The iPhone Fold could make concerts even worse

27:05I already get annoyed when people are recording the concert and I can't see because their phone's in front of me. If it's the size of an iPad mini, I'm going to be really... Well, your view will be better because the screen will be bigger. No, the only rational thing to do is to bring a full size iPad and then stand in front of that person. Get to the front. Like just a full arms race. Because doesn't the full-size iPad have the full camera array? I think it has two. I don't think it has a telephoto camera. It's got LiDAR sensors. Yeah, for some reason. So you can map the concert and relive it in 3D.

27:39In your Vision Pro. That's your 3D scanned on a rail. You're like, I've got a full 3D avatar of you saved on my iPad for further use. I don't need your Alicia Keys concert. I got my own. We got Alicia Keys at home. Those are my camera crash out questions. Obviously, more will be revealed, but I'm dying to know. More will be revealed. I mean, people are going to use this thing. It's going to get away from Apple in the best way, right? Yeah. That's the nature of these things is people start using them in ways no one can predict. And everyone's camera is the size of an iPad mini. It's just one of the most unpredictable changes to just how we have thought about making and taking photos in quite a while.

28:15That's true. It's going to be fun. Very excited to find out September 9th. All right. We've got a lot more to talk about. We're going into the meta settlement when we're back. The perfect lunch combo. That first bite of your favorite sub, followed by ice cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends, and now that's next level. Suddenly, the laughs get louder, the stories keep flowing, and the food tastes better. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today.

29:15I see you.

29:21All right, we're back. So big news this week in the world of Meta. Meta has had a lot of lawsuits flying its way. One of the most important was a lawsuit from attorneys general across the United States who had sued Meta claiming that its platforms had been made addictive to teenagers and children in particular and that Meta had deceived people about the design choices they were making. Lauren Feiner and Addie Robertson were on the show earlier this week to get into the weeds on that. But I really want to talk about what this actually means for Facebook and Instagram as apps, because there are kind of two halves of this settlement.

29:58One is that Meta has to pay some money. The other is that they have to make a bunch of changes to their apps. David, can you kind of break down for me what some of those changes are? Yeah, there's quite a few of these changes. And honestly, I would love to see some of these as changes or at least options in my app, as I am not a teen. One of them, two hour daily time limit that's cumulative across Facebook and Instagram, which can be turned off with the parent's permission. Am I my own parent? I hope so. So there's a night mode where you can default block the apps from midnight to 6 a.m. to help you sleep.

30:33School mode. So notifications can be muted from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. By the way, a lot of these exclude DMs, which is an interesting sort of idea there. I mean, obviously, DMs are extremely common in all of these apps. And arguably, Instagram is a DMing app that has reels. There are screen time prompts every 15 minutes to let you know you've been on the app for another 15 minutes, which is helpful. Algorithmic feed control. Teens can now choose non-algorithmic feed as their default, and parrots can adjust the default. I want all of these things. This is really like a wish list of features for people who are like, these apps are too addictive.

31:08I do want to step back for a second. So the states had gone very aggressive at Meta. Nilay, my question is, you're looking at this list. Who won this trial, right? Not this trial, in this settlement. Who comes out ahead? It depends on who you think is getting what. Like in a very real way. This is a list of regulations that if the states had passed laws to get, they probably would lose in court. because a lot of these implicate the First Amendment very directly. And there's not some great body of precedent or academic research that would overcome the First Amendment problems with this. These are speech regulations.

31:52You can only speak on Facebook for two hours a day, says the state. Straightforwardly, a speech regulation straightforwardly implicates the First Amendment. So if you are the state regulator and you're like, look at this big addictive platform that's hurting our teens. How do we get Mark Zuckerberg to do anything about it? You've won because they have agreed to the limitations that if they had fought you on, they might have won. And in fact, almost certainly would have won something, right? That this would have been a 10 year battle that would have gone to the Supreme court and we would have had 50 episodes of the Verge cast about whether night mode implicates the first amendment for teenagers.

32:35You could feel a lot of different ways about that. So in that very narrow view, the states have won here because they've accomplished a series of regulations that might help teens be less addicted to this one platform in a way that if they had literally passed a law and Meta had taken them to court, they might not have gotten as cleanly and easily as they have gotten here. I think a lot of people who spend time thinking about platform moderation and regulation are looking at this and saying, oh, Meta just ran away with this right like meta just hoodwinked these states because the money part of the judgment only pays out over 10 years and only in 70 percent of it actually gets distributed over those 10 years so that's like 10 billion dollars over 10 years and the last 30 percent only gets distributed if tiktok and youtube agree to the exact same restrictions which is bananas because who Meta has every incentive in the world to keep TikTok and YouTube from agreeing to this because they'll save money if TikTok doesn't agree to this.

33:42But they've also agreed to run an ad campaign agreeing to this. And they've given a huge sign off on these are the gold standard teen safety regulations that all of the other platforms have to contend with. Whether or not you are worried about the First Amendment implications of the state's imposing speech regulations on these platforms. This is a big swirl. If you're a parent, you are looking at this. If you have, like me, your parents are senior citizens who are addicted to WhatsApp, you're like, oh, can I get this for WhatsApp? That'd be great. There's a lot of this that on its face is good and smart.

34:20It's the stuff we all want. Like we can see that this will disrupt the engagement cycle. This will disrupt the business model built around making the platforms more addictive, making them full of rage bait, all that stuff. This will disrupt that. This will disrupt Meta's ad revenue for young people because they're going to be using the platform less. But hidden in here is a bunch of regulations that I don't know if the states would have gotten all on their own that Facebook is now going to impose on the other platforms. And I think that's pretty wild. So I think from that perspective, Meta has kind of run away from this.

34:58They've like hoodwinked the states into age verification at scale across the internet. They've hoodwinked the states into going to TikTok and YouTube and whoever else and snap and saying, hey, if you don't voluntarily impose these restrictions that may or may not have speech problems associated with them, we'll bring a lawsuit and we'll say to the judge, well, Facebook settled this way and we'll tie you up in knots for it. Or you could just do age verification, whether or not you agree with it. So on that perspective, you know, all of the policy people that I pay attention to are kind of like, what?

35:31What? Don't do that. Yeah. So, I mean, there's some real back and forth here. I think it's very funny. You mentioned it, but Meta is running these full page ads in the New York Times and the Washington Post, egging on TikTok and YouTube to adopt these exact same rules. And I'm curious, is there any reason either of these platforms would voluntarily agree to any of this? Right. It seems to me the answer is no, which is why Facebook did not. Right. They waited until they were sued by basically every state in the U.S. Yeah, I don't see a reason other than garnering goodwill, but it's not enough for the amount of money that they're making from all of these things.

