CES 2026: Part Six (Thursday)

Summary

Better Offline: CES 2026 - Part Six (Thursday)

Podcast: Better Offline (Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts)
Airdate: January 8, 2026
Host: Ed Zitron
Panelists: Chloe Radcliffe, Matt Binder (Mashable), Devindra Hardawar (Engadget), Edward Ongweso Jr., and an additional guest (Tech Bubble Newsletter)
Location: Las Vegas, live from CES

---

Episode Overview

This episode continues “Better Offline’s” deep dive into CES 2026, focusing on the tech industry’s persistent, sometimes disastrous, pursuit of growth, the consequences of the AI hype cycle, and how these macro trends tangibly affect products, prices, and ordinary users. The hosts and panelists blend hands-on product talk (especially about Dell’s laptop drama and the RAM crisis) with lived experiences of technology, cultural observations about generations, and philosophical debate about how we use tech — and where society may be headed.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dell’s Branding Backtrack and Product Design Flops

Timestamps: 01:52–07:40, 27:34–29:32

• Dell tried to emulate Apple by rebranding all computers “Dell Pro” and “Dell Pro Max,” only to see confusion and losses.

  • Devindra: “Last year, Dell did the dumbest thing…XPS, that thing that's been selling for decades. People love it. Let's kill all that, right?” (02:00)
  • The XPS brand is back after a disastrous year. They addressed usability issues like invisible trackpads and capacitive touch function rows.
    • “They made an invisible trackpad…looks cool, but it's hard to use because you can't tell where it begins.” (03:01)
    • “They put just little notches so you feel it…just basic usability things.” (03:52)
    • Function row issues: “They disappeared in bright sunlight. You couldn't see them…Did you guys not go outside?” (04:13)

• AI branding confusion: Dell is publicly coy about “AI PCs,” but in reality is still massively invested in AI servers.

  • “Do not believe Dell's lies…They are fully AI built and will be punished by the dark gods when the AI bubble bursts.” (05:56)

2. Wearables, Smart Rings, and the “Pebble Guy”

Timestamps: 08:16–18:28

• Panel discusses the persistent, niche nature of wearables. Smart rings in particular are divisive.

  • Devindra: “Smart rings were bullshit last year, and I still believe that...but the pebble smart ring kind of cool.” (08:23)
  • Ed: “I find smartwatches very annoying…my weird, fucking, oddly dainty wrists.” (08:59)
  • Panel agrees: form factors matter; wearables are inherently personal.

• Pebble (the beloved e-ink smartwatch company) is trying to make a comeback.

  • “They use the Kindle…so it's like that but on a watch.” (10:21)
  • Pebble’s founder got Google to open-source the original Pebble smartwatch software.

• New Pebble “voice memo ring” takes quick notes and transcribes speech with an onboard LLM (no cloud).

  • Chloe: “As a comedian, my phone background says ‘document everything.’ I record every set...this ring sounds like something I would use.” (11:14)
  • But it’s limited: records 12–15 hours of short notes, lasts two years, not rechargeable.
  • Some panelists disappointed: “If you're thinking a journalist…15 equal, like, 30, 30-minute interviews… this is not for interviews.” (15:20)
  • Real use case: reminders, short thoughts, “shower ideas.”

3. Economics of Wearables & “Disposable Tech”

Timestamps: 14:04–20:29

• Disposable/non-rechargeable smart devices spark debate about e-waste, recycling, and the annoyance of returns.
  • Ed: “The moment I’m told I have to mail something, I just want to jump off a fucking bridge.” (18:28)
• Millennial task management anxieties surface as a cultural generational marker, leading to a discussion on the pressures of modern life, social expectations, and generational drift.

4. The Millennial Generation & Tech’s Cultural Problems

Timestamps: 21:10–26:53

• Chloe and others unpack why millennials feel overwhelmed: rapid life pace, internet’s omnipresence, being “expected to be your own small business,” plus societal collapse.
  • Chloe: “We are the first generation that was expected to do suddenly like twice as much in a career...your job is also not in your pocket all the time. Right?” (21:11, 22:13)
• Panel explores “gifted and talented program” millennial trauma, perfectionism, rise of digital life vs Gen X and Boomers.
• Generational sniping and self-awareness create running jokes: “All the super rich tech assholes are Gen Xers.” (24:19)

5. Why the Tech Industry’s AI “Growth” Is (Mostly) Hollow

Timestamps: 31:22–34:36, 37:39–44:48, 47:39–54:37

• Discussion of the “midlife crisis” among tech giants, desperate to find the “next big thing.”

  • Devindra: “They're all desperate...missing out on the next big thing because Microsoft missed out on mobile...” (32:20)
  • AI is “the next thing” for marketing, not substance.

• User pain: none of these innovations make things more reliable.

  • Users want: “I wish my phone just fucking worked…Just do what I ask.” (39:47–40:11)

• AI’s supposed leaps (“like image generation”) are plateauing; costs are huge, energy intensive, climate- and supply chain-wrecking.

  • Ed: “We've reached the point of diminishing returns…we are out of data.” (42:56)

• Most AI upcharge products deliver little real user value. Industry is driven by hype, not usefulness.

• AI’s impacts on memory, media, and culture are already worrying: people are using image generation to create false memories of deceased loved ones, which the panel finds deeply unhealthy.

  “At some point these image generators are going to distort your memory…I think that's so fucking unhealthy.” – Matt Binder (46:27)

6. Financial Collapse, The “RAM Crisis” & AI’s Real Costs

Timestamps: 64:15–74:38, 75:00–79:03

• RAM prices have ballooned (3–4x increases) because so much capacity is diverted to AI servers; even regular consumer products are affected.
  • Devindra: “RAM prices have increased by three to four times across the board, which is insane. And that'll affect everything.” (67:33)
  • Chloe: “Are you saying if you need to get a new computer, do it now because it's only going to get worse?” (68:26)
• Brief deep-dive into how semiconductors are made, global supply constraints, and why ramping up supply isn’t easy.
• Environmental impacts: companies turning to nuclear and gas turbines to power data centers, harming local communities, burning more fossil fuels.
  • “The gas is bad because nuclear power will get felony. ...They’re poisoning water.” (76:49)
• Tech companies are running out of meaningful ways to differentiate new products besides slapping on half-implemented AI.

7. Societal & Economic Implications: Will The Real World Finally Push Back?

Timestamps: 80:12–89:09, 96:15–99:01

• Inflation in electronics due to RAM and component prices will likely have a broader, sooner impact than the much-ballyhooed AI industry collapse.
  • “My gut says that the inflationary effects are going to actually be more immediate than the AI bubble.” (85:40)
• When does the public say “enough”? Will people stop buying things? The panel is unsure—but expects a “gut punch” before the industry admits defeat.

8. Tech’s Cultural Exhaustion & The Call for “Intentionality”

Timestamps: 99:27–112:20

• The “constant drip feed” of entertainment and infinite social feeds have numbed us, dulled activism, and increased tolerance for a hostile, overpriced tech ecosystem.
• Renewed interest in older tech, local use/local-first AI, “punk tech,” moving away from infinite upgrade/consumption cycles.
  • “You could use the same technology from five fucking years ago... computers are fucking great right now.” (108:33)

9. What Should Consumers Do?

• Don’t stop using tech—use it more intentionally. Buy used, refurbished, ignore “growth for growth’s sake” hardware cycles.
• Panel’s practical advice: “Buy used. Buy refurb. Don’t give these fucking companies another fucking dollar until they can prove that they can earn it.” (112:43)
• If you need tech, you can find nearly-new and get what you actually want, rather than subsidize unnecessary upgrades and exorbitant prices.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Do not believe Dell's lies. Do not let them lie to you… They are fully AI built and will be punished by the dark gods when the AI bubble bursts.” – Ed Zitron (05:56)
• “If I bought a calculator that said 2 plus 2 equals 5, I would throw it away because it's garbage.” – Devindra Hardawar (40:21)
• “We've reached the point of diminishing returns because we’re out of data. We are out of data.” – Ed Zitron (42:56)
• “The reason that tasks feel so alienating and so off putting is because…we're sort of the first generation that was expected to do suddenly like twice as much in a career…” – Chloe Radcliffe (21:11)
• “We're all being harassed by everything, all the time.” – Ed Zitron (27:24)
• “The pressure is just increasing on people and will eventually pop...the pressure is increasing from all sides.” – Ed Zitron (105:40)
• “Buy used. Buy refurb. Don't give these fucking companies another fucking dollar until they can prove that they can earn it.” – Ed Zitron (112:43)

---

Additional Segment Highlights with Timestamps

• [13:06–14:56]: The “on-device” nature of the Pebble ring’s LLM and its exact limitations (storage, duration, device connection) are debated.
• [23:35–25:25]: Gen X leans right, “all the super rich tech assholes are Gen Xers,” and boomers’ relative anti-Trump sentiment comes up as part of generational analysis.
• [36:11–37:39]: A history lesson on BlackBerry, Palm, and how Microsoft flubbed mobile as Apple and Google innovated.
• [48:42–50:35]: Dangers and creepiness of deepfaked family memories and AI “restoration” photos; panelists react with horror.
• [66:02–69:03]: Explanation of API access to AI, cost structures, why “cheaper” models actually get more expensive with more “tokens” used.
• [75:48–78:24]: Shortages now impacting power generation for data centers (gas turbines, nuclear, supply chain pressure).
• [100:21–104:20]: Cultural regression: Gen Z’s nostalgia for pre-smartphone life, and Chloe’s argument that entertainment feeds are more a threat to social engagement than AI.

---

Final Thoughts: Human Connection Trumps Hype

• Despite the bleak landscape, the hosts and panelists stress that digital tools still enable genuine connection—whether to friends, creators, or communities.
• Ed Zitron, closing: “The best thing you can do when you hear this stuff, when you're like, I'm upset with this, is love your friends harder. Tell them you love everyone in this room. Genuinely so happy to have everyone here…that little thing that you think is so immaterial will save lives, will make people's lives happier. Tell people you love their. Go online. Use social media to say, I think, Chloe, you're insanely funny and I've watched you only get funnier...These things are actually very easy to do and easier because of digital.” (119:20)

---

Panelist Plugs

• Devindra Hardawar: Latest at Engadget, co-hosts The Filmcast.
• Edward Ongweso Jr.: Tech Bubble Newsletter, upcoming essays in print magazine.
• Chloe Radcliffe: Stand-up tour dates (Cincinnati, Washington DC, Philadelphia, etc.)

---

Recurring Themes Throughout the Episode

• Tech’s growth obsession is finally running into physical, environmental, and economic limitations.
• The vast majority of AI hype seems untethered from real user value; most users want stability, not novelty.
• Millennial & Gen Z anxiety is both a cultural product of tech expansion and a driver of changing tech values.
• Buy used, resist hype; demand products and platforms that serve actual human needs.
• Intentionality, real relationships, and community building are the most valuable uses of tech—if we can resist the numbing effect of endless feeds and hollow upgrades.

---

Summary prepared for listeners who want an unvarnished, detailed window into tech’s future — as experienced by industry insiders, critics, and comedic observers on the CES show floor.

Transcript

[Chloe Radcliffe]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

[iHeart Radio Announcer]

Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-IHeart.

[Jorge Ramos]

Hola. I'm Jorge Ramos. This week on the Movement, we take a look at Venezuela's uncertain future in a conversation with two people who have directly advised US Presidents, Juan Gonzalez during the Obama and Biden administrations.

[Devindra Hardawar]

We're really good at invading countries. We're very bad at nation building, and.

[Jorge Ramos]

Carlos de Rosillo during Trump's two terms.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I can guarantee you that nobody in.

[Jorge Ramos]

The Trump administration likes Del C. Rodriguez. Listen to the moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Call Zone Media. Enter the Mind gym and pick up some brain weights. It's time for better Offline's coverage of the Consumer Electronics show. And I am your host, Ed Zit.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Tron.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

We're back here in the palazzo and beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, bringing you another episode. It is Thursday and we're still covering ces. We are still here with an amazing assortment of guests from the tech industry. We've got an open bar, we've got tacos, a place to sit down for members of the media, whether or not they join us on the microphone and. And of course, we've got some new contestants and some old contestants revisiting guests. My first is, of course, Chloe Radcliffe, stand up comedian and actress from Is this thing on?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You're never going to get rid of me. I'm like bed bugs.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I love it. I'm here forever with Cradley Booper. And of course, Matt Bender of Mashable.

[Matt Binder]

Joins us three times in a row.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

What's up?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And then the wonderful Da Vindra hardware event. Gadget.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Let's go.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And you said you wanted to talk shit on Dell, so let's start there. What is.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Give us.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Oh, man.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Give us the history.

[Devindra Hardawar]

So last year, Dell did this. The dumbest thing I've seen a tech company do in a very long time. They're like, hey, we all these brands, you know, and love XPs, that thing that's been selling for decades. People love it. Let's kill all that, right? Let's call all computers Dell. Dell Pro. Dell Pro. Max, those names may sound familiar. They're a little Apple Y. Yeah. And when that was Announced last year, I was at a press conference and Michael Dell was there announcing all of this. And my first question to him was, like, what do you have to gain by copying Apple? Like, what are you doing here? Yeah, he did not have a good response to that. Fast forward a year. Every other PC manufacturer, shipments growing, Dell down, right? Because nobody knew what the hell Dell was producing this year, especially the people who wanted an xps, right? So they turned, they. They turned around. They brought back the XPS brand. They're actually doubling down on it and also fixing all the stupid issues we've brought up in our reviews over the last few years, too. So it's double vindication. XPS is back.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

What are the things that they messed up and what have they fixed?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Have you seen the XPS lately?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I have not.

[Devindra Hardawar]

So they did this thing. Sometimes designers go a little crazy. They're like, what if you couldn't see a trackpad? What if it was just all wrist pad? So they did that. They made an invisible trackpad that works and it looks cool, but it's hard to use because you can't tell where it begins.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's hard to use because a huge part of using a trackpad is being able to see being in track, or.

[Devindra Hardawar]

At least feel it. At least feel where it begins and ends.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I have a problem with my MacBook Pro because the trackpad pad is slightly bigger than usual and my nasty, clammy wrists get on it. But an invisible one, I would snap that thing.

[Devindra Hardawar]

But also, at least with a MacBook, right, you have an edge.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

You can see where it is.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You can see the trackpad. You don't even need to see it. You need to feel it, right? Because you're not looking at the trackpad using it.

[Matt Binder]

I could see an invisible trackpad working if they made the technology to just extend it. So that whole area is a trackpad. But what you're saying is that's not the case.

[Devindra Hardawar]

A lot of it is a trackpad, but the very edges aren't. Anyway, what they did with the new redesign, they put just little notches so you feel it. Wow. And these are just like basic usability things to think about.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

They could have very easily done that.

[Devindra Hardawar]

They could have done that first. But anyway, and also, the function row on the Dell XPS's for the last couple of years was this, like capacitive touch thing. They weren't real keys. They were buttons that kind of changed when you hit a button and they disappeared in bright sunlight. You couldn't see them. So, like, your Function keys, the volume button, all that stuff just disappeared. And I talked to Dell, I was like, did you guys not go outside? Did you not bring this computer outside?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

No, no. You're talking to computer engineers. No, they didn't go outside.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But like, wait, but did they say whether they did?

