Quitting Booze, Quitting Alexa, and AI Tries to Replace Us All | E014 | Diggnation

Summary

Diggnation (Rebooted) Episode E014: "Quitting Booze, Quitting Alexa, and AI Tries to Replace Us All"

Release Date: May 13, 2025
Hosts: Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht

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1. Introduction

After a 15-year hiatus, Diggnation returns with its rebooted format, diving into the hottest internet stories with Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht. In this episode, titled "Quitting Booze, Quitting Alexa, and AI Tries to Replace Us All," the hosts explore personal lifestyle changes, advancements in artificial intelligence, and the implications of these technologies on human interaction and community building.

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2. Quitting Booze: Kevin’s Sobriety Journey

Kevin Rose opens the episode by sharing his personal journey of abstaining from alcohol. Having been sober for 15 days, Kevin discusses the initial challenges and the positive impacts on his health and wellbeing.

• Challenges and Benefits:
  “First 10 days sucked. It's called wet draws, dude.” ([02:27])
  Kevin acknowledges the difficulties of early sobriety but highlights improvements in his physical appearance and overall health.
  “I'm like glowing. I have less wrinkles.” ([02:36])

• Support Systems:
  Kevin emphasizes the importance of a support network, mentioning friends who have successfully maintained sobriety and the benefits of reaching the 90-day mark.
  “The 90 day mark is super special because you actually get comfort and like go back to that childhood kind of like anxiety-less state.” ([05:01])

• Alternative Vices:
  To replace his drinking habit, Kevin shares his new routines, including sauna sessions and spending quality time with his children building Legos.
  “Sauna is huge... Legos with my kids.” ([06:01])

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3. Quitting Alexa: Alex’s Move to Home Assistant

Alex Albrecht discusses his decision to transition away from Amazon’s Alexa devices in favor of a more personalized and secure home automation system.

• Motivation for Change:
  Alex explains his desire to reduce reliance on commercial ecosystems and enhance privacy.
  “I didn't have to touch a switch. All the lights go on and off with simple voice commands.” ([39:56])

• DIY Home Automation:
  He elaborates on setting up his own LLM (Large Language Model) server to manage home automation tasks, integrating tools like 11 Labs for text-to-speech.
  “I'm gonna build my own LLM box in the house.” ([40:11])

• Practical Applications:
  Alex shares practical examples of their smart home setup, including automated lighting synced with their entertainment systems.
  “When I hit play, all the lights go down into theater mode.” ([41:01])

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4. AI and Human Replacement: Navigating the Future

A significant portion of the episode delves into the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence and the potential risks associated with AI replacing human roles, both socially and professionally.

• AI in Conversations:
  Kevin and Alex discuss the emergence of AI sexbots and the broader implications of AI attempting to replace human interactions.
  “AI Sexbots... it's gonna make conversations more stable but not replace human connection.” ([27:22])

• Community Integrity:
  The hosts express concerns over AI bots infiltrating online communities, referencing recent Reddit experiments where AI bots successfully changed users' views.
  “You have to make sure that there's a verified human on the back end.” ([35:18])

• Role of AI in Moderation:
  They explore how AI could assist in moderating discussions, fact-checking, and maintaining the quality of conversations without supplanting human moderators.
  “AI should be an helping partner... more like a moderator in the room.” ([30:04])

• Quotes:

  • Kevin Rose: “There are going to be a thousand AI agents trying to convince you of something.” ([35:13])
  • Alex Albrecht: “If we can use AI to bring people closer together, that is a win in my book.” ([29:52])

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5. Building and Supporting Community: Groundbreakers Initiative

The hosts introduce their Groundbreakers program, aimed at fostering community involvement and supporting charitable causes.

• Fundraising and Charity:
  Groundbreakers sold out a 25,000-strong list, raising funds which were donated to The Nature Conservancy, Thorn, and Code.org based on community votes.
  “Nature Conservancy won out $95,000 going over to them.” ([24:36])

• Community Feedback:
  Justin highlights the value of community feedback in shaping product development, ensuring that the platform aligns with user needs and promotes meaningful interactions.
  “The real secret sauce is people meeting each other and building on the platform.” ([26:29])

---

6. Guest Appearance: J.C. Hayes Joins as Advisor

J.C. Hayes, with a rich background in community building and digital media, joins the episode to discuss his role as an advisor for Diggnation.

• Background and Expertise:
  Hayes shares his diverse experiences, from being a smokejumper and founding GameSpot in the late '90s to launching successful ventures like GoPro and an alcohol company.
  “GameSpot was early days gamers... then I was like, I'm out. I'm going to GoPro.” ([45:00])

• Vision for Diggnation:
  Hayes expresses enthusiasm about contributing to Diggnation’s growth, emphasizing the importance of authentic community engagement and leveraging his experience to build a sustainable platform.
  “These are the brains that need to build platforms that are bad for society? Doesn't really make sense.” ([50:32])

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7. AI in Creative Industries: Runway AI’s Animated Pilot

Alex introduces Runway AI's initiative to generate an animated pilot, "Mars and Civ. No Vacancy," entirely through AI.

• Project Overview:
  Runway AI leverages generative models to create pilot content, showcasing both the potential and limitations of AI in animation.
  “It's a little creepy... feels like walking through mud.” ([51:56])

• Implications for Animation:
  The hosts debate the future of animation, contemplating whether AI will complement or replace human animators, and the ethical considerations of AI-generated content in mainstream media.
  “There is a happy balance to be made. Most big companies are hesitant to embrace AI in their creative processes.” ([58:16])
  “This feels like a giant squash step. I can't imagine a streamer saying yes to this.” ([52:32])

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8. Fitness Technology: WHOOP 5 Tracker Review

Kevin introduces the latest iteration of the WHOOP fitness tracker, discussing its features and benefits.

• New Features:
  The WHOOP 5 offers a 14+ day battery life, wireless charging, enhanced sensor frequencies, and advanced health metrics like on-demand ECG and blood pressure insights.
  “It has a wireless charging pack... sensor frequency is 26 times a second.” ([64:07])

• User Experience:
  Kevin shares his personal experience with the WHOOP 5, highlighting improvements in heart rate variability (HRV) and overall health monitoring.
  “Mine says my heart is eight or nine years younger than my biological age.” ([65:00])

• Comparison with Competitors:
  The discussion contrasts WHOOP’s subscription model with devices like the Apple Watch, emphasizing WHOOP’s comprehensive data analytics and specialized health features.
  “WHOOP is free per month with their subscription plan, whereas Apple Watch doesn't have a monthly fee.” ([66:48])

---

9. 3D Printing Adventures: Alex’s DIY Projects

Alex shares his recent foray into 3D printing, detailing the process of designing and printing custom parts for home automation.

• Project Description:
  Faced with a malfunctioning electric strike plate, Alex designed a spacer using Fusion360 to prevent water damage, showcasing the practical applications of 3D printing.
  “I had to figure out how to use Fusion360... built the device that exists in virtual space.” ([73:35])

• Future Plans:
  Inspired by the capabilities of 3D printing, Alex contemplates investing in a high-end resin printer to expand his DIY projects, discussing the potential for creating intricate and durable components.
  “This is the first day and I got one. It’s coming.” ([75:15])

• Quotes:

  • Alex Albrecht: “It's like a game changer for even just the little thing.”* ([75:25])
  • Kevin Rose: “You'll just go around making door handles for everyone.”* ([78:59])

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10. Apple's Ruling on External Purchases: Industry Implications

The hosts dissect Apple's recent legal ruling requiring apps to allow external link purchases for subscriptions and products, effectively bypassing Apple's in-app purchase system and its 30% commission.

• Overview of the Ruling:
  Apple is mandated to permit third-party payment systems within apps, enabling developers to direct users to external websites for purchases without incurring Apple’s fees.
  “Apple has to allow third-party external link purchases... bypassing the 30% commission.” ([79:22])

• Impact on Developers and Services:
  The decision provides major platforms like Spotify and Kindle the ability to sell directly to consumers, potentially reducing costs for both developers and users.
  “You can skip that line so you don't have to wait a couple years.” ([08:08])

• Economic Considerations:
  While Apple argues that the commission covers distribution and infrastructure costs, critics like Kevin highlight the disproportionate impact on developers, especially those relying on microtransactions.
  “Apple is taking 30% of transactions for things like buying a hat for $0.99.” ([84:10])

• Future Outlook:
  The hosts debate the balance between Apple's ecosystem benefits and its revenue model, contemplating how this ruling might reshape app development and monetization strategies.
  “It's a big shakeup of their... only one player to go to if you're in the Apple ecosystem.” ([83:52])

• Quotes:

  • Kevin Rose: “If you have a subscription model, this is a big deal because it's been four years in the making.” ([63:03])
  • Alex Albrecht: “If you go with someone like Stripe... you have to deal with returns, but they provide valuable services.” ([84:44])

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Conclusion

In this episode, Kevin and Alex navigate through personal lifestyle changes, the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, and significant industry shifts impacting community platforms and app development. Their candid discussions, enriched with personal anecdotes and expert insights, provide listeners with a comprehensive look at the intersection of technology and daily life.

Notable Quotes:

• Kevin Rose: “There are going to be a thousand AI agents trying to convince you of something.” ([35:13])
• Alex Albrecht: “If we can use AI to bring people closer together, that is a win in my book.” ([29:52])
• Kevin Rose: “We have to guard this... ensure that there's a verified human on the back end.” ([36:46])

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Disclaimer: This summary focuses on the core content of the episode, omitting advertisements, intros, outros, and non-essential sections to provide a clear and comprehensive overview for those who haven't listened to the full episode.

Transcript

[Kevin Rose]

Today on dignation. AI Sexbots. Two lines of text that will create any video game you like.

[Alex Albrecht]

I fix my door with models.

[Kevin Rose]

He does.

[Alex Albrecht]

Coming up on Dig Nation. Welcome to dignation. Also potentially hazardous to your health.

[Kevin Rose]

All right, moving on. Why do you have flies in your freaking house?

[Alex Albrecht]

I've noticed in some of these in Southern California and I have shrimp.

[Kevin Rose]

You put zombie and you put eerie in the title and I don't want to do it. Dignation.com.

[Alex Albrecht]

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dignation. Episode number 14. I'm Alex Albrecht.

[Kevin Rose]

And I'm Kevin Rose. Dignation covers some of the hottest stories from around the interwebs, carefully curated and packaged down in bite sized chunks of information that you will enjoy and love.

[Alex Albrecht]

For your money back. And century Tweet. You already got your money back, as it were. Hey, Kevin. How are you, my friend?

[Kevin Rose]

Good to see you.

[Alex Albrecht]

Good to see you. It's been a while. It's a little early. It is for us to be rocking. Hardcore boozing.

[Kevin Rose]

I'm going to see my mom for Mother's Day.

[Alex Albrecht]

By the way, Happy Mother's Day to.

[Kevin Rose]

All the Mother's Day, to all the moms out there and to all the milfs. I'm just kidding.

[Alex Albrecht]

All right, here we go. Let's start it. Let's start it.

[Kevin Rose]

Let's start with the milf.

[Alex Albrecht]

Everything is right about a milf.

[Kevin Rose]

See? Okay, we're agreed. So, okay, this is an odd one, but we'll let that see if Mel cuts it or not.

[Alex Albrecht]

So you are going to.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes. My mom, who's not you.

[Alex Albrecht]

Just stop.

[Kevin Rose]

Let's just keep moving. I'm also at.

[Alex Albrecht]

I didn't say you gave me a look. Wow. What?

[Kevin Rose]

Justin is giving me the look right now.

[Alex Albrecht]

Nobody's giving any look.

[Kevin Rose]

Justin is here. CEO of dig.com Justin, welcome.

[Justin]

Happy Mother's Day to the MILFs.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. Okay. See? Okay.

[Alex Albrecht]

So because of that, I'm gonna see.

[Kevin Rose]

My mom real quick.

[Alex Albrecht]

You have to leave a little earlier.

[Kevin Rose]

Take a little flight and then back for Mother's Day to get back to.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh, you're.

[Kevin Rose]

You're my milf, which is my wife. Yes, I can say that. I think, right. That I'm allowed to say all of.

[Alex Albrecht]

This is probably bad territory. Okay, moving on.

[Kevin Rose]

So I'm back for that. On.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, so we're recording early.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes.

[Alex Albrecht]

So hence having a cappuccino instead of a lovely mascot.

[Kevin Rose]

And if you can't tell, I've had three cups of coffee already. I am like, oh, and I'm sober.

[Alex Albrecht]

That's what we just talked about.

[Kevin Rose]

I know, but I mean, I've been sober for a little while.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh, you have? This is a continuation.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes. And we should talk about for real quick.

[Alex Albrecht]

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

So I'm 15 days in.

[Alex Albrecht]

Okay.

