Ford was hoping that they would. And so despite their best efforts and their refreshes and their special Matt Black version, and they brought to the studio here, not enough sales, so they're discontinuing it. That said, they are still going to continue to do like hybrid

stuff with F-150 platform. Yeah. There's lots of versions of F-150, obviously, and they're going to do, I guess they're trying to do a version that drives on electric motors as the power train, but is fueled by a gas generator that fills battery in. then power to power train. Yeah. So it's more of like a Fisker type setup. Carra Rivera. Yeah, exactly.

They said they can get up to 700 miles on that. Yeah, I was confused by that because there's like no information, but 700 got thrown around in like every article that I saw. But I guess it's, I'm assuming there's still battery involved into it. And the gasoline engine is a is a generator. It's a generator that's extending range in quick scenarios. Sounds like a really cool way to have two things to go wrong in your car. the gas engine.

Well, that's what people say about hybrids. It's more complicated, but it is, you do have the upside of more range. Yeah, I see it as a pickup truck, especially at F150 range of, you know, the most popular vehicle in America.

This is making way more sense. I mean, you get the torque of an electric car, which is great. It's weird, though, because is that, that torque's not always the same kind of torque they want when it comes to towing, right? Yeah, I don't know how this will do with towing.

I'm not a towing expert, but I kind of feel like the F-150s. lighting was weak with towing, and that was one reason why a lot of F-150 owners wouldn't have wanted it as much, but it was really good at a lot of other stuff, obviously not as much range when you're to towing or in general. Grocery is tough to tow. Yeah, that's the thing. It's like, there's two types of F-150 owners.

There's the ones that buy an F-150 because they need an F-150, and then there's the people who buy an F-150 just because that's what I want. People who everyone else has a truck. I want a truck, too, and it's a popular, here's the truck you get. I might have to help my friend move one day. Yeah. I had multiple people in my life that were excited for this truck just because of the giant battery that they could use in case like the power goes out in house. That was a nice feature. Yeah. That was a really nice feature.

Everyone was excited about that. Yeah. So vehicle to grid power is still like sort of a new feature that a couple big battery EVs will do. I don't know. I'm going to mess up the list if I try to name them. But there are a couple that also still do this where they can be your house's battery backup in a pinch. Pretty sick. It'll be like 150 kilowatt hours last few free. days. But yeah, now that this truck is discontinued, that's one less option. That's not really good for anyone. Yeah, agreed. Can I say there's a quote from Jim Farley that I really dislike. CEO Ford. CEO Ford. What do you say? This is a customer-driven shift to create a stronger,

more resilient, and more profitable Ford. Is he implying that the customers are driving a more profitable Ford? Like, we want that? No, I think it's just, I don't care about any of you. We're going to make as much profit. Which every company, every company. But just like... I'm trying to read into this because it's a CEO statement. Customer-driven shift implies people weren't buying the electric ones. So this is customer-driven. You guys are doing this to create a stronger, more resilient, and more profitable Ford.

So the EVs were smaller margins and less profitable. And what we're going to switch to and pivot to will be more profitable for Ford. Do we all care that Ford is more profitable? Well, it's the CEO. He's talking to shareholders. Yeah. And to be clear, customers were not driving the F-150 lighting. But it was a great truck, customer-driven, truck.

Yeah, companies don't care about you. So the EU, also this week, just announced like a plan to stop doing electric vehicles and stuff like that. Well, no, to stop the plan to stop gasoline. They removed their mandate for all new vehicle sales to be electric by, I believe, 2035. Thank you for putting into words my incoherent thought. I got you. But my question. is, is this more of a trend now? Are we, like, reversing the whole EV thing? Well, I think

the bigger thing is right now is we're losing or have lost the U.S. EV tax credit. And I think that's, I think everybody understands that that is for EVs in general hurting sales pretty hard. It's interesting. Just to be clear, I don't think this has that much to do with the F-150 thing because it's really hard to buy an F-150 in Europe, period. I think he's just saying the trend. Like, we're seeing all these 2030 promises are probably. probably just going to be that there were promises three or four years ago. If you're paying enough attention to this industry, there is definitely a trend. It's kind of like reading between the lines.

I remember, like, we saw Porsche promise that the 718 came in was going to be EV in its next refresh. And then they kind of went, and also a gas one. And we went, oh, I was expecting that to be fully electric. But, like, we see stuff like that happening. We see companies who are going, ah, we're going to go, we're going to have all these electric cars and we're going to go fully electric by this year. And then quietly, they're just not doing it. Yeah. So customer driven, probably.

And also just being realistic. Like, I'm reading up on this, and by reading up, I mean, I Googled EU Electric Mandate and the AI overview is telling me that the recent change removes the hard 2035 ban on new cars that are gas powered, but they are still allowing up to 10% of sales to be combustion engines. So it's like, instead of 100, it'll be 90. Just slowly walking it back to be more realistic and more on. 10% yeah versus zero over that yeah so I I agree that it's a trend it's a slow iceberg movement type of trend where it doesn't look like a disaster but it just feels like

we're calibrating to what's realistic and customer trends and profit yeah but the realism is based on company profits profit well if you're not if nobody's buying EVs and the government incentives go away and sales drop it's like you can't make people buy EVs if They don't want them. Well, that's why we were incentivizing people to buy EVs. We're incentivizing them because they're more expensive per car. So it's like if I want someone to choose the EV, it needs to be the correct choice for them. They don't get to just force people into buying EV.

So if it was, oh, $7,000 less, well, now it makes it a better buy. I'm going to choose the EV. But now that that incentive goes away in this specific case in the U.S., it's like, now the gas car is a better buy. I'm going, I'm going to buy the gas car and the hybrid and Toyota's sitting there going, yes, more Prius buyers for us. It's true. So, yeah, that's true. That's just how. Toyota's sitting in the middle ground forever with the Prius was probably their best call.