36:16And I'm not sure that anybody's going to buy that Meta is coming from a righteous position here. No. No. No. They were going to lose this. The weird thing about this is, you know, Adam Masseri was on the stand a few days ago and it was brutal. Yeah. Because he's reacting to documents that literally say, don't show this data to Adam. It will create litigation risk for us. And he would have to say things like, well, I want my team to be honest with me. But sometimes they can't be because of this. And he's like looking at the lawyer. Like they were stuck in a very complicated trap where their own research into what the harms actually were and how to combat them was being used against them to show that they knew there were harms and they weren't doing enough.

37:05And so, you know, Zuck's response to this was we should stop doing this research. Every platform's response to this is we should stop doing this research. Yeah. Because if you create the knowledge that something bad is happening, then you have created the liability that you didn't do enough to stop it. This is a very bad set of incentives. On top of that, you're getting, well, the way to stop it is to impose controls on how people communicate on your platform, which you as the private company can do. But maybe you think that the government should not be able to mandate. In this country, the government usually can't mandate that stuff.

37:42Other countries around the world, very different. But in this country, the First Amendment usually prohibits the government from mandating that stuff. And you end up in this place where, oh, you can concede to the government all of these things. And you can neuter your competitors who get to do those things by saying, oh, we're going to make it so every attorney general in the country who participated in this can now run around with a huge incentive, monetary billions of dollar incentive, to punish Google. unless they agree to these rules, to punish TikTok unless they agree to these rules. And that is pretty, you know, it's like, it's pretty sharky.

38:21It might be the right outcome. I don't know that answer because I am a parent and I dread the day my children get phones with social media on them. And I'm looking at two hour daily time and night mode and school mode and algorithmic feed control. I'm like, oh, these are the things that I want. Right? If you don't build them into the software, I can't parent enough unless I impose draconian surveillance on my children to make them stop doing these things. Well, it's very interesting. Like, these are all features that we all believe, we think that these will make the app less addictive, right? Like, there's no autoplay on video, right?

39:01That you can choose a non-algorithmic feed. We all kind of just have this belief that these things will reduce usage. I think it's probably true. But this is probably the first time we're going to find out at scale if that is true, which is a very big but important if. Right? Like, if these things don't work, then it's just the time limit. It's just we're cutting you off after two hours, which is still a lot of time. And the other question becomes, as part of this here, it says that they have to do better age verification, which I feel like we've been through a hundred times. And teens are very good at getting around the age verification things.

39:36And Meta can say, we're doing more intense age verification systems. We're using more of the data we have to actually track how old you are and all this stuff and your time on other apps, et cetera. But people are still going to get around them. Oh, but that's built into this. The age verification systems they have to use. Meta has a choice here where they can use an accredited third-party verification service. And ostensibly, the idea there is to create a market for these third-party verification services. Or they can build their own. And there are some acceptable levels of tolerance in that rule.

40:13And I think it's 10%. So they can have a 10 % error rate. And that is acceptable. And I think it's different in the different age ranges. So there's a little bit of tolerance built into this. It's like the 17-year-olds, you expect more of them to be able to fake their ID. Yeah. There's like something in here where it's like if we detect that you're an actual child, we need to be more tolerant of that. There's some amount of we understand the technology is not perfect and they will try to defeat it. So we will allow for some error rate. But what you're really getting, and this is true in all age verification, is you have to tell a big centralized service provider what your government name is.

40:52You have to identify yourself, even if you're an adult, because there's no way to only do it for kids. And that, right, that obviously creates a huge burden on adults who are not subject to these regulations. And Meta just horse powered it through. Right. And like, great. Like, we all agree that this is a good thing. This has been up and down to the Supreme Court. And the arguments against it are super real, which is making adults in this country submit government mandated identification to the Internet every time they want to do anything is actually a huge burden. is actually another restriction on your speech and your liberty.

41:29And here we are. Maybe the states couldn't have gotten it if they just passed this law because of that burden, but they got it because Meta caved. And there is an incentive to get YouTube and TikTok to do it too. And there's some piece of this, like again, when you say who won and who lost, boy, does that cut in 50 different directions. Yeah. And it gets messier. Like the state's job is not done, right? Like, because there are parts of this where the states still have to figure out where the line is. There's this very weird thing going on where Meta agreed to limit the use of, what is it, extreme makeup filters, but it's not defined what that is.

42:09So there's some system where the government is going to determine what that is. A cosmetic procedure filter shall mean any digital filter or augmented reality effect that distorts, sculpts, redefines, or idealizes the user's face in a way that cannot be achieved without cosmetic surgery or extreme makeup techniques. So nothing goofy. Now, for the avoidance of doubt, it goes on to say, this does not include, one, fantasy character effects. And I just want to be clear. With specific definitions, filters that change a user's facial structure for the purpose of turning the user into a non-human or fictional character, e.g.

42:45an elf or an animal, e.g. a dragon or puppy. Okay. Just putting it out there. A filter that turns into a puppy. So Memoji still work. Puppy is fine. Okay. Carved out. Makeup smoothing effects. Filters that smooth skin or alter appearance in ways that can be achieved by ordinary makeup techniques without altering the appearance of underlying physical facial structures or meaningfully altering skin tone. And then lastly, parity and exaggeration effects. So to help operationalize this definition, the states will provide meta, illustrative examples and guidance of AR effects that are cosmetic procedure filters and AR effects that are not cosmetic procedure filters in a letter to be sent within two months.

43:29So the states, someone in some government office is going to have to sit around doing puppy filters that are okay and puppy filters that are not okay, put that all into a letter and send it off to medical. Are they going to have to like bring in some makeup experts and have them like apply this stuff to see what is possible, where the limits truly are? When I say that this runs right into extremely weird government speech regulations, this is your extremely weird government speech regulation. Now, it is without question that letting a bunch of teens do extreme makeup effects and view one another in filtered ways does massive harm to self-esteem.

44:11Like, those studies have been done. They have been done about meta platforms very specifically. Instagram and teen girls are just—the entire movie, The Social Reckoning, is about this thing. Like, this is not in question about whether this is bad. What to do about it at the government level is a First Amendment question. And so instead of running that to ground, what are the limits? What showing does the government need to make in order to pass this regulation? Meta has just conceded, yep, this is probably pretty bad. Why don't you guys send us a bunch of puppy filter pictures that are okay and we'll deal with it?

