WTF Happened in 2025 - Waveform Rewind

Summary

Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast

Episode: WTF Happened in 2025 - Waveform Rewind

Date: December 19, 2025
Host: Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) with Andrew Manganelli, David Imel, Adam Molina, and Ellis Roven

Episode Overview

This special Waveform "After Dark" episode brings a spirited year-end rewind to 2025’s most impactful, strange, and hilarious tech stories. The crew unboxes and live-reviews the Samsung Galaxy Z Tri Fold, debates the “new Twitter” trademark battle, reviews end-of-year hardware launches and failures, revisits their (sometimes cringingly wrong) predictions from January, and crowns the year’s biggest stories and trends in tech. The lighter segment includes hot wings, spicy trivia, and a “hot sauce of shame” payoff for a lost tech bet. The episode is loaded with group banter, sharp insights, a parade of notable quotes, and a hard-earned, laugh-filled look back on an eventful tech year.

---

Key Segments & Discussion Points

1. Waveform After Dark: Setting the Mood

[02:09]

• First-ever "After Dark" episode, filmed in the evening for chill energy.
• Lots of banter about Hot Ones, inside jokes, and Ellis’ dramatic lighting change.

Quote:

“This episode is being taped at 5pm which means this is the first ever episode of... Waveform After Dark.”
— Ellis, [02:09]

---

2. Samsung Galaxy Z Tri Fold: First Impressions & Deep Dive

[02:39 – 19:23]

• Marques brings the just-acquired Samsung Galaxy Z Tri Fold (a trifold folding phone/tablet hybrid) for a live hands-on.
• Explains how it compares to the Z Fold 7, pricing ($2,500-$3,000), specs (Snapdragon 8 Elite, 512GB/16GB RAM), triple screen layout.
• Real-life benefits: fits in pocket yet opens to a full 10” tablet.
• Discussion on camera quality, aspect ratios for video viewing, multitasking (3 windows), and DeX mode.
• The hardware quirks: visible screen creases, panel thickness differences, major “wobble,” and fingerprint magnet issues.
• Battery tradeoffs (smaller than true tablets), questions over durability (IP48), and “should I daily this?” debate.
• Rumor talk: is Apple’s rumored foldable more media-friendly? Long-term trends in folding devices vs. smart glasses.
• Evolution of foldables: from concept to thinner-than-ever, now realistic for daily use.

Quotes:

“It’s a full diagonal 10 inch tablet on the inside and I like it more than I thought I would.”
— Marques, [03:22]

“I really think there’s a big difference between the on-screen presence and the in-hand presence of this phone for sure, which is so hard to convey in video...”
— Marques, [11:23]

Notable Moment:

• Waveform crew jokily invent “short form slots” with three simultaneous Reels/TikToks for the trifold, poking fun at short-form video culture.
• Lively debates on practical utility vs. “gimmick” status with honest disagreements.

Timestamps:

• Specs breakdown: [05:00]
• Trifold quirks and keyboard fun: [08:18]
• Durability/IP48/fingerprint row: [10:00-16:44]
• Rumors & future of foldables: [11:45-13:19]
• Foldable market evolution: [14:30]

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3. The Twitter/X/Operation Bluebird Trademark Saga

[20:30 – 25:54]

• David introduces the absurd legal battle between “X” (the company formerly known as Twitter) and a new startup claiming abandoned “Twitter” trademarks.
• Banter about the ongoing confusion with X.com, inability to Google “X,” and “everyone still calls it Twitter."
• Question of trademark rules: if you stop using a name, when can someone else take it?
• Reflection on the impossibility of recapturing OG Twitter energy, regardless of legal outcomes.

Quotes:

“It’s almost cringy that this new startup is trying to be the new Twitter. Like, I don’t really think that’s a good goal to have.”
— Marques, [24:53]

Timestamp:

• Core discussion: [20:30-25:54]

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4. Instagram TV App (for Fire TV) & Short-form Video “Doomscrolling”

[30:16 – 35:09]

• Instagram launches a new Fire TV-only app for watching Reels on the TV, reminiscent of the failed IGTV attempt.
• Debates on whether short-form video consumption together (on big screens) actually adds value or just more brain rot.
• Laments that integrating Reels into the main app years ago should’ve been obvious: “Vertical video was just a feature!”

Quote:

“The social aspect of watching video together is very strong…there could be 2% value in that.”
— David, [33:53]

---

5. Disney x OpenAI: Generative Video, Sora, & Copyright Battles

[35:09 – 37:54]

• OpenAI announces a partnership with Disney to use Sora for short-form generative video content—raising questions about creativity vs. automation.
• Disney simultaneously sues Google for copyright infringement.
• Crew is collectively unsettled by Disney automating its legendary bespoke animation pipeline.

Quote:

“This is a company that's known for bespoke making everything by hand… and now they've gone and done this.”
— Ellis, [36:29]

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6. Google “CC” AI Assistant Launches – A Niche Nerd Feature in the Making

[38:06 – 41:41]

• Google Labs tests “CC,” an assistant that summarizes your calendar, email, and Drive content as a briefing.
• Marques predicts CC will merge with existing Google Assistant routines.
• Collective confusion over product naming, targeting, and whether this will ever reach non-power users.

---

7. Ford F150 Lightning Electric Truck Is Discontinued – A Shift in the EV Landscape

[41:47 – 49:54]

• The Ford F150 Lightning, a high-profile competitor to Tesla, is being discontinued due to poor sales.
• Discussion about hybrid “generator” models, EV tax credits expiring, and worldwide softening of EV mandates (EU, US).
• The crew reflects on the end of the EV hype cycle and the realities of “customer-driven” market corrections.
• Tangent about consumer priorities: “Sometimes you just want truck to go, go, and beep, beep.”

Quotes:

“...The EVs were smaller margins and less profitable and what we're going to switch to and pivot to will be more profitable for Ford.”
— Marques, [45:42]

“If nobody's buying EVs and the government incentives go away and sales drop, it's like you can't make people buy EVs if they don't want them.”
— Marques, [48:31]

---

8. The Rivian “Autonomy Day” Event – Self-Driving Promises (and Over-Promises)

[50:11 – 59:55]

• Rivian holds a dense, technical “Autonomy Day,” promising new in-house silicon and full hands-off driving in their Generation 3 vehicles.
• Crew debates the real utility, market targeting, and inevitable confusion surrounding these “Tesla-like” promises (including hardware cut-offs).
• Nuanced debate: does LIDAR sensor redundancy make sense, or is “vision-only” the future?

Quotes:

“They promise a lot…this is way too much. That's also just out of Rivian's hands for quite a bit of it in terms of regulations.”
— Andrew, [56:47]

“I think one of the most interesting battlegrounds on the internet [is] the lidar versus no lidar battle in the self driving world.”
— Marques, [58:40]

---

9. Prediction Recap & 2025’s Funniest Tech Blunders

[64:20 – 75:11]

• Crew revisits their start-of-year “predictions”:
  • QI2 wireless charging adoption: split bets.
  • Year of Pixel 10 (Tensor leap): didn’t happen.
  • Hot takes on AI wearables: “no one got it right.”
  • Humane AI pin gets acquired by HP: surprisingly correct.
  • Browser wars are “back” (Marques scores a win).
  • Live translation will never come—Ellis lost this bet and must eat Da Bomb hot sauce.
• The cringe and comedy of January-optimism meets reality.

Quotes:

“That just shows that Adam was especially wrong.”
— Andrew, [68:56]
“I am a man of my word. After we finish the next part of Waveform Wrapped, I will... stick around, and I will... Da Bomb.”
— Ellis, [73:28]

---

10. 2025’s Biggest Tech Stories — Mount Rushmore & The Story of the Year

[75:11 – 85:36]

• Crew creates a “Mount Rushmore” of the year’s top stories:
  • Liquid Glass UI madness and backlash.
  • TikTok nearly getting banned for a night (mass internet panic).
  • The rise and fall of short-form vertical video everywhere.
  • Nintendo Switch 2, meta AI glasses, new foldables, and the fall of iPhone Air.
• Reflections on the year’s “vibe”: more chaos than monumental progress, but “everyone did what they said they would.”

Quotes:

“Honestly, my Mount Rushmore is all of the unsealed documents from the Meta lawsuit.”
— Ellis, [85:03]
“This year, I interviewed Tim Cook and he just didn’t answer any of the questions.”
— Marques, [84:08]

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11. Ellis Eats Da Bomb (Punishment for Lost Bet — Live Translation Launch)

[87:01 – 94:00]

• Ellis follows through on his bet: since live translation was actually released (contrary to his prediction), he eats a spoonful of the infamously hot "Da Bomb" sauce, offers an apology to developers worldwide, and instantly regrets it.
• The rest of the crew both sympathizes and laughs hard.

Quote:

“I never apologize... I was wrong. And now I’m going to pay the price. So let’s get a little warm up going.”
— Ellis, [89:09]

Timestamp:

• Apology & Da Bomb sequence: [88:09-90:17]

---

12. Final Trivia & Year-End Wrap

[90:15 – end]

• Tech trivia and shout-outs, with points tallied for the year.
• Ellis, through pain, delivers the final trivia as Waveform fades out on a high note, promising “2026 is gonna be sick.”

---

Most Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “It’s a full diagonal 10-inch tablet on the inside and I like it more than I thought I would.” — Marques, [03:22]
• “If you get all three videos being the same, then Neil Mohan has to step down and you become the CEO of YouTube.” — David, [04:31]
• “We just published our video…if you already have a phone and a tablet, this isn’t for you. But the person who wants to have a phone and a tablet but take it in their pocket…this does that.” — Marques, [08:43]
• “It’s almost cringy that this new startup is trying to be the new Twitter. Like, I don’t really think that’s a good goal to have.” — Marques, [24:53]
• “The social aspect of watching video together is very strong… there could be 2% value in that.” — David, [33:53]
• “This is a company that's known for bespoke making everything by hand… and now they've gone and done this.” — Ellis, [36:29]
• “I just want car to go. I want car to go, go and beep, beep.” — Ellis, [62:15]
• “My Mount Rushmore for stories of 2025: Liquid Glass, South By Southwest, SU7, and the Switch 2.” — Marques, [79:21-80:07]
• “I am a man of my word… I will be doing Da Bomb on a spoon.” — Ellis, [87:19-88:00]

---

Episode Takeaways

• 2025 tech was defined less by single monumental breakthroughs and more by the collective chaos of device evolution, legal wrangling, and cultural micro-trends (foldables, generative AI, short-form video, etc.).
• Foldables are increasingly real, but still have “first-gen” quirks.
• AI and automation pervade—even Disney is “out-sourcing” creativity.
• The dream of “the next Twitter” is a nostalgic folly.
• Product overpromising (self-driving/AI) is alive and well.
• Tech personalities’ bets and predictions are often humbled (“I thought I was smart...I was the most wrong.” — Ellis).
• The show closes with friendship, laughter, humility, and the hottest tech take—literally.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Start Time | |------------------------------------------------|--------------| | After Dark setup, Hot Ones jokes | 00:50 | | Galaxy Z Tri Fold hands-on | 02:39 | | Foldable quirks / specs | 05:00 | | Trifold usability & battery tradeoffs | 09:16 | | Future of folds vs smart glasses | 12:49 | | Twitter/X/Bluebird legal saga | 20:30 | | Instagram/Fire TV, short-form video reflection | 30:16 | | OpenAI/Disney deal, Sora | 35:09 | | Google CC, AI assistant | 38:06 | | Ford F150 Lightning discontinued | 41:47 | | EV trend reversals | 46:39 | | Rivian autonomy event | 50:11 | | Lidar vs. cameras debate | 58:40 | | Prediction recap and punishment setup | 64:20 | | Big stories / Mount Rushmore debate | 75:11 | | Da Bomb hot sauce punishment | 87:01 | | Show outro / wrap-up | 94:00 |

---

Closing Note

Waveform After Dark’s 2025 rewind is everything the audience expects—tech nerd arguments, big laughs, biting honesty, and inside jokes, brought home by the year’s most memorable gadgets and misadventures. Whether you crave hard tech analysis or just want to feel like you’re in the room with Marques and friends, you won’t want to miss this one.

Transcript

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[Andrew]

We've all watched Hot Ones enough.

[David]

We shouldn't.

[Andrew]

I have. Not everyone, but David has watched Hot Ones enough that we should.

[David]

The only episode I watched was the one where what's his name, like, you better be careful.

[Adam]

David is right there.

[Andrew]

Marquez has been on it twice.

[David]

I think I watched that one. Wait, twice I watched one. I didn't know. You went on again.

[Marques]

Unbelievable. I talked so much about you on that episode. That's crazy.

[Adam]

He was like, my good friend David.

[Marques]

There was a whole section where Sean is like, I heard you're friends with David. You should totally watch it, dude.

[David]

All right, that's cool. Keep it up.

[Marques]

Yo, what's up, people of the Internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform podcast.

[Adam]

We're your hosts.

[Marques]

I'm Marques.

[Andrew]

I'm Andrew.

[David]

And I'm David.

[Marques]

And this week, we've got a regularly scheduled. I said else is going to.

[Ellis]

I am going to interrupt you. That's right, because.

[David]

And I'm wrong, Burgundy.

[Ellis]

And I'm interrupting you because this episode is not like normal episodes. Do you guys know why this is a very special episode?

[Marques]

Is it because it's the last one?

[Ellis]

It is coincidentally the last episode of the year, but that's not what's regularly scheduled.

[Andrew]

Of the year.

[Marques]

Yeah, but that's not what he means.

[David]

Hit it, Rich.