Because they just knew that no one was ever going to, like, fully switch one way or the other. They're hybrid kings. They are. I'll throw one more thing out there. Yeah. Because I already can feel all the truck people yelling at me. I figured, why not have all the Tesla people yelling me also? Let's go.

All in. Even though the F-150 Lightning literally is a car that Ford says this isn't worth producing anymore and still outsold the cyber truck in 2025. Yeah Have you tried version 14, Andrew? Have you tried version 14, bro? Yeah, it's funny that like Tesla sells Well, Tesla only has a lot of nuance to that And I don't care.

Yeah, the joke is funny. They have four or five models. Ford, F150 is the most popular vehicle in America. So the fact that one of the trims didn't sell well and got discontinued is kind of not huge news. Yeah. But it is what it is. speaking of EV trucks

so easy there we go because I wrote it in the outline I didn't even see that I saw Rivian in bold and I was like I got this but yes

speaking of EVV trucks Rivian had an event this past week and it was really interesting because I couldn't tell who the event was for the first part of it was this really engaging

and interesting like AI chat from RJ who's a CEO talking about how they're going to be making their own silicon and their Generation 3 platform of vehicles is going to be fully self-driving on millions of miles of roads.

And I was like, whoa, it's really interesting. But this is also their autonomy day event. So then it transferred into this really, really long, very detailed and honestly complex, but explanations of how they're doing these things and the neural nets and the advantages of their approach, mixing in LiDAR with radar with cameras, why they believe this is the right solution for the future.

And it feels like they were talking to shareholders, engineers, You know who they were talking to. Yeah, and the comments section was people watching a live stream on Twitter.com or YouTube. So it was like people who are terminally online and maybe a little bit too in the bubble. And they were like, this isn't close to what Tesla is doing. And then they had hands-on after, which was allowing people to ride in these new self-driving rivians. And so there's some footage online of these rides and some of them look okay.

Some of them look like they had some errors and misses, which is. normal they didn't do like a closed course thing um so there's a lot going on my takeaway which is very much just from my own perspective because i own a generation one rivian was i'm glad i didn't buy a gen two rvian because none of those are going to get the the new silicon it's the gen three which is basically r2 they announced new silicon sorry yeah you kind of have to be in the lingo Rivian has R1, which is the first generation of their vehicles, and then they have R2, which is the SUV, like, second generation thing. And then they have R3, which is even smaller. But they also have Generation 1, which is Rivian R1T and R1S, and then Generation 2, which is also Rivian 2, R1S, and R1T.

And then Generation 3, which is R2. And presumably there'll be an R1, Gen 3. And R3. And probably an R1, Gen 3. And R3 will be Gen 3. So the takeaway here is R2 is the first Gen 3 vehicle that will have the silicon in it, that will have all the full self-driving that they're talking about all these new capabilities. It'll have LiDAR up at the top, and they talk about how smoothly integrated that LiDAR box is.

And the Gen 2 vehicles now that are like a slight update to my Gen 1 R1 are not going to get all of that. Thanks, sad for those people. Yeah, they might get some of that, but they won't have the silicon, obviously. They're already shipping. Anyway, yeah, it's interesting. They're promising a lot. It's kind of hard to take all their word for it because we see these types of events. I did not love how much they promised there.

They promise a lot. They don't really Tesla. Yeah. And I, you know, I feel like that's a combo of like maybe a little bit of fundraising and talking to the public about like, oh, yeah, we are super AI first and self-driving and all that stuff. And then people who invest and have lots of money to give Rivian might go, oh, seems. about right and be more down whatever I don't think it's going to sell them any R1s though because it doesn't have the stuff that they're talking about to Tesla's credit them going all in on the cameras it was like now for their customers their customers get to you know

theoretically use more of the self-driving features as they get updated because all of the Tesla's for a very long time have cameras yeah and so they're not going to need like new sense and stuff. There's like, yeah, they've switched out the, the boxes. They've changed the sensors, the cameras. Yeah, but they're not, there's no, like, hard limit on, like, your Model 3 can do it. Yeah, there is. No, I think there is. I think it's, like, a joke. Right, but haven't they not updated the hardware versions in, like, a while? There was at least one statement on stage that Elon, uh, sort of skirted around. He'd said, oh, yeah, all Model 3s are going to have full self-driving. And then you hear someone

in the crowd go, like, what about Hardware 3? and he kind of just goes, let's not pay attention to nuance. Like, he literally says, like, let's not get nuanced. Because he knows that this is for a certain X date and forward version of Tesla. And it's not actually all Model 3 that are going to get all these features.

Got it. But if you just kind of avoid nuance, it seems like a nice thing to say. I don't know if there's a lawsuit about that, but it's like the same thing is going to happen with everyone who has updated hardware in their cars. They build new capabilities around the updated hardware. And so everyone who's on previous gens,

like me, a first-gen-buyan buyer who spent tons of money on a truck to support this early thing. I'm not getting any of these features. Yeah. Oh, well. Too bad they can't just, like, update the box. What features did they announce, though?