[Kevin Rose]

I'm feeling good.

[Alex Albrecht]

That's good. That's half a month.

[Kevin Rose]

First 10 days sucked.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yep.

[Kevin Rose]

It's called wet draws, dude.

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, look at alcohol.

[Kevin Rose]

I'm like glowing. I have less wrinkles. It's weird. I got a little couple there, but it's.

[Alex Albrecht]

Don't show.

[Kevin Rose]

Alex.

[Alex Albrecht]

Now, look. This is what. This is what bottles of red wine and Jack Daniels every night will do for you.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, you look amazing.

[Alex Albrecht]

I mean, come on. We're almost 50, fucker.

[Kevin Rose]

I know, I know. We're almost 50.

[Alex Albrecht]

This is crazy.

[Kevin Rose]

I will say that. You know, I really. And I know you hate to hear this. Cause we got dignations to shoot and all that shit, but like, I gotta make 90 days, dude. I told my doctor. I told my doctor, your doctor will.

[Alex Albrecht]

Hold you a cannibal.

[Kevin Rose]

A cannibal? What are you saying? Well, my liver enzymes were a little elevated. And you know you're always good. Cause you cheat.

[Alex Albrecht]

It's not cheating.

[Kevin Rose]

Tell him what you do.

[Alex Albrecht]

I just don't drink for like seven days before I go see my doctor. Right. And then he goes, hey, you're looking great. And I go, thank you. Last time he said that, I had the EKG of a professional athlete.

[Kevin Rose]

No, he did not. He did.

[Alex Albrecht]

And I went of like, what? I was like, which. Yeah, yeah, right. Table tennis.

[Kevin Rose]

I mean, even table tennis feels trash. Have you seen those guys on the.

[Alex Albrecht]

Table tennis athlete, shuffleboarding dice.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

Darts.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, exactly.

[Alex Albrecht]

Those big British guys that drink and throw darts.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

I've got their EKG in my chest.

[Kevin Rose]

That's still amazing, though.

[Alex Albrecht]

Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

Hearts.

[Alex Albrecht]

Hopefully not going to be a thing.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, we'll see. So anyway, I'm 15 days in. I want to go 90. It is hard, no doubt, but is Daria joining?

[Alex Albrecht]

No, that is. That is one of the things that's so hard because Heather, every time we're like, hey, we should like, let's just take a little break. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. That first night, Heather's like, well, I'm having a drink.

[Kevin Rose]

Right.

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, this is not helpful.

[Kevin Rose]

That's normally me.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

Because I'll always be like, oh, well, I'm going to pop a bottle of champagne then. Because I'm celebrating love that made it through another day. Well, it's just. It's one of those things where I would consider. I put myself in the bucket of, you know, post Covid. I kind of got into this routine of drinking ice. So just like one of those things where it's like, it's easier when you're stressed out. Like, you know, Justin and I are working our asses off trying to launch this thing. We're raising new fund at tru. We've got like, you know, a bunch of things all going on at the same time. I'm flying all over the place. Like, I'm back on Sunday, then I'm off to SF on Monday. All good things, but like when, you know, five, six o' clock rolls around, having a drink or two, you're just like, ah, okay, long day.

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, you like, we've talked about it a lot on the show, but like, you know, you would have booze before flying because of how you feel about flying.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh yeah, I don't like flying.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. So you should not be in the air. So not having that outlet has probably got to be interesting.

[Kevin Rose]

I've done a few flights since because I've been flying a lot. And I will say that, you know, I think it's one of those things where a buddy of mine who I have three friends now that have gone through aa and not because I wouldn't put any one of them in like the hardcore camp of being like alcoholics, but more like they needed the structure of it all. And the one thing they told me is that like, that 90 day mark is super special because you actually get comfort and like go back to that childhood kind of like anxiety less state because you have to sit with yourself. Cause there is a bit. I mean, if you really drill down to why we drink, let's do it.

[Alex Albrecht]

On your show where we drink heavily.

[Kevin Rose]

No, we can move on. But like, there is a little bit of anxiety there that comes up, whether it be a long day at work or whatever it may be. And you kind of like it's easier to grab for that than sit with that anxiety.

[Alex Albrecht]

100%.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. And so anyway, my buddies that have made it 90 days and beyond, they're always like, just get to 90 days. You'll have that reboot of your system. Your nerves will settle. And then I got a couple of friends that like, now they enjoy it at a celebration a couple times a week. And it's not like a thing. That is just a habit. Right?

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

It's also really hard to reset.

[Alex Albrecht]

You add this structure of like, I'm not gonna drink this hard like thing. And then somebody's like, well, it's my birthday. And you're like, well, okay, I guess I'm drinking now again. You know what I mean?

[Kevin Rose]

So this vodka is.

[Alex Albrecht]

This vodka is good.

[Kevin Rose]

No, I'm just kidding. It's water, it's watering water. But there is.

[Justin]

So Kevin, let me ask you this then. Cause you're saying this is typically like a wind down from the day kind of thing.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes.

[Justin]

What have you found helps out at the end of a day where you're like, okay, it has been a stressful day, it's been really busy. How are you spending that?

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. So there's two things that I found that are really helpful right now. Sauna is huge. Because a sauna will kick the shit out of you to where like you're sweating and you kind of don't want to drink because you just like, you're kind of exhausted and like you want to go to bed afterwards. Saunas are amazing.

[Alex Albrecht]

Okay.

[Kevin Rose]

And then also Legos with my kids. I've been doing a lot of Legos at night with my kids, which is pretty awesome. And then vibe coding, which we're going to talk about one shotters here in a second is my next thing. So those will be my go to vices.

[Alex Albrecht]

I like vibe coding, but I would say too, I wanted to get this out of there because we have. Last week I was drinking the lovely mascot from Harlan.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes.

[Alex Albrecht]

And I did sort of throw in there like, hey, maybe we'll get people on the allocation list. Short answer is a number of you have emailed in. We've seen the emails. We are building a list and we are gonna send it over to the mascot and you guys will be on the list for allocation. So thank you Will for hooking up our buds with some nice hooch.

[Kevin Rose]

So here's the deal. Mascot is an awesome win. If you want to skip that, email us at fansig or dignationig.com.

[Mal]

Yep.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

And we can't guarantee to get everyone in. We'll probably get like 100ish, maybe a little bit more into that list.

[Alex Albrecht]

Working on it.

[Kevin Rose]

Cuz it's a small producer, small allocation. But you'll skip the line so you don't have to wait a couple years and then you can get allocation to the wine. It's fantastic.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. And we're going to go order that. We received it and we've already received a bunch, so that's, that's super cool. I also wanted to say, yeah, we got an email way back in the day.

[Kevin Rose]

Wait this is an old email.

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, not that old. I mean, six months maybe. And I was just, like, filtered through and I finally saw it, and I was like, oh, my God, this is, like, the best thing ever. Okay, ready for this?

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

Hey, guys. Emailed you a few months back and figured I would try again.

[Kevin Rose]

So this is, like, maybe even for a year now.

[Alex Albrecht]

Like, more than I thought. First off, just wanted to say welcome back. I was just listening to the south by Southwest podcast, and Alex is talking about making custom chef knives.

[Kevin Rose]

I don't even remember that. That's why I'm on 15 day 15.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, I get that. I totally get that. Heather gave me, like, this, like, thing where you could make your own chef's knife, and it's just still in the box. Anyway, quick introduction. My name is John Grazino. Grazzino Grazino. Goes by Graz. Hi, Graz. Thank you. Currently have a show on Netflix called Making Fun, which, by the way, I watched the trailer. It's adorable. It's like a bunch of, like, these guys that are, like, woodworkers and blacksmiths and, like, basically handy guys, and they get kids to call in and say, we want a giant unicorn that runs off a ramp, and they decide whether they could actually build the thing in real life.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, it's kind of like Mythbusters but for kids.

[Alex Albrecht]

So one of the ones from the trailer was they made a giant rock paper, scissors hands, but, like, 10ft tall. And so I was like, oh, my God, this is so fun. Anyway, so he's on a show called Making Fun, where me and my buddies take pictures from kids to build out their crazy ideas. My specialty, this is Graz. My specialty is custom knife making, and I would love to make Kevin and Alex, that's me and you, Custom Dig Nation kitchen knives.

[Kevin Rose]

Grass.

[Alex Albrecht]

Thanks for the entertainment over the years and a welcome back gift. You can check out my stuff on my Insta post, which is Graz makes, by the way.

[Kevin Rose]

I went to his website.

[Alex Albrecht]

Let me know and I'll send them out asap. Yes, we will have someone email you. That is so. I am so.

[Kevin Rose]

Look at how badass these things are, dude. Look at how. Look at that chef's knife.

[Alex Albrecht]

I'm like, I love that custom chef's knife.

[Kevin Rose]

I know.

[Alex Albrecht]

Flat blade, the Japanese.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

To me, this is crazy because I am so excited to get my gosh darn kitchen working. It's still not done, but once it's done, I'm gonna be cooking the God of some stuff. So custom knives. That would be fantastic, Graz. Thank you very much. And thank you for watching.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. And if you're building anything cool that you want to give us. No, I'm just kidd. Email us dignation fans or dign. I was hooked up.

[Alex Albrecht]

Dignationig.com do you want another coffee?

[Kevin Rose]

Seriously? Too many. Yeah. All right, let's talk about one Shotters.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

So what you were like, what is this?

[Alex Albrecht]

You just said Vibe one Shotter.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, Vibe one Shotter. Okay, so here's the deal. This is becoming a little bit of a thing on the interwebs.

[Alex Albrecht]

Okay. I like things on the interwebs.

[Kevin Rose]

So three, four days ago, by this time, you see this preview, seven days ago, Google just released a new version of Gemini that is a new update to their coding models. Okay. So it's still under the 2.5 Pro category, but it's the more recent one that just came out. They had one that came out in March and this is the updated version of that. Okay. So this one, in terms of all of the different benchmarks that are out there for coding, it jumped everybody else. So this is considered kind of the pinnacle apex model of generative AI coding.

[Alex Albrecht]

Okay.

[Kevin Rose]

And what they have also done is created a feature inside of Gemini and I would recommend getting the pro version of Gemini so you can play around with this because it's like 20 bucks a month or whatever to get this access to this model. And you click on this button down here called Canvas. So down in the corner here you'll see something called Canvas. Click on that and then you just describe to the actual model what you want. And I said make me a 3 GS breakout game. Game Breakout game. Which I don't know why I wrote.

[Alex Albrecht]

Game twice Game, Breakout game.

[Kevin Rose]

So there goes the champras. Thank you for the tease, Justin. So I just said that and 3Js for people who don't know, it's framework to make like visual games and animation and stuff like that. So I just gave it a little bit of prompting and then it didn't get the paddle working. And so I just said fix the paddle. That's all. I said fix the paddle. Okay, so two one shotter is like one prompt and it works. That's a one shot. So it's like you just get one thing, it goes and then it's working.

[Alex Albrecht]

So make me a chicken salad sandwich.

[Kevin Rose]

This is it. Look at this.

[Alex Albrecht]

Launch ball, dude.

[Kevin Rose]

How amazing is this? So it built this entire game. So people creating these amazing games. One prompt and it's ready to go. So you can download this, you can turn it to iOS app, whatever you want. To do. And it's like, good to go. Now watch this. So now here's the prompt. I'll say when I hit a green block, make 100 balls appear that are in the game for me to hit back. That was the horrible. Way too much context.

[Alex Albrecht]

The computer's like, first off, you need to see a doctor. Listen, I. I've called 911 or something is going wrong.

[Kevin Rose]

Sometimes you just have to, like, you know, just.

[Alex Albrecht]

Free ball.

[Kevin Rose]

Just free ball, yeah. In this case, 100 balls. So it is going. And now if you take a look at the coding side, it's actually rewriting the code, like, in real time. And you can kind of watch as it's coming up with a solution, but you'll see it start. It's going to work with multiple. There goes.

[Alex Albrecht]

Now it's code in multi ball.

[Kevin Rose]

Now look at how fast it's coding now. It just.

[Alex Albrecht]

I mean, that's about how fast I code.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, it's true. From back, everyone knows, like, when you were at your peak.

[Alex Albrecht]

My peak.

[Kevin Rose]

This is Alex. The red code right there, this is.

[Alex Albrecht]

Alex's Reddit code right there.

[Kevin Rose]

So we'll check back in on this in about a minute and just see if it did what I said. But this is. Dude, Bolt now has a mobile app where you can build iOS apps directly on your mobile phone while you're going.

[Alex Albrecht]

See, this is the thing we've been talking about, the whole interface list system, where you just ask your phone to book you tickets to this play in New York.

[Kevin Rose]

It's here.

[Alex Albrecht]

Dude, by the way, I'm going to New York. I'm gonna go see a couple shows.