[Ellis]

Oh, no, guys. This episode is being taped at 5pm which means this is the first ever episode of.

[Andrew]

Oh, Waveform After Dark.

[Marques]

After Dark. Thank you, Rich.

[Ellis]

You can get the lights again.

[Andrew]

I was wondering why Rich is here. I was like, this is a long clip for you.

[Ellis]

That was it.

[Marques]

Should we talk about why we're here at 5pm yes, we should.

[David]

That was a good transition.

[Marques]

Okay, so today I got to finally get Some hands on time with this thing right here, which is the Samsung Galaxy Z Tri Fold. This morning we went into the city, got some info from Samsung on what it was about and got to shoot some footage of it. And then we got back to the studio and the one that I bought from Korea had also arrived the same day. And that is this one right here.

[David]

So how much did it cost you from Korea? Do you know how much it costs?

[Marques]

So I'm gonna get my invoice later. So I don't actually know, but I hear it's somewhere between 2,500 and $3,000. Dang. It's an expensive phone, but I've watched other people's videos on it and I've seen photos of it and it looks like such a chunk and I keep thinking, oh, it's kind of a gimmick, like whatever. Samsung's doing the trifold thing, but it's obviously not going to be reasonable to use. And then I picked it up and held it and I used it with the screen closed, which is basically the same as the Z Fold seven. And it's fine. And then I opened it and it's a whole tablet on the inside. And I'm starting to think this is actually kind of a nice, like a really nice phone this year. It's obviously super expensive, but I'm holding up to the camera for the video viewers. This thing is a full diagonal 10 inch tablet on the inside and I like it more than I thought I would.

[David]

So are we gonna get rid of short form video now that we're gonna be able to have landscapes in our pockets?

[Andrew]

No, because like you said, you said this before. You can put, you can put three short form videos across it and play it like a slot machine.

[Marques]

Wait, can you actually, I mean, you can.

[Andrew]

It's literally short form slots.

[Ellis]

And if you get all three screens showing the same short, like if before you page, then you win

[Andrew]

and you can't stop until that happens.

[David]

Yeah, instead of it being like a seven, a cherry, like three or four things, it's millions of videos that you have to get lined up.

[Marques]

So yeah, you can do three things side by side.

[David]

If you get all three videos being the same, then Neil Moynihan has to step down and you become the CEO of YouTube.

[Adam]

His name is Neil.

[David]

Neil.

[Ellis]

Not Moynihan Station.

[David]

Sorry, Neil. I love Moynihan Station. That's beautiful.

[Marques]

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

[Andrew]

Wait, real quick, is there a one terabyte version? I thought on the Samsung Press Mobile

[Marques]

something maybe that's not coming to the US because I was told it's only one spec 512.

[Andrew]

Okay. There might be somewhere where you can get a one terabyte version.

[Marques]

Oh, okay. Even better. But yeah, the outside screen, the COVID screen is just your classic 21 by. What is it? 21 by 9? I think it's a widescreen, obviously. Definitely 2600 nits, 120 hertz. Why am I. It's hard to talk. I've been talking all day. It's been a long day. It's been a long day. But then you open the phone. Oh. On the back has the cameras, same as The Z Fold 7 as well. So 200 megapixel primary and then an ultra wide and a 3x telephoto.

[David]

So mid.

[Marques]

Great. Okay. Yeah. But then you open it and it's like. It's a tablet.

[David]

So dope.

[Marques]

It's all the things you can watch full screen videos, you can game. You can have apps side by side and they're not actually cramped. That's huge. You can type on a full size keyboard. You have decks all the time even without being connected to a monitor. You can also connect it to a monitor, mouse and keyboard and use it as a second display.

[Andrew]

Can I ask a stupid question?

[Marques]

Go for it.

[Andrew]

What does dex not on a monitor even mean? Because isn't the whole point of dex that it goes on windows? It's just like. It's just more computer.

[David]

Like I guess.

[Marques]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

But on the screen. Okay, fair.

[Marques]

No, that's a very valid question.

[David]

Yeah. So it's like full. It's full screen apps that give.

[Marques]

What's a computer different.

[David]

Like, like if you're in the files app, it'll show the full tree structure and then you can resize windows and you can keep them in certain areas. It's literally a desktop.

[Andrew]

Everything's computer.

[David]

Everything's computer. I know.

[Ellis]

It's just an iPad.

[David]

Well, it's a Samsung Galaxy Tab.

[Andrew]

Oh wait, that's kind of.

[Marques]

I've got three windows open here. And then I go, you know what, I want to go to a new Space.

[David]

Whoa.

[Marques]

And do three more windows and then move back.

[Andrew]

I'm going to say something real quick. Those creases are pretty rough right now. Those are not good.

[Marques]

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

[David]

Question.

[Marques]

Yeah.

[David]

Considering the square aspect ratio of a bi fold is kind of lame for watching videos and doesn't really do anything for you, in my humblest opinion. How much of a 16 by 9 video fits full screen on this? How many. How many black borders?

[Marques]

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

[David]

So it's like it's most of the display though.

[Marques]

You'd say, yeah, it's pretty nice. Apps that use the whole screen, like gaming or whatever.

[Andrew]

The split screen keyboard is literally, there's no keyboard on the middle panel that's so wide.

[Marques]

That's so fun. Samsung's tablets do that too, so they just treat it like it makes sense.

[Andrew]

It's just really jarring to see a whole panel with.

[David]

I do love the idea of, like being on an airplane and being able to play like a PlayStation 2 game with a controller. Like, is that not awesome?

[Marques]

God, that's.

[David]

Is that not awesome? God of War.

[Marques]

Yeah, I'm. I'm preemptively thinking about what the comments will be like. We just published our video. My hands on with it. I think one common concern or question that I have is like, all right, I already have a tablet. Like, why is this better than a tablet? It's not. It's just that it can fit in Your pocket? Yeah, that's like the main, like obviously if you already have a phone and a tablet, this isn't for you. But the person who wants to have a phone and a tablet but take it in their pocket with them. Yeah, this does that.

[David]

I mean you have to have a bag to carry a tablet with you basically.

[Marques]

And you don't with this with a 10 inch screen.

[David]

Yeah, that is pretty amazing.

[Marques]

So that's sweet. It has a cellular connection all the time which is nice for a tablet. It's thinner probably than the tablet you're thinking of. But the other thing is it's definitely a smaller battery than the tablet you're thinking of. Most 10 inch tablets have like an 8000 milliamp hour battery roughly. Even Samsung's like S10 tab. S10 has a roughly 8000 milliamp hour battery. This has a 5600 milliamp hour battery. Is that YouTube's desktop site?

[Andrew]

No, that's actually I'm trying to find a 16 by 9 video. So that's your iPhone 5s review.

[Marques]

Is that a 16 by 9 video?

[Adam]

I'm.

[Andrew]

I was guessing. We switched to 2 by 1 when Brandon and Vin convinced us to. Yeah, like 2018. So that's pretty good.

[David]

And then you can enlarge it and then it's.

[Marques]

Yes. And that looks awesome.

[David]

Looks pretty good.

[Andrew]

That's pretty. Oh no, that's definitely cutting a lot off the sides when it's full screen.

[Marques]

It is when you full screen. But yeah.

[Adam]

What is the IP rating of this?

[Andrew]

48.

[Marques]

IP 48 which is also the same as the Z Fold 7 so you can drop some water on it, next to it, around it.

[Adam]

That's impressive for a gen 1.

[Andrew]

A dust particle or like piece of sand being folded in not once but now twice.

[Marques]

Probably that.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Marques]

Probably don't get dust particles.

[David]

I'm concerned about that. That's going to be the longevity test for, for people that have this early.

[Marques]

Yeah. I think this is fair to consider it a first gen product. Like it's a first gen tri fold. So it's first gen something. I think I'll turn location lock off. Rotation, rock, rotate rotation. I turn the. I turn rotation lock off. I've said so many words today.

[David]

Have you seen that trend that's been going around that's like it's on the TV and it goes rock sock, rock sock box, rock sock. I feel like you could not do that. Right.

[Marques]

I'd be very bad at it right now.

[Adam]

Marques, are you going to daily this?

[Marques]

I've Been thinking about it. I imported it from Korea, so I'm not exactly sure what the Banzer situation is going to be looking like. But on this, on this phone, I think I would like to daily it. I think I can get my esim in there and try it.

[David]

Oh, it's not. Landscape lock is not. Oh, wait, yes it was.

[Marques]

Hold on.

[Andrew]

Almost did it daily because we almost

[David]

just lost it on the floor.

[Ellis]

The amount of products that we've like taken out the box and dropped on

[David]

this podcast is like Linus, watch out. All right, cool.

[Marques]

Yeah, I am more of a fan than I expected to be. I really think there's a big difference between the on screen presence and the in hand presence of this phone for sure, which is so hard to convey in video because you're watching this on a screen. So it's like it probably doesn't translate very well. But you'll have to take my word for it.

[David]

I can't wait till there's another Chinese version of this. But it has better batteries and it's got like 12,000 milliamp hours or something.

[Marques]

Seems like that's en route. I mean, are we talking about this later? But isn't there some more steam for this iPhone fold this year?

[David]

Yeah, it's coming out next year.

[Marques]

People think it's going to be like kind of a squat regular size phone and then it opens up to be wider than it is tall. Which makes sense because the whole idea with all these square folds is you don't really get a ton out of a lot of media situations.

[David]

Is that a new leak that just came out?

[Andrew]

I saw someone posting it, but it looks rumors so poorly.

[Marques]

Like I don't think it's rendered.

[Andrew]

It felt. I just like glazed.

[Adam]

So it like opens up into like an iPad mini, like turned on its side basically Kind of.

[Ellis]

Yeah.

[Marques]

I think I saw somebody did a mock up of basically like imagine like the first gen pixel fold, like that sort of passport size. But then you open it and it's wider screen and that makes it better for watching videos on the inside, which I could see that being a highlight, you know, of this phone.

[Adam]

Okay, question for you guys about this. Fast forward 10 years. Are we using smart glasses or are we using folds like this that unfold into like a giant tablet?

[David]

This. I mean we'll have smart glasses as well.

[Marques]

You said 10 years or five years.

[Adam]

I say 10 years. Let's do 10 years.

[David]

I think that not everyone is going to. If you're. If you don't have a prescription, you'll Use smart glasses as sunglasses. If you do have a prescription, people will start using smart glasses on the daily. But I don't think it's going to replace their phone. I think it's just going to be the meta Ray ban style. You know, it'll have a display, it'll give you notifications. But yeah, I don't know, I probably won't wear it because I have perfect vision.

[Ellis]

I think show off. I think there's like a degree where like we're now that we're hitting like max dopamine technology. You know, we're finding that like outside of video games and vertical video, like people don't really spend like that much time using tech. So I think the value prop of a device that can't really do vertical video that well or game very well. Like I don't know if people are gonna wear no. No smart glasses.

[Marques]

Oh, like I don't know.

[Andrew]

But I would argue smart glasses. That's kind of the point of it is it's just it's there when you need it and because it's so convenient that it's there the times you do need it and you don't have to pull something out of your pocket or it's just like. Right.

[Marques]

Fun fact.

[Andrew]

I ain't trying to waste time pulling out my pocket. I don't even. I use wireless charging. I'm efficiency major right here.

[Marques]

Wow. You can doom scroll Instagram reels on the meta on the highway.

[Ellis]

That's right, yeah.

[Adam]

Oh God.

[David]

That's one of their use cases.

[Marques]

Yeah, I just looked it up. We went from not having any foldables to having foldables the way we have them now in about eight years.

[David]

Has it been that long?

[Marques]

Like The Z fold one is 2019 and we had foldables for maybe a year or two before that. So like 2017 to 2025.

[Andrew]

And it's progressed so much that even this triple folding. Well, the tri fold is thinner than the Z fold five. It was that thick for that long. Like when it's folded up. When it's folded up, it is thinner than the Z fold 5. When the Z fold 5 unfolded, it's

[Adam]

thinner than the iPhone Air. We put it up to the. To Brandon's thin Air.

[Andrew]

The panels are three different sizes. Are they all smaller than it?

[David]

Well, you know, they're also as thin as it's.

[Andrew]

Yeah. If you can't fit it through a slot.

[Marques]

That is one of the interesting things about this phone is each one of these panels is a slightly different thickness. 3.9 millimeters on the left, 4.2 millimeters in the middle, 4.0 millimeters on the right to fit battery and USB type C and, you know, speakers and all the things happening in this phone, that's just how it. But yeah, they're all thinner than the iPhone air. And then you fold it up and it's thinner than Z fold 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Kind of crazy.

[Andrew]

I think I just realized a very small mistake we made in the video.

[Marques]

I cut that out. I'm thinking the same thing because you

[Andrew]

said the middle panel for USB C, but it's the middle panel when it's folded, when it's unfolded, it's the right panel.

[Adam]

Yep.

[David]

Oh, God.

[Marques]

I caught that and cut it out.

[Andrew]

I. Yeah, I never would have thought of that.

[David]

These are harder to describe when you have 3D space.

[Marques]

Audio people are like, I don't understand.

[Andrew]

Well, yeah, audio people. When you're unfolding it, they kind of looks. Yeah, not doing that.

[David]

The phone's USB C port is on the bottom when it is folded up. But because the bottom is actually the middle, the rightmost.

[Marques]

Wait, never mind. It's the rightmost panel is the USB C port.

[David]

It's the rightmost panel, which is the bottom when it's folded.

[Andrew]

What is.

[Ellis]

You ever bought like a. Like a fish from a fishmonger? It kind of unfolds like that. Like, you lay it down, you go one and then two, and then you got your fish.

