Tesla’s Robotaxi Test Takes to the Streets

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32:27You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. I have another story. This is a story about cars. and it's actually kind of a fighting story. Be really careful because the last time I talked about cars on this podcast, I didn't hear the end of it for like six weeks. Oh, I got you. No, this is all real and this is all interesting. You remember CarPlay Ultra? Ultra. Remember last WWDC when they first showed us CarPlay Ultra? I think that was two WWDCs ago. Was it two? Yeah. Two years ago they showed us CarPlay Ultra and they were like, trust us, it's coming to a bunch of car makers and they told us, you know, people don't buy cars unless they have CarPlay.

33:11And we went, really interesting? And then we moved on. And I don't know if you remember, but there were a whole bunch of manufacturer logos on those pages. And Apple is essentially, through these presentations, promising that it's going to be coming to more cars and more car manufacturers soon. This latest update, it's been two years now, is essentially a bunch of car manufacturers going, hey, yeah, we don't want that. We're not doing the CarPlay Ultra thing. The announcement is now the latest three are Mercedes, Audi, and Volvo are out on CarPlay Ultra. CarPlay Ultra being specifically the version of CarPlay that also takes over the dash and the tachometer behind the steering wheel, all that extra stuff in your car.

33:57And all the comments are kind of just along the same lines of like, yeah, why would any car manufacturer want to support CarPlay Ultra? It's bad enough that they're giving up full control over that entertainment screen. Why would they give up the whole car? There's a great quote in here from one executive at Raynault who's developing a vehicle mainly controlled by software. It's pronounced Renault. Renault. And they told Apple, quote, don't try to invade our own systems. Dang. So it's pretty clear. A lot of car manufacturers are not into it. The only ones that seem to still be in are, and we don't have all the models yet, but are Porsche, Aston Martin, and Hyundai Kia, that sort of company.

34:42And that's it. And the only ones we've seen so far are just the Top Gear video of them showing it to us on that Aston Martin DBX707. I think that's the only vehicle I've seen running CarPlay Ultra. Yeah, the one that no one can afford. Since two years ago when they first showed it off. Yeah. So CarPlay Ultra kind of running up against a wall here. I don't know if you guys are like expecting to try to run CarPlay Ultra, if you're interested in CarPlay Ultra or if you just don't care. Seems like most people don't care. I think it's vaguely interesting, but I'm also not very interested in something that requires one platform.

35:15An iPhone? Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think this is what Apple did for their Apple Car platform? They were like, we're going to make the car. And so they designed the software for the car. And they were like, oh, man, designing like the rest of the car. Reflecturing cars is hard. What if we just took the software we made and put it in other people's cars? That's a whole other can of worms because if you're going to design a car and your Apple, people also expect it to be electric. They expect it to be fully self-driving, which we'll get to in a second. So there's a whole bunch of more stuff that comes from a high-tech car.

35:45Yeah, which is probably what they gave up on it. Also, the whole manufacturing part, which is like what bankrupts most companies. Yeah. So, yeah, I think as far as being a high-tech car startup, there is a lot of variables in play. And Apple can do software. Yeah. But what if they just took over the software without making a car? No. Ah. You sound like Renault. So, yeah. Do you know what company, funny enough, does still seem to be going forward with CarPlay Ultra? Aston Martin. Which one? Take a guess. One you wouldn't expect. Well, the ones that I know about are Porsche, Aston Martin, and Honda.

36:16So, what's one you wouldn't expect because of the software it already has? Oh, Tesla Rivian. Polestar. Oh. Well, yeah. Not that you wouldn't expect it, but their whole basis already is Android Automotive. but it seems like they're still in on CarPlay Ultra. I think that they're just like... No, they're one of the ones out. They're one of the ones out? Or at least Volvo's out. Is Polestar in today? No, this is from like two weeks ago. That's not from today. But still, it seems like they're still possibly in it. I would say that they're probably out. I would assume they were out. They're in a quantum superposition of in and out.

36:52The wave function will collapse when you buy your next Polestar because you have to observe it yourself. The moment you look at it, it becomes Android Automotive or Apple. This article from today says that Mercedes, Audi, and Volvo, and Polestar, and Renault are all distancing themselves from this project. So a lot's happened in the last two weeks. So just kidding. Yeah. You know what's hilarious who hasn't said that they're leaving CarPlay Ultra? Jaguar. Because less than a year ago, the Jaguar design team was like, we have no idea what anybody wants from us that's very true yeah they should just accept that yeah it doesn't matter what they do yeah they should they should just be like apple please design stuff for us please copy nothing yeah yeah okay i have a very stupid fundamental question about all this that you guys can maybe help me with okay so if i get a car yeah and it has android automotive yeah but then i buy an iphone uh-huh can i and it supports carplay carplay ultra can i plug in and it just takes over the car.

37:53Does the car, this theoretical car supports CarPlay Ultra and runs Android Automotive? Yes. CarPlay Ultra or CarPlay in general? CarPlay Ultra, specifically this one. Which is what the, I don't think it's exclusive, right? It's what the Polestar was going to do. Yeah, in this theoretical world where that car exists, yeah, you plug in your iPhone or you connect your iPhone and it takes over all of the screens in the car. Like buying one doesn't lock me into the phone. That's the big question, yeah. That's a question. Like the Ashton Martin right now, if I have an Android phone. It doesn't do Android Auto?