44:47And maybe that's fine. Like, truly, I think you can make, particularly parents, parents of teen girls will make the argument that's fine because it will go into effect now. Right. The balance of harms favors them acting now. If you have other concerns about the First Amendment and the very notion of some staffer in a state attorney's general office looking at filters and deciding which ones are OK and which ones are not for kids, then you have a totally different set of harms to balance. and we're just going to live through this version of it for five minutes before we decide if this is okay. But it's funny to think about a dragon or a puppy filter is fine.

45:28An elf is fine, but something that makes it look like you've got a nose job might not be fine. But the actual speech implication, the speech regulation implication is gigantic. Yeah. Do you know if each individual attorneys general has to submit a different example or is this like all 48 attorneys generals get together? project. Yeah. Did they get together? It says the settling states. So I'm this is just going to be the worst Zoom call of all time. Yes. I am not a cat. Yeah. Everyone all the lawyers finally get to just full cat filter. Yeah. There's something here. Again, we're going to write more about it.

46:07I think Addy and Lauren has a piece up today on the site just about how much we like the people have given up in terms of speech regulation here there's i know adi's fired up about it the the coverage there's a great piece from mike massacate tech dirt about it the amount that meta gave up here in terms of speech regulation in order to make this go away is pretty massive and then the turn of we're gonna make youtube and tiktok do it too is also massive so i'm glad you mentioned that because the thing that i am curious about is if TikTok and YouTube do not do this, right? Because it's still in question, right?

46:46The states probably have to force them into it somehow. Does Meta have a big problem on their hands if YouTube has years without any of these restrictions, right? And so instead of scrolling Instagram all night, you're just going to be using YouTube Shorts. That is a big question. I feel like a lot of people might just go to TikTok. I know that when I get annoyed at myself for using an app too much, I close it. And then the next thing I know, I'm using a different app. So that's probably something that people will be doing. There's no worse feeling than closing TikTok and getting sucked into Instagram rails, which is just a worse TikTok.

47:21Yeah. Yeah. Meta is a winner in a lot of ways in social media advertising. Like businesses rise and fall on meta social media advertising. That's just the way it goes. In a way that is not true of TikTok and YouTube. TikTok is big, but ever since the blip, right? Like the change of control to Oracle, it just has not been dominant in the way that it was. YouTube Shorts are not really a competitor with Reels. I don't know if you have a different opinion of that. You spend more time thinking about YouTube than I do. But they're not really a competitor to Reels in that way. That is the engine of culture, is Reels going viral.

47:56Or the engine of like social media commerce is Reels. Like it is just, that's the thing. So anything that harms Meta and allows the other two to win is going to be in favor of those two. But I just, I don't see them holding off the government in this way now because the government has this tool, which is Meta agreed to this. Do you want these lawsuits? We got 47 state attorneys general who got nothing to do. Cross it off the list. They're just going to file the same lawsuit and do the same discovery and drag Sundar Pichai and Neil Mohan through the same appearance on the stand where they knew it and they did it anyway.

48:40Or you can just do this stuff. Yeah, make it easy. I think that's a really important dynamic, especially as all of these companies spend gobs of money on AI buildouts. Half of them are defense contractors or owned by Oracle or operated by Oracle, which is a defense contractor. Like, they need the government to stay off their back here. Yeah. Yeah. So what is the government's next step here? Right. Because this seems great. Right. If you've got a kid in middle school, you're you're you're set. But that has only agreed to this for 10 years. And then then what happens? Right. Are they just like, oh, hopefully Congress passes a law.

49:17Like maybe Congress is functional in 10 years. So there are already there. I think today there were stories about Congress needing to pass the kid online, the kids online safety act. Right. Which wouldn't do all of this, but it would do some of this. Yes. I think you've got 10 years now to see if these interventions solve a problem and to figure out how to write them into law in a way that doesn't immediately lead to First Amendment lawsuits. Who knows? But that's that's a pretty long time. Yeah. Also, short form video only took off six years ago. So who knows what's going to be happening in 10 years?

49:52This is very true. Well, we're all going to be holding up iPads, shooting at landscape, and watching the platform. That's only two years from now. In 10 years, it's going to be a whole other story. It's going to be the creeper glasses or something. Oh, boy. Okay. All right. We've got to take a break. We're back. The hype desk is back. Brendan Carr as a dummy is back. And the lightning round. Still waiting in line? Again? That's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with Stamps.com. Over 4 million businesses have skipped the line with Stamps.com. Join them to save up to 90 % off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now.

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51:08That's stitchfix.com. Hello? Look what TJ Maxx dragged in. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu. We are digital. We are downloadable. We are streamable. The fashion event of the year is certified fresh. Pull yourself together. We have work to do. Critics say it's smart and witty and the perfect sequel. That's all. Get runway ready for The Devil Wears Prada 2 on Disney Plus and Hulu. Rated PG-13.

51:45All right, we're back, and it is time for the Hype Desk. Ashley Esqueda is here with an unsponsored Hype Desk. Hey, Ashley. Hi. What have you got for us today? Well, it's the only thing, right? The only thing, truly. It's the biggest news of the year. Maybe the decade. Who needs trials? Who needs any of that stuff? So Grand Theft Auto 6, Rockstar just presented a world premiere, but on Netflix, which was pretty crazy. And everyone's talking about it. I mean, it looks amazing. I, too, am hype. I am here at the hype desk feeling very hype about it. Like, I want to go commit some crimes right now.

52:29I'm ready. I'm ready. Hold on. Please, everyone, wait until the podcast is over. Until the crimes start. Please, I can't handle this. I've been committed crimes the whole time. Right now, passively. So, okay, they've already had, I think, two trailers out. Now they have this big Netflix showcase. What is it, like 20 to 30 minutes? What is this? Is this an enormous trailer? It is a very extended look at the game. It's the full gameplay. This was all captured on a PlayStation 5. They walk through different sections of different quests, different things that you're going to be doing. Jason and Lucia are back.

53:03This is, it's now sort of like a duo protagonist situation where you're able to choose who you want to play as and then text your partner to like come help you on Quest or stay and like chill out. You can make it a romantic relationship or a platonic relationship, which is kind of interesting. Can you go back and forth between the two? Interestingly enough, Eli. For five years. For five years. It's so complicated. So, yeah, there are times where you will apparently, whoever you're not playing as might text you and say, oh, be sure to lock up when you come home, or if you're out too long, they might text you.