[Kevin Rose]

Jessica. Ed, do it.

[Alex Albrecht]

No, I asked my wife, actually, to be fair, I did not. She just was like, we're going to New York and getting. And watching some stuff. And I was like, okay, when are you going? End of this month of May.

[Kevin Rose]

Dude, I'll be there, too.

[Justin]

What?

[Kevin Rose]

When I was speaking at the Wall Street Journal conference.

[Alex Albrecht]

I'm speaking at the Wall Street Journal conference.

[Kevin Rose]

No, you're not. That was amazing. It's so great. I would have been like, oh, fun.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. No, we're going to be there, like, the 20. What the fuck? The 23rd. Oh, no. 6th. What happened?

[Kevin Rose]

It didn't work. It's cutting through all the blocks now with one hit.

[Alex Albrecht]

Bro, you made a Powerball.

[Kevin Rose]

Now it's just cutting through all the blocks. Yeah, okay. That's not exactly what I wanted to do anyway. Buggy still, but you win the game faster.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. I mean, hey, it did Something. But no. So I'm going. But we're going to go see Glengarry Glen Ross with like a bunch of really cool people. And then we're going to go see the picture of Dorian Gray.

[Kevin Rose]

Just going to be awesome with Sarah Snook. We should hang out there. Is it the last week of May? Because I'll be out there the last week of May.

[Alex Albrecht]

This is the first weekend of maybe 1st of May already happened.

[Kevin Rose]

No, last week of May.

[Alex Albrecht]

No, it's the weekend. It's like Memorial Day, Labor Day. I can. Which one happens?

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. So are you there on that Monday? Are we talking about this on the podcast?

[Alex Albrecht]

I don't know. What are you doing?

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. Okay, let's keep going.

[Alex Albrecht]

Look, I just start texting you and we don't have to say anything. You're watching.

[Kevin Rose]

Like all the logistics of how we made the cameras weren't rolling. It would take us like 20 minutes to figure out if we're going to be there in the same day. All right, here we go.

[Alex Albrecht]

We both have our calendars in front of us. Either one of us opened it.

[Kevin Rose]

All right, let's talk about sponsors. One real quick is NordVPN, who is one of our longtime fan favorites, favorite of the show. We've been talking about Nord for at least a decade. I love Nord, probably longer. Get exclusive NordVPN [e-mail] Digg it's risk free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee.

[Alex Albrecht]

And I have to say, I just, when we were just talking about this, I was like, ooh, can I mention this? Which is I am a huge rugby fan. It's a very hard to consume rugby in the US and I have Nord. I've had NordVPN for ages. Pop over to the UK, take a little dip in the UK and I can watch the, you know, Five Nations.

[Kevin Rose]

It unlocks all that stuff.

[Alex Albrecht]

So great.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. So this is what I've used. So did I tell you what I do with Adobe?

[Alex Albrecht]

No.

[Kevin Rose]

I don't know if we're allowed to do this during sponsorship. But like I, I said I was from Brazil and shit. And then it gave me like Adobe rates in Brazil, which was like from all. The whole Photoshop bundle was like four bucks a month or whatever. You can like get cheaper rates, but dude, that's what they charge. I don't know. Anyway, I did that one time.

[Alex Albrecht]

So.

[Kevin Rose]

Secure Internet with NordVPN, all of your Internet data stays safe behind a wall and is encrypted. They have a strict no logs policy. So not only Adobe will know that I did that.

[Alex Albrecht]

I mean they will now.

[Kevin Rose]

They don't track, collect or share your private data. It's none of our business. Both ours of Ignition and nords. We're not looking at your data either. Look at your data, mask your IP address, keep your browsing safe and don't let others track what you do online. And they have threat protection.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, it's super cool.

[Kevin Rose]

Now this is interesting because like even if you turn NORD off as a VPN service, you're like, I'm not using it right now. It still protects you from malicious websites, downloads, trackers, intrusive ads. Yeah, nord's been awesome, man. They've been a good sponsor. And it's one of those products where when we get pitch stuff to have on the show, it's easy yeses. When we've used their product for so long and know that it's just a solid product. NORD is one of those. Anyway, NORDVPN is offering a huge discount which means on their two year plans you get four additional bonus months for our listeners. Get [e-mail] digg and of course it has that 30 day money back guarantee. So if you don't like it, you just hit them up and you get your cash back. Get it at nordvpn.com digg or click the link in the description below. If you're watching on a video player where there's descriptions below.

[Alex Albrecht]

Correctamundo. Okay, first story. Talking about kitchens and knives and fun kitchen accessories. Made in has a new grill that's handcrafted in Texas with a cool ass design. I added the ass because it's very cool. So you heard of Made in cookware?

[Kevin Rose]

No.

[Alex Albrecht]

So Made in Cookware, they like some of the best like chefs on the planet.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, made in. Not like a. Made in a castle.

[Alex Albrecht]

Not like Maiden. Oh, not like Maiden in a castle. Maiden, right, I get it now. Is cookware, right?

[Kevin Rose]

Maiden could be cool too, with like a cool little logo, like a baby.

[Alex Albrecht]

I mean I think Maiden would probably be like, wait, I. We saw you come up with the ontication. Now you're competing because it sounds like ours.

[Kevin Rose]

We're gonna sue you. Yeah, exactly.

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, they have, they are finally starting a grill, right? So they finally developed their own products. And basically the way that the CEO described it, he was like, we have built so many products to use on the heat. We are now finally first time building a heat source ourselves. And it's crazy construction. They are all made in The US So they found it. They're in Texas. They found a company in Texas that they partnered with. But look at this thing, dude, it's beautiful. It's portable. It's made for fuel burning so you.

[Kevin Rose]

Can use charcoal, long charcoal, wood or even.

[Alex Albrecht]

What's the tempanyaki stuff?

[Kevin Rose]

The like Teppanyaki?

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, the. Or like the. What are those?

[Kevin Rose]

Like the charcoal logs.

[Alex Albrecht]

Charcoal logs.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

So it's designed for that. And then look on the handles. You can crank up how close to the grill you want to stuff. I already ordered one.

[Kevin Rose]

Did you really?

[Alex Albrecht]

It's literally the first day and I got one. It's coming.

[Kevin Rose]

Dude, the cool thing about this is it's like it's super utilitarian and it looks like. I love well built stuff that it doesn't break. And this is like one of those things that you look at it, you're like beautiful design. And there is nothing beats wood based grilling. Like when you can get actually down to those coals and like, you know, a good like flavored wood.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. And the wood smoke, all that stuff. The other thing that's crazy is if you look in this picture here, which I think you can probably see in the momentito, this actually fits. I have their made in carbon steel griddle that slots in the grill grate, flips back into the back and you slot in the made in griddle pan.

[Kevin Rose]

Dude, that's cool.

[Alex Albrecht]

Which I have. And then it becomes a frickin outdoor griddle. I can make breakfast.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes, or you can just do breakfast on there. If you're camping or something.

[Alex Albrecht]

All this stuff and it's portable.

[Kevin Rose]

Have you thought about getting like a little camper like hook up like a camper van? Yeah, like something to hook up to the. Like I want to get like an Airstream or something.

[Alex Albrecht]

I mean I love the idea of it, but it's sort of like me getting my pilots, like me buying.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, but it's less expensive than that shit. The boat was dumb.

[Alex Albrecht]

The boat was dumb. It was nice, but it was dumb. Dumb.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. Maintenance on that shit.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, but, but meow. Maybe you could convince me to get an RV in a hot second.

[Kevin Rose]

It's just like I have a buddy, my buddy Mike Mazer. Shout out to Mike.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh yeah, Mazer's all about that dude.

[Kevin Rose]

He always like every weekend he's sending pictures of freaking him out camping. And he's got his Starlink.

[Alex Albrecht]

Now he lives in Montana. He just goes out his driveway and he's camping.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, but dude, he sent me A picture of him as he's driving with his Starlink. Starlink. Have you used Starlink yet?

[Justin]

It's incredible. It is a. It's a great product. Despite all of everything around it, it's one of the best products out right now.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. For people who don't have access to wired Internet, it's. I mean believe also on planes.

[Kevin Rose]

So they have it on GS now and we had it on Hawaiian Airlines once. I remember when we were coming back. We're coming back from this conference. I was getting freaking 50 megs to my seat, dude.

[Alex Albrecht]

That's nuts.

[Kevin Rose]

On an airplane.

[Alex Albrecht]

Wow.

[Kevin Rose]

It was insane. It was insane. Anyway, my point is that camping became glampy and became. I am actually at my office now in the middle of nowhere. Like Covid hit.

[Alex Albrecht]

So many people were just like, screw it. I'll just be in the. You know.

[Kevin Rose]

But you could be doing full on video conferences. Like we'd be doing live dignations in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, exactly.

[Alex Albrecht]

So great.

[Mal]

I have cut dignation from my camper van using Starlink and Joshua Tree.

[Kevin Rose]

Are you serious?

[Mal]

I have the exact same sort of setup.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Mal]

I love that. Starlink has been a game changer.

[Alex Albrecht]

Honestly, this. This you should get if you for an rv.

[Kevin Rose]

Everybody had one of these pairs with your starlink. Matt, you need one of these grills.

[Alex Albrecht]

I mean it's, it's, you know, it's 500 bucks, but it's not like that crazy expensive.

[Justin]

But it won't always be like, like I'm telling you, this is going to be. You're going to see competitors rise that are doing very similar business models. This is going to be a very crowded space. No, I know you're talking about.

[Kevin Rose]

We were talking about the grill.

[Alex Albrecht]

We were talking about the grill.

[Justin]

Oh, go back to the grill. We're back to the grill.

[Alex Albrecht]

Some competitors that are going to be so much.

[Kevin Rose]

Go back.

[Justin]

That grill's it.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's right. On the startling front, who is it that Amazon just started launching? Amazon's doing satellites. Like, oh, wow. So now they're coming in with their own version of starlink.

[Alex Albrecht]

Amazon link, blanket of Internet.

[Kevin Rose]

Exactly.

[Alex Albrecht]

Dripping down onto our faces as it should have always been of the Internet.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes, we.

[Alex Albrecht]

Justin, thank you for being here. We wanted to get some info. Thank you for being here at your office.

[Justin]

I actually sleep here, so.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

How is groundbreakers going? Is there more information we can give the guy? The peeps out there. I love that I almost said the guys. I'm sure there are lots of ladies that also are groundbreakers.

[Justin]

Lots of folks. Lots of folks.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Justin]

Groundbreakers. Let's see. Week was a pretty fun week. So, you know, we had a lot of questions because, you know, we showed a lot of designs initially, but this is the first week we ever showed some of the mobile app designs, which were designing Dig on both, you know, the desktop browser experience in parity with Android and iOS. And so this was kind of the first week we showed some of the iOS designs and the Android designs, and it was really great. We got so much great feedback. One of the coolest things about Groundbreakers, if y' all are in there and if you're not, here's what's cool. We show designs, we immediately get feedback, and then it's like the next week we get to be like, great. We've incorporated your feedback, we've reworked a couple of these things. We've thought more about this, you know, and again, it's not, like, designed by committee completely. I'd say there are some things that we know we're designing a certain way because it paves the way for what comes next. But I will say there's so many parts of it that people have had incredible ideas and perspectives about what they want to see from Digg. And so we did that, which was great. We love the design feedback. The mobile stuff is super fun. Love hearing from you all about that. But then the other side of it was, how much, Alex, do you know about, like, the. The donation stuff that we were just doing?

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, love it. And we were. You guys were trying to figure out where you were going to deploy that capital.

[Kevin Rose]

So the groundbreakers was for people that don't know it was capped at 25,000 people. We sold out all those people, got their username, and then we took all of those dollars and donate, or were going to donate to charity.

[Justin]

That's right. And we left it up to the community to decide. So, you know, we came up with three finalists for where to donate the money, and it was either the Nature Conservancy, it was Thorn, or it was code.org and so the community voted on where the money was going to go. We want to make sure all of these amazing organizations got something. So, you know, we're talking about the number one place. We get 95,000. Second and third place would both get 10,000. And so, yeah, it was. It was such a cool thing to be able to do. And so Nature conservancy won out $95,000 going over to them, and 10,000 to Thorn, and 10,000 to Code.org.

[Alex Albrecht]

That'S so cool. Such a great idea.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, I think it's. It's one of those things where there's a couple things at play. One, we wanted to make sure that people know that we're, like, in this to build with the community. It's not just a cash grab. We're not trying to make a few bucks. And so that was cool to do that with charity. And the second piece was that, like, as Justin said, we know there's certain things that we don't want to share that we're building towards that are kind of crazy.

[Alex Albrecht]

Wow.