[Devindra Hardawar]

They were like, it was Covid and we were designing, you know, it was like a. The excuses were it was kind of a rough time to design. I think sometimes some companies let their designers go crazy, like, we're gonna out Apple, Apple. The thing about Apple is that they at least tend to think about usability and practical functionality.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

The company best known for its usability, like very consumer facing.

[Devindra Hardawar]

They don'.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Like changing things up other than liquid glass, which fucking sucks.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You could argue about liquid glass. Yeah, but they're charging the mouse on the bottom. That's like Johnny Eye bullshit. But Apple itself doesn't tend to do that. So anyway, that's. They're just keys now. They're just keys. And these new, the XPS 1416 are lighter than ever. This XPS 14 is like about 3 pounds, which is pretty great. That's pretty light. Yeah, for a 14 inch laptop. So, yeah, total vindication. They fixed a lot of the issues. The branding is back. It is funny talking to people at Dell because all the executives and the marketing people like, yeah, yeah, this rebranding is going to go great. And all the underlings, like all the people who've been working on these computers and have dedicated decades of their lives to it, they're like, what, what is happening here? Like I built XPS machines, you know, and they felt really bad about it. So on every level, the branding, the rebranding was a failure. XPS is back and I'm happy about that. And we just got to tell Dell for like that whole. When I saw them again. Yeah, we were right. We told you, we told you this.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Well, there's misinformation going on around Dell as well. This because everyone's saying, oh, Dell claimed that they're backing off AI branding and people don't like AI. Apparently David Gerard, he chased this down. Journalist Java Gerard. Jesus Christ. He. Apparently that was never said. And Dell is full scale AI. Like anyone who thinks that they're not. They have forecasted $25 billion of AI server sales this year. Do not believe Dell's lies. Do not let them lie to you and claim this isn't the case. They, they are fully AI built and will be punished by the dark gods when the AI bubble bursts.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I've had some Interesting conversations with people at Dell who are pissed off at Microsoft, pissed off about the AI PC push. Because it's literally all marketing bullshit, as you've covered extensively, that has not led to actually useful features for people. So, yeah, Dell is invest in AI. What I have noticed is that they're not saying AI PC. They're not out there shipping. They're not saying, like, hey, we got the latest Copilot plus systems. Because nobody cared. Nobody cared about Copilot plus, which.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Did they try saying AI last year?

[Devindra Hardawar]

They did. Oh, they tried last year they did. And now it's just like, hey, you know what's great? A computer. A computer that works.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

What if a computer turned on?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, I gotta say, what if. What if a computer was a thing that you could see the things on?

[Devindra Hardawar]

What if the keys work?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You could see it.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You could feel the trackpad.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Basic concepts. I will say that from my. Now, you know, this is my first year at ces, from my relative limited exposure to the kind of products that get shown at ces. Somebody being like, hey, do you want a laptop that you have no idea where you're touching on it? Do you want a laptop that has a bunch of buttons? But you're gonna have to use it in pretty limited facilities to make sure that you know exactly what you are clicking. That's the new product.

[Devindra Hardawar]

The whole world can be described by like, I think you should leave sketches. Right? Yeah. We'd be saying, yes, the car sketches I want where the steering wheel doesn't fly off. And that's basically what we're saying here.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No, no, it's literally, there's two. CES is two. I think you should leave sketches. It's that. And it's also a guy who just walks around going, what the hell is that? What the hell is that? Who needs smart glasses? That goes, that's a flower pot. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Who walks into his pantry and goes, oh, what the fuck do I cook?

[Devindra Hardawar]

I've got too much shit on me. Sketch. Yeah, I just can't survive.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

That's Victoria's song from the Verge. Just too many wearables.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Too many wearables. Alth. So we had a good chat with the guy from pebble who is back.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Everyone likes Pebble Good wearables.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Actually, I said smart rings were bullshit last year and I still believe that. Sorry, Victoria, but the pebble smart ring kind of cool.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

What do you think is bullshit about smart rings?

[Devindra Hardawar]

The form factor means they can never really do much. The battery life is always going to.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Be and sorry form factor. You mean being a ring? It's a ring.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's a ring where it can never have like a big battery. It can never be that useful. It's very limited in terms of what you can do.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And all the rings we've seen, I know you've worn a couple Ed like they're just, they're fine. But you know what's better is just a smartwatch that is not as, not as it doesn't feel as beltering.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I push back on you on that. I find smartwatches very annoying.

[Matt Binder]

And I agree.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Like my weird fucking like oddly dainty wrists mean that, like I see muscle there. I got muscle upwards before.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You are being degenerate.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Oh, thank you, Chloe. Thank you, Chloe.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Compared to my wrist just destroying me.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And just annihilating me.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

No, no.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

My Apple watch for some reason just doesn't get a full connection, no matter how tight.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And that's interesting.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And like this ring for the most part works, but even then, like it's. I still don't get a full connection sometimes. Sometimes it doesn't.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Oh really?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah. Even then it doesn't recognize a full workout. Sometimes it's. It kind of.

[Devindra Hardawar]

The wearables are personal. Like that's the thing. Yeah, we're all weird. Like what, what we like to touch, what textures we like. I think I've learned. I just don't like ring stuff.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You know, so like that's just right.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

It's hard to make a generous product in that way.

[Matt Binder]

The thing is too, you have to be the type of person who wears whatever that wearable is. Like the non tech version of it too. Like I don't wear watches, so I wouldn't wear a smartwatch. I don't wear a ring, so I wouldn't wear a smart ring. I don't wear glasses, so I wouldn't wear smart glasses.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That's a big one too. Smart glasses also kind of bullshit. But the pebble thing is kind of cool because the pebble guy was always like, first off, their thing was E Ink smart watches, like back in 2014, 2018. Yeah, those are coming back. He's bringing that back.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Wait, what are those?

[Devindra Hardawar]

So pebble used to have these smartwatches that lasted for weeks and just they were very basic. They could like upload notifications.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

They use the Kindle.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yes.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

So it's like that but on a watch.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Not really an LCD screen, but more like papery.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, yeah, it's the paper screen.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And I can read my book on my watch?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Well, I mean, I don't think you'd want to.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You could read your notifications on your watch for sure. But he's bringing back that. Because what happened was Fitbit bought Pebble, Google bought Fitbit. And he went to Google and was like, hey, my software, my pebble software. Nothing's happening. Can you open source that? And Google for once did a good thing and was like, yes, they open sourced it. That's nice. Now the pebble guy can go back and make hardware using that software. So the pebble watches are back, but he has a ring that looks really cool.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But the thing is, with the ring, from what I've heard, is you have to physically hold it down when you're recording.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Wait, so the ring all. It does. It does one thing. It's supposed to do it really well. You hit a button on the ring, it takes notes.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, but do you have to physically hold it down the entire time?

[Devindra Hardawar]

I don't know. I don't know if it's.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

We also, we looked this up and I was saying that I, because I, as a comedian, my phone background says document everything. I record every single set that I do in stand up in my voice memos. Like, I use the notes and the voice memos in my phone are the two things that, like, unlock my voice.

[Devindra Hardawar]

This would be perfect for you and perfect for me supposedly will last two years, except. Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Also I love to, like, sometimes I'll just record a meeting and not tell the other person. Now, that's illegal in the state that I live. But it's a way for me to be like, okay, I remember, like, if I'm practicing a pitch for a show that I'm trying to sell or whatever, I'm like, I just want to be able to be in the moment, but also remember how I did this and how they react to it and what questions they ask, whatever. Anyway, this ring sounds like something that I would use.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Then I looked up what it looks like and it really does look like my ring. That definitely does not have a microphone in it.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

So I did just look this up. You just have to click it once to record it. And it's 75 bucks. I hate to say it, I actually kind of want this because I'm not trying to surreptitiously record people, but I absolutely, like, usually got an idea. Thirty seconds before I meant to fall asleep, I remember 13 things. I would like a reminder for now, perhaps I wouldn't be wearing a ring at that time, but forcibly, I'll walk Around be like, shit, I need to remember this. Shit, I need to remember this. Or even just, if I could say an idea. And it says here it's an on device LLM.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yep.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And that I find quite interesting because.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Not going to the cloud.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Not going to the cloud. Not melting giraffes as a means of powering GPUs.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

On which device? On a ring or on your phone.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

That's kind of what I'm trying to work out.

[Devindra Hardawar]

We do. Yeah. I don't.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

We just get a whole LLM on a ring?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No, that's kind of what we're gonna get there.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I'm asking such like, Podunk Il building. You feed a whole robot on that ring.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I actually will push back. That's not a Podunk question. That's a perfectly fucking reasonable one. Because especially when we're being told we need 89 data centers, we must. We must knock down entire neighborhoods and put up a data center the size of, I don't know, New York City for better. I understand the question. I'm going to assume that this thing needs. You need to connect it to your phone and your phone, it has. I don't fit.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

A whole AI on your phone.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yes, yes, but I'm guessing it's a very simplified transcription. Specific one, but I do not know, it might.

[Matt Binder]

It might. It might store the recordings on the ring in case you don't have the connectivity to your phone in the moment.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No, it says completely on device. You don't require an Internet connection.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Okay, perfect.

[Matt Binder]

I'm finding out about this ring right here, right now. I have no idea.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

75 bucks. March 2026.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Lasts two years. Now that's the thing. It's not rechargeable. So what? Once you. Once. Once it's done, you send it back to them.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Why?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Because he is very much like, I think this is true. We have too much shit to charge. Like, I'm just tired of it. So he's like, okay, what if a ring lasts two years? And if you actually are still using it by then, send it back and maybe get a replacement. Exactly.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That's probably better than holding on to a charger that you will do.

[Matt Binder]

What happens a year and a half in, though? If it's got a less of a charge and not lasting, it can record.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Roughly 12 to 15 hours of recording. And it lasts for two years. I'm sorry, I. I don't know if you're a journalist.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

It runs out to 15 hours of recording total.

[Devindra Hardawar]

No, no, no, you can.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

That's what it says here on their website.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I mean that must be able to offload. Yeah. We have not gone to the specifics of it, but it definitely. He wants you to hold 12 to.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

15 hours total and then you can dump that.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, yeah, but you just.

[Devindra Hardawar]

We have the technology to clear.

[Matt Binder]

I found an article on. It's not my outlet, but Android Authority with. It's expected to last for up to two years with normal usage and normal usage is described as 10 to 20 times per day recording three to six second voice notes.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I wanted to love this. I wanted to love this so bad. But if you're thinking a journalist and you do what, what? So 15 equal like 3030 minute interviews.

[Matt Binder]

That's $75 a week.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You're never gonna record.

[Devindra Hardawar]

This is not for interviews.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, you're not gonna record a full interview.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That's for you on the toilet. This is for you in the shower.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I do have a lot of thoughts there.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's toilet thoughts, it's shower thoughts. The storage thing. We have the ability to move data. Like that could be solved.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Sure. But I'm just kind of like if this is meant to be for quick thoughts, fine. But I'm just like as someone especially. Cause it does the transcription. I'm just like. That would be really useful. But I guess you can do that with the Apple Watch.

[Matt Binder]

But also three to six second voice notes. I mean, is that really saving you time that you couldn't just whip out your phone and type it yourself?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, exactly.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I'm kind of like my iPhone actually.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That does add up. Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I do actually think that being able to say like a very quick thing.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Captain's log.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, yeah, I do think that that is cool. The use case that I would be using it for is if I. I am always like writing down in a conversation if somebody says a very smart thing or like analyzes something in a really cool way, I'm always like, hold on, I want to write that down. And so if I could just be like, hey, can you explain, like, explain to me why this movie didn't. Wasn't. Wasn't effective in the way that we both felt that it wasn't effective. But I am not articulate enough to be able to put this into words. But you, my boyfriend, who is a smart director can say it into my ring and. But that explanation is going to take 60 seconds. Like I, I do think that there's a use case that is well under seconds though.

[Matt Binder]

Is your 62nd note. Is your entire day.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

That's what I'm saying.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That's what I'm saying.

[Matt Binder]

To last two years.

[iHeart Radio Announcer]

Exactly.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

That's what I'm saying. Let's do like that.

[Matt Binder]

I would be doing. Doing that in my mind too. If you give me a time frame like this. If you want this to last two years, you need to use it no more than six to ten times.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You're supposed to have your phone, but.

[Matt Binder]

Every time I use it, I'd be like, oh, this was juice number six. Do I really want to go and push it for the next note?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

This is how you know that you did not grow up with money.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matt Binder]

And I still did not have money. Yes.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

That is a very clear glass marker.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I will give them credit in that they specifically say, this is not designed to record your whole life or meetings. It is very much a reminder thing. I can kind of see it and there are numerous times where I will just be sitting there and be like, oh, I have an idea. Like, what if Benoit Blanc interrogated Cuba, for example? But like the useful ones too. But it's. I also like typing, but again, different. But I can see different strokes of different folks. That's fine. And also, Chloe does literally do this. She's like, can you say that again so I can write it down? Yeah, this might be a Chloe Radcliffe approved device, potentially. How?

[Devindra Hardawar]

The way I do reviews is often I'm like, out just like dictating thoughts.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Into my phone. So that's like often a thing. The other thing I'll point out is that, you know, the lifespan is the thing. Like, will people want basically a disposable device. But what if I think you send it back to them? It gets recycled, the battery gets recycled.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Good for them.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Electronics recycling, not that great, but better.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Than just need to put it in the mail. Like, it's just the moment I'm told I have to mail something, I just want to. I want to jump off a fucking bridge. Like, I'm just like, oh, you want me to go to the post office? Let me just.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Let me.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Let me go to Dwyer Mode.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You get a self. Self, you know, label or whatever. Drop it in the thing.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No, no, no, no.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But then that means you got a print.

[Matt Binder]

You got a print.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Self, label.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Shoot me in the goddamn hand.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You know, they have. There's that startup that does the thing for returns right now where you get a barcode and you just bring it.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

To like the bathroom and that shit rocks.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And that's cool.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Oh, wait, what's that?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Tell me about that with, like, Amazon Returns. And as long as you go to.

[Matt Binder]

The UPS store, you can do it.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

With Kohl's as well, I think.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Okay, yeah, that's Amazon. There's also another company that just does returns.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Amberjack is a shoe company I used, and they have it where it was just. You scan. It was like, you could take it to a Kohl's or something, which is cool. Like, it's weird. Like, there are little things like that which are really useful. Like I said, this is a dyspraxic physical coordination disability. Putting together, like, opening a package isn't fun. Packing a package sucks. Is like, the paint box for me. It's like, if you're like, return this with a label. I'm like, you want me to touch the thing with the knife on it and the tape?

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's also like, that's where Millennial breakdown happens. It's like, oh, this is a task. Well, it's not a task that takes time.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Well, let me explain dyspraxia, though. Yeah. It's not like it's like a task. It's picking up a box and putting tape in a straight line is genuinely difficult. Like, my brain, it's in, like, the more complex it is. Like, it actually, like, is upsetting. Like, it's meant, like, I'm sure that few dyspraxics who listen are like, yeah, fuck yeah, dude, Boxes suck. But it is really like that. And it's hard to describe because it sounds like I'm just being a baby. I wish I was. I wish this was just me being like, ooh, a court. Put a book together. No, it's really fucking difficult. It's really. It's so difficult for me. So it's like, oh, I gave you a label. You gave me a death sentence.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Like, to the point of what you're saying, there are. We have the technology. Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Which is cool.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You have a QR code. You bring it to store. They're like, I'll deal with this problem for you. Which is great. You walk away happy. Millennial.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yes.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yes, I was.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Okay. I want to. In defense of millennials. Are you millennials? Yeah. In defense of millennials. I think the reason. I don't want to do a task.