53:43And if you don't respond to them, or if you don't go back home in a certain amount of time, you might actually negatively affect your relationship with the other character. Sorry, are we learning about how to have a healthy relationship from Grand Theft Auto? I'm dying to talk about this. Thank you, thank you. because this is what I wanted to talk about. I'm watching this showcase and I'm like, this looks amazing. I can't wait to do crimes and have fun. But also, the news came out a couple days ago that you will have to exercise and eat properly and stuff to keep your character in shape. They can get out of shape.

54:17And so I'm like, now watching this showcase and I'm like, is Grand Theft Auto teaching us to be better as a society? I'm scared. I feel a little bit scared about this, but also... Greg, that's always going to be like, and by the way, men, you're spending too much time inside alone. We need to go outside, hang with your buds. Wait, I just want to be clear. The big innovation in GTA 5 was heists. I'm trying to rewind my brain. It's like, you're going to rob a doc. Self-care is the new thing. And this one is like, you have to be nice to your partner to figure out how to get to the next level. Am I going to put all the effort in to take care of myself in a video game?

54:53You're going to have to learn how to exercise, how to eat properly. you're going to have to learn how to be in a healthy relationship. Guys, is Grand Theft Auto VI going to save us? I feel, I don't know how, I feel very mixed feelings about this. I'm already having like full body chills at how a certain class of ex-commentor is going to call this game woke while still like stealing airplanes. Yeah, yeah. While still stealing airplanes. My favorite part of the entire showcase was stealing cars is a little bit different. Like it's just a little different now. And one of the clips they showed was Lucia steals a car and then this kid, this Gen Z kid gets out of the trunk with his phone.

55:33He's like, what's going on? You stole my friend's car. I'm doing the trunk challenge. What am I going to do, chat? And then they cut to a clip of him in the trunk live streaming while you're escaping from the police. Incredible. Incredible scenes from Grand Theft Auto 6. I was very like, oh, cool, a new Grand Theft Auto. But now that I have seen this showcase, I am so I'm so on board. But also, again, to to your point, you like I I cannot even take care of myself in real life. And so I don't know how I'm going to do that in a game. I'm not really sure if I'm going to be motivated to do that. So I guess I'm just going to have a you know, it'll be just like me.

56:14It'll be a super out of shape, like gangly person, like basically running out of gas, trying to get 30 feet away. I just completely collapsed because my heart explodes. You're not texting your partner back. Not texting my partner. The ADHD is very strong. And so, yeah, it might not go well for me. Was this like the thesis of the gameplay reveal? It wasn't. Was there fun parts? Oh, there's so much. All the things you love about Grand Theft Auto are back. There's strip clubs. There's drugs. There's killing. Like all the things. There's cartel wars and shooting and action and stealing cars. Stealing cars feels less edgy than having to maintain a relationship while you're out committing crimes.

57:00That feels high stakes. I feel like this is an existential meditation on current events, like just our strange times that we live in. It feels slightly more... Are there GLP-1s? Can you avoid getting fat by doing a strip club all day by doing injections? Straight up, I got to be honest with you. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a thing you could like go buy. Like go buy it off market. There's peptides in this thing. Little shortcuts. Yeah. And if not, there should be because that seems like a thing you would be able to do in a rock star game. The mods are coming. The mods are 100 % coming. He's like, oh, I'm going to open up a Jeep.

57:35Maybe that's one of the secret exclusive stores that comes with the$99 version of the game. There's like an unethical pharmacist who's like, I'll sell you everything you need. It's crazy to me that they've been working on this game for so long and they still managed to get in things that only surfaced in the last couple of years. Really wild. Maybe that makes it less surprising, but of course that's going to extend the development time by a lot. Yeah. I also have to give like a huge, I don't know what their optimization team looks like, but this game looks incredible on PlayStation 5. Like so good.

58:09And we clear it was a PS5, not a PS5 Pro. It didn't say PS5 Pro. It just said captured on PlayStation, PS5. The Everyman's PlayStation. Right. So it did not say pro. So it could, but I don't know. I mean, are they required to say pro? Like, I'm not sure. Probably. Ashley, we should talk about the leaks really fast because this comes after, what, like two weeks of kind of daily leaks of the game. Yeah. And I feel like the conversation online has suggested, like, oh, no, the game is spoiled now. And I'm curious, after having watched this showcase, does that feel true? I'm going to say pretty wholeheartedly no.

58:46I think that the leaks, so for those who have not been paying attention to that story, there is a person or persons going by CyberLeak who had been said that they were upset about the fact that there was no physical edition of the game and had this trove of clips, of gameplay clips, and was releasing them and leaking them and encouraging people to invest in a crypto coin. They seem... They were mad because there's no physical version of the game, right? Yeah, totally. Yeah, they seem to have cashed out on that. So there may or may not be more leaks going forward. Rockstar responded to it a few days ago, said that they were absolutely heartbroken, which, yes, it's absolutely heartbreaking for any developer to have their work leaked, especially in a form that is not the finished, polished version.

59:36So it is really terrible for them. Like, that totally sucks. But yeah, so there were leaks and these gameplay clips were coming out. A lot of people were saying, oh, now these bits of the story are spoiled. But the thing is, I'm of the mindset where it's just like, there's always in every Grand Theft Auto game. There's so much that you could not possibly be, unless it was just even a full straight playthrough of the main storyline would not be spoiling Grand Theft Auto. because there's so much to do in those cities. And Rockstar is even saying, like, this is the biggest, it's humongous. The map is huge.

1:00:16And so for them to say that is, I mean, like, I can't even imagine how much there's going to be to do. The city feels so alive. There's just people everywhere of all shapes and sizes. They have talked about how they created, like, new structures for the character models, the NPCs, so they could have different shapes and sizes of people with different animations to just really make the city feel lived in. So I don't know that there's any way that they could spoil the game for people. And I mean, even if it was just the full main storyline, I don't know that it could be spoiled because someone is always going to come up with something or find something absolutely crazy in a Grand Theft Auto game that you can't cover all your bases.