[Kevin Rose]

Ideas that hopefully will change the industry. So it's not designed by committee, but the cool thing about it is it's like a seat at the table. It's almost like if you had a big board of directors or something and there's somebody there, they have a voice, they can make themselves heard. It doesn't mean the company's gonna do that, but at least they're sitting there and they have a way and a wedge in to have a direct conversation with us as we're building. And we've already seen some great feedback and insights that have made it into the product itself, which is awesome.

[Justin]

And the thing that we talked about before Kevin was like, you know, there's this relationship that gets formed with, like, us getting to meet some of the people that are going to really seed this community platform ahead of time. But the coolest connections have been other people meeting each other and being like, oh, I'm about. Like somebody was posting. Like, I'm looking for other people that are, you know, interested in photography and DSLR stuff and, like, seeing those connections form and knowing what they can build on the platform, I think that's the real secret sauce. And that's the stuff that gets me excited about.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, it's a great point. Cause, like, the world is kind of moving towards. Some people are moving towards this idea that, like, AI is going to be our friend and replace our friends. There was a Theo Vaughn and Zuckerberg interview. Did you see that? No. Oh, my God. You did not see the film of Zuckerberg interview.

[Justin]

Gotta watch it.

[Kevin Rose]

Did you see the one, the producer on the background behind the scenes being like, shut up.

[Justin]

No. No.

[Kevin Rose]

You didn't see that. Oh, my God. I wish we could roll it. But it is an amazing video where he's just talking about AI as friends, essentially. Right.

[Justin]

As a replacement.

[Kevin Rose]

As a replacement. And we're just like, God, we are so going in the opposite direction. AI should be A helping partner in terms of all the dirty laundry and heavy lifting that you don't want to do. Right. All the administrative bureaucracy and all the shit that you don't want to ban. Hammer and all the stuff that is just a horrible thing for a moderator to do. But it should be about human connection more than anything else.

[Justin]

Well, because at the end of the day, if there is a loneliness epidemic, it's not going to be filled with just, like, getting yourself digitally busy. I think every solution we think through has to be authentic in communication and in having real community that shows up with people. And so.

[Kevin Rose]

But you haven't had a chat with one of those AI sex bots yet, though. No, no, no, no.

[Justin]

But I read yours when you sent it to me.

[Kevin Rose]

All right?

[Justin]

I read yours. That was enough for me.

[Kevin Rose]

I did it that one time.

[Alex Albrecht]

I did that one.

[Kevin Rose]

I told you about that. I told you about it. It was completely unregulated. And for those that didn't watch the episode where I mentioned it, I'll say the 32nd version is, I never thought AI should be regulated until I had a shout out to this sexbot. Because I'll tell you what, I go in there and I'm just like, hey, how are you? You know, just like, saying, like, what's up? And it comes back to me. I'm like, okay, it's gonna, like, slowly escalate and be like, I'm unzipping my shirt right now. And, like, it did things to me within, like, three paragraphs where I'm like, I don't think that's legal in many states. And I'm like. Like, I wanted to call the senators and shit and be like, regulate this shit now, but it was. It was all off the guardrails. Like, there were no guardrails, but it took it to like, a 12.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh, boy.

[Mal]

By the way, I just. I love how obsessed Kevin is with this story. Cause I think you've mentioned this in every single episode.

[Kevin Rose]

100%. Because people will not appreciate this, Mal, until you actually have tried it. I get it. Because what it is, what it is. I had. I had a conversation with a buddy of mine that I can't mention because he's on the board of a public trade company and he has access to some AI models that are seasoned before anyone else where they have the guardrails off them. And when the guardrails are off of them, they can assemble anything that they want to in any way that they want. Meaning, like, it can be like, how do I build a destructive Product to go do this thing. Right. Like really bad shit. And then it can also do the same on the relationship front. How do I, you know, it will answer the most craziest edges of humanity.

[Alex Albrecht]

Jesus.

[Kevin Rose]

In a very accurate way. So, like, it could easily tell you how to build a bomb out of household materials. No doubt in my mind.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh, my God.

[Kevin Rose]

And so that's like the, the bad version. And so when you see this, it's a good version. Well, I mean, the, the sexpot stuff was crazy. There needs to be a slider. It's like you're a 12 and you need a two.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

You know, it's like. But I don't think that's gonna solve the problem.

[Justin]

Are you asking? I don't have any opinion anymore.

[Kevin Rose]

Human connection.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. I mean, look, at the end of the day, if we can use AI to bring people closer together, that is a win in my book. And the question is, how are we gonna do that and are people doing that?

[Kevin Rose]

Well, we've thought about that and we're not ready to talk about it product wise. But think about it this way. There are a lot of people having conversations about a lot of hot button topics. Right?

[Alex Albrecht]

Hot topics.

[Kevin Rose]

Hot topics. And if you can think about AI.

[Alex Albrecht]

15 year old girls wearing.

[Kevin Rose]

Not hot topic.

[Alex Albrecht]

Not hot topic, hot topics.

[Kevin Rose]

But like things that are gonna get like, very controversial very fast, right? Oh, yeah. And so if that is the case, might there be a role not for AI to take the place of a conversation, but to kind of help the conversation in certain ways, either via fact checking or kind of inserting where appropriate? There's a lot to play with here. Wow. In a way that isn't more like a friend replacement, but more just like, hey, let me be the stable hand here and help be. It's like when you watch a presidential debate or whatever and there's like a moderator in the room, it's saying like, hey, let's keep it on topic here. Have you considered this? Have you considered this? And a good kind of moderator of a debate will let both sides speak freely, but also kind of like make sure that people have equal time and that they're not like crossing a certain line. So it's fascinating the stuff to play with.

[Alex Albrecht]

I'm excited to see all this stuff come together. Every time I walk in the office, I'm like, hey, that looks amazing.

[Kevin Rose]

It's crazy shit.

[Justin]

That said, it's not a sex spot. We're not building a dig sex bot. Just so we're clear.

[Alex Albrecht]

I just want to say Time and a place. Time and a place. Speaking of, if you're loving what you're liking, I don't know what that means. We are on the YouTubes and when you're on the YouTubes, if you haven't subscribed to the channel, please subscribe to the channel. And if you do enjoy the content, please like the content so more people like us can connect.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes. Sponsor, sponsor, sponsor. Time. Is this one mine?

[Alex Albrecht]

Yep.

[Kevin Rose]

All right. Viori Vuori is an investment in your happiness for our listeners. They are offering 20% off your first purchase if you go back and watch an episode ago or two episodes ago. I actually stopped by their store before I came in and had some Vuori shirts on. They are by far, like all jokes aside, some of my most comfortable shirts are Viori shirts. Love the plain black ones. So you get 20% off your first purchase. Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at Vuori. That's V U O-R-I.com dig that's V-U-O-R-I.com dig exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. And not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but you enjoy free shipping on any US orders over $75 and also free returns. So go to vuori.com digg and discover versatile Vuori clothing exclusion. Supply. Visit the website for full terms and fees.

[Alex Albrecht]

I love the free returns because when you're buying clothes online, like sometimes you're just like, oh, that's, you know, I know people that buy like all three sizes of things and then figure out which one of them fits.

[Kevin Rose]

I sometimes do that. I sometimes do that. If I haven't shopped with someone before and I'm like, I don't know if I'm a medium large, it just saves me. Actually, I still have to ship something back, but normally they have the thing.

[Alex Albrecht]

In there and it's like, yeah, there we go. All right, all right, next story.

[Kevin Rose]

Kevin Rossi, Reddit will be tightening verification to keep out human, like AI bots.

[Alex Albrecht]

Interesting.

[Kevin Rose]

This is a recent announcement from Reddit as of just a few days ago. So basically what happened is there was this research that was conducted on the quote, unquote, change my view subreddit. And it was this large scale experiment that was done on to explore really how persuasive the AI can be. So they released a bunch of comment bots that were AI bots and they posted over 1700 comments. And they were adopting different Personas, like abuse survivors. They had controversial identities like anti Black Lives Matter advocates. It was just like a, it was mini nightmare for Reddit because Reddit basically had to come up and say like, hey, we don't have enough checks in place to guarantee that these aren't going to be bots that you're chatting with.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

And you know, I think that they did the right thing here in announcing that they needed to do more human verification. You know, one of the things that we think deeply of, and Justin can speak this as well, but one of the things that has been top of mind for me for quite some time is, you know, how do we ensure that when we open up the floodgates, when we open up dig for the first time that we do it in the right way so that you know, you're actually having conversations with humans. Because, because the issue is that why LLMs and chatbots and that are a little bit pricey to spin up on demand. Now you have to imagine that because infra and all of that is just going to get cheaper over time. Models are going to run on what now is considered to be high end. GPUs will be commodity hardware in the next few years. And if that's the case and models are getting condensed and smaller in size, we're going to have a massive proliferation of AI agents anywhere and everywhere on the web trying to convince you to buy things, trying to persuade you to different friending you and DMing you and acting like they've known you or want to get to know you. Yeah, you won't even know. You will have back and forth conversations. You probably are today with bots and their plan, they're like sleeper bots. Their plan is to either convince you of something or get you to buy something. And it could be 3, 6, 9, 12 months away from now.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, well that's the other thing is they don't have a time.

[Kevin Rose]

They build.

[Alex Albrecht]

They're like we could.

[Kevin Rose]

They don't die for years.

[Alex Albrecht]

They don't die, they don't sleep.

[Kevin Rose]

They don't sleep and they just can start picking away different people. Hundreds of thousands of people at once per agent. But it's really scary though, because oh.

[Alex Albrecht]

My God, it's like her, remember her?

[Kevin Rose]

They heard you this well at the.

[Alex Albrecht]

End, the whole thing was that he discovered that she had been talking to like 150,000 people concurrently at the exact same time. And it just completely diminished his relationship with her.

[Kevin Rose]

I wonder if my bot's doing that.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh look, it says no, I have not. Kevin is the only One that it.

[Kevin Rose]

Got that crazy with. I thought I was so charming. Yeah, you just really up there. But all jokes aside, I think that what we're gonna see here is an erosion of trust on the Internet.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

And the problem with that is that, you know, I will say and give credit where credit is due. The one thing that they became known for over the last decade plus is you would say, hey, I'm interested in the Whoop Fitness band. And you would type in Whoop fitness reviews, space Reddit into Google. Everybody did that. Why? Because you wanted real humans takes, not just some copy, Right.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yep.

[Kevin Rose]

We are now that is gone. Everything you can expect to read is going to be some beautifully written with spelling errors and all.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

From LLMs that is going to convince you to buy X product. I mean, so we have to guard this. We have to guard dig. We have to guard the entry points and really make sure that there's a verified human on the back end.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, a thousand percent. I mean, because that's. That is what you guys are building a new community from the ground up. That is the time to be able to put those guardrails in, out of the gate so that, you know, when you're inside the garden, so to speak, just having good people.

[Kevin Rose]

What did you call it today, Justin? We wrote on the whiteboard the word that you came up with a couple days ago.

[Justin]

Well, we were just saying, like, what does it look like to look like a human trust network, like, at the end of the day? Because it's like, it's one of those things where it's like, I don't know that the average person is thinking about these things. Like, like, I mean, you know, most, most, I think dignation listeners and most people that have kind of been in the tech world for a while, like, it's like, yeah, you know, we try to stay up on these things. You guys are constantly talking about these things. But it's like, I don't know that everybody is really questioning whether the person on the other end, on the other side of the screen is actually another human.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[Justin]

And it's like, I. I just, I don't know that that question is something that it's like, oh, well, let's just table it. Not worry about it because AI has a long way to go. We'll talk about it in five years. Yeah, I don't think it's five years. I think it's happening now in a lot of cases.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, it is. And it's just going to be. I mean, we just Saw it. I mean, the whole thing was about 1700 comments from all these AI agents and they were able to successfully, you know, change people's views.

[Alex Albrecht]

That's crazy.

[Kevin Rose]

And it's just like, I mean, you can imagine that this is the early innings of AI. How even six months from now, how pervasive and how smart will these bots be able to take something that you said? You're like, well, I don't know that I believe that yet. And it's like, okay, I see a vulnerability. Let me go in here and double down this point here. Change their mind. It's just, it's really.

[Justin]

It's like a gradient of like, you know, what they can do because it's like, you know, in the simplest form, okay, fine, we can send a whole botch, a whole bunch of bots out to troll.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[Justin]

And then it's like, okay, we can send a whole bunch of bots out to like review bomb or review lift a product.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah.

[Justin]

And then it's like on the further end, it's like, you know, it can be used for political nefarious purposes to really alter perspectives on a lot of things.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

I dropped in a chat conversation. I was having my wife in the chat GPT. Oh, boy. And I gotta say, I was like, help me win this. You know, like, smart. And she's. She's freaking pissed. Neuroscientist. And like, she was winning. I was like, I gotta.

[Justin]

Yeah, she's impervious to that stuff.