38:24It will not do Android. It will not do CarPlay Ultra. It will not do CarPlay Ultra. Yeah, CarPlay Ultra still relies on the iPhone. CarPlay... CarPlay... CarPlay... CarPlay... CarPlay... CarPlay does do CarPlay Ultra, right? Right. Yeah. But you need an iPhone to do that. Oh, is that what you're saying? So if I have an Android phone and I have an Ashton Martin because I'm awesome. Yeah. When I plug in... When you plug in, you will get the normal Android Auto experience. You do not get CarPlay Ultra. CarPlay Ultra is if you have an iPhone, you connect it, it takes over, all of the screens no no wonder car manufacturers don't want to be involved in this like dude why would you make the most expensive product you own lock you into a phone ecosystem that doesn't make any sense there are lots of cars that have one or the other it's less common now but there have been plenty that have been like only carplay or only android auto yeah there's like different levels of connecting your phone to your car you can just connect via bluetooth in theory and then just like play whatever audio coming from your phone and put your phone in the dash and that's whatever but the in-car software usually sucks so your house was like this what if you're like damn i really want to try the new rog phone but i i have an apple house well that's not entirely fictional yeah because think about home pod and no no no no totally but i mean like i just spent you know half a million dollars on a house and now in order to change my thousand dollar devices ecosystem i would literally have to restructure the entire financial future of my life which i get a car is not half a million dollars but also it could be it is oftentimes something you pay off over the course of decades so it's like yeah still does have its own ui though like the aston martin still has its own ui yeah if it's not if you have an android phone it's just the astin yeah my house regular android my house has light switches but i still want to use the home pod you know well this is this is home kit basically this is like matter is important there are people who who move into super fancy high-rise apartments with ipads embedded in the walls yeah that's kind of kind of like that yeah that's true sort of locked in and honestly like most people are fine like they they are not upset that they are locked into an ecosystem you know what i mean i guess i'm that way they actually bully people who are in other ecosystems right exactly like I am also that way.

40:40We cover all, that's true. We cover all this stuff, so we're interested and we want to try something, but it's hard for us to even try something when it doesn't work with the ecosystem that we're locked into. But most people are like, oh, yeah, just give me the new iPhone, give me the new AirPods, give me the new MacBook. You're so right, David. I will admit, on the podcast, just so everyone knows, I've been curious about the S Pen for a while. I've really wanted to try it. Never going to. Unfortunate. Because you can't. Yeah, because I literally can't. That's exactly what I'm saying. Because I'm staring at Adam's S Pen right now, and I'm just like, f***.

41:13If there was a smart pen protocol for your phone. Yeah, yeah, exactly. What's that saying? A federated smart pen universe opens. Speaking of cars and fantastical future stories, there was also an event, or at least some happenings, in Austin, Texas this past week. Did any of you guys see what happened in Texas? I did. It was pretty funny. I was tagged about a thousand times in tweets about what was happening in Texas, most of which lacked reading comprehension skills. But that's okay. That's okay. Because we can still talk about it. Because it was interesting. Grok context, please. Is this true?

41:52So here's the context. Tesla finally started doing test runs that the, quote, public can use of robo-taxis in Austin, Texas. It's a small geo-fenced part of Austin, and these are Tesla model-wise. In fact, I can pull up all the stipulations of exactly the restrictions. It ran from—oh, I need my tab open here. So if you wanted to do one of those robo-taxi rides, you could pick an area in this defined geolocation. You're already missing one. If you were an influencer selected to do one of the rides so far— Is that part of it? You have to be selected? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I gotta get invited. Invite only.

42:32I think it was invite only. Okay, so for this test, it was invite only. But essentially, this was model-wise where there was nobody sitting in the driver's seat, but there was a Tesla employee sitting in the passenger seat. We assume that that is required for some reason. We know the reason. Well, you know, we don't— They had a kill switch. It's a safety monitor. There's some speculation about what they're doing in the front seat. There is some UI on the screen that allows them to tell it to stop or pull over, and they all seem to always have their hand on the handle. We don't know why or what that means.

43:03Tesla hasn't told us. But the point is there's a Tesla employee in the front of the car, but not the driver's seat. Very important. Not the driver's seat. You could call the car. It runs from 6 a.m. to midnight. It doesn't run in all weather situations. But in the perfect weather that we saw videos of, it was taking people to various restaurants. Not the airport, though. Not the airport. Well, this is a small area. Didn't have any highways in it. It was up to about 35 miles an hour. But it was taking people around. it kind of resembled what you might see from a waymo except a waymo doesn't have someone in the front seat it's just a different system altogether uh but this is tesla's thing all rides were four dollars and twenty cents just because it was easy to you know because there's like 20 people that were allowed yeah promotional flat rate we don't have to charge people we're not making money from this yet uh onboard cameras would monitor passenger behavior apparently and if you're under 18 you can't do one of these rides but it is a big step theoretically towards this future of what tesla is imagining which is robo taxis all over the world or at least all over the parts of the world that allow it that will just drive people around with no driver didn't they also have a car that was like driving behind it to make sure that nothing would happen i don't know i thought i read that on the verge i was watching videos from the people who were there one from dan from what's inside one from kim and it was just called it in the app you get into the back seat there would be a tesla employee in the front seat and then you'd hit the go button on the screen and from that back seat you just have the car drive you and if anything weird started to happen the employee could stop the car or pause it or or take over whatever they had to do but did you see any videos of anyone stopping it i saw two videos i saw one video of the car following a ups truck the ups truck pulled up to clearly start to reverse into a spot the robo taxi didn't get the signal and just continued right into the path of the ups truck so the employee reached over and stopped it to allow the ups truck to back in i saw that then i saw another video where there were no interjections but it fully went to the wrong side of the road and like wiggled and then came back to the right side of the road and that was kind of weird but nobody interjected it was in a turn lane went into the turn lane started to turn left then just went straight but ahead of it is the opposite side of the road right and then continued going forward until it got into the next turn lane but that means for half of a block it was in the wrong lane of traffic yeah but but no intervention yeah success this article says in some cases tesla is using chase cars and remote drivers as backup okay i never saw you know i'm watched going by the videos that i watched from the influencers who were invited i don't know the criteria for the influencers invited i was not invited so assume whatever you want about the criteria but yeah that was that happened uh there's two ways you can interpret this one wow big step tesla's on their way robo taxi coming soon marquez get the clippers ready or two you know i watch that and i see marketing it's like another very beautiful tesla showy thing to do if someone's required to be in the front seat why not put him in the driver's seat because it looks way better when no one's in the driver's seat if that person is not going to intervene at all and is not going to grab the wheel don't put him in driver's seat put him in the passenger seat but for some reason you need them still in the front seat that was kind of a damper the reason they're doing that is because they're being extremely cautious and extremely safe about every any little incident that could happen they want to make sure everything goes smoothly a very small number of people get invited to use this thing perfect conditions geofence location small area no highways you know great weather only during the daytime like there's so many things that they're trying to do to make sure this this little experiment goes well so that they can build out on it and build out on it and build out on it and maybe one day it's all of austin maybe one day it's all hours one maybe one day there's nobody in the front seat but that's all maybe one day type stuff so if you want to read into this as being a successful test with a few interventions you can but that's a really hard extrapolation to go all the way out to like robo taxis all i also implore you to get into waymo because they're really really good yeah it's funny for a long time but also use the same tricks at like remote drivers like constant monitoring bike like centers internationally you know it's not it the goalposts are not that far off yeah there's a lot of resurfaced talk about waymo because of these tests because of the things that tesla has said about geofence testing before you know waymo being uh a lot of more jaguar ipaces with a bunch of lidar sensors on top much more expensive to make a bunch of these taxis but yeah they operate around a whole bunch of cities and without a driver in the front seat.