So Rivian's main thing was their current driver assist feature. I'm not going to try to name them because they all have different pilot auto type names or whatever, but the current driver assist feature is something like 100,000 fully lined highways. 135,000 miles of roads that is getting updated.

to 3.5 million miles of roads. I think the quote the one guy said later was if it has clearly marked painted lines, you can drive on it, to which every comment I saw from that is like, well, where I live does fucking have that. I'm not coming to work. There's a lot more roads in the U.S.,

but it's like the current driver assist that I try to use doesn't work on neighborhood streets, doesn't work on lots of regular roads that you think it should work on. It works okay on a lot of highways, but it's like just a regular road with lines on it. it wouldn't work. So this theoretically multiplies by several orders of magnitude how many roads

it can drive hands-free on. Whether you choose to use that or not, or if you were planning on using it for everything, there's still a long way to go for them. And then the next level of things they're doing for the Gen 3. Gen San Wong. That's a different company. But yeah, in 2026, they're claiming point-to-point, so like put it address to address and I'll drive you the whole way. And then Gen 3 architecture is Eyes Off. So he's claiming you can, like, read a book and do stuff like that. And then after that would be Personal Level 4.

This is the level of promising where I was like, I don't like this. This is way too much. That's also just out of Rivian's hands for quite a bit of it in terms of regulations. And that's a lot to promise. Yeah. There are laws. My question is, if you're doing Eyes Off, but you also can only do it on marked roads. If you are eyes off

and if GPS doesn't know the road has lines or not, and you get to a unlined road, what happens? I guess it'll just beep at you. Probably beeps at you and says takeover. Yeah. Because it's probably not like you can sit in the back seat. No, no, you can't beep in the back but like if you're reading a book like he said

and in a split second, if you're going 60 and now the road doesn't have lines on it anymore, what is your ditching the book and grabbing the wheel? Doesn't Tesla just like slow down? Does it slow? It slowly slows down until it basically... Does it pull over? Okay.

That sounds unsafe for other people driving on the roads. It's just that of course... Better than barreling down a road that you don't know. And so that's also true. Hey, listen, I'm not the one who made the problem here. What happens? It accelerates. Goes even faster.

I think one of the most interesting battlegrounds on the internet, which has been hilarious, and this may just be comment farming, but I think it's hilarious, is the LIDAR versus no LIDAR battle in the self-driving world. And really, it's just people who listen. to what Tesla slash Elon says, which is lighter is stupid, you don't need it. Or what a lot of others like Jaguar with the iPase and Waymo

and obviously with Rivian now are doing, which is adding LiDAR to the suite of sensors to help augment the downsides of vision only. Right. And the argument is like vision only can do a lot if your systems are really good, if your AI is really good. But there's this really, really, really, really long tail

of edge cases of things that are kind of weird to solve for with vision. Fog. Fog and rain and all that other stuff, but also just weird stuff that happens on the road. And LIDAR can see further and has obviously a better long-distance vision than just the cameras.

And so I guess what RJ was saying on stage with the Rivian's event is LIDAR has come down enough in price that this is not prohibitively expensive. We're going to do this. We're going to build this into all of our data. And so the camps are, People who say, this is doomed, you're just adding noise to your neural nets, or this is actually better than not having it. Of course you should add it.

They fight a lot on Twitter. Marquez, people have been driving cars for millions of years without LIDAR in their eyes. I don't know what you need LIDAR for. Well, that goes to my, like, humanoid robot argument, too, which is people going that robots should be human-shaped. I'm like, you just inherited all of the blind spots and all of the downsides of humans, including drivers. Of course human drivers are worse than robot drivers. We have no eyes in the back of our head. Do you know what the best part of what this episode is?

What? We get to leave for two weeks and not read any of the comments. It's going to be a brutal. It's going to have the most comments of every episode. Can some machine learning engineer please explain to me why all the AI companies were like, no, we need to steal everything because the more information we have to give to the models, the smarter they're going to be, and that somehow doesn't apply to cars. Like, oh, no, that's too much information.

Get the LiDAR out of here. No radar. Just cameras. That's too much. It's like, how does that make? make any goddamn sense. Well, they are, to be fair, they are working on ways to not just feed more data to the language models.

Like, they're working on ways around that. After they stole everything? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, after they stole everything. One of the thing they did announce, Rivian assistant. This was interesting. Which was kind of like, yeah, exactly what you would imagine is your own in-car assistant.

But one thing I thought that was interesting is RJ shows a way that you can, like, obviously you can do vehicular commands in terms of with your car. That definitely sounds like breaking a lot, like a charge. Manslaughter. But you said vehicular commands. Yeah. Like turn on my heated seat. I didn't say that out loud.

But it also, like, it could make changes to Google Calendar and other Google things, which if you're partnering with Google somehow or connecting with Google, give me Android Auto, you can do it, coward, just do it. It makes no sense to not do it. Wait, I'm trying to think, okay, what their logic would be. Like if I ask them right now, what would they say? Because they're a lot, okay, I use Rivian software, Rivian gets all the data about how I use the car.

If I have Android Auto, I will just use that. And so I won't put all my navigation data or anything else like that into Rivian system, so Rivian system can't learn and get better. So what they do is they plug in certain parts of Google's ecosystem so that I keep using Rivian software, but that I can still interact with Google's services. That's probably what they would say.

I don't fucking care. But yeah, I will definitely use it to do things in the car and I will definitely not use it to change my calendar. I do not trust that. Do you trust that? Would you ask your car to change your calendar? Absolutely not. I feel like I wouldn't trust that.

No, no way. I like having my calendar in my car. Yeah, but on like something I can see and like do with my hands, I guess theoretically... Theoretically, it's self-driving. Yeah, is it going to show me my calendar? We're just old. Yeah. I need to physically see myself move.

it, I don't know if I would trust like some automated system to do it just for me to tell. I don't even trust Google a system, yeah, yeah. The automated system, no. But if it showed like a little calendar widget on your screen and then I could see the box move, I guess I'd trust it then. Yeah. I'm a very visual learner. I don't want my car to have any thoughts.

I don't want my car to have to think about where to turn. I don't want my car to think about my calendar. I don't want my car to think at all. Just APIs. I want it to go pedal down and go. Go forward. I want car to go. I want car to go go and beep beep.