[Alex Albrecht]

Wait, so what did it tell you to do?

[Kevin Rose]

I'm like, just leave.

[Alex Albrecht]

Walk away.

[Kevin Rose]

That's like, run, motherfucker.

[Alex Albrecht]

Take your go bag and leave.

[Kevin Rose]

No, it was stick your go back. That's what. Literally, it's over there. No, no, but all jokes aside, like, you can use it for so much shit now.

[Alex Albrecht]

I mean, shit we were talking about. It was almost less than a year ago when you were talking about your buddy that wanted a raise and, like, put in the thing and was like, how should I email this to format it to my boss to get a raise? And they got a raise.

[Kevin Rose]

Exactly. Because they use Crucial Conversations, the book, as a PDF and it referenced the book, came up with a proper framing and then put it into email form. It's just insane.

[Alex Albrecht]

It's crazy it's going to come along so much. I mean, like last, last episode I was telling you guys about starting with Home Assistant, and one of the things that I've been wanting to do is wean my way off of the Echo devices and off of the Amazon Ecosystem.

[Kevin Rose]

Who the hell is hooked on an echo device to begin with? You have to wean your way off an echo.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, well. Cause you turn on all the lights in the house. No, no, no. I go, you know the name, you know the wake name that I'm not gonna.

[Kevin Rose]

What is your wake name?

[Alex Albrecht]

At home, it's the normal one that everyone's.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh. Cause you're thinking everyone will turn on everybody's will.

[Alex Albrecht]

And I just say good morning and all the lights go on in my house. And then say goodnight and all the lights go off in my house.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, so that's, that's like easy. And we have one in the shower. So like oftentimes it'll be like, what's the weather?

[Kevin Rose]

Are they waterproof?

[Alex Albrecht]

No, not in the shower. Like next to the shower or like, hey, play, you know, KPCC or play some music or whatever. And so we. One of the things that's coming now is that I'm gonna build my own LLM box in the house. Basically my own LLM server.

[Kevin Rose]

Nice.

[Alex Albrecht]

That will then communicate to home assistant via the vocal assistant. And 11 labs actually have really good text to speech stuff that you can use.

[Kevin Rose]

You can one shot of this right now.

[Alex Albrecht]

I'm gonna one shot it when I get home and do a little one shotting. Just get the freshen up my coding experience.

[Kevin Rose]

You've been using home assist as well, right? No, I have.

[Mal]

I'm loving it.

[Kevin Rose]

And I'm trying to wean myself off Alexa too. Who the hell is hooked on Alexa? Are you hooked on Alexa?

[Justin]

No. No, I'm not at all.

[Alex Albrecht]

I don't think the one thing where you're just like, good morning and all the lights go on and then you're like, I don't. Didn't have to touch a switch.

[Mal]

Yeah, it's a fun nerdy thing. Like at the first thing I did, I have a Plex server. When I hit play, all the lights go down into theater mode. When I hit pause, the lights come.

[Kevin Rose]

Out a little bit. I mean, that's nice that you guys have home.

[Alex Albrecht]

It's about the gym. I'm sorry. But it's really fun when you get home.

[Kevin Rose]

I had this working in my house.

[Alex Albrecht]

We just got our fence redone in the backyard. And so we're doing. I'm going through and redoing all the backyard lights. And so we installed a bunch of govee lights. So great to be able to control them with this. Like at sunset they come on.

[Kevin Rose]

Do they sponsor you?

[Alex Albrecht]

No. But if you. Anybody at govee wants to sponsor dignation. Come on.

[Kevin Rose]

We were talking about this before episode. Alex is like, I'm a cheap sponsor.

[Alex Albrecht]

Send me something, I'll talk about it.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, you grill. I love grilling.

[Alex Albrecht]

Speaking of sponsors, this is a real one. This is a real one. And it's very close to both of our hearts because we use it. I used it this morning at the gym. Element. Everybody needs to stay hydrated. I talk about this all the time. I'm always constantly getting charley horses at the gym. My guy was like, hey buddy, you gotta hydrate, you gotta get your electrolytes in. You gotta make sure you're doing your stuff. And so I've been using Element every single day at the gym. It's just the best. It's a zero sugar electrolyte drink mix. Not only has it got 1,000 milligrams of electrolytes, but it's got 200 milligrams of potassium, which is fantastic. They have partnered with like all sorts of people. The USA, Olympic weightlifting, lots of Olympic athletes, Navy SEALs use it. It's amazing. And if you go to drinklmnt.com dig you can get a free Element sample pack with any purchase. And that's drinklmnt drinkelement.com digg and also they have new Element sparkling. So it's a 16 ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water. It's fantastic and there's no questions asked refund. So if you don't like it, just email hellorinkelement.com LMNT.com and they will take care of you. I personally, my favorite flavor is the orange salt. It tastes like the lime juice chewable C vitamins that we had as kids. And so it's very nostalgic.

[Kevin Rose]

I will say we don't have to read any more about Element but I'll say an extra little plug for them as well. I use a post sauna and I put it actually I put more water in it so I get a bigger vessel because if it's a little too salty for you, you can just add a little bit more water because it's a tiny bit at my borderline for salt. And I know that's by design. It's supposed to like. Salt actually helps you.

[Alex Albrecht]

It's a thousand milligrams.

[Kevin Rose]

Take more water in. But I diluted a tiny bit. I actually can get two full drinks out of one packet. So I cut the packet in half. But anyway, yeah, good stuff. All right. We are very excited. One of the things that we are working on at Digg is making sure that we surround ourselves at the company with trusted advisors that can help us on a variety of different fronts. Because we are building a new community platform and we want to make sure that when we think about product, we think about communities, we think about the feature set and stuff that we want to build over the next six months to a year. We bring in people with outside perspectives so that we can learn. There's a lot of stuff to learn here. And we have a series of advisors that we're going to be introducing you to over call it the next what mal, like two to three months, something like that? Yeah, two to three months. And so super stoked to have J.C. hayes here. Thank you for joining us and announcing you as one of our first advisors. So welcome to the team.

[J.C. Hayes]

Thank you. So exciting.

[Kevin Rose]

We're excited to talk to you. For people that don't know you or your background, I know you're old school in that you've been building stuff for a long time, working with communities for a long time, seeing communities at scale. Can you walk us through a little bit about your adventure throughout this world?

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, first off, you started as a smoke jumper.

[J.C. Hayes]

Yes, started as a smoke jumper.

[Alex Albrecht]

That is crazy.

[J.C. Hayes]

Which is probably why you wanted me.

[Alex Albrecht]

To parachuting the forest fires.

[J.C. Hayes]

We actually, we got to the fires before the parachuters, so technically we were hella repellers. So we had a helicopter, we got right over the fire and we rappelled down 300ft on a rope and we got there first we had a tool called the Pulaski. It's actually better than a shovel to dig. Oh, little note.

[Kevin Rose]

Do you buy that on Amazon?

[J.C. Hayes]

Probably.

[Alex Albrecht]

What is it?

[Kevin Rose]

How do you spell it?

[J.C. Hayes]

Pulaski.

[Alex Albrecht]

I'm sure it's an axe on one.

[J.C. Hayes]

Side and a hoe on the other. And you dig line and then you can also chop a tree down. So is the point of you get to the fire really early, dig line around it and then you have to chainsaw any fuel in front of it so you can contain it. Back when I was was fighting fire, you could actually contain them because they weren't.

[Alex Albrecht]

So I just, it was so crazy because I was like looking through your history and I was like, oh yeah, so this all tracks, you know, like zd, like all this stuff and faze, clan, blah, blah, blah. And then I was like, smoke jumper, how did that.

[J.C. Hayes]

You know, it was easier than the digital media world really. You go, you put the fire out, you.

[Kevin Rose]

Sometimes I just like be a smokejumper. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's something about that nice life of just like one job, you know?

[J.C. Hayes]

You know what you gotta do, you get out.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. Well, here's a picture of the ax. I actually have it up now if we want to cut to that. I pulled up one of these. So this is what we should buy if I want something else.

[J.C. Hayes]

Yes, this is a Pulaski. It's an incredible tool. You can do everything.

[Kevin Rose]

That's amazing. And they should sponsor us, given that there's the axe, shovel, tie in to dig. We get that part of it. But tell us about the social stuff, the community stuff that you've done, the other stuff.

[J.C. Hayes]

So, yes, after that, I started GameSpot late 90s and absolutely loved it. It was when we all thought we were gonna change the world. And the Internet was cool and new and fun. GameSpot was early, early days gamers. So Tomb Raider and Doom and Eidos. It was before they all became franchise, kind of like the movie industry. Same exact thing, but really creative people. But no, it was fun. We did the first game crib. It was a reality TV show about esports and gamers. Tsm, first esports company that we did. We worked with Twitch early before they went over, you know, to Amazon. Yeah, Just so much of that world I absolutely loved. And then I was sick of, like trying to convince, you know, everyone that gamers were like, really a big deal. And so I'm like, I'm out. I'm going to GoPro. Let's inspire the youth to go outdoors. That was the whole idea. Like, let's inspire the youth to get outdoors and get moving. I had three boys at the time, and every day surviving was like a war. It's just boy. I mean, have you seen the meme about girl moms? Boy moms, like, girl moms are like doing facials at night and boy moms are like, it's blood. There's smoking cigarettes. It's like exhausting.

[Alex Albrecht]

Three boys, like, let's just strap cameras on these guys and make some money.

[J.C. Hayes]

And then I face plan.

[Alex Albrecht]

I lost the best because, like, when I first. When I first saw the thing, I was like, oh, this makes sense. Alcohol brand. Like, that's so great. So how did you get into bottled margaritas?

[J.C. Hayes]

Clan was awesome. It was like in 2019, it was the riot. Like, gaming was finally. We were finally realizing what we had talked about like 15 years ago. I'm like, no gamer. This is a huge. They're actually driving culture. They're the rock stars. Yeah, they're on the COVID of Sports Illustrated. So many things were happening.

[Alex Albrecht]

Legend stuff. Overwatch League was coming out then, and it was just, like, massive. Yeah.

[J.C. Hayes]

So I. So I did jump back in for a bit. And then, you know, as things do with the Internet in that time period, a lot was happening. You know, not to go political, but there's a lot going on.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[J.C. Hayes]

And I just remember thinking, you know, I'm raising three boys, and the Internet's becoming really toxic, and all these media platforms are becoming really toxic and not great for the youth. And I'm watching it. So I.

[Kevin Rose]

You start an alcohol company, you're like, ah, this is too much. Bring joy to the planet.

[J.C. Hayes]

I was pushing it to Gen Xers.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[J.C. Hayes]

I literally made it. Cause it doesn't exist. So you can't get a margarita in a bottle. The ones in the cans doesn't taste right. It's just. It doesn't work. Tequila doesn't work in cans. So we make them in Jalisco, Mexico, small distillers.

[Alex Albrecht]

So you were saying that the. It's wrapped for a specific reason, right? The paper wrapping?

[J.C. Hayes]

Yes, initially, yes. We wrap them to protect the citrus from the UV rays. And then it also looks kind of cool. And it stands out because no one. I mean, my husband's like, ugh, you're doing a margarita in a bot. Those are gross. Like, no one likes them.

[Kevin Rose]

But this is.

[J.C. Hayes]

I swear, if you were drinking, Kevin.

[Kevin Rose]

I mean, I'll be. I'll be back on that train soon enough.

[J.C. Hayes]

Okay.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. There we go.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh, I love that.

[Kevin Rose]

Justin's. Yeah, he's my. He's my. He's my drink double. Basically my stunt double, but for drinking. Are you serious?

[J.C. Hayes]

They go to.

[Kevin Rose]

It is Friday.

[J.C. Hayes]

All natural. You won't have a hangover. Me.

[Alex Albrecht]

So great.

[J.C. Hayes]

Drink the whole bottle.

[Kevin Rose]

Maybe.

[Alex Albrecht]

Maybe.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

You know what? I'll try it out. I'll try it out.

[Kevin Rose]

That's amazing.

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, welcome to the team. So excited to have you. This is gonna be so, so much fun.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. I know that you're obviously, your connections in gaming and all the things that we want to do on that front are gonna be huge for us. And just chatting through what community looks like and all you've seen over the years and applying that to what we do. So there's a lot to discuss, but great to have you on board.

[J.C. Hayes]

I'm. I'm so excited. Thank you for doing this. I have not been excited until you guys made the big announcement. Literally, I'm like, these are the brains that need to be why build platforms that are bad for society?

[Alex Albrecht]

Doesn't really make sense.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. There is a different path for sure.

[J.C. Hayes]

So it's great.

[Alex Albrecht]

We shall find it. Well, thank you. Thank you for coming out.

[J.C. Hayes]

Yeah, thanks, guys.

[Kevin Rose]

Awesome.

[Alex Albrecht]

Speaking of AI, and sometimes the day.