47:49And so naturally there are lots of instances of them screwing up and people are bringing back up the footage now of, oh, look at what this Waymo couldn't do. Oh, look at this weird incident that this Waymo pulled off. Or, oh, look at all these things that Waymo has been doing behind the scenes. So this is a very difficult technological problem to solve. I think as a fan of tech, I'm just interested in hopefully these tests going well and it's actually like working. I think a lot of people are like picking a horse. Like I only support the tesla vision way or i only support the lidar way and you will see these like sides fighting each other about like oh lidar's stupid it's overpriced what a dumb idea but as a fan of tech i just want them both to get better just get better i want them to actually work instead of fighting each other so that's that's kind of where i'm at they're both not quite good enough for me to just want them to be everywhere yet so waymo is pretty damn good waymo is good it's in a couple cities i don't think they're anywhere near the east coast yet so i'm like not they're going to test in new york again soon there's plenty of videos of waymo just being an absolute and new for sure and the data they put out on their own like service is doesn't line up with the data collected by independent uh observers either so it's like not actually clear statistically how how good waymo is yeah there was a neat article about how if you watch all of the videos from all these people invited to the Tesla event and you go, okay, well, there's only a few days of recording and two or three major instances, then you extrapolate that to however many millions of miles you want them to drive and how many major instances that is.

49:21Clearly it must get better before it scales up. Yeah. Uh, I just Ellis's crazy corner moment. I just want to press like, even if Waymo does work really well on an individual level, it is not clear what mass adoption of Waymo's will do to a metro area. You know what I mean? It's not clear what it will do to traffic. It's not clear what it'll do to accidents. There are lots of studies that say lots of things on both sides of the argument. I heard a really funny Waymo story this week of someone in either Austin or LA who has a Waymo who operates like that way most territory is his neighborhood. And it has chosen the parking spot right in front of his house as the wait for my next ride spot and so every day he comes home and there's a waymo in his parking spot with no one in it just waiting for a ride to call and if you wait next to the waymo for like 10 minutes and it detects that you're waiting it will go and find another spot it's still annoying but yeah every day he invest in a large cone every day he comes home and has to wait for a way to move yeah wait just buy a huge cone you'll be fine yeah i don't i don't know if you're allowed to do that yeah Anyway, I don't know.

50:27Also, Elon says that on June 28th, there will be a Tesla that drives itself from the factory all the way to the customer's house. I'm so tempted to make another bet. I am so tempted to make another bet. Yeah, he's not very good with dates. This is also like three days away with that weapon. This is when he originally said tentatively the 22nd is when RoboTaxi would roll out. It did start. Well, this is only 15 days ago that he did this. Not that long. So maybe they're planning like a specific customer with a specific thing happening. I'm not sure. Yeah. Maybe someone lives right next to the factory and they're like, we're doing this.

51:03It's happening on this day. They sleep in the factory. They have an RV in the factory. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, anyway, if you're one of the people on Twitter expecting me to shave my head, just go back and watch the original video. If you're wondering what the bet was, it's not about a Model Y with someone in the front seat driving around Austin. It's about that little gold robo-taxi. There still is a chance. CyberCab. CyberCab. CyberCab. I personally would like to see it. I thought it was RoboTaxi. RoboTaxi is a service CyberCab's little gold two-seater thing. Dude. Yeah. Get it right or you know nothing.

51:37We'll see if they can do it. It'd be fun for the content for me personally, but not for you. They've got a year and change to ship one for$30 ,000. So there you go. Speaking of things that are going to go on sale for an interesting price, the Fairphone. There is a new Fairphone. There's a new Fairphone. Is it$30 ,000? Thankfully not. So the whole point of the Fairphone, I reviewed a Fairphone a couple years ago, and the Fairphone, as you can probably tell by its name, is intended to be extremely repairable, and you'll be able to replace parts. If one of them breaks, if the screen breaks, you can pop it off and replace the screen.

52:16Key distinction here, not upgradable, like if it was modular, but you can stay at the same level of the phone forever by replacing parts anytime they break. Right. New Fairphone comes out, new level. This one's a Snapdragon 7S Gen 3, so a little bit higher performing. It also has a 120 hertz dynamic AMOLED display. Yeah. And you can, again, replace those parts over and over again and hopefully keep the phone for longer. Right. So this is not like if you have a Fairphone 4, it's not like you buy Fairphone 6 parts or something like that. That would be a totally different concept. Perfect for someone like Ellis, who just keeps his phone forever.