[Devindra Hardawar]

For sure.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You're not wrong. I'm not. Yeah, duh.

[Devindra Hardawar]

The things that. The simple things that pile up that take five minutes to do. Right.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yes, totally. But I think the reason that we. This is sort of off topic, but. And I'm finding it in the moment, so come with Me on this.

[Devindra Hardawar]

All right.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But I think the reason that we are so that tasks are feel like so alienating and so off putting is because we, we are. Oh, boy, she's taking a swing here.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Let's go.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I think we are because of our generation's interaction with the Internet's like rapid expansion and social media's rapid expansion. We're sort of the first generation that was expected to do suddenly like twice as much in a career in raising a family in whatever that like we are the generation. The first generation where it's like you're expected to be your own whole small business.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And I think that prior generations. Excuse me. Had more. She's taking a swing. Had more free time.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yes.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

There's like that life was slower and so that like you could say, and 45 minutes once a week I do my little tasks and like, even if you can be like, I don't like doing them, but it's like you have that 45 minutes and there's not this like constant hammering in the back of your head that is you could be doing these higher scale things for your job or for your life that are made possible because of the constant access to the Internet.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah. And your job is also not in your pocket all the time. Right. Or able to.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Exactly.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

That's. And it's like also boomers and Gen X's, of course, hearing this will say, well, when I grew up, my parents just left me at home and we had just entertained ourselves. And yeah, we just are all so cynical. And of course we could buy houses and college actually guaranteed you a job and college was cheaper and housing was cheaper. I guess not in the 90s, but even then it was easier to get a house. And I mean it was.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You're starting a millennial, you're starting a generational.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I don't it.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah. Boomers got us here, by the way.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah. Gen X, we need you. We need you.

[Devindra Hardawar]

We do need them. But also they got us here. Yeah. Because they're inaction. Yes.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Gen X's are the problem. There we are.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

War.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

War more than boomers.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I think both of them had their hand. I think boomers and their shitty decisions. But Gen X's are the ones with their inaction when they chose. And they were Gen Xers who did.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And they tilted right. A lot of Gen X. Oh yeah.

[Matt Binder]

Even if you look at like, like how like the generations fall politically now. Like, you know, the cliche is like all you boomers were the worst or whatever. But if you look, there's A lot of boomers who are very like, anti Trump. And I don't see the same with Gen X. In fact, Gen X is the one that went the other during the pandemic, like, while everyone else was like, oh, I can't believe how Trump is doing what Trump is doing during the pandemic. Gen X was going like, I can't believe I have to deal with my shitty kid who I can't send off to school.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I'm right wing now.

[Matt Binder]

I mean that's literally.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And also boomers will do the whole thing. We're just going to get people. I'm going to get some emails. There are a lot of boomers who are like, back in my day, I could just walk into a store and say, good sir, I'd like a job. And they'd say, I like the cut of your jib, boy. But at the same time, and there is a lot of like old people who are like, just go and get a job. It's that easy. The Gen X is if you make a post on Blue sky and I've done this several times, just be like, make fun of Gen X as being like, yeah, I get home, my parents weren't there, so I'd make myself dinner and I'd entertain myself all day, every day. And I was so independent. There will be Gen X's who respond and be like, yeah, that's actually true. And you should, like, they get very personal about it.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I don't know.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

You live through some of the best music as well. Like, stop.

[Matt Binder]

I mean, we're at. We're at ces. I mean, all the super rich tech assholes are Gen Xers.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Like, yeah, but to your idea, what you were saying about like back to me, back to the millennial.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Correct.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I think you're absolutely right. But also there's other aspects of it and people talk about it. It's the way millennials went to school. Because we went to school in this, like real. In America, in this really optimized, like the sort of goals that you had to chase were very specific. The whole gifted and talented crowd, like we are seeing, basically.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Of which I was one.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yes, same.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Of which I was not. Yeah, I really was not.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Neither gifted nor down.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No, I was not.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You see online, like the gift. Intelligent adults, we're like, oh, that was kind of wrong. That maybe kind of broke us in terms of how we do you mean.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

The high expectations based on it, us and the expectation of perfectionism or like how that metastasizes into perfectionism.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Exactly. All that like, we were built for school and for taking tests and then sent to the real world. It's like, oh, and do you think.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

So than other generations?

[Matt Binder]

Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you think about it, like, why. Why did all the first Internet culture come from millennials? And that's because, like, Gen X was at the age where there's history there, there's Gen X.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That's. I mean, there's no.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

By Gen X. I don't know.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Because we're cooler.

[Matt Binder]

No, but I'm talking about, like, meme culture and stuff like that.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Our lives. Sorry, that's. I think I know what you're saying, which is that our lives were digital in a way. Theirs were not.

[Matt Binder]

Yes.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Here's what's interesting, is that we're getting too millennial focus, because we're all millennials, I guess. But also, we knew what the world was.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

We were very young.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Okay, thank you. Good to know.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Hollywood cast me in things.

[Devindra Hardawar]

We knew what the world was before the Internet. We saw what the world became with the Internet, and we're expected to meet experts at it post Internet. So we saw the full breadth of it.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah. So that's why, like, Gen Zers and young kids do not know the world before.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And it's kind of tough to describe what that was.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

We also were children during 9, 11, and we entered the workforce in, like, children and teenagers.

[Devindra Hardawar]

But yes, the world fell apart.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Teenagers are still children. 2008 as well. Like, I think that it's understated, like, because 2008, I moved to America that year and it was very much like, oh, welcome to America. No, it happened as I moved, not because, I don't know, I moved. And it was just like, oh, hey, you know that whole thing you were told about you go to college, everything will be fine. Fuck you.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's just. Exactly.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And I don't think other older generations realize how stark that was, how hot. Like, there are Gen X boomers probably remember before the Department of Homeland Security existed. Like, and I just think the expectations of hyper digitization and the constant expectation and notifications, stuff like that. I think it's really easy to color millennials. Like, oh, you're so. Oh, you want your little treats and all this. No, we're being harassed by everyone is now harassed by everything all the time.

[Devindra Hardawar]

We're aware of it.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Everything. And we know and we remember it could have been different when it's frustrating as well, because, by the way, Michael Dell, Gen X. Yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Just.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And we're. And just to be clear, this is Mr. Dell of the Dell Company one.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Of the richest men in the world, by the way. Like he's up there. He's also the guy behind Trump Bucks.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

How have I never heard of Michael Dell?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Oh, he's.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Is he the guy who founded Dell?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yes.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And yeah, he's. It's weird because Dell went through this thing is. And we'll rotate shortly. But it's this weird thing where Dell went through this real shithouse era when they were just complete dog shit. Their computers sucked and then they went. Took themselves off of the public markets, private again, fix things, everyone loved them again. Then they went public again and then they appear to be like thinking about being shit, but they're back to being okay and they bet their whole future on AI.

[Matt Binder]

It's just one of my earliest computers were Dell. And I remember they were really big and then they sort of. Everyone else beat them in everything and then no one wanted it. And they had that really to me, they had that time period where they were the computer that at least I did. I automatically associated with like the older crowd, older people. Because especially as like the gaming PC became big and then building your own PC became big. Dell was still out there. I feel like doing like old school type marketing to specific audiences.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

During a time period where like everyone was moving beyond that.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And then they bought Alienware, which was this insane company where they'd be these. I had a day. My dad. My dad bought me an Alienware once and I fucking loved it. It was this insane like, I don't know how like 3 foot tall giant thing with like a swinging door and a big alien head in it for like a teenage boy with no friends. It was the.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

It was.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

This is my friend.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Sorry, what does the alien in the.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Box, it's literally just a gaming PC. But it looked like a tube. It was more tubes.

[Matt Binder]

It's why his wrists are so muscular.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

No.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

God damn it. They just get body shaming me. No, it's. It's interesting though because hearing them, it just. And as we'll. We'll transition into the next episode, obviously, but it's like it feels like all these companies are having a midlife crisis. And I think.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yes.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

You know what we're doing.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I was going to say, I mean like, maybe they are. They are.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Well, now is the time. The millennial midlife crisis. It's like, give us room.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Not for me. I'm very young.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Okay. But yes. All right, getting there.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And coming up now, an ad just for Gen X is. It's going to be for something called latchkey biz. It's going to allow you to have a social network where you cr you were such an independent child and how you remember when MTV was good and.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Is actively losing subscribers.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No. Gen X's will email me now and be like, actually, you know what? I watch Liquid Television and I was cool.

[Jorge Ramos]

Hola, I'm Jorge Ramos. This week on the Movement, we take a look at Venezuela's uncertain future in a conversation with two people who have directly advised US President Juan Gonzalez during the Obama and Biden administrations.

[Devindra Hardawar]

We're really good at invading countries. We're very bad at nation building.

[Jorge Ramos]

And Carlos de Rosillo during Trump's two terms.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I can guarantee you that nobody in.

[Jorge Ramos]

The Trump administration likes Delsey Rodriguez. Listen to the moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola ramos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[iHeart Radio Announcer]

Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart streaming radio and podcasting. Call 844-844 iHeart to get started. That's 844-844, iHeart.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

We're back in the room. We're back with a wonderful cast, of course. Actress and stand up comedian Chloe Radcliffe.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Matt Binder of Mashable and Devindra Hardware of Engadget.

[Devindra Hardawar]

What's up?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And you know what? I do actually kind of like this Gen X and midlife crisis happening with AI. It kind of makes sense because it's like you look at all these companies and they're all like, fuck, how do we keep growing? The rot economy I've written and said about, but it's also a degree of like, wait, what do people want anymore? Because we got so rich. Because Gen X is able to accumulate wealth in a way that millennials couldn't. Boomers.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's all fomo. It's all FOMO about what's next FOMO.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

With disconnection from anyone like that. I'm sorry. Oh, it was a rough time during COVID We didn't go outside. Fuck off. You could still step outside just once, just be like, all right, let's go outside.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You know, it's also funny. I spent all of COVID outside because that's where you didn't get a germ for a while.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It was better to be.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

What are we talking about?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, yeah, just take the laptop outside. Or do you not have an overhead lamp?

[Devindra Hardawar]

I do. That was very stupid. But to what is happening to all these? Cause I've been covering them since 2010. I've been following the tech industry forever. They're all desperate. They're all desperate of missing out on the next big thing. Because Microsoft missed out on mobile. They tried desperately to kind of get that back. Like Windows Mobile, all these things, making Windows 8. But no, that was Apple, that was smartphone era, that was tablets. They never quite got into that. But they also didn't realize people like PCs, people like computers. Maybe you should double down on that. Which is what Windows 11 was. Windows 12 kind of became the thing. But that was the mobile era. Then there was like tablets and stuff, wearables for a while. People were hot, like, oh, this is gonna be the next big thing. It's a niche. It's a very small niche because you.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Wear them and not everyone wears the same thing.

[Devindra Hardawar]

To Matt Bin this point, what's happened is that the world revolves around our phones. Cause these are the most personal computers we have.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's my best friend.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's your best friend. It holds all your deepest secrets and inner thoughts. It connects you to the world. So how do you go past phone? The next stage of computing to them is okay, a thing that processes data at obscene levels that we don't fully understand. But it seems like black magic. And that's what AI is.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But it's so funny though because they're like, well, what do we replace a device that's all about personal stuff and our communication with others and our ability to condense our thoughts and access media we like, well, what if we took away all personal choice and data entry of any kind? Would they like that? But I actually, while you were saying that, I just had a thought. All these companies missed out on mobile. Microsoft didn't miss out on mobile. They made a shit mobile phone by acquiring Nokia. And Windows Phone sucked. And it's like, why do people like the Mac so much? Because it. Because it was good. Because the UI was good. Why do people like the iPhone? Because the UI was good. It took so long for Android to even be half assed. Was The T. Mobile G1 was the.

[Devindra Hardawar]

First and it was so far behind.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And they were so far behind for long. And Windows Phone was an insane. It was just this like tiles. It was Windows 8, but in a phone.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I will say it was cool. It was cool because it was different. But they again missed out on some practical functionality like Windows Phone.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Bjork is cool and different, but I would not.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And she misses out on my laptop.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I would not be, like, playing Bjork at an NFL game. Like, I wouldn't be playing Bjork in a commercial. I'm saying that, like, there are journalists and specifics and it's like something.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But if we're connecting with broad, like middle America.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I don't think so. You're referencing Surface now, which is at the NFL games.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, no, the Surface. It's so funny having Surface things there, especially with Aaron Rodgers just smashing them. But it's like they don't. They. They're like, well, what do we do? Well, we'll do our spin. It's like, make it good, make it good.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I can understand we're going to go into history here for the kids. But Microsoft was making mobile shit for a very long time.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Right, the IPAC as well.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Right, the IPAC, all that stuff. But it was BlackBerry era, right? Okay, okay, rewind to, like late 90s. It was like personal assistants, right? PDAs, the Palm Pilots, all those things. Evolution of that was BlackBerry. Microsoft was doing stuff within Pocket PC and they made a couple ones, but they never really took.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And they were like little laptops.

[Devindra Hardawar]

They were like little keys or like little BlackBerry clones.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But you used like a little pen.

[Devindra Hardawar]

With something you could use. Some of them had like a stylus, too. But the thing is, BlackBerry was hot because data was bad. And BlackBerry created the technology to have quick digital messaging. To all your friends. Go watch the movie BlackBerry, which is not fully historically accurate, but gets the.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Tech a Jimpus, a fan of the show. Sorry.

[Devindra Hardawar]

But the movie BlackBerry, Wonderful, Amazing, has one of the guys from It's Always Sunny in there too. And he's just like, wonderfully offensive and like, really gives his nice. Check out that movie. But BlackBerry innovated. Innovator's Dilemma came for them because they didn't believe you could have a phone that was all screen and that was iPhone.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

It's difficult. It genuinely.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You mean like, they had considered. They were like, should we make phone all screen?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, because BlackBerry.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And they were like, no, no, we not make touchscreen all keyboard.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Oh, my God. Howerton, who is Dennis from It's Always in Philadelphia, plays my friend Jim Basilier.

[Devindra Hardawar]

He plays.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

He reads my newsletter.

[Devindra Hardawar]

What a glow up. What a glow up.

[Matt Binder]

I remember when I was in high school, the big Phone at the time where those. Like the screen that flips. The Nokia Sidekick, I think it was called.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Phones were so cool. Before the iPhone, phones had all this, like, cool stuff. I had. I had a Helio Ocean which flipped up vertically and also flipped sideways like a Sidekick. Amazing stuff. And then the iPhone came out and it was like, okay, all screen, but also apps. Your phone is now a computer. It's not just like a limited thing with garbage version of the Internet. It's the full Internet. And then cellular speeds got better, so, like Internet in your pocket, full computer in your pocket. You cannot deny that that's the best thing. So Microsoft just was never able. They didn't catch up to that quick enough. We talk about Android being shit. Early on it was. But within a couple years they kind of did the Windows thing where Google just like had the software and had other people come and make the hardware and Android took over the world. Like, Android had dominated cell phones, smartphones pretty quickly. Pretty quickly on. But it's hard to deny. Everyone is chasing, like, what is the next thing. They think AI is the next thing. And I'm glad that there are people out there, like, we're looking at this and like, this is bullshit. This is not good.