[Kevin Rose]

That I don't drink.

[Alex Albrecht]

I know.

[Kevin Rose]

We get the good juice here. I know.

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, next time. Next time. Okay, this one touches a little bit of a nerve.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, for you?

[Alex Albrecht]

For me. Runway AI's studio arm launches animated pilot. Mars and Civ. No Vacancy. So I'm sure you know of. Because this is literally like an AI company. So Runway AI does video AI generation stuff. They are now have a studio arm which is for them to create pilots content using their AI systems. So this is the.

[Kevin Rose]

Their computers, if you will.

[Alex Albrecht]

Their computers, if you will. So they put together a pilot presentation essentially for a new animated series called Mars and Civ, no Vacancy, using the Runway AI generative AI models. I watched it. It's very interesting.

[Kevin Rose]

Can we hit play on a little? Can I see a little.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

Little clippers.

[Alex Albrecht]

It's a little creepy. Let me see. Oh, wait, hold on. I think.

[Kevin Rose]

Creepy in what way?

[Alex Albrecht]

Well.

[Kevin Rose]

And why does it hit a nerve? Where's the nerve part?

[Alex Albrecht]

I mean, all the animators are gonna go out of business. You know, they're just gonna be able to make their own stuff. And now, here we go. Let's see. Here's nyc, Marvin, Sid, Siv. Here we go. Here's a little. Here's a little. A sample smidgen, if you will.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay. I know we don't have audio here, but we can actually. I guess we'd.

[Mal]

Yeah, we'll pick it up on his blob.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. Oh.

[Kevin Rose]

So this was 100%.

[Alex Albrecht]

So this is all AI generated run. I think it's not doing audio because of the thing anyway. But so what I mean by creepy is like, it's got a vibe that's like, not quite right, if you know what I mean.

[Kevin Rose]

Like, the guy has extra fingers kind of thing.

[Alex Albrecht]

Not that I think we've solved that for Generative AI. And the other thing that's interesting is it reminded me a lot of the original Tracey Ullman Simpsons stuff. Everything felt. It feels a little slow. Like if you watch some of the old Simpsons clips from the Tracy Ullman show, there's a lot of like, hey, boy. Hi, dad. What's wrong? You know what I mean? Like, it just feels like. It feels like you're kind of like walking through mud a little bit. Yeah, this has that same feeling, like it's just a little bit slow. And I don't know if that's just either A, a creative choice, which is fine, or B, was the performance of the actors or was somehow connected to the fact that it's AI generated. Because basically I think what they are doing is they're generating or maybe even hand sketching the characters and then using the AI robot dual coloring and all that to do the switching between. Right. So, like, that's my gut, but it's definitely a footprint. I mean, they're taking this out to the town to see if somebody will buy it, like a streamer or something like that. I'm a little skeptical because I think that most big corporations are going to want to stay as far away from A.I. i mean, like, think about what was the one, the Disney show, the Disney plus show, with the Marvel invasion. I think it was secret invasion, where they used AI generated images for the opening credit sequence. The whole point of the thing was you don't know who's human and who's not. So they actually used it creatively. Like we're using AI because it has that weird like, is it human, Is it not human vibe. But they got slammed. Like, they got.

[Kevin Rose]

By the industry?

[Alex Albrecht]

No, by the public being like, how dare you not use. Like you're not using artists that would usually get paid for those openings. And that was just the opening credits of a show.

[Kevin Rose]

How do you feel about this long term? What does your gut tell you, given that we're in la? Cause I might have a very different opinion on this.

[Alex Albrecht]

My gut tells me that there is going to be a world in the not too distant future where you are going to be present. I think it's going to start first for kids and then make its way up the age ladder. But I think it's going to start with, what do you want to see Peppa the pig? Talk about. What do you want to see? You know, the insert some other kids thing. As a person who doesn't have children, I don't know what these things are. What do you want to spot?

[Kevin Rose]

Dragons love tacos.

[Alex Albrecht]

Dragons love tacos. Okay, so you're like another kid's book, children, caterpillar thing. It's like where you put your finger in the caterpillar.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, exactly.

[Alex Albrecht]

That's okay. This is why I don't have children.

[Kevin Rose]

Anyway, he's been banned from having children.

[Alex Albrecht]

From having children because of the caterpillar thing anyway. But I think what's gonna happen is early. It'll be, hey, the Peppa the pigs of the world or the dragons love tacos or whatever. It'll be like, I wanna see a story about a princess going to the thing. And then they will see an episode of, of Peppa the Pig or an episode of whatever taco dragons or whatever. And that'll be the sort of early foot into the generative stuff. And then it'll start getting a little bit higher as far as the age levels go and a little bit more complex. I think there's a world in which you go, I want Peppa the Pig to help teach me about geometry. You know what I mean?

[Kevin Rose]

But do you think it's gonna be existing brands going and embracing these tools to get Peppa the Pig to do teach you about geometry? Like, I'll give you an example. So with the one shot gaming stuff that's happening right now, people are going in and they're like saying, come to boom. And they're coming up with some really creative things and AI kind of helps out there and they release it and you know, tens of thousands of people play with it and it's just kind of like a little novelty thing, right?

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

When I first downloaded, and this was back in the day I downloaded online, I can't remember where I was. It was very early Internet days. But I got the first episode of south park, the unreleased one.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh, the yeah, yeah, yeah, Brian Boitano one.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. And it was like, it was like the mouse weren't linked up correctly. It was all kind of jacked up. And so in some sense I kind of feel like what's going to happen is there are going to be two really creative, you know, probably younger kids playing in, you know, their basement and just like say, hey, make this AI thing do this and start telling some jokes. And then all of a sudden we'll have the next south park that was created by AI and it will go so viral because it's so funny or so creative on that front. And then everyone will have forgotten that it's AI.

[Alex Albrecht]

I mean, you're not wrong about that.

[Kevin Rose]

Because in some sense, like South Park, I mean, it's animated, it was done by computers.

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, like they did the cutout thing for the first one and then.

[Kevin Rose]

Right, right. But the point being is that like, it's just a tool that's moving from one animation tool to another animation tool.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yes, yes.

[Kevin Rose]

You see what I'm saying?

[Alex Albrecht]

I totally see what you're saying and I think you're right. I also think animation is definitely going to be the first. I mean, look, I did you Know, I created a live interactive animated weekly television series for Caffeine Studios when I was working over there. You know what I mean? We were using VR. It was just the computer was doing all of the animations with just a performer doing mocap in real time. Right. There is a world in which this is not too far a step away from that, you know, and then it really also depends upon like did they have the characters generated by AI or were they generated by artists that then used the Runway AI system to animate them? You know what I mean? So I think there is a happy balance to be made. I think one of the biggest issues that Hollywood has right now is AI is a third rail for most companies. Like as an independent film producer, if I use the word AI when I'm talking about trying to sell or finance a film, that's death blow to me.

[Kevin Rose]

Sure.

[Alex Albrecht]

You know what I mean? Because everybody is like, well then why are the. No actor is gonna wanna come and be in a movie where you go, oh, the script was generated by AI. So it's like there's a third railness for production. And I think the real kicker is gonna be how do we step it into the mainstream usage without it seeming like this sort of like anti creative boogeyman, you know what I mean? And it's gonna be a tough balance, but stuff like this makes me go, I feel like they didn't make the baby step. This feels like a big giant squash step. And I can't imagine if I was an executive at any streamer or network television channel right now and this came across my desk. There is no world in which I would have the confidence to be the one to say yes with this.

[Kevin Rose]

Well, let me tell you the difference. The difference will be when this comes across your desk. Not today, not this.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

Like call it six months, a year from now.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

And it already has 150 million views on it.

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, that's.

[Kevin Rose]

And you're like, that's the problem.

[Alex Albrecht]

I mean not problem, but that's.

[Kevin Rose]

This is catch. This is caught on. It's really funny. Of course we're going to say yes that 100%, you know, so it's like it's all about. No one wants to take that first, put that first check out there, be made a fool of. But then once it cracks and breaks, it breaks wide open.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. You know, I mean that we're just waiting. I mean, look, we all know it's the genie's out of the bottle.

[Kevin Rose]

It's out of the bottle.

[Alex Albrecht]

So we're all just waiting for it to, to pop and squat. I don't know.

[Mal]

I think your one shot example is kind of, I think an example of, of where things are headed because no one's going to play that game. It's fascinating to create something as a proof of concept, but it's broken, it doesn't work or it's now table stakes and anyone can do that. You still need teams to create this stuff. I think the industry is just going to shift to begin to utilize AI in different ways. Yes, the traditional roles, especially like union roles are going to start to disappear, but new jobs that are being augmented by AI are going to reappear. This whole thing of like entire post production teams and animation disappearing again. You're gonna be throwing AI to team up with people to create larger projects that are worthwhile.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[J.C. Hayes]

Also what's fun about that? Yeah, it's like, then you have computers doing it. Yeah, but I'm married to an actor, so.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And to be fair, like that's one of the things like we've been watching andor which by the way, holy hell, if you guys have not been watching.

[Kevin Rose]

Andor I need to catch up.

[Alex Albrecht]

It is, don't break it, don't break good television.

[Kevin Rose]

Nothing.

[Alex Albrecht]

But they make sense. It's not cg, like they're cg, but the CG is.

[Kevin Rose]

That's not where it's going to get applied first, right?

[Alex Albrecht]

No, I know, but I'm just saying like there's something about like, let me give you an tangible creativity of it.

[Kevin Rose]

I think we're trying to think too far in the future and say like, hey, is AI going to ever make a, you know, 100 million dollar video game that it's made today? Of course not. That's going to be quite a while. But you know, will AI make the next wordle? Absolutely. If you have the idea today for the next wordle.

[Alex Albrecht]

I already started talking about it and then it just didn't. It broke.

[Kevin Rose]

Wait, I did.

[Alex Albrecht]

I had this really cool, crazy idea because I was like, I'm a. Oh no, because you were.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, you take my idea.

[Alex Albrecht]

No, no, no, I told you my idea. You told me your idea. And I got me excited because I was like, well, I want to have an idea. So then I went home and my, my wife Heather is like such a nut for.

[Kevin Rose]

Is this word on my idea? Why is it word?

[Alex Albrecht]

No, there's lots of word games.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh my God.

[Alex Albrecht]

You see, one shot. My idea. No, no, no. Well, I tried to one Shot my idea. And then I went, oh, yeah, my idea doesn't work. It's like when I found out that I had that startup and I talked that one lawyer and he was like, I mean, it's illegal. And I went. I was like, wow, why is that illegal? And he was like, yeah, it's been illegal since 1898. I was like, okay, well, it was a good idea.

[Kevin Rose]

So.

[Alex Albrecht]

But anyway, it didn't. It didn't work. But I did. I did the hot fast. What. What is it called? One shot.

[Kevin Rose]

One shot. Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

I tried to do the one shotter thing and. And it was like, this doesn't work. And I was like, well, thanks for that.

[Kevin Rose]

So my point is that, like, wordle, no problem. Like, we'll get there very quickly, I think. What's gonna happen, though? Well, I mean, I've already seen the AI taking away jobs on a whole variety of other fronts. I just think, yes, it will be a little bit later. First, it'll be better versions of these animation tools as augmented by AI poweredness of it all. Yeah, yeah, we're seeing that with Photoshop. We're seeing that with other tools where it's like, oh, they just make me a faster, better version of that.

[Alex Albrecht]

Premiere. The editing stuff in Premiere.

[Kevin Rose]

No brainer.

[Alex Albrecht]

Multicam editing and Premiere and just go. Just get me 90% of the way there and then I'll go through and like, fine tune it.

[Kevin Rose]

Exactly.

[Alex Albrecht]

That's a lot of the horse work, that. Horse work.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, Everybody knows what that. A lot of stuff in this episode.

[Alex Albrecht]

Man, I should be drinking coffee.

[Kevin Rose]

Horsework.com.

[Alex Albrecht]

Okay.

[Kevin Rose]

Horsework.com.

[Alex Albrecht]

Doing the horse's work. Work.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay, well, we'll see what happens. Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

All right, good luck. Anyway.

[Kevin Rose]

All right, next story of the day. Moving on, let's talk about Kevin being able to find his spot in the script.

[Alex Albrecht]

It's Whoop 5.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, the Whoop 5 is out.

[Alex Albrecht]

I'm excited to hear what the whoop is.

[Kevin Rose]

So do you know about the whoop though, right? No. Oh, you. That's right. We did an episode where you didn't know what the whoop was.

[Alex Albrecht]

I have not been true. The whoop is. Well, tell me what the whoop is.

[Kevin Rose]

You've seen this whoop.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh, that whoop?

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, it's a health and fitness tracker. You've been getting into fitness. I couldn't make donation early take because I had to go to the gym. That was you.