52:52yeah i don't need no fair phone i've told you guys i've replaced every single individual part of my phone so it's a fair it's basically a fair phone it's it's basic it's the ship the ship of theseus i fair phone okay yeah it's perfect yeah the idea i guess of this one with this new design and with this new chip is to feel a little bit more flagshipy it's ip55 right uh it's got i think i don't know if the battery is bigger but it's a 6.3 inch it's an oled it's it's it's nicer than the previous Fairphones have been. Yeah. And to be fair, like, huh. Thanks. I didn't mean to do that, but it's good.

53:29A big point about the Fairphone is it is about repairability, obviously, but a big part of their thing is also about like fair resource development trade stuff. Sourcing. They support. They make Dua Lipa mine her own lithium. That's right. That's right. Yeah, they support a lot of ethical lithium mining stuff and try to promote better consumer choice through that kind of stuff. It also has these accessories, which I really hope they're very similar to the CMF phone accessories. I really hope that you can use them when the Fairphone 7 comes out because the CMF phone one, only a couple of them work on the CMF phone two.

54:12which is a whole accessory ecosystem that only works for one really cheap phone is insane. And that's just like a lot of wasted plastic and stuff. So another interesting thing about it, it has this new switch on it that basically turns it into a dumb phone. I actually think this is pretty cool. Really interesting. That is really cool. It's like a minimal phone switch. Yeah, basically there's a switch on the side that turns it into the moments UI which makes everything monochrome and then has like five of your essential apps. So calendar. It's a list for you. Meet Gmail Chrome phone. Sounds like a launcher switch.

54:47It's basically a launcher switch, yeah. That's absolute gas. Yeah, it's dope. Like this is a good, like why didn't they just do this on more phones? I feel like you can do this from the app store. Well, yeah. No, no. Yeah. It's not having an integrated. Having integrated is cool. I think a slider is a cool. Is that the fact that it's a slider? I could map that to a double press of a random button on almost any phone. No, but it's so different, dude, because it's like that is that's a lifestyle choice. That is like that is like it. OK, laugh all you want. But I'm telling you, it's like that is a choice you make because of the impact.

55:18It'll have my phone before the end of this episode. Yeah, you guys aren't hearing me. It's like it was as soon as you bake it into software. It's not reflective of the impact it'll actually have on your life. This is the design thing. That's cool. I love that it's a switch. So like you're using your phone like normal and then you're like trying to hang out with my family. The beauty of Android is I could just do this. I don't need it built into the phone. I don't need the device. I'm so sick of you green bubblers. I've been hearing this for like a decade. The beauty of Android is that all you have to do is spend three hours banging your head against the wall with like a separate Google Cloud server that you forward all this data to just so you.

55:54It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's a launcher. Isn't this great that they're baking into hardware? Yes. Like, I know everyone will always say this could have been an app. It's like the Fuji X half, right? Everyone always says, oh, this could have been an app. It's just a wide, but it's cool. How is this different? You're saying it's baked in. In what way is it more baked in? Well, it has a physical hardware switch. Right, and so a lot of phones have a customizable button where you can map it to whatever you want, in which case you would map it to whatever launcher you grab from the Play Store.

56:26In what way is this more baked in than me mapping a custom button to a launcher from the Play Store? Well, in one way it is. Matter of fact, that's probably exactly what this is. It is vertical integration. in that it's the same company that made the phone made the launcher yeah i guess i give you that it's sure and the switch is is it's because it's a conscious that's cool yeah it's a conscious design choice you know what i mean the the the the like david said it because it's a vertically integrated choice you can have other features and other design i don't know the phone very well but you can have everything support this one decision yeah whereas and we all know we all know you can map anything you want to anything you want on an Android phone, but it is always annoying and it's always stupid and it never works exactly the way you want to.

57:12I love iPhone shortcuts. I could probably come up with something genius like this with an iPhone shortcut. And even those barely work. I think your view of shortcuts might be tainted by how bad the iPhone shortcuts are, because iPhone shortcuts are bad and are frankly almost unusable compared to what I found like on an Android phone where I agree on the Zen phone from a couple of years ago or even the last Zen phone, you'll literally you'll hit the button for the first time and it'll be like, what in all of your phone would you like to map this button to? And I go this app and then it goes, OK.

57:43And every time I press that button, it launches that app. And it's great. Yeah. And I just I feel like that's all that this is strongly about this. I don't know if I'm articulating my argument very well. I mostly think selling a phone with with a dumb phone switch is very different than. And also the only iPhone shortcut I've ever gotten to work consistently well is one that I made when I first got here where I'd press an app on my home screen and icon on my home screen. And it would search for a random, I would search GIFs for the word poop and then pick a random one and text it to Adam. That was a slider.

58:16That worked? Dude, if I had the poop button on my phone, totally different experience. Well, I mean, there is an action button. I give Fairphone credit here because their dumb phone UI, the five apps, are ones that you actually need. Where half of these dumb phone apps don't let you look at your email. So giving you Gmail here, thank you for realizing that some of us have to work and look at our Gmail. They still realize that this needs to be a phone. They just made the UI so that it's less like there's stuff everywhere and there's a lot of choices. It's just like a list with the time and essentials and stuff like that.