[Andrew]

I actually fillet it. Isn't there? Like, is it on Reddit or something when you, like, retire a phrase? Because it perfectly hits like you found the perfect description for that.

[Marques]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

I think we can retire fingerprint magnet with this phone because lord, the amount of fingerprints on the surface area of this phone, it's crazy.

[Adam]

You gotta wear gloves.

[Marques]

It's like black and gray carbon fiber mimicking fiberglass composite. It's smooth. And I think it makes sense in here because you have to make something smooth with a little bit of a bezel that you can then safely close the outside screen over.

[David]

Yeah.

[Marques]

So no real texture, but yeah, very much a fingerprint mat.

[David]

Did you get the kickstand case with it?

[Marques]

The case that comes with it is just a sort of a back, spine, and back cover case. So that's the Samsung case. It also comes with a 45 watt charger in the box. It's crazy.

[Andrew]

Throw you a little bone for $3,000.

[Marques]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Adam]

That wobble is crazy.

[David]

The wobble.

[Adam]

I just saw you put it down.

[Marques]

I mentioned it in the video I got, every time I mentioned it, people are like, you put a case on it. Okay, so fine. So you'll put a case on. It'll be fine. But this is one of the biggest wobblers of all time.

[David]

The case that comes with is thin enough. It's still gonna wobble like this.

[Marques]

It wobbles a lot less. I tried it. I actually think that they thought about that when they made the case for this.

[Andrew]

They should bring back the bikini case for this.

[Marques]

The bikini cases, actually, it was kind of iconic.

[Andrew]

It was iconic. Ellis doesn't remember it. Search Galaxy S8 bikini. Was it S8 Galaxy S. Can I hold it?

[David]

I for one. And I'm excited for you to test this so that I can decide whether or not I definitely will not.

[Ellis]

I did it wrong and it yelled at me.

[Andrew]

Oh, I did want to see that.

[David]

It yells. It vibrates at you.

[Marques]

It vibrates strongly.

[Andrew]

Can I see that?

[David]

So you.

[Ellis]

Can I break it? Is it bad?

[Marques]

I haven't.

[David]

It's bad. If you break it.

[Marques]

Nothing's really happening. I mean, if you try to, like, smush it, probably not.

[Adam]

Because

[David]

you can do that. You can do it the wrong way.

[Ellis]

Yelling at me.

[Andrew]

No, it does.

[Marques]

When the screen does it. Yeah. Stop.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Marques]

Yeah. It doesn't like.

[David]

It doesn't like it.

[Marques]

It yells at you. But otherwise, yeah, very intuitive.

[David]

Well, I'm excited to see whether or not you actually get value out of this. This is what I have considered like the dream device for a very, very long time. And if I could have something that I could just carry a little bit. A little keyboard with me and a little mouse with me and I could just write on Google. All I want to do is write on Google Docs. That's all I want to do without having to carry a laptop. So if this can do that, I'm very happy.

[Andrew]

I just like that the light phone and this came out in the same year.

[Marques]

Wow.

[David]

Maximalist and minimalist.

[Ellis]

I do maintain, like, the most fun I've ever had on a foldable is E reading with one page on each side. And I don't know what that would

[David]

be like because it looks like a real book.

[Ellis]

It feels like a real book.

[Andrew]

A real book couldn't even do this.

[David]

Can this do three pages?

[Ellis]

Yeah, yeah.

[David]

Four dimensional book right here.

[Ellis]

Yeah.

[David]

Okay, great.

[Andrew]

So, yeah, that was our. We have the Z fold in. In house. For real? For real. On God. Final MP4.

[David]

Last week's episode we titled the Galaxy Z Fold. The Galaxy Z tri fold is here for real. For Real on God. What are we supposed to title this week's episode?

[Andrew]

Final MP4.

[David]

I like that.

[Andrew]

No, I think. Yeah. All right. That title went hard last week also. CTR was fantastic.

[David]

It was early. Speaking of the things that you can do on the Galaxy Z Trifold, if there is. If. If there was this new social media app coming out that is supposed to replace Twitter, you could run it on one of the three screens.

[Adam]

Was that a. Was that a segue?

[David]

That's what I was trying to do.

[Marques]

Oh, yeah. C plus.

[Adam]

Yeah. What I expect.

[David]

Come on.

[Ellis]

It was.

[Marques]

All right.

[David]

All right.

[Andrew]

Segway Wordle last night.

[Marques]

Yeah, I think it was Segway.

[Andrew]

It was either Segway or Suede Segue. I think I guessed to Suede first.

[David]

Wow.

[Marques]

Well, what is the social media.

[David]

All right, let me tell you about this.

[Marques]

Yeah.

[David]

Okay.

[Marques]

So federated.

[David]

No, it's not. And this is why.

[Ellis]

No point.

[David]

This is why I'm like, if you're going to make a social media app in the future, just stop non federating them. Come on, guys. So what is it?

[Marques]

We're in 2020.

[David]

Okay. So a couple of weeks ago, this startup popped up called Operation Bluebird. And effectively what they're trying to do is get the Twitter name back because they are making the claim that X abandons the Twitter name when they switched everything to X. Which I would, you know, agree with.

[Marques]

I would disagree.

[Andrew]

Really?

[Marques]

Dude, I think they very hastily changed some things like the URL and the logo to X. But for a long time, pieces of the UI in the settings still said Twitter.

[David]

Correct. But that was them being like, lazy.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I like agree with both of you. I think it is still everywhere and is still almost considered Twitter for the most part. But I think the owners of Twitter,

[David]

they said, yeah, it's not Twitter anymore.

[Andrew]

And like, they make fun of people for calling it Twitter still.

[David]

And like, Elon replied to you on X, you said, I'm still calling it Twitter, and Elon said, you won't. Yeah, well, is that. That's got to be used in the litigation.

[Marques]

We're still calling it Twitter today.

[David]

That's got to be used in litigation.

[Ellis]

Yeah.

[David]

Anyway, so last week they filed a petition to the U.S. patent Office to cancel X's ownership of the trademarks for Twitter and Tweet.

[Marques]

Trademark.

[David]

Yeah, trademark. Because X had made it clear that they didn't have any intention to use the Twitter name anymore.

[Marques]

Okay, Right.

[David]

X has now sued them, which they didn't need to do. They could have just filed a motion to cancel the trademark infringe the trademark cancellation.

[Adam]

I'm sorry, what's X? You keep saying X.

[David]

Okay, here's another problem. When I'm trying to Google something on the X platform, it's impossible because you just write X in Google after and nothing comes up.

[Marques]

Twitter doesn't try to search Twitter and you're using, like, Google space X. Yeah,

[David]

it doesn't do anything.

[Marques]

It's a possible space x dot com. Does that work?

[David]

You could probably do a site space.

[Adam]

X is a different company.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Marques]

Look what.

[Andrew]

Look what happened.

[David]

Yeah, it's bad.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[David]

Anyway, they're suing. Trying to stop them from doing this. They're arguing that as of December 14, more than 4 million users came to X by typing in twitter.com. that's really.

[Ellis]

I'm one of them.

[Marques]

I am one of them, too.

[Andrew]

Everyone has all uses.

[Ellis]

This is so frustrating because I want to stick it to the man and call it Twitter, but I'm actually on the platform.

[David]

Well, you want them to lose the.

[Ellis]

Yeah, I want them to get.

[Adam]

And I'm.

[Ellis]

I'm helping them not do that.

[David]

I mean, they were big about changing it to X. So, you know, commit.

[Marques]

You know, this is such a weird thing because, like, if you. Even if you. Like if I own a trademark or whatever and I stop using it. Yeah. That doesn't mean people immediately sue me to cancel my ownership.

[David]

If you have no intention to use it in the future, then they can file to cancel your ownership.

[Marques]

Interesting. So it's up to them to determine if I intend to use it in the future or not.

[Andrew]

It's like the guy who got Lambo.com?

[Marques]

yeah, actually, that's actually a lot like that.

[David]

Wow. Yes.

[Andrew]

How long has it been called X?

[David]

I think since 2021, right?

[Andrew]

No, no, no.

[Ellis]

It was after I started working here.

[David]

2022, I think it was 2023 when I turned out.

[Marques]

Yeah.

[David]

Oh, wow.

[Marques]

Okay.

[David]

Well, anyway, this Bluebird startup has this site called Twitter New up right now, where you can sign up, you can reserve your handle in case they ever actually do get the Twitter name.

[Marques]

That's brutal.

[David]

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

[Ellis]

I don't know.

[Adam]

If he didn't care about it, he just wasn't good at it.

[David]

Well, he had like. Yeah, no, I mean, he had like, majority ownership and, like, he didn't have to. He didn't have to, like, go by the whims of some investors, you know, to try to, like, inshitify it.

[Andrew]

Well, until he sold it.

[Marques]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And then.

[David]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Marques]

I will say that there will never be another OG Twitter. Like, that was an era that came and went and now there are things that are trying to be it and it's not gonna happen again.

[David]

It's not gonna happen again.

[Marques]

And it's almost cringy that this new startup is trying to be the new Twitter. Like, I don't really think that's a good goal to have, but I just

[Ellis]

got Elon Musk on Twitter, not new.

[Marques]

Oh, my God.

[David]

I take it back. I take it back. When you reserved it.

[Marques]

Yeah.

[David]

And it said nobody had already reserved it.

[Adam]

Nope.

[David]

That's insane.

[Andrew]

This is one of those things where the Twitter new thing is. It's like, I don't care. This is stupid. But it's really funny to watch X, like squirm a bit and be like, no, no, no, just kidding. We do really want it.

[Marques]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

I mean, even though we've told everyone we don't.

[Marques]

I still use twitter.com to go to X. Oh, yes.

[Andrew]

So do I.

[Marques]

So, yeah, there's just too many.

[David]

There's too many microchasms of the Internet at this point. And being able to have like one central social, social media site where things are happening is just not possible anymore, isn't it?

[Ellis]

I think you mean microcosm.

[Andrew]

I think you mean micro contrast.

[Ellis]

Yeah, they don't know that reference yet.

[David]

Yeah, that'll be next week.

[Marques]

That's funny. Yeah, Yeah, I. Yeah, well, I don't know. They're going to try, but I kind of think that we're just going to keep using the things we use.

[David]

Which, which way do you think that they're going to rule?

[Marques]

What's your prediction ruling? I think because twitter.com still links to x.com they'll probably go, ah, well, seems like that's still in use. That might be enough. But I'm not a lawyer, so this isn't legal advice.

[David]

But I'm not a rapper.

[Marques]

That's funny. All right, well, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we still got more to talk about end of the year type news. But before we take a break. Yes, trivia time, guys.

[Ellis]

Let's get the energy up. Come on. It's 5pm I know it's 5:30. It's 6pm we gotta get hype. Before I do trivia, I just need to issue a correction from last week because last week I got mad and called out a a company that sort of sounds like Buy Mommy for raising the price on my domain. And this is really embarrassing because a very nice fan wrote to me who runs a website called Domain Details which posts helpful information and stuff about websites and whatnot. And he explained to me that it actually wasn't godaddy that raised the price, it was the registry, which is really embarrassing.

[David]

Donuts Inc.

[Ellis]

I don't know who does Vin Donuts is the big one. Yeah, it's pretty embarrassing because we did like three hours of podcasts on how this all works and I still got it wrong. And if you want to know what a domain registry is, you can go to domain details.com or listen to our two part series on how the Internet works. Yeah, David and I and Adam go to Virginia.

[David]

We did. We shared two beds for three people.

[Ellis]

Yes.

[David]

And they did have an indoor pool.

[Ellis]

Watch the episode to find out.

[Andrew]

Really weird. You all slept in the same bed?

[Ellis]

Two of us did. And if you want to find out which two of us slept in the same bed, you'll have to go and listen to the episode.

[David]

Yeah, we had two beds for three people and we only used one.

[Adam]

I mean this is Waveform after dark.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's true.

[Ellis]

Wait for map to dark.

[David]

Okay guys, next we're going to kiss in the Vision Pro. Anyway, 6:00pm what's the question? All of it.

[Ellis]

All of it's making it.

[David]

Come on.

[Ellis]

What three letters represent both a Chinese tech conglomerate and the initials of an American blues legend?

[Marques]

I'm going to write down what I

[Andrew]

think think it is the blues legend. It's their initials.

[Ellis]

It's the initials of their stage name, not their birth name. I did not know that.

[David]

Conglomerate or company.

[Marques]

Is that going to help us at all?

[David]

It would.

[Marques]

Okay.

[David]

It would.

[Marques]

Cuz.

[David]

I know.

[Ellis]

I feel. I feel like if I tell you which one. I mean, I did already say.

[David]

You said conglomerate.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[David]

So.

[Marques]

But I.

[Ellis]

That might, you know, that kind of makes it a little easy.

[Marques]

Why.

[Andrew]

But that's the question.

[David]

That's just the question.

[Adam]

We'll be right back after the break.

[Marques]

What?

[Ellis]

So everyone knows our politics are divided. There's left versus right and dividing lines on age, gender or race. But maybe our biggest divide in our politics is isn't about identity at all

[Adam]

it's insiders versus outsiders. At least that's what Congressman Ro Khanna would say.

[Andrew]

The real issue is two tiers of justice in America.

[Ellis]

The real issue is people with power and wealth using it to be above

[Andrew]

the law and escape even investigation or prosecution.

[Ellis]

And it's only gotten more noticeable in recent months, as issues like the Epstein

[Adam]

files and artificial intelligence have seemed to pit the elites against everybody else. California Congressman Ro Khanna takes on the Epstein class today.

[Ellis]

Explain in your feed every weekday and now on Saturdays too.