And that's like good enough for me. No breaks. It's just sworn. Oh, yeah. I think we need an ad break. That's trivia. I'm really, wait, I'm really curious what's the last. No, it's okay.

This is a trivia question. Oh, okay. I'm just really curious what the last trivia question of the year is going to be better be good. Oh, I really want to be good. Don't you want to know? All right, so this is a bit of a teaser for this next segment coming up. Oh.

But. I'm looking at Ellis as I say this. question number two of this episode last one of the year what is the Scoville rating of Da Bomb

Closest this without Closest without going Going over Scobia I think we should just do Delta We've all watched We've all watched

Hot Ones enough We should notice Everyone but David has watched Hot Ones enough That we should The only Hot Ones I watched was the one

Where What's his name Like gives us up You better be careful David It's right there Marquez's been on it twice. I think I watched that one.

Wait, twice? I watched one. I didn't know you went on again. David, just leave. Just leave. I'm unbelievable. I talked so much about you on that episode. That's crazy.

He was like my good friend, David. There was a whole section where Sean is like, I heard your friends with David. You should totally watch it. It was so good. All right, that's cool. I'll key it up. Anyway.

I'll key up on one of my three screens. Well, think about this one. answers will be at the end like usual. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from LinkedIn. When you're running a small business, it's hard to find the time to hire the perfect candidate, especially when you've got so much on your plate.

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Oh, yeah, after dark. Aw yeah. And we're back. that was petting ziri she's just sitting right here next to me my shirt's back on now so 2025 how do we end the last episode of this calendar year

of our regular scheduled programming how should we end this well adam was nice enough to go back and look at all the predictions we made at the start of the year and kind of has a little recap going on too so I think we just jump straight into what we predicted

is this waveform wrapped kind of kind of sort of I hope I got everything right You didn't You did not All right What did we say Do you want to go through these at them

You wrote them all down And we'll just react to them Also quick note This is the last Regularly scheduled program Of this year We will have a bonus episode Next week at the time of you

listening to this So if you're traveling for the holidays Yeah next Tuesday There will be an episode Yes The 23rd Yeah 23rd Random 2025 predictions

The first one was will the S-25 have Chitu wireless charging? David said yes Chitu meaning with the magnets Yeah with the magnets With the magnets Because I was Chitu as we knew it Before Chitu ready

The first like two episodes of the year We're us debating this Cheet two got out and I was like five times And they kept changing the spec They're like Cheetoo ready As we predicted Cheet ready Andrew also said yes

Marquez said no I said no Ellis said Yes. So I got that right. So Marquez and I got it correct. Whatever. The only phones that had Chee 2 were just the pixel and the iPhone? Speaking of Pixel, that was the next one.

Marquez. Was it only the pixel? Pixel Snap. Oh, well, then the Skyline. HMG Skyline. Well, yeah, that's it. Marquez, you said that 2025 would be the year of the Pixel 10. Oh.

Oh, no. How do you feel about that? Did get a shut me down last week with my hot take. I remember what I was thinking when I said that and I had a lot to do with Tenser and that did not happen. Yeah. Damn.

You were saying that this year it would take a big leap and then next year in the 11 we would get a big visual refresh. I don't know why I have that much faith. That might be true. Because it's 10. Yeah, I mean, this would have been

a great year to do it. Well, that was the question, David. You said, because it's the 10, do you think they're going to do something big? And Marquez was like, nah. But. Oh, wait, he said nah or he said, yeah. He said it wouldn't, they wouldn't do anything big to the hardware.

It would be the same hardware. And tensors are going to be a huge leap. Yeah, it's going to be the year of the pixel tent. It should have been. It ended up being that pixel snap was a bigger deal than any of the rest of the stuff. Yeah, yeah. It's true. Unfortunately.

We like pixel snap. Yeah. It's called tenser, right? And then it's the 10th. It's pixel, come on, guys. How many hot dogs would you like? Ten sir. Exactly.

Why is it hot dogs? It's always hot dogs. It's always hot. And so I saw it backs. Okay. Then we had our hot takes predictions. Okay. Which, all right, mine, I'm just going to get it out the way now.

You can all laugh at me. You only had two predictions. Well, no, that was the... Those are just like random ones that he... We had a bunch that episode, but those were the ones I felt like were worth. Okay, yeah. To re-talking about. Yeah.

Random hot take predictions. Mine was that someone will get the AI wearable right this year. How do you feel about that one? The pebble. The what? It's not out yet. It's not AI. It's not AI.

Dude, when does anything ever come out anymore? Okay? Like, come on. Yeah, I don't feel great about that one, but it's in 2026. I don't know, Mark, I said, like, three different AI wearables on the testing desk. I do. No, I might have to open this. Because I don't, I cannot confirm or deny this about the pocket one that I got or the friend one that I got.

I got to try those things. I can confirm. They did not get it right. I've seen the subway ads. I've seen those subway ads. Subway ads? Oh, my God. Wait, no.

It was like, every. Where on the subway. Which one? Friend. They booked out the entire New York subway. Did they spend any money on the hardware or just a website domain and subway ads? It's the size of an air. It's just an air tag.

That's all it is. It kind of looks like it. Yeah. No. No. He was whining on Twitter the other day though. I mean, turns out when you're just like a chat GBT rapper, you don't have to spend out of money. That was the tweet I saw.

Really? That was... Hey, 20% of the people on this podcast are paying customers. Of chat GBT? For a friend? You bought the... You pay for it? You can buy the friend?

You pay for it sitting on my desk. And you're paying for this. You know what's funny? I don't think that's, I don't think that's a different AI necklace. I'm pretty sure. Oh, the one that I have? Yeah. Whoops.