[Alex Albrecht]

You have to go to the gym?

[Kevin Rose]

Anyway, let's get back to the whoop. Yeah. So the whoop is for a certain class of people out there that know what I'm talking about. No offense. Massive offense.

[Alex Albrecht]

Clearly not me.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay, Alex, let's send Alex. Whoop. Whoop. People. You're watching. At least somebody that works at Woohoo is watching. Alex needs a whoop.

[Alex Albrecht]

So I mean, I'll take a whoop. I'll take anything.

[Kevin Rose]

So very cheap. The Whoop 4 came out in 2021and they have not released anything for all these years. And everyone's like, what the. Like no whoop. No, for you. Like no whoop. It was the same whoop. And everyone's like. And they did do a lot of software updates to it.

[Alex Albrecht]

Okay.

[Kevin Rose]

And they kept making it better and better on the software side. But actually I was really impressed because we were able to squeeze a lot out of that small little unit. So the new one just got announced. Okay. It's 7% smaller, no big deal. 14 plus days battery life, which is huge for wearable.

[Alex Albrecht]

14 days?

[Kevin Rose]

Yes. And so the old one was four to five days.

[Alex Albrecht]

Okay.

[Kevin Rose]

It has a wireless charging pack. Processor's fast or whatever. Sensor frequency is 26 times a second versus 13. That's fine. More power efficient, all that water resistant. So now they have a step counter that's like table stakes these days. This is what's cool. It does on demand ECG and EKG readouts. It has blood pressure insights with no device is done to date.

[Alex Albrecht]

Okay. I do like that.

[Kevin Rose]

Which is really interesting.

[Alex Albrecht]

That's good for old men.

[Kevin Rose]

Irregular heartbeat alerts, which is cool. But also the Apple watch does it Stress monitor, which is cool. But the Aura does it in others. It has health span and longevity metrics. We'll TVD on what that actually means, but okay, whatever.

[Alex Albrecht]

AI system Daily Outlook 22 years. Thank you. Whoop.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. Mine says my heart is. My aura says my heart is eight or nine years younger than what my biological age is. Yeah, okay, I'll take it.

[Alex Albrecht]

So enhance anything.

[Kevin Rose]

Exactly. Any positive metric, I'll send it my way.

[Alex Albrecht]

Sleep performance has not exploded.

[Kevin Rose]

4 part actionable sleep enhanced sensor.

[Alex Albrecht]

Do you sleep with your watch on?

[Kevin Rose]

I would not with my watch. The watch is too bulky for me.

[Alex Albrecht]

I can't sleep.

[Kevin Rose]

Super light. That's the one thing I do like about it. And it doesn't have a display. No, that's by design though, so it doesn't distract me. But also you can wear a watch like a normal watch. And a whoop. And it doesn't look like you're double watching it.

[J.C. Hayes]

What does the Whoop. Look, I'm confused. Is it a bracelet?

[Alex Albrecht]

Bring it out. Yes.

[Kevin Rose]

Time to go to whoop.com.

[Alex Albrecht]

Hairs.

[J.C. Hayes]

Maybe just be healthy and then you don't have to wear that.

[Alex Albrecht]

Be healthy.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, I mean I understand that's a lot, but look, it's pretty. Can we get the video up of that? There we go. Look at that. So that's backside, side, side, back side, front side. So it's a nice looking device.

[Alex Albrecht]

It looks like a belt for your wrist.

[Kevin Rose]

It is, but a good belt.

[Alex Albrecht]

Like a nice Prada belt.

[J.C. Hayes]

You wear it like a belt. You wear it on your wrist.

[Kevin Rose]

But no, actually it's a great question because they make underwear, bras and other things that you can slide the sensor into. So you unhook it from the bracelet.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh, interesting.

[Kevin Rose]

And you can wear it on your underwear. You can wear it on your, at your bra line. Like you can wear it.

[J.C. Hayes]

That seems dangerous in your underwear.

[Kevin Rose]

I, I mean it is. I think they put it in a spot that is they put it in a comfortable spot. But like there's Whoop Lux. So you can see like it's like. And I have no, I'm not an investor. Whoop. I'm actually an investor in Aura. So I don't know why I'm doing this free promo.

[J.C. Hayes]

But that's actually pretty.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, it's pretty. I've always enjoyed the app. I think in terms of, and I'll just say this, I've used all these devices.

[Alex Albrecht]

So you're health monitor guy.

[Kevin Rose]

Well, I, Yeah. So I was on the board of Aura for a few years and it helped them launch the. Not this version but the one before. And we had all the different devices because we had to play with them all to see what else was out there in the market. One of the things I always loved about Woob is I thought they had a very comprehensive and good dashboard, almost more analytics and more data heavy than anyone else out there. And I would say that ORA is probably on par with them. Now I'm really curious to get this new one in. I ordered one to see what it's all about. I'll come back with a little mini review and let you know what I think. But I will say I found that the reason I like the Whoop and the Aura is they don't have unfortunately like a setting for sauna to let you know they do on the Whoop. So like you can measure your heart rate when you're in the sauna. Like they do all these things where like they do these more Extreme environments than these other devices.

[Alex Albrecht]

Anyway, what do you do with all of your data? Cause one of the things that I do.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, my God, dude, you should see this.

[Alex Albrecht]

I have the Apple watch, and every time I do a workout, I always turn on the thing to track all my stuff. And I have never looked at that data. I've had it for like, two years.

[J.C. Hayes]

Yeah, there's so much data, I don't.

[Alex Albrecht]

Know what to do with it.

[J.C. Hayes]

I'm confused as to, like, I'm supposed to eat a ton of protein, not too much. I should eat dairy. But actually not so much bad for you. Like, it's so confusing that I just drank a margarita. I just.

[Kevin Rose]

There's a lot.

[Alex Albrecht]

I mean, look, we all know healthy is healthy. Let's drink margaritas. So that's interesting.

[Kevin Rose]

So look at this. This is my resilience on, like, before I started drinking it after. So if you see that. That bar, how it looks, like, really kind of shitty now. Watch this. So this is like, as I'm drinking, Like, I like a good drink. And this is me stopping drinking. That's where we are today.

[Alex Albrecht]

What is really.

[J.C. Hayes]

That's why the no drinking phase is really. It's.

[Alex Albrecht]

You gotta.

[J.C. Hayes]

People don't drink anymore.

[Kevin Rose]

So it took me. It took me from adequate. Like, here's the thing. It's limited, adequate, solid, strong, and exceptional. And that's as you go up the. Like, I was like borderline adequate, limited. And then it took me from addict basically all the way up to exceptional in two weeks.

[Alex Albrecht]

How. What is that?

[Kevin Rose]

Hrv. So heart rate.

[Alex Albrecht]

Excuse me.

[Kevin Rose]

We have a truck going on his fire truck.

[Alex Albrecht]

Speaking of fire people. So I gotta go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, I'm out with the freaking ax in hand.

[Kevin Rose]

I'd be like, well, you know, you got a job.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, so what is that resilience?

[Kevin Rose]

It looks like hrv, which is your heart rate variability. So the more variability that you have in your heart rate, the better, actually. And then it looks at your sleep data. It looks at your deep sleep, your light sleep, your REM sleep.

[Alex Albrecht]

That's what I want to find out.

[Kevin Rose]

It looks at your resting heart rate. Have you seen your resting heart rate?

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, I talked about this on the show, but there was a period of time where my watch kept being like, hey, your resting heart rate is really high. But then I've started working out.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, but you also know what that is?

[Alex Albrecht]

It's my heart beating fast.

[Kevin Rose]

But do you know why that is?

[Alex Albrecht]

Alcohol.

[Kevin Rose]

Correct. You were like.

[Alex Albrecht]

The thing.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, the thing. Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh, God, I love it.

[Kevin Rose]

All right, so whoop.

[Alex Albrecht]

Whoop.

[Kevin Rose]

New whoop is out. This is a big deal for some people because it's been four years in the making, so.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh, great.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[J.C. Hayes]

And you can try it before you. You can try it for a month, I think.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, I think they have like a trial thing where you can go and like, try it out and see if you like it. And it is. The one thing they do do is they do a subscription model. So it's like, not like you can do like a monthly fee kind of thing for the device. They have an option where you can pay for the device like up front. But I believe that, like, so if you go with like, let's just pick the middle one, the peak one, which is the new one. I think it's like, oh, geez. Okay, Black band, so. Oh, yeah, one month free trial. That's cool. And then basically family plan. What does that mean? I don't have. I don't wanna put my kids on this. Oh. So the annual membership is 239 on. The Whoop is free per month and the whoop is free? Yes. You're just paying. That's like all inclusive kind of thing.

[Alex Albrecht]

I mean, shoot, these Apple watches were like 650 or whatever. You know what I mean?

[Kevin Rose]

Yes, but. And there's no monthly fee with that, though.

[Alex Albrecht]

No, I know, but I mean, like, if you're, you know, if you're a tech nerd like me and want to have the fanciest stuff all the time. Yeah. You know, it's like my phone, right? Like, I pay the monthly thing for my phone and then I get to just every year when they like a new phone, it's slightly nicer.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, I feel.

[Alex Albrecht]

I guess I get that. I guess I get it.

[Kevin Rose]

I always want to, like, keep mine for an extra year because I feel bad about upgrading every single time I guess somebody else is getting that phone.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh, dude. 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

They recycle. Okay.

[Alex Albrecht]

Okay. Next story is not really a story. It's just something that I did this week and I thought, I'm going to talk about this because it's very. It was the promise of my 3D printer, so I got a 3D printer. Heather bought me a 3D printer for my birthday, I think something like that. A while ago, like five years ago, something like that. And it was really fun. And I printed out like a little baby grogu for her and I painted it and gave it to her and it was super fun. Like, I have some Dice boxes and dice towers for D and D that I had, which was fun. And then I just sort of ran out of stuff to print, so I was like, nah, not really. And my buddy Ron, who was on the dungeon run, a DD show that I had for a while, he's huge into 3D printing. And he was like, dude, the thing that's crazy is design your own thing to solve your problems. Like something that you have in the household, you don't have to go buy it. You can literally just design it and then print it. And the idea of that has always been like the gold standard of using 3D printers. Yeah, I had no idea.

[Kevin Rose]

And I can't like do blenders and shit. Like, you can't like do like appliances. What are you gonna design, like, cup holders?

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, so I've been going through this crazy automation phase and I've needed some fancy cup holders. No, I'm just kidding. I've been going through this whole home automation stuff we're doing. And one of the things that I wanted to upgrade was I have a hardwired intercom system at the house. You press a button, it rings. On these two things in the house, you can press a key, it has a straight electric stripe, opens the door, all that stuff. I've been wanting to get into a different ecosystem with that, automate it, and I've just been like dragging my feet. One of the things that I found was our electric strike plate, which is basically just the thing that goes and opens a door. It broke because the person who installed it installed it out from the door. And so whenever it rains, which is very rare, but when it does, and it did a while back, rain would get down in between the metal frame of the door and the actual unit because it's not seated in.

[Kevin Rose]

So it would like complete the circuit.

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, no, it just, it blew the whole thing.

[Kevin Rose]

I had to buy the little things.

[Alex Albrecht]

Inside, pop all the little things inside, whatever they might be.

[Kevin Rose]

Resistors. Resistors, yeah, yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

Capacitors.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

Transistors. Yeah. Anyway, so I got, so I got a new one. But then I put it in and it's, you know, it's still sitting this far out. And I was like, God damn it, this fricking thing is gonna get wet again and all this stuff. And I go, I have a 3D printer. I have to be able to 3D print like a thing that, like a spacer that just plugs that hole.

[Kevin Rose]

If this is like a 10 minute story to talk about how you just made a spacer for Your door. This is the most boring story ever.

[Alex Albrecht]

No, the fact of the matter is I had to figure out how to use Fusion360. I got digital calipers out. I literally like measured all this stuff out, built this device that exists in virtual space, and sent it to my friend Allison, who's got a 3D printer. Cause mine's old.

[Kevin Rose]

I bet you I could one shot.

[Alex Albrecht]

That you could maybe one shot it. But I was thinking of like pictures, like taking pictures. But I literally had to get in there and be like, what's the diameter of the screw hole that I have to have? How far from the front is the screw hole, how far from the backside is the screw hole? And then build all that stuff and then extrude it up the exact amount that I need for the spacers and blah, blah, blah, blah. And it was like, like very satisfying. It is currently being printed by my friend Alison. I'm gonna pick it up today.

[Kevin Rose]

So what's the best 3D printer to get right now?

[Alex Albrecht]

So then I went on this whole fucking pony show, of course. Because I want. Anytime something cool happens, I want to buy shit, right? So bad.

[Kevin Rose]

It's bad, but I like it.