[Marques]

Oh, yeah. Waveform After Dark. Whose voice is that?

[Andrew]

It's always Elsa's voice.

[David]

I like the. Like, the tone at the end. Like, it's nice.

[Marques]

Bravo.

[Andrew]

Is that the PS3? Startup music.

[Ellis]

What do you think I'm doing in the audio room all day, man?

[David]

Making that.

[Marques]

All right, so Instagram launched a new app.

[David]

Yeah.

[Marques]

But only on Fire tv. So it's for tv, but it's not Instagram tv. Correct. It's for Fire tv. Fire tv. So I'm assuming this just lets me doom scroll on my TV now.

[David]

Yes.

[Marques]

Sick. I've been waiting for that.

[David]

But worse.

[Marques]

You know what's crazy? I have the YouTube app on my Samsung TV at home and you can doom scroll shorts on it and I've done it. That's all.

[Ellis]

No, me too.

[David]

Wait, did you do it on purpose?

[Marques]

No. Well, I didn't enter the carousel on purpose, but once I entered the carousel, I was like, I wonder if I can. Oh, no, hold on.

[David]

And you're like, yeah, yeah, YouTube.

[Andrew]

I have a feature idea. Let you rotate 90 degrees so you can lay down on the couch, use all of your landscape screen real estate and doom scroll that way.

[Marques]

Whoa. Really efficient.

[David]

So new Instagram TV app. It's not the igtv though. We might be too old for this. You might be too young for this, if you're listening. But Instagram did launch a thing called igtv before reels were a thing that failed spectacularly. But it was also like you had to turn your phone sideways. It was around the Quibi days, if you know what that means.

[Marques]

Remember when we asked was just vertical video. Yeah. Yeah. Well, people sometimes like me uploaded horizontal. But remember when we used to ask the question, is this like a product or a feature?

[David]

Yes.

[Marques]

In hindsight, it was so obvious that Vertical video was just a feature of Instagram and they should have built it in.

[David]

Yeah.

[Marques]

But it really to them was so vastly different that it was an entirely separate product.

[David]

Yeah.

[Marques]

Which is crazy.

[Ellis]

Am I crazy? Because you guys have talked about this. You guys talked about this a few times, and I feel like I'm having, like, a Mandela effect because I only remember IGTV as being a button in the bottom of the Instagram.

[Marques]

They put a button in the Instagram app that launched the other app.

[Ellis]

That's what that button did.

[Marques]

It launched the igtv app.

[Ellis]

I never pressed it.

[Marques]

They eventually, obviously, moved it in to just be a section of Instagram, but there was probably a couple months there where it was a whole separate thing.

[David]

Yeah, they had a crazy launch party for that too. It was a whole thing.

[Andrew]

The logo is kind of fire.

[David]

Yeah. Well, now. Yeah, it kind of looks like mtv. Oh, that's the other.

[Andrew]

I think that's the fake logo.

[David]

Okay, so this app is currently only launching on Amazon Fire TV devices, which is a very, very niche collaboration. Look, I think that short form videos a scourge on humanity and is melting our brains. However.

[Marques]

Whoa.

[David]

This is my, like, hey, subscribe to Waveform shorts. Yeah, well. Well, you can't subscribe to the shorts. You can only.

[Adam]

You can try.

[David]

You can subscribe to clips. But that's not. That's not.

[Ellis]

We don't. Yeah, we haven't done it.

[David]

That's not vertical.

[Ellis]

A year vertical.

[David]

Short form content.

[Ellis]

Well, that was embarrassing.

[David]

Yeah.

[Marques]

So.

[David]

However. And this is only like a 2% however, this is a. Like, I still think this is bad, but, you know, if you're watching it on tv, there's a much higher chance that you're watching it with somebody else. And I think that considering people send reels to each other so much because they want, like, we have a whole reels channel in Instagram where we just send it. It's a studio channel where we just send it to each other. Yeah. The social aspect of watching video together is very strong. And considering the content quality of many reels has gotten very high, I think having your friend, your partner, your dog on the couch with you, your cat to watch your reels with you, there could be 2% value in that.

[Marques]

You know, this social video watching experience.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Marques]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

You're saying Lane and I should sit on the couch and watch reels together.

[Marques]

I mean, there is obviously, to an extent, people already do this with every other form of video. It's just adding short form, vertical video to the list of things that you watch.

[David]

Yeah.

[Marques]

I mean, which, fine.

[David]

If I'm gonna be forced to watch reels, I'd rather watch it on my TV with somebody than with. Than on my phone.

[Adam]

I was just gonna say we're already forced to watch reels. So would you rather have this split off into its own IGTV app that has reels?

[Marques]

Yes. Right.

[David]

But they'll never do that.

[Marques]

Yeah. At this point, yeah. It's better for us because we're less likely to open it and therefore less likely to get addicted. And we can go over there intentionally when we want that. Brain rot and then we come back. But obviously that's the opposite of what they want. They want us to just stumble into short form video and just start scrolling.

[David]

Yeah.

[Marques]

Which is hilarious because you used to just swipe over on Instagram and that would be your inbox. Now you swipe over, it's just reels.

[David]

Yeah.

[Marques]

Convenient.

[Andrew]

I mean, if they swap them into separate apps, I would download Instagram again, but I un downloaded it because I was so tired of reels and like looking through it.

[David]

So does your brain feel better?

[Andrew]

Hell yeah. For a lot of reasons.

[Marques]

Wrinklier

[David]

much. Wrinkler again.

[Marques]

Yeah.

[David]

Well, anyway, OpenAI has also launched a new image generator model which is best for enterprise use, they say. And I think the only reason that they're saying that is because they just did a $1 billion deal with Disney. We didn't talk about this last week, but OpenAI struck a $1 billion investment deal with Disney where Disney now gets to use Sora very, very extensively. And there will be Disney characters in Sora. And I've already seen what some people are doing with it, and it's not good. It's pretty bad.

[Andrew]

The last thing I would want is my children's based animated characters to the heathens of the Internet.

[David]

The reason that Disney said they want to do this is because they are going to add like short form generative video feeds to Disney plus, which if you really.

[Adam]

What does that even mean?

[David]

If you really.

[Ellis]

They're gonna do the Sora app to

[David]

Disney plus, They're gonna have like generated Disney videos on the Disney plus app that are generated with Sora.

[Marques]

User generated?

[David]

I don't think so. I think, like, by Disney people. Yeah, it's horror. It's really bad.

[Adam]

So instead of hiring animators to do that, they're just gonna have Sora do it?

[Andrew]

Yeah, they're a lean team over.

[David]

They're a lean team over at Disney.

[Marques]

Really weird.

[Ellis]

This is a company that's known for A, like, bespoke making everything by hand. Like with armies of artists and engineers and imagineers and animators and B, suing the bejesus out of anyone who uses any of their ip.

[David]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ellis]

And now they. And now They've now they've gone and done this.

[David]

Yeah. So I, I think that OpenAI needed to make the new image model to compete with Gemini because Gemini 3's image model was really, really, really good. And that's the reason they did it. But the reason that they're saying it's best for enterprise use, I think is just because they made this deal with Disney and we didn't also did not talk about this. But last week, the day after they announced the $1 billion investment deal with Disney, they also sued Google for massive copyright. Copyright infringement on a massive scale.

[Adam]

Oh, I thought it was the same

[David]

day it was the day after. Basically. Yeah.

[Marques]

They're just trying to get everyone to

[David]

pay them, you know, or to work with them in different ways.

[Ellis]

Disney pay. Like they're trying to get Google to receive a billion dollars. Like what's the.

[David]

Well, what's to work with them in some way. I don't know. I think they're like, these companies are just going to steal our ip no matter. You can go on Gemini right now and just generate Disney characters. So I think that they're like all these companies are stealing our ip no matter what. We should figure out a way for this to work for both of us because otherwise, you know, it's just gonna happen. Yeah. Sorry to depress you on a Tuesday night.

[Andrew]

Wednesday night, this kind of stuff hits way worse at 6:00pm yeah,

[David]

well, in more positive news, that happens in the morning.

[Andrew]

Nice.

[David]

Google has launched a new CC feature in labs.

[Adam]

See, that's the kind of high quality segues I'm looking for. Thank you.

[David]

You're welcome, Adam. And effectively, I think you would actually like this a lot more.

[Marques]

Cause I'm on the waitlist.

[David]

Oh, you're on the waitlist.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[David]

Well, you do like it a lot. It plugs into your calendar, your Gmail and your Google Drive to basically give you a morning briefing of everything you've got going on during the day, things that you might want to schedule, that you might want to take a look at. It's basically a Gemini sort of butler assistant thing. But in your email, I have a

[Marques]

theory about this that's going to be extremely niche and only apply to a few people.

[David]

Do it.

[Marques]

So for those of you who are like me, who every morning ask, hey G, how's my day? Or what's my day like? And then Google Assistant goes through and does the normal routine of like, here's your A, here's your B, here's your commute or whatever, whatever you put in for it to tell you it does that this is that. And I think when the teams that make these two separate products realize, like they meet each other. When these teams meet each other on Google campus one day, they're going to combine them and they will give me like an AI, like, good version of this at some point. But they have to meet first. So hopefully one of them is watching this podcast and they realize that they exist.

[David]

It's almost like they have a video conferencing app that's called the exact thing

[Andrew]

Starlink, Google Hangouts meet.

[Marques]

Yeah. Yeah.

[David]

So I don't know, I mean, I'm curious how it might use like your Google Drive to let you know what you need to do that day. I can see the calendar making sense. I can see your email making sense. Google Drive seems strange. Unless there's some enterprise Google Drive feature with like due dates that I don't know about.

[Marques]

Could be fun. If it knows, like which video script Google Doc I've been working on. And it's like, oh, you're gonna need a link to this doc today. Yeah, it'd be cool if it just

[David]

like opened all the tabs you needed at once.

[Marques]

That'd be fire.

[David]

That'd be fire.

[Andrew]

Starline is what I meant to say. Oh, so I'm an idiot.

[David]

I was like, starlink.

[Marques]

I remember Starline.

[David]

Yeah. So it is in beta right now in Google Labs and for Gemini Ultra and paid users in the US And Canada. I think Google's just trying to put Gemini in every little aspect of people's lives. Even people, like people who live in their email inbox, which is a lot of people.

[Marques]

It's me.

[David]

Well, you also live in a. Inside a camera.

[Adam]

You also don't use Gmail.

[Marques]

I don't use gmail.com, but I use Gmail.

[Adam]

I thought you used Superhuman.

[Marques]

Well, yeah.

[David]

Yes.

[Marques]

Which syncs Gmail.

[Adam]

Yeah, but I mean, like, well, you, you wouldn't get this feature, would you?

[Marques]

Unless you're using it.

[David]

I think you get it as it

[Marques]

arrives as an email.

[Adam]

Oh, I thought it was like a pop up in the email app or something.

[Marques]

I mean, ideally it's reading all the emails or whatever from my account and then just shows up in as another email. Yeah, maybe.

[David]

What's interesting, if you want to talk to cc, you can email cc or you can reply to one of the emails it sends you and it'll send you an email back. So it's kind of like.

[Marques]

And then it turns into a chatbot and then it's Gemini and Then suddenly you're in the Gemini app.

[David]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ellis]

Now I'm confused. The. The AI's name is CC. Or you. You CC it in.

[David]

The product name is called cc as a play on words to the fact that it's through your email.

[Ellis]

Okay, but you're not actually cc.

[David]

You're not carbon copying anything.

[Adam]

Yeah, I thought it was closed captioning.

[Ellis]

No, I thought it was the famous Yankees closed captioning.

[Andrew]

That's just simple.

[Ellis]

He gets it.

[David]

I don't know what that is.

[Andrew]

F1 driver.

[Marques]

Anyway, speaking of things that are former. Damn. You said former.

[Adam]

Yeah. That's Sad.

[Marques]

The Ford F150 Lightning is discontinued. What? Isn't that crazy?

[David]

Only as we know it, though.

[Marques]

As we know it. So the Ford F150 Lightning was one of the original, like competitor EVs to Tesla. Tesla's doing their thing for a while and then we got a couple big like new EV competitors. There was like the Mach E. There was. Oh, what was the other? I'm gonna remember them, actually. F150 Lightning was the pickup truck and then Rivian R1T came along and Jaguar. I pace. I remember this era. Every new EV got compared to The Tesla and F150 was one of them. Where we went, ah, that's good. That's one of the things that Tesla doesn't have and that people are going to want. And they basically just made an F150 with all the same benefits and accessories and every module would fit. It's just with an electric powertrain instead of gas. And it sold okay. I see them on the road once. Yeah, I see them. But it didn't sell to the rate that Ford was hoping that they would. And so despite their best efforts and their refreshes and their special matte black version that they brought to the studio here, not enough sales, so they're discontinuing it. That said, they are still going to continue to do like hybrid stuff with F150 platform. Yeah, there's lots of versions of F150, obviously. And they're going to do, I guess they're trying to do a version that drives on electric motors as the powertrain, but is fueled by a gas generator that fills battery and then powers the powertrain. So it's more of like a Fisker type setup.

[Andrew]

Rivero.

[Marques]

Yeah, exactly.

[David]

They said they can get up to 700 miles on that.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I was confused by that because there's like no information. But 700 got thrown around in like every article that I saw. But I Guess, believe it or not, I'm assuming there's still battery involved into it. And the gasoline engine is a.

[Marques]

Is a generator.

[Andrew]

Is a generator that's extending range in quick scenarios. Sounds like a really cool way to have two things to go wrong in your car. The gas engine.