There's another one that kind of looks like that. Oh, God. All right. Well, I'll test them all later. That just shows that Adam was especially wrong. I want to confirm that, but I'm pretty sure it's something else. I'll go back and find that. I cannot confirm her tonight.

Well, the next one was Andrews. Rabbit will survive and release the Rabbit R2. I was close. You're close. Close. Defined survive. They are not out of business yet. Yeah, because they didn't have to pay any of their employees.

If they haven't paid any of their employees, are they still technically? Still alive and tease, teased a new one. Exactly. Okay. Oh, my God. Technically. Are we gonna, I got closer than that. Another CES where a bunch of influencers like talk about how cool it is and ends up being shit.

Can they afford a plane ticket to CES? They'll get flown out there. Fighting words, Andrew. David, you said, Yeah, this is a little crazy You said, I think humane gets sold in 2025 Correct But you also said probably not to HP

No way How did you do that? Did you really say it? It did seem a little obvious because like HP Humane Pin, you know, a little on the nose Thank you Alice Did I ever say that? You did I think it was because it was around the time

that rumors first started popping up It hadn't happened yet But it was like around the time that there were rumors I think I was just thinking that would just be too funny. It would be too depressing and funny. Wow. Andrew also asked if one inevitably sold if it would be more or less than Juan Soto's contract. Not even close.

Player of the Mets, which was $765 million. They sold for about $116 million. So not close. That's still too much. Although his contract was for 15 years. So, you know, they made that in like, what, three? Are they making the AI for the printers better over there? Do you have an HP printer?

Yeah, what's going on over there? at HP. Who? They're just printing money. HP decided to buy Humane. I have so many questions Yeah, I know, right? That are not yet answered about that.

It's probably the, they did invent some sort of projector technology. Hey, printer. Hey, printer. Connect to Wi-Fi again, please, for the love of God. HP makes laptops still. Dragonfly. Yeah.

They make a lot. They make Chromebucks. The next hot take was Marquez. You said, the browser wars are back. True. I got that right. Yep. I think you're working right there are so many browsers.

He also didn't expect the main browser war to be the company killing their own browser and starting another one and causing a giant risk between their face. We got side plots, we got main plots, we got chat GPT threatening Google, threatening, per play. We got a whole bunch. Well, existing enough for a little code red action. I feel like that's kind of interesting. Oh, I thought you meant like Atlas. No.

Well, I mean, that's one of the things. Yeah. The browser wars are back. I thought you meant they sent a threat to the other. I wouldn't be shocked. Yeah. A little lunch with Sundar. And that's it.

Yeah, that's it. Oh, wait, no. There's one more. Ellis, you said last year that Microsoft will not be adding live translation to any of their products in 2025. Huh. You also said that if they do, you will sit at the big table and apologize while eating the bomb. Da bomb. Sorry.

The bomb. Interesting. Did Microsoft technically add it? Teams. But did they really? Interpreter. Well, I don't, I haven't heard anything about it. We've joked about the live translation thing all year.

It's the kind of thing where like, I'm pretty sure I'm wrong. Like, even if I did just say Microsoft, like, my whole thing was like, this is, this is not real. And as the reason I say I'm pretty sure I'm wrong is because like earlier we're talking about this. And I was like, yeah, because now the pixel buds and the AirPods both have live translation. And everyone was like, but, but do they? And I was like, no, they do, right? Who's used it? And no one in the office had used it.

Yeah. And it still, like... It doesn't mean it doesn't exist. No, I agree. I feel like it got added to everything, and I haven't heard of peep about any of it. But now I... The pixel has it for phone calls. No.

I've heard a single person... That doesn't mean it doesn't work. I'm just saying... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just thought if it would be, like, real, like, life-changing, we would have heard about it a little more. Anyway, this is all to say... Well, how much do you speak a different language? Yeah, we don't have...

We don't use it, but that doesn't have... I mean, it's not good for people who do speak another language. Like, I use it. I remember when the pixel came out, everyone was trying this demo in all of our first hands-on in our reviews, and they literally would call us and have someone in another room speak another language to us, and we would hear the translation in English. We'd speak back, it would translate, and it would work. And I haven't used it since then because I don't need to make phone calls to people

who I don't speak to in different languages, but it works. Yeah. I am a man of my word. After we finish the next part of Waveform Rapt, I will take a seat at the big table. I will issue my apology. So stick around. And I will, I will debom.

You should do the readout with, you should do the bomb and then do the readout. But you got to let similar for. I was going to do debaum and then read you as a trivia quest. Okay, I like that. I like that better, yeah. Because,

man, that waiting music is going to feel a little long. Are you going to do a spoonful? I don't know. I think a dab is plenty. I'm going to do a dab. I also, it's dinner time and I haven't eaten.

So I'm probably going to like put it on. This is bad. A pringle. We do have milk in the office. Can you scar your stomach lining? No, it's just going to sit there for a while until you cover it with other food. No, we're going to, yeah. I did hot ones on an empty stomach.

It was bad. You did hot ones? I feel like every time I say it, I'm like, maybe I'm flexing. Maybe this is just unnecessary? Yeah. I did watch one of them. Yeah? Did you?

I did. Which one? I don't know one of the two I think it was the first one I've been here a long time I think it's safe to say that while some of us

were kind of right I was the most wrong it's okay Alice I think you had a fair data you know because they have announced live translation like 50 times over the last 10 years I had 11 years

to make this bet and the one year I made it Who's the year? Probably not best to guess the year that all the LLMs actually started working. Well, that was our predictions. So now looking back at this past year, what do you think was the story of the year if you had to pick one? What's the theme?

Tech story of the year. I like your list and just liquid asses in the middle of it. Damn, there was actually a lot of stuff this year. Do you want to just read this list out of it? It's a pretty solid. These are all things that happened this year. There's all stuff that happened in 2025. Okay.