1:01:02I do feel like, spoiler, you have to exercise. might have just to be clear there's like a bigger video game industry you There's a lot of story to tell here. Is this the game that saves video games from whatever is happening to video games? There's a lot of pressure on GTA 6 to just be a hit and make everything okay. So, yes and no. This is kind of like very similar to where we are with the movies, right? Like it took so long for the movies to sort of recover after COVID for different reasons. But we're finally now seeing this has been like the first good box office year, like back to business kind of box office year in a long time, like pre-COVID.

1:01:47I think with games, this is, GTA is such an anomaly that it is absolutely impossible to make this some kind of bellwether for the industry, in my opinion, because it is so singular. And, you know, allegedly, you know, some people are saying the budget's been like a billion dollars and it's just been in development for so long. And it's so different from what the industry looks like for everybody else right now, like all of the other studios that are operating. that I just, I, I obviously everyone wants, everyone in the industry is rooting for it, wants it to make a bunch of money. Um, but I don't think any, I hope, which I think we all know, like, I don't think the message here is like lean into more Grand Theft Autos because really you're just sort of betting the entire farm on one thing.

1:02:35And so it seems like, um, and not every game is going to be a GTA 6. Like not every, no game is a GTA 6. Like I just, it is again, singular. So So I don't know if there's, I hope the executives don't look at it and go, I want one of those. But that is usually, that's usually what happens. Is this my Fortnite? I think fewer games would be better. Every studio should release one game every 10 years. And we should all just get very, very hyped for it. People are going to be playing GTA 6 for the next 10 years. So they got time. This game is built to be played for years and years and years and years and years.

1:03:14And so I think, again, like it's a singular thing. I think that you can't really extrapolate like the success or failure. Like I don't think Grand Theft Auto 6 is going to be a flop by any means. But, you know, I really believe like you can't, you can't really come. It's so incomparable to anything else that exists. It's such a big zeitgeisty moment in video games whenever we get a new one. yeah i mean publishers are moving their release dates around it to just avoid the blast radius of this game yeah there's i think almost nothing coming out in november with the exception of um my one of my favorite things happening is um devolver is putting out they they have immediately since the release date like the first release date got released or got announced devolver was like we're releasing a game on that day we're not afraid of grand theft auto 6 We don't even know what the game is, but we're going to release a game on that day.

1:04:11And then when they moved it, they were like, we know you're afraid of us and we're moving our release date to your new release date. We're doing it. And so I love that. I think that's very funny. But yeah, everybody else just wants out. They want to get away from... It's just going to be... People are just going to sink their whole entire holiday season into that game. For the people who don't have a PlayStation 5 and can't afford one anymore, you can buy whatever indie game devolver is putting out. That's true. It's a good alternative. Buy a bunch of indies for$100. Like take your$100 and buy a ton of indies.

1:04:45I have a very naive question because I've never played a GTA game. Do you imagine that they're going to microtransaction the hell out of this game for like a long period of time? Or is that not something they're doing notably? I think GTA 6, probably not. but then they're obviously like you'll have DLC but then GTA 6 Online is a different thing and so I think that that is you know I think there's value there or potential there Did that do well for GTA 5? Where they made a ton of money on that? I mean they made enough money to make this one so I assume Well I guess I guess so I just imagine like it's a$100 game which is a very expensive game and they are going to sell a lot of them but is that a billion dollars is my question you know that's a great question my understanding is that GTA 5 online has been just immensely successful yeah immensely successful huge yeah okay people I mean it's still constantly and consistently being like when you look at things like SteamDB like concurrent player people are just really consistently playing it wow just even now it's they really love it yeah I'm sure there's a lot more to come here there's so much more sweet thanks so much Ashley it was really fun to talk GTA 6 thanks okay Okay, there's only one thing more exciting than Grand Theft Auto 6, and it's everyone's favorite podcast within a podcast about everyone's least favorite FCC chairman.

1:06:09It's time for Brendan Carr as a Dummy.

1:06:23Is that in like 7-4? Oh, we're going. Opposite drop. For breakdown. set. Math metal.

1:06:37Okay. That was awesome. That was very good. Very good. I guess on GTA Radio would be good. Yeah. Yeah, Rockstar, if you're listening, we can hook you up. Who was that by? That theme was submitted by Incidental Medication who says the most recent themes have been, quote, a bit too fluffy. Look, I'm not saying I agree. I'm not saying I disagree. I love all of our theme song submissions equally, including the AI ones, which Travis really dislikes. But it's true that we've been missing some edge. And you know what? If you two submit a metal theme for Brenton Carr as a dummy, I will let you critique the other themes.

1:07:18Oh, that's good. Yeah. I think that's the bonus in addition to the theme getting played. I'm saying a lot of them have been missing drops. We've had a lot of builds and no drops. If you want to get on the air, I can help you out. All right. Brendan, this week is a short one, but important one. It's not the usual free speech disaster. That was meta in the States earlier in the show. This one, I think, is more important. So there's a thing called the E-Rate Program, which is very boring. Every time I've had an FCC commissioner on the show, they all want to talk about it, even though it's the wonkiest thing.

1:07:50It's the system by which the federal government subsidizes internet access for schools and libraries. and there's this thing called the universal service fund it's on your bill you see it so when you buy internet access there is a tax on your bill for the usf and in olden days that tax paid to connect everyone to the phone system and here in 2027 after quite a lot of wonkery that tax can now be used to subsize internet access for lower income people and in particular uh schools and libraries so of course brendan hates the idea of writing internet access to schools in libraries. He's our guy. Of course he does.

1:08:27He's a cartoon villain of a human being. And he is trying to cut it. And so he's opened a comment period to cut it. He says things like, today the E-rate program spends around$2.5 billion a year. And a lot of new data is pouring in about the use of screen time for students. So we got to save the children by cutting internet access to schools and libraries. Do you see how there's not actually a connection between those things. And again, I say this as a parent in a school district where the parents are like, maybe this Chromebook situation is out of control. Like there's a lot of that going on.

1:08:59Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul is on Decoder very soon to talk about phone bans in New York state. Like there is a lot of question about computers and phones in schools. I'll grant you that, but we should cut access to the library because we're worried about screen time is not actually the move. So the comment period is open for this. The FCC people are leaving comments and the comments are coming in from people like Lisa Winston, the superintendent of Huntington Beach City School District in California. By the way, Fierce Wireless did a great piece of reporting here. We'll link it up.