[Marques]

Well, that's what people say about hybrids. It's more complicated, but it is. You do have the upside of more range.

[Andrew]

So, yeah, I see it as a pickup truck, especially at the F150 range of, you know, the most popular vehicle in America. This making way more sense.

[David]

I mean, you get the torque of an electric car, which is great.

[Andrew]

It's weird, though, because is that that torque's not always the same kind of torque they want when it comes to towing. Right.

[Marques]

Yeah. I don't know how this will do with towing. I'm not a towing expert, but I kind of feel like the F150 lighting was weak with towing. And that was one reason why a lot of F150 owners wouldn't have wanted it as much. But it was really good at a lot of other stuff. Obviously not as much range when you're towing or in general, groceries.

[Andrew]

Tough to tow.

[Marques]

Yeah, that's the thing. It's like there's two types of F150 owners. There's the ones that buy an F150 because they need an F150, and then there's the people who buy an F150 just because that's what I want. People who Everyone else has a truck. I want a truck, too. And it's a popular. Here's the truck you get.

[David]

I might have to help my friend move one day.

[Adam]

Yeah. I had multiple people in my life that were excited for this truck just because of the giant battery that they could use in case, like, the power goes out in the house.

[Marques]

Like, that was the killer feature. Yeah, that was a really nice trick

[Adam]

everyone was excited about.

[Marques]

Yeah. So power vehicle to grid power is still like sort of a niche feature that a couple big battery EVs will do. I don't know. I'm going to mess up the list if I try to name them. But there are a couple that also still do this where they can be your house's battery backup in a pinch. Pretty sick. It'll be like 150 kilowatt hours. Lasts you for days. But yeah, now that this truck is discontinued, that's one less option that's not really good for anyone.

[Andrew]

Yeah, agreed. Can I say there's a quote from Jim Farley that I really dislike CEO

[Marques]

for CEO of Ford. What do you say?

[Andrew]

This is a customer driven shift to create a stronger, more resilient and more profitable Ford.

[Marques]

Is he implying that the customers are driving a more profitable Ford? Like we want that?

[Andrew]

No, I think it's just, I don't care about any of you. We're going to make as much profit which every company ever. But just like I'm trying to read

[Marques]

into this because it's a CEO statement, customer driven shift implies people weren't buying the electric ones. So this is customer driven. You guys are doing this to create a stronger, more resilient and more profitable ford. So the EVs were smaller margins and less profitable and what we're going to switch to and pivot to will be more profitable for Ford.

[Andrew]

Do we all care that Ford is more profitable?

[Marques]

Well, it's the CEO, he's talking to shareholders. Yeah.

[Ellis]

And to be clear, customers were not driving the F150 lighting, but it was a great truck.

[Marques]

Customer driven truck. Yeah.

[Andrew]

We don't have this.

[Adam]

So the EU also this week just announced like a plan to stop doing electric vehicles and stuff like that.

[Andrew]

Well, no, to stop the plan to stop gasoline.

[Marques]

They removed their mandate for all new vehicle sales to be electric by I believe 2035.

[Adam]

Thank you for putting into words my incoherent thought.

[Marques]

I got you.

[Adam]

But my question is, is this more of a trend now? Are we like reversing the whole ev?

[Andrew]

Well, I think the bigger thing is right now is we're losing or have lost the US EV tax credit. And I think that's lost. I think everybody understands that that is for EVs in general hurting sales pretty hard.

[Marques]

It's interesting.

[Ellis]

Just to be clear, I don't think this has that much to do with the F150 thing because it's really hard to buy an F150 in Europe, period.

[Andrew]

I think he's just saying the trend like we're seeing all these 2030 promises are probably just going to be that they were promises three or four years ago.

[Marques]

If you're, if you're paying enough attention to this industry, there is definitely a trend. It's kind of like reading between the lines. I remember like we saw Porsche promise that the 718 Cayman was going to be EV in its next refresh. And then they kind of went, and also a gas one and oh, I, I was expecting that to be fully electric. But like we see stuff like that happening. We see companies who are going, ah, we're going to go, we're Going to have all these electric cars and we're going to go fully electric by this year. And then quietly, they're just not doing it.

[David]

Yeah.

[Marques]

So customer driven. Probably. And also just being realistic. Like I'm reading up on this and by reading up, I mean I googled EU electric mandate and the AI overview is telling me that the recent change removes the hard 2035 band on New cars that are gas powered, but they are still allowing up to 10% of sales to be combustion engines. So it's like instead of 100, it'll be 90. Just slowly walking it back to be more realistic and more aligned with 10%.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[Marques]

Versus zero. Yeah. So I agree that it's a trend. It's a slow iceberg movement type of trend where it doesn't look like a disaster, but it just feels like we're calibrating to what's realistic. Mm. And customer trends and profit.

[Andrew]

Well. Yeah. But the realism is based on company profits profit.

[Marques]

Well, if you're not. If nobody's buying EVs and the government incentives go away and sales drop, it's like you can't make people buy EVs if they don't want them.

[David]

Well, that's why we were incentivizing people to buy EVs.

[Marques]

We're incentivizing them because they're more expensive per car.

[David]

Yeah.

[Marques]

So it's like if I want someone to choose the ev, it needs to be the correct choice for them. They don't get to just force people into buying EVs. So if it was, oh, $7,000 less. Well, now it makes it a better buy. I'm going to choose the ev. But now that that incentive goes away in this specific case in the U.S. it's like, now the gas car is a better buy. I'm going to buy the gas car and the hybrid and Toyota's sitting there going, yes, more Prius buyers for us.

[Andrew]

It's true.

[David]

So that's true. That's just how Toyota sitting in the middle ground forever with the Prius was probably their best call because they just knew that no one was ever going to like fully switch one way or the other.

[Marques]

They're hybrid kings. They are.

[Andrew]

I'll throw one more thing out there.

[Marques]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Because I already can feel all the truck people yelling at me. I figured, why not have all the Tesla people yell at me also, let's go all in. Even though the F150 Lightning literally is a car that Ford says this isn't worth producing anymore and still outsold the Cybertruck in 2025.

[Marques]

Yeah, but have you tried, have you

[Ellis]

tried version 14, Andrew? Have you tried version 14, bro?

[Marques]

Yeah, it's funny that like Tesla sells well.

[Andrew]

Tesla only has a lot of nuance to that and I don't care.

[Adam]

Yeah, the joke is funny.

[Marques]

They have four or five models. Ford F150 is the most popular vehicle in America. So the fact that one of the trims didn't sell well and got discontinued is kind of not huge news. But it is what it is. Speaking of EV trucks. Oh, so easy. There we go.

[Andrew]

Because I wrote it in the outline.

[Marques]

Oh, you did? I didn't even see that. I saw Rivian in Bold and I was like, I got this. But yes, speaking of EV trucks, Rivian had an event this past week and it was really interesting because I couldn't tell who the event was for. The first part of it was this really engaging and interesting like AI chat from rj, who's a CEO, talking about how they're going to be making their own silicon and their Generation 3 platformer vehicles is going to be fully self driving on millions of miles of roads. And I was like, whoa, that's really interesting. But this is also their Autonomy day event. So then it transferred into this really, really long, very detailed and honestly complex but explanations of how they're doing these things and the neural nets and the advantages of their approach, mixing in lidar with radar, with cameras, why they believe this is the right solution for the future. And it feels like they were talking to engineers, shareholders, engineers, types. Yeah.

[Adam]

You know who they were talking to?

[Marques]

Yeah. And the comments section was people watching a live stream on twitter.com or YouTube. So it was like people who are terminally online and maybe a little bit too in the bubble and they were like, this isn't close to what Tesla's doing. And then they had hands on after which was allowing people to ride in these new self driving Rivians. And so there's some footage online of these, these, these rides and some of them look okay, some of them look like they had some errors and misses, which is normal. They didn't do like a closed course thing. So there's a lot going on. My takeaway, which is very much just from my own perspective because I own a generation 1 Rivian was. I'm glad I didn't buy a gen 2 Rivian because none of those are going to get the new Silicon. It's the Gen 3 which is basically R2.

[Adam]

Did they announce new silicon?

[Marques]

Sorry, yeah, you kind of have to be in the Lingo, Rivian has R1 which is the first generation of their vehicles and then they have R1, R2 which is the SUV like second generation thing. And then they have R3 which is even smaller. But they also have generation 1 which is Rivian, R1T and R1S and then generation 2 which is also Rivian two R1S and R1T and then generation 3 which is R2.

[Andrew]

And presumably there'll be an R1 gen

[Marques]

3 and R3 and probably, probably an R1 gen 3 and R 3 will be gen 3. So the takeaway here is R2 is the first gen 3 vehicle that will have the silicon in it, that will have all the full self driving that they're talking about, all these new capabilities. It'll have lidar up at the top and they talked about how smoothly integrated that lidar box is. And the Gen 2 vehicles now that are like a slight Update to my Gen 1 R1 are not going to get all of that.

[David]

Dang sad for those people.

[Marques]

Yeah, they might get some of that, but they won't have the silicon. Obviously. They're already shipping anyway. Yeah, it's interesting. They're promising a lot. It's kind of hard to take all their word for it because you see these.

[Andrew]

I love how much they promised.

[Marques]

They promise a lot.

[Andrew]

Felt really Tesla Y. Yeah.

[Marques]

And I, you know, I feel like that's a combo of like maybe a little bit of fundraising and talking to the public about like, oh yeah, we are super AI first and self driving and all that stuff. And then people who invest and have lots of money to give. Rivian might go, huh, seems about right. And be more down. Whatever. I don't think it's going to sell them any R1s though because it doesn't have the stuff that they're talking about.

[David]

To Tesla's credit, them going all in on the cameras. It was like now for their customers, their customers get to theoretically use more of the self driving features as they get updated. Because all of the Teslas for a very long time have cameras.

[Marques]

Yeah.

[David]

And so they're not gonna need like new sensors and stuff. There's like. Yeah, they've switched out the, the boxes,

[Marques]

they've changed the sensors, the cameras.

[David]

Yeah, but they're not, there's no like hard limit on like your Model 3 can do it. And yeah, there is no.

[Andrew]

I think there is, I think hardware version, like a joke.

[David]

Right. But haven't they not updated the hardware versions in like a while?

[Marques]

There was at least one statement on stage that Elon sort of skirted around, he'd said oh yeah, all model threes are going to have full self driving. And then you hear someone in the crowd go like what about Hardware 3? And he kind of just goes, let's not pay attention to nuance. Like he literally says, like let's not get nuanced because he knows that this is for a certain X date and forward version of Tesla and it's not actually all Model 3s that are going to get all these features.

[David]

Got it.

[Marques]

But if you just kind of avoid nuance, it seems like a nice thing to say. I don't know if there's a lawsuit about that, but it's like the same thing is going to happen with everyone who has updated hardware in their cars. They build new capabilities around the updated hardware and so everyone who's on previous gens, like me, a first gen Rivian buyer who spent tons of money on a truck to support this early thing, I'm not getting any of these features so.

[David]

Oh well, too bad they can't just like update the box.

[Adam]

What features did they announce though?

[Marques]

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

[Andrew]

roads that is getting updated to 3.5 million miles of roads. I think the quote the one guy said later was if it has clearly marked painted lines you can drive on it. To which every comment I saw from that is like, well where I live doesn't have that. So like, like I'm not coming to work.

[Marques]

Yeah, there's a lot more roads in the US but it's like the current driver assist that I try to use doesn't work on neighborhood streets, doesn't work on lots of regular roads that you think it should work on. It works okay on a lot highways, but it's like just a regular road with lines on it. It wouldn't work. So this theoretically multiplies by several orders of magnitude how many roads it can drive hands free on. Whether you choose to use that or not, or if you were planning on using it for everything, there's still a long way to go for them but.

[Andrew]

And then the next, the next level of things they're doing for the Gen

[David]

Gen, 3 Gen Senwang, that's a different company

[Andrew]

universe. But yeah, in 2026 they're claiming point to point. So like Put it address to address and I'll drive you the whole way. And then Gen 3 architecture is eyes off. So he's claiming you can like read a book and do stuff like that. And then after that would be personal level four. This is the level of promising where I was like I don't like this. This is way too much. That's also just out of Rivan's hands for quite a bit of it in terms of regulations.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And that's a lot to promise.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

There are long. My question is if you're doing eyes off but you also can only do it on marked roads. If you are eyes off and it GPS doesn't know the road has lines or not and you get to a unlined road, what happens?

[David]

It'll just beep at you.

[Marques]

Probably beeps at you and says take over.

[David]

Yeah. Cuz it, it's probably not like you can sit in the back seat.

[Andrew]

No, no, you can't beep in the back. But like if you're reading a book like he said and in a split sec if you're going 60 and now the road doesn't have lines on it anymore, what is your ditching the book and grabbing the wheel doesn't test just like slow down. Does it slow?

[Marques]

Slowly slows down until it basically does it pull over?

[Andrew]

Okay, that sounds unsafe for other people driving on the roads to just have a car slow.

[Marques]

Better than barreling down a road that you don't have.

[Andrew]

So that's also true. Hey listen, I'm not the one who made the problem here.

[David]

What happens it accelerates, goes even faster.