Nintendo Switch 2. Let's go. Nintendo Switch 2. TikTok got sold, question mark. Sort of. Kind of, maybe. Yeah. The first waveform live stream, which Ellis added.

I completely forgot about that story. I think another one of those has to happen in 2026 somehow, at least one. The Galaxy S-25 happened. I feel like Galaxy and iPhone just by themselves are big things of the year in tech. I guess, for that. I would argue. S-Lide up. Basically not news.

didn't do anything. Is that news? Okay. Next, Apple Vision Pro turned one. I don't know. Don't remember. Deep Seek. Remember that? The whole industry shook. That was this year. Yeah. That was crazy. Do we ever find out if that was cap or not? Like, I don't think it was. They just released some new stuff last week. Then there was the iPhone E, which confused us all. And got best of the year. Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah. Sigma BF camera. Remember that? Oh, the Sigma boyfriend. Yeah, that was this year. Coolest thing for two weeks and... All-metal, baby. Hey, two weeks is longer than a lot of stories last. That's true.

Yeah, that's true. Live at Southby. That was fun. Our first show. That was cool. The Dodge EV charger. Room. That was this year.

That was this year with its face TV of all time. That Marquez really hated. The Frat Sonic Chamber exhaust, man. You could hear us pull up from outside the studio. That was the muscle car that was too heavy to do burnouts. Yeah, not enough power. Yeah. Yeah, unfortunate.

Damn. iPhone Air. Yeah, that happened. Big story. Yeah, big story. And iPhone are getting discontinued. Allegedly. Illegibly.

Liquid ass, of course. Yeah. An orange iPhone. That might be the story. That might be. What, liquid glass? Yeah. It's a wonderful.

Yeah. Well, there was also the Jimmy Fallon Pixel 10 event. That's the one. That's the year. Meta AI glasses. Part, part number. Or three, whatever. humanoid robots coming back

didn't see that coming out. That was a lot yeah. Steam machine and steam frame announced, which everyone yelled at me because they said people were actually excited for the steam frames. Oh, the frame. Yeah, I think people are excited for the steam frame. I don't care that much, but I'm excited for the steam machine. I had a lot of Normies hit me up and say they were stoked on the steam machine.

Yeah, it was kind of surprising. I think VR people. Kind of surprising that Normies care about Steam hardware, really? Yes. Yeah. was I not just saying this Elliot's grandma

has never heard of Steam machine or the Steam deck anecdotal end up he's in our Discord server oh sorry he's the guy

whose grandma thought that the fold was AI yeah yeah we stand her uh air drop coming to Android

come on I think that might have been one of the big Titanic News yeah we'd know more about it if they got Jimmy Fallon to pronounce it

Jaume 17 Pro Max That did happen I don't think I pronounced that correctly Shaomi That was right The Xiaomi Sue 7 That happened this year I'm pretty sure it's

SU7 So I made a Sue 7 joke Once around the office And no one is referred It as the SU7 It's so perfect I mean I'm sure it's not pronounced That way in every market

But it's literally SU set Like how else would you pronounce it? It's US 7 But I naturally just started saying Sue so two seven or was it today's episode with the trifold is that the story the trifold is pretty crazy no no i like the story of the top three i have a mount rushmore i have a i have a top three i'll take that i'll take i have a mount rushmore for this year there are four heads

on mount rushmore yes i have a top four i was adjusting sorry i had three and now i have four so i have a mount rushmore for this year the last one george rushmore for waveform and for stories of 2025 number one is liquid glass okay yeah it's liquid glass not even necessarily number one it's just on the mountain yeah liquid glass number two live at south by southwest oh yeah I have to throw that on the Mount Rushmore that was pretty bomb it's pretty mom number three sue seven so seven I knew you didn't do that kick it off we're too old for this dude shouldn't be and number four let's throw uh Let's throw meta-AI glasses on there.

Hot take. I think that that was really interesting. Switch-2 did kind of make a repeating... I can make an argument for that. All right. Throw the Switch-2 in there. Switch-2 is in there over the meta-AI glasses. But I did find I got more people asking me in real life about the AI glasses.

That was interesting. I'm not going to do a Mount Rushmore, but I think the cool full-circle thing is we got Project Mujan in, like, January. And we went to that event, and they, like, teased the trifold in that little, like, timeline, and we got it right at the end of the year. Yeah. Which is kind of cool. Just barely slipped it in by the end. Yeah. It's sick.

I think that, you know, Liquid Ass being such a, like, a story that was just so prevalent throughout the entire year. Like, people still are talking about this. And now a lot of the normies are updating their phones. And they're all like, what the fuck is this? nobody likes it notably a lot of the Apple executives have moved on to other companies the design chief

that made Liquid Glass left for meta so he's going to make stories you know everything over there is going to be horrible now even worse than it already is so I feel like yeah I feel like Liquid Glass has been the most like it's been a story all year

you know I mean it got announced in June of was that this year no last year No, this year. No, this year, this year, this year. They showed it off. This summer. This summer.

They showed it off. This summer. Coming to an iPhone near you. Now it's coming to everything. Maybe, but we're going to change it a few times. Yeah. So, in considering all the other companies, like, copied liquid glass for their UIs in China, I would say that's one of the big ones. I do have a, sorry.

I can't say this one more, I guess. What? I'll say, I'll just believe it. It'll just be one. Okay, okay, yeah, just bleep it, yeah. So. Like that's still going. When TikTok got, like, banned for the night. That's so true. Right? I remember. Exactly. Oh, same. I got about that. I do, too. They're like, I can picture. And you had.