58:55Anyway, did you guys know it has 1 ,400 nits of peak brightness? They made a privacy-focused version that does not run Google. It's de-Googled. A de-Googled version of Android called EOS that is made by Muerna. And that is$900. The normal Fairphone is 599 euros. This says Fairphone sells only the EOS model through its local partner. Okay, so in the U.S. you can only get it through a partner. It's 599 euro in about 700 US dollars, which is still a lot. But, you know, it's cool. Would you put a SIM card in an EOS phone and ask if you want to initialize the media? anyone canon joke canon I'm like 0 for 3 today you guys they have to be stupider you know they're too smart yeah that's right that's right besides that they are going to send me one so I should have one probably for next week that we can look at and talk about switch on and off crap out of that button it's a switch up and down up and down okay um wait last question about that oh yeah can i remap that switch i don't think so it's probably worse than your usual android phone you can't remap it i'm guessing counterpoint the switch is pina colada colored that's true damn that is good if you have a well it's more yellow okay anyway they're gonna make uh right now they have four accessories for it so there's a case accessory which i don't know if you could really consider an accessory but it does have a slot out for the other accessories there's like a finger jammer thing where you put your finger in it so you can hold it easier there is a wallet case that looks pretty good and there is a lanyard which um is a choice so uh yeah i i don't know i'm excited wallet phone cases terrify me this is an episode for another day but i can't understand putting everything on your phone and then losing everything at once.

1:01:02I will say... That's mainly what I'm worried about. What kind of pina colada is that? Okay, I got one last thing. Okay, there is this new Adobe Project Indigo camera app that got kind of like stealth launched. This is quite interesting. So Mark Lavoie, who is the person that invented HDR Plus on the Nexus 6. I've talked with him extensively over the years. He is very smart. he basically created computational photography. He made the pixel cameras good. Yeah, he really defined the pixel camera look. He also said that they made it based on art, which is interesting. Well, the Pixel 6, yeah. They used Renaissance art.

1:01:43And Pixel 7 and 8, they moved away from that a little bit. So anyway, in 2020 or so, Mark left Google to go work at Adobe. And he said that he was going to be working on a universal camera app at Adobe. It made a lot of sense for him considering he invented computational photography, right? So we were all kind of waiting with bated breath to see what is this universal camera app that he's working on. It's been a long time. It's been like five years. And last week, he dropped with Adobe this new app that's in super beta called Project Indigo. The cool thing is you don't actually have to have an Adobe subscription to download it, which is nice.

1:02:19It is currently only available on the iPhone, which is not nice, but it kind of makes sense in some ways. uh anyway hard disagree well i don't know they have to develop whatever okay so basically i read the technical paper on this because they released this whole this whole paper about it and effectively what it is is just a intense ramped up version of what hdr plus was doing on the original pixel phones um so i just want to give a short primer about computational photography on smartphones Generally, HDR on smartphones, the way that it does it is that it takes multiple really short frames, and then it aligns them, and then it boosts the overall exposure of those frames.

1:03:04And generally, when you don't get a lot of light on a pixel, you have more noise, which is just random pixels that don't get the information. And when you up the exposure of all the pixels, you see the noise more. There's this thing called the signal-to-noise ratio. So what they do with computational photography is because your phone has a gyroscope, it's able to know exactly what the pitch, yaw, and skew is of your phone at all given times. And so it can align the exact pixels over the course of like seven frames. And that allows it to have a better signal to noise ratio because it takes the average of every single pixel.

1:03:36It does that. So what smartphones have done for a while now with computational photography is it's taken like seven frames and aligned to those. but when you do that when you're not getting a lot of light you also have to do a lot of noise reduction because you're upping you're taking these really short exposures you're upping the exposure you have to do noise reduction that basically smooths out the image and then you have to apply sharpening that's what's like led to this like smartphone plasticky look that we've had for a very long time and so mark's vision for this new project indigo app was to try to like kind of counteract that plasticky look.

1:04:14Also, because it's HDR, it like crushes the highlights down and it brings up the shadows and it kind of creates a really flat sort of like tone curve. So what the new Project Indigo app does is a few things. One of the things is that it takes 32 frames of even shorter exposures, which will lead to lower noise, which is really cool. And then they also, and I guess they can do that because they have faster processing in phones now. You know, when the Nexus 6 was out, but it took a while. Once you pressed the button, it would process, process, process. But now these ISPs are super fast, so you're able to take way more exposures and align them more, which reduces noise significantly, which is quite cool.

1:04:49They also have this new way of processing RAW files. So Apple's ProRAW on the iPhone basically will take, it's like a semi-RAW image. It's not true RAW because it's doing the demosaicing to push out the ProRAW file. this creates a new type of dng that doesn't do the demosaicing which is i have a whole separate we we have a whole separate video on the studio channel about demosaicing that we can put in the show notes practically what it means is that you're going to be able to get like way more color dynamic range which is really nice um you're going to get way lower noise and then it also has all these new features with like long exposure photography that looks really good that also uses like 32 frames of one second exposures that looks awesome uh it's gonna have pro controls adobe's adding all these photoshop ai tools like removing reflections in the mirror and stuff so this new project indigo app overall it's like basically they they let mark lavoy cook for five years and they were like do what you did for google but do it for us with the new technology that smartphones now have and then they're also integrating all of these other uh ai tools that that Adobe has developed over the last few years.

1:06:03So it's going to be like a test bed for a lot of these features. It's currently free on the App Store. You can download it. You don't have an Adobe subscription, which is really nice. Do you need to have a test flight or something? Nope. While you were describing all the computational photography and stuff, I downloaded it and started playing with it. And it's pretty nice. I mean, UI is pretty intuitive. I've taken a few test images. This podcast studio has perfect lighting, so I'm not going to be able to actually see what it's good at yet. But I want to play with it. Yeah, the one thing in the white paper that I was like, eh, is that they're really in on HDR stuff and doing like tone mapping.