[Marques]

I think one of the most interesting battlegrounds on the Internet, which has been hilarious and this may just be comment farming, but I think it's hilarious is the lidar versus no lidar battle in the self driving world. And really it's just people who listen to what Tesla Elon says, which is lidar stupid, you don't need it. Or what a lot of others like Jaguar with the I pace and Waymo and obviously with Rivian now are doing which is adding lidar to the suite of sensors to help augment the downsides of vision only. Right. And the argument is like vision only can do a lot if your systems are really good, if your AI is really good. But there is this really, really, really, really, really long tail of edge cases of things that are kind of weird to solve for with vision. Fog, fog and rain and all that other stuff, but also just weird stuff that happens on the road and lidar can see further and has obviously a better long distance vision than just the cameras. And so I guess what RJ was saying on stage with Rivian's event is lidar has come down enough in price that this is not prohibitively expensive. We're going to do this. We're going to build this into all of our data. And so the camps are people who say, this is doomed. You're just adding noise to your neural nets. Or this is actually better than not having it. Of course you should add it. They fight a lot on Twitter.

[Andrew]

Marques. People have been driving cars for millions of years without LIDAR in their eyes. I don't know what you need LIDAR for.

[Marques]

Well, that goes to my humanoid robot argument too, which is people going that human robots should be human shaped. I'm like, you just inherited all of the blind spots and all of the downsides of humans, including drivers. Of course human drivers are worse than robot drivers. We have no eyes in the back of our head.

[Andrew]

Do you know what the best part about this episode is?

[Marques]

What?

[Andrew]

We get to leave for two weeks. Not read any of the comments because it's going to be a.

[Marques]

It's going to have comments of every episode.

[Ellis]

Can some machine learning engineer please explain to me why all the AI companies were like, no, we need to steal everything because the more information we have to give to the models, the smarter they're going to be. And that somehow doesn't apply to cars. Like, like, oh no, that's too much information. Get the LIDAR out of here. No radar, just, just camera. That's too much. It's like, how does that make any sense?

[David]

Well, they are, to be fair, they are working on ways to not just feed more data to the language models. Like they're, they're working on ways around that.

[Andrew]

After they stole everything.

[David]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, after they stole everything.

[Andrew]

One other thing they did announce Rivian assistant.

[Marques]

This is interesting.

[Andrew]

Which was kind of like, yeah, exactly what you imagine is your own in car assistant. But one thing I thought that was interesting is RJ shows a way that you can, like, obviously you can do vehicular commands in terms of, with your car. That definitely sounds like breaking a lock like a charge manslaughter.

[Marques]

But you, you said vehicular commands like turn on my heated.

[Andrew]

I didn't say that out loud,

[Marques]

but

[Andrew]

it also, like, it could make changes to Google Calendar and other Google things which if you're partnering with Google somehow or connecting with Google, give me Android Auto. You can do it.

[Marques]

Coward.

[Andrew]

Just do it. It makes no sense to not do It.

[Marques]

Wait, I'm trying to think. Okay. What their logic would be like if I asked them right now what they say. Because the lot. Okay. I use Rivian software. Rivian gets all the data about how I use the car. If I have Android Auto, I will just use that. And so I won't put all my navigation data or anything else like that into Rivian system. So Rivian system can't learn and get better. So what they do is they plug in certain parts of Google's ecosystem so that I keep using Rivian software, but that I can still interact with Google services. That's probably what they would say.

[Andrew]

I don't care.

[Marques]

But yeah, I. I will definitely use it to do things in the car and I will definitely not use it to change my calendar. I do not trust that. Do you trust that? Would you ask your car to change your calendar?

[Adam]

Absolutely.

[Marques]

I feel like I wouldn't trust that. No.

[Adam]

No way.

[David]

I like having my calendar in my car.

[Marques]

Yeah. But on like something I can see and like do with my hands, I guess, theoretically. Theoretically.

[David]

It's self driving.

[Marques]

Yeah. Is it going to show me my calendar?

[Adam]

We're just old.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

I need to physically see myself moving it. I don't know if I would trust like some automated system to do it just for me.

[David]

I don't even trust Google Assistant to do that. Yeah, the automated system. No, but if it showed like a little calendar widget on your screen and

[Marques]

then I could see the box move, I guess I trust it then. Yeah, I'm a very visual learner.

[Ellis]

I don't want my car to have any thoughts. I don't want my car to have to think about where to turn. I don't want my car to have to think about my calendar. I don't want my car to think at all.

[Marques]

Just APIs.

[Ellis]

I want it to go pedal down and go, go forward. I want car to go. I want car to go, go and beep, beep.

[Marques]

And that's.

[Ellis]

That's like good enough.

[Andrew]

No brakes, just horn. I think we knew. I think we need an ad break. Let's trivia.

[David]

I'm really. Wait. I'm really curious what the last. No, it's okay.

[Marques]

This is.

[David]

This is a trivia question.

[Andrew]

Oh, okay.

[David]

I'm just really curious what the last trivia question of the year is gonna be. Better be good.

[Marques]

Oh, I really want to get.

[Adam]

Don't you want to know? All right, so this is a bit of a teaser for this next segment coming up.

[David]

Oh, but

[Adam]

I'm looking at Ellis as I say this. Question number two of this episode, last one of the year. What is the Scoville rating of da bomb?

[Marques]

Super hot question. Closest without. Closest without going over scope.

[Andrew]

I think we should just do Delta. We've all watched. We've all watched Hot Ones enough. I've noticed everyone but David watched Hot Ones enough. Though we should.

[David]

The only Hot Ones episode I watched was the one where what's his name, like, you better be careful.

[Andrew]

David Marquez has been on it twice.

[David]

I think I watched that one. Wait. Twice I watched one. I didn't know you went on again, David.

[Adam]

Just leave. Just leave.

[Marques]

Unbelievable. I talked so much about you on that episode. That's crazy.

[Adam]

He was like, my good friend David.

[Marques]

There was a whole section where Sean is like, I heard you're friends with David. You should totally watch it, dude. It was so good.

[David]

All right, that's cool. I'll queue it up anyway. I'll queue it up on one of my three screens.

[Marques]

Well, think about this one. Answers will be at the end like usual. We'll be right back. A Wheel After Dark.

[Ellis]

Oh, yeah. And we're back.

[Marques]

I was petting Zuri. Okay. Sorry. She's just sitting right here next to me.

[David]

My shirt's back on now.

[Marques]

So, 2025. How do we end the last episode of this calendar year of our regular scheduled programming? How should we end this?

[Andrew]

Well, Adam was nice enough to go back and look at all the predictions we made at the start of the year and kind of has a little recap going, too. So I think we just jump straight into what we predicted.

[David]

Is this waveform wrapped kind of.

[Andrew]

Kind of, sort of.

[Marques]

I hope I got everything right.

[Andrew]

You didn't.

[David]

Damn. All right, what did we say?

[Andrew]

Do you want to go through these, Adam? You wrote them all down. We'll just react to them. Yeah.

[Adam]

Also, quick note. This is the last regularly scheduled program of this year. We will have a bonus episode next week at the time of you listening to this. So if you're traveling for the holidays. Yeah. Next Tuesday, there will be an episode.

[Marques]

Yes.

[Adam]

Okay.

[Andrew]

23rd.

[Adam]

Yeah, 23rd. Random 2025 predictions. The first one was, will the S25 have QI2 wireless charging? David said yes.

[Marques]

QI2, meaning with the magnets?

[Adam]

Yeah, with the magnets.

[Marques]

With the magnets.

[Andrew]

That was QI2 as we knew it before.

[David]

Wait, the first two episodes of the

[Marques]

year were us debating this.

[Andrew]

Cheetu got it.

[David]

I was like, five times. And they kept changing the spec.

[Andrew]

They're like, choo, choo.

[Marques]

As we predicted.

[Ellis]

Cheetu ready?

[Adam]

Andrew Also said yes, Marques said no, I said no, Ellis said yes.

[Marques]

So I got that right.

[Adam]

So Marques and I got it correct.

[Marques]

Whatever. The only phones that had Chi2 were just the Pixel and the iPhone.

[Adam]

Speaking of Pixel, that was the next one. Marquez.

[David]

Was it only the Pixel?

[Marques]

Pixel, hmd, Skyline, whatever. Well, yeah, that's it.

[Adam]

Marques, you said that 2025 would be the year of the Pixel 10.

[Marques]

Oh, oh no.

[Adam]

How do you feel about that? You shut me down last week with my hot take.

[Marques]

I remember what I was thinking when I said that and it had a lot to do with Tensor and that did not happen.

[David]

Yeah, damn.

[Adam]

You were saying that this year it would take a big leap and then next year in the, in the 11, we would get a big visual refresh.

[Marques]

I don't know why I have that

[Andrew]

much faith that might be true.

[David]

Because 10.

[Marques]

Yeah, I mean this would have been

[David]

a great year to do it.

[Adam]

Yeah, well, that was the question. David, you said because it's the 10, do you think they're going to do something big? And Marques is like nah, but.

[Andrew]

Oh wait, he said nah or he

[Adam]

said yeah, he said it wouldn't. They wouldn't do anything big to the hardware. It would be the same hardware and Tensor is going to be a huge leap and it's going to be the year of the Pixel 10.

[David]

It should have been.

[Marques]

It ended up being that Pixel Snap was a bigger deal than any of the rest of the stuff. Yeah, yeah, true.

[Andrew]

Unfortunately we like Pixel Snap.

[David]

Yeah, it's called 10, sir. Right. And then it's pixel 10. Come on, guys.

[Marques]

Tensor with the 10.

[Ellis]

How many hot dogs would you like?

[Andrew]

Tensor?

[David]

Exactly like how many?

[Andrew]

It's always hot dogs.

[Marques]

Always hot dogs.

[Adam]

Okay, then we had our hot takes predictions.

[Marques]

Okay.

[Adam]

Which? All right, mine. I'm just gonna get it out the way. Now you can all laugh at me.

[David]

We only did two predictions.

[Adam]

Well, no, that was the.

[Andrew]

Those are just like random, random things that I picked.

[Adam]

We had a bunch that episode, but those were the ones I felt like were worth. Okay, yeah, retalking about. Yeah, random hot take predictions. Mine was that someone will get the, the AI wearable right this year.

[Marques]

How do you feel about that one?

[Ellis]

The Pebble?

[Andrew]

The what?

[Adam]

It's not out yet.

[David]

It's not AI.

[Ellis]

When does anything ever come out anymore? Okay, like, come on.

[Adam]

Yeah, I don't feel great about that one. But it's in 2026.

[Andrew]

I don't know. Mark has had like three different AI wearables on the testing desk that just Collects.

[Marques]

No.

[Andrew]

Because they're so boring.

[Marques]

Because I don't. I cannot confirm or deny this about the pocket one that I got or the friend one that I got. I got to try those things.

[Andrew]

I can confirm they did not get it right. I've seen Friend Definitely did not get it right.

[David]

I've seen those subway ads.

[Ellis]

It was, like, everywhere.

[Andrew]

On which one?

[David]

Friend.

[Ellis]

Friend.

[David]

They booked out the entire New York subway.

[Andrew]

Did they spend any money on the hardware or just a website domain?

[David]

It's the size of an air. It's just a airtag. Yeah, that's all it is.

[Marques]

Kind of looks like it, yeah.

[Ellis]

Business yet?

[Adam]

No.

[David]

No.

[Andrew]

He was whining on Twitter the other day, though.

[Adam]

I mean, turns out when you're just, like, a Chat GPT rapper, you don't have to spend.

[Andrew]

That was the Tweet I saw.

[Marques]

Hey, 20% of the people on this podcast are paying customers of Chat GPT for Friend. Friend.

[Andrew]

You bought the.

[David]

You pay for.

[Andrew]

You can buy the friend you pay

[Marques]

for sitting on my desk, and you're paying for this.

[Andrew]

You know what's funny? I don't think that's. I don't think that's a different AI necklace. I'm pretty sure.

[Marques]

Oh, the one that I have.

[David]

Yeah.

[Marques]

Whoops. There's another one that kind of looks like the. Oh, God. All right, well, I'll test them all later.

[David]

That just shows that Adam was especially wrong.

[Andrew]

I want to confirm that, but I'm pretty sure it's something else.

[Marques]

I'll go back and find that. Cannot confirm or deny.

[Adam]

Well, the next one was Andrew's rabbit will survive and Release the rabbit. R2.

[Andrew]

I was close.

[Adam]

You're close. They are not out of business yet.

[Andrew]

Yeah, because they didn't have to pay any employees.

[David]

If they haven't paid any of their employees, are they still.

[Andrew]

Technically still alive and teased a new one.

[Marques]

Exactly. Okay.

[Ellis]

Oh, my God.

[David]

Are we gonna. I got closer than that. Another CES where a bunch of influencers, like, talk about how cool it is and ends up being.

[Andrew]

Can they afford a plane ticket to ces?

[David]

They'll get flown out there.

[Adam]

Fighting words, Andrew. David, you said.

[David]

Yeah, this is.

[Adam]

This is a little crazy. You said, I think humane gets sold in 2025.

[Marques]

Correct?

[Andrew]

Correct.

[Adam]

But you also said, probably not to HP.

[Andrew]

How did you do that? Did he really say that?

[Ellis]

It did seem a little obvious because, like, HP Humane pin, you know, a little on the nose.

[David]

Thank you, Alice. Did I say that?

[Marques]

You did.

[Adam]

I think it was because it was around the time that rumors first started Popping up. It hadn't happened yet, but it was like, around the time that there were rumors, I think.

[David]

I think I was just thinking that would just be. That would be too funny. It would be too depressing and funny. Wow.

[Adam]

Andrew also asked if one had inevitably sold if it would be more or less than Juan Soto's contract. Not even player of the mets, which was $765 million. They sold for about 116 million. So not close.

[David]

That's still too much.

[Adam]

Although his contract was for 15 years. So, you know, they made that in like, what, three.

[David]

Are they making the AI for the printers better over there?

[Adam]

Do you have an HP printer?

[Marques]

Yeah. What's going on over there at hp?