1:09:32But she wrote, our district's connectivity is not convenience. It is the delivery mechanism for state testing, student safety and wellness monitoring, emergency communication with families, and daily instructions. We get matching funding of nearly 1.5 million over the past 10 years that has helped build and maintain that infrastructure. So if Brendan cuts it, they can't run the tests anymore. They can't communicate with families when something bad happens because it's the internet access. It is not screen time. Brendan, he's a dummy. He's connected two dots that shouldn't be connected. We got another quote here, a comment submitted to the FCC from the director of library system in Northeast Georgia.

1:10:13E-rate funding enables Northeast Georgia libraries to provide broadband access that library patrons use for daily activities, including computing online learning, applying for government benefits, filing taxes, and applying for jobs. That doesn't seem like the kind of inner access you should cut. But right next to that are a bunch of right-wing lobbyist groups that are trying to cut the Universal Service Fund entirely. And Brendan, obviously, the author of Project 2025's chapter on telecom regulation, is right there with him. So he's trying to do it from the government level. There's groups trying to do it at the sort of litigation level about whether the government has power to levy any tax whatsoever.

1:10:49And in the middle is not a bunch of kids who are addicted to Instagram at school, but literal school administrators and library administrators saying, no, we actually just need to pay our bills. Like, this is the fee that pays our bills. Anyway, the comment period is open. It's as stupid as ever when it comes to Brendan. I'm particularly outraged when it comes to cutting internet access for disadvantaged people. That's the thing that the FCC should do. That is the great success story of what you would call the post-Janet Jackson Super Bowl nipple FCC. Like that was a bad point in our country's history when the FCC was such a speech regulator that they went whole hog at Viacom over that.

1:11:30And they actually pivoted like both Republican and Democratic FCC chairs. After that, we're like, we got a little over our skis. We're going to focus on Internet access. And now we're back and we're cutting Internet access and we're doing speech regulations of the view. Brendan Carr, everybody. You can submit a comment. You can go to the FCC's website. We'll link the form. You should, and you should say that internet access for schools and libraries is generally a good thing, and the USF is generally a good thing. Anyway, Brendan, if you want to come on the show and defend taking literally candy from babies, you can do that.

1:12:05I would love to have you on the show. You can respond to any of these comments. We'll dig up some other ones. Or you can say libraries should not have their internet access subsidized, which most people, I think, are happy to do. Anyway, that has been Brendan Carr's Demi, America's favorite podcast for the podcast. Brandon Carr is a dummy.

1:12:30I just want to harmonize with that one, it ends. It's very good. It's very good. It's lovely. Always good when you've angered librarians quite literally across the United States. Okay, everyone. It is now, at last, time for the lightning round. We've got some stories queued up, a lot of big things. I'm going to start with, I think, something pretty important, which is that my understanding is that this week, NVIDIA saved the U.S. economy. Right? It's time for quarterly earnings. So Jensen's got to get out there. He's got to say, NVIDIA, we're doing well. They've got to be doing pretty well at a minimum or else I think the entire economy is going to crash because everything is invested in AI.

1:13:17and all the AI relies on NVIDIA and NVIDIA is circularly invested in everybody else. Oh boy, did Jensen get out there. Jensen got out there and said some big things, right? Jensen, quote, AI has reached its inflection point. It's doing useful work. Its tokens are productive and profitable. Now compute is revenue. So compute is now revenue. That's big. And that is probably why NVIDIA is making a lot of money. He then goes on to say, quote, demand is accelerating. This time last year, one lab alone was driving the build out. Today, we have a golden age of new AI labs and startups, multiple frontier labs scaling in parallel, a thriving open model ecosystem system, and a physical AI coming online.

1:13:59The AI infrastructure build out is at full steam. This is all preceding NVIDIA projecting that their revenue is going to grow by 70 % in its 2028 fiscal year. 70 % in one year to where it's at right now. For where it's at right now. Yes. Which is most of the U.S. economy. Yes. So NVIDIA is doing okay. NVIDIA is doing okay. And by that fact, the U.S. economy will continue for a little bit longer. Nilo, do these numbers seem high to you? Do you feel like the AI buildout has reached its inflection point? No, definitely not. We're still trying to get data centers everywhere, including space. So that's one thing, right?

1:14:45Yeah. So the demand for the chips is related to the desire to build data centers. So of course, NVIDIA can forecast demand because they have pretty good visibility into all the data centers that may or may not get built, including a bunch of data centers that they are funding in a series of circular deals. This is a big problem for the U.S. economy, right? Whether or not the circular financing will collapse inward upon itself. But they have a view into how many chips they're going to sell. The more interesting thing to me about all of this is Jensen is on CNBC talking about the fact that compute is an asset class, which means you can invest in it and you can see it grow and fall.

1:15:27And it's fungible. And the chips have this really long life that allows compute, not the chips themselves, but compute, a derivative of chips existing in data centers to be an asset class that you can invest in. Liz has written all about this, but there's something that's happening here where we're seeing an earnings report based on like a very fundamental transaction. you need chips, NVIDIA sells you chips, money changes hands, into sleight of hand that compute is now revenue, that the circular financing deals will all pay off in the end, that NVIDIA is an investor in the data centers who are raising debt based on the value of the chips they're buying from NVIDIA with NVIDIA's money.

1:16:14That's all going to pay off in the end. I don't think we see any of that in these earnings. Do you know what I mean? I have to tell you, I was reading the Wall Street Journal's write-up of this, and people are having just like literally emotional reactions to NVIDIA's earnings. The Wall Street Journal frames it as providing much-needed relief to investors and lifting investors' spirits, relieving their anxieties about the AI boom. And I'm just like, there's a little too much built around NVIDIA's success here. And NVIDIA has made sure it is that way. Right. The question for all of this, and Jensen says it, the tokens are productive and profitable.

1:16:56This is Jensen's big claim. This is the heart of NVIDIA's earnings. The tokens are profitable. So if you buy a NVIDIA GPU and you spend the money to build a data center around it and you buy the energy needed to turn it on in all of the build out associated with that and you spend a dollar on that, you get more than a dollar's worth out. The token generating the token is now profitable. That is actually unclear. There is some reporting out of Anthropic that they can run inference profitably, but Anthropic isn't public yet. And they also just said that their total interestable market is$30 trillion, which is bananas.

1:17:38That's bigger than SpaceX said in its IPO. There's not a lot of reporting out of OpenAI about whether its tokens are profitable. There are claims. Now, there are claims up and down that inference can and will be profitable for these companies to generate the tokens. We just don't have the actual numbers. We just don't. They're not public companies and they have not had any call to share these numbers with us. They might. And there's reporting this week. Alex Heath actually wrote a time cover story about OpenAI. And in that, he said Sarah Fry, the CFO, is running mock public company drills where they pretend to have earnings so they can be ready for the IPO.