1:06:36They developed this new type of JPEG that basically can like apply a tone map later. And I just think HDR looks bad. I just think it looks bad. It always looks bad. It's a lot of HDR. I forgot that he left to go to Adobe to do this. Yeah. That was so long ago. But I am kind of excited for this. This seems interesting. Yeah, it's cool. I mean, it's interesting. And if you look, we can also put the the article not we can also put like the white paper in the show notes. There are some samples in the white paper. Some of them are like, but then you look at the long exposure stuff and it looks really good.

1:07:09It looks very, very good. Part of the paper is he was saying like smartphone photos can look like good on your phone. But as soon as you put them like on a big screen or try to print them, they look awful. And so they specifically were thinking about how can we take photos that are going to look good when you blow them up and not look like plasticky and horrible. So that's a nice, nice little thing. So I'm pretty excited about this. How long until you need a Adobe subscription? Two weeks. Yeah, I mean. That's the thing I'm most surprised about this is you saying here's an Adobe product that doesn't need an Adobe subscription for it, which is wild.

1:07:42I mean, funny enough, when you download the app, it has the like test flight looking icon where it has like the like blueprint chart thing that goes through it. So it's clearly like an alpha app, but it is interesting. It's weird to me because this is, at least in my opinion, clearly a pro app. So the fact that it is free without a subscription kind of is confusing to me. Yeah, I mean, you can just point and shoot, but it does have a lot of pro controls. But yeah, regular people are probably not going to download this. It takes all your photos and puts them into their AI research library. I kind of want to go test some of the long exposure stuff because it looks really good.

1:08:19So anyway. We're about to Montauk. Ayo. Yet again. I'll play with it. We'll report back next week. Yeah, we'll play with it. Yeah. So the last time David and I drove out to Montauk to take pictures, it was so cloudy. We didn't even take any pictures. The last time Adam and I drove out to Montauk to take photos, we got home at four in the morning and then Google threatened me after I published my article. Oh my God. Yeah. Nice. But you know who will never threaten you? Trivia. Me doing trivia. I feel like you would. I feel like you'd have. David, if you get this question wrong. I'm going to take away a point.

1:08:52Yeah. Actually. You can't prove it. Next question. I might be able to. So we spoke a little bit earlier about Mario Kart World. In Mario Kart, you can choose between 50, 100, or 150 CC races. But also in Mario Kart, what does the CC mean? Credit card. Sabathia. Well, think about it. Are you a Yankee fan? Yes. The most mean. Fair enough. Answers at the end like usual. We'll be right back.

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1:11:32All right, welcome back. All right, so this is actually the last episode of the month of June, which is where we usually do our crown and clown. We thought about it. We didn't have too much to say there, but in honor of the NBA Finals, which ended in the month of June, we are going to attempt, as a group, attempt to explain to David, who I assume did not watch the finals, I did not. what happened using tech terms. I don't even know who's in the finals. This is perfect. This is how we want to explain it to you so that you can appreciate the chaos that it was. The only reason I knew the Knicks were in it is because people outside my window wouldn't stop screaming until four in the morning.

1:12:09Which is perfect because the Knicks lost right before the finals. They were not in the finals. They were in the semifinals. They were in the, yes, the Eastern Conference Finals. Yeah, they were in the Eastern Conference Finals. Yeah. So my method, I think, is actually a throwback to earlier this episode. Oh. I think it would be easiest if I explained it in terms of Mario Kart. So you know how in Mario Kart there's like a bunch of races? Imagine there's like a series of like seven races, and whoever wins four races first gets the gold, right? And there are some characters, obviously, on each side.

1:12:47There are teams. Cow. And I think some of the biggest characters for this particular NBA Finals would be, so the two teams were the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers. The Oklahoma City Thunder have Mario on their team. He's like the main character. He's the MVP of the league. Everybody knows who he is. He's having a great year. Is that the guy that was like, oh, they traded him. What the heck? No. No, so his actual name is Shea Gilgis Alexander. SGA for short. Oh, I did hear that. But this is Mario. The other side has... That's Mario. Yeah. You know, team's expected to win. The other side have Bowser.

1:13:29They have Mario on their team. The other side, how would you... Who is Shea? Waluigi. Definitely Waluigi. Shea is Waluigi. Not everybody... It's an acquired taste, right? Some people would say he's overrated. Wait, Shea is? No, no, no, no. Waluigi. Halibur. Tyrese Halliburton is Waluigi. So they have this player. His actual name is Tyrese Halliburton, but we'll call him Waluigi. Wait, wait. You know he's the guy who made that crazy shot against the Knicks to go to overtime in that one game? Remember you said you saw that clip of the guy who dribbled up, dribbled all the way back, made that shot, and it sent him overtime?

1:14:02Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he lost. And then the Knicks lost. The Knicks lost, yes. Yeah. You know, I turned on my projector, and the first thing that happened was that. And I was like, whoa. And then I changed the channel.

1:14:15No, so like Halliburton is Waluigi because it's like most people, a lot of people think he's a little bit annoying. A lot of people think he is vastly overrated. A lot of people can't really stand the vibe, but the contingent of Waluigi fans are like, there's no one else. What about Wario? Like, is he more like Mario? No. No. No, so he's more like Mario's evil brother. Maybe Waluigi isn't the right one. That was who I went to first. I like that. Is he tall? Yeah. Well, I guess they're all tall. They're all kind of tall. Maybe like... And lanky. Is he tall and lanky? Okay, whatever. Okay, so Waluigi.

1:14:59So the races are happening. Is he evil? It's a team. It depends on who you are. Alex thinks so. Yeah. They're team races, but obviously first one to win. Mario's team is expected to literally win every race. They're such overwhelming favorites. it's not even close. And what team is that? And that's the Thunder. Thunder. They had an all-time season. It was great. Okay. But what weirdly happened was the first game, Waluigi's team won. Okay. And I was like, oh. That's not common. That's not, that's, all right, we got a series on our hands. Second game, okay, Mario's team won. So we're back to 1-1.