[Alex Albrecht]

And this guy, this thing called Flow Labs 4L, it's massive and it's super not expensive, cheap. It's like 20 grand, but. But it's a resin printer. So the way that 3D printers are. Flow Labs, I think it's Flow Lab 4L.

[Kevin Rose]

4L. Like that? Flow Lab.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, that's it.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay, here we go. All right.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, that's it.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, I've seen this. Teenage engineering, I think did the design for this.

[Alex Albrecht]

That does not surprise me. It's gorgeous.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

So there's basically two ways 3D printers. There's extruders where you basically like put the little thing on the ground and then go up a level. And then there's resin based printers, which is basically like. It's in the plate, goes into this resin. That's liquid terminator. Lasers hit it, solidify it, goes up a level. Lasers hit it up a level. So basically, extruders, like pile it on from the bottom up. And the.

[Kevin Rose]

Was that a terminator where like a terminator came out, like of a resin or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what this is.

[Alex Albrecht]

But this stuff can be way more fine and fine details it.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, wow. Look at the detail on that thing, bro. You can look at that little mini roller coaster. So.

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, that's not a roller coaster. That's a product that's in Scaffolding that's going to be removed.

[Kevin Rose]

Shut up.

[Alex Albrecht]

No. Yeah, yeah. The piece. That's just scaffolding to hold it up.

[Kevin Rose]

That'S a roller coaster.

[Alex Albrecht]

They all look like. Every build looks like a roller coaster.

[Kevin Rose]

Doesn't that look like a mini roller coaster?

[Alex Albrecht]

It does, but it's actually like a lacrosse head.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay. Oh, they're doing golf clubs. Oh, this is really. So what is the. Oh, there it is. Pixel size. So that's what you need to know. But here's the thing in terms of.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. Oh, no, no, no. It's like, super crazy fine. But the other thing is it can be. You can do all sorts of materials. You can do, like, flexible materials. You can do, like, rigid materials.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, wow.

[Alex Albrecht]

Like that. You can do things like in nylon and all sorts. Not nylon. I don't know where that came from. But all sorts of crazy shit. But this is the thing is, like, now that I have unlocked. This is the thing that got me excited was literally yesterday. I've unlocked this whole concept of being able to sit, draw what I want, measure it in real time, bring it into a 3D environment, build it, extrude it, make it what it is that I want, and then send it off to be 3D printed. Like, game changer for even just the little thing.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, look at that steering wheel.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. But even like a little clip, Right? Like, I'm redoing all the. I said I'm redoing all the stuff in the backyard. The lights. You can make, like, little clips where you're like, I just need this little itty bitty thing so I can put it onto the fence. But my fence is this size. And you can make little lips. I mean, this shit is endless.

[Kevin Rose]

Anyway, this is amazing. Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

Super excited about it.

[Kevin Rose]

Are you buying one?

[Alex Albrecht]

I don't want to buy the $20,000 3D printer. That's the size of. Wow.

[Kevin Rose]

Look how huge that thing is.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh, it's massive. But think about how much big stuff you can make. I know, I know. If I buy that. My wife's.

[Kevin Rose]

Look at that guy's roller coaster. Look at him. He's looking at his roller coaster. He's like, all roller coasters. He's like.

[Alex Albrecht]

That would kill. Didn't somebody invent a roller coaster that would kill? It was like a suicide coaster.

[Kevin Rose]

No.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. It was like a Swedish architect or designer built a roller coaster that was so intense with the GS that it would basically slowly kill you.

[Mal]

That's totally a thing.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Mal]

I think there's a story about that.

[Alex Albrecht]

I think we did it on the show like years ago.

[Kevin Rose]

Theoretical. Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. Oh well, just theoretical. AI simulated it and it works really well. I'm glad AI knows about it.

[Kevin Rose]

This is cool. Well, you could get the mini one to start maybe that's your like.

[Alex Albrecht]

That's what I was thinking.

[Kevin Rose]

Get this little guy right here.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh no, that, that actually is. That cures it. That washes it.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, you need all three.

[Alex Albrecht]

I mean that's why it's 20 grand, because the device is 10.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay.

[Alex Albrecht]

But then the washer you put in and it takes away all the like it like washes the resin and then you cure it in the curing bin.

[Kevin Rose]

The professional post cure.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. But there's a four. The L is large, obviously. So there's a form four.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. Starting at 10 grand. Oh, here's the packages.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. So that's the one where it's got everything. The washer, the cure.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, you kinda gotta get that one.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. But if you go to the 3D printers, you can go see the littler one is the four.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, they're there.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. Wait.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, we have this little guy right here. Cute little guy. Or it's two grand right here.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you still gotta get the other stuff. So it's not, you know.

[Kevin Rose]

All right, this is cool.

[Alex Albrecht]

I know. Anyway, so I might be back into 3D printing. It may have happened.

[Kevin Rose]

Love it.

[Alex Albrecht]

Let's see if my door closes.

[Kevin Rose]

You'll just go around making door handles for everyone.

[Alex Albrecht]

Hey man, you want a door handle? Come to me.

[Kevin Rose]

All right, next story of the day, Apple's ruling. This one is. This one's pretty big. It's weird to me that this came out and I read a little bit about it, but I don't think people quite understand what this really means.

[Alex Albrecht]

Did you get an email? No, I got an email.

[Kevin Rose]

From Apple?

[Alex Albrecht]

No, no, no, From Ludlof. What? Wait, what are you talking about?

[Kevin Rose]

I think that may be like a spam.

[Alex Albrecht]

No, no, no.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay, so Apple, basically what happened is the judge said that they have to allow in third party external link purchases of subscriptions and products so that you would launch a web based browser.

[Alex Albrecht]

Got it. And this was the whole talking about two different things.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

This is epic versus Apple.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

So they've been fighting them for years. Right.

[Alex Albrecht]

So there's a close you can ecosystem and they take the 30%.

[Kevin Rose]

Right?

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

And so now Spotify and I believe Kindle have. Now they have a way to bypass the in store app purchase and buy directly on their sites. And so now you have to pay the Apple tax.

[Alex Albrecht]

No, again.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, But I kind of feel like this isn't fully, completely fair to Apple because Apple's doing the distribution of your application. They're paying for it to be hosted in cdn. And granted, it's pennies, but, like, they're making a searchable app store where your app can be found. They should get something. Yeah, but.

[Alex Albrecht]

But it's just for the subscription stuff, right?

[Kevin Rose]

Exactly.

[Alex Albrecht]

But then again, if you think about it, most things now are freemium models anyway, where they're like, hey, buy the app, you get it for free, and then there's an ad or whatever. But if you want to get rid of that, you have to sign up for the subscription. You know what I mean?

[Kevin Rose]

So this is launching outside of their ecosystem. So it's no longer that quick. Apple pay. And then you actually get to buy directly from the person, which actually. That's weird.

[Alex Albrecht]

That's a friction point that I'm like, I don't know if I love that.

[Kevin Rose]

Oh, so you'd rather pay directly with Apple? Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

Cause I just go, oh, I want that. Yeah, give me a subscription. Boop boop. Like, Duolingo. Like, I don't have to go to Duolingo and be like, I agree, but is it worth.

[Kevin Rose]

So if they said, we'll give you a 30% discount if you buy directly from us.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh, I'd buy directly.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[Alex Albrecht]

Wouldn't even think about it.

[Kevin Rose]

Well. Cause they have the stripe checkout flows and everything. It's all easy now. You put a phone number in and half the shit's already there.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

So, I mean, this is a big deal because, like, this is billions of dollars in revenue stuff, right?

[Alex Albrecht]

Because the Fortnite is on mobile.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes.

[Alex Albrecht]

That was the big one, was Fortnite was mobile. And they were like, you are taking 30% of our Fortnite on. I don't know if I mean. Oh, dude. Yeah, right. Because I played Call of Duty on my iPhone. Like, there's a lot of stuff that you can do on the iPhone that's subscription based.

[Kevin Rose]

Well, this is the problem where I think Apple just got a little too greedy. Like, if they had come in with a flat T across the board for everyone said, hey, listen, we're do distribution, search, credit card processing, fraud prevention, the whole thing. So if you think about what does that typically cost? Well, if you go with someone like stripe, you're paying two and a half percent plus 30 cents a transaction or whatever. It may be that's for the top class fraud prevention credit card, all that stuff. But they deal with the returns for you. They deal with all that stuff. So there is an additional amount that I'd be willing to pay even if Apple came and said, hey listen, it's 8% of any transaction we do. 10%.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

You know, I'd be like, okay, I get all of these things or I have to do it with a third party. I'll just use Apple. Because that's a no brainer.

[Alex Albrecht]

Because they're at 30%. They've been at 30%.

[Kevin Rose]

I know. And they haven't backed out.

[Alex Albrecht]

I mean, they've also made a fuck ton of money.

[Kevin Rose]

I know. It's billions of dollars in revenue annually for them. It's like insane. Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

Because one app goes crazy. Plus it's also like if you're an app developer. I remember this back in the day, early days when there were like, you know, like the camera apps. Cause the camera app on the phone wasn't that good. Like it was so much worth it to be on the App Store because if you were on the App Store, if you could crack in any of those lists where you were getting in front of people, like you would make so much money compared to just going it on your own and being like, I think this is gonna work for some phones.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

You know what I mean?

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

But that's huge, dude.

[Mal]

I feel like Kindle's a really good example of something that's not subscription based but really affected my spending habits. Like that friction of like, oh, I can't buy it here, I'm just not going to get it.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah, Interesting. Well how does it work with Netflix? Because there's no way you're buying a Netflix.

[Kevin Rose]

They don't let you buy it on there.

[Alex Albrecht]

They don't let you buy it. You have to buy it on the web account.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. So if you go and download Netflix, I'm pretty sure it used to be this way. They may have changed. With your Netflix you have to sign in but you can't actually buy it. You have to go to netflix.com on another device.

[Alex Albrecht]

But it's interesting that if it was for certain things they had already said like Netflix, you can have an app in the App Store that would will host and that we don't take any percentage of the. They must have negotiated.

[Kevin Rose]

Always said that.

[Alex Albrecht]

No, I know, but I'm just saying they must have negotiated something in the back.

[Kevin Rose]

In terms of what?

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh, interesting.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. A lot of services have said, yes, you can buy us through Apple, but we're going to be 30% more expensive. So we just are break even.

[Alex Albrecht]

Crazy.

[Kevin Rose]

I know. It is a. It's a big deal.

[Alex Albrecht]

That's a. I mean, that's a big shakeup of their. You know, I don't want to say monopoly, but, like, you know, if you want to be in the Apple ecosystem, especially with the iPhones or the iPads, there's only one player to go to.

[Kevin Rose]

I think it's also. But it's needed, though, like, this 30% idea, especially on, like, microtransactions.

[Alex Albrecht]

Oh, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

Because there's a lot of businesses out there where they're either running, like, really thin margins, and so 30% is a big deal to their business, or they're just, like, doing something where it's like, I want a different color hat, and it's like, you know, a Roblox purchase where I'm buying something for my kids for 99 cents.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

And you're telling me that now that independent developer that put that together is not getting that money? Apple's taking 30% of that to flip one bit that says they get to wear the purple hat now. Yeah. Like, it's ridiculous.

[Alex Albrecht]

That's crazy.

[Kevin Rose]

They get paid on all that shit.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

So I don't know. There's no perfect answer here, because obviously they have to make money as well. Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

Fun to watch.

[Alex Albrecht]

Interesting. All right, people. Whoa. That was. That was really fun. Yes. I'm hopped up on coffee.

[Kevin Rose]

Yes.

[Alex Albrecht]

I now have to pee. Yes, again, because of coffee and water.

[Kevin Rose]

Why don't we ever have to pee when we're drinking?

[Alex Albrecht]

Alcohol just absorbs into your system.

[Kevin Rose]

That's right.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah. It comes out of your pores when you're with sugars.

[Kevin Rose]

It was a fun episode, though. I can't believe we did. This is our first subway episode in years.

[Alex Albrecht]

That.

[Kevin Rose]

Probably forever. Yeah.

[Alex Albrecht]

Not forever, but years.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah. Years.

[Alex Albrecht]

Well, that is it for this week's edition of Dig Nation, please. Super excited that J.C. hayes got to come in and say hi.

[J.C. Hayes]

I'm glad I'm on your first sober episode.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah.

[Kevin Rose]

Yeah, it made sense.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, it makes a lot like.

[J.C. Hayes]

It makes so much sense.

[Alex Albrecht]

Yeah, I get it now. Love it. Hopefully we will see you soon. Oh, we got to talk about the shooting next time because I saw that the date changed.

[Kevin Rose]

Should we pull up our calendars?

[Alex Albrecht]

No, not yet.

[Kevin Rose]

Okay.

[Alex Albrecht]

Hey, we'll see you soon. Love you guys.

[Kevin Rose]

Bye.