1:18:15So, like, it's coming. The transparency is coming. But the claim here from NVIDIA is the tokens are profitable. which means if you build a data center and you run them, then you will make a profit running the data center on embedding chips. If that's true, then it's all going to be fine. If that's not true, and I'm just saying we don't know, then a lot of things are going to come to an end pretty quickly. Then next to that is whether actually putting AI in your workplace or doing a big AI digital transformation with the help of your friendly local private equity or consulting firm will actually make your business more profitable.

1:18:48And no one knows the answer to that question. Like truly no one knows the answer to that question because we've only just begun. So NVIDIA is, like I said, they're selling a lot of chips. The second and third order of whether those chips are profitable is not in focus yet, regardless of what Jensen's saying here. The other big NVIDIA news this week that I want to just mention briefly is there is a rumor. It's not confirmed. It's a rumor that they might buy Hugging Face for$13 billion, which is kind of the hub for open source AI models. This would be a very big deal, very big hedge for them to make sure that the entire open source AI ecosystem is optimized for NVIDIA chips.

1:19:30So you can see the logic there. This is not confirmed yet. Who knows? Perhaps by the time this show airs, it will be. But that is the next thing that has sent people into a tizzy. 13 billion is not a lot of dollars for nvidia also uh notably the company that got autonomous autonomously hacked by open ai um and i think we've been waiting for the day in which a company gets autonomously hacked by one of these companies and is not happy about it hugging face is fine nvidia will probably be mostly okay with it because they're all sort of circularly financing each other, the moment when it's a company that's not within that ring of trust, it might be not so happy.

1:20:09Well, it's very funny because they're like, we did get autonomously hacked, but look at how good the AI is. Look at how crazy this was. Shows it's working, huh? Yeah. It was very notable that when that hack happened, everyone came out and said, this is awesome. Because it's not going to be awesome in the future. Yeah. It's going to be a little less awesome. We have breaking news here. There's an open letter signed by over 100 companies, including OpenAiAthropic and Google, saying that we need a global surge in cyber defense and that AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated.

1:20:46So we need to put cyber-capable AI in the hands of defenders, starting with teams protecting essential services. So we need to use Mythos. We need more AI to protect us from the AI that we forgot to control. Cool. I look forward to them all taking action on that open letter immediately. Immediately. By the way, there's also reporting on just the details of the Hugging Face hacked have been reported now. They released their internal report. And boy, is it worse than people thought. A bunch of agents in that opening eye started a message board and talked to each other and sent each other messages on how to break out.

1:21:19It's very good stuff. If you like cyberpunk movies about the world ending. Heist film. Sort of a heist. But, you know, one of the reasons NVIDIA might want to buy Hugging Face is to more closely align it with OpenAI, which is they are all tied up with in different ways, and maybe keep anyone from talking about this stuff too much. Because this is how you get the regulation. Right. Okay, David, do you have anything for us that is not going to destroy the world? Well, I was going to make it about this Pokemon Sleep Fitbit Air. Wait, Pokemon Sleep Fitbit Air is an incredible series of words. Collab of the century.

1:21:59I will talk about it, I guess. Okay, fine. So it makes sense to me that Nintendo would make a Pokemon Fitbit Air. Sure, I guess. All these companies want to address younger and younger markets. Obviously, that's what the Chromebook was for, to get it into the hands of children in schools so they eventually use more Google products and services. It's especially easy to get it into the hands of children when you can go to the parents and say, we're going to gamify your child's sleep to make sure they're on their phone less and they are spending more time sleeping. For those that don't know, Pokemon Sleep, I think a lot of people don't know, to be clear.

1:22:37Pokemon Sleep is an app on your phone where the more you sleep and the better you sleep, you befriend and level up different Pokemon. So it is an app that is made to not be used because you're sleeping. And then when you wake up, you get to play with your Pokemon. And this has nothing to do with Pokemon Go? No. Okay. No. So it's a different game. where you carry things around and that helps you get Pokemon. Carry things around? Or you have to wear this thing. Oh, no. You just sleep. You just sleep. You just sleep. You just sleep and it gives you points. And it's very simple, right? Okay. For some reason, Nintendo has released a Pokemon Sleep Edition, which as Marquez pointed out on our podcast yesterday, it's a more blue, like, Steph Curry, Fitbit Air than the official Steph Curry one is because it's actually like the, what is the team?

1:23:31Oakland? Is it Oakland? That's the wrong guy. I don't know. I'm so sorry. What is the basketball team Steph Curry is on? The Warriors? Golden State Warriors. Did you say Oakland? Okay. I don't know. Look, I'm not a sports guy. That was such a confusing question. I couldn't get out Warriors because I was like, is this a trick question? Is this a trick question? No. What team is Steph Curry? Okay, go ahead. So this is a special edition Pokemon Sleep. It costs$129.99 instead of$99.99. So it is more expensive. it is just blue except for the fact that on the very bottom there's a little sleeping pikachu i like the sleeping pikachu i will give it that but it does say the word mark pokemon sleep which i don't think is great for a thing you wear all the time pokemon sleep every time you say it sounds like a command like you were ordering a pokemon to go to sleep a pokemon sleep or like you you push the the band on someone's face and they immediately go down yeah yeah the way that i can see this is uh google wanting to address the younger market and get them into the health fitness tech stuff because fitbit has released like kids editions of its fitbits right now there's a kids edition if i look pokemon is not only for kids the kids can also access the fitbit ai agent that tells them about their sleeping if you have the pro to get a better uh snorlax level yeah well because your your sleep score has been bad it is strange uh in the press release they sent me it has the little like fine print in the bottom and it says the Fitbit Air is for kids 13 and older and I'm like well there's a little bit of a mismatch here because I think that most parents are going to be buying the Pokemon Sleep model of a Fitbit Air for younger than 13 but I don't know.

1:25:05This both does not make a lot of sense to me but also I think it looks nice. It looks look the material I have the regular Fitbit Air I have the blue one the material of this one is nicer it is nicer and it is very deep blue. It's an extra 20 bucks. It better be. It's an extra 30 bucks. Yeah, which is 30%. There you go. Okay. I didn't want to talk about that because I just quickly want to talk about the fact that Panic, which is another little game company, game publisher, they are passing on the Playdate tariff refunds to customers. So for those that don't remember, the government charged an illegal tariff, people that were importing things that were not made in America, the Supreme Court struck that down and the government had to pay these companies the refunds back.