1:15:32Okay. Third game, Waluigi's team gets another win. Ooh. And the theme for a lot of these wins is like, you know how when you're in like last place in Mario Kart and you are kind of so far behind it doesn't really matter but then you start getting all the best power-ups and then you start surging ahead and you go from dead last all the way to suddenly first in the last like half of the last lap. That's like their thing. That's like Waluigi's thing. He'll be in last place. He'll seem like he's out of it and the whole team's like kind of not going to win and it seems like they've accepted they're not going to win and in the last half of the last lap boom, power-ups, giant blimp thing, surge to the front, first place, they win.

1:16:10That's how they win their game. Did they win the third game? That's how they've been winning all playoffs. So now they're up 2-1. And then Mario's team wins again, and it's 2-2. Then Mario's team goes up 3-2. So, like, all right, it's been a nice Cinderella run. We kind of thought Waluigi's team had a shot here, but now it's 3-2, and Mario's team's probably going to win the next game. And then the fourth game, then this sixth game, Waluigi's team just smacks Mario's team. It's not even close. Really? Blue shelled. So, yeah, big time, leading the whole way. No one behind him ever had a shot. So he gets to the finish line, and it's like, okay, now we've got a critical game seven.

1:16:55Whoever wins this race wins the whole series. Dang. Mario's team or Waluigi's team, who you got? And in the first lap of this final race, Waluigi's controller breaks. Yeah. Really, really sad. wait he broke something while we use controller in the game yeah and so from that moment his team never really has a shot no way mario's team wins going away kind of a muted celebration because a if that controller didn't break it would have been a lot closer but wow and mario that controller broke he was in first yeah he was cooking but waluigi like three separate times during this playoff run had been down by one point and at the very last second made a huge bucket and ended up winning the game like he was they people were literally calling him the moment because he just like gold coins so did he break his red shell his achilles yeah how do you do it balling too hard he was during the game yeah during the game he was he was kind of playing through an half injury and then so did they like bring him away yeah I think he got surgery before the game was over.

1:18:06Like, I think they just took him straight to the hospital. He was, yeah, on crutches. That did not happen. But the next day, he's got a picture with surgery. Oh my gosh. So, yeah, pretty dramatic. Hopefully, this analogy helps you appreciate that while Mario's team won, in the back of everyone's head, if Waluigi's controller didn't break, I know not everybody's a fan, but that could have been a crazy game seven. So it would have been an upset if they won. It would have been an upset. There's also, like, I'm not going to say that Mario's team was like the most stacked team ever, you know what I mean?

1:18:39But it was sort of like Mario Bowser Peach Luigi versus Waluigi Dry Bones, the fishing rod guy who pulls you off. You know what I mean? Koopa Troopa's in there. That Koopa Troopa's in there. A second Dry Bones for some reason. I can't wait to edit this because I'm putting all of them right next to their players. Birdo. What about Birdo? Birdo is definitely on Waluigi. Nemar is Koopa Troopa for sure, I think. What about the new cow player? Not that. Who's Alex Caruso? He's got a ring already, so maybe... Dude, he's toad. Alex Caruso's 100 % toad. Yeah. Okay, well, that's really depressing for everybody involved.

1:19:22Yeah. It does sting. Like, even if you won, you'd be like... Yeah. Okay. Mario actually went to Waluigi's locker room after the game and like pat him around the back and was like, it's going to be okay. Yeah, that's kind of BM. It's going to be okay. I'm going to go back to my trophy. Everyone who likes Mario was like, see, Mario's so classy. What a great... I think what they should have done is they should have stopped the game, waited for like six months for it to heal and then played it. Interesting take. That's so funny. That is an interesting take. I think you should be the commissioner. I've never heard that.

1:19:52I think that's messed up. Yeah. They basically got a free win. It's interesting because, you know, Waluigi's team beat another team who a different player's controller broke on that team. So now there's... Oh, really? It's a whole thing. I mean, just like how Bowser gives Mario a free win in the game is because he's like, oh no, my tail's so long. You can spin me around and throw me at the wall. I think one of the cool, unique things about basketball compared to other sports is that playoff basketball is also an endurance sport. It's not just about can you play basketball better than the other team?

1:20:27It's can you play basketball every other day for four weeks and your body still hold up? That's crazy. The end of the NHL playoffs are basically like what what is what tape is holding you together after? Yeah, like the finals. I think I'm standing. There were multiple people this year who were like, oh, yeah, my foot was broken. Like I had like rib cracked. Oh, my gosh. I mean, muscles tearing off. That's true. but there's still something going on with the NBA lately because this is like the third Achilles rupture in like six months or something like that. Fourth, I think. Something like that, where it used to be like once a season.

1:21:03Now it's like, I think there was eight this season alone, some crazy number. I'm cutting off because we're about 30 seconds away from something using the phrase pace and space and this is not a basketball podcast. Yet, yet. So David, do you feel like you understand the NBA finals? Yeah, but you could have just told me what happened. Are you rooting for Waluigi next year? Yeah, dude. You hope Waluigi comes back stronger than ever. You know, the whole idea of the anti-hero, you know, it's like based around Waluigi. And Tyrese is totally, excuse me, Waluigi is totally the anti-hero of the NBA right now.

1:21:40It's like in The Incredibles 1, you know, with... Frozone. No, no, no, no. Frozone's a good guy. I know, I'm just... With the bad guy who has the big hair and he's the kid.

1:21:53syndrome never watched that movie like he's the entry anti-hero but you like have sympathy for him he's not that bad and i'm a nick fan i don't think haliburton's that bad i think he's just like i was talking about very excuse you no no no no no a few weeks ago adam you came to work and you were looking kind of nift and i was like adam what's up and you're like i just i just hate him so much but that picture of tyrese haliburton in the gucci loafers man it's so dope his vibe is so good but I hate him. He took a picture with his dog. How could you not like him? We got a big ticket back to technology with the trivia section of the podcast.