[David]

What?

[Andrew]

Who?

[Adam]

They're just printing money.

[Marques]

HP decided to buy Humane. I have so many questions.

[David]

Yeah, I know, right?

[Marques]

That are not yet answered about that.

[David]

It's probably the. They did invent some sort of projector technology.

[Adam]

Hey, printer.

[Andrew]

Hey, printer. Connect to WI fi again, please, for the love of God.

[Marques]

HP makes laptops still Dragonfly. Yeah, they make a lot of Chromebooks.

[Adam]

The next hot take was Marquez. You said the browser wars are back.

[David]

True.

[Marques]

I got that. Right.

[Adam]

Yep. Definitely, I got that.

[David]

But there are so many browsers useless.

[Andrew]

He also didn't expect the main browser war to be the company killing their own browser and starting another one and causing a giant side.

[Marques]

We got side plots. We got main plots. We got ChatGPT threatening Google threatening Perplex.

[David]

We got a whole bunch threatening.

[Marques]

Well, existing enough for a little Code Red action. I feel like that's.

[David]

Oh, I thought you meant, like, Atlas.

[Marques]

No, the. Alice. Well, I mean, that's one of the things. And yeah, the browser wars are back.

[Andrew]

I thought you meant they sent a threat to the other. I would have.

[David]

Shocked. Yeah.

[Marques]

Little lunch with Sundar.

[Andrew]

And that's it.

[Adam]

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

[David]

Da bomb.

[Ellis]

Sorry.

[Adam]

Da bomb.

[David]

Did Microsoft.

[Andrew]

Technically.

[Ellis]

Microsoft Teams. But did they really.

[Andrew]

Interpreter mode? Well, I don't. I haven't heard anything about. We've joked about the live translation thing all year.

[Ellis]

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

[David]

Yeah.

[Marques]

And it still, like, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

[Andrew]

No, I agree. I feel like it got added to everything and I haven't heard a peep about any of it, but now I.

[Marques]

The Pixel has it for phone calls now.

[Andrew]

Have you heard a single person.

[Marques]

That doesn't mean it doesn't work.

[Andrew]

I'm just saying.

[Marques]

Yeah, I use it.

[Andrew]

I just thought if it would be, like, real, like, life changing, we would have heard about it a little more.

[Ellis]

Anyway, this is all the same.

[David]

How much do you speak a different language?

[Marques]

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

[David]

Yeah.

[Ellis]

I am a man of my word. After we finish the next part of Waveform Wrapped, I will take a seat at the big table. I will issue my apology, stick around, and I will. I will Debom.

[Andrew]

You should do the readout with. You should do the bomb and then do the readout.

[David]

But you got to let.

[Ellis]

I was going to do dabob and then read you guys a trivia question.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Marques]

I like that better.

[David]

Yeah.

[Ellis]

Because, man, that waiting music is gonna feel.

[David]

Are you gonna do a spoonful?

[Ellis]

I don't know.

[Marques]

I think a dab is plenty.

[Ellis]

I'm gonna do a dab. I also. It's dinner time and I haven't eaten, so I'm probably gonna, like, put it on.

[Marques]

This is bad.

[Ellis]

A Pringle. We do have milk in the office.

[David]

Can you scar your stomach lining?

[Marques]

That's called an ulcer.

[Ellis]

Yeah.

[Marques]

You can sit there for a while

[David]

until you cover it with other food. No, we're gonna.

[Marques]

Yeah.

[Adam]

I'm sorry.

[Marques]

I did hot ones on an empty stomach.

[Adam]

It was bad.

[David]

You did hot ones.

[Marques]

I feel like every time I Say it. I'm like, maybe I'm flexing. Maybe this is just unnecessary.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[David]

I did watch one of them.

[Ellis]

Yeah.

[Adam]

Did you?

[David]

I did.

[Adam]

Okay.

[Ellis]

Which one?

[Marques]

The.

[Andrew]

I don't know.

[David]

One of the two. I think it was the first one.

[Marques]

Anyway.

[Ellis]

Yeah.

[David]

So I've been here a long time.

[Ellis]

I think it's safe to say that while some of us were kind of right, I was the most wrong.

[David]

It's okay, Alice. I think you had a fair data, you know, because they have announced live translation like 50 times over the last 10 years.

[Ellis]

I had 11 years to make this bet, and the one year I make it is the year I. Yeah.

[David]

Probably not best to guess the year that like all the LLMs actually started working.

[Adam]

Well, that was our. Our predictions. So now looking back at this past year, what do you think was the story of the year? If you had to pick one, what's the theme?

[Marques]

Tech story of the year.

[Andrew]

I like your list. And just liquid asses in the middle of it.

[David]

Damn. There was actually a lot of stuff.

[Andrew]

Do you want to read. Just read this list, Adam.

[Marques]

These are all things that happened this year.

[Adam]

There's all stuff that happened in 2025.

[Marques]

Okay.

[Adam]

Nintendo Switch 2.

[David]

Let's go.

[Adam]

Nintendo Switch to. Nintendo Switch to TikTok. Got sold. Question mark.

[David]

Sort of.

[Marques]

Kind of maybe.

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

The first waveform live stream which Alice added.

[David]

I completely forgot.

[Andrew]

I think another one of those has to happen in 2023 somehow at least one.

[Adam]

The Galaxy S25 happened. I feel like Galaxy and iPhone just by themselves are big things of the year in tech.

[Andrew]

I guess I would argue s lineup

[David]

basically not news this year. Didn't do anything.

[Adam]

Is that news? Okay, next. Apple Vision Pro turned one. Don't remember Deep Seek. Remember that?

[David]

Yeah.

[Adam]

The whole industry shook. That was this year.

[Marques]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Andrew]

That was crazy.

[Ellis]

Do we ever find out if that was cap or not?

[Marques]

Like, I don't know. I don't think.

[David]

I don't think it was. They just released some new stuff last week.

[Adam]

Then there was the iPhone E which confused us all.

[Marques]

Woof.

[Adam]

And got bust of the year.

[David]

Yeah, I forgot about that.

[Adam]

Yeah. Sigma B.F. camera.

[Marques]

Remember that?

[David]

Oh, the Sigma boyfriend. Yeah.

[Andrew]

That was this year coolest thing for two weeks.

[Marques]

And yeah, metal baby.

[David]

Hey, two weeks is longer than a lot of stories last.

[Andrew]

True.

[Adam]

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Live at south by.

[Andrew]

That was fun.

[Adam]

Our first show. That was cool. The Dodge EV Charger room.

[David]

Room.

[Andrew]

That was this year.

[Adam]

That was this year.

[Marques]

With loudest EV of all time. That Marquez really hated the fratsonic chambered exhaust man. You could hear us pull up from outside the studio.

[Ellis]

That was the muscle car that was too heavy to do burnouts.

[Marques]

Yeah. Not enough power. Yeah, yeah. Unfortunate.

[Adam]

Damn iPhone Air happened.

[David]

Big story.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[David]

Big Story and iPhone are getting discontinued. Allegedly.

[Adam]

Liquid ass. Of course.

[David]

Yeah.

[Marques]

An orange iPhone might be the story. That might be cool.

[Adam]

What? Liquid glass?

[Marques]

Yeah, it's wonderful.

[Adam]

Yeah. Well, there was also the Jimmy Fallon Pixel 10 event.

[Marques]

That's the one.

[Adam]

Meta AI glasses part.

[David]

Part 2 or 3.

[Adam]

Whatever. Humanoid robots coming back.

[David]

Oh, that was a lot. Yeah.

[Adam]

Steam Machine and Steam Frame announced, which everyone yelled at me because they said people were actually excited for the Steam comics.

[Andrew]

Oh, the frame. Yeah. I think people are excited for the frame. I don't care that much, but I'm excited for the Steam Machine.

[David]

I had a lot of normies hit me up and say they were stoked on the Steam Machine. Yeah, it was kind of surprising.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I think.

[Ellis]

Kind of surprising. Kind of surprising that normies care about Steam hardware. Really?

[David]

Yes.

[Marques]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ellis]

Was I not just saying this?

[Andrew]

Elliot's grandma has never heard of Steam Machine or the Steam Deck.

[Ellis]

I don't know.

[Andrew]

He's in our Discord server. Sorry, dude.

[David]

He's the guy whose grandma thought that the fold was AI.

[Marques]

Yeah, we.

[Andrew]

Someone doesn't watch the video.

[Adam]

Airdrop coming to Android.

[David]

Come on. I think that might have been one

[Marques]

of the best Titanic news.

[Andrew]

Yeah, we'd know more about it if they got Jimmy Fallon to announce it.

[Adam]

Xiaomi 17 Pro.

[Marques]

Max, that did happen.

[Adam]

I don't think I pronounced that correctly. Xiaomi.

[Andrew]

That was right. Xiaomi.

[David]

Xiaomi.

[Adam]

Xiaomi. The Xiaomi SU7. That happened this year.

[Ellis]

Wait, I'm pretty sure it's SU7. So I made a SU7 joke once around the office, and no one is referred to as the SU7.

[Andrew]

Well, that's why it's the SU7.

[Adam]

And so.

[Ellis]

Oh, perfect.

[David]

I mean.

[Marques]

I mean, I'm sure it's not pronounced that way in every market, but it's literally SU7. Like, how else would you pronounce it? Maybe you're not supposed to ever pronounce it SU7, but I naturally just started saying Sioux. So, SUE7.

[Adam]

Or was it today's episode with the Trifold?

[Marques]

Is that the story of the Trifold is pretty crazy?

[Andrew]

No, I like the story of the top three.

[Marques]

I have a Mount Rushmore.

[David]

I have a tough crazy one.

[Marques]

I'll take that.

[David]

I'll take this.

[Marques]

I have a Mount Rushmore for this year.

[Ellis]

There are four heads on Mount Rushmore.

[David]

Yes, I have a top four.

[Marques]

I was adjusting.

[Adam]

Sorry.

[Marques]

I had three and now I have four. So I have a Mount Rushmore for this year.

[Andrew]

The last one, George Washington.

[Marques]

My Mount Rushmore for waveform and for stories of 2025. Number one is liquid glass.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Marques]

Yeah, it's liquid glass. Not even necessarily number one. It's just on the mountain. Yeah, Liquid glass. Number two, live at south by Southwest. Oh, I have to throw that on the Mount Rushmore. That was pretty bomb.

[David]

It's pretty bomb.

[Marques]

Number three, sue seven.

[David]

SU seven.

[Marques]

I didn't even do that.

[Andrew]

Let's kick it off.

[David]

We're too old for this, dude.

[Marques]

Shouldn't be. And number four, let's throw. Let's throw Meta AI Glasses on there.

[David]

Hot take.

[Marques]

I think that was really interesting. Switch 2 did kind of make a repeating. Yeah, I could make an argument for that. All right, throw the Switch 2 in there. Switch 2 is in there over the Meta AI glasses.

[Andrew]

Thank goodness.

[Marques]

But I did find. I got more people asking me in real life about the AI glasses.

[Andrew]

I'm not going to do a Mount Rushmore. But I think the coolest full circle thing is we got Project Muhan in like January, and we went to that event and they like, teased the trifold in that little, like, timeline, and we got it right at the end of the year.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Which is kind of cool.

[Marques]

Just barely slipped it in by the end. Yeah.

[Ellis]

It's sick.

[David]

I think that, you know, Liquid Ass being such a. Like a story that was just so prevalent throughout the entire year. Like, people have still are talking about this and. And now a lot of the normies are updating their phones and they're all like, what the is this? Nobody likes it. Notably, a lot of the Apple executives have moved on to other companies. The design chief that made Liquid Glass left for Meta, so he's gonna make stories. You know, everything over there is going to be horrible now, even worse than already is. So I feel like. Yeah, I feel like Liquid glass has been the most, like, it's been a story all year. You know, I mean, we. It got announced in June of. Was that this year? No. Last year? No. This year?

[Marques]

No, this year. This summer.

[David]

This year.

[Marques]

They showed it off this summer.

[David]

This. They showed it off this summer.

[Marques]

Coming to an iPhone near you now it's coming to everything.

[Andrew]

Maybe, but we're going to change it a few times.

[David]

Yeah. So. And considering all the other companies like copy liquid glass and to for their UIs in China, I would say that's one. One of the big ones. I do have a. Sorry, I can't say this on my.

[Marques]

Guess.

[Adam]

I'll.

[David]

I'll.

[Ellis]

I'll just bleep it.

[David]

It'll just be one.

[Marques]

Bleep it. Yeah.

[David]

So.

[Ellis]

The fleet is still going.

[Andrew]

Just flip it.

[David]

When TikTok got, like, banned for the night.

[Andrew]

That's so true.

[David]

Right?

[Andrew]

Good one.

[Marques]

Oh, I forgot about that. I do, too. They're like, wow, I can picture. And you had. And then we started scrolling.

[Ellis]

Like.

[Andrew]

No, like, I know this is a finite scroll right now.

[Marques]

Like, does. Yeah, that did happen.

[Adam]

I remember reaching the end.

[Marques]

That was like, crashed. And I was like, oh, my God, that was January.

[David]

I remember walking out of a bar with, like, my friend, and he opens his phone, he goes, oh, my God. Tick tock is gone. Yeah. It was like a.

[Marques]

It kind of staggered because I remember I was still scrolling, but my friend stopped scrolling. So they came over and watched me

[David]

give me my dopamine.

[Andrew]

All the. The video content was like, this could be gone. It was basically people saying, like, goodbye and where else to find me.

[David]

Yeah, yeah. On Red Note.

[Marques]

And then

[Adam]

forgot about that.