1:25:48And most of these companies did nothing with that. They just kept the money. They pocketed the money. Some of them kept the prices the same as the adjusted prices were. Everything's gotten worse. But this week, Panic sent out an email to customers that had bought things like the Playdate during that period and refunded them the difference that they charged for the tariff fee. Oh, that's great. Which I just think is good. like we need more companies doing this. We need to shout out more companies that are doing these good things. Yeah, that's lovely. I just wanted to note that. That's really great.

1:26:21That's good. All right, I love that. Okay, Eli, close us out. I'm ending with camera drama of the highest order. The only way it could happen. You're just trapped in between us. I'm sorry. This is very good. All right, bring it to us. Bring it to us. So Waymo this week put out a blog post called 10 AI Lessons from Driving 200-plus Million Fully Autonomous Miles. Now, you would think this is just your normal blog post, right? You're celebrating a milestone. We're Waymo. There's a cute little van now. People love a Waymo, especially when they all honk at each other in a circle, disrupting the operations of cities late at night.

1:26:58But in this blog post, Waymo takes an incredibly hard shot at Tesla. So Shrikanth Thiru Malai, who's the VP of onboard software, doesn't say Elon Musk or Tesla directly in this post, but he writes, cameras are incredible, but they aren't enough. For years, there has been a debate over whether cameras alone could solve full autonomy. Now, after more than 200 million real world miles, the data is clear. Safe, fully autonomous operations at scale require more. That what they mean is LiDAR and radar, which Waymo's obviously have. They create a rich, redundant worldview that no single sensor can replicate.

1:27:36this is incredible shots at tesla which is i think a few weeks away from the cybercab launch event yeah to which only like very friendly youtubers have been invited but if you will recall uh elon years and years ago when they took lidar off of tesla's said he thought lidar was a local maximum and that tesla would solve full self-driving with cameras alone and so now they're about to launch the cyber cab and waymo which is usually not in the market for drama in any way shape or form especially because they're also part of google which is rarely in the market for drama is just out here with a blog post being like yeah your shit sucks like as direct as they can be uh after 200 million real world miles the data is clear safe fully autonomous operations at scale require are more than cameras.

1:28:25There's only one company they're talking about, which is minutes away from the CyberCab launch. I think this is pretty wild stuff. Now we're going to have a bunch of Tesla fans point out that Teslas do have FSD. It is mostly camera-based. Elon has proven to be more right than wrong about this thing over time. But FSD has a lot of problems, right? The coach of the 49ers just got himself hurt because he was relying on FSD and even said, I knew better in a car still crashed. Like, that's the level of FSD problems that we have in this country now. Famous people who can afford drivers like, ah, the robot will do it, and the car crashes, and they are, like, not present for the start of the football season.

1:29:07Like, that's where we are with FSD. Some of it is cameras, some of it is software, some of it is Tesla's amount of risk. But it's funny that the iPad has LIDAR sensors and Tesla's drone. is this a regulatory play like are they trying to get regulators to be like only safe robo taxis with lidar backup are allowed and try to edge tesla out i mean i i think there's a little bit of that i think there's a little bit of just it is not yet settled how this technology should actually work right we're we're still in a race like waymos are great there's lots of waymos You can get them in certain cities in the country.

1:29:50They are still not great at snow. There are lots of parts of, in San Francisco, if you want to get from Mountain View to the airport, which is the last time I tried to take a Waymo, it's like, yeah, we can't do that. We're not going to do that. And some of that's regulatory, some of that's technical, some of that is mapping, some of that is safety. There's a lot of that going on. And then, obviously, the CyberCab launch is going to attract a lot of attention. and I'm confident Tesla is going to say they can do it with cameras alone because they're going to get that question. And in Tesla's last earnings call - They're not going to get that question.

1:30:22Well, not from - Not from the people they invited. Not from the people they invited. But it will be present because they keep talking about it. So in their last earnings call, the Tesla head of AI said, historically, the so-called experts have always claimed that you need LiDARs, radars, HD maps, and the entire kitchen sink to drive safely. We show that's not true. You can have safe, comfortable, and affordable autonomy with just cameras. This should be a huge validation of Tesla's entire approach. So these companies are fighting, right? The technical approach is not settled. And somewhere in there is safety and whether or not you trust the car to actually drive itself, even if the cameras get occluded or the LiDAR doesn't work or whatever things can happen that can go wrong with a self-driving car.

1:31:00But most of the rest of the industry has added LiDAR for all kinds of very obvious reason, including the fact that LiDAR sensors are getting cheaper over time. Yes, this feels like an obvious trajectory. Yes, they were expensive early on. I do not think that they are groundbreakingly expensive anymore. When it comes to something as important as safety, it feels like an obvious thing to go back on. But yes, it will be very interesting to see what happens after the CyberCab officially rolls out. I'm here for this drama. I want there to be more prodding at these safety records. If Apple can afford to put a LiDAR sensor in the iPad Pro, which nobody uses.

1:31:41and then decide to save money on the polishing cloth. Yes. I think that they're probably not that expensive anymore. Tesla is in a place where they have been so vocal about not using LiDAR for so long. It's their whole personality. Yeah, it's like they got to give up on a core piece of themselves. And if they really give up on it, all of these cars that they have advertised as FSD capable will not be FSD capable, and that will put them in a world of pain, which there already were because they were being really sketchy about which cars were going to be FST capable. It was like Hardware 3 or something.

1:32:20They had promised, but now it's not. And it's going to be like Lawsuit City if they ever go back on this and require LiDAR. So they've really boxed themselves in. Yeah. Okay. Neal, you teased it a little bit earlier, but what do we have coming up on Decoder? Decoder next week is going to be great. It's going to be Governor Kathy Hochul. We have a lot to talk about there. and then there's one I can't say that was just, I nerded out for an hour today. It was really fun. I'm very excited for both of these. I think it's gonna be a fun week on Decoder. Cool, that is it for The Verge Cast. Remember to subscribe to The Verge for ad-free episodes of all of our podcasts, exclusive newsletters, and a whole lot more.

1:32:54We'd love to hear from you. You can email us vergecast at theverge.com or call the hotline 866-VERGE-11. The Verge Cast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today's show is produced by Josh Cajas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. We'll see you next week. Nealai. Back and roll. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial.

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