[Matt Binder]

But are they sure? Like, are they really convinced that AI.

[Devindra Hardawar]

What's amazing is that they're not right.

[Matt Binder]

So Mashable published. I didn't do the interview, but we spoke to Lenovo CEO and we asked him about people who are anti AI and AI skeptics. And his answer to that was basically, you can't avoid it. You won't be able to avoid it. And it's like, that's not the.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That's not an answer.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

That's not.

[Matt Binder]

But that's also not like a ring.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Dorset be able to avoid.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, that's not the ringing in, like.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

It's the whole thing of it's inevitable.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's inevitable. Right.

[Matt Binder]

Do you believe in this product? Well, you can't avoid what's coming. I mean, you know, we all die.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

Like, no, but it's.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I think I. Having not read the interview, I could imagine being like, sort of having the attitude of, like, I don't. Who gives a shit if you.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

If you don't believe in this. It's happening.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's. We've invested billions of dollars and, like, stock is going up and, like, deal.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

With it and who. Why is it on me to convince you? You. You can sit there and bang your drum as long as. And I don't mean this to. I Don't mean to be on a side, but, like, I can imagine, sort of, yeah, I'm going to leave it. Who gives a shit?

[Matt Binder]

I appreciate the honesty, the answer.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But if your job is literally to market it to a journalist like Apple.

[Matt Binder]

If when the iPhone first came out and people asked about the iPhone, like, are people really good? Apple didn't go, like, it's inevitable. They were like, well, try, try it and you'll. You'll see.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I will say, steve Jobs, famously an asshole.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, you're holding it.

[Matt Binder]

But he had the product to back him up.

[Devindra Hardawar]

The messaging was, you'll get used to it. Like the Apple way was, you'll get used to it. We know better.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But that's not what AI is saying.

[Devindra Hardawar]

But that's not what AI is saying.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

It's happening. And the funny thing is about AI as well is if AI was, I can say to my computer, load this, do this, and it actually did it every time. That'd be fucking sick.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Well, guess what? That's what Microsoft's pitching you with the Copilot.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

They are lying.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It doesn't work.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

They are just like, yeah, I swear to God, I thought public companies couldn't just lie, but they can only do it about numbers.

[Devindra Hardawar]

If you're all in the same grift, it doesn't matter, right? And also what we're learning is that rules don't matter, laws don't apply to the rich and the powerful.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But here's the thing, gravity does. And I think they will all be punished. Mashallah. Like when, when the stock was, Nvidia's kind of down today. It's kind of fun to watch. It's also funny as well, because none of it really clicks with what users desire. Because what users desire right now is, I wish my phone just fucking worked. I wish every app didn't need to ping me 14 times a day to say, have you thought about using me?

[Devindra Hardawar]

I think just work is the thing. Just work. Just do what I ask you to do.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

When you're saying that the companies themselves don't even fully believe, what more is there to that?

[Devindra Hardawar]

I've talked to a whole bunch of. I bring this question to every big company I talk to. And early on, when Microsoft was doing Copilot, I was like, this thing doesn't work, right? Like, you make me want to use Copilot as, like, a search engine, but I cannot trust it. It's not always delivering correct information. If I bought a calculator that said 2 plus 2 equals 5, I would throw it away because it's garbage. And the Microsoft people were like, it's a work in progress, we're going to get better. And they're making you accept a certain level of bullshit because they can't stop. They've invested too much in it. They practically are invested in half of OpenAI. So like, they can't stop. It's too big and their stock is being rewarded for it, so they can't say anything about it.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Okay. And again, just to play devil's advocate and that this is not, this doesn't. The views reflected here are not my own. I can, you know, I look at what AI take image. Take image production for example. What the images that AI could create four years ago versus the images that AI can still. Images that AI can create today are unrecognizable.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Between the two, they're so much better.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And when they were producing the dog shit images 4 years ago, if somebody was like, if I, you know, like if you do the same calculator thing and then they're like, well, yeah, it's a work in progress and in four years the calculator is going to say two plus two equals four every single time again. I think that that is a fair response.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And that's the thing.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

That's the thing though. This is one I've answered a lot. This is where I'm like, oh, so that made sense maybe two years ago. So it made sense. Like I would say it stopped being rational to do that. Like maybe, I mean, at latest March last year. So 2025, I would say, right up until image generation with GPT. That was when you just went bonk. I know people are going to say nano ban. Nano banana. I went an entire day without saying nano banana, which is now on televisions.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's just like, I do not know what that was.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Nana Banana is, oh, you want image generation. Google's image generation is like the best.

[Matt Binder]

The best one on the market.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And people like, look, it can generate a picture of a, a, a woman for some reason that I'm using. Like she lives in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, it's like tube generation. Oh God.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And they can't answer the basic question about the entire idea of imagery generation, which is what I can't say.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But the thing is, it's not, not like it's, but the thing is it's not having these meteoric jumps.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Four years ago, sort of in 20.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, you're saying, you're saying like the curve is leveling.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yes. So we've reached the point of diminishing returns because the way these models get better is two ways. One, you feed data into them. Two, you tweak the models by they, you basically tweak their outputs. You say don't do this, do this.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Things with images, you're right up against the wall now. Like they've got about where they can get. And their thing they'll say is like, look, we've made some realistic looking images. The problem isn't making one realistic image. It's doing the same thing more than once, reliably, maybe twice, thrice, 100 times. It's being able to have consistent visual image. And you can kind of do that, but it takes a shit ton of computational power. And as we run up against the realm of running out of money, that's become the problem. But also most of them have hit diminishing returns because we've run out of data. We are out of data. You mean of feed of things to feed into the thingy.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Slop for the slop.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Slop. Well, food for the slop.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Food for the pigs to. So they can make to poop. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

But here's the basic question about image generation. Like, I don't care how much better it's getting.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I don't care who gives a. About. Yeah, it's like, why does this exist?

[Matt Binder]

That's the thing like with, with so much of this. Like the, like when we, we talk about like the calculator that, you know, has to get the math problem correct. Well, there's the use case for that is it gets the, you need, you.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Need to do math. Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

With AI generation and all, an AI video image generation and video generation, it's sort of just like, like, okay, you can do it, but what is the purpose?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Like, like the TV guys are like, oh, you can make a wallpaper for your tv. I don't, I don't turn my TV on for a wallpaper. I don't care.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, it's like, who gives a, who gives a shit?

[Matt Binder]

The point for me, like, like people like, oh, you could take a picture, a selfie of yourself and insert yourself in different. Well, for me, like when I want to look at a picture of myself, it's because I want to remember that experience that I, I experienced. Oh, but what I, if I, I put myself in an AI image generator and it puts me in, in front of the pyramids and Egypt and Egypt.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Why the fuck do I care?

[Devindra Hardawar]

I don't know.

[Matt Binder]

There's no memory there of me Doing that.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I saw a really evil one where it's like a guy showing his grandmother with dementia, like a picture of her with Jimi Hendrix. Parody. The following is parody. I think that person should be fucking tortured.

[Matt Binder]

No, I'm so glad you brought that up, because I have.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

You should be in fucking. You disgusting fucking monster.

[Matt Binder]

Facebook consistently hammers me with recommendations of groups for people who are asking people to like clean up their family photos and stuff. And those groups are now full of people who come in and go, oh, my daughter or grandma or whoever in my family died. And this is the only photo I have of them. Can you make it color or fix it? And now all the responses are people putting it through the AI image generators and they spit out things that don't even look like the deceased family member. And some of these people love it. And some people even put them in like the deceased pictures. Family member picture in a video generator.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

That generates yassifying their grandfather.

[Matt Binder]

But it's. But it's like, you know, at some point these image generators are going to distort your memory of the actual person totally. Because. Because if you only have one photo of someone and that photo was cleaned up, quote unquote, but it changed how your family member looks and you're constantly looking at that photo, it's gonna eventually actually fuck with your real memory of what that person looked like or sounded like for like the voice cloning stuff. And it's like, I think that's so fudgeing unhealthy. They're going to have a world of people who remember their own ancestors as people who did not even exist because they don't have an actual photo in their brain of how they actually look. They have the AI generated photo of them.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I completely agree. And I. I'm sure that this is already happening. And then I. And this is where I get a little nihilistic. This is where I get a little depressed. I wind up going. My impulse, as a millennial who experienced the world pre Internet or pre ubiquitous Internet, my instinct is that their brains are going to be fucked up by shit like that because. And it feels good in the moment. And so they keep doing the drug. And why wouldn't you? If the drug dealer keeps coming to your house, of course it is going to be very difficult to say no. It's much easier to say no when the drug is not inside your house all the time. Time. And so they're going to keep doing the drug. They're going to up the brain. They're. They're going to have these, this insane relationship with memory and with emotion and with human connectivity. And then I want to say, and at some point they will, in their heart of hearts, understand that this is bad. It. In years, decades, Like, I'm not, I'm not saying, you know, they'll wake up one week, but like at some point in their old age or in their middle age, they will go, wow, this is, is, this is bad. I, I don't know how to describe this. I don't know how to articulate this. But I can feel in my heart that something is disconnected from what the human experience should be.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I think that's partially what we're doing right now. Because people are using these tools and not fully thinking about it. And there are just so many philosophical questions about us, like how do we process information, how do we process memory? How does this work within our society? What's the anthropological impact of all this falsified information? Like there's immediate harms of nothing. We can't trust reality anymore. We can't trust anything. Cause they can just make up facts. But also the eventual harms is that the idea of memory is just gonna disappear.

[Matt Binder]

I mean, but another thing I've seen, and this is one really depressing one, like someone will ask for something. Like they'll post a photo of their child who died at nine months, three years, whatever. And they'll be like, oh, I'd love to see how they would look if they made it to 40. And it's like, no, don't do that to me.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

No, no, no, no, no, no. Right, exactly.

[Matt Binder]

Don't do that. You have the videos of them, when they existed and who they were and what they were. Just keep that in your memory. Don't look at this person who never will or did exist, right, that they're generating. It's just.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Oh, and the thing is, mess with people, all of that photo editing stuff, and in particular the new things where you can be like, okay, add a sword to the photo. Make him look like Captain America. Give my grandmother giant abs. Like all of the things that you can do with AI Now.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

All right, now, now, now, now you've got my attention.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Make my yoke my grandma phrase to remember, yoke my grandma. But here's the thing. I genuinely believe all of this is going away. No one, no one other than me is really willing to fully go. I think all of this goes away. I think everything dies within two years. I think all. I think that there is going to be the big egg face moment. And no one is real. No one wants to take the logical endpoint, which is is the people who are dependent on these things are not going to have a thingy anymore. Unless they're going to put DeepSeek R1 on their laptop and wake 30 seconds between responses. Because I think all of this is just. I think every image is like a few. But my theory, I'm just this is guy and stick. I think it's like a few bucks per image. And I think, and I hear MIT Technology reviewed an article middle of last year, images are more cheaper than text, but they're still very expensive. But nothing's worth surprised.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Images are cheap.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I was surprised too, but I forget the actual thing. But all of this like the video generation stuff that's gone away first so.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And sorry, that couple dollars per image or whatever is for them to produce being paid by OpenAI or. It is.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah. For those paying for the GPUs to run.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Right.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Okay.

[Matt Binder]

And that's another thing though. Most of the AI generated stuff you see out there, not professional work obviously, but like things people post on social media or whatever. They're just using like the free version of a lot of.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Exactly.

[Matt Binder]

Because no one, no one wants to actually unless you're using it again for professional purposes. No one is paying. It's yoke my grandma for free. No one wants to pay for the subscriptions.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And that's the thing. OpenAI has this big thing. People love to email be like, what if they did ads? If you are someone who's emailed me about it that you're like 75,000.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Wow.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

What if they did ads? Here's the problem. The information had a great story this week was 900 million weekly active users though they bullshit those numbers. 800 million of those are outside of the US thus they're lower value advertising clients. So yeah, most of them are free. They're just. And the most exciting and the funny thing is is even the ones that pay are the most enthusiastic. Who cost you the most money? OpenAI loses money even on their 200 buck a month 1. So the more in, the more you like something, the worse you are as a customer. It's usually the opposite. It's usually like your power user of Facebook doesn't cost them that much because it's basic. It's just. So the way a website works is like Facebook is. No, no.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

All right, Ed, I know I'm a lady and I know I'm not in tech. No, I'm kidding.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No, no. So when you.

[Matt Binder]

When you should be In a box.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

So picture a computer.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No, no, no, no. Chloe, don't maybe be sarcastic and be like, do you, do you know what akamai is? So it's when you run a website, like Facebook page with some videos, the streaming doesn't require. It's like a CPU and like requires storage and ram. Like in a big server.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

That is intensive because they have shit tons of users. But because like shit tons of users, it's just because you have a lot of them. It's not because the process of serving you Facebook or Instagram is super expensive to do. It's expensive because they have so many people. The problem is with AI is that having one user who's particularly demanding is extremely expensive, actually.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And every bearing costs on the company.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Exactly. Because GPUs are extreme, they are cost intensive, they require a lot of energy, but they also put out a shit ton of heat, which requires a bunch of cooling. And the bigger the data center, the more intensive the cooling. And I had someone email me the other day saying really big data centers can cause like, like gigawatt ones can cause like weather effects with the amount.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Of heat that display and they're affecting the local like communities.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And, and just to clarify what you were saying earlier about when you're, when you're saying the logical endpoint of your pessimism about AI or whatever, however you want to frame it, the logical endpoint is that all of this goes away. You're saying it collapses. From a financial standpoint. Yes, but what that. But then the logical endpoint of that is that the companies, Anthropic, OpenAI, whatever, ChatGPT go, well, we don't have the money anymore to run these data centers.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Correct.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And the data centers are what are required to. When somebody types in, yoke my grandma. Yeah, yeah, we need the data center to be having to have the electricity on and have the air conditioning running.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yes.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And that when somebody's not paying those bills, then I can't get my grandma yoke.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Correct. And there's no economic reason to do it because to Davindra's point, the only reason they're doing this right now is because their stock value is growing. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, They've seen their stock grow not because of AI revenues, they don't talk about those, but because AI is so big, so huge and so yoked. Yeah, yeah, everyone's talking AI. But the moment. And the thing is, I've heard people say, oh well, it's a chatgpt bubble. It's not an AI Bubble, here's the thing. Oh yeah, it's a real why?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

How does somebody thread that needle?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Because they're fucking stupid. No, the argument is that well, OpenAI is the worst business of all time. It burns money forever. They have no profitability. But all the other ones will be okay. There will be other winners. The problem is is that this is a vibes based thing. Now what happens to the vibe when the main business that everyone knows like 800-900-million weekly active users compared to everyone else where they have like 20 now you may think you've heard Microsoft say they've got hundreds of millions of copilot users. You've heard Google say hundreds of millions of Google Gemini. That's because they put them in their main products. But even then their shareholders are just going to go right, why are you spending all this fucking money on this? Why are you propping up these insanely expensive things? And if you wonder why I'm so confident about the this. None of them talk about the revenues or the costs.