1:22:28Hit it. Let's do it. I need a pen. I don't even remember the first one. Oh. Question one. IO versus IO was in the news today but I need you to give me as many IO definitions and acronyms as you can give me starting now.

1:22:55like just things that could mean yeah but i won't accept people's names like initials don't count and um i'm i yeah i guess that's my only rule i thought of more rules but i don't care too i don't think any of us have very many to break the rule i have like 10-ish on my head i have one Marquez should have gotten and I'm interested. David, you should at least know two. David, you should definitely know two. You mean it could be like the Google? I didn't think about that. Yeah, I'll accept Google I.O. the event as a thing. Oh, really? Wait, you can't write it now. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

1:23:35But that's not an acronym. But Google I.O. just means Google. I said definitions or acronyms. But also, David, I was talking about the I.O. acronym that we made an entire bonus episode about. What is that? Wait, I don't know. Okay. Are you serious? All right. Marquez, you go first. What are you talking about? All right. One, two, three, four, four. I have five here. What? All right. Let's see. Wait. In, out. That's one. Input, output. That's the same one. That's the same thing. Darn, okay. The state of Iowa. Yes. That is correct. The state acronym for Iowa. And IOTA. That's not an acronym. That's not an...

1:24:13I would never use I. Wait, wait, wait. Hold up. IO is not. IO is an abbreviation. IO is not an acronym. It's an abbreviation. If you had said that. Come on. You said acronym. An acronym is an abbreviation. No, it's not. It's not, but I feel like it was fine. I specifically said place names are accepted in both the first cut to trivia and just now. So whatever. I'm not going to give you IOTA, though, because I don't think that is really short for that. So we have two for you, Marquez. Last one, Old MacDonald, How to Farm, E-I-E-I-O. Dang. That was a great one. I might have given you that on creativity.

1:24:55If that's the tiebreaker, I'll give it to you, Marquez. Okay. Yeah. How many did he get? Two. Wait, what tiebreaker? As if you guys also get two. Wait, so only the person that gets a good supply? But we have tiebreakers for that? Is this, like, hard? What is happening? I don't get why this is so much harder than any other trivia. Well, it's usually not competitive. Input, output. And in ultimate frisbee, an inside out throw is called an IO. That's true. I will accept that. It was not on my list, but Andrew, so unfortunately, Marquez is still winning because he does have the old McDonald tiebreaker here.

1:25:29I said only one of you would get points. I explained all of this. I just missed that. I'm sorry. I missed that too. See? See? All right. All right, David. Input, output. And then I wrote Google I.O. in cursive after the thing. Well after the buzzer. But I didn't know. Well, it doesn't matter anyways because Marquez gets the. Let me fill you out on some other definitions, abbreviations. Yeah, please. Acronyms for I.O. We have the top level domain that we did the whole episode on,.IndiaOcean. We have one right there. I didn't think about that. When you're writing legal documents, you end in IO, which is the acronym for the Latin phrase meaning or Latin phrase in Ilo ordine, which means respectively.

1:26:13You have IO, the moon of Jupiter. You have IO in Greece. There's a few other place names that don't really matter. There's a freshwater snail called an IO that I did not know about until researching this. Nice. There's actually a lot of them. But shout out for getting Iowa. thank you yeah shout out to kate and clark hold on wait is iowa not ia no it's indiana right no wait hold on it's ia yeah yeah okay so shh uh-oh so i win yeah so andrew witt andrew witt what about me with the google io thing there we go wow i that's funny because when i googled i thought so and then i was what is i oh idaho's id adam idaho and indiana is i n idaho's id You know what's really funny?

1:27:02Is you know what told me that IO was Iowa's state abbreviation and I just believed it? The Google AI search summary. Idaho's ID? Yeah. Anyway, that question was painful and annoying and I'm kind of mad at you guys for making that so tough. When are us? Old MacDonald would have given me In Mario Kart, what does CC stand for? I'll give you a hint. It stands for the same thing it does with real-life motorcycles. Why would it be anything different? I'll get to it in a bit. But while we do this, quick update on the score. Marquez with 26, Andrew with 16, David with 30. I feel like it came to me. Still 30.

1:27:52Is that that much of a hint? Yeah. Really? That's what I was trying to avoid. Sorry. It was kind of a trick question. That's exactly what I thought. Okay, flip it and read. Why would it be a trick question? What did you guys say? Cubic centimeters. Cubic centimeters. That's correct. No, what? Whoa, you were laughing at him. Andrew, what did you say? Cubic centimeters. Correct. David? I said closed circuit. Wrong. So Andrew and Marquez get the point. It is cubic centimeter. The reason I didn't want them to know that is because I was trying to trick them with specifically in Mario Kart but it's the same thing in real life.

1:28:29Can you explain to me why it's that? Engine displacement. Engine size of the engine. So when you're in Mario Kart and you have 50, 100, and 150, why is it that it's harder? It's faster. It's faster. 150cc engine with more displacement is more powerful so that everything goes faster. Really? Everything's faster together. I've been incorrect my entire life. I really thought that that was the difficult... There might be people learning this in real time. I thought that was the difficulty level. real it kind of is too guys i apologize i think i might be the problem nevertheless hopefully somebody no we don't update the score of the day andrew gets two points just saying just end it please end it on that note hopefully someone learned something from the last half hour of this podcast i know that i did i learned that i was not io um but i like the state anyway it's pretty cool lots of corn thanks for watching thanks for listening maybe we'll be on Spotify videos someday but not now.

1:29:25Catch you guys later. Peace. Wait, you see that over there? It's the rails. We're way off the rails We should bring it back Okay fine None of that's making it in So I can get a clean cut No you gotta keep that in Everyone loves our rambles

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