[David]

Twelve hours later, it was back.

[Marques]

Yeah. The next day, scrolling.

[Adam]

Did it cross any of your minds? Because it crossed my mind because I'm, like, logged into TikTok and, you know, all that stuff on my phone for, like, the Waveform podcast. Did it cross your minds that we should say goodbye on TikTok? On TikTok. No, it didn't cross.

[Marques]

We're not like TikTok neither. I think it was the TikTok creators, those who have no other channels anywhere, who were like, I need to, like, take these people with me somewhere. Like, the panic in the strategy of I'm just gonna spam, like, please go follow me on Instagram now was very real. We have a diversified audience on a couple platforms. Our TikTok going away would kind of suck, but wouldn't be the end of the world, so we didn't feel the need to take it back.

[David]

Yeah.

[Marques]

But it would have been pretty wild if it went away. Yeah.

[David]

Dua Lipa interviewing Tim Cookos last year, right?

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[David]

I guess that won't be on my Mount Rushmore.

[Marques]

I would have made it.

[Adam]

That's on my Mount Rushmore, period.

[Marques]

This year, I interviewed Tim Cook and he just didn't answer any of the questions.

[David]

That was this year.

[Marques]

Yeah.

[David]

Oh, my God.

[Marques]

Remember? Really? I was like, you want to do a blind ranking of some Apple stuff? And he was like, what's that? I was like, this is not caloric.

[David]

The magic mouse.

[Marques]

Yeah. Yeah, I forgot that moment is on my Mount Rushmore of this year.

[David]

Yeah.

[Marques]

Where I could see the clip as it was happening. The ergonomics.

[David]

Ergonomics, yeah.

[Ellis]

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

[David]

You know, what did Samsung put out that was good?

[Ellis]

Well, we don't know if it's good yet, but they did it. You know, they said. They said they were gonna do it and they. Then they did it.

[David]

Yeah, they did do it.

[Ellis]

Yeah. You know, even. Even Meta said they were gonna do a thing and they did.

[Marques]

I have a hot take.

[Ellis]

They also.

[David]

It's cooking.

[Ellis]

Yeah.

[David]

Honestly.

[Ellis]

Honestly, my Mount Rushmore is all of the unsealed documents from the Meta lawsuit that Reute has reported on. I don't know if there's four of

[David]

them, but, man, there's definitely at least four.

[Ellis]

Yeah.

[David]

Yeah. And the Nintendo Switch 2.

[Ellis]

And the Nintendo Switch 2. A device I don't own and I've never played.

[David]

Yeah.

[Marques]

But it.

[David]

There was a lot of hype for a lot of months.

[Andrew]

Marquez, what's your hot take? We're also going to start the next year with predictions again. We'll do that next episode in a couple weeks.

[David]

Next episode? The week.

[Andrew]

Oh, yeah, you're right. Next regularly scheduled.

[David]

Yeah, in the new year.

[Marques]

I was just gonna say Samsung ships a car in three years.

[David]

Whoa, whoa.

[Adam]

Where did that come from?

[Andrew]

What?

[Marques]

Xiaomi just shipped a car.

[Adam]

Do you know something we don't?

[David]

Yeah, but Xiaomi is Chinese.

[Marques]

Yeah.

[David]

And China, like, pumps money into car companies.

[Marques]

Yeah. Samsung's gonna show up.

[Adam]

Samsung, like, owns something.

[Marques]

They're also gonna, like, collab. Yeah, they have a lot of funding. They're gonna collab. They're gonna scrap a bunch of stuff together, a bunch of metal, a bunch of collaborative companies, and they're gonna make a car.

[David]

Do you think they're just gonna collab with Kia?

[Marques]

Yeah. It'll insert Korean. Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Marques]

But it'll have a Samsung logo somewhere in there.

[Ellis]

Samsung sold their car division to Renault a bunch of years ago and it got rebranded to just Renault Korea. They still have a minority stake in it, but it seems like Samsung's auto business is now mostly a Renault thing, and Geely also has a minority stake in it.

[David]

Did the twerking hamster in the. Dude, did that happen this year?

[Ellis]

No, that was last year.

[David]

Really? Yeah.

[Andrew]

I think that might have Been two years ago. I think that might been have in two years.

[David]

That would have been on my Rushmore for me for sure as long I'm

[Marques]

really hoping, I'm really hoping I get one more trivia point this year. It's been so long since I got a point in trivia. It might have been before Thanksgiving.

[Andrew]

Last guy might have been when the corgi was twerking on the Mini Cooper.

[David]

That's true.

[Marques]

So I say we do the trivia.

[Adam]

Trivia, dude.

[Ellis]

Trivia, dude.

[Adam]

But first Ellis has to.

[Ellis]

It's what's.

[David]

Okay, it's us.

[Adam]

Sorry, Ellis was just shaking the.

[Ellis]

Shaking off the.

[David]

Wait. You're holding a computer with two hands, Marques. Wait, where'd your computer go?

[Marques]

It's in my hand.

[David]

I always use a phone.

[Marques]

It's in my pocket. Now where'd you.

[David]

Sorry.

[Marques]

Sorry.

[Adam]

It's time for Ellis to eat the bomb, guys.

[Ellis]

Okay, so as promised, at the beginning of the year I said live translation wasn't going to be a thing because every tech company had been announcing it every year for the past decade. And lo and behold, the year I played place, my bet is the year it all comes out. And so as promised, I will be doing da bomb on a spoon. I have with me some aids, a glass of milk, some extra toasty Cheez its and string cheese. This is just what I ran and got from the save you. There's some solidified stuff at the top so I'm just going to get. Get that out of the way because I feel like that's going to be extra concentrated. My heart is like already racing.

[David]

I'm nervous for you.

[Ellis]

I've had da bomb before. Have I had it raw on an empty stomach?

[David]

No, no, it's like you have an ulcer probably is. This still smells horrible.

[Adam]

It smells like battery acid.

[Marques]

Yeah, it tastes like. I'll just let you experience it.

[David]

You know what battery acid tastes like?

[Marques]

It tastes like what you imagine battery acid tastes like. I don't have to taste battery acid to tell people this tastes like battery acid. Fair enough, fair enough.

[Ellis]

Okay, just.

[Marques]

That is a whole dab. Ladies and gentlemen. Ellis is being very brave right now.

[Adam]

I was worried.

[David]

I'm worried, I'm worried.

[Andrew]

I'm gonna.

[Ellis]

Am I allowed to. Am I allowed to coat my palate

[David]

with cheese at first?

[Marques]

Sure gonna save you, bro.

[Adam]

It's not gonna help.

[David]

Is there anything. Okay, I need like a safe word for you. Like is there something where like if you actually need.

[Adam]

Once he does ambulance.

[David]

I don't know. What am I Supposed to do if you like are gonna.

[Andrew]

They don't come after 7pm yeah, so I'm nervous.

[Ellis]

I will say I am a spicy food expert.

[Marques]

Won't save you.

[Ellis]

And something I do know about spicy food is that the trick is small bites and that is impossible on a spoon. So I'm just going to touch this chopstick to my tongue a few times as a ramp up and then we're going to dive in.

[Adam]

No, the trick is glass of water.

[Ellis]

I never apologize. The whole thing. I never apologize. Computer programmers of the world. Software developers. Machine learning engineers. AI venture capitalists. Apple, Google, Microsoft executives. Mag 7 employees. I'm sorry, I thought y' all were full of. I thought y' all were mad full of. And taking billions of dollars from people who are also filled to sell people stuff that didn't work. And I still think that's what's going on.

[David]

Welcome to America.

[Ellis]

I was wrong. And now I'm going to pay the price. So let's get a little warm up going. All right, do it.

[Marques]

It doesn't work that way. It's just like getting stabbed by a thousand tiny knives, basically.

[Andrew]

I thought I was smart.

[Ellis]

Yeah, baby.

[Marques]

Yeah.

[Adam]

All right, give him the first question.

[David]

Did you do it?

[Andrew]

No.

[Marques]

You should prepare exactly what you plan to say because I know it's gonna be harder.

[David]

You can back out, Ellis.

[Marques]

No.

[Ellis]

Man of my word. Thank you, Marquez.

[Marques]

You're in. I wrote down the answer already.

[David]

Oh, I forget the question. What was it? Oh, you're gonna say it. Is that the whole amount?

[Marques]

Yep.

[Ellis]

That's enough.

[Marques]

He did it.

[Adam]

He took a spoonful.

[Andrew]

Careful around the eyes.

[Ellis]

Marcus Brownlee. Andrew Mangadelli.

[David]

Yeah.

[Ellis]

David. Mel.

[Adam]

It gets worse when you talk.

[Ellis]

Oh, yeah?

[David]

Yep.

[Ellis]

What three letters represent both a Chinese tech conglomerate. No, Chinese tech conglomerate. And an American blues guitar legend.

[Andrew]

Oh, I. I don't usually do trivia from here. I can see Marquez bored. I was never gonna guess that, so I'm just not going to guess.

[Marques]

Ah, damn.

[Ellis]

I'm so sorry.

[Andrew]

We've never done this before.

[Adam]

Ellis is at the big table and Andrew is next to me at the producer table, which has a great view of Marquesa's board so that the work.

[Marques]

Didn't think about that one.

[Andrew]

I kind of thought that bomb was going to be like too old, but.

[Ellis]

Oh, it did say refrigerate after O. And it has been on our table unrefrigerated for like two years.

[Andrew]

It seems like it's getting in pretty good though.

[Ellis]

Okay, Marquez, what did you put? I put ecl and what American blues legend has at the initials up?

[Marques]

I don't know.

[David]

Tom, Clara?

[Marques]

I don't know. I hadn't thought that far ahead.

[Andrew]

David, what'd you put?

[David]

I put bbk.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Ellis]

That's right.

[Adam]

What's the point?

[David]

What,

[Ellis]

what, what blues guitar legend?

[David]

B.B. king.

[Adam]

B.B.

[Ellis]

king is correct. Good job.

[David]

Thanks.

[Ellis]

Can you play the after dark music or something?

[Marques]

Yeah, baby. I'm ready for the next one.

[Adam]

Next question.

[Marques]

Okay.

[Adam]

What is the Scoville rating of the bomb that Ellis just inhaled?

[David]

And it's Delta. Wait, Andrew didn't answer.

[Andrew]

I don't know.

[Adam]

He's not gonna answer because he saw Marquez this board.

[Marques]

Actually I'm. I'm changing.

[Ellis]

We're.

[Andrew]

Are we doing prices right or Delta? Oh, we are doing Delta. Okay, cool.

[David]

I prefer United.

[Marques]

Just kidding. I don't.

[Ellis]

All right, we're good.

[David]

Okay,

[Adam]

wait, real quick before we flip, am I wrong? Quick update on the score. Oh, Marques has 10. David, after that correct question. Well after that correct answer with 12, Andrew with 14.

[Marques]

I need.

[Adam]

All right, slip him. And Reed, what do you got?

[Marques]

Please be.

[David]

Oh my goodness.

[Adam]

Andrew, what'd you say?

[Marques]

Big range.

[Andrew]

2.3 million.

[Adam]

Marques?

[Marques]

835,000.

[Ellis]

David, 35,000.

[David]

10,000.

[Adam]

Y' all really gonna make me do some crazy math.

[David]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Is it like one point something?

[Adam]

It's 135k. So Marquez is closest.

[Ellis]

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

[Marques]

No, I'm further.

[Adam]

Wait, no. David tells us you can even kind of see it.

[Marques]

I wrote, I thought it was 135, 000 and I was right. And then I erased it and wrote 835000 because I doubted myself. I almost.

[David]

Never doubt yourself, Marquez. Never doubt yourself.

[Marques]

It's going to be a whole year before I get a point. This is tough.

[Adam]

Ellis, how are you doing over there?

[Ellis]

Actually pretty good. It's just my lips at this point. I mean I say that and then I'm sure it's going to come back.

[Adam]

It also like it will on the toilet later.

[Ellis]

It somehow regardless is in my nose. Didn't touch my nose, but.

[Andrew]

Wow, that's a wrap.

[Adam]

That's hot man.

[Marques]

Congrats on, on keeping it to your word. Hopefully the bets that we make next year.

[Ellis]

No, I already know next year. None of those humanoid robots are coming. And if one of them does, I'm doing this again, baby.

[Marques]

I love it.

[Andrew]

Do it.

[David]

Do two of them next time. If one of them comes out.

[Marques]

Okay, that's perfect. I like that. That's a great place to end it.

[Andrew]

Humanoid robot can serve you the spoonful of last.

[Ellis]

Yeah, that's actually. That's what we'll do. If one of these humanoid robots actually comes out and it actually works, that robot can come on the show and spoon me another man.

[Marques]

Dabom from the same bottle.

[David]

Smells so bad even from here.

[Adam]

Please take us out.

[Marques]

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening, for all of 2025. See you on the other side. 2026 is gonna be sick.

[Ellis]

Do it.

[David]

Except for next week's episode.

[Andrew]

We'll also one more bonus episode next week.

[David]

Yeah.

[Ellis]

Play After Dark 3.

[David]

There's a third one.

[Ellis]

Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven. We're part of the Vox Media podcast. Podcast network. We're vain. Still wrote the music. This has been 2025 on Waveform. Let's get it.

[Marques]

Whoops. Just fade to black.

[Andrew]

All right, for this clip's outro, Alice is going to be taking another hit of da bomb. Ellis, where'd you go?

[Marques]

Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax. And let go of whatever you're carrying today.

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[Marques]

And breathe.

[David]

Oh, sorry.

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[Marques]

Namaste.

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[Adam]

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[Marques]

Experian.