[Matt Binder]

The thing also though is if AI was to disappear, what do customers, what do consumers lose out? Like what, what is the.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Nobody will care. Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

And the things that people may use in their everyday life like, like AI transcription or voice to text. We're at the point now where those models actually could just live on your personal computer. You don't need an outside server at all. You don't need a, a company to pay a monthly fee to. You could just download a model, it's a few gigs and you voice to text and your own transcription. It's that other more intensive stuff that are just like little toys that no one really needs that'll just go away.

[Devindra Hardawar]

To me that is the logical outcome by the way is like the big AI will die off to a certain degree. That will lead to widespread economic devastation by the way. That will be hard.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

It's going to be worse than the great financial crisis in my opinion.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Could be worse than the financial crisis, could be a depression level hit on the world economy. So that worries me. But in for when it comes because all these companies, I know, I thought.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It was a joke.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Oh my God. But the idea of local, the idea of like local AI and stuff that's just like okay, my watch is a little better. My, my, I can transcribe to my computer that lives locally. That does happen.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I have one piece of bad news though. The only reason those models are being worked on right now is because of the big ones. And once those big ones go away, they're not going to have any fucking reason to do them. They don't care about transcription, they don't care about the useful stuff. They care about.

[Devindra Hardawar]

They still need a reason to sell you a laptop every year or something.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I don't think this is going to be enough of one. And I. Yeah, my thing is like I'm not sure how we're going to intellectually recon reconcile with this because this is the world pants shitting competition.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Well, it's also. Everything is so fucking stupid right now. Like every, every level. If you. We've been in the CS bubble, but looking at the wider world right now.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah. Yes.

[Devindra Hardawar]

So dumb. Like we Trump invading Venezuela was how we started the circumstances. Year I was born in Guyana, South America, the country right next to Venezuela. And it's probably right next on like because they just found oil. So Exxon is like just out there still taking all that stuff right now.

[Matt Binder]

Put it back. We didn't find anything.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Things.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Things are so stupid right now. So that's why I do kind of feel like, yes, we're going to see.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But this is. And I know this sounds hard to reconcile with, I think this is going to be stupider just because. Hear me out. Every major CEO has added. AI has talked about. That's all they talk about is AI. Every major tech company, AI, A AI and a bunch of people we work for. Not me personally, but tons of people we work for. People have said that AI is the future world leaders, AI is the future. Everyone said AI the future. And I think all of them are wrong. What are we meant to do with that information? Because this is Trump politics, okay? There's voting, there's like a process. This is like for now, sure, but the foundations of economic movement, but also, also knowledge in the world and consensus reality and paradigms themselves have been based on the idea that the people running the money, people running businesses are somewhat intelligent. That would not be fucking wrong. And what's become obvious is almost nobody knows anything ever. And I don't mean this in the cutesy like, oh, bosses don't know stuff. I mean these people have just been wrong. Like, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Just like AI will do this, but.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It'S not, it's not just AI. I will tell you. Like when I started covering technology and doing journals and I was mainly writing about startups at the time, I was like, oh cool. Their ideas are so interesting. They've gotten billions of usually millions of dollars of investment. I was talking to Kevin Systrom and the Instagram guys when it was just Four dudes. I was like, oh, man, they must be so smart and so interesting. No, usually not usually. It's just like, you're a nerd who knows how to code, who came up with one interesting idea, and the VCs were just throwing money at you. And. And even when it comes to, like, business, big business in general, people rise to the top. Not often through their skill. It's through they've been there long enough or they're a good enough company shill. I get logical.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

My point is, imagine if the great financial crisis. Microsoft was in housing, Google was in housing, Amazon was in housing, Disney entered housing. Everyone bought houses, and everyone was selling houses. And everyone was offering mortgages. Everyone did mortgages. Mortgages were the future of every single business in the entire world. Everyone on LinkedIn was saying, I'm a housing expert now. Now that is it. Except when they said housing, they meant cat litter boxes, because I'm joking. But it's like, yeah, what if everyone was like, wrong, wrong, wrong in a way that's not political. It's just obvious that so many people we thought were smart were just, like, able to do Mad Libs.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I have a question about the leaders who have backed AI.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Right.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Okay. As I see it, there's two categories that I understand, and I'm going to ask about what is the middle category? Middle category. Category that I understand is tech CEO who has. Whose company has some vested financial interest in AI being successful.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Right.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Totally get it. Absolutely. Like, why would Google add Gemini to all of their products? Great. Because they, like, they are. They see a potential financial benefit. Fine.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah. They were also Google's holding off. Google was trying to be cool and chill about it and then opening up AI kind of blew the doors open and they had to rush everything out. Sure, yeah. Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Okay. That category I understand. Then CEOs of companies who have been sold the lie of AI can make your whole company work better. That I also completely understand. Like, you know, Salesforce saying, I guess this is sort of an example of the middle category. Somebody at Salesforce being like, we're going to add AI and AI is flashy and sexy, and that's a new. And it's. It's the best, best thing. And then turning to Home Depot and being like, now you should pay us extra because our new Salesforce category or our new Salesforce product has AI and that's going to make your life better. And Home Depot goes, great, awesome. We'll pay more for that. But that I understand. I. Look, I understand the.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But even Those don't truly make sense, but keep going.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Right, right, right, right, right, right. And I like, disagree with the efficacy, but I understand the. The messaging there. What CEOs or what companies. Companies have added AI, trumpeted AI, you know, championed AI that are not in the category of their company is a direct financial benefit, benefactor to the technology or. Or like a direct owner of the technology of a version of technology.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Disney. Disney.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Right, right, right.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Being one of the most journalist outlets. And they will claim, oh, AI will generate stories. They don't. And I'll actually push back on the things with Salesforce because there's a really core thing. What Salesforce was it. I will choose another company in my head because Salesforce is so special. But like a software company. In this case, the really simple thing I'll say to that is even they don't make sense because it don't work. It don't do that. Like, it don't. It don't do. It don't do thingy. Like you say, the whole thing Copilot is sold on doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's never worked.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I do want to. It works enough.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No, it doesn't.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It is good enough for people to be using it. My issues are, you're a computer.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

My Mac.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You should be my man.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I gotta push back. It doesn't. There have been like eight different stories in the last year where Microsoft's 365copilot can't do things like prepare PowerPoint.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Oh, yeah. It's like specific failures. Yes, but it's specific failures. Yeah. On the general, what's it like?

[Matt Binder]

The general.

[Devindra Hardawar]

What I'm saying is, like, you ask Copilot or you ask Gemini, like a question, and it will get you a response that is good enough. He was like, hey, make me a chart of this data. Hey, that actually works.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Work.

[Devindra Hardawar]

A lot of that stuff does work.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I've used it many times.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's untrustworthy.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Like, that's the thing that means it doesn't work.

[Devindra Hardawar]

No, no, no. But there are variations of how badly.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But the thing is, if there's a variation of how well something works, that just means it doesn't work most of the time.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Sure.

[Devindra Hardawar]

But there's a reason hundreds of millions of people are still, like, using them.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah. Because they're being. They're being pushed into by everybody.

[Devindra Hardawar]

But people like using the like for them. The degree of like, as good enough as it can be for them. It's good enough. That's why we're pushing back though, and we're saying, like, you can't trust this data. You can't trust this stuff. They're not thinking about that, but they are just using it.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

So we'll continue this debate. It's not really a debate. We're all agreeing shortly after this break. This next ad is for specifically boomers. It's called where's my pills? There's someone who will be really angry at this one. They're in the draw, mate.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Foreign.

[Jorge Ramos]

I'm Jorge Ramos. This week on the Moment, we take a look at Venezuela's uncertain future in a conversation with two people who have directly advised US Presidents Juan Gonzalez during the Obama and Biden administrations.

[Devindra Hardawar]

We're really good at invading countries. We're very bad at nation building.

[Jorge Ramos]

And Carlos Yar Rosillo during Trump's two terms.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I can get. I guarantee you that nobody in the.

[Jorge Ramos]

Trump administration likes Delsey Rodriguez. Listen to the moment with Jorge Ramos and Paolo ramos on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[iHeart Radio Announcer]

Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast rankings. Radio Think podcasting can help your business. Think iHeart streaming radio and podcasting. Call 844-844-iHeart to get started. That's 844-844-iheart.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And we return to our scene. I'm now joined by Edward Ungracer Jr. Of the Tech Bubble Newsletter.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Hello.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

My friends, Chloe Radcliffe, of course, the actress and stand up comedian. Who it's you. And of course the Vintra hardware of Angela.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Hello.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And I think we're in an interesting point in the, in the show where we're all like getting to the end and we're realizing we have to go back to the real world and there's this thing of this AI thing and this whole, this whole situation where, and to get back to the debate we were just having, it's like, yeah, it kind of works, but I don't think that people realize that because it only kind of works when they start charging what it actually costs, which is like probably 2 to 5 to 15 times what they're charging. No one's going to want to pay for the half ass thing anymore. And many will not be able to pay for it at all. Like I was saying yesterday, like a lot of these companies that are just thing bolted onto LLM die just immediately like just they will turn to dust because imagine if the core fuel of a car of course like double, tripled, quadrupled in value in cost of course.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Course I okay, interesting proposition here. Do you think two questions. Do you think that AI companies will start charging subscription rates before the financial implosion that you predict?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, I think that. Well you've already kind of seen signs. No, they're very unfair with this. No one likes this one. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have added priority processing to their API customs. API just refers to instead of of you or me using like chat, GPT or Claude, you as a company would connect your software with an API to their service and then run on top of it. Now when you run something on top of these models you're effectively just prompting.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Them A API stands for a pretty big interface.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I I There you go.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, that's the new one.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, my brain couldn't think of the real one so I can't make fun of anymore. But it's like those companies, companies cannot survive with a product with a cost race. I had a reader listen listener and reader reach out and actually tell me that you need priority processing if you're above a certain things just your costs double there or and I think the, the other thing that people will say is oh, the cost of models is coming down. Classic talking point. Jensen Huang and his Nvidia thing. His press conference said oh, the cost of models is coming down. Yeah, but it's kind of like if the cost of fuel came down a bit but your journey to work took 15 times longer because now when you use a new model it isn't just spitting out an output, it's using models that use more computational power to give you slightly better results. So it may be cheaper, but it takes longer. It well it's not that it takes longer, it uses more tokens just for simplification's sake. The thing that hap that they generate to give you an answer, it uses a reasoning model which uses more tokens to do the output. So while it might be cheaper, cheaper on a token basis, you're using more of the fuckers. So it's not cheaper at all, it's actually more expensive.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, we can argue a lot about the AI industry like that's going to be an Indian thing. I will say we are seeing the direct impacts of the rise of AI. Right, go on. Talk about memory in the scene.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Oh fucking hbo, the memory. I'd love to talk about this.

[Devindra Hardawar]

RAM prices have increased by three to four times across the board, which is insane. And that'll affect everything. That affects phones, computers, whatever.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Like this, every, like everything has to be.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Because CAR is computer now.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yes, car is computer. So any device needs some sort of memory. What is interesting is like we are seeing the direct impact of that already. Dell's XPS 14, which should be a computer that costs under $1,500 because of what it is. And that's what the competition is. And that was about the pricing Dell gave me when I first wrote my post. They said 1600, next day, an update. That thing is going to start at $2,050.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Jesus Christ.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Because of Ram?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Because of, because they're not going to say why, but I would logically think like that is going to be the highest cost for a lot of new systems. That is insane. That is a. It's a premium, ultra portable. Sure. That thing should cost under 1,500 bucks or about $1,500. So we are going to see similar premiums like that.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Are you saying if you need to get a new computer, do it now because it's only going to get worse.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Do it immediately and maybe buy used or refurbished, which is my recommendation for everything interesting. But yeah, buying a new system this year is going to suck.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

So we're going to do an episode on this next week with Steve Berg from Games Nexus.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Oh, nice.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

So RAM it. Random access memory.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

A website is.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah. No, no, no, this is the thing.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

There is no I want, I want this.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But also the best lesson Sophie and Robert gave me is explain everything. Because even if you think you know something, you don't. So RAM is when you quickly need information to do a task on a computer so you couldn't access the hard drive. No matter how fast the hard drive is, it's not fast enough to get something immediately. AI services are extremely demanding on something called high bandwidth ram, which is just allows you to keep a bunch of memory stuff in the RAM so you can constantly access it because that's how LLMs work. Someone's going to email me and say I truncated that. Shut the fuck up. But it's nevertheless, because of the demands of Nvidia building GPUs, of Broadcom building their own bullshit GPUs, AMD building their own bullshit GPUs, the price of RAM across the world has increased. Now eagle eared listeners may think. I heard a story, Edward, about OpenAI taking 40% of the world's great ram. This story is bullshit. And everyone pushing it is a fucking liar. If you look on SK Hynix and SAP. So OpenAI did a deal, quote unquote, with SK Hynix and Samsung, two companies out in Asia, where they were going to get hundreds of thousands of wafers of ram. Just the things that you car up into ram, which is insane on its own, but it was a letter of intent, which is a concept of a deal. It's like, if you and I are emailing, why don't we do this? It means fucking nothing. And everyone's trying to blame that. No, what it is, is just every GPU. Anyone doing anything with GPUs is just.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Did you see buying all the RAM, the new Nvidia supercomputer, the Vera Rubin thing. I hate that they're using these actual scientists to apply to these things. It seems so disrespectful. But 1.5 terabytes of RAM in this Vera Rubin supercomputer, and that's this. So it's like.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

Say that again.

[Devindra Hardawar]

One point AMD, 1.5 terabytes terabytes of hybrid.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

How many is that? How. 1.5 terabytes per. How many GPUs?

[Devindra Hardawar]

I. I'm gonna have to look into the specifics here. There's a lot of GPUs, but I believe it's in the full. It's in the full. Okay.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And sorry, not to be a woman who doesn't work in tech about this.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No. This is actually very annoying.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

So supercomputer named after a lady. And we think it's disrespectful. Yes. Tell me the name again.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Vera Rubin.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Vera Rubin.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Okay.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

The Vera Rubin computer is a big box and it's really powerful. And inside there's a smaller. There's a little shoebox that you can keep. All the little rams, tons of GPUs.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah. And like, little smaller computers are all tied together.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yes, tied together. Okay. RAM is like one box where you have all sorts of random things that you might just need.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

It's like a chip.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I know, I know, but I'm picturing it in my head.

[Devindra Hardawar]

If you imagine, like city block, right? Different blocks or different components. The RAM is the streets in between between them to deliver information. Okay, so more ram, bigger streets. High bandwidth ram. Faster streets, faster traffic. Right? Okay, so that's the basic thing. It's just a shit ton of data. That's what AI needs. Why?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Oh, my God. It's 1.5 terabytes per fucking rack.

[Devindra Hardawar]

No, per rack. And there's a lot of racks in there.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

There's a lot of racks in there?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

A fucking data center will be full of like hundreds racks on racks on racks. Literally.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Okay, but hold on. Why is RAM a limited.