And then we started scrolling, like, no, it's going to be like, I know this is a finite scroll right now. Damn, that did happen. I remember reaching the end. That was January? It crashed, and I was like, oh, my God. That was January. I remember walking out of a bar with, like, my friend, and he opens his phone, and he goes,

oh, my God. TikTok is gone. Yeah, it was like a... Yeah, it kind of staggered because I remember I was still scrolling, but my friend stopped scrolling, so they came over and watched me. scroll for a little bit till that was January yeah that was January give me my dopamine all the the video content was like this could be gone yeah it was basically people saying like

goodbye and where else to find me yeah yeah on red note and then I forgot about that 12 hours later it was back yeah the next day did it cross any of your minds because it crossed my mind because I'm like logged into TikTok and you know all that stuff on my phone for like the Wayform podcast did it cross your mind

that we should say goodbye on TikTok? On TikTok? No. It didn't cross. We're not like TikTok needed. I think it was the TikTok creators. Those who have no other channels anywhere

who are like, I need to like take these people with me somewhere. Like the panic in the strategy of I'm just going to spam like please go follow me on Instagram now was very real. We have a diversified audience on a couple platforms. Our TikTok going away would kind of suck but wouldn't be the end of the world.

So we didn't feel it needs to say goodbye. Yeah. But it would have been pretty. wild if it went away yeah do a leapa interviewing tim kooko's last year right yeah that was on paternity i guess that won't be on my mountain rushmore period this year i interviewed tim cook and he just didn't answer any of the questions so that was this year yeah i was like you want to do a blind ranking of some apple stuff and he was like what's that i was like this is not out work.

The magic mouse. Yeah. I forgot that was the problem. That moment is on my Mount Rushmore this year. Yeah. Where I could see the clip as it was happening. The ergonomics.

Yeah. This year just felt like a bunch of nonsense to me. I don't know. Like, it's hard for me to make my Mount Rushmore. You know, I like, like, Samsung put out some really great stuff. Orange iPhone was great. you know what did the sims like but it was good

well we don't know if it's good yet but they did it you know they said they said they were going to do it and they then they did it yeah they did do it and Android XR goggles too yeah you know even even meta said they were going to do a thing and they did it have a hot take they also

it's cooking yeah honestly honestly my Mount Rushmore is all of the unsealed documents from the meta lawsuit I don't know if there's four of them but man there's definitely a least four Yeah. And the Nintendo Switch 2. And the Nintendo Switch 2. A device I don't own and I've never played.

Yeah. But there was a lot of hype for a lot of months. Marcus, what's your hot take? We're also going to start the next year with predictions again. But we'll do that next episode in a couple weeks. Well, not next episode, the week. Oh, yeah, you're right. Another episode. The next regularly scheduled. Yeah, in the new year.

I was just going to say Samsung ships a car in three years. Whoa. Where did that go on? What? Xiaomi just shipped a car. Do you know something we don't? Yeah, but Xiaomi is Chinese. Yeah. And China, like, pumps money into car companies.

Samsung's going to show up. Samsung, like, owns South Korea. They're also going to, like, collab. Yeah, they have a lot of funding. Yeah, they're going to collab. They're going to scrap a bunch of stuff together, a bunch of metal, a bunch of collaborative companies, and they're going to make a car. Didn't they're just going to collab with Kia?

Yeah, pick a, insert Korean. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But it'll have a Samsung logo somewhere in there. Samsung sold their car division to Renault a bunch of years ago, and it got rebranded to just Renault Korea. They still have a minority stake in it, but it seems like Samsung's auto business is now mostly a Renault thing,

and Gilee also has a minority stake in it. Did the twerking hamster in the... Dude! Did that happen this year? No, that was last year. Really? Yeah. I think that might have been two years ago.

I think that might have been two years ago. That would have been on my rummush more for me for sure. As long as it's been hoping. I'm really hoping. I get one more trivia point this year. It's been so long since I got a point in trivia. It might have been before Thanksgiving. It might have been

when the Korgi was twerking on the Mniko. Yeah, that's true. So, uh, I say we do the trivia. Trivia, dude. Trivia, dude. But first, Ellis has to... It's what's... Okay. It's hot sauce. Sorry, Alice was just shaking the...

You're holding a computer with two hands, Marquez. Wait. Where'd you're going to computer go. It's in my hand. ILCs is a phone. It's in my pocket now. Sorry. Sorry. It's time for Ellis to eat the bomb. Guys, okay, so as promised at the beginning

of the year, I said live translation wasn't going to be a thing because every tech company had been announcing it every year for the past decade, and lo and behold, the year I place my bet is the year it all comes out. And so, as promised,

I will be doing de bomb on a spoon. I have with me some aids, a glass of milk, some extra toasty cheez-its, and string cheese. This is just what I ran and got from the... I can't save you. There's some solidified stuff at the top, so I'm just going to get that out of the way, because I feel like that's going to be extra concentrated. My heart is, like, already racing.

I'm nervous for you. I've had to bomb before. Have I had it raw on an empty stomach? No. No. So they need to be an ulcer. Probably. the smell is horrible

it smells like battery acid yeah it tastes like hell just let you experience you know what battery acid tastes like it tastes like what you imagine battery acid tastes like I don't have to taste battery acid to tell people this tastes like battery acid

you know fair enough that is a whole dab ladies and gentlemen Ellis is being very brave right now I'm worried I'm worried I'm gonna am I like to to coat my palate with cheese at first

it's not gonna save you bro it's not gonna help Is there anything, okay, I need like a safe word for you. Like, is there something where, like, if you actually need an ambulance? I don't know. What are we supposed to do if you, like, are going to die? They don't come after 7 p.m. Yeah.