[Devindra Hardawar]

There are only three companies in the world that make it. Ed, you can have.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No, no, please, please. No, you go ahead.

[Devindra Hardawar]

But that's basically it. There are only three companies and nobody expected. They were fine. We were fine and nobody expected that. Why do you need so much goddamn ram? Nobody was prepared to do this.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, yeah. And is RAM a physical thing that somebody makes?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yes. So the preparation, it's. I'm gonna this up slightly. So Devindra, please correct me if I get something.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I am not an architecture.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

So there's a company called, called tsmc. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. I think I get that.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I also, I respect companies that are just like. What's your name? Business company.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yes.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Like yeah, just tell me what you do. They have these things called fabs and they basically build chips and there's a whole supply chain of how chips are made. You get wafers of ram, you cut them up. Sounds delicious. Isn't?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Wait, wait, wait, wait. You get.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No, you get like a big sheet of. You get a big sheet of memory. Yeah. And then you cut them up. Making chips is cool, but you're saying.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Saying the wafer is a certain amount of chips. You print the sheet, you print them up, you make a sheet of a thousand chips and then a wafer is 100 chips.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, a wafer is just the thing that you Carpenter chips. But really simple. Just, just. You don't need to know that Pip. Just really simple. There is a limited amount of machinery to build ram. There are what, there's sk, Hynix, Samsung and who else who makes them?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Micro Marvell. Okay.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Marvel. There's like three companies who make ram.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And we can't make more machines to make ram.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

There's just limited space, there's spent.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's going to take a long time to spin that up, maybe more.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

One important detail. So making chips in general requires something called a clean room. So think about any scientific process that cannot be interfered with by any contaminants.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Growing mushrooms in your garage.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Right? Pretty close.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Take it 300 steps higher where it's just like if a single speck of dust gets in there, you up millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. Like it's really. You have massive things and to run these machines requires. Requires very specific talent that we don't have enough of. But Also there's only a certain amount of space in the world. So we're just, we're at the limits. And while they're building more fabs, where you build these things there's only so much. And right now we have these fucking assholes who are like, I need 1.5 terabytes to give you an idea. Like I think this iPhone Air has 8 gigabytes of RAM. Terabyte is 1000 gig gigabytes of. Incorrect.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, correct.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Great stuff. So it's just like you have one big asshole taking all the chips. Now back to my. I worry about the collapse thing. We're going to have, we have all of this allocation being done for one company. What happens? Those aren't selling anymore. We're going to just have fucking chaos. But until then, the price of RAM is going to keep going up and it's going to be harder to get, which will make it more expensive, which will make every single consumer device more expensive without exception.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And again, just to ask the stupid question.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No stupid.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

When we say, say the price of RAM is going up, I could equivalently say the price per RAM chip is going up.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yes, exactly. Sure.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Okay, great.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And it's kind, it's like, it's a very simple supply chain thing. It's like if the price of wheels went up, cars would become more expensive. I realize that's a city but like it's, it's a very simple thing and it's affecting everything.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And I'm, that's what pisses me off because like we can debate about like how useful AI is but the direct impact to consumers right now, people building PCs and anybody buying a new computer, you're going to be screwed in 2026. And I'm working on a piece right now about that because.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Tell me, tell us more.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, it's the same thing. AMD also announced their new high end supercomputer AI servers, also gobs of ram. So yesterday I sat down and I talked with one of the AMD executives about what is the state of the computing industry, how do things look? And they admit, like it's going to be rough. People are probably, if you're a PC owner and you're going to do an I upgrade, you're probably not going to build a whole new PC this year. Maybe you'll just do a processor upgrade or GPU upgrade or something. Even those are going to get expensive. But I think they're expecting a slowdown in this industry too. So it's going to be tough.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And the solution can't even just be buy used and refurbished because those prices.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Those prices are going to buy and we're seeing the after effects of that actually outside of this. So we had example but we're running out. We also don't have enough power. So gas turbines which they're using to power some of these data centers which you should not do, but they're doing anyway way are actually sold out for seven years. They're buying old used gas turbines. I wouldn't be surprised if the used RAM market gets fucked too.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's already getting bad. But hell yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I mean who's the worst? Someone stopped making consumer ram.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Right?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

It was Corsair. Was it Corsair?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Micron.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Micron. My bad, sorry.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

So.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And I feel bad. And Micron owned Crucial. And I feel bad because Crucial was like the first RAM stick I bought when I was building a computer. And like I have memories attached to that. My bigger worry that though is they're lighting up nuclear power plants for this bullshit.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And that's where it's like I'm not worried about that. I'm worried more about the gas turbines.

[Devindra Hardawar]

The gas is bad.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

The gas is bad because nuclear power will get felony.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That's going to be a big fight. But I. We should, we should have invested more in nuclear power. It may be too late, but I don't know.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Hold on. Yeah, you're saying bad to light up nuclear power plants because these are old things that might not be in good enough shape.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Well, it's just more like you're not.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Saying you're not anti nuclear power.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I'm not anti nuclear power. We need that power for other people stuff. And this power should be going to like residential uses and it's literally going to be sucked up by bullshit.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But it's also.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And you're. And why are the gas turbines bad gases?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Because. Because gas turbines are basically karma. No, they're not the same. But like they have the same after effect of belching out gas. And Elon Musk's data centers are already ruining black communities because of this very specific thing. They're poisoning water. It's really fudgeing.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Horrible.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But also this RAM thing I think is going to be everywhere. And the PC industry was already in decline. I believe they were.

[Devindra Hardawar]

No, it was last year. It was up.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I thought they were having a My bad.

[Devindra Hardawar]

No, but only Dell was down.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But here's the thing.

[Devindra Hardawar]

For reasons we discussed surely won't everyone.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Be down because more expensive and Apple smartphone sales, like every bit of this is going to Be bad. And they are already running out of ways to sell you a phone. My biggest example being like, why else would they ship Apple Intelligence? Which is the most mass radicalization event I've seen in tech. Just I've never met so many people like fuck AI than people who use Apple Intelligence.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Who are just like, fuck this shit. I fucking hate this. Why? I don't know why. My phone is like sparkly rainbows and just wrong all the time and giving me a summary saying like 8 Ubers are coming your way.

[Devindra Hardawar]

The notifications are bad. Apple wouldn't be doing that if other people weren't chasing all this bullshit. But they're being forced into it and you know. You know.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But are they being forced into it?

[Devindra Hardawar]

They are kind of being forced into.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It because like, why could they not be like.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Because everyone talks. Shareholders stock prices. Yeah, shareholder stock price. Everyone's like, oh man, Apple's slow to AI. I guess Apple doesn't have the innovation, you know, charity.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Looks like someone didn't shit their pants yet.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah. So Apple rushed out Apple Intelligence. They got out there, they announced the super smart Siri thing, which was not. They couldn't ship it. So they took a hit for that. They took a hit for the intelligence issues again. They were forced into that in a way. And hey, I blame them for the issues. But if Apple left its own Devices is a company that is really slow about pushing and trying to change new things. I think they would at least try to make it less error prone.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And the point I was making was that Apple shoving Apple Intelligence in there was a sign that Apple doesn't really have anything else. And I will say this. People get so mad when I like my devices.

[Devindra Hardawar]

People.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I get little emails of people being like, fucking shill. When I'm just like, yeah, I like my phone. And they're like, fucking piece of shit. But it's like, Apple phone good, use it. I don't know. I would love an Apple phone with.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Great aspects of Apple intelligence other than the liquid.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Liquid ass. The new operating system that is so bad it makes wanna scream. But it's like it's just because we're. And it's not because of Apple being a bad company necessarily. It's just there's only so much you can do with a certain form factor. Your phone can only do so much.

[Devindra Hardawar]

But there are things like, hey, voice memos, instantly transcribe. Now that is sick. Sick.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Text voice notes, getting transcribed. That's fucking great.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You can hit a bubble as well now. And those get Transcribed. That's happening because of an on device AI and it's so that's great and.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

That shit's dope, but that shit don't make growth happen. Like you're not. But also everyone does that now. And that's the problem. It's like how do you sell a new phone? So they're in this situation where how do we sell a new phone at a time when they're going to have to increase the prices on everything? Because RAM is more expensive. Because to make a new phone faster.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You need ram and also to fit models onto your phone you need more ram. You need more RAM because those people, models sit in memory and have to sit there and work all the time. They can't just like come off the storage disk.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Do you Remember in like 2020, 2021 the supply chain crisis that was caused by like basic goods being delayed? Yeah, this is kind of like that for computer. And we're going to see how many thing have computer in it. Televisions, phones, cars, I mean even the thing we're recording on right here, that that has RAM in it, that everything has RAM on it that has any electronics these days.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That's my big worry of 2026 is basically we're screwed when it comes to consumer tech.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But the thing is it will screwed.

[Devindra Hardawar]

For prices, screwed for prices, screwed for all sorts of things.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But when. Oh sorry, keep going.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Well, companies may die out. Like things, like things will just be bad. But yes, prices is going to be where it starts.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And the other thing is, is that we're at a point when they're there. As you've seen you work the Consumer Electronics show, you've had a very egregious example of how these companies do not have a fucking clue what to sell you. They're still that half heartedly coming up with ideas. Like the death of a relationship ship is like, yeah, we're gonna go put a recall guest on. We fucking hate each other. We're gonna go, we're just gonna be so happy. Everyone's trying to come up with a little idea to do something with. And at a time when they're struggling for ideas to sell more things to grow, the core thing they use to build the thingy is becoming more expensive in a way that you can't circumvent. There is no way to fix this. Good example would be so in video. I may have mentioned this in the previous episode here. So Nvidia crazy thing. 88% of their revenue comes from selling these things for data centers. A Much smaller percentage comes from selling GPUs for gaming devices. So an Xbox for example. The problem is with that is they've already raised the price on the Xbox. They're probably going to have to do it again. And those GPUs. Now Nvidia also has deals with other companies where they can take an Nvidia GPU for gamers and they can sell it. They can say it's an Nvidia gpu, but it's got our label on it. We do special things things with it. Problem. Nvidia is no longer including RAM with it. So every single non Nvidia GPU company has to now buy RAM separately. So their supply chain just got up. Imagine if you're a car company and you buy a certain block of car and it has some bits, but you customize it and they're like, yeah, man, sorry, we just don't do steering wheels here anymore. They got real expensive. You're gonna have to buy them from the steering wheel guy who is now charging more.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That's already happened to some degree to stuff like lidar and things like there was technology that was in Teslas like this is core to autopilot and self driving. And then LIDAR got expensive.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, but here's the thing though. This is a really simple thing though. This is just the, like part of the motor. This is the core component of the entire computing supply chain. Everywhere that is going to go up, we're going to see to your point of interest, Lindra. Shit. Just get more expensive and see who can withstand that pain.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I mean, what do you, what, what do you think the chances are that inflation actually causes some kind of spark conflagration before the financial collapse of the AIs?

[Devindra Hardawar]

This will likely lead to the borrowed money.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

This is a form of inflation, honestly, on the computer industry.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

That's what I'm saying. I'm saying. No, no, sorry. That's exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying, like you've talked about the financial collapse of, of the AI's system of borrowing money.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

That could go bad when, if, if.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Look, keep going.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, yeah, okay.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

No, no, don't be.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No, this is good.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

This is, this is like playing a clarinet solo in front of everybody. Okay, that could, that financial collapse could trigger if Nvidia stops. Fuck. We were just talking about this last night.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah. If Nvidia stops. Most of Nvidia's revenue comes from people borrowing money.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yes.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

With borrowed money.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yes. And if people. If, I mean, if, if the banks ever come calling for that borrowed money?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

They're in do do land.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yes. Or if Nvidia stop. If they're, what is it? If they're.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Their numbers go down, but if their revenues stop growing.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

If their revenue stop growing. Okay, that's the like financial system potential collapse. What do you think the chances are that this inflation just hits like general populace so severely before the actual. Before the Nvidia financial.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I mean, it's already happened with this computer.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I understand, but like, but like so severely, you know, people are just. People, people are just living through it right now.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I think I get what you're saying. It will cause two gut punches. It will be likely before the AI bubble bursts, we will have a thing where anyone selling consumer electronics or even enterprise hardware. So just consumer electronics for the enterprise, their costs go up. So they will probably sell less because their customers will be unable to afford as much, which will cause a bunch of tech companies to not make as much money, which will lower the values of their stocks. This will then lead them to go, go AI AI. And then their shareholders will go, great. You've been saying that AI for three years. You got any money? And they'll go, what if I told you I had less money because it lost me? And at that point the world panting competition will end.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I guess I, I listen to all of this and I actually get my gut, which means almost nothing because I understand almost nothing of it. But my gut says that the. Thank you. That the, the inflationary effects are going to actually be more immediate than the AI bubble.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I agree fully.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And I guess I don't mean like, duh, yeah, they're happening now, but I mean like some degree of severity that, that people decide is not tolerable.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Will happen before the AI bubbles.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Sorry, Ed, we barely brought you into the.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

No, no, no, you're good. I mean, I, I think, I mean, this raises me to something. I've just been wondering where it feels like we just keep coming up into this problem where we are having structural limitations imposed or, you know, rushed up against because, you know, the sector in one way or another is forcing. Allocation of resources, allocation of capital, Demands of growth. Yeah, Demands of growth, allocation of energy to satisfy it. So, you know, at what point does it end where, you know, we, we have a shortage of power now, we have a shortage of RAM that seems to be, in the short and medium term, fundamentally unfixable.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

It is. And it's the demands of eternal growth. It really, it's just because here's the Thing we talk about a lot this week about. We just want a computer that works. Yeah. That isn't going to grow. The company guaranteed 20% year over year, every single quarter.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Quarter.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And it sucks because you should just be able to have a company that grows 3% every quarter. The stock market should like that, but they don't. And as a result, when things consume, they must consume eternally. To your point.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

Yeah, yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

The best example of this recently is the instant pot, Right?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Love an instant pot. Everybody loves an instant pot. It's too good. It's so good, nobody needed to buy new instant pots.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Instant pot went out of business. Well.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Because they got bought by private equity.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, that too. But also forever. They could. They could. Couldn't hit that mass growth because instant pot. Too good. It just works.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

A pressure cooker is a pressure cooker.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah. And they were one of the first digital ones. But it's still. It works and it works well. So sorry. You couldn't grow fast enough. You're dead. Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And it sucks because. I don't know, they. I have this somewhat. I don't know, maybe this is not nihilistic.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Would they have died if private equity hadn't bought them?

[Devindra Hardawar]

No, probably not.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

They were private.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, they were.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

They were private.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

They could just keep chugging along and do your thing.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

If you're a private company, you don't have share. Well, I guess you have investors, but you don't. Shareholders saying you have to grow. You don't have Jim Cramer up your asshole.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And it's. It's unfortunate, but I think that there is a level of this. Honestly, I'm glad you brought this up. I think the thing that happens before the AI bubble is just the. The ultimate slowdown because.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

What was like, the fact that, like, it's kind of insane the Dell did such a big song and dance last year, and then we're like, actually, Jake, Okay, I'm kidding. That was a bit.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Because it hit him where it hurts.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

They directly saw falling sales because they could draw the line to the rebranding because of that. They're like, oh, shit, what do we do? We got to refocus on consumers.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Which is so bizarre, though.