So, I'm nervous. I will say, I am a spicy food expert. It won't save you. And something I do know about spicy food is that the trick is small bites. And that is impossible on a spoon. So I'm just going to touch this chopstick to my tongue a few times as a ramp up. And then we're going to dive in. No, the trick is.

glass of water. I never apologized. I never apologized. Computer programmers of the world, software developers, machine learning engineers, AI, venture capitalists, Apple, Google, Microsoft executives, MagS7 employees. I'm sorry. I thought y'all were full of shit. I thought y'all were mad full of shit and taking billions of dollars from people who were also full of shit to sell people stuff that didn't work. And I still think that's what's going on. But I was wrong. And now I'm going to pay the price.

So let's get a little warm up going. Do it. It doesn't work that way. It's just like getting stabbed by a thousand tiny knives, basically. I thought I was smart. Yeah, baby. All right. Give them the first question.

Did you do it? No. You should prepare exactly what you plan to say because I know it's going to be hard to think. You can back out, Ellis. No. I can't. My word. Thank you, Marquez.

You're in. I wrote down the answer already Oh, I forget the question What was it? Oh, you're going to say it Is that the whole amount? Yep That's enough He did it He took a spoonful

Careful around the eyes Marcus Brownley Andrew Mangadelli Yeah David Mill It gets worse when you talk Oh yeah Yep

What three letters Represent both a Chinese tech conglomerate Oh, no. Chinese Taekylamarite and an American blues guitar legend. I don't usually do trivia from here. I can see Marquette's bored. I was never going to guess that, so I'm just not going to guess. I'm so sorry.

We've never done this before. Alice is at the big table, and Andrew is next to me at the producer table, which has a great view of Marquez's board, so that didn't work. Didn't think about that one. I kind of thought that bomb was going to be like too old, but, uh... Oh. It did say refrigerated after opening, and it has been on our table unrefrigerated for like two years. It seems like it's getting it pretty good, though.

Okay. Marquez, what did you put? I put E.C.L. And what American Blues legend has that the initials up? He's going for the milk. I don't know. Tom I don't know

I hadn't thought that far ahead I thought that far ahead David, what do you put I put I put BBK Oh great

that's right David gets the point What What? What blues guitar Legend Bibi King BB King is correct

Good job Thanks Can you play the after Dark music I'm like, I'm ready for the next one. Next question. What is the Scoville rating of the bomb that Ellis just inhaled?

And it's Delta? Wait, Andrew didn't answer. He's not going to answer because he saw Marquez's board. Oh. Actually, I'm changing. Are we doing prices right or Delta? Oh, we are doing Delta? Okay, cool.

I prefer United. Just kidding, I don't. All right, we'll go. Okay. Wait, real quick, before we flip, quick update on the score. Marquez has 10. David, after that correct question,

well, after that correct answer, was 12, Andrew with 14. I need All right, slip him and read. What do you got? Please be. Oh, my goodness. Andrew, what did you say?

Big range. 2.3 million. Marquez? 835,000. David. How do you write 35,000? 10,000. Y'all really going to make me do some crazy math.

Yeah. Is it like one point something? It's 135K. That's what I wrote the first time. So Marquez is closest. Wait, whoa, wait, wait, wait. No, I'm for a little. Wait, no.

David tells us. Let's go. You can even kind of see it. I wrote, I thought it was $135,000. And I was right. And then I erased it and wrote $835,000. Because I doubted myself. I almost doubt that.

Never doubt yourself, Marquez. Never doubt yourself. It's going to be a whole year before I get a point. This is tough. Alice, how are you doing over there? Actually pretty good. It's just my lips at this point. I mean, I say that and then I'm sure it's going to come back.

It also like. It will on the toilet. later. And somehow regardless is in my nose. Didn't touch my nose. But, um... Wow. That's a wrap.

That's hot, man. Congrats on keeping into your word. Hopefully the bets that we make next year are... No, I already know. Next year, none of those humanoid robots are coming out. And if one of them

does, I'm doing this shit again, maybe. I love it. Do two of them next time. If one of them comes out... Okay. That's perfect. I like that. That's a great place to end it. A humanoid robot can serve you the spoonful of last day.

That's actually, that's what we'll do. If one of these humanoid robots actually comes out and it actually works, that robot can come on the show and spoon me another man. To bomb from the same bottle. Smells so bad even from here. Because please take us out. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening for all of 2025.

See you on the other side. 2026 is going to be sick. Do it. Except for next week's episode. We'll also be here. One more bonus episode next week. Yeah. Play After Dark 3.

There's a third one. Wayform is produced by Adam Alina and Ellis Roben. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. We're, uh, Veen still wrote the music. This has been 2025 on Wave Form. Let's get it! Whoops. Just fade to black.

All right, for this clip's outro, Ellis is going to be taking another hit of the bomb. Ellis, where'd you go? 2025 was a wild year for the tech industry. AI seemed like it took over everyone's brains. It was the only thing anyone wanted to talk about. Invidia became the most valuable company in the world. We had some huge new video games. The Switch 2 launched a lot of people got it.

There was just a lot going on. And on the Vergecast, we are talking about the best, the worst, the most important, the biggest heel turns, all the stuff that happened in 2025. And making maybe a few predictions about what's going to happen next year. All that and more on the Vergecast, wherever you get podcasts. This series is presented by Jira by Atlassian. Right now is the AI Gold Rush. everyone who builds an app, a platform, a piece of software, a gizmo, that's somebody, anything. Everybody is trying to put AI everywhere.

And for two weeks in a series on the Vergecast, we are talking through what that looks like. We're talking to developers about what they're building and how they're building it. And whether AI actually does make sense everywhere, or is just going to ruin everything in the process. That's the AI miniseries on the Vergecast, wherever you get podcasts. This series is presented by MongoDB.