[Devindra Hardawar]

If only people loudly told them that this was a mistake from the beginning.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

If only there were [e-mail] that they could have read in detail last year. But it's like, that's. That's really, like, this is very bad, this RAM crisis.

[Devindra Hardawar]

This is bad.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

It's so. I'm really glad you brought this up.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

Because it's so scary what now then happens with. Because I think something that we've talked about also is I think like, you know, kind of like what you're saying off the top. The financial element of the AI bubble is one that we can see it for what it is but that there are a multitude of ways in which they've been able to juggle find some new frontier of growth and more dance. These structural issues that we keep coming across feel non negotiable. So what effect do. Do you guys see them as being? Risk of some sort of breaking point?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yes.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

In terms of the AI infrastructure overbuild. In terms of adoption amongst consumers. I mean like what like let's say for, let's say that nothing happens in terms of degradation of the financial conditions. Is the structural limitations that we're seeing now with the RAM sufficient to impose like a crisis?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

This is basically what I'm. You're saying it so much more eloquently than what I'm asking but that's basically exactly what I'm asking.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Chloe, you're too rude about yourself. You were completely on the money. You were also Ed, here's the thing and I think Devindra, you have some thoughts in this as well. It's you. You can get more debt. Money can be found elsewhere. The Singaporean was the, the country's fund. I should remember the name for that. They invest it, they're going to invest in anthropic. More money can be found. There's a limit, but we're not at it yet. There are limits to power and here's the thing. 1.5 terabytes per. I'm gonna guess VR 288 HP. Whatever the 10 power.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

That's what I was going to guess.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Of course you're constantly like the GB 300 is $4.5 million and how the hell do the economics work? What do you mean a data center reit? Ed, I don't get this. People are saying that the cost of inference is going down, it's going up. Let's talk about high bandwidth ram. You're constantly in my text with this.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, I won't get.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, you just won't stop talking about models. No, but it's just real simple. Nvidia's are saying we're gonna build the biggest fucking hugest tower ever. And by the way, it's full of more RAM than ever. They haven't announced the price of their new big enterprise GPUs. I think they're going to be catastrophically more expensive because they have more RAM than ever. It's like everything, including the thing that needs debt, the borrowed money to keep going is gonna get more expensive. Expensive consumer devices are going to get more expensive. To your point, Ed, it's like, yeah, they've been able to get away with it because you can find more venture capital money, you can find more debt, you can find more assholes to loan you money. You can't find more ram, you can't find more power is not something you don't just like plug into the fucking wall. There are literal limits. And it's like we're now, we're now seeing the. After that. I can't get over the fact they raised the laptop's price. 500 bucks. Yeah, that's fucking.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That is overnight is the, that makes.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

It unaffordable for most people. That's, that is a huge. And this is, this stops people upgrading and upgrade cycles of what make these companies live and die at a time when there's less. You can get a laptop from you even. I could get like an M3 MacBook Air and be pretty fucking happy. I'm using a 3 year old MacBook Pro and it fucking bangs. That shit's shit's flying.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's a computer that works. Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But the thing is why would I upgrade? And that's actually like, that sounds like a cutesy thing. So that's actually a huge question. Because I'm a like a tech pig. Like I, I'm a hog. I love my laptops and my goo, my dude ads and my gizmos and shit. And I'm like, I don't fucking need a new laptop. Why would I need that? It's going nice and fair.

[Devindra Hardawar]

That is a good problem. Like that is usually it's good for consumers. It's good for consumers. It's a good, you made a good product that lasts. Unfortunately that is bad for your overall revenues, but that's good that you are capable of doing that. I wish more companies were capable of doing that. Honestly. I'm also thinking about where we are. The climate crisis isn't slowing down, right. All these companies that for so long were talking about, oh, we have all these climate goals, we're going to reduce energy, we're going to be more conservative. Once AI shit started happening, they shut, shut up because all their stuff blew away. That didn't matter anymore because it was all AI all the time. And yeah, the world right now is going to be more expensive when it comes to Gadgets. The world in the future is going to be hard to live in because of all the stupid decisions happening right now. And I'm so angry about all of it.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And we are now going to transition to our final 30 minutes of this episode. This next one is brought to you by Gen Z Biz. Now, it's just a store where you can just buy Zyn to your door. I don't actually know what Zyn is. Please, if you're, if you're one of my three Zoomer listeners, please email me what Zin is and how you consume it. And can you tell me what's cool as well? I haven't known what that was for 10 years. And we're back in the room. We're back in the room. We've got the Vindra hardware from Engad.

[Devindra Hardawar]

What's up?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

We've got Edward Ungueso Jr. Of Tech Bubble Newsletter.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

Hello, Hello.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And we've got Chloe Radcliffe, actress, star of this, this thing on. I got targeted on Instagram.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Star is real generous now.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

What's great was the clip I got was like Cradley Booper being talked to. Sorry, we'll own it. We'll own it. Thank you, Christ. And going, look, yeah, I'm in. Stand up. And Cradley Booper going, what? Anyway, stand up comedian Chloe Radcliffe. Um, and yet we're back talking about RAM and the slowdown. And I'm going to be honest, I know it seems bad now and it will be bad. The tech industry needs this. The tech industry needs to be punished for the growth lust because there is no, there's no sustainable future doing this. And this was also inevitable. And I think it's scary.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

So they're just, I mean, so then is the, you know, if we if ideal what delays on the products that are the most RAM intensive to give infrastructure a chance to fill a backlog and to give the next generation.

[Devindra Hardawar]

There are rumors that they may revive old hardware. There's a rumor that Nvidia's RTX 3060, which is a 2.3-year-old GPU, may be back in market soon because it's using older, slower RAM too. So it's not using the newest, fastest.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Of the gpu, Is it a less powerful gpu?

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yes, way less powerful. But it's also like, it's like 2G generations back. It is a sign that you have to bring back the past because the present is unaffordable and you cannot make it. So I don't know. That's never happened before.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, I've never heard of that.

[Devindra Hardawar]

We don't know if this is true, but this is the rumor.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I thought that was confirmed. I'm glad you said it was a rumor.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

So I. Okay, as my responsibility as layperson, I then think about how do normal people experience this? Because normal people have heard AI a million times. We've heard RAM is getting more expensive. But, like, I think I'm smart and I didn't know any of this shit. I've heard these words, but I don't know the details.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Right.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And so as a, as a representative of normal people, as stuff gets more and more and more expensive, so far, the American population has just, just borne the load of more expensive life. People have people complain about it. It's very frustrating. It negatively impacts people's physical health and their ability to enjoy life. But, like, pretty much everybody has just.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Sort of gone, well, the people who can afford it eat the cost. But then we don't hear about the people who.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But there's. There's also a limit. Finish your question.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Sorry. Yes, and. But, but I think the people who can't afford it eat the cost too.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I think, I mean, like, in other ways, I guess. But here's the thing.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Here's the thing. You're saying that for now there is a limit. And what it is, is people are eating the cost in as much as they can. At some point, there's a limit because there are people who wear like, Apple's AirPod Max. I don't really think that that's like a regular person thing. It's like 500 bucks. But those have RAM in them. Modern headphones have RAM in it. Like there are headphones that have RAM in them.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Even cheap laptop laptops have RAM in them. Everything has RAM in it. So, yes, the cost of everything already went up and never came down. There is a point when people will just stop buying new electronics at all.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And I have a thesis, okay, so there's a point where people will stop buying new electronics at all. And then there is some further point at which people will draw a line at inflationary prices overall, whether it's in electronic, whether it's in whatever. I'm. Because I'm sure, sure that RAM shortages are going to affect things that don't have RAM in it, because the things that are used to ship, those things have RAM in it. You know, it's like, I. Right, I can imagine that this, that this impacts prices overall. And what we have seen in trend lines is that once prices go up, they stay up. They don't come back down for the most part.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

So, yeah, that might actually not happen with ram. Because if they.

[Devindra Hardawar]

My.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

My real crazy scenario that I want to think about is AMD Nvidia buying all this ram. What the fuck they do with it when no one wants to buy their bullshit anymore. All of these companies that have built massive allocations for RAM won't have any use.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah. But other like consumer goods, I think once those prices go up.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

The thing is, if no one's buying them, they will have. Because what we're talking about here isn't just like the top crust. It's everything.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But so far, people are still buying them. People are tightening belts. But I think a lot of people, people are just spending way more money than they would have been.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

They're all the stores and not saving.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And like, because.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Because you're living pay to paycheck to paycheck with no safety net.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Right. But that is rough. Yeah. But I think a lot of people are paying the higher prices rather than not buying the items there are.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's. Yeah. To a certain degree. Like sometimes you need it, Sometimes you need it. I do think we gotta look at this culture culturally too, because people don't just sit down and read business news and make logical business decisions as economists think. We do think we respond to culture. We respond to like that's how things are reacting. And I think it is interesting that the youngs, the Gen Zs and all are looking back to pre smartphone culture, pre social media culture.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And how prevalent is this?

[Devindra Hardawar]

I mean, it's just like they grew up watching reruns of the Office.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Right.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And then there's a lot of things about this they're theorizing is that this is a world they probably will never actually see. Just like having a simple office job that's like that. And there's a lot of like looking back towards retro stuff. I think culturally we will. We may regress a little. It's like going back to the old video Cars, but like you regress back to, okay, we gave too much of our lives to social media. We will just take a step back.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Okay, so this is. I was thinking about this on the plane to CES as I was like sort of collating some of my thoughts about Tekken 8ai and stuff. And I actually think I lay much more of the sin at the feet of the constant entertainment feed.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Oh yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Than I do at the feet of AI. I. I think that social media and the constant input of entertainment has numbed us and has. Has reduced People's interest in making statements or engaging with. With societal ills. Yeah, by, you know, orders of magnitude. And so I actually, to me, I'm sort of like, yeah, AI is whatever bullshit it is, but I actually think that the core of the social ills is the constant drip feed of entertainment that, that just turns your brain, that just dulls you to.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And a lot of people are trying to take a step back from this information overload. And I think we will probably see more of that.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I think we will see more of that. But so my thesis winds up being that I think the break for people, for people living in this inflationary environment, I think that breaking point will be a lot higher than it would be without social media. I think the breaking point will take a lot longer than it would be without.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It feels bad, but you can just pick something up and scroll through things that make your brain go bing, bing.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

So I agree. My thing is, is they forced AI into every social networking app too. AI is everywhere. It's in your ear. I realize I'm doing my same bit that I always do, but it's like when that disappears, gets weird, it kind of becomes obvious it was bullshit that will filter into the feeds. You're kind of already seeing it. You're seeing people, you're seeing random people being anti AI now. People I.

[Devindra Hardawar]

People.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I never talked about it, but two separate things.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, but.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But it creates the kind of chaos that makes people be like, wait, why do I need new fucking laptop? Why don't just go on ebay and buy an HP Omen from 4 years ago? Why I just buy a iPhone 16.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Or enjoy what you have. Enjoy what you have.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Or what you have is fine. Like this iPad is over a year old and I will probably use it for another three years or more. I don't know what they could possibly do.

[Devindra Hardawar]

The iPad Pro, by the way, a stunning example of a product Apple spent years being like, why does this exist? A super powerful iPad, who will spend the money of a laptop to just get an iPad? And they spent so long figuring out not what to do. Like they had no idea what to do with anything. That's endemic of like another issue, like them trying to push into bigger categories and more expensive products. But it's all kind of part of the same thing. Like, you gotta push more, you need more. The information overload. We were not, we didn't evolve to process this much information. So I think that has had a cultural impact on our brains. Covid has like rewired people completely. You would think it would push us to be more, you know, more socially supportive or socially supportive, like try to come together. And it just broke our brains in other ways. So it's just like, I don't know.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But I think that the reason it broke people's brains was facilitated by the entertainment feed. And I want to differentiate that from a social media platform where you can go and, you know, talk to your friends and family. Truly, to me it is.

[Devindra Hardawar]

They all kind of ended up becoming entertainment.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

This is. But, but it's why I'm specifically different, different why I am using the words entertainment feed. Because I think that. How would you define that constant flow of entertainment that is instantly and always accessible and this.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Is this video or this text involved in this or is this only.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I think video is so much more poisonous than text. But I will say I think text is. I think text does a very similar thing.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No, but video is much easier to cycle through and consume a bunch of information fast.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's not even, it's not even just the cycle through. It's that like I open Instagram, I opened Instagram this morning to do a work thing to like find a specific producer and look at who she follows and be like, do I know anybody who she like? It's like a, it's a networking. It's a useful tool. And I opened it and it's some two hours later. Truly, truly, truly. And it's because, because like I see in the little carousel, I see this little 15 second like a girl being like, here's what my boyfriend expected on New Year's and then here's what he actually got. And it's like a very funny video.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Going around and like looking at Gettysburg.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But my brain, my brain is like, I see, I see thing move. And that makes me like, I like things like that.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I'm so fucking glad I'm autistic. I'm so fucking glad I see that. I'm like, I got something else to do. I'm doing, I'm doing work. I just, it's so cool.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

Cool.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I don't. I see that. I'm like, yeah, trying to fuck with this. Happened to me like I'm a pig, but I'm not that kind of hog.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Last night I was like, I had hours free for, for once and see, I was like, I could watch a movie, I could do all this stuff. Sat down, started looking at TikTok. I was like, you know what? This is comfy. Yeah, this is nice. And also because my brain has been at like 200% the entire week. So it just needs to like cool down. But it is such a great, like.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Cool it down with the, like, with.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Like the Bing brain stuff rather than.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I'm gonna put on a movie and cool down in front of the movie, which is one bigger.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And I think that the pressure is just increasing on people and will eventually pop. And I think the pressure is increasing from all sides.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I just think it's going to take a lot longer now than it would have with the technology we had 20 years ago.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I will say that the problem is the first of all, the real world was never meant to connect with finance this much. Most people were never meant to know what HB RAM was, was. No one was meant to know what a GPU was. Seven years ago, if you told you ask some what a GPU was, they would call the police. Like, they'd be like, why are you saying strange words to me? You're a witch. And no offense to witches, but it's just now everyone's kind of aware of this and it's in their head and every boss and company is saying, AI, you must do AI now.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You will.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

You are stupid. You're a pig. And a. There's a great video of a comedian I don't remember is just try banana now. Now. And it's just like. That's all I think of with this stuff is just harassing people. I think you're right in that it's gonna take a little longer because people are so addicted to feeds and the feeds are so intense, it just numbs them. But I think that there is a degree of harassment from the AI stuff that means that when this starts to burst, it's gonna be like fucking Coruscant and Return of the Jedi. I think people are gonna be fucking excited to see this burn. I think people are just so fucking angry. And the fucking price of all electro. A time when we're most the angriest we've ever been at the computer. I'm not saying I don't know the order of events.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

But I think this is.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I know this is the thing is there's so much happening in the world right now. There's also the literal destruction of democracy right in front of us. Right? There is war. We're being led by warmongers. And also the economy is collapsing. All this stuff is happening. I tend to look at like, what will be the broad societal ways, like we move through this. And the only way is like, we do have to step away from the tech a little bit. But it's also like, I don't know, doing those social things that we didn't used to do or like, we kind of stepped away from. So. I love libraries. Hell yeah, libraries are great.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Libraries. Fucking great.

[Devindra Hardawar]

We let a lot of people really shit on libraries and also strip away their resources and stuff. It is things like that where you see the rest of your community, you can help other each each other. You learn together. That's the sort of thing I want to support moving forward. And we need that.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I will also say, like I said this yesterday on the episode. It's like I am a rare thing of like, the Internet has allowed me to become a person rather than maybe less of one.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yes. That's like, I was a socially anxious kid and technology and the Internet did help me. So. Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And the thing is, you just. I think there's just a level of intentionality where it's like, I. The feeds don't work on me. I get deep anxiety when I have an infinite scroll. Like I have the opposite. It has the opposite effect on me. I'm like, why won't this end? I can't watch anything.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Everything.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I don't want to look at it because it's. It's worrying me. This is bothering, which is literally everyone else is different. It's so strange. But it's like these tools also let me talk to everyone in this room in an instant. They let me put on an Insane podcast for 20 hours in a week and nobody stops. But there are actual beautiful things that technology can do. And what's great is you could use the same technology from five fucking years ago. I'm not even saying put your phone down and burn it. I'm saying use what you got now or use what just happened. Computers. Putting aside all the growth capitalism stuff, computers are fucking great right now.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Computers are great. People are going back to personal music players. Just like a thing that plays music. You know what? That is beautiful. And the kids right now, the thing people are saying is like, they don't know if they're trusting an image. That's AI. That's an inherent distrust in AI and calling it out as a cultural object. I think that's fascinating too. So we are seeing the signs that there is going to be some sort of like pushback. I don't want there to be like the Battlestar Galactica thing. Right?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Or the dune jihad.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You get a B.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

We're going to get just the guy.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Who just like a lot of revolt.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

Jihad us, you know?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No, it's like, we don't have to.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Go all the way.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

It's the tweet where the guy's like, what's the highest number? One million. It's it. But at the same time, my pushback. Not. Sorry, this is not a pushback. I'm agreeing with everything, but it's the way through this is to just be a little bit more fucking intentional with it. I know it's hokey. Don't look at this. You're going to look at it. Don't hate yourself, but be aware that something's being done to you with it. And also remember, you can call any of your friends using these things. You can talk to any of your friends if you're feeling lonely in the said use signal or imessage.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Did you see they brought the landline back? One of the interesting products of like, that was in the holiday season. I think it's more like uppity rich parents are doing this, but they're like, there's a startup that made a handset and you can program like your friends to it. So your kids friends, it's a handset. They pick it up, they dial their friends. I think there is a cord. There may be a cordless person, but it's basically handset.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

It's a phone's phone. Numbers memorized.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, it's more like these are your trusted contacts. That's all this thing can call. It's back to the days where we.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Were just like, is it plugged into your wall or is it a cell phone that just plugs in?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I think because we can be quite cynical about CES and my God, if we got another two hours today and four hours tomorrow and one hour on Saturday. So we will be. But there's also a degree of, like, as much as we complain, I got to hang out with my friends all week.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I got to hang out with connection. That's it.

[Matt Binder]

I got to do it.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And I got to record using a weird Rodecaster Pro 2.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Look at this thing. It's amazing.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And we could record the audio, have one for Matt Osowski, produce it, make.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

A beat on that.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It looks like I could make a beat on that.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

You have a soundboard as well. You can do all sorts of noises, but it's like you can do really cool shit with a computer now and you can talk to your friends with it. It's. But the reason that things are shit is the people that are making the interfaces, the social interfaces are getting in the way. Understanding that and starting from that position is what makes things better for you. They're not going to make it better for you. They're fucking assholes. Mark Zuckerberg is overseeing a fraudulent operation. 10% of their revenue in 2024 for Meta was from scams and fraud. That is a fucking report thing from Jeff Horwitz of Reuters. Like, that should tell you everything. It does not mean that the computer is inherently bad. What they've done to the computer is bad. And what we can do with the computer is the solution in that you can pull together a bunch of people just using text and email. I fucking just did it this week. There are great things. You can do it text, text, text. Go meet in real life. You can take fucking photos on your phone. Awesome. There are still good things to be done. I know this is so hokey, but I think it's.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's a good point. It's not about being completely anti tech, it's about intensifying.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

It's about being anti tech industry at the moment. Because it's like we like Pebble. Because Pebble's like, what if a device had a use case? And everyone's like, fuck this shit. What do you mean you won't grow by 22% year over year, every quarter you put piece of. Except he's private, doesn't matter. And it's just buy years at the moment. That's my big. That's actually my better offline 2020. I love buy used.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Buy refurb.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, Buy refurb. Buy used. Don't give these fucking companies another fucking dollar until they can prove that they can earn it. Because that is the real problem. They want to grow forever. You want to grow forever. Make useful shit. But the actual internals of the computer. I also will address something that people email me occasionally, which is, oh, the computer industry. It used to be good. Whatever. I don't know if it used to be good, but it used to be better. But there are beautiful things from the computer.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah. Part of how we got here is that we didn't ask cultural questions. Right. We didn't push back against certain elements. Like, I was there when social media was just starting out and it was like, oh, yeah, look at this feed of information.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

It was cool.

[Devindra Hardawar]

But it was also, we knew Mark Zuckerberg was a piece of shit from the beginning, but didn't we?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Most people did not.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Most people did not. But there were enough stories about, oh, look at this kid who dropped out of Harvard and like did this thing. But there were stories about what he did before. How the shitty sexist proto social network he made who he was. Those stories were out there. And I watched this kid who didn't finish college but also had no real awareness of the world be propped up by VCs and the entire industry as some sort of boy king. And what he did was create a thing that just generated money. Right. And that the entire point of Facebook 2000 late 2000s to 2010s was, was just as much engagement as possible. It was just that farming. And then everybody copied that and that broke us because they didn't want to create something good. They just wanted to create something that addicted us. So it's like cigarettes.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

It's that and the scourge of neoliberalism and the idea that so many things, everything, that the market is dominant. The market would never incentivize something bad again.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Everyone talks about the lack of regulations in the 2010s. That didn't help.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

You talk about killing baby Hitler. That's great. I think baby Milton Friedman and baby Ronald Reagan put them on the top of the pile.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

Get me started.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yes. We got all sorts of babies.

[Devindra Hardawar]

There's a lot of babies. There's a lot of babies.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

A lot of babies. No, but it's. But the thing is, it's like the incentives are the problem and the only thing we can do as consumers is don't stop using tech.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I think that that's an unrealistic thing. Like Chloe, it's your life. Like, you have to use tech. Especially as a stand up. You kind of.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I have to use social media.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, you have to. There's just no other way around it. Don't buy a new phone. I'm done buying new fucking shit. I'm. I'm going.

[Devindra Hardawar]

They're alliance.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

You haven't seen how broken my phone.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No, but go and, go and buy a. Chloe. Chloe, go and buy a refurb.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I just looked at it.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You know what's great? Refurb iPhone.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

I actually think I am done buying new phones. I'm going to buy the refurb forever.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I buy my, my parents refurb iPhones every couple of years from Amazon. Perfect for them. Yep, cool. Works great. They, the hardware lasts and then they're still like before. No new shit.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

No new shit. Unless it's cool. Unless it's fucking new and cool and, and good. Fuck ces. Fuck. It's like. But really though, if you can buy new, buy used, go on ebay, go on whatever, go on Craigslist, like go and buy from a regular person. Circulate that money in the real world. Take it out of the fucking stock market. Cash. Cash. Okay. I'm going a little insane, but it's like I stand by it because it's like all of the new prices are.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Going to go up. Yeah. And when it comes to social media, I think we can be more intentional. Right. It's like for the longest time people are making arguments like, okay, I'm going to start stay on X. Even though Elon Musk bought it and destroyed Twitter, I'm going to stay on the stage now. It's a fricking CSAM generating garbage machine. It's like, I think we can start to make those moral choices where it's like career wise, I would be better off staying on X probably. But you have to have some sort of moral center. And I think we need to ask more of that of ourselves right now. So get off of X.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

You need to. I want to stay on there for my fucking publisher. And I might talk to them about it. It's just like it's a horrifying pedo generation.

[Devindra Hardawar]

You don't want to be there. And they're literally. Nobody's doing anything about the pornography and the CSAM being generated on it. And that just exists. And they just got a bunch of new funding. They got rewarded for this.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Well, they did that so they could buy GPUs.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yes.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Now actually, I want to end with a fun idea. Here's a fun idea that I think everyone's going to love. So here is how Elon Musk ruins his life using AI. So Elon Musk is doing. They just raised $20 billion. Most of that is going to go to GPUs for AI for Grok.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And where did they raise that from VCs.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

VCs. Oh, fuck, I forget like, who exactly were the venture capitalists.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

But is it mostly VC?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

It's mostly VCs in debt and Nvidia. So they're doing that to build more data centers. They're losing over a billion dollars a month just on the current thing. They're going to build more data centers, which will lose them even more money. Elon Musk's money mostly comes from leverage, which means just borrowing on his current holdings. He's not particularly liquid and he's added the most money losing thingy ever to a social network which already loses money. And R Grok on Reddit. Everyone there should be redacted. It's mostly just people generating horrifying things of woman. Here's the thing. Every time he does that. It's probably five to ten bucks and it's happening millions of times a day. This could actually lead. AI, could lead to the destruction of someone like that. And people say, oh, Elon Musk always finds more money. There are actual limits to Ed's point.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

Point, sure.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

There are actual limits to things, I.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Would say for normal people. Yes. He is still. He is the world's richest.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

He's finding ways to do it because he's the richest man on paper.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And he got so much like The Twitter deal's $13 billion. That's nothing compared to the data centers. I want everyone to just think about and laugh about the idea that this man is building big ass data centers that just. I'm just losing money.

[Devindra Hardawar]

He keeps talking about Mars. Let him go to Mars. Let him go to Mars. Let him be hoisted by his own.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

If you've read the beginning of Red Mars, you know, there's great.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's totally great.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

There's some ideas there.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

In that first prologue about what might happen to Elon Musk.

[Devindra Hardawar]

I love Kim Stanley. He's so good.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Yeah, it's. And I realized that it's tough. And I know as we come to the end of this block, I know we've been quite cynical. This is so hokey. And I do this every single. The best thing you can do when you hear this stuff, when you're like, I'm upset with this is love your friends harder. Tell them you love everyone in this room. Genuinely so happy to have everyone here. But it's like that little thing that you think is so immaterial will save lives, will make people's lives happier. Tell people you love their. Go online. Use social media to say, I think, Chloe, you're insanely funny and I've watched you only get funnier. Davindra, I followed your work for like a decade. Edward Ongueso Jr. An insanely talented man. And I love reading your work and I love having you on the mic. These things are actually very easy to do and easier because of digital. There is never go, you're listening to this. Go and fucking do that to literally anyone you know, family member, friend, creator, tell them you love them, love their shit.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And why.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

That is actually something that digital communication allows you to do today that will make the world better. Buy used. Buy used now. If you want a new thing, buy a used one. It's probably fine. That is the only way we begin fixing things and these moral choices like Davindra mentioned, mentioned.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

But what if I want A chatgpt wrapper to tell me what color my is. And if that is gonna be indicative of a health problem.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

You could just use Microsoft Copilot, which will be in a Windows laptop from a year ago.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

Microsoft 365 copilot.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

And you have to turn the laptop around and point it at your poop in the toilet and then take a photo.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

And then also at the same time, look at the chatbot and be like, is this working?

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

You got this.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Yeah, we're gonna see some cool stuff like these, these local ll LLMs. We're going to go back to punk tech, right? People building their own cool little models. Little cool things like we're, we're going to be back there. Their own little gadgets powered by punk tech. I want to see that more.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

And the thing is, I know it's fucking grim out there and it really is. We are still. One of the problems in society is we're hyper connected and full of technology. One of the cool things is we are as well. And there is a ton of tech that exists today. You don't need to worry about the. The future that will do what you want to do. Buy used and also tell your friends and family you love them. Tell creators you love their work. Share their shit.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Yeah, give me little compliments.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Give. No, I'm actually deadly serious though. Give friends little compliments that you can do that in seconds. Now. It doesn't matter where they are in the world as long as they got an Internet connection. It's so fucking hokey, but I think it's easy to miss. And I think like as we come to an end, as we come to the end here, has come to the end of this blog. It's worth saying that.

[Devindra Hardawar]

And you.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

You know what? I'll let everyone plug something. Devendra, what are you working on at the moment? What do you want people to read?

[Devindra Hardawar]

And gadgets where I'm doing their stuff. Check out RCS coverage. I also do a movie podcast. The film [e-mail]. can't wait to see your movie, Chloe. But maybe don't listen to my review. I don't know. I don't know.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Edwin Groiser Jr. What are you excited about writing? What are you writing at the moment?

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

Working on this very weird essay for print magazine.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Tell me.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

I mean, yeah, I've pitched the same idea. You're not supposed to do this. I pitched the same idea to two places, but I know one is gonna actually say yes and the other won't and it's One of my favorite speeches is MLK's letter to Christians. It's from the perspective of Paul writing to American Christians and kind of like sussing out the society they have and warning about it. But I wanted to invert it. So I wrote like a letter from a future where fascists won. And it's letter from the fascist who won to the fascist now as a way to reverse. Talk about stuff that's going on now.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Fuck yeah.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

That sounds amazing.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

I don't like researching it, but it's been interesting.

[Devindra Hardawar]

It's a fun experiment.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So stuff like that. I've been trying to do a lot more fiction experiments because I've been doing more readings lately, so.

[Devindra Hardawar]

Good.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

Excited for that.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Fucking great. Chloe, where you playing with then?

[Chloe Radcliffe]

I'm doing Cincinnati this weekend. The 9th and 10th, or 10th and 11th, whatever the Friday, Saturday is link.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Will be in there.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Then Washington D.C. the next weekend, MLK weekend, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then that following week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Not a weekend. I'm doing my solo show Cheat in Philadelphia. Come on out to that. After that, Vermont, Fort Collins, yada, yada yada.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Fargo and I have been putting a link to getting a permanent discount to my newsletter in in these things. I've not done my paid newsletter. It's a chunk of my income. Please, God, subscribe to my paid newsletter. I really, if I can, in a year's time, if I can double from here, I can just do this. Yeah, really happy.

[Guest/Additional Panelist]

Also subscribe to mine. Yeah, we'll figure out a special. We can do an ad ad.

[Edward Ongweso Jr.]

Two ads are better than one discount. Yeah, but really though, if you're going to put your money into a anything. Sean Paul Adams, who is a friend of the show, friend of the sweet, he passed sadly last year. His son is epileptic. So we are honoring him by getting you to donate to the Pediatric Epilepsy Research Consortium. His family and friends would deeply appreciate you doing so. And so would I. Thank you so much. We'll be back for two hours in a few hours. This has been incredible. I love doing this show. I love you all. Thank you for listening. Listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osawski. You can check out more of his music and audio [e-mail] m a t t o s o w s k-I.com you can email me at ezetteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat. Where's your ed at? To visit the Discord and go to R betteroffline to check out our Reddit thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or.

[Chloe Radcliffe]